The Midnight Rose

by Lucinda Riley

  At Easter, we packed for the holidays, expecting to catch the train down to Dartmoor. We were surprised when a chauffeur arrived in a Rolls-Royce to collect us on the last day of term.

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Indira, not knowing the roads well enough to tell. The driver remained silent, and it was only when we reached the familiar streets of London that Indira’s face broke into a smile. As the car drew up outside the Pont Street house, Indira threw herself out of it and ran up the steps to the front door.

  The door opened and there was the Maharani herself.

  ‘Ma!’ I watched Indira throw herself into her mother’s arms.

  ‘Surprise!’ the Maharani said as she hugged her daughter to her. ‘I didn’t want to tell you I’d be here for definite until the ship had docked safely in England. Which was only yesterday.’

  ‘But how? I thought it was impossible to travel, with all the ships being requisitioned for troops?’ asked Indira, as we walked inside.

  ‘I’ll tell you all about it. It was quite an adventure!’ She laughed, as her gaze finally fell upon me. ‘Anni, how you have grown! Why, Indira, our Anni is turning into a beauty!’

  I ignored her remark as a kind pleasantry and followed them both into the elegant drawing room, where a welcoming fire was lit in the grate.

  ‘So, Ma, tell me how you made it all the way to England?’ Indira said as we sat down and the Maharani called her maid to bring tea.

  ‘I said that it was a matter of urgency that I travel here. I told the Resident that my youngest child was seriously ill in London, and I had to come, whatever the consequences. So, the captain of one of the British India troop ships agreed to take me on-board. He warned me very sternly that he couldn’t guarantee my safety –’ the Maharani smiled, obviously very pleased with the adventure – ‘and that I might have to sleep in a hammock alongside the soldiers! Of course, they found me far more comfortable quarters than that and I ate very well every night with the delightful Captain and his officers.’

  ‘Oh, Ma,’ cried Indira, her eyes wide, ‘you might have died on the way! You know how many ships have been lost already.’

  ‘I know, my pyari, but I couldn’t bear to go another day without seeing my daughter. And besides, the ship was full-steam ahead – top speed all the way to get us here without incident. We arrived in half the time it usually takes. So how are you both?’ Her gaze passed to me and then settled back on her beloved daughter.

  ‘Anni and I have been as unhappy as the birds in monsoon season,’ Indira moaned. ‘The food has been terrible, the cold unbearable and everyone here is miserable. Ma, I don’t think you know what England is really like. It’s a dreadful, dark country and I can’t wait to come home.’

  ‘Things are difficult in India too. We have many of our own young men fighting for England in the war.’ The Maharani sighed. ‘These are worrying and difficult times for us all. But,’ she said, rallying, ‘we must make the best of it. So, while I’m here in London, we will do just that.’

  She was as good as her word, and the house was filled with guests drawn from a London starved of pleasure, guests who were eager to enjoy her opulent style of entertaining. She threw dinners and cocktail parties – although quite where she procured delicacies such as quails’ eggs, smoked salmon and caviar in wartime London, I have no idea.

  The Maharani was horrified at the state of my wardrobe, which had not been replenished for almost two years. I had grown out of almost everything I owned, so she packed me off with Indira to Harrods to buy what we wanted. This time, I found myself far more interested in the womenswear department. I wouldn’t have gone so far as to agree with the Maharani when she had kindly told me I’d become ‘a beauty’. But even I could see, when I tried on the beautiful dresses and looked at myself in the mirror, that my puppy fat had left me, revealing a shapely and quite acceptable figure.

  ‘Anni, you should have written to me!’ she said, berating me again. ‘Please, don’t feel shame in asking for what you need in the future.’

  The Maharani also sent me to an optician for a new pair of glasses to replace the one pair I owned, which I had clumsily repaired with fuse wire when they’d broken. Indira and I had long-overdue haircuts and emerged from the salon proudly with our hair styled in the new modern bob. We were also treated to our first manicure by the woman who came to the house for the Maharani. That night, as I walked down to dinner in my beautiful new silk dress from Harrods, I even think I may have garnered some admiring glances from the other guests.

