She smiled as she made the little jest but Daisy could see the sadness behind the smile. India had been Edith Forester’s world and her husband’s. Daisy had never herself known a settled life, but she was sensitive enough to imagine how frightening this new experience must be for them.
‘He’ll be sorry to have missed you,’ Edith repeated, ‘but we must have that drink. We must drink to your return.’ She clapped her hands and a white-coated servant obediently appeared at her elbow. ‘A gin and lime, my dear?’
She remembered Edith’s fondness for gimlets. She had never grown to like the drink, but at least she’d learned to swallow it without grimacing, and she accepted the glass that Salim held out to her. She’d made this call for a very particular reason and she would need to be patient and allow Edith time to tell her sorrowful tale. And she did, at length. Of how dreadful it had been seeing the Indian Army divided in such a cavalier fashion, how bitterly sad its dismemberment was after two hundred proud years of service.
‘Two hundred years to build, my dear Daisy, and three months to destroy. And these are men who fought side by side in two world wars.’ The older woman’s voice shook very slightly. ‘Every caste, every creed and colour—all united in a common cause. Countless numbers of them have died for Britain, yet with just one stroke of a pen, they’ve been divided forever.’
‘I heard,’ was all Daisy could say.
‘Everyone’s heard,’ Edith said a trifle scornfully, ‘but they don’t know how it’s been. Soldiers, tough men—Moslems, Hindus, Sikhs—wept on each other’s shoulders when it happened. Can you imagine? And look how it has left us.’ Edith waved her hand at the nearly bare room. Daisy saw the marks on the walls where their treasured pictures had hung.
‘Jocelyn came home to help you pack, I believe.’ She needed to interrupt this flow of gentle complaint and get to what she wanted to know.
‘Yes, she’s a wonderful daughter. She travelled across, all the way from Assam. It’s not an easy journey, but she was such a help. So quick, too. I’ve become a little slow these days.’
For the first time Daisy looked at her hostess closely. Edith was showing signs of age that she hadn’t noticed before. Her skin had always appeared toughened from years in the sun, but it was more papery now, and the luxuriant hair she’d always worn in a disorderly bun was sparser and showed more grey than brown.
‘Jocelyn sent me a keepsake from among the things she sorted,’ Daisy began.
‘Did she? She was always a kind, thoughtful girl. It was something nice, I hope.’
‘A purse, a very pretty little purse. It was among Anish Rana’s possessions, I think she said. It must have belonged to his mother.’
‘Ah.’ There was a pause while Edith decided how best to approach the difficult subject. Daisy helped her out. ‘The regiment was still holding Lieutentant Rana’s belongings?’
‘Yes, indeed. Dreadful business. The Colonel didn’t know what to do with the stuff after the poor man died. There wasn’t a great deal of it, of course. He was a single officer living in barracks. But it was still right to return his personal possessions to his family.’
‘It doesn’t seem the regiment was able to.’
‘The adjutant tried. He tried very hard. He managed to trace the family, I believe, well, part of the family. I think it was the relatives on the mother’s side. But the man he spoke to simply didn’t want to know. He was quite rude, Dennis said.’
‘So the family was local?’ Daisy asked carefully, holding her breath a fraction.
‘I imagine so. Dennis did tell me where he found the man—I think he was Lieutenant Rana’s uncle—but I can’t remember the name of the place. I doubt you’d know it anyway.’
‘But quite near Jasirapur?’ Daisy persisted.
Her hostess was looking at her oddly. She supposed her questions had become a little too particular. ‘Yes. It wasn’t far. In fact, the adjutant even thought of driving there and pushing the stuff through the gate. But, in the end, he decided it wouldn’t look very dignified.’
Her companion said nothing for several minutes and seemed lost in thought. Daisy felt disappointment seeping through her. The Foresters had been her most certain hope, but it appeared she would discover little here. She felt flustered and unsure of what to do next and the heat of the room began to overpower her. A small electric fan was churning in one corner but it succeeded only in stirring the heavy air anew. She glanced up at the ceiling. The punkah was still there, she saw, but now there was no man to work it. She hoped that Independence had given the punkah wallah a less wearisome job.
