‘That’s a pity.’
‘Jack found it hard to accept my decision to marry Ned.’
‘He is not a man to accept failure.’
‘No,’ she said, suddenly staring into space. ‘I wish we’d had a chance to talk before he left.’
‘Do you not think he loved his wife?’ Henry wondered, trying to keep his tone generous.
‘Loved? She was his servant! He married her in a blink.’
‘Do you resent Mrs Bryant?’
‘Yes, I resent her. But the sad truth is, I am desperately envious of her, Henry, because, you see, I have been lying to myself, lying to my family … and worse than either, I lied to Ned. I loved my husband, Henry, but I’m horrified to admit to you – and you only – that even now it’s Jack I dream about. It’s his face I see before I fall asleep at night and his name that comes to mind when I’m feeling sorry for myself. It should be Ned’s. But I loved Jack in a dangerous way,’ she said, so baldly, so unexpectedly, that Henry’s glasses slipped forward in his haste to stop her telling him any more.
‘I … er … I don’t think you should say any —’
‘I must. It’s time I was honest! All this grieving … it’s really about guilt. I’m guilty of the worst sort of treachery and I’ve hated myself, Henry. Until you walked in, I haven’t had anyone I could talk to. My family wouldn’t understand.’
‘Please, Iris. I’m really not —’
But she cut him off again, alarming him by suddenly standing. The baby squirmed but didn’t wake. She kissed her forehead.
‘Poor, darling Lily. Do you know why I named her that?’
Henry didn’t want to know but felt certain she was going to tell him. He shook his head silently, fearful of what was coming.
‘Because Jack loved lily of the valley, the emblem of a tin-mining town called Helston, not far from Penzance where he came from. It was his mother’s favourite flower. He told me that on our afternoon in Bangalore.’
Henry swallowed hard. He sensed where this was going.
Iris had a fire in her eyes now, and it blazed with memory and a guilty joy. ‘You see, Henry, Lily is not Ned’s child.’ Henry’s throat closed with fear and deep regret. ‘She is the product of that afternoon with Jack in Bangalore. I make it sound dirty but it wasn’t. It was pure and very wonderful. We were in love but we knew it was wrong.’
‘Did Ned know?’
‘Perhaps about Jack and myself, I can’t be sure, but not about our baby.’ Her face sagged. ‘At least, I don’t believe so … I hope not, for his sake.’
‘So Bella was telling the truth.’
Iris nodded. ‘She was. I lied to her, to Ned, to my family and to myself. I suspected I was pregnant as I was formally engaged. My body had a serious reaction and I was sickening constantly. I knew I had to marry Ned quickly.’
Henry’s face must have expressed his horror. ‘Does Jack know?’
‘No!’
‘But why didn’t you tell him?’
Iris began to pace, swaying with each step to keep the baby peaceful. ‘I don’t know.’ She shook her head, a combination of anger and regret in her expression. ‘I … there were so many people involved. I was frightened. Ned – oh, poor Ned,’ she wept, clutching Lily closer. ‘He was such a lovely man. He loved me so much, Henry, so much that I just couldn’t hurt him. He was so excited about the baby. And I knew Jack was too dangerous to love. I couldn’t trust that he’d stay.’
‘And he didn’t,’ Henry said softly, almost to himself. ‘He left two of you, pregnant and alone.’
‘Perhaps you will tell him,’ she said, pulling a hanky from a pocket. She sniffed. ‘He should know about her,’ she said, staring lovingly at Lily. ‘I know he’s not coming back. If he wanted me with him, he could have written, or found a way to get a message to me. Despite all I once said to the contrary, I would have gone, run to his arms in Cornwall, but …’ She looked at him, wearily. ‘Just tell him about Lily, that’s all.’
‘I’ll write to him as soon as possible, I promise. And you’ll take the house?’
‘Yes, I’ll accept Jack’s house on his daughter’s behalf. She will have somewhere beautiful to grow up in and to remember her father by. It will force me to be honest about Lily with my family too. Bangalore will be good for us. I can get a job as a schoolteacher – perhaps at my old school across the road.’
