I looked out of his windows with a sigh, past the patio I could see to where the land dropped away to the valley. ‘To describe this place as beautiful is inadequate. It’s paradise and even that phrasing is overused and seems not to fully sum it up.’
He fixed my gaze to his. ‘I’m glad it strikes you this way.’
‘Who wouldn’t be awed?’
He shook his head with a shrug as if to suggest he knew of these very people.
‘I know it’s your home,’ I continued, ‘but what do you love most about it?’ I needed him talking so I could hear how he sounded as he breathed, and also to help get us away from those sinking sands of recrimination that surely wanted to swallow me.
He didn’t hesitate at my question. ‘Its simplicity. Everything about life is clear, uncomplicated.’
‘Right.’
‘You don’t think so?’ He gestured to the seat that he’d asked Adri to bring in for me.
I moved to sit in it now, facing him, and leaned an elbow on the bed. I chanced a grin. ‘Those mountains change. One moment they dominate the landscape, and then in a few heartbeats the mist shades them away. Sometimes they’re purple, right now almost glacial blue. I think that makes them complex . . . full of intrigue.’
He smiled. ‘Yes, but they are there, have been for millennia, and you can count on that never changing. They’re reliable.’
I felt he was using them as a metaphor. ‘Not like people, you mean?’ Oh, what was wrong with me, leading myself straight back to the marshlands?
‘Indeed. All I can hear is the birdsong of the hills. That is healing in itself.’
I wasn’t prepared for him to cover my hand with his. His fingers loosely wrapped beneath my palm and I was sure I could feel each fingertip’s pressure against my skin. ‘Anger has made me remiss. Isla, I do need to thank you for bringing me here.’
I didn’t move my fingers; I held his gaze and aimed for a doctor’s controlled response. ‘You were curled up in fever but I noticed you were staring towards a tiny window high on the wall of that clinic you run.’
He frowned. ‘I don’t remember that.’
‘I believe you were willing yourself towards the outdoors, the fresher air . . . probably the mountains. It’s how I got the idea. It was from you. You showed me the way: what you wanted, what was needed.’
The pressure around my hand became slightly harder. It was only a small shift but now his fingers touched the most sensitive part of my hand.
‘Then we share something very special, if we can communicate without words,’ he continued.
‘What about your wife?’
‘What about her?’ His tone was even but I sensed suspicion.
‘Do you want me to let her know you’re unwell, that you’re here at Brackenridge? Perhaps —’
‘I do not. But thank you. She doesn’t need to be unnecessarily worried.’
It was clear he did not like me referring to his wife; either that or he didn’t like me speaking of his other life . . . the one away from the India that he loved. I took his message to steer away from that topic for now. ‘What about some more tea?’ I offered, and could hear the self-conscious tone.
‘Let’s talk . . . while we can.’
‘What do you mean?’ I reacted, thinking he was referring to a potential relapse or worse.
A crooked grin lifted one side of his mouth. ‘I mean, before we begin arguing; it’s our usual pathway.’
‘Let’s aim not to while you’re sick.’
‘Twice now you’ve cared for me in illness. You do know there’s an old superstition that if you make it to three times, you have to stay?’
It was good to laugh with him again. I even covered his hand with mine now, feeling immediately less tense. ‘You’re making that up.’
‘No,’ he said, feigning indignation. ‘It’s an old saying from Bhutan.’
I doubted it but it was amusing. ‘Well, I refuse to let you be sick a third time.’
‘Pity,’ he murmured. We looked at each other and I surprised myself at not being embarrassed to enjoy the subtext of that remark.
‘Let me look at the burn, change the dressing while we chat. What would you like to talk about?’ I said, even though I would have liked to remain in that jokey mood of innuendo. His gaze held me like an addiction. I found it took genuine willpower to look away. I began to unravel the bandage.
‘Will you let me go outside, Doctor?’
I cut him a look of worry. ‘Oh, is that wise?’
‘Fresh, chilly mountain air. Nothing like it for TB.’
