She smiled back, remembering how he often sought out Holly. Too bad, Jim,' she sympathized.
Two cars will be handy, though,' he went on, 'especially as the Senhor and Terry will be away in the big one for the next few days. We could never fit the three adults and the two imps into one Mini.'
`So they're leaving us,' Greer mused.
`Yes, some estate or other that Senhor Martinez is interested in buying. Our doctor is going to look over the health angle. Show me what you have written, Chandra, if you don't intend to write any more.'
Greer rose. Jim's demand to see Chandra's writing had reminded her that she had some writing to do. To Arlene. Now was her chance when she could see to the posting of the letter herself. She and Holly could send it away when they drove into the village.
The Senhor sought her out soon afterwards to show her the car, a small manoeuvrable one which should cause her no difficulty used on the established roads.
`I would not take the car on any track, though, Senhorita Greer.'
`No, senhor.'
He stood looking at her a moment as though to ask her something, then he must have changed his mind.
`I will be absent for the rest of the day, probably tomorrow, the day after.'
`Yes, the boys' tutor told me.'
`You will remember not to venture too far at this juncture.' Again the long look.
Greer was thinking only of the letter. 'All we will do,' she assured him, 'will be to go into the town.'
He went soon afterwards, and almost at once his accountant sought Greer out. 'The Senhor wishes me to advance you this sum.'
`But this is not right; I was paid last week.' `Nonetheless,' smiled the man, 'he says that a goldsmith's shop is a fascinating place.'
`He is very good,' said Greer. She was thinking with relief that she could send the money to Arlene.
After lunch, the two girls got into the small model and took the winding road into Stuyva.
There was none of the bazaar spirit of the Bombay markets, they found, but the shops selling spice and herbs were there, the copper pot shop, the trays of strung jasmine. And the goldsmith's.
Holly, looked wistfully at the goldsmith's wares, and Greer had an impulse to take the notes out of the envelope marked for Arlene and buy her sister that filigree necklace that she held lovingly in her thin hands instead.
But she knew that Holly would understand the position and agree to what she was doing, and except that she did not want her involved, Greer would have confided in her at once.
Instead they had coffee at a coffee house, Greer taking out her little memo book to check Arlene's address.
Holly suddenly called for her attention. There was a small procession passing along the street.
`He must be a Mogul at least,' she said of the young man's finery.
The coffee proprietor explained in his honeyed English that he was a bridegroom. Grooms wore the costume and stage jewellery of a rajah, he recounted.
They enjoyed the little tableau, the hired elephant with its ornaments and draperies of scarlet and gold, the resplendent groom, the beautiful bride, the many attendants. They returned reluctantly to their coffee when the procession was over, but discussed it at length with their host. Then Greer addressed her letter and they posted it.
As they left in the car for the house in the hills again, the coffee man ran out of his shop with a small leather book in his hand.
`Memsahibs,' he called, 'memsahibs!' But they were chattering about the wedding again and did not look back.
He shrugged and put it aside with its addresses and its notes. One of the notes Greer's reminder to tell Arlene that during their absence in the country only the gardener would be in attendance ... occasionally ... at the Senhor's Bombay house.
CHAPTER EIGHT
GREER did not miss her memo book. She had no occasion to consult it, so she did not discover its absence. The next few days were spent busily, enjoyably, and . . . or so Greer considered ... gainfully. For Greer felt at last that she made a forward step in her observation of the boys. Though this satisfaction did not come until nearly the end of the Senhor's and the doctor's absence.
But previous to that, the hours fairly flew. There were -many interesting things to see in Stuyva, intriguing things to do, and with a car at one's disposal, apart from the several hours spent with Chandra and Subhas, in Holly's case hours spent with Jim Matson, the girls were never home.
