And Thereby Hangs a Tale (31 page)

'I would like Mother to be present when I
tell you my news.'

The Maharaja looked apprehensive, but stood
aside to allow his wife and son to enter the study. Both men remained standing
until the Maharani had taken her seat.

Once the Maharani had sat down, Jamwal turned
to his mother and said in a gentle voice, 'Mother, I have fallen in love with
the most wonderful young woman, and I want you to know that I have
asked her to be my wife.'

The Maharani bowed her head.

Jamwal turned to face his
father, who was gripping the arms of his chair, ashen-faced, but before Jamwal
could continue, the Maharaja said, 'I have never concerned myself with the way
you conduct your life in Delhi, even when those activities have been reported
in the gutter press. Heaven knows, I was young myself once. But I have always
assumed that you were aware of your duties to this family, and that in time
would marry a young woman not only from your own background, but who also met
with the approval of your mother and myself.'

'Nisha and I are from the same background, Father,
so let's be frank, it's not her background we're discussing, but my caste.'

'No,' said his father, 'what we are
discussing is your responsibility to the family that raised you, and bestowed
on you all the privileges you have taken for granted since the day you were
born.'

'Father,' said Jamwal quietly, 'I didn't
fall in love simply to annoy you. What has happened between Nisha and me is something
rare and beautiful, and a cause for celebration, not anger. That is why I
returned home in the hope of receiving your blessing.'

'You will never have my blessing,' said his father.
'And if you are foolish enough to go ahead with this unacceptable union, you
will not be welcome in this house again.'

Jamwal looked towards his mother, but her head
remained bowed and she didn't speak.

'Father,' Jamwal said, turning back to face him,
'won't you even meet Nisha before you make your decision?'

'Not only will I never meet this young
woman, but also no member of this family will ever be permitted to come into
contact with her. Your grandmother must go to her grave unaware of this
misalliance, and your brother, who married wisely, will now become not only my
successor, but also my sole heir, while your sister will enjoy all the
privileges that were once to be bestowed on you.'

'If it was a lack of wisdom that caused me
to fall in love, Father, so be it, because the woman I have asked to be my wife
and the mother of my children is a beautiful, intelligent and remarkable human
being, with whom I intend to spend the rest of my life.'

'But she is not a Rajput,' said his father defiantly.

'That was not her choice,' replied Jamwal, 'as
it was not mine.'

'It is clear to me,' said his father, 'that
there is no point in continuing with this conversation. You have obviously made
up your mind, and chosen to bring dishonour on this house and humiliation to
the family we have invited to share our name.'

'And if I were not to marry Nisha, having
giv-en her my word, Father, I would bring dishonour on the woman I love and
humiliation to the family whose name she bears.'

The Maharaja rose slowly from his chair and glowered
defiantly at his youngest child. Jamwal had never seen such anger in
those eyes. He stood to face his wrath, but his father didn't speak for some
time, as if he needed to measure his words.

'As it appears to me that you are determined
to marry this young woman against the wishes of your family, and that nothing I
can say will prevent this inappropriate and dis-tasteful union, I now tell you,
in the presence of your mother, that you are no longer my son.'

Nisha had been standing by the barrier for over
an hour before Jamwal's plane was due to land, painfully aware that as he was
returning on the same day, it could not be good news. She did not want him to
see that she'd been crying. While he was away she had resolved that if his
father demanded he must choose between her and his family, she would release
him from any obligation he felt to her.

When Jamwal strode into the arrivals hall, he
looked grim-faced but resolute. He took Nisha firmly by the hand and, without
saying a word, led her out on to the concourse, clearly unwilling to tell her
what had happened in front of strangers. She feared the worst, but said
nothing.

At the taxi rank, Jamwal opened the door for
Nisha before climbing in beside her.

'Where to, sahib?' asked the driver cheerfully.

'The High Court,' Jamwal said without emotion.

'Why are we going to the High Court?' asked Nisha.

'To get married,' Jamwal replied.

Nisha's mother and father held a more formal
ceremony on the lawn of their home in Chanakyapuri a few days later to
celebrate their daughter's marriage. The festivities had gone on for several
days, and culminated in a large party that was attended by over a
thousand guests, although not a single member of Jamwal's family attended the
ceremony.

After the newly married couple had danced seven
times around Pheras, the final confirmation of their wedding vows, Mr and Mrs Rameshwar
Singh strolled around the grounds, speaking to as many of their guests as
possible.

'So where are you spending your honeymoon,
dare I ask?' said Noel Kumar.

'We're flying to Goa, to spend a few days at
the Raj,' said Jamwal.

'I can't think of a more beautiful place to spend
your first few days as man and wife,' said Noel.

'A wedding gift from your uncle,' said
Nisha.

'So generous of him.'

'Just be sure you have him back in time for the
board meeting on Monday week, young lady, because one of the items under
discussion is a new project that I know the chairman wants Jamwal to
mastermind.'

'Any clues?' asked Jamwal.

'Certainly not,' said Noel. 'You just go
away and enjoy your honeymoon. Nothing's so important that it can't wait until
you're back.'

'And if we hang around here any longer,'
said Nisha, taking her husband by the hand, 'we might miss our plane.'

A large crowd gathered by the entrance to the
house and threw marigold petals in their path and waved as the couple were
driven away.

When Mr and Mrs Rameshwar Singh drove on to
the airport's private runway forty minutes later, the company's Gulfstream jet awaited
them, door open, steps down.

