by Francis King
‘Oh, I don’t think …’
But as Isabel began to brush the hair now tumbling around her shoulders, Clare turned away and made slowly for the door.
Chapter Two
Old Mrs Thompson, a worn flannelette dressing-gown over her petticoat, sat by the window alternately looking down to the lake and writing a letter to one of her daughters, Janet, in her large, straggling hand:
‘… Toby is always good to me, on that score I have no complaints, and little Peter, though terribly spoiled by his mother, is a joy. Helen is a thoroughly nice girl, even if I sometimes feel she really has little time for her poor old grandmother. Isabel now seems to think I’m less of a burden than at first! The house is spacious and comfortable and of course it’s bliss to have servants to attend to one’s every want or whim. But I must confess that I’m often homesick and wonder if I did the right thing in coming out here. There’s so much I miss. I suppose the real trouble is that everyone needs to be needed and I just feel that, though everyone is so kind to me, I no longer have any useful purpose.
‘How depressing and worrying what we read from home! Though we have all this civil unrest, with that wretched Gandhi constantly stirring up trouble, we seem mercifully far from threats of war. Typical of …’
She stopped there, the thick-nibbed fountain-pen first jerking and then trailing downwards on the paper, as a violent knocking starded her.
‘Isabel?’ she quavered.
Clare had never been up to this room. Her hands deep in the pockets of her wrap, her shoulders hunched and her lips, which old Mrs Thompson had never seen before without lipstick on them, looking oddly blue, she ventured a few steps forward.
‘Yes, dear?’
Mrs Thompson did not trust Clare. She was sure that she was after her Toby. He, poor lamb, had always been so susceptible, bringing home a whole series of girls, each more unsuitable than her predecessor, until, at long last, he had married that poor little thing who, but for her TB and her age, would have been just perfect.
‘Has Peter been up here?’
‘Peter? No, of course not. He never comes up here except when his mother drags him up on his daily visit. I’m afraid he finds an old woman’s company rather of a bore. Not that I blame him,’ she added, though secretly she did.
‘He’s vanished,’ Clare said, taking her hands out of her dressing-gown pockets and spreading them out. Those nails! Like talons dipped in blood. Isabel or Toby ought to say something to her about them. Totally unsuitable for a so-called governess.
‘Vanished?’ Like Isabel, the old woman wondered why Clare should be so upset. ‘Oh, I expect he’s wandered off somewhere or other. He’s such an independent little chap. Perhaps he’s with Helen.’
Clare hesitated. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’
The old woman reached out for her stick and, using it as a fulcrum, painfully eased herself up from her chair. She limped, crab-wise, out on to the landing and then, raising the stick, rapped with it on Helen’s door. ‘ Helen!’ she called. ‘Helen! Are you there?’
The door opened. In jodhpurs and aertex shirt, the vee of her neck sunburned and her shingled blond hair, with its deep diagonal wave, crisp on either side of cheeks radiant with health, Helen emerged on to the landing. ‘Did you want something, Granny?’
‘Is Peter with you?’
‘Peter? No. Why?’
‘He seems to have vanished.’
Clare had sunk down on to the straight-backed chair by the landing window. ‘He’s nowhere in the house,’ she said. ‘And the servants haven’t seen him. I’d taken a pill your stepmother gave me and must have slept more deeply than usual. When I woke, his bed was empty. He’s not with your stepmother.’
‘He’s probably somewhere in the garden. Or gone for an early ride with my father.’ Helen was brisk. ‘Let’s go downstairs and have a look.’ She put out a hand to draw Clare out of the chair in which she was crouching. ‘I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.’
‘It’s such a responsibility, looking after a child like that.’
‘If you don’t like that kind of responsibility, then you shouldn’t have become a governess,’ the old woman said tartly over her shoulder, as she returned to her room.
‘Come!’
Helen still held Clare’s hand, as she guided her down the stairs.
Chapter Three
The two girls, Clare’s hair streaming backwards and her knees close together as her legs flew sideways in their absurdly high heels, ran between the rank-smelling hedges and over the small, brownish flowers which the wind had scattered from them. Toby was riding slowly towards the house, with Hilda walking beside him, her face upturned to his in conversation. The sun shone on the boots which, each morning, the bearer buffed with so much care, on his sparse, reddish hair and on the sweat on his naked forearms and his forehead. ‘ Father! Father!’ Helen cried out, in a loud, clear voice; and behind her Clare panted: ‘Oh, Mr Thompson, Mr Thompson!’