I nodded. ‘Yes, of course that’s true and we can try, but, Saxon, if you stagger or fall, I’m not strong enough to hold you,’ I warned.
‘Then let me fall,’ he said, making it sound so simple. ‘Being out there will do wonders.’
‘Now?’
He shrugged. ‘In the next hour the temperature is going to drop dramatically. Now is best.’
‘Let me sort your hand first.’ The burn was angry and moist. ‘Second degree, in my opinion.’ He nodded.
‘Pain?’
‘Plenty.’
‘Right. I’ve brought some painkiller for you to inhale. We’ll change the dressing twice a day and use cold flannels. Debriding, perhaps, when the blisters begin to dry?’
He nodded.
I soaked off wherever the dressing had stuck to his wound and spent another ten minutes, frustrating him while I fussed over the wound care, before finally using fresh strips of bedsheet that Adri had cut and boiled through the night as my bandaging.
Getting him out of bed and into socks, slippers, a dressing-gown and a rug thrown about him all but exhausted him.
‘Wait here,’ I said, leaving him seated on the edge of his bed, wheezing. ‘Give me two minutes.’
I skipped down the corridor, gathering rugs and cushions from my room before setting up a day bed fit for a maharajah on the verandah. Surveying my work, feeling it would do, I was shocked to see him limp into the open, but witnessing the genuine pleasure in his expression and how it creased his face into smiles pushed away my irritation. It looked as though every muscle of his face was all about joy. His eyes shone brighter as he looked upon what I could well imagine was his favourite vista.
‘Saxon, really, you do test one’s patience. I asked you to wait.’
He ignored me but put out an arm. I let him lean his weight against me as we manoeuvred him onto the day bed and then I was all about briskly snuggling him in as one might a child against winter’s elements. The dying afternoon was still mild but the wind could cut, I’d noticed.
‘Ah, I can smell it’s August,’ he said, his long legs stretched out, but he insisted on sitting up.
‘How?’
‘Imprinted on le grand lobe lymbique,’ he said, touching his temple.
‘I too have read Broca’s work. I thought the French physician was mostly associated with speech and language processing.’
‘It is, but he gave us more insight into the mysterious paleomammalian brain that’s triggered new research. Doesn’t that whole area of memory, emotion, motivation, intrigue you?’
‘It does.’
He shook his head in soft awe. ‘That small soft matter at the base of my brain is responsible for me inherently knowing it’s August through sense alone . . . how it feels, how the air tastes,’ he said, sticking out his tongue and wiggling it for effect to make me smile helplessly. He inhaled, lids lowered. ‘How the landscape smells,’ he said, sounding dreamy.
‘How does it smell?’
He opened his eyes. ‘You tell me. Give me a word.’
I played along. ‘Grassy.’
‘Good. How about wet leaves?’
‘That’s two words,’ I corrected and he gave a look of amusement that conceded my point.
With eyes closed he inhaled his favourite world again. ‘I can smell the tea from the withering troughs,’ he continued, ‘and I know the difference in bouquet between first flush a
nd monsoon flush so I know what time of year it is from the most prehistoric sense I own.’
‘Withering troughs?’
‘When I’m strong enough I’ll take you down there and explain the process of tea from the bush to the teapot.’
I nodded. ‘I’ll look forward to that. Speaking of which, how about a pot?’
‘Of tea?’
‘No, I was thinking wine.’
He gave me a look of disdain. ‘You’re going to make it?’
‘I see no one else who will. You know something, Saxon? I think you’ve spent too long around people who wait on you.’
‘And you don’t have any help at home?’
‘In London we have a housekeeper who comes in to keep us tidy but I do cook for my father and myself most evenings.’
‘Really?’
I nodded, surprised that he envisaged me as being waited on. ‘I even clean my own boots, you know. I catch a bus to work, or I ride my bicycle in the summer.’
‘Should I be giving you an award?’
I grinned. ‘No, but you should refrain from making judgements. I don’t know about the women you mix with in England but I’m today’s London girl, who doesn’t wait for a man or anyone else to do . . . ’ I couldn’t find a word that felt neutral, so I plumped for a meaningless one. ‘Things for her.’
