India Dark (21 page)

We took a train trip to Cawnpore the next morning and the Lieutenant was there too. After Cawnpore, we went to Meerut where there was a cantonment station and the headquarters of a division of the army, and that's when I realised Lieutenant Madden was following me. At first, I wondered if it was simply a coincidence. I didn't want it to be a coincidence.

I'd never seen so many soldiers in one place as there were at Meerut. Their faces glowed with rapt attention as they watched every turn, every flounce, every gesture I made. I knew it was what I was born for, to be admired in that way. It made me long to dance at the Tivoli, to sing vaudeville, or at the very least perform upon a stage where I'd be seen as a real actress, not simply a Lilliputian.

Some of the soldiers were only a few years older than we were and I don't think they thought of me as a child. I'm sure George didn't. When he looked at me, I could see that I was a woman in his eyes. When he smiled at me, his smile was for me alone. He came to every show. The first night in Meerut, when I saw him in the audience, I felt a throbbing in my temples, as if my heart was beating furiously and my blood bubbling like champagne.

It was in Meerut that George finally spoke to me.

Meerut was a city of canvas, with streets lit by electric light. The tents were unimaginably elegant. They had carpets, dressing tables and armchairs, as if they were real rooms, and in some of them the walls were lined with pretty patterned material.

It was cold at night in Meerut, and though the days were bright we had to bundle up snugly in our beds. We slept under lovely
razais
, thick quilts made in Jaipur. It's funny to think that you can feel more like a princess in a tent than in a hotel.

On our last night in Meerut, as we strolled back through the city of canvas, a great crowd of girls, I looked over my shoulder and saw Lieutenant Madden following us. I shivered. Once he knew I'd seen him, he walked more briskly, catching up with us in a moment. He wore a woollen greatcoat to keep the cold at bay and he looked so dashing I was dizzy with pleasure at the sight of him.

‘Excuse me, Miss Sweetrick,' he said, his voice deliciously mellow and gentle. The other girls stopped too, their faces alive with curiosity.

He took a step closer to me and I shivered again. ‘I'm sorry to keep you, but I was wondering if you would autograph your portrait for me.'

All the girls had sold dozens of photos at the end of the Meerut performance. There was no shortage of young men keen to own an image of us. George had been dumbstruck when I walked through the audience at the close of the performance that evening. He hadn't uttered a word. He had simply taken one of my portraits and given me two rupees in exchange. Now it was my turn to be rendered mute.

‘You look cold, Miss Sweetrick.'

He swept off his coat and draped it around my shoulders. The other girls laughed and George smiled at them as he handed me his pen and my portrait. ‘I'm sorry I only have one coat to share, ladies,' he said to them. Then he lowered his tone so it was warm and husky. ‘Miss Sweetrick,' he said, ‘I will treasure this image all the more if it bears your signature.'

Finally, I found my voice. ‘To whom should I inscribe it?'

‘To Lieutenant George Madden,' he said, leaning over me to watch as I signed my name across the bottom of the photograph.

When I handed back his pen, our hands touched briefly and the warmth of his skin sent a charge of heat through me. I reached to take his coat off, to return it to him, but he raised his hands. ‘No, Miss Sweetrick. I'll send my batman to collect it in the morning.'

That's when I knew he was a gentleman. Not only had he let me wear his coat, but he was important enough to have his own batman. I think I was walking on air for the rest of the short trip to our quarters. That night, in our tent, I spread his coat across the end of my bed so I could snuggle my toes beneath it, and I said his name over and over. It tasted honey-sweet on my lips.

Eliza was in the bed closest to me, and as I savoured my moment with George, I did something I've regretted ever since. I turned to her and asked, ‘What does it feel like to be in love, Liz?'

‘It's wonderful and it's terrible and it changes everything,' she said.

I wanted everything to change. I believed it would once we were in Delhi. In Delhi, I turned sixteen. Sweet sixteen.

As we drove through the wide streets, past heathen buildings with their strange towers and ramshackle bazaars crowded with Indians, on our way to the Rama Theatre, all I could think of was George. That first night he wasn't in the audience. I thought he would be at our show at Ludlow Castle, because he simply had to be a member of the Delhi Club. But he wasn't there either. I couldn't understand it. I knew, in my heart, that he wanted me.