Toby did not quicken the pace of his horse, but his conversation with Hilda ceased. Eventually, beside them and above them, he looked down. ‘ What is it? What’s the matter?’ Then an anxiety darkened his face. ‘Is the baby on the way?’
‘No, no. It’s Peter, Father. Peter.’
‘Peter?’
‘We thought he might have been out riding with you but then the syce …’ Helen grasped a rein as the grey impatiently tossed his head from side to side and then let out a whinny. ‘He’s nowhere to be found. And no one has seen him.’
Hilda looked from her employer to the girls and then back again to him. Her thick spectacles flashed fire as they caught the sunlight.
‘He must be somewhere,’ Toby said.
‘No, no. Nowhere!’ Clare all but wailed.
‘Christ!’ Without saying another word, Toby kicked at the side of the horse so that, curvetting sideways, the animal jerked the rein from Helen’s grasp. At that, Toby began first to trot and then to canter towards the stables.
The girls looked at each other and, turning, ran after him, Helen in the lead, graceful in her effortless athleticism, and Clare following with that ungainly throwing-out of her legs, her arms flatting, while she gulped, as though drowning, for air.
In the stableyard Toby jumped down and began to bellow for the syce. Abandoning his mug of thick, bitter tea, the man ran out in panic. Usually his master did not return home so soon. ‘ Hold the horse’, Toby ordered him in Hindustani. ‘But don’t unsaddle him. I may need him.’ The girls, who had taken a short cut along the perilously disintegrating path above the tennis court, joined him as he was striding into the house. Old Mrs Thompson was anxiously awaiting them in the hall, from time to time peering out from the doorway, her grey hair blowing untidily about her face.
‘Someone must have stolen him,’ Toby said. It was an odd word to use – as though he were talking of the bottles of drink, table linen, bed linen or small items of money which occasionally disappeared from the house. ‘ I’d better telephone down to the police station.’
‘Oh, Toby, I’m sure there’s no need to do that yet,’ the old woman intervened. ‘ He’s probably wandered off …’
Ignoring her, Toby turned to the girls: ‘You’ve looked everywhere, haven’t you? You’ve questioned the servants? The ayah? The bearer?’
‘Oh, yes, yes.’ Clare dabbed with a lace-fringed handkerchief, screwed into a sodden ball, first at her forehead and then at her cheeks and chin. ‘ We’ve been all over the garden and all over the servants’ quarters and half-way down the cud.’
‘God! This country!’ In the drawing room, Toby banged with increasing impatience on the telephone cradle with forefinger and middle finger. ‘Dead! The fucking thing would go dead at a moment like this.’ Neither his mother nor the girls had ever heard him use that expletive before.
Helen pointed downwards. ‘Someone has tugged out the wire from the socket,’ she said calmly. ‘Look.’
Toby stooped and, though it was immedia
tely apparent that what she had said was true, he picked up the end of the wire and examined it carefully.
Again Helen pointed. ‘And that window’s unlatched. Or did you unlatch it when you came down?’
‘No, I haven’t been in here this morning.’ Toby now went over to the French window, although, again, there could be no doubt about Helen’s observation. He put his hand to the latch and jerked it back and forth. ‘I made sure it was secure last night. I always do. You know that.’
Old Mrs Thompson ventured: ‘I suppose one of the servants might have …’
‘The servants never do anything more than they have to do. And why unlatch the window unless to leave it open?’ Toby stood by the window, legs wide apart and thick, reddish eyebrows drawn together, while the green eyes gazed, in bafflement, first at the old woman and then at the girls. ‘Are you sure none of you …?’
‘None of us touched that latch,’ Helen said, in a calm, steady voice, totally unlike Clare’s agitated, breathless one.
‘I’d better get down to the police station as quickly as possible. I’ll take the horse. Singh is often there on Sundays. Otherwise I’ll get them to call his house.’
‘Couldn’t you ring from the Andersons?’ the old woman suggested. ‘Or the Mukerjees? The Mukerjees are nearest.’
