A Garland of Marigolds

by Isobel Chace

  “Oh, I shouldn’t say that,” he said cheerfully. “There’s a long way to go, I know, but the soil is pretty good.”

  “I’ve just analyzed various samples,” I said dryly.

  “And?”

  “And the sooner we add some nitrogen to the soil the better!” I said grimly.

  “Look, I know that soil—” he began.

  “Do you?” I asked him tartly.

  “Perhaps you’d better let me have your findings,” he sighed. He looked rather depressed. “Though where I’m going to conjure the stuff up from I don’t know!”

  “It’s the lack of water that I’m really worried about,” I insisted.

  Gideon grunted. The water from his hair was dripping down the back of his neck and he pulled out a handkerchief to dry himself. Across one corner was a smear of pale mauve lipstick. My sympathy for him died dramatically.

  “The new well will help,” he said.

  I gave him a scornful look. “It might,” I agreed, “if anyone was around to work it!”

  “Is that intended as a reference to me?” he asked stiffly.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “If the cap fits...” I drawled.

  To my surprise he looked amused.

  “I’ll tell you when it does,” he said.

  Somehow, I thought dismally, he had managed to get the last word again.

  In the morning my jeep was ready for me. I spent most mornings out in the field and afternoons checking my findings and working in the laboratory. Gideon managed to procure various chemicals, but it continued to be the lack of water that worried me most. When I was not worrying about my work, I worried about myself. I could feel myself growing tighter and more intense, but I didn’t feel that I could relax with anyone any longer. Whenever I did I was hurt too badly, or so it seemed to me.

  I was sitting at the bench in the laboratory when the Swami walked in. He came and went as he pleased, his saffron robes flapping in the dusty breeze. Everyone respected him. I was always pleased to see him and soon got used to his shock of wild hair and his ability to remove himself from any conversation by the simple expedient of staring into space.

  “I thought you would like to accompany me through the village to see the new pump.”

  I was highly gratified. For a moment I tried not to show it, but the smile of pleasure spread across my face just the same.

  “Is it really working?” I asked.

  He nodded. “So they tell me.”

  I threw down my pen and stood up immediately. I had been astonished and appalled by the delay in getting the well into action.

  We walked through the village as if we owned it. The Swami strode on ahead, his robes rippling in the wind; I followed a pace behind, anxious as always to see everything that was going on around me. The Swami must have been more observant than he looked because he stopped suddenly in the middle of the street. As always in the presence of a foreigner a knot of begging children had gathered, more curious than determined. The boldest of them touched my skirts, while the others put their hands over their faces and peered through their fingers.

  “It will be well when my people learn to be a little less materialistic,” the Swami said sternly.

  I laughed. “You want too much!” I teased him, a little shocked by my own audacity. “They have to eat!”

  “But not by begging.”

  “No, but by giving me water for my wheat!” I retorted.

  He shook his head at me.

  “You must ask Mr. Wait for that.”

  I sighed. “I suppose so,” I said.

  There were surprisingly few people at the well. I recognized most of the women drawing water. They were very graceful, filling their pots and carrying them off on their heads, but it was plain that the vast majority of them were still using the water from the buffalo tanks. We stood and watched for a while, trying to fight down a feeling of disappointment that the whole village was not making use of it as we had hoped.

  I went to the edge of the well and peered down into its depths. There was very little to see, for the new electrical machinery took up most of the space and one could only glimpse the water below.

  “It is working well now,” the Swami told me, not without pride. “At first it was difficult because none of us knew how to prime it.” I giggled, remembering similar pumps in the country where we had spent our school holidays when I was a child. I put my two hands on the edge of the well and exchanged smiles with one of the youngest housewives I had ever seen. Aged no more than twelve, she nevertheless had the proud bearing of one who was sure of her own status. For an instant I thought she might have been a relative of Lakshmi’s, but as soon as she filled her earthenware pot and raised it to her head, the likeness disappeared and she wandered away down the street and was lost in the crowd.

  I was so busy watching the first girl, I didn’t see the second until she was right on top of me. She had none of the confidence of the first, but was quite scared to take the water from the well. I stood up straight to help her, but other hands were there before mine. To my surprise, they were Gideon’s.

  “Will you get me water to drink?” he asked her.

  She was plainly overcome by such a request, but his smile reassured her and it was obvious that she didn’t like to refuse his request.

  “The water is tasteless after the other,” she told him shyly. “It is clean,” he replied. “The other water holds many illnesses inside it. This will keep your children well and strong.”

  She licked her lips doubtfully.

  “My husband will say my cooking is not as good as his mother’s,” she went on.

  Gideon laughed. “All husbands say that anyway!” he teased her. “You try it and see if he doesn’t compliment you on your new skill.”

