by Rosie Thomas
‘Hello there,’ Rainer cheerily called down to him. ‘What’s all this?’ Not waiting for Ravi’s answer he skipped down the stairs to meet him.
As his foot touched the bottom step he seemed to trip and almost overbalance. The box of tricks flew open and a shower of glittering rings, metal cups, scarves, coloured balls and gewgaws cascaded at Ravi’s feet. Rainer’s extravagant cape, the opposite of a muted pheran, swirled about him as Ravi stepped backwards with an exclamation of startled annoyance. He was scowling in distaste at this display of heathen arcana.
‘How clumsy of me.’ Rainer sighed. One-sidedly he bent to scoop up a coloured ball, but at the same instant two doves escaped from within his cape. Their wingbeats were loud in the confined space. Ravi leapt further backwards, crashing against the door edge, his arms flailing to beat off the birds. Prita’s white pashmina shawl fluttered as she enveloped herself within it and drew a fold over her bowed head. She slipped past Ravi Singh and out into the street.
‘So sorry.’ Rainer laughed. ‘I am training the birds. You see we have some way to go.’
Casually he unhooked his cape and let it drop from his shoulders. He folded it neatly and placed it inside the box, then piled the fallen items on top. Finally he took off the tailcoat and closed the lid of the box on everything. In his shirtsleeves he stretched out his arms and the doves flew back to him.
‘Is this a social call?’ he asked the glowering Ravi.
‘It is not. I have come for the child.’
‘For this five men burst into my house? Child? Which child is this?’
With a growl of impatience Ravi pushed him aside and took the stairs two at a time. Nerys still sat with the sewing in her lap, but when Ravi appeared she got up and went composedly to meet him. Caroline stood like a ghost against the window as the four men hunted through the room.
‘What are you doing?’ Nerys demanded.
Ravi strode to Caroline. ‘Where is the child?’ he shouted.
Rainer came back and put the doves into their cage. ‘Would our guests like some refreshments?’ he asked.
Nerys slid to his side. Rainer flicked a glance at Ravi’s half-turned back, then cupped Nerys’s face in his hands. He whispered to her, ‘She will be safe. Don’t worry if you hear nothing for a while. And I will come back, I promise you.’
His lips brushed her forehead. Before Ravi angrily swung away from the trembling Caroline, Rainer had melted away.
Vanished, as if into thin air. Nerys inwardly smiled.
‘Search the house,’ Ravi ordered. ‘Where has the Swiss gone? Bring him back.’
His furious expression indicated that he knew he was already outwitted. The men ran to do as they were told and Ravi confronted the two women again.
‘The girl was here an hour ago,’ he said. ‘Where is she now?’
‘She?’ Nerys innocently asked. She had trouble not smiling, and she realised that she was actually enjoying herself. She took Caroline’s cold hand and drew it under her arm so they presented a solid front against Ravi. ‘We have had some mission children to visit. They love the magic, you know. But they have all gone home now. Is it one of them you mean?’
Ravi came one step closer but Nerys only raised her chin and held on to Caroline. Nerys’s look said plainly, I may be only a woman but I am British, a missionary’s wife. You are a powerful man, but what do you think will happen if you lay a single finger on either of us?
He stopped short, with his hands clenched at his sides.
‘Who was the Indian woman?’
‘I think you must be referring to Mrs Stamm. I am sorry you didn’t give me the chance to introduce you. Perhaps there will be another opportunity.’
Ravi’s handsome face was contused with anger, but he managed to speak coolly enough. ‘As you well know, Mrs Watkins, the child I am looking for is actually my own daughter. I have decided that neither Mrs Bowen, nor her husband, nor your little Christian mission is fit to care for her. I am going to take her into my own household.’
Perhaps as a slave to one of your sisters – or quite probably much worse than that, Nerys mentally supplied. ‘I’m afraid you are too late. The child is no longer in Srinagar, and will soon be leaving India.’
‘You cannot remove an Indian native from her own country and people.’