‘Yes, I suppose I could do that. I suppose so. Anyway, there’s no time to be lost. Go on with the search while I’m gone but don’t – for God’s sake don’t – upset Isabel. A shock could so easily … It’s so near her time. For the moment, say nothing more to her.’
He hurried out, leaving behind in the drawing room the acrid smell of his exertion and anxiety. The girls gazed at each other, the old woman gazed at them. Clare put a hand to her mouth and let out a whimper. Helen told her sharply: ‘Stop that! Stop that at once!’
Chapter Four
Though the morning sun had no warmth in it, Mr Mukerjee was watering his garden in striped cotton pyjamas. Beneath the pyjamas he wore a woollen vest and woollen longjohns, their ribbing visible above his ankles. On his hair, which his elder daughter had just washed for him, he wore a fine net, its elastic making an indentation just above his eyebrows. His high-instepped feet sported a pair of unlaced patent-leather shoes, more suitable for a formal dinner party than for gardening. Although he owned so many of the houses occupied by the British, the house in which he himself lived was modest. He employed only two paid servants, though an elderly female relative might be regarded as an unpaid one.
Soon, when the hot weather had smouldered out in the plains, most of the British would begin their migration; and then, though his houses would lie empty and damp for another six months, and no money would come in, he would be happy. From time to time he would supervise repairs and redecorations in desultory fashion; but for most of the day he would remain, in pyjamas and dressing-gown, in his study, overheated by two paraffin stoves, with its glassed-in verandah overlooking the lake. He would read the newspapers, he would entertain his cronies, he would suck on the cigarettes which he himself rolled in their delicate, grey-tinted papers and would chew on the betel-nut which he himself enfolded in its coarse green leaves. Above all, he would drowse, as the flies drowsed against the panes of the verandah, pleasurably poised between consciousness and unconsciousness, reality and dream.
The clatter of hooves made his head jerk up; and there, hurtling precipitously down the path beyond his garden wall, Mr Thompson appeared on his grey. Horses, such strong and violent creatures, frightened Mr Mukerjee. He winced, the hose now lowered, so that its jet sprayed his shoes and bare ankles above them. Toby reined, the grey tossed his head from side to side, so that yellow froth spattered the bougainvillaea trailing over the retaining wall of the hillside. What could Mr Thompson want of him? Oh gosh! Had there been a fire, a burst pipe, a collapsed ceiling? Mr Mukerjee dreaded all such things and, dreading them, also dreaded any contact with his tenants.
‘Mr Mukerjee! Mr Mukerjee!’ At this distance, Toby’s voice had the hortatory loudness of someone shouting at a football match.
‘Yes, sir, yes.’ Mr Mukerjee advanced in his unlaced patent-leather shoes, the hose still spitting water. Then he stopped and put down the hose against the base of a rosebush. ‘What is it, sir?’
‘Mr Mukerjee, have you seen my boy?’
‘Your bearer, sir? Muhammed, sir?’
‘No, no!’ Toby’s exasperation made Mr Mukerjee quail. ‘My son, my Peter!’
‘Well, no, sir, no. Was he planning to come on a visit here?’ The possibility amazed Mr Mukerjee, who had long since realized that his white tenants did not want their capricious, domineering child to associate with his dogged, docile ones.
‘Good God, no! No! He’s lost, vanished! I’m afraid that someone – some gang – some dacoits – must have stolen him.’ Again that odd word, with its suggestion of household filching.
‘Stolen him, sir?’
‘I’m on my way down to the police station. Whoever took the boy, also pulled out the telephone wires.’
‘The telephone! You have no telephone! But if you wish, sir, you may use …’
Did Toby hear the suggestion? Later, when he was asked, Mr Mukerjee could never be sure. After all, as he well knew, his sing-song voice lacked power; and there was a strong wind blowing off the lake, sending rose petals whirling across the garden.
‘Janoo! Janoo!’ Mr Mukerjee called to his wife. ‘Are you there, woman?’
He thought, momentarily, that perhaps he should himself telephone down to the Assistant Inspector, a remote relation of his. But then he decided against a course so presumptuous. The sahibs did not care for one to poke one’s nose – Mr Mukerjee’s English was painstakingly idiomatic – into their affairs.
