Bella looked into her water glass. She had expected none of this. What had happened to the old maid-governess? Had that been nothing but a chrysalis?
“I went with the staff from Government House to Gandhi’s funeral, you know,” Miss White continued. “I shall never forget it. The vast throng of people. And the flowers. And the cries that Gandhi was now immortal, cries that rose up like the smoke off the pyre. And the millions of flowers. And the feeling that people had of wanting to live up to something that had just died before their eyes.
“It was through Edwina that I met Brian – once we were back in this country. I continued to have a role as a sort of social secretary, and I met Brian that way. We hit it off straight away, and we’ve been married now for four years.”
Bella said, “I’m so glad you’re happy.”
Miss White looked into her eyes. And then she said, “Yes, I’m happy.”
After coffee, they went out to the car, which was parked before the front door. Miss White embraced Bella and then kissed Richard on the cheek.
“Bless you,” she said.
They drove down the drive. Bella turned her head to look back. Miss White was still standing there, watching them as they made their way towards the public road.
Her heart was full. She reached for Li Po and Po Chü-i, who had been sitting, arm in arm, on the back seat. She put them beside her. As she did so, she reverted to something she had not done for a long time – she addressed the dolls. It was a whisper and was not intended for Richard, who was busy anyway, adjusting the rear-view mirror.
“So that’s Miss White,” she said.
From beside her, a small voice said, “A likely story!”
Bella looked down. She saw Li Po’s bad arm, with its stitches. She thought, “You should forgive, you know.”
But that, it seemed, was a difficult thing for a doll to do.
The roads were quiet, punctuated by the long shadows thrown by the hedgerows in the late-afternoon light. The Suffolk sky was large and empty, apart from wisps of white cloud here and there. Bella looked at Richard beside her. She reached out and touched his knee, gently. He smiled, and said, “Why did you do that?”
She shrugged. Why not? She loved him so much. She was so lucky.
She said, “I’m glad that Miss White is happy. I didn’t think she would be, you know.”
He said, “Happiness is an odd thing, isn’t it? I’m not sure if you can set out to achieve it – it either happens to you or it doesn’t.”
Li Po listened. He muttered, “That’s trite.”
But nobody heard him, and dolls don’t talk. Nor did he know that the following week he and Po Chü-i were going to be donated to a charity sale to raise money for the Royal Blind School.
Bella and Richard had three children – two girls and a boy. They asked their mother about Sri Lanka. She said, “It’s hard to describe what it was like, and I was very young when I left it. I liked the people, though, and I’d love to go back one day.”
Miss White had told Bella that she was happy, and that was true. She became happier still. She thought that when you looked at your life, you should not judge it just by one part, as we can all make mistakes. That’s what she said one day to her husband, and he said, “You’re right there, Lavender. Absolutely right. As always.”
She named two of his racehorses after Li Po and Po Chü-i. They were both very successful. Li Po won the Gold Cup at Cheltenham. Po Chü-i was sold to the Irish for a very large sum. Miss White used some of the proceeds to buy an eye-wateringly expensive set of early watercolours of views of Calcutta and the banks of the Hooghly. “I loved Calcutta,” she said. “I loved it so much.”
The dolls themselves were bought by a woman who was visiting Scotland from New York and who chanced upon the charity sale. She took them back to her fashionable apartment in Manhattan. They were placed in a glass case opposite a window that looked out over the East River. She knew everyone: Robert Lowell, Hemingway, Norman Mailer. They were admired by guests to the apartment, one of whom said one day, “This one has had an arm sewn back on. Look.” And then she added, “If my arm ever falls off, I hope somebody’s kind enough to sew it back on.” That was Dorothy Parker.
The owner said, “Yes, you’re right. I suspect there’s a story behind that.”
“Very possibly,” said Miss Parker. “Most people whose arms fall off have a story.”
Li Po just looked. He had nothing further to say, although he continued to observe. From his glass case he had a view, to the side, of the United Nations Building. He could see motorcades arriving on UN Plaza way down below on the street. He saw Kennedy; he saw Khrushchev. He saw everything.
He watched, while Po Chü-i dozed beside him, content with the warm sunlight that flooded through the window, yellow, textured, thick, like butter.
The Pavilion in the Clouds Page 21