  In the middle of the holidays, Indira was ecstatic with happiness when Prince Varun appeared at one of the Maharani’s soirées. He was in London on two weeks’ leave from his regiment.

  Since they had last met, Indira had grown into a startlingly beautiful young woman. I watched them closely that evening, having no idea if anyone else around the table noticed the chemistry between the two of them.

  That night, after dinner, Indira arrived in our bedroom just as I had climbed under the blankets. Her eyes were alight and she was tingling with excitement from top to toe.

  ‘Oh, Anni, isn’t he beautiful?’ she said, as she sprang full-length onto her bed and lay, eyes closed, with a dreamy expression on her face.

  ‘He is very handsome, yes.’

  ‘And guess what? He wants to meet me again whilst he’s in London. Can you believe it?’ She clasped her hands together in delight. ‘Of course, Ma will never let me go unchaperoned. So would you, darling Anni, accompany me for tea at the Ritz, then leave me by the hotel entrance and go for a walk for an hour? Please,’ she begged me, ‘I have no idea when we will see each other again. I must go.’

  ‘Indy, I can’t. You know you should never be seen out in public alone with a man. You are a princess, there are rules.’

  ‘I don’t care!’ Indira sank her face into the pillow, then turned to look at me, a glint in her eye. ‘After all, I hardly think we can get up to much over a cup of tea and some cucumber sandwiches, can we? Unless he takes me upstairs, of course . . .’

  ‘Please, don’t even say it!’ I rolled my eyes in horror. ‘If your mother finds out, which she almost certainly will, as she has spies everywhere, we’ll both be in terrible trouble.’

  ‘Well, that’s nothing new for me, is it? What’s she going to do, put me back into purdah? Please say you’ll cover for me, Anni, just this once.’

  ‘All right,’ I sighed heavily, ‘just this once, and only for an hour.’

  ‘Thank you!’ Indira, having got her way, threw her arms around me. ‘You truly are the best friend a girl could have.’

  The following afternoon, we both dressed up in suitable attire for taking tea at the Ritz and called for the chauffeur to drive us there. Indira, sitting in the back next to me, could hardly control her excitement. ‘You understand the plan, Anni, don’t you? We’ll tell the chauffeur to collect us at four. And you’ll pretend to come inside, but leave me at the entrance.’

  ‘Yes.’ I frowned, this being the hundredth time she had told me. ‘Good luck,’ I said as we alighted in front of the grand entrance to the Ritz and I saw the chauffeur pull away. She blew me a kiss as she stepped inside. I turned round and walked towards Green Park, not looking forward to an empty hour sitting alone in the chill of a spring day in London. I happened to glance across the street and saw an elegant, stone building that proclaimed itself to be the Royal Academy of Arts. Crossing the road, I studied the board outside. Apparently there was an exhibition of new artists, so I walked through the grand portico and up the steps. Inside, I approached the desk which sat in the middle of the impressive hall.

  ‘I’d like to see the exhibition. How much is it?’ I asked the woman sitting behind it.

  ‘Are you a member of the Royal Academy?’

  ‘No. Do I need to be?’

  She paused for a moment, then answered, ‘Yes. You do.’

  ‘Then I’m sorry to trouble you,’ I said and began to walk as elegantly as I could back towards the ex
it. As I did so, the two Englishwomen who’d been waiting behind me stepped forward to the desk. The receptionist asked if they were members and they replied, as I had, that they were not.

  ‘Then that will be five shillings each,’ the receptionist replied. The women paid and walked on inside.

  That moment, without the cloak of Indian royalty around my shoulders, was my first taste of racial prejudice in Great Britain, the country that had ruled us for over a hundred and fifty years. And sadly, it wouldn’t be my last.

  Subsequently, I spent the following three afternoons shivering in Green Park waiting for Indira to complete further trysts with her prince. Even though Fortnum and Mason and the delights of Piccadilly were only a stone’s throw away, I was too frightened by the reaction of the woman at the Royal Academy to venture anywhere else alone. I realised how odd I must have looked out of context, without the rest of the royal party: with my brown body and face encased in Western dress, I certainly garnered many stares as people passed me on my park bench. I lowered my eyes to my new friend, Thomas Hardy, and concentrated on Far from the Madding Crowd.