‘Amrita—that was the name of the house,’ Edith announced out of the blue. ‘I remember thinking what a pretty name it was, far too pretty for the rude man who lived there.’
‘Amrita,’ Daisy repeated. ‘You’re right—it is pretty.’ But would she ever be able to trace the house? There were bound to be a hundred Amritas in the district.
‘Something’s coming back to me. Let me see. Yes, the Colonel had once to visit nearby—I can’t recall why. My memory worsens every year, but I do remember going with him. The village was quite attractive, as Indian villages go. Yes, that’s right. It was a place called … Megaur … or perhaps it was a village near Megaur. I know you turned left at the station, Marwar Junction that is, and not straight ahead as though you were going to Jasirapur. Then you simply followed the road. It can’t be more than twenty miles from here. Less, probably, if we drove there quite easily.’
Amrita, Megaur. It was enough. Daisy wriggled in her chair, barely able to contain her excitement. ‘It’s good to know where my purse might have come from,’ she murmured. The remark was inane, she knew, but she had to say something. Hopefully, it might distract Edith’s attention from the strange behaviour of her guest.
‘I suppose it is good to know,’ the lady said vaguely. ‘But do have another gimlet.’
‘I won’t, thank you … Edith. I should be getting back, or I’ll hold up dinner. And the tonga driver has been waiting for me all this time.’
‘That’s his job, my dear,’ Mrs Forester said dismissively.
She wondered anew how the Foresters would cope in the very different world of post-war England. Edith and her husband had devoted their lives to the Raj and no doubt loved India passionately. But, whatever their benevolence, they were blind to the truth that Britain had no lasting place here. She was remembering the words of a patient she’d had at Bart’s, a retired colonial officer. He’d taken a keen interest in her travels and he’d talked a good deal about India. At one point he’d said rather wearily that no foreign power would ever succeed in mastering the country. You can order them about a little, he’d said, introduce new ideas, even dragoon them into accepting the unfamiliar, but then you must go away and die in Cheltenham.
She wasn’t sure where in England the Foresters were bound, but the old man’s words had an unsettling truth to them.
‘Thank you again,’ she said, and rose to leave. ‘Please give my best wishes to the Colonel and to Jocelyn.’
Her hostess rose with her and escorted her to the front door. She stood watching as Daisy walked down the veranda steps to the waiting tonga, her face gaunt and slightly bewildered. ‘Do come back when you can,’ she called out. ‘I’m sorry you have to go so soon.’
Daisy looked back and saw the older woman desolate against the naked interior of the house. Her parting words seemed a fitting elegy.
CHAPTER 5
That evening, she made a decision. She was going to Megaur, she was going to find Amrita. But she knew she would face stiff opposition from both Mike and Grayson. She must keep her plans to herself and, if possible, keep silent too, on her visit to Mrs Forester. She was lucky. Both men assumed that after she’d returned from the bazaar, she’d spent the rest of the day at Tamarind Drive. The talk over dinner turned instead to the papers Mike had unearthed that day, with Daisy a silent listener. She was surprised to hear for the first time an edge creeping into their c
onversation.
‘I can’t for the life of me see why Mountbatten had to be in such a hurry,’ Mike grumbled. ‘He pushed Partition forwards ten whole months and completely destroyed the government’s own schedule. Why rush such a delicate operation? The more I read, the more I realise how close India came to annihilation. His decision was totally reckless. But then what do you expect from an aristocrat who fought a bit in Burma but knows nothing else of the world.’
‘He won a grand victory in Burma and I don’t think you can blame all the violence on Mountbatten’s decision,’ Grayson said mildly.
‘Don’t you? Well, try reading some of the reports filed by the civil admin teams from around the country.’ He saw Grayson looking quizzical. ‘Copies of their records were sent to every regional administration. And yes, I know, it’s unlikely to lead to any useful information on Javinder, but I have to go through everything.’
‘I’m glad you’re being so thorough,’ Grayson said, but Daisy thought that he didn’t look that glad.
