‘How old is she?’
‘Seven. Eight on October thirty-first.’
‘Doing well at school?’
‘Yes. She’s bright. Like her father.’
‘And her prospective stepmother.’
‘You are too kind. And there I was, thinking you might hate me for breaking up the family.’
‘You’re not breaking it up. India or Tasmania, you’ll always be family. The only thing that matters is that you should be happy.’ Marina took her hand, her eyes searching Tamsyn’s face. ‘Are you happy, my dear?’
‘Ecstatic,’ Tamsyn said.
Grant came. They piled into the car and he took them to his in-laws’ place: a bungalow with a bounteous garden on a hilltop on the outskirts of town.
* * *
They dropped Marina outside the gate.
‘Aren’t you coming in?’
‘Better not,’ Grant said. ‘Mrs Kumar will want to talk about the wedding and it will be easier with us out of the way.’
Marina walked up the path between richly flowering shrubs.
Doctor Kumar was a former medical practitioner who had retired five years earlier. He was thin and vigorous, with greying hair and a stern expression. He was courteous rather than welcoming and his wife, of an age with her husband and wearing a plain maroon sari, was the same. They spoke fluent English with a pronounced Indian accent.
Doctor Kumar soon left them. ‘I have one or two things to do.’ His smile was polite but no more.
Marina and Mrs Kumar sat in the living room with a view over the garden. A uniformed maid brought a tray of tea and small, brightly coloured cakes.
‘You have been having an arduous journey to get here, I think,’ Mrs Kumar said.
‘Worth it, though,’ Marina said.
‘What do you think about this new marriage?’
‘I am happy. It’s what Tamsyn wants and I have formed a good first impression of the man she’s marrying.’
‘The difference in age does not trouble you?’
‘Not in the least.’
They sampled their tea silently for a minute.
‘He is a good man,’ Mrs Kumar said. ‘I do not deny that. Yet my husband and I would have preferred Parvati to marry an Indian gentleman. There are enough problems in any marriage without that, isn’t it?’
‘Tamsyn’s father and I came from very different backgrounds but we were very happy together.’
‘Certainly, that is the most important thing. And Esmé is very dear to both Doctor Kumar and myself. She has become a most important part of our lives. We considered having her live with us after our daughter passed but decided it would be better for the child if she grew up with children of her own age. There are days when I regret that decision but on the whole I think it was in Esmé’s best interests.’
‘I am sure you’re right,’ Marina said. ‘Not an easy decision, though.’
‘We still see a lot of her, of course. To be honest with you, Mrs Trevelyan, I cannot imagine what our life would be without her.’
It was a quiet ceremony when Tamsyn Trevelyan promised to love, honour and obey her new husband, with only a handful of guests to witness it. Among them was Doctor Kumar, who had reluctantly agreed to give the bride away, and who now sat with a countenance more suited to a funeral than a wedding. At his side Mrs Kumar, plump and formidable, wore an expression indecipherable even to the most astute.
Esmé, who had fallen in love all over again with her new mother who was only twelve years older than she was, wore a pale blue dress and was half-buried beneath garlands of flowers bought by the bridegroom: roses, pansies and orchids in profusion.
The bride wore white gardenias in her hair and, for luck, a string of pearls around her neck. Her full-length gown—white in acknowledgement of the virginity she had possessed once—had full-length sleeves moulded closely to her arms, while the modified square-cut neck revealed nothing that mattered. Her voluminous veil formed a white cloud about her head.
Marina, seated in the place of honour in the front row, watched her daughter transformed into a vision of ethereal beauty. She was delighted to be there to see it but sad that Tamsyn’s father was not, knowing how much it would have meant to him.
Doctor and Mrs Kumar had been uncomfortable about having the small reception in their garden so they used the church hall instead.
The priest in charge at St Patrick’s felt it his obligation to impart words of wisdom to the gathering, with particular reference to the newly married couple, so he spoke kindly to Grant and Mrs Drake, who had now entered upon a state of life of which the priest admitted, waggishly, that he had no personal knowledge. But he had observed many couples entering upon what all hoped would be a state of bliss. Sadly, things did not always work out that way, but he was confident that, with faith, the snares and pitfalls of life might be avoided or, if that was impossible, would be borne with grace and an unshaken faith in the hereafter.
While Marina, standing on the edge of the little group, chose to say nothing, which she believed was the better way.
* * *
No honeymoon was planned. The Drakes would overnight at the 7 Pines, where the bridal suite had been reserved, and then travel down to Delhi. All this—the wedding ceremony and reception—had been an acknowledgement of the tradition that society had imposed upon them: a show, pleasant and indeed delightful, but in the context of their future life of no great relevance. All that had gone before was ended; it was in Delhi that their life would now begin.
For a brief time, the ceremony designed to draw them together had the odd effect of driving them apart. They had lived together in unmarried fulfilment for weeks; now that their union was officially sanctioned, Tamsyn sensed that the world, or their part of it, had changed. She had become familiar with the man; now she had to explore what it was to have a husband. That night, in the bridal suite, they stared at each other with new eyes, naked before each other in a way they had never been before.