  She was overcome with amusement at the idea, but she dipped her pot into the water and offered it to Gideon. The other women, gaining their confidence, pushed closer to see the fun. Gideon was completely at home with them. He was never familiar, but within seconds they all felt at ease.

  The Swami watched paternally from the edge of the ring of women.

  “I shall leave you in his capable hands,” he said to me in amused tones. “He is already managing to do what I had planned.”

  “To win their confidence?” I asked him.

  The Swami nodded solemnly. “Exactly.”

  Gideon moved away from the well and joined me on the edge of the throng.

  “Working hard?” he asked me wryly.

  I kept my head with determination.

  “There’s blight on some of your potatoes,” I told him, figuring that the best form of defence was to attack.

  He smiled quite affably.

  “I know. I’m dealing with it tomorrow.” His grin grew bigger. “Afraid it will spread onto your fields?” he prodded me.

  “Of course,” I retorted. “My wheat is parched, but it is clean.” He was still amused, and I wondered what had put him into such a good temper.

  “Famous last words!” he said.

  “I haven’t enough water on those fields to feed a bug!” I turned to face him. “Dr. Wait—”

  His smile died.

  “Suki, don’t dare mention water to me again!” he reproved me. “I haven’t the time or the inclination to go into it now.”

  But when would he have? I wondered. I allowed my eyes to drop from his face, but not before I noted the signs of fatigue in his eyes. If he had been home at a reasonable hour I thought, he would be more able to do his work. I suppose my thoughts must have been mirrored on my face, because he grasped me firmly by the hand and pulled me down the street.

  “You and I,” he said, “are going to the pan seller and there we’ll sit in the shade and regain a sense of proportion!”

  I didn’t know what a pan seller was, but I followed him willingly enough. I liked being with him, liked it more than was good for me.

  The pan vendor had chosen an ideal spot under a shady tree. Gideon and I sat on the red
dust and watched him. He squatted beside a little cabinet and a potful of leaves covered with water. When Gideon nodded to him, he carefully prepared a leaf for each of us, covering it with various spices from the little drawers in the cabinet; lime and cutch, cardamon seeds and cloves and the inevitable shred of finely beaten silver which, for some reason, all Indians seem to think essential to their good health.

  Gideon received the first leaf and popped it whole into his mouth, chewing it cautiously at first and then with obvious pleasure. I could smell the spices and, when he had finished, his mouth was as red as if he had swallowed a dollop of red ink. I was not at all sure at first that I liked the flavor of the spices, but the taste was so clean and fresh that I was sorry when I had reduced it to pulp and there was nothing left to wonder over.

  “Now, about the water,” Gideon began.

  I waited for him to go on, but he was lost in thought.

  “Well?” I prompted.

  “We’ll have to make better use of the monsoons,” he said. “The streams fill up then—too much so.”

  I thought of the muddy trickle that ran beside the wheat field.

  “I shall build a dam myself,” I announced. The spices from the pan had practically blown the top of my head off and I felt quite capable of doing anything. “It isn’t impossible,” I went on, “the water is there!”

  Gideon gave me a long, hard look. “All right,” he said slowly. “See what you can do, but don’t come crying to me if it doesn’t work.”

  My back stiffened. “I wouldn’t dream of it!” I told him coldly.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Julie Burnett invited Gideon and Camilla to spend Sunday with her parents. For some reason Joseph and I were not included in the invitation. I don’t think either of us minded, but Camilla took immediate offense at the whole arrangement. After the incident of the moth, no one had expected her to become exactly friendly with the other girl, but we couldn’t help feeling that a certain tolerance was desirable.

  “I won’t go!” she told her brother.

  Gideon barely looked up from the paper he was reading.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said.

  Camilla, who was not often or easily putout, completely lost her temper.

  “Nothing will induce me to go! Why should I? Besides, why can’t she ask all of us? She’s a horrible snob and I won’t have anything to do with her!”

  Things were not made better by Gideon leaving the room as if he had not heard her.

  “Would you go?” Camilla demanded. “Imagine his liking such a person!” A terrible thought struck her. “Suki, you don’t suppose he would actually marry her, do you? Because no one else in the family will survive the shock!”

  “Oh, Camilla!” I protested, because I didn’t like the idea of Gideon marrying Julie, “I imagine your brother will make up his own mind when it comes to marriage.”

  “Possibly,” she agreed tearfully. “But I couldn’t live in the same household with her.”

  I sighed. It wasn’t my place, I supposed, to break it to her that she might not be wanted by her brother once he married. I half-thought that I might try and prepare the ground, but the very idea of Julie living on various research stations around the world was so ridiculous that I hardly knew where to start. It was funny that we should all think of her as such a social creature when really she lived right at the back of beyond and probably had had as few parties and outings in her life as I had.