We stayed at the Maidens Hotel in Delhi, and while the others were napping, I wandered the long colonnaded foyer, gazing out into the gardens, trying to will Lieutenant Madden into being, trying to make him appear through the sheer strength of my longing. I still had the note he'd given me, the one his batman had delivered when he'd come to collect his greatcoat. He'd said it wasn't very far from Meerut to Delhi, closer than Cawnpore had been to Meerut, and that he would be there to see me sing. He hoped I would sing Violet Gray again in
The Belle of New York
, and he loved it when I sang ‘I Do, So There'. There was nothing improper in the note, but beneath the words I could sense something special.

It was still warm in the late afternoon, before the cool night air began to fall. I was dressed in my best fine white linens but as the heat subsided, I found a cane armchair and arranged myself to appear dainty. I was taut with anticipation, expecting to see George saunter into the foyer at any moment. That's probably why my hearing was attuned to every passing conversation.

When I heard Eliza and the Butcher chatting as they settled themselves at a table in the tearooms I didn't alert them to my presence. They were so close to me, just the other side of the potted ferns, and I could hear every word of their conversation. Every poisonous little word.

‘He turned out to be a gentleman when I confronted him,' said the Butcher. ‘But what cheek, really, thinking because he's an officer that he's less of a stagedoor Johnny.'

‘She was thinking very fondly of him.'

‘Which you know leads to nothing but trouble. Why, she's not sixteen yet, is she?'

‘Oh Arthur, you forget everyone's birthdays. It was yesterday. Besides, sixteen is quite old enough to know your own heart. I was not sixteen when we began,' said Eliza, disgustingly coquettish.

‘But you, my dear, are altogether a different character to Tilly Sweetrick, as the child calls herself.' And then he had the temerity to laugh.

It was like a lead weight dropping through my body, the moment of realisation. Eliza had betrayed me. The past few days, when I'd thought we were almost back to our old friendship, had been an illusion. Even as I sat beside her in railway carriages and we held hands, as we pretended to find our way back to that easy companionship we'd shared in America, she was conspiring against me.

Between them, Eliza and the Butcher had broken my heart.

Eliza said love changes everything. So does betrayal.

39

STRANGERS ON A TRAIN

Poesy Swift

From Allahabad to Delhi, Tilly, Ruby and Lizzie sat side by side in the same compartment. They said they felt sick if they couldn't face the same direction as the engine and I didn't mind sitting opposite them. It was simply a relief to see everyone getting along so nicely at last. Ruby was starting to laugh again and it almost looked as though Lizzie and Tilly had begun to like each other. It wasn't until we left Delhi that I realised those weeks of happiness had been nothing but the calm before the storm.

The train from Delhi to Bombay was going to take two days and two nights. I'd imagined we would all be great chums on the long trip. But Tilly was determined to change everything. When Mr Arthur left our compartment for a moment, she grabbed Ruby's hand and then mine and dragged us out into the corridor.

‘Where are you going?' called Lizzie, putting her head out the door.

‘Only to the lavatory,' replied Tilly, as we hurried along the carriage.

‘Where
are
we going?' I asked, trying not to sound too much like Lizzie's echo.

‘Exploring. We are going exploring because if I have to sit next to Eliza Finton for one more minute I'll explode.'

Ruby laughed but I felt a little shiver course through me. What had happened to spoil everything?

We sat in a booth in the dining compartment and ordered the cheapest thing on the menu. It was while the three of us were sipping on a single plain soda that we met Mr Barton and his wife. There were lots of Britishers returning from Patiala, in the north, where they'd been for the races. Mr Barton said he'd been a jockey once. He was no taller than I was and his ears stuck out like jug handles, but he had become a trainer and then a horse owner and he'd even run horses that had won a place in the Melbourne Cup. How could we not be impressed? He had been in Patiala racing one of his own horses and giving advice to the Maharajah.

Mr Barton had grand stories about Patiala race week. He told us about beautiful rows of marquees and tents in the park surrounding the Palace, and special performances by a famous magician in the palace theatre. The Maharajah's zenana had come in ‘purdah', every inch of their bodies covered with cloth, and watched the magician through veils. But some of the audience had been very alarmed by his tricks and decided he was under the influence of ‘the evil one'.