Her level gaze retorted, It’s still wartime. India has thousands of orphans, starving or abandoned. Do you think one child will be missed among so many?
But she didn’t make the attempt to contradict him.
Two of the men came back. The house was empty and their search hadn’t taken long. Presumably the other two were combing the streets for Rainer and Prita. Nerys felt no anxiety on that score.
Ravi flung a last glance at Caroline. ‘Do you still imagine that you can outwit me?’
Only Nerys could feel how violently Caroline trembled.
With his men at his heels, Ravi left them.
As soon as they were sure he had gone, Nerys took the distraught Caroline in her arms. ‘Don’t worry. Zahra will be safe. Rainer will see to that.’
But she thought that Caroline’s mental state had slipped beyond anxiety for Zahra or even for herself. She was shaking, and biting her lips so hard that toothmarks showed in the thin skin. She seemed eaten up by a black terror that had no rational roots in her real difficulties, and by deep unhappiness that flooded all her being. All Nerys could do was hold her tight, murmur disjointed words that did not comfort, and hope that her despair might eventually lighten.
‘Sit down,’ she murmured to her. ‘I am going to make you some tea, and then take you home.’ She guided Caroline to Prita’s chair.
Farida appeared in the doorway. The girl marched straight to Nerys, her eyes burning. Nerys gripped her shoulders. ‘You did very well, Farida. Zahra will be safe from bad men now.’
But Farida only swung out at Nerys with two fists. She beat them on Nerys’s body. ‘Zahra. I want Zahra.’ She wouldn’t ever give way to tears, but the depth of her distress was plain.
Nerys could only catch at her wrists to restrain her, and say, ‘I know, I know you do, but she has had to go away. I hope she’ll come back, Farida, but I don’t know when it will be.’
The girl tore herself free and ran to the door. With a heavy heart, Nerys watched her go. It would be hard for all of them until they knew what Zahra’s future was likely to be, but hardest of all for poor, loyal Farida.
Outside in the bright afternoon, a woman in a plain white sari walked quickly through the streets with a child on her hip. The child was crying but no one paid the slightest attention to such a commonplace sight. At a sufficient distance, a tough-looking European man in shirtsleeves took the same route. A series of detours through enclosed alleyways and across weedy patches of derelict ground brought the people to the gate of Professor Pran, the Pandit university teacher who was shortly to move away for ever from the beloved city of his birth.
When Caroline and Nerys returned to the Bowens’ bungalow, the worried house-boy was waiting on the step for them. ‘Madam, quick now. Very sorry, Sahib sick. Hospital.’
Julia Dunkeley’s head popped up beyond the hedge. It was her husband who had sent for the doctor while Caroline was out. She said she would come with Caroline to the hospital, but Nerys told her very firmly that there was no need for that because she would accompany Caroline herself.
The army hospital was a series of single-storey buildings set in scrubby gardens, and in the past weeks Ralph had spent plenty of time there. Now a nurse led the two women to a curtained-off corner of a long ward in which wounded men lay propped in their beds and convalescents read or played cards at a centre table.
Ralph was asleep. His skin was a dark yellow colour and he was breathing in thick gasps through his open mouth. A metal kidney dish stood on the locker. Caroline sank down on the edge of the bedside chair and Nerys told her that she would wait outside. There was a loggia opening off the ward and she went out there where the air was
less redolent of clogged dressings and sickness. Small groups of men sat smoking in bamboo chairs. She found an empty seat and sank down, gratefully closing her eyes.
She needed time to assimilate the events of the day.
Later, Caroline made her way towards her. She looked as if she were sleep-walking, even though her eyes were unnaturally wide. ‘The doctor says his liver is failing. He is very ill.’
The bluff MO had made a tent of his fingertips, not quite looking Captain Bowen’s wife in the eye. He had talked about the severe damage her husband’s bodily systems had sustained while he was a captive of the Japanese, and how his life was in the balance.
‘We must hope fervently that he will recover from this crisis,’ he said, and added that for the next few days the outcome was unpredictable. But if and when Ralph was finally out of danger, his life from now on would always have to be highly regulated.