'I do wish someone from your family had
attended the wedding,' said Nisha as she fastened her seat belt. 'I was hoping
that perhaps your brother or sister might have turned up unannounced.'

'If either of them had,' said Jamwal, 'they would
have suffered the same fate as me.'

Nisha felt the first moment of sadness that day.

Two and a half hours later the plane touched
down at Goa's Dabolim airport, where another car was waiting to whisk them off
to their hotel. They had planned to have a quiet supper in the hotel dining
room, but that was before they were shown around the bridal suite, where they
immediately started undressing each other. The bellboy left hurriedly and
placed a 'Do not disturb' sign on the door. In fact, they missed dinner, and breakfast,
only surfacing in time for lunch the following day.

'Let's have a swim before breakfast,' said Jamwal
as he placed his feet on the thick carpet.

'I think you mean lunch, my darling,' said Nisha
as she slipped out of bed and disappeared into the bathroom.

Jamwal pulled on a pair of swimming trunks and
sat on the end of the bed waiting for Nisha to return. She emerged from the
bathroom a few minutes later wearing a turquoise swimsuit that made Jamwal
think about skipping lunch.

'Come on, Jamwal, it's a perfect day,' Nisha
said as she drew the curtains and opened the French windows that led on to a
freshly cut lawn surrounded by a luxuriant tropical garden of deep red
frangipani, orange dahlias and fragrant hibiscus.

They were walking hand in hand towards the beach
when Jamwal spotted the large swimming pool at the far end of the lawn. 'Did I ever
tell you, my darling, that when I was at school I won a gold medal for diving?'

'No, you didn't,' Nisha replied. 'It must have
been some other woman you were showing off to,' she added with a grin.

'You'll live to regret those words,' he
said, releasing her hand and beginning to run towards the pool. When he reached
the edge of the pool he took off and leapt high into the air before executing a
perfect dive, entering the water so smoothly he hwomamoog to en-cardly left a
ripple on the surface.

Nisha ran towards the pool laughing. 'Not bad,'
she called out. 'I bet the other girl was impressed.'

She stood at the edge of the pool for a
moment before falling to her knees and peering down into the shallow water.
When she saw the blood slowly rising to the surface, she screamed.

I have a passion, almost an obsession, about
not being late, and it's always severely tested whenever I visit India. And
however much I cajoled, remonstrated with and simply shouted at my poor driver,
I was still several minutes late that night for a dinner being held in my
honour.

I ran into the dining room of the Raj and apologized
profusely to my host, who wasn't at all put out, although the rest of the party
were already seated. He introduced me to some old friends, some recent
acquaintances and a couple I'd never met before.

What followed was one of those evenings you just
don't want to end: that rare combination of good food, vintage wine and
sparkling conversation which was emphasized by the fact that we were the last
people to leave the dining room, long after midnight.

One of the guests I hadn't met before was seated
opposite me. He was a handsome man, with the type of build that left you in no
doubt he must have been a fine athlete in his youth. His conversation was witty
and well informed, and he had an opinion on most things, from Sachin Tendulkar
(who was certain to be the first cricketer to reach fifty test centuries) to
Rahul Gandhi (undoubtedly a future prime minister, if that's the road he chooses
to travel down). His wife, who was sitting on my right, possessed that rare middle-aged
beauty that the callow young can only look forward to, and rarely achieve.

I decided to flirt with her outrageously in
the hope of getting a rise out of her self-possessed husband, but he simply
flicked me away as if I were some irritating fly that had interrupted his
afternoon snooze. I gave up the losing battle and began a serious conversation
with his wife instead.

I discovered that Mrs Rameshwar Singh worked
for one of India's leading fashion houses. She told me how much she always enjoyed
visiting England whenever she could get away. It was not always easy to drag her
husband from his work, she explained, adding, 'He's still quite a handful.'

'Do you have any children?' I asked.

'Sadly not,' she replied wistfully.

'And what does your husband do?' I asked, quickly
changing the subject.

'Jamwal is on the board of the Raj Group.

He's headed up their hotel operation for the
past fifteen years.'

'I've stayed at six Raj hotels in the last
nine days,' I told her, 'and I've rarely come across their equal.'

'Oh, do tell him that,' she whispered.
'He'll be so touched, especially as the two of you have spent most of the
evening trying to prove how macho you are.' Both of us put nicely in our place,
I felt.

When the evening finally came to an end, everyone
stood except the man seated opposite me. Nisha moved swiftly round to the other
side of the table to join her husband, and it was not until that moment that I
realized Jamwal was in a wheelchair.

I watched sympathetically as she wheeled him
slowly out of the room. No one who saw the way she touched his shoulder and
gave him a smile the rest of us had not been graced with, could have had any
doubt of their affection for each other.

He teased her unmercifully. 'You never stopped
flirting with the damn author all evening, you hussy,' he said, loud enough to be
sure that I could hear.

'So he did get a rise out of you after all,
my darling,' she responded.

I laughed, and whispered to my host, 'Such an
interesting couple. How did they ever get together?'

He smiled. 'She claims that he tied her to a
lamp post and then left her.'

'And what's his version?' I asked.

'That they first met at a traffic light in
Delhi .

. . and she left him.'

And thereby hangs a tale.

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ALSO
BY JEFFREY ARCHER

FOREWORD

1
STUCK ON YOU

2
THE QUEEN'S BIRTHDAY TELEGRAM

3
HIGH HEELS