We all laughed at that.

‘Charlie Byrne, a boy in our troupe, he's a wonderful magician,' I told the Bartons.

‘But if you come to see us, you won't actually get to see him perform his mischief,' said Tilly. ‘Conjurers play with people's minds, whereas we girls, we play with their hearts.'

‘We're musical theatre artistes, actually,' said Ruby. ‘When we return to Australia, I'll be eighteen and then I'm going to join the vaudeville circuit or maybe go to London and perform in the West End.'

‘My word,' said Mrs Barton, ‘we'll have to see the young ladies perform if they come to London.'

‘You can come and see us in Bombay,' said Tilly.

The next thing I knew, Tilly and Ruby and the Bartons were as thick as thieves and we were all strolling up to first class to visit them in their private compartment.

In first class, the seats were three feet wide and the padding was so thick and comfortable you could bounce on your bottom on the smooth leather and not even feel the springs beneath. There were lovely blue glass shutters, and a small window slid open so that the passengers could give instructions to the ‘boy' on the other side, who sat in the small servant's compartment. He wasn't really a boy at all but a very old man who smiled at us with rheumy eyes when Mr Barton ordered him to fetch sweet lime sodas for all the young ladies.

The seats were long enough for the Bartons to take one each and recline full length, and they told us that at night their
nowker
made up the bed with a
razai
quilt and sheets. I thought of how we all fell asleep across each other's laps, a tangle of limbs and skirts, and felt a pinch of shame.

I knew we shouldn't have stayed so long, but first class was so deliciously cool. They had an air-cooling gadget in the wall, a kind of fan made of rushes and a wheel with the bottom half set in water. Tilly and Ruby stood in front of the machine while I turned the wheel and they squealed as cool air made their hair ripple out behind them.

Mr Barton laughed. ‘Here, we'll get our
nowker
to do that for ye,' he said. He went to slide the little window that looked into the servant's room, but before he could speak there was a knock at the door of the compartment. It was Lionel.

‘Excuse me, sir,' he said, polite as you please. ‘Mr Arthur Percival, our manager, wants the young ladies to return to their seats.'

I saw a cloud pass across Tilly's face but then she was all charm and smiles again.

‘Thank you so much for your hospitality, dear Mr and Mrs Barton,' she said. ‘We've had a lovely time.'

‘Well, we hope to see you again, Miss Sweetrick, and your little friends. We must come along to that show of yours in Bombay.'

It was only when we were out in the corridor that Tilly turned on Lionel. ‘You really have turned into the Butcher's lackey, haven't you? The Butcher's boy, running all his odious little errands.'

Lionel blushed and I did feel sorry for him.

‘You can tell him from me that we're not going back to his compartment.'

‘You can't do that!' said Lionel.

‘Yes we can. We're going to sit in the littlies' compartment. I'm not putting up with Eliza Finton for a minute longer.'

‘I don't want to change,' I said, alarmed.

Ruby turned on me, her eyes flashing. ‘You're such a turncoat, Poesy. First you were Tilly's friend, then Eliza's, then you made all that fuss about me, and now you want to climb back into Eliza's pocket.'

‘I didn't . . . ' I sputtered.

‘Oh, that's right,' said Tilly slyly. She could be so cruelly sly. ‘You want everyone to believe we're just one big happy family. You want everyone to like you, don't you, Poesy? But when you've pried out all our secrets, you'll scuttle back to Eliza, won't you? Maybe you and Lionel are two peas in a pod. Maybe we should call you Lizzie's lackey.'

I stood with my mouth open, staring at Tilly and Ruby in mute disbelief. I could barely recognise the laughing girls that I'd sat with in the dining compartment. They were like strangers. How could they both turn on me so quickly! Then I felt a lurching stab of guilt. Had I said something to Lizzie that I shouldn't? We'd talked about Tilly and George but all the girls knew about their romance and I'd not breathed a word to Mr Arthur. And Ruby knew I'd never told anyone about her running away the second time. I looked at Ruby pleadingly but she simply flicked her hair and said, ‘Make up your mind. Whose side are you on?'