Often Greer thought about those hours that Holly spent with the young teacher. Holly previously the little recluse, recluse because of her delicate health, now adding Jim Matson to these new strings to her bow! There could be no jealousy in Greer when it came to Holly, Holly had been deprived of so much she could only feel pleasure in her stepsister's pleasure, but there could be, and there was, a note of warning. The same warning she had received in Terry Holliday's interest in Holly. It was the sound of the Senhor Martinez's displeasure. For he was interested in Holly, too. He had shown it clearly Expressed it clearly. And the Senhor was the one who counted.
Greer now measured the times the two, Holly and Jim, paired off together, and felt an unease. Yet her good sense told her that it was only natural that two young people should seek each other when they were off duty... not duty for Holly, she had no duty save the duty of regaining her strength ... but duty for Jim. It was only natural that they took the advantage of Greer's supervision of the boys
to enjoy each other's company.
Assuring herself of the usualness of it, Greer now took the hands of Chandra and Subhas, and once more, in the pool at the bottom of the garden, or on a walk, endeavoured to 'observe'. The trouble was, she thought ruefully, the two children did things almost uncannily together, making it near impossible to 'observe'.
Trying to make her see something in a tree that they could see but she couldn't, they directed severely and in precise unison : 'Greer, look where we're putting our eyes.'
She laughed at the phrasing, but not at the instinctive unison We. Our. Us. How could she report anything to the Guptas when these two boys even saw the same things? But she did not think about it then so much as later. And then she did think.
Meanwhile the car excursions proved delightful. Motoring in India, Greer had previously found, once off the more controlled motorways could be a very slow business, not because the roads were bad but because of the animals that inhabited them. The ways now of Stuyva proved just as frustrating if charming. Bullocks harnessed to carts had to be given right of way, goats driven by goatherds in search of new pastures. Once they even encountered a lazy water buffalo who evidently preferred the dusty road to his own background. He looked back at them with his china-blue eyes, no doubt aware of his rights, for with the exception of wild game, most animals led a sacred life in this India.
There were also crows, doves and innumerable tree squirrels to impede progress, for the roads were always tree-lined, generally the ficus family, and the creatures came after the hard little figs.
On one of these interrupted journeys, Greer, as she waited for a clear path, mentioned to her stepsister . . . casually, she hoped . . . the many times that Holly and Jim appeared to seek each other's company.
`Yes.' Holly actually gave a little shiver of joy. 'Oh, yes, Greer.'
Her agreement startled Greer, but she hoped she did not show it. However she could not refrain from a spontaneous `But, darling—' . . . Holly, she really wanted to remind her, there has also been the doctor, and although I know you don't mean anything, although I know that all this is new and sweet and very flattering to you, you . . . well, you just can't, Holly. You can't. Especially – particularly where there is also – the Senhor. At that `Senhor' Greer knew a sharp pain in her that she had known once before; it had been that morning when Vasco had denied that Holly and Terry made a fine pair. She tried to thrust the ache aside, but it was no use, it persisted. I mustn't permit it, she knew. I mustn't feel like this.
She became aware of Holly's inquiring e
yes on her, inquiring what she had to say.
`Darling,' she said inadequately, 'you and Jim . .
`Oh, yes, you must wonder,' trilled Holly joyously, 'and I wish I could tell you, but I can't, Greer, not yet, not until . . .' Another happy shiver.
`But Doctor Terry—' Greer said inadequately as before. Surely even an inexperienced girl must know that she couldn't play around like this.
`Yes, Terry's in the picture, too,' Holly admitted quite calmly.
`Holly!' A pause. Then: 'That only leaves the Senhor.'
`But he is the important one,' Holly announced. She mused a moment. 'Without Vasco it just couldn't come true.'
Greer put her foot on the clutch, got into gear, released the brake. She startled some tree squirrels and nearly knocked over a cow.