‘Well, I am, and it’s often frightening stuff. Endless disputes over the anomalies caused by carving up the country. If people were lucky, disagreements were settled peacefully but if not …’ He wagged his head dismissively.
‘There were bound to be anomalies, Mike, whenever Partition was done and however long it took.’
Grayson was trying for calm, but his friend hardly heard him. ‘Ludicrous situations, too, which make the so-called Raj a laughing stock. Canal works on one side of the border while the embankments protecting it are on the other. Loads of instances like that. The border even runs down the middle of some villages, would you believe, with a dozen huts left in India and a dozen more in Pakistan. One poor devil had his house bisected—his front door opened to India but his rear window looked into Pakistan. It’s laughable but it’s also terrifying. No wonder there’s been such trouble.’
‘I know. I’ve read some of the accounts. But you could argue that rushing through independence was the best way to prevent even more violence.’
‘There surely couldn’t have been more. And what about the huge refugee problem it’s created. That has to be down to Mountbatten.’
‘Like I said, whenever it was done, Partition was always going to mean chaos.’ There was a forced patience to Grayson’s voice now. ‘India has known centuries of integration. It’s a mass of different cultures and traditions and beliefs. The entire country is a cultural compromise. However you divide it, there will always be people who don’t fit a particular “box”.’
‘Let’s hope they like the boxes they’ve ended up in then.’ Mike laid down his knife and fork and pushed away his half-eaten meal. ‘The only positive I can see is that no matter how bad the current situation, it’s got to be better than the Raj.’
‘Maybe.’
Daisy was surprised to hear Grayson sound uncertain. He had always been a firm believer in Indian independence. Perhaps the dreadful violence had made him reconsider, or perhaps he was simply antagonised by Mike’s truculence.
‘No maybe, my friend. The Raj made Britain wealthy and self-confident but at the expense of millions of Indians.’
‘I’d agree that some people made a lot of money out of the country,’ Grayson conceded, ‘but not the vast majority of those who worked here. The ordinary little people who actually ran India.’
‘That was their job.’
‘True, but they also did it because they loved the country and its people. They built roads, hospitals, looked after forests, joined the Indian Army. People like Colonel Forester and his wife.’
He looked towards Daisy as he said this, but thankfully Mike had the bit between his teeth and she was spared having to respond. She would surely have given herself away.
‘You’re talking like an imperialist, Gray.’ Mike’s lips thinned. ‘I’m surprised and, as an Irishman, I have to say it grates.’
‘I’m just trying to give the other side of the picture.’ Grayson stretched his long legs beneath the table. ‘You could argue that it was Britain who first introduced the idea of liberty, albeit indirectly.’
Mike threw back his head and laughed, but it was a peculiarly joyless laugh. ‘You’re saying that Britain encouraged independence? Someone should have told the poor devils banged up for years for being nationalists. And perhaps I hadn’t heard but did Britain maybe help to set up Congress?’
‘Of course not. But sometimes ideas percolate without there appearing to be any definite agency. The need for progress, for instance. And, in a sense, being against Britain united India. It created the concept of patriotism, of a nation. Indians started to talk of Mother India. That was new, and look where it’s led.’
Mike shook his head. ‘I never thought I’d hear you justify a colonial regime.’
‘I’m not justifying it. Merely playing devil’s advocate.’
‘Be careful you don’t turn into the devil while you’re doing it,’ Mike said sourly.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care.’ Grayson got up from the table and pulled back Daisy’s chair for her. ‘You’re very quiet this evening, Miss Driscoll. Have we overwhelmed you by the brilliance of our arguments?’
‘I really don’t know enough to say anything sensible,’ she excused herself. ‘Overall, though, I think I’d be with Mike on this.’
Mike smiled at her with genuine warmth and she realised how much that had been missing during their trip.
‘I’ve clearly lost out,’ Grayson said, ‘and before you two gang up on me any more, I’m off to bed. There’s a lot to do tomorrow and I can’t imagine it will be any cooler to do it in.’