‘You understand me, I’m sure,’ the doctor said. ‘He must keep quiet, watch his diet, drink absolutely no alcohol. There will be a disabled discharge, of course. He is fortunate to have a young wife to care for him.’ Then he had touched Caroline lightly on the shoulder. ‘This is another shock for you, my dear. But if we do manage to pull him through, the two of you will have your life together. I promise you, we will do our very best for him.’
Nerys led her between the flowerbeds. Caroline’s head hung as she concentrated on the effort of walking. They were almost at the hospital gates when she suddenly jerked upright and began to laugh. ‘He won’t be able to shoot Ravi Singh now, will he? But just to make sure, I’m going to throw his guns in the lake.’
‘It’s all right, Caroline. I’ll speak to Major Dunkeley about the guns,’ Nerys soothed.
She wished very much that Myrtle and Archie were here today.
At the bottom of a narrow ravine choked with rocks and twisted tree roots lay the wreckage of a red Ford truck. Broken glass covered the stones, shards of it glittering in the sunshine.
An Indian Army troop carrier had drawn up at the roadside thirty feet above, and a trio of soldiers scrambled through the chutes of torn earth and uprooted saplings that marked the truck’s descent. As they reached the mangled vehicle the buzzing of flies was the only sound. One of the men stooped and peered into the upside-down cab. A pool of blood had collected in the roof felt and the flies swarmed there. There was much more blood on the grey metal dashboard, and the torn ribbons of a white dupatta scarf hung from the twisted wing mirror.
The men searched through the cab and the truck body, picking through open boxes that spilt a few clothes, some metal cups, a bright-coloured ball squashed and dented by the impact. From the twigs of a thorn bush one man retrieved a child’s plaited leather sandal.
There were no bodies to be found, no valuables, only the rifled luggage. The soldiers conferred in low voices and then began the steep ascent back to the road where their companions smoked and waited. This was an under-populated area, too rocky and barren for any farming, even for grazing animals. There were caves at the upper end of some of these ravines, used as hiding places by Azad Kashmir rebels or other desperate men, and the rocky ground was also home to packs of wild dogs. One of the men said that there were wolves hereabouts too. Further down the mountainside, where shepherds spent the summer months, there were stone-lined pits that had been dug as wolf traps. The others shrugged. Whether this was an accident followed by looting, a roadside hold-up or a murder scene was not their concern, and they had seen plenty of sights more disturbing. The wireless operator reported the incident to their base and gave the map co-ordinates. Then the troop carrier resumed its journey.
There were six berths in the cabin and a single small porthole. The woman and child had been assigned a middle and lower left, each with a cretonne curtain that could be drawn for privacy. The porter deposited their cabin bags and the man gave him his tip. As soon as they were alone the three of them inspected the little space and peered into the miniature bathroom.
‘I wonder who you’ll be sharing with?’ the man said.
They would be women, of course, whoever they were, and most probably also Indian. Perhaps they would be nuns, or scholarship students heading for England.
The child clung to the woman’s hand. His hair was cut short and he wore an everyday kurta pyjama.
‘Why can you not come with us now?’ the woman demanded.
‘I can’t, because I have a promise to fulfil. You don’t want me to break a promise, do you?’
It was a discussion they had been over many, many times.
‘Who will meet us in England? How will I know who they are?’
‘My friend will be at the docks, that is another promise. You have his photograph safe so you will recognise him?’
She held it up. It showed a smiling elderly man in leather boots and knee breeches, his hat pushed to the back of his head and a pipe in his mouth.
‘Edward will take care of you both. And very soon, a matter of weeks, I will join you and we will go to my home in Switzerland. You’ll be happy there, I know. That’s promise number three, isn’t it?’
She smiled, at last. ‘You are very good.’
He took her face between his hands and kissed her forehead. ‘Remember, as soon as the ship leaves the dock you are safe. You can put her in her proper clothes again, and she will no longer be Arjun but the orphan daughter of friends you are taking to her father’s cousins in London.’