`There's a temple we haven't visited yet,' she said a little faintly. She did not know about Holly, but she would have traded all the carvings, paintings, miniatures . . . and that pervasive smell that went with these aged interiors . . . for one honest interchange with her stepsister. But how could she ask Holly? Eager-for-life little
Holly? Holly of whom Doctor Jenner had quietly said `.. . why not?' `.. . may as well'. . . let her go.'
So they set off for the little mosque Greer had been told about, awaking the guardian who was taking his siesta on a grass mat at the bottom of the steep steps.
They also explored ruins with vermilion pomegranate flowers growing out of tumbled walls. They visited old gardens with fountains that played no longer, only gently broke the looking-glass surface of the pools.
But Greer would not go to the Pool of the Pink Lilies.
`You always wanted to see it,' Holly reminded her once of the old Shrine.
`It's down a narrow track. I said I would keep to the roads.' That could not sound convincing, Greer knew, not on a narrow road like they were traversing now, but Holly did not argue.
She did say, though, that it might have been interesting to have observed the boys there.
Greer answered noncommittally and changed the subject, but evidently Holly kept it in view, for the next afternoon not only she and Jim went off together, they took Chandra and Subhas with them.
Greer heard all about it over tea later.
`The lilies are not out yet,' Holly told her. She must have sensed a wish in her stepsister not to be told more about the shrine, for she touched next on the boys.
`It did nothing to them, Greer,' she reported. She glanced at Jim for his opinion.
`Nothing,' he nodded. 'No feeling at all . . . except a disgust that there was nary a tadpole,' he laughed.
`No doubt a mutual disgust?' queried Greer.
`Isn't everything mutual there?' Jim shrugged. He looked across at Holly and raised his brows in inquiry. She nodded back to him, got up and the pair went off together.
After a while Greer sought out Chandra and Subhas.
She watched them as they tried to dam up the creek with stones and pebbles; they were very methodical youngsters, she thought, very much on the practical side. Still, a poet could be methodical, practical, too; just because words sang in him it did not mean he had nothing he could do with his hands.
She smiled at the little figures plodding backwards and forwards. One of these small people was the son of a man who had been one of three close friends. Part of a trinity. One of them also was the Senhor's godchild. She tried for a moment to get a feeling out of that, but it was no use. The two, she thought, could have been the one boy.
She took them across to the Guptas again, recounting to the older people what Jim had recounted of Bwali.
`Oh, yes,' they nodded, 'that was also done earlier by Vasco. The boys were not at all impressed, he said. But after all, is any child?'
`Yaqub's child?' asked Greer gently.
Greer asked them next about the mother, the wife of their son, why hadn't her parents tried to help? But Laill's parents had died soon after her marriage, they told her, they had never seen their grandchild.
`There is no one left on her side,' they sighed.
Where she had been reluctant before, now suddenly Greer found herself eager ... anxious . . . to help. She studied the children continually. She asked searching questions of the Guptas, sensitively at first, then, when she saw that time had softened the sharpness of their loss, with more directness. She asked where the unfortunate village had been.
`As the crow flies,' said Mr. Gupta, 'it was not far away.' He led Greer to the window and pointed to a distant hill, one of those violet rises behind the gentler slopes. 'The fated small place where Yaqub was performing his work was on the other side of that taller peak,' he said.
`But that's almost dose,' mused Greer. 'Could I go there?'
`From here, from Stuyva, only this route.' Mr. Gupta produced a map and demonstrated a track that entailed many more miles than the crow would need. 'There is a shorter road from the motorway,' he added. As she studied the legend he explained, The flood came down here.' He pointed. 'Taking all before it.'
`All except—'
`Yes, all except those two children, and one of them . . He made a little gesture.
But Greer was thinking in a different strain. 'All except two children.' But had there been . . . could there have been . . . a third?
`I'd still like to go,' she said quietly.
`There is nothing there,' he told her just as quietly. `The village has never been rebuilt.'
`But I'll see it all the same.'
The Indian smiled tolerantly at her. 'That was done, of course, but there was nothing. Nothing. Only the two children remain of that sad place.'