‘How does your fiancé feel about your fierce independence?’
I shrugged. ‘Technically he’s not my fiancé, although I am returning to marry him. Even so, you’ll note Jove’s not here directing my life, is he?’ I turned to walk back into the house, affecting a sort of cheeky spin on my heels, hoping that my response hit the right note of brazen without sounding contemptuous of Jove, but as the deeper hallway swallowed me I wondered to myself what I had hoped to convey to Saxon with that comment. I thought of myself as someone who didn’t make empty remarks. Had I just opened up the doors of my life to Saxon Vickery, suggesting I could do whatever I wanted? And within that frame, did that move from beyond I can think how I choose to I will behave how I want without fearing repercussion? I blamed Saxon. It didn’t matter if we were having an out-and-out disagreement that stretched to raised voices and yes, even violence, or whether we were friendly, as we were now; I behaved differently around him.
I looked into rooms, their furniture covered with dust sheets, and ultimately found my way to a kitchen. It was small, I thought, for a house of this size but it was still bigger than our kitchen in London. The room smelt musty and while I could tell Adri’s folks had wiped down the surfaces, I could see their barefoot prints in the layer of dust on the floor as though ghosts had stepped here. I began opening cupboards, forcing them to yield the air they’d held tight for years. All the implements required for tea were left neatly on a counter.
More of the broth and a small helping of rice, plus some curried meat, were also left on the stove. Fresh eggs, milk, boiled water and oats for porridge had been provisioned as well. I still needed to do some food shopping, I suspected, so I could get some variety into Saxon’s diet, particularly some vegetables and fruit.
A small wood fire had been lit in the oven, and was merrily smouldering. I fed it with some kindling and then tossed in a couple of logs. With a spirit lamp, the brass kettle felt as though it took a full year to come to the boil but I spent the time putting together a tray and then amusing myself drifting through the unlocked rooms in the house. I didn’t touch anything. I didn’t open their shutters, although I wanted to; instead I let my eyes adjust to the distilled soft afternoon sunlight that stole through the angled louvres and I watched the dust motes I’d disturbed dance in muted light before they settled back down to rest.
I tried to imagine the house echoing with childhood squeals and laughter of the brothers, with their mother shooshing them, a father smiling with a pipe nearby. Instinctively I decided that was not how Saxon’s family had lived; it was as though Brackenridge was setting me right about the presumption. No, this was not a house of much laughter but there was no doubting it loved its family and sat here beneath its dust covers, ever ready to welcome its members back. In my wanderings I fetched the painkiller for Saxon; though he was not asking for it, I suspected he needed it.
I returned to the kitchen, opening the two safes easily although the keys hung from both locks and I presumed in days gone by one kept meat, the other dairy, and were locked up against thieving. I had entered a bygone world in this kitchen; it was thoroughly English in its layout and all the pots and pans were familiar to me now, including the aluminium degshis that the locals favoured cooking in, but it did feel as though it was trapped in my grandmother’s Victorian era. That thought prompted me to remember the chamber pots that would need to be emptied regularly. Given we would likely be here for a week or more, we were going to need some staples. I would have to speak to Adri about purchasing those goods.
I made the tea, pouring boiling water over three scoops of leaves: one for each drinker and one for the pot, I heard my granny say in my mind. I covered it with a discoloured old cosy that someone had made and embroidered with a fine eye for detail and a keen needle. I wondered if it was Saxon’s mother who’d put love into it.
And then I was drifting back down the lonely corridor but smiling to myself, feeling suddenly domestic after months of spending most waking hours in a hospital ward. The mildness of just twenty minutes or so earlier had stolen away, replaced by the pinch of chill as I stepped back out onto the verandah. I gave a soft gasp and shivered, glad that I’d urged Saxon to make himself comfy in the end portion of the verandah where it had been glazed, like a tiny conservatory.
‘You look pleased with yourself,’ he remarked as I set the tray down.