Chapter Five
Soon after her arrival, Helen had made her father and stepmother laugh when she had remarked of the ayah that she had ‘an amazing dignity’. What did she mean, Isabel had demanded. Priceless! But old Mrs Thompson, nodding her head over the knitting which constantly grew from beneath her arthritic fingers, had not laughed but had nodded her head. ‘ She’s so – so …’ Helen went on. Then, embarrassed both by Toby’s and Isabel’s derision and by her inability to define that dignity, she, blushing, gave up.
The ayah, with her erect carriage, her long, narrow feet, bangles around the ankles, and her strong hands with their strangely yielding, pink palms, seemed ageless to the girl. There was a gold stud in one of her nostrils; her teeth, stained by betel-juice, were the colour of Clare’s ivory cigarette holder. She never smiled, except at Peter; she rarely spoke unless some question was put to her. None of the family knew anything of her former life, except that she had worked for the family of a general, now back in England, before she had come to them with a highly laudatory reference; but then no one had attempted to get to know anything about it.
The ayah hated Clare, who gave her peremptory orders, the cigarette holder jutting up and outwards from between her full lips, who threw her soiled underclothes on to the floor for her to pick up, who scattered powder over the dressing-table for her to wipe away, and who, worst of all, had come between her baba and herself, stealing him from her. Clare’s predecessor, Nanny Rose, who had also spent all her life in India but who, unlike her, was not a Eurasian, had been different; but Nanny Rose, suddenly collapsing on her knees on the bathmat like some felled animal, her mouth half-open and an eyelid flickering, while the two women had been bathing their darling (that was how Nanny Rose always referred to him, her darling) was now far away in a home for old people near the daughter whom she had come to love so much less than her charge. The ayah had struggled to drag Nanny Rose up to her feet, while Peter looked over the side of his zinc tub, toy boat in hand, with a faint, unalarmed curiosity. Then, noticing the widening pool on the bathmat, she had cried out again and again: ‘Memsahib! Memsahib!’ Finally, Isabel had appeared, had asked crossly, seeming not to notice Nanny Rose, now slumped, head on chin, in an ancient wicker chair: ‘What is it? What�
��s all this noise?’ had then taken in the situation and had at once snatched up the naked, dripping child in her firm arms, the water staining her evening dress, and had rushed him away. The ayah sometimes dreamed of visiting Nanny Rose, half-way across the subcontinent.
Now, when the bearer, whom she dreaded and disliked, told her that the baba was lost, she at once joined him in searching. The two of them went into the empty rooms into which the two girls had gone before them. They even disturbed the old woman, back alone now at the top of the house, a game of demon patience laid out before her. Querulously she told them in an English which neither of them could understand: ‘Oh, but I’ve already said – he’s not here – not here! Not with me! My son has gone to call the police. The police.’ She spoke that last word with extreme emphasis, dividing its syllables. In growing panic, the ayah opened cupboards, looked under beds, and wandered, the bearer pattering behind her, between the sheeted furniture, tea chests, cabin-trunks and suitcases crammed into the loft which formed the spine of the humped, sprawling house. It was in the loft that the two girls, hearing movements overhead, came on them.
‘We’ve looked here already, he’s not here,’ Helen said, in her fluent Hindustani, learned as a child. The ayah folded her hands before her and bowed, as though to ask forgiveness for some delinquency. She then asked: ‘What about the memsahib’s room?’ Helen replied that he was not there, no one must disturb the memsahib.
Eventually the two girls went and sat out on the verandah, to wait for Toby’s return with the police. They sat, the ayah noticed, as, alone now, she still went on with her search in the garden, far apart from each other, Helen lying back, her eyes closed, in a deckchair at one end of the verandah, and Clare leaning forward, one hand clasping the other at the wrist as though to take her own pulse, on an upright, wooden one at the other end. Clare was gripping the ivory cigarette holder between her clenched teeth but for once there was no cigarette in it. Far off, from the Victorian Gothic church invisible but for its spire sticking up like a needle through the dark green fabric of the branches knitted roughly together around the lake, there came a monotonous pealing. It was Sunday, the ayah realized. Now that Nanny Rose, the only church-goer in the family, was no longer there, Sundays went unremarked except for the leg of lamb or round of beef at luncheon.