The woman nodded obediently.
‘Don’t worry so much.’ He kissed her again, then lifted the child off its feet and swung it to the top bunk. ‘You are the king of the castle up there, aren’t you?’
Later, with the klaxons sounding to warn those who were not sailing that they must leave the ship immediately, they reached the head of the gangway. Everywhere friends and relatives were hugging and weeping as the moment of parting approached.
‘I’ll see you soon,’ the man breathed. He kissed the two of them once more and ran down the sloping gangway. He stood on the dockside as the giant hawsers were released and the ship’s hooter gave three long blasts. Craning his neck upwards, he could just see the woman at the ship’s rail, the child held tightly in her arms. He waved until his arms ached, and watched the white dupatta fluttering in response. When finally he couldn’t see it any more across the breadth of water, he turned and threaded his way through the cacophony of porters and baggage carts. Ahead of him, towering over the Bombay docks, stood the giant arch known as the Gateway to India. The man began to hurry. He had to catch the Frontier Mail to Rawalpindi, where his American companions and their sherpas, recruited from Darjeeling, were waiting for him. Then they would begin the long journey north to the mountain. It was already much later in the season than he had intended.
Ralph was still in the hospital, but the chief MO believed that he had turned a corner. The doctor told Caroline that she should be proud of her husband because he had an unquenchable will to live. She turned her eyes down to her hands, picking at the rags of skin until her sore fingers bled. A voice in her head, louder and more insistent than ever, continued to tell her that she wasn’t worth anything, couldn’t be, because she didn’t have the will to do a single thing, even to put an end to herself.
If you had an ounce of courage, you would do it, if you had an ounce of courage, you would …
When she was not at the hospital, she spent most of her time alone in the stifling bungalow. Nerys tried to persuade to come and stay at the mission, but Caroline was finding it harder and harder to be with other people, even Nerys.
‘I’m just tired,’ she whispered. ‘Tired and worried. When will there be any news from Rainer?’
‘I don’t know. We just have to trust him to do the right thing,’ was the only answer.
On 9 May, news of the unconditional German surrender was announced and Victory in Europe was declared. Srinagar broke into celebrations, although India still looked eastwards to the Pacific war. Multi-coloured lights dappled the black lake,
and in the early hours of the morning, dance music still drifted out of the club.
Mr Fanshawe let the diminished British military and civilian population know that on the night of 10 May an impromptu VE Day party would be held in the gardens of the Residency.
‘Please come – come with Evan and Ianto and me. Just for an hour,’ Nerys begged Caroline.
‘All right,’ she finally agreed.
Making a huge effort, she had the dhobi-wallah air and press her silk dress, she put curlers in her hair, and even searched the tin cupboard in the bathroom for the lipstick Myrtle had once declared was just the right shade for her skin. An hour before the party was due to start she sat down on the veranda chair to gather her strength. The air was hot and seemed thick enough to choke her. She rested her head against a cushion and fanned herself with an old magazine.
The clink of the gate latch woke her from a doze. A man stood just inside the fence, holding out an envelope. ‘Madam, for you,’ he said softly.
On legs that felt like tubes of jelly, Caroline tottered down the step to the path and held out her hand to take the letter. Worrying vaguely that she didn’t have a suitable coin, she asked him to wait, but the man had already closed the gate. His shadow passed behind the bushes and Caroline glanced down at the handwriting on the envelope. A cold hand clutched at her stomach.
Standing in the veranda shade she tore it open.
Ravi wrote that the child was dead.
The Swiss man’s ruined vehicle had been found in a ravine. No bodies had been recovered as yet but there was enough evidence to make it certain that the deaths had taken place.
A tragedy, of course. Ravi was sure that she would want to hear about it before the news became generally known. He conveyed his sympathy and good wishes.
Caroline dropped the letter. Soundlessly, she drifted through the bungalow’s cramped rooms, her eyes travelling over the familiar furnishings, the faded covers, Ralph’s books of military history and their framed wedding photograph.