‘I was just thinking that I haven’t so much as cooked myself a slice of toast since arriving in India.’
He cut me an ironic grin. ‘And there you have part of the secret as to why so many Brits love living here and never want to leave India. Some of the men who would conduct lives of little consequence in menial desk jobs back home can live like kings out here, with a retinue of servants to wait on their every whim.’
I shook my head. ‘Haughty wives, no doubt, giving a lazy savage a good clip around the ear, eh?’
He smiled sadly. ‘Not all but too many.’
I handed him the inhaler, making sure he breathed in some low-level morphine. ‘How about the lady of the house here?’ I asked, keen to learn more. I settled into a wicker chair next to him, against plump cushions whose colours had faded in the sunlight.
He regarded me, sighing out from the inhalation. ‘My mother, you mean?’
I nodded. ‘Tell me about the family while the tea brews.’
I watched him shiver a little and wasn’t sure if it was the dropping temperature, his illness, pain relief, or my mention of his family.
‘I don’t think we’re that different from many other families. I suppose the best way to describe my mother is cold.’ His frankness caught me off-guard but he didn’t notice my wince as he was staring into the distance, remembering. ‘I think love was an alien concept for her. I didn’t know my grandparents well but I think as they raised four boys, the single girl in their midst was confusing and they treated her as something strangely separate. They didn’t allow for her emotions, which I suppose she in turn learned to damp down until they hardly ever appeared. Meanwhile, my father was about as distant a character as you could imagine. It was almost like the angels that arrange the chess pieces of life decided to have some fun and bring together two remote people who were starved of affection and any knowledge of how to give it. That they worked out how to have children is remarkable,’ he added, with a helpless trill of sarcasm edging the words, ‘and we were raised in an atmosphere of right and wrong – no grey areas.’ He shrugged.
‘That’s it?’
‘What else would you like to know? Perhaps that I didn’t like my parents and I sense they felt much the same way about me?’
‘Oh, Saxon, why? How could t
hey not love you?’ I sounded devastated but felt instantly stupid for the patronising tone; I didn’t know them so why should I care?
He gave me another of his withering looks. ‘Isn’t that tea brewed?’
‘Half a minute more,’ I said. Determined to hear it, I risked pushing. ‘Tell me about them and you, your brother.’ I didn’t dare trespass on the memory of a dead sister.
He impressed me by continuing. ‘Well, they liked Rex in their own way, and because I’m the antithesis of my brother – he was the right and I was the wrong – they found me to be the imposition I always felt.’
I resisted offering any sympathy. ‘How are you boys so different?’
He sighed, wearying of my curiosity. ‘Rex aimed to ingratiate. He wanted their love and pride . . . earned it the hard way by pleasing them in every way he could. I suppose from very young I must have decided that, as their son, I was owed their love and didn’t feel obliged to prove myself worthy of it.’
I turned the pot and ignored his gentle scoff. ‘My granny insisted,’ I said. ‘Three times.’
‘Be careful not to turn it widdershins or you may invite the devil here,’ he cautioned.
I grinned, looking out. ‘Not with those sentinels guarding us.’
He returned my smile. ‘That’s how I regard Kangchenjunga too. He and his friends are my guardians.’
I nodded. ‘Well, they loved you, even if your parents didn’t.’
‘My parents tolerated me. I was a male Vickery – I got that bit right.’
I poured the tea in a gentle torrent of amber light, the liquid curling around the inside of the cups to spin gently. ‘No milk for you yet, and no sugar even if we wanted,’ I warned.
‘None needed.’ He took the cup I offered and blew on the steam through lips that looked like they’d whistle when he was happy. I wished I could see him happy. He gave a low sigh. ‘Not bad, Dr Fenwick.’
‘How about you and Rex? You said you don’t communicate much.’
‘Barely,’ he said, in a hard tone. ‘He lives in Hampshire somewhere. I’m sure I mentioned that we have nothing in common.’
‘You have Brackenridge in common.’
The Tea Gardens Page 29