She had never thought she’d be shy with him; now she was. It was only later that familiarity re-exerted itself. Then they were united as never before, the temporary separation of mind and emotion serving to strengthen the bond once they had found each other again.
In the morning they said goodbye to Esmé, who had gone back to school. They thanked Doctor and Mrs Kumar for their lukewarm hospitality. With Marina in the back seat of the hire car, they drove to Kalka station; together they caught the train to Delhi, which they found hot, humid and as noisy as ever.
Marina stayed with them overnight; the next morning they saw her off on the next leg of her long journey to Tasmania, and returned hand in hand to the fourth-floor apartment. They stood in the living room and looked at each other; for the second time in two days, it was a journey of discovery: the married couple, the very-much-in-love couple, alone and together in what would henceforth be their home. Tamsyn welcomed the prospect. Until that moment they had been living in a world of fantasy and magic. It had been a wonderful experience but now she needed more, and thought the solidity of steel and stone would bring the necessary permanence to their lives.
Even the view from the bedroom window of trees and other apartment blocks, with people passing to and fro along the street below them, and the sounds—the hooting of cars and trundle of cart wheels, the cries and scents of this Asian city—provided the safe haven where their marriage, moored to the future rather than the past, might develop and grow strong.
In the apartment all was silence, islanded amid the noises rising from the street. In the silence Tamsyn for the first time began to think about the future. Grant had his work, to which he would be returning the next day. But what did she have?
‘I cannot do nothing,’ she said.
But what she was able to do, or what the authorities would allow her to do, was unclear.
She had no qualifications, no experience and, of critical importance, no work permit.
Grant, not sounding too hopeful about it, s
aid he would see what he could do.
While she waited for the miracle that showed no sign of eventuating, Tamsyn spent time and a limited amount of money on sprucing up the apartment. What had previously been a bachelor’s residence, spare and stark in nature, she now softened with flowers in vases, multicoloured Thai silk cushions and—daringly—enlarged reproductions of several Mughal miniature paintings, among them, or so the dealer told her, a study of the important Persian poet Sa’adi in the rose garden, taken from the Gulistan, his most famous work, published in 1645.
There was a shopping centre two streets away from the apartment. She bought their food there and got into conversation with the shop owners. No one was interested in employing someone who spoke nothing but English but one day, a month after her arrival in Delhi, the owner of a travel agency asked if she would be willing to act as a guide to visitors from Britain and the USA.
The pay was poor and the arrangement irregular for someone without a work permit, but she took it anyway, first recruiting Grant to spend a weekend running around the places they thought would be of interest to tourists. That way, she reasoned, she would have at least something to tell them while she was showing them around. If she didn’t know the answers to their questions, she would just have to improvise. At least it would get her out of the apartment once or twice a week.
What it also did was give her a taste for the business.
‘We never had a honeymoon,’ Grant said in November.
‘We certainly did. The only thing is, we reversed the conventional sequence. We had the honeymoon first.’
‘You’re right. But I think we deserve another one.’
‘Can we bring Esmé with us?’
‘Bring my daughter on our honeymoon?’
‘Why not? She was there when we had the first one.’
‘As long as you’re happy.’
‘I’d love to have her along.’
‘The school is closed for two months from the middle of December. Why not have her down here for Christmas and head out in the new year?’
‘Suits me.’
‘Where would you like to go? Somewhere warm? Kerala? Sri Lanka?’
She was looking out of the window at a row of apartment buildings, almost half a mile away, standing in a neat line like soldiers on parade. Slowly she turned.
‘I’d like to go back to Kashmir,’ she said. ‘To our houseboat.’
‘In January? It will be very cold,’ he warned. ‘My dad took me up there once to go duck shooting and it just about froze my ears off. And there might be snow.’
She thought of the cold, hard glitter of ice reflecting the moon, the silent call of the distant peaks. She thought yes.
‘That’s what I want,’ she said.
CHAPTER 10
Tamsyn was delighted that Esmé had come with them. The forecast was for snow and they were both looking forward to it but when it came it was no more than a sprinkle, individual flakes drifting one by one out of a dark sky.
It became bitterly cold. The pot-bellied stove in the living room glowed with heat behind its protective screen and they could smell the sweet scent of the burning wood in every cabin of the houseboat. They had planned to return to Gulmarg, where skiing might be possible—a new adventure for Tamsyn—but they were told that heavy snowfalls in the mountains had blocked the only road, so Gulmarg was out.
On clear nights the frost clamped down on the lake and, when there was no wind, they woke in the mornings to find a thick layer of frost on the deck where they had sunbathed in the summer, with fingers of ice reaching out across the surface of the lake. The ice was as thin as cellophane and disappeared almost at once when the sun came up, but the following morning, while the cold snap lasted, it was there again.