  “I don’t suppose Gideon is really serious about her,” I said pacifically. “He has to be polite and so do we.”

  Camilla stared at me, wide-eyed.

  “You mean I have to go on Sunday?”

  I nodded regretfully, but Camilla became quite cheerful about it.

  “Okay, I’ll go. It will be interesting to see what sort of people managed to produce a freak like Julie, anyway.”

  I frowned at her, but I had to admit that I would have been interested myself. It was terrible to be so curious and I couldn’t help being glad that Gideon didn’t know of my interest, for I was quite sure that he would have had no sympathy with my own vivid dislike for the other girl.

  I thought Gideon looked grim and strange in a jacket and tie when he got the jeep out on the Sunday. Camilla had excelled herself by producing a filmy nylon dress that clung to her youthful figure and a picture hat that gave her a quaint dignity.

  “Somebody has to keep the flag flying,” she said tersely.

  “Oh yes!” I agreed. It was difficult to keep from laughing and I was afraid that Gideon would see. As it was, I thought I caught an answering gleam of laughter in his eyes, but I knew of course that I must be mistaken. One doesn’t stay out until all hours of the night with a girl unless one admires her.

  “What are you two going to do with yourselves?” Gideon asked as he started up the engine. For a minute he sounded quite envious of our freedom.

  “I’m going to start the dam,” I said.

  Joseph stood with his hands on his hips, twisting his belt with his thumbs.

  “I guess I’ll help,” he said indifferently.

  Gideon hesitated, looking worried.

  “Do you think you can manage on your own?” he asked.

  “Why not?”

  He smiled slightly at my challenging attitude.

  “Go carefully,” he bade me. “You can’t accomplish everything at once.”

  I hardly listened to him. I certainly didn’t take his words of caution seriously. Poor Camilla, I thought, what a dull day she was going to have. But my own day was full of the most exciting prospects. I turned to Joseph with enthusiasm.

  “Will you go and round up the men?” I asked him. “The sooner we begin the better!”

  The gentlemen of the panchayat stood in a group at the edge of the field looking with distaste at the barely moving muddy waters of the stream. They did not understand my plans for the dam and were plainly suspicious that any female could conceive such a plan.

  “The water is small and narrow,” they argued. “How will you make it more? It will never be enough to water the whole field.”

  It was difficult to argue in a language with which they were not familiar. I found it easier to show them. Accordingly I built a tiny dam across one of the trickles that made up the stream. I tried to explain how I would build a tank on either side to take up the water and how I would slowly build the two walls toward each other, with sluice gates in the center that could be opened during the monsoons to control flooding. The old men watched with interest. They nodded their heads and discussed the plan among themselves. One of them had a son who had traveled to another district to see a similar experiment. It had brought prosperity to the whole area, he reported eagerly, and the other men believed him. They knew how important water was to the crops. They also knew what it was like to live in times of famine.

  “It would cost very little,” I encouraged them.

  Two of the older men hitched up their clothing and came and stood beside me in the stream. With eager hands, I described exactly where the dam would be built, splashing around in the water and getting myself thoroughly muddy and wet.

  “It will need much labor,” the old men said finally.

  “There are young men in the village,” I replied eagerly. I knew that there would be the difficulty of caste, but I was hoping for the best. I wasn’t at all sure of the working force I would get, but I was reasonably sure that I could manage with a few.

  “We would have to pay for the sand and cement?”

  I nodded unhappily.

  “But the field would repay the expense in a single season,” I countered.

  The old men scuffed their toes in the muddy waters and thought some more.

  “We shall do it,” they said at last. “We shall do it if Mr. Wait agrees to the plans. We shall discuss the whole matter with him.”

  I agreed to this, shaking hands with each of the old men in turn. When they had gone, I found myself alone, still up to my ankles in muddy w
ater, but completely content because I knew that somehow I was going to make the wretched field productive.

  I was still there, gloating, when Joseph came to find me. He wore his hat at an angle, his trousers were skin-tight and his shirt was hanging out. He sat down on the bank beside the stream and took out his cigarette case. It flashed gold in the sun as he opened it and offered me a cigarette. I accepted one gratefully and sat beside him.

  “Thank you very much,” I said.

  “How did it go?” he asked.

  I sat down beside him, trying in vain not to grin too triumphantly.

  “Well, I think. The actual decision is to be referred to Gideon.”

  “Oh well, that was only to be expected. You don’t mind, do you?”

  I felt quite breezy with confidence and didn’t mind at all.

  “Not in the least!” I assured him.

  He grinned. “Good for you! I’ll be right in there, cheering for you!”

  But I wasn’t as sure of him as I wanted to be. For all the length of time I had been on my own, making my own friends and answerable to no one, I was strangely ignorant of the ways of men. When I thought about it, there had been only one man whom I had really studied and that was Timothy.