‘I’m glad,’ he said, relief flooding through him.
‘I’m very grateful for your understanding.’
‘Oh, there is one more thing,’ he said, praying he could do this next bit without adding to the whole sorry tale of lies. ‘I was asked to give this to you as well. Perhaps it is something Lily can wear when she’s older.’ He held out the watch.
Iris gave a soft gasp. ‘I thought he gave it to his servant.’
He hated the way Iris denigrated Kanakammal. Henry didn’t dare speak for a few seconds. He shook his head, then shrugged to cover his embarrassment. ‘Perhaps his wife wore it for a while. Anyway, it is a gift to you.’
She took it and he nearly sighed with final relief that his part in this was complete.
‘I shall caretake it for Lily. It makes me feel very special to know that he remembered and wants me to have this.’
Henry stood, eager to be gone. ‘Well, I should be going. I’m at the Bangalore Club for another couple of days if you have any questions, but I think everything is in order now. I’m deeply sorry again about your husband.’
She smiled sadly. ‘Thank you. Everywhere I turn is a constant reminder that he’s not here and not coming back.’
He wasn’t sure whether she meant Ned or Jack … perhaps she didn’t know either. Henry gave a small bow. There really was nothing more to say. Iris saw him to the door and waved as he climbed into his waiting car.
He had never been so relieved to see his driver. ‘Get me out of here, George.’
And as they passed a busy junction where five roads connected and then drew level with a large neem tree on the left, he saw Jack’s wife standing beneath its branches, a radiant ivory sari draped gracefully over her bulging belly. As he saw her, her name came to him in perfect rhythm. Kanakammal. She was tracing a finger on the bark of the tree.
‘Stop, please,’ he said.
Henry got out of the car and walked up the slight incline to her. ‘It’s done,’ he said.
She nodded. ‘I am glad.’
‘Are you sure there is nothing else I can tell Jack?’
She paused, considering his request. ‘Please tell my husband that his son and I will pray for his happiness every day. And that I heard him say my true name the night that he left … and that it gave me joy to hear him speak it.’
And then she turned and walked away in her bare feet, heading down the road to KGF.
Henry felt momentarily lost. He glanced towards the tree and noticed the initials JB carved into the bark. It was an old marking, perhaps when Jack had first arrived in KGF and made his decision to stay. Nearby was another set of initials – ES – and Henry felt a spike of sorrow.
He swung around to watch Kanakammal again, hoping she might pause, or even turn to say more, but she never looked back.
49
Gloria watched Jack as he sat alone at the bottom of the walled garden reading the letter she had picked up from the post office that morning. It had arrived by special delivery and was obviously important.
She’d held it up to the sunlight, trying to see what she could make out, but no luck. The neat handwriting on the back told her it was from a man called Henry Berry, postmarked Bombay. She’d read about Bombay once in a magazine but she had no desire to see exotic places where coloured people lived and wild beasts roamed the streets. No, she was happy to stay in Cornwall and find herself a good husband.
She glanced back towards Mrs Bryant’s dressing room, waiting for her mistress to emerge, but quickly returned her gaze to the son and sighed as she stared at his thick dark hair. What wouldn’t she give
to run her fingers through it? His face was hidden but she knew it well enough in her dreams.
There was tension in the hunch of his shoulders and she had watched him read the letter more than once, poring over its pages.
‘Gloria, dear?’ Mrs Bryant’s voice startled her. ‘Have you seen my son anywhere?’
‘He is in the garden. He’s had a letter from India,’ she said carefully.
‘Oh?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. I was hoping I hadn’t missed him,’ Elizabeth said, pulling on a single strand of pearls.
‘Do you think he’ll ever go back?’ Gloria said, watching Jack from the corner of her eye. He seemed to be staring into space.
‘To India? Over my dead body! No, I have my son back with me now and everyone here knows he’s been exonerated from any fault in the Levant disaster. Cornwall is where he will remain. There’s nothing in India for him.’
‘Do you want me to fetch him for you, Mrs Bryant?’
‘Thank you, dear.’