On fine mornings, when they’d eaten breakfast, Grant arranged with Aziz to have the shikara take the three of them across to the shore at a point where a rutted track climbed steeply through the pine woods into a range of hills that ran parallel with the lakeside. The frost had made the ruts as hard as iron, with frozen snow in the furrows, but they were all wearing the Norwegian hiking boots they had bought from the Climbers Supply Depot when they’d been there in June. Esmé’s feet had grown a fraction since then so her boots were a little tight but they still handled the track without difficulty.
They never saw any other visitors because no one came up to Srinagar in the winter. Their friends in Delhi had thought they were mad to come but they’d done it anyway and were pleased they had.
At the top of the track were meadows with sheep grazing. In a cleft in the hillside were the shepherds’ huts. The shepherds were fierce-looking men, heavily bearded, with their black hair tangled about their heads, but they greeted them cheerfully enough. Grant spoke to them in Urdu and on one occasion the men offered them harsh-tasting coffee in tin mugs, for which they gave them a handful of rupee notes.
Barefoot children were playing outside the huts but they saw no women and Grant said they would not come out in the presence of strangers.
From the edge of the meadows they had an uninterrupted view of the lake far below, with the lines of houseboats mostly shut for the winter, and the water of the lake was no longer green, as it had been in June, but a cold slate grey.
One day, at the end of their walk, they saw a bank of dark cloud welling up above the distant mountains and later, after they were safely back in the warm houseboat, the pine logs hissing and spitting in the stove and the red and golden flame light shifting around the walls of the living room, it began to snow.
It snowed all that night, and snow was still falling when they got up in the morning. The previous day the cold had been savage, but with the snow the temperature had risen and the trees along the lake were dripping with moisture from the melting frost.
The snow stopped around lunchtime but the tracks would be impassible, so they stayed indoors. They had brought plenty of books and two packs of playing cards. Grant tried to teach Tamsyn the rudiments of bridge, a game for which it became quickly apparent she had neither aptitude nor interest.
‘At least it helped to pass the time,’ she said cheerfully as they put the cards away.
The skies cleared in the afternoon and they put on their warmest clothes and went up on deck, from which the snow had almost vanished.
It was five-thirty and the sun was well down in the western sky. The snowfields and the trees were touched with its warm golden light and the lake, islands and surrounding country had a beauty enhanced by the absolute silence, all normal sound muffled by the snow.
That night, 22 January, was the night of the full moon. At nine o’clock, well wrapped up against the now intense cold, the three of them went back up on deck.
There was no sound. All the world, it seemed, was petrified, unmoving in the moon’s silver light. The surface of the lake was a blaze of cold fire, yet beneath the trees the darkness was absolute. In the distance the brilliance of the snow-clad mountains enticed them with its ethereal beauty, and Tamsyn knew it was yet another scene that would remain etched on her brain forever.
The stars were muted by the moonlight yet they were still there, and Tamsyn was aware of them. It seemed to her the constellations were drifting in slow gyrations across the sky, arching high before sinking to touch the land and the tranquil waters of the lake. She felt her spirit move with them, breaking free from the gravity that until that moment had held her fast to the deck beneath her feet, and, as it moved, all her being dissolved in silent worship of the water, the mountains, the moonlight and the man’s warm presence at her side. Beauty and desire filled her in equal portions, and she knew that night she had reached a pinnacle of sensation that she might never achieve again.
Later, making ready for bed in their cabin, she thought how blessed she was to have observed a scene of such majesty in the company of the man she loved and respected best in all the world.
The next morning the skies were still clear; much of the snow had vanished from those sectio
ns of the land that were exposed to the sun, and they arranged for a car to take them into Srinagar to eat lunch at a restaurant with windows that overlooked the river crammed with small craft heading this way and that about their business. On the other side of the river stood a tall building with an elaborately carved wooden facade. There was a large opening on the upper floor, and through it men were winching crates into a barge that was moored underneath them. The men were shouting instructions to each other. The crates swung on the end of the rope by which they were being lowered, and every time it happened the voices of men rose in a crescendo they could hear clearly through the restaurant’s window glass. No one seemed to be paying attention to what the rest were saying and Tamsyn expected that any moment a crate might break free and fall into the river, but none of them did.
They had grilled trout that the waiter told them had been caught in the lake. The trout were large and succulent and came with a dish of curried vegetables. The flavour of the curry might have been too much for the delicacy of the fish but somehow it was not.
After lunch they went for a drive. The surface of the road was wet, and if the frost returned it would become a skating rink overnight, but for the moment it was safe enough. It was pleasant driving through the forested countryside with the remnants of the recent snow heaped along the roadside.
After an hour they returned to the houseboat, where Grant found a message waiting for him.
‘Damn!’
‘What is it?’
‘There’s been a derailment. I have to go back. I suppose I always knew it was too good to last.’
It was a dismal moment.
‘How long will you be away?’
‘I don’t know.’
There was a plane at nine in the morning and he would be on it; beyond that he could tell her nothing.
She watched as he packed. Already she felt the emptiness.
‘Lucky it’s no longer snowing.’
Early the next morning, Aziz ordered a taxi. Tamsyn and Esmé drove with Grant to the airport.
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