Also a third child? Greer's mind returned to that again and again. The thought reared up once more in an episode that occurred just before the Senhor's return.
Like all children the world over the two Indian boys were more demons than angels, and the trick was to keep them occupied so that mischief was kept at bay. There was much to be said, said Jim, for that time-honoured theory on idle hands.
So when Jim was not teaching, Greer was diverting, but inevitably two little boys had to find themselves alone. Within a remarkably short space of time they created a situation that probably had been created many times before all over the world, but it was the thought that the occurrence evoked that struck Greer so forcibly.
Chandra . . . or was it Subhas, for she still had difficulty with their identities, and so did Jim . . . decided to discover how the water went down the sink, and in doing so entrapped three of his small brown fingers. Being a resourceful child, or perhaps anticipating a scolding, he did not call out for quite a while, but tried to free himself. Then he pulled the fingers the wrong way, and pain pushed aside resource and caution, and Chandra ... or Subhas? ... yelled. As a matter of fact both children yelled, but Greer did not consider this until later.
The cries soon brought the household, with Jim, Holly and Greer to the distressed boy, and for an hour they worked on the trapped hand. But the bruised fingers had swollen considerably and now the entire palm was over the drain-hole.
Jim, lying on his back on the floor to consider the scene, said there was nothing else for it than to cut away the grill with a hacksaw blade. 'But it will have to be done carefully, and the fingers guarded, otherwise we could cut them off.'
`Get me out!' cried Chandra in Indian, English and Portuguese. Subhas cried out exactly the same words in the same languages in the same routine, but in the anxiety of the moment it was not noticed.
The hacksaw was produced and the men took it in turn to cut at the grill, Greer nursing the little boy in comforting arms. Once the child accidentally grabbed at the tap with the free hand and sent a flood of water on Jim and while he dried off someone else took over, still carefully shielding the trapped, bruised, badly swollen fingers.
It seemed an eternity before they had him free, and all the time the two boys cried together, stopped together, began again.
Once, towards the end of the ordeal, Greer glanced across
at the free child and saw that the little boy was holding his hand in exactly the same prisoned position as the trapped boy. His face was twisted with fear and pain like the other little face. And when at last freedom came both boys had swollen hands. Both boys.
Greer simply stood looking down on the two pairs of red, burning, throbbing fingers. It couldn't be! She had read of such things, of course, in identical brothers, but
Chandra and Subhas were not. Yet throughout the ordeal they had wept at the same time, been soothed together—What was this?
And those were Senhor Martinez's opening words a few minutes afterwards. In the heat of the episode no one had heard the returning car, they had not seen the doctor and the Portuguese enter the bungalow.
`What's this?' Vasco Martinez called from the door.
It was odd, Greer thought afterwards, how with the arrival of the Senhor everything seemed to become calm again. The children's cries diminished, the episode became a minor domestic happening, the flood of water on Jim even a humorous interlude. And the swelling went down on the bruised fingers. Greer did not look at the fingers of the child who had not undergone the ordeal. I imagined they were sore and red, she said to herself but she knew she could not put down to imagination that joint suffering, those chorused cries.
The children were comforted by a small stray black lamb that the Senhor and Terry had picked up on the road and brought home to them. The nightmare forgotten ... 'How could it be a nightmare, Greer, in the day, why isn't it daymare?' they demanded ... they bore Mr. Black as they named him down the gully to be taught to swim.
`Only not too much at once, darlings,' Greer pleaded, `he's not like a dog who loves to splash.'
Not satisfied that they heeded her, and feeling sorry for the little black stranger, Greer quickly swallowed the tea that had come in, and started off to follow the boys down. She became aware that Vasco Martinez was accompanying her.
`Do not worry, Senhorita Greer,' he told her, 'already they love Mr. Black and will see he comes to no harm.'
The Pool of Pink Lilies Page 14