Gloria couldn’t get down the two flights of stairs and into the side garden quickly enough, having to stop herself running by the time she was out of the double doors and onto the small patio. She slowed down, smoothed her clothes and took a deep breath.
She sauntered along the winding path that would take her beneath the magnificent rose arbour and down to the bench beneath the apple tree. But when it came into view, it was empty. Jack was just closing the back gate and standing on the other side.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr Bryant,’ she said.
Jack swung around wearing a faraway expression.
She nodded towards the envelope. ‘I hope it wasn’t bad news.’
‘A friend writing with all the latest gossip, that’s all.’
‘Do you miss it?’ she asked shyly.
‘Sometimes.’ He hesitated but then shook his head. ‘Did you want me for something?’
‘Mrs Bryant sent me. She wonders if you’d come and see her?’
‘Certainly,’ he said.
She took her chance. It was rare that she had any time alone with him. ‘I don’t mean to speak out of turn, Mr Bryant, but you’ve made her very happy by coming home. I think we’re all very pleased to have you here.’
‘That’s kind of you, Glory. You must remember to call me Jack.’
She grinned. ‘You should get yourself out a bit … Jack, if you don’t mind me saying so.’
‘Out?’
‘You know, dancing, or perhaps to a show. I think you could do with some cheering up.’
She tried not to squirm as his hard gaze regarded her silently in the late-afternoon sunshine. Summer was ended and the leaves were just turning. It was still mild enough to sit outside in his rolled-up shirtsleeves. She noticed the tan on his thick arms had long ago faded and she hoped his memories of India would fade equally quickly.
‘Maybe you can help cheer me?’ he said suddenly.
She felt her pulse quicken, wanted to respond eagerly, but he’d already turned his back on her and she couldn’t tell whether he was simply teasing.
‘Come on, Conan,’ he said softly to the small dog, and over his shoulder he murmured, ‘Tell Mother I’ll be up shortly.’
Before Gloria could say another word, he strode away.
Jack didn’t want Gloria’s company and he couldn’t face his mother immediately. The letter had unsettled him, stirring buried emotions. He had thought he’d locked India and his time there safely away, not to be glimpsed again. But Henry’s succinct prose had reopened the past and Jack had to confront it again.
He hadn’t meant to walk this far but he found himself sitting on the clifftop down the lane from Pendeen church. It had become a place of keen significance for him and he frequently came to this same spot where he’d last spoken to his father, as if by being here he could hang onto Charles Bryant, feel close to him.
Jack read the letter again and it still seemed unreal that he was now the father of two children. A daughter to Iris, whom she had called Lily. Henry wrote that Iris wanted Jack to know she had named the child for him.
Henry didn’t dwell on Iris, which gladdened Jack because he knew that she’d been right; their affair had been doomed from the outset. He could see that now. Thinking about Iris could still ignite his desire, but did he truly love her? With the benefit of hindsight and distance, he suspected that passion, perhaps even lust, had been confused for love. A vague sense of shame niggled, but if he could ignore the guilt for long enough, he would leave it behind, just as he’d left behind the women whose lives he had irrevocably changed in India. Iris would never be without suitors, and once her grief was set aside she would be open to their approaches. Henry assured that while Ned’s widow appeared thin, she was also looking forward to a new future in Bangalore.
Jack’s feelings towards his daughter were quite different. In fact, his heart lurched at the news of Lily and he made a solemn private promise that he would support her and ensure a good education, whatever she needed. Jack even wistfully imagined them meeting one day; he could picture her arriving off a ship in Southampton, dark and beautiful like her mother. He suspected he would fall instantly in love with his daughter, and it would be a real love.
But if his heart had skipped a beat at the news of Lily, it seemed to break at the knowledge that he now had a son. Henry, back in Bombay, had received word that Kanakammal had given Jack a fine, strong son, as she’d promised. She had called the boy Charles after his Cornish grandfather. Jack wept as he read Henry’s precisely looped handwriting once again:
When we met she gave me the impression that she will do all in her power to ensure that your son knows you. She hopes you will meet him one day but until then will keep your memory alive for him. No distance will prevent him growing up honouring you as you honour your own father.