  When Indira and I met at the appointed time at the side entrance to the Ritz, and climbed into the car to return home, we were in polar-opposite emotional states: she, in the first flush of love; I, realising even more clearly that I belonged nowhere.

  ‘Oh, Anni,’ she gushed, as I listened yet again to the flood of superlatives about her prince. ‘I’m so in love, and today he told me he is in love with me!’

  ‘I’m very happy for you, Indy, but’ – I had done my research on Indira’s prince – ‘he’s already married. You know he is.’

  ‘Of course I know! He is a prince, after all. It was arranged for him before he even took his first steps. But it’s official, that’s all. It is not a love marriage.’

  ‘Just as your own marriage has been arranged to the Maharaja of Dharampur,’ I reminded her brusquely. ‘And surely, Indira, you couldn’t bear being only the second wife? Besides, we both know that your father takes a particularly modern approach to your mother. Prince Varun would almost certainly expect you to stay at his palace in purdah as he travels.’

  ‘Yes, maybe at first, for the sake of form,’ Indira countered, ‘but then he’d wish me to become his companion and travel the world with him, just as Ma does with Pa.’

  ‘Are you –’ I cleared my throat – ‘telling me that you and Prince Varun have discussed this?’

  ‘Of course! He wants to marry me. Today he said he’d known from when he first saw me that one day we would be married.’

  I stared at her in shock. What Indira was telling me was ridiculous. She was already betrothed to another, and a marriage arranged years ago between two princely states and their ruling families could not simply be cancelled.

  I also knew all too well that Indira was used to getting her own way, but surely this would prove a step too far, even for her. To add insult to injury, I was equally furious with myself for abetting their romance.

  ‘Indy, please,’ I begged her, ‘you must know that you and Prince Varun can never be together?’

  ‘Don’t say that!’ she snapped at me irritably. ‘Of course it’s possible, anything is possible with love . . .’

  As usual, when I wasn’t in full agreement with Indira’s thoughts and feelings, she distanced herself from me. I had refused to be a party to her deception any longer, but I knew full well that in the afternoons, whilst she told her mother that she was off to visit a friend, she was seeing her prince. I would be glad to return to school and to remove both myself and Indira from London.

  A week later, Varun left to return to his regiment and Indira sank into a deep depression, refusing to leave her room, citing illness as the reason.

  Two nights before we were to return to school in Eastbourne, the Maharani called me into the drawing room to see her.

  ‘Dear Anni, I think it’s time that we discussed your future.’

  ‘Yes, Your Highness.’

  ‘Please –’ she indicated a chair by the fire which she always had burning in the drawing room – ‘sit down. Tea?’

  I accepted a cup and waited to hear what she had to say.

  ‘Indira doesn’t know it yet, but I’m taking her back to India with me when I leave in a few days’ time. Her illness in recent days has made my mind up. I wish for my family to be together during these difficult times and India, for the moment at least, is a safe place to be. Now, unlike my daughter,’ she smiled, ‘I know you’re doing exceptionally well at school – I do read all your reports, you know. You’re a clever girl, just as I knew you were when you were younger, and a very good influence on Indira.’

  I tried to hold back my blushes, berating myself for the deceit of the past two weeks. ‘Thank you, Your Highness.’

  ‘So, it’s time to ask you what you want, Anni. You have your matriculation and the completion of your formal education coming up in the next few weeks. For Indira –’ the Maharani sighed – ‘it hardly matters. She will be married to the Maharaja of Dharampur within the next eighteen months. Of course, there’ll always be a place for you in my home and I don’t doubt that Indira will wish for you to accompany her to her new palace when she marries. But I feel I should ask you, Anni, if it is your wish to return to India with us? Or whether you want to stay in England and complete your education?’

  ‘I don’t know, Your Highness.’

  ‘I’ve also had a letter from Lady Selina at Astbury Hall. As I’m sure you know, she’s an old friend of Minty, my daughter. She says you assisted her when she gave birth to her child.’