It was the signal for a general breaking up of the party and Daisy was able to slip away to her room with a murmured goodnight. The slightly bad-tempered conversation had ensured that she’d escaped interrogation, not just about how she’d spent today, but how she intended to spend tomorrow. There had been a price to pay for it though. An unaccustomed divide had opened up between the two friends and she hadn’t enjoyed seeing them disagree so starkly.
Once Mike and Grayson had left the house the following morning—together, she noted, and that felt a good deal better—she set off for Megaur. It took an hour’s driving along a road which wound northwards and across a landscape crackling with heat. In this first searing blast of India’s hot season, there was no sign that when the rains came, bushes and trees, fields and ditches would burst into new, green life. For now she looked out on a land shrivelled into crisp parchment. Beneath the sun’s white glare, the bright trees on either side sent sparks flying heavenwards. Clouds of dust mushroomed over the tonga as they drove, covering horse and driver and passenger with a fine red sheen. Yesterday she’d been foolish enough to venture out bareheaded and Grayson had taken her to task. Today she’d been careful to unhook the last remaining topi from the corner stand, but it proved only a flimsy defence. Even beneath the tonga’s fringed canopy, she had continually to adjust the helmet to cover as much of her neck as possible, and it wasn’t long before she was feeling hot and gritty.
In just under the hour, they were driving through Megaur. It was a sizeable village, with several narrow streets of whitewashed houses, a variety of shops and stalls and a large and ornate temple set back from the road. It was cleaner and tidier than most of the smaller villages they’d passed through and she wondered if Anish’s uncle was the main landlord of the district. If so, Megaur did him proud. Mrs Forester had called him a rude man, but Daisy hoped she’d been mistaken. Edith’s relationship with Indians was mediated through long experience of living under the Raj and she was likely to interpret any show of pride as discourtesy.
The tonga drew to a halt outside a pair of elaborately decorated iron gates and the driver said something to her in Hindi. This must be Amrita. She went to alight and then realised with a sinking feeling that the colonel’s wife had not mentioned the name of the man who lived here, and she had no idea how to address him. Not that it mattered, it seemed. She had barely rung the
bell, when a white-coated servant emerged from the house and waved at her. It took her a while before she realised that he was waving her away.
She peered through the gate and tried to explain her arrival. But the man wasn’t interested in listening. Either he spoke no English or he’d been sent to frighten her away. The latter it appeared, for he picked up a large wooden stave from the side of the drive and walked purposefully towards her. At the sign of this aggression, the tonga driver took fright and began to back his horse up the lane they had just travelled.
Daisy didn’t blame him but neither did she intend to be intimidated. ‘Tell your master that my name is Driscoll and I have travelled some miles to see him. Be sure to say that I won’t intrude for long but I would be grateful to speak with him for a short while.’
A loudspeaker attached to one of the gateposts crackled into life. She hadn’t noticed it before but evidently it relayed speech back into the house. The voice that emerged from its depths was smooth and urbane.
‘Good morning, Miss Driscoll. Please, do come in.’
And the gates swung open.
Grayson had spent another frustrating morning. For nearly two days he’d questioned members of the administration team, telephoned old contacts and walked the town’s streets, but only the haziest of whispers had been of any interest. It was a most unusual situation and it took him some time to realise that it was a reluctance to speak, rather than ignorance, that was keeping people silent. When yesterday he’d made an abortive visit to the bazaar, he’d thought the stallholders in those narrow, ancient streets might be holding out for more money than he’d so far offered. He knew them to be a canny bunch. But when today he’d cast his net wider, visiting every business, every professional office in the town, and received the same response, he became certain his potential informants were scared. Everywhere he met with the same reception—a warm greeting, a chair pulled out, chai brought, but when the conversation turned to the troubles in the north of Rajasthan, there was a deafening silence followed by an apologetic smile and more chai. It must be precisely what Javinder had faced, and yet the young man had discovered enough to send him hotfoot to—to where? The region was huge and Grayson could be travelling for days and still find himself nowhere near his young colleague. He needed to have some sense of where he should be heading, particularly as it seemed his journey was likely to be every bit as dangerous as he’d feared.
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