Jack crushed the letter in his fist. His wife was showing him that she forgave him all the sorrows he had brought upon her and that she had kept the very best of him – his son. The Bryant line lived on through this boy and he kept chewing at the notion that he must bring this child to Cornwall so that he might know the land of the Bryant men that had gone before him.
Jack was struck by the painful irony that his son and his father not only shared the same name but managed to prompt identical anguish in him. Would young Charles love him? It was a question that had always gnawed at Jack regarding his father. More importantly, would Jack live up to the honour that Kanakammal spoke of? He would try to. Kanakammal was making it possible for him to start developing a relationship with his son. She asked for nothing more from Jack, but would she let him take Charles away? No mother gave up her son willingly. Jack didn’t care. He wanted his boy at his side more than anything else he’d ever wanted in his life. And it wasn’t just a wistful dream that he could ease his son into the family business empire that Jack had such big plans for. The notion felt real and attainable. Perhaps he could, at last, do something right in raising a son properly; something that the elder Charles would approve of. Imagining his father as finally proud of him brought fresh tears to Jack’s eyes, but it was a good feeling, an exciting one, that lifted his spirits and banished the heaviness that he’d carried in his heart this last year.
Jack looked out to sea as the soft summer breeze dried the tears on his cheeks, and the emerald water and cloudless sky made him momentarily dream of sailing again to an exotic land where, in fields of gold, his past and his future awaited him.
Author’s note
The story of my two grandfathers – one a Cornish miner, the other a Scot who lost his mother when the family was in Rangoon, and who both ended up in Kolar Gold Fields in the 1920s – has been buried in our family’s history for long enough that no one else but a writer growing up within its ranks would see its fascinating potential. My maternal grandfather did marry a wonderful Anglo-Indian called May Iris, the daughter of a doctor, and they had seven children and remained happily married until he died suddenly aged
forty-two. James Patton is my Ned in this tale; he did flee Burma, did become an electrician and was the manager of the KGF electric department at his death. Meanwhile, my paternal grandfather, John Richards, known as Jack, did ride motorbikes, did own property and most certainly did marry his beautiful Indian servant – I’m sure much to the shock of his peers. She gave him three sons. Her name was Kanakammal – but he called her Elizabeth for ease.
I am the only blood granddaughter of this quartet. Both my grandfathers died long before I was born but I did enjoy an especially happy and loving relationship with my granny (May), who migrated to England where I was born. I met Kanakammal when I was teenager in 1973 and fell in love with her for the short time we were together in India. She died a few months later.
To my knowledge my grandfathers barely knew each other in life – neither did my grandmothers – but why on earth would I ruin a good story with the truth!
This is a work of fiction so I haven’t aimed for historical accuracy at every turn, even though I borrow ruthlessly from real times and events. Thus I have taken liberties with dates and facts and even crafted a non-existent shaft in KGF. Any discrepancy a well-informed reader might spot is likely deliberate, and if accidental, is my own fault and not that of my brilliant team of generous and willing helpers around the world.
I wanted this novel to read with pace and ease, so I have consciously avoided trying to recreate the language, dialects or manner of speaking of the time in which this story is set. My aim for this tale is purely to entertain. I do hope it does just that. Thank you for reading it.
Acknowledgements
Where to begin to thank a small army of people who have been instrumental in getting this project from idea to reality?
I guess it begins with one of Australia’s most beloved storytellers. Bryce Courtenay convinced me ten years ago to write a book and set me on a new career path. Fields of Gold is my sixteenth novel and it’s the one I’ve always wanted to write. Thank you, Bryce, for insisting I finally write it and also to Bob Sessions at Penguin for becoming such a strong supporter of this project and for giving me the wonderful Ali Watts as my editor. Ali, you are pure joy to work with. Thanks also to Belinda Byrne for your brilliant, hard work to help me to get the very best out of this story. Of course, all my new Penguin friends deserve big hurrahs – Gabrielle, Peg, Peter, Lou, Sally, Dan, Mary – thanks all for the support and highly professional way in which you do everything.
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