  ‘Yes, Your Highness, I did.’

  ‘So,’ the Maharani continued, steepling her beautifully manicured fingers, ‘if you do decide to stay in England, Selina has offered you a position at Astbury Hall taking care of her baby daughter. It seems she is struggling to find a good nursemaid during this crisis.’

  I admit that my heart leapt at the thought of living in the house Donald would one day be returning to, when the war was finally over. ‘It’s very kind of her, and I will certainly think about it.’

  ‘It must, of course, be your choice,’ she continued, ‘but I do feel that perhaps your horizons should be set beyond being a mere nursemaid.’

  I knew I had only a few moments to assimilate what she was saying. This woman, who didn’t need to ask me what I wanted for my future, but had the grace and integrity to do so, was offering me my freedom. ‘I miss India terribly,’ I answered honestly, ‘and if I did stay here, I’d miss Indira too. She’s like my sister.’

  ‘We all miss India and our friends when we are away,’ the Maharani agreed, ‘but the life you would have there as a grown woman is perhaps not what you would wish. Even though it will pain my daughter to lose you, I wouldn’t want to see you shut up in a zenana for the rest of your life, unable to use that clever brain of yours. And –’ the Maharani sighed – ‘forgive me if I speak the truth, but even though I will, of course, endeavour to help you, your marriage prospects will be . . . limited.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘So, Anni, it is for you to decide. I’m happy if you wish to stay here in England and complete your education – I feel it would be unfair for you to have worked so hard without doing so – or if you want to return to India with Indira and me. Your passage home is already booked, but I can easily cancel it.’

  ‘Your Highness, I need a little time to think,’ I answered.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘We will talk tomorrow morning. Let us hope Indira has recovered from her illness and can travel.’

  ‘Yes.’

  As I rose and walked to the door, the Maharani followed me and put her hand on my shoulder. ‘Remember, Anni, I know my daughter very well. She is far too much like me. Her heart rules her head.’

  I knew the Maharani was telling me that she was aware of Indira’s crush on Prince Varun and would deal with it. I was sure that was part of the reason she was taking Indira home with her and I felt
relieved that the burden had been lifted from me.

  That night, I silently paced the bedroom floor while Indira slept. I was flushed with the new and rare feeling of making my own decisions – I held my destiny in my own hands. To stay on alone in England and complete my education would be a brave step, whereas if I returned to India with the Maharani and Indira I’d have the protective shield of the royal family around me. I thought of the moment at the Royal Academy of Arts and shuddered. But if Indira’s arranged marriage went ahead, my future would, as the Maharani had subtly pointed out, be limited to the confines of Indira’s new zenana. And I would almost certainly remain a spinster for the rest of my days.

  And then again, in England lay freedom and also – I forced myself to be honest about why the position Selina had offered me was so tempting – Donald.

  I knew we were merely friends and I understood that, given our positions in life, we could never be more. But if I returned to India, I would surely never see him again.

  Eventually, I did what any young adult does when they have a difficult decision to make: I consulted my parents. I sat cross-legged on the floor, looked up to the heavens and asked them what their daughter should do. Then I waited for a response . . .

  ‘I have decided I wish to stay in England and complete my education.’

  The Maharani smiled at me. ‘I thought that might be your answer, Anni.’

  ‘I think . . .’ This was the first time I’d voiced the thoughts that had been coming into my head for a while now and had crystallised last night after I’d consulted my parents, ‘I think I might like to train as a nurse.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that it might suit you, given your gifts.’ She gave me a sweet, reassuring smile.

  ‘But what about Princess Indira? We haven’t been apart for almost six years. I don’t want her to feel that I’m deserting her.’

  ‘As we both know, Anni, my daughter’s heart is elsewhere for the present. She sees and feels nothing else.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and we shared a moment of understanding.

  ‘Leave her to me, Anni, trust me to take care of the situation. I think it’s right that you forge your own life. I will send you a monthly allowance, which should be adequate for your needs and, if you wish me to, I’ll write to Selina telling her you would like to accept her offer.’