Sail Upon the Land

Titania:
Set your heart at rest.

The Fairyland buys not the child of me.

His mother was a votaress of my order,

And in the spicèd Indian air by night

Full often hath she gossiped by my side,

And sat with me on Neptune’s yellow sands,

Marking th’embarkèd traders on the flood,

When we have laughed to see the sails conceive

And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;

Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait

Following, her womb then rich with my young squire

Would imitate, and sail upon the land

To fetch me trifles and return again

As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.

But she, being mortal, of that boy did die.

And for her sake do I rear up her boy,

And for her sake I will not part with him.

Ronny was a big man. His sheer weight was impossible to shift and he wasn’t bothering to prop himself on his elbows. Very little straw between him and the stable floor so Damson couldn’t blame him for that. But she’d said no repeatedly, pushing at his massive chest, hitting and slapping. He didn’t seem to notice let alone care. She tried to scream but there wasn’t enough air in her lungs and no one nearby to come running.

An hour earlier they’d been leaning from the saddle to kiss each other by the light of an Indian moon. Silver water hyacinth choked the half-ruined irrigation tank where they paused in their reckless midnight gallop.

The kissing went on after they rode back to the stables. Unsaddling the horses they kissed each time they brushed against each other in the dim light, moving between stall and tack room. After the horses were tied up with a meagre scoop of feed and fresh water he took her by the hand.

He’d stopped before they got to the door and pushed her quite gently into an empty stall. So sweet, as if he just wanted another kiss before they wandered through the yard and up the path, parting at the door of the Guest House – as they had on the two previous evenings. He was holding her too tight. He crushed a breast in his huge hand where before he had not touched her body apart from holding her in his arms. With a twinge of doubt she pulled away to let him know he was going too far. He responded by tripping her over on to her back.

She gasped, banging her head, winded and struggling to get up. At first she imagined it was a joke or that he was playing, so confused was she by the swift change of mood. Then she caught sight of his eyes and any doubt was seared away by his blank gaze and lowered lids. Why was he shoving down so hard on her chest with his left hand? She couldn’t breathe. Gripping his forearm with both hands, she shook it as if trying to dislodge fruit from a tree. He was far too strong for her, ignoring her resistance with frightening intensity. She twisted and squirmed and tried to bite. Scratching was pointless with her bitten nails. He didn’t say anything. She realised he hadn’t since they came back into the stables. At least he didn’t hit her.

‘No,’ she said again. ‘Please. I don’t want this.’

He didn’t seem to care. And the jovial man who’d wooed her so passionately every evening for the last three days was now a heaving rapist in the shit-scented dark.

They were miles from anywhere. She was alone. If she sank beneath the water hyacinth bound with the straps of her sodden rucksack stuffed with stones, who would ever know? She froze.

As soon as the mood had shifted, his size, which had seemed so reassuring, became hard and threatening. His muscles moved with lazy power. How charming he’d seemed, how handsome and masculine, how jolly. How beautiful she’d felt, dumpy Damson with her long mousy hair and fat bottom. He’d delighted in cinching her small waist with his big hands.

Ronny had constructed what she now realised were idiotic air castles so subtly in the drought-stricken garden of her mind: of dropping out, moving in and running the Vhilaki Guest House with him, making it a big success. Maybe even turning the Hunting Lodge into a smart hotel. He had such plans, seemed so civilised, so educated, so familiar. He’d hinted at her continuing her medical studies in India, maybe opening a charitable clinic. She’d lapped it up.

She was shot with a bolt of shame like an abject beast in the sudden shambles of her life. In the straw. That was slang for having a baby, wasn’t it? She wasn’t on the Pill. She’d never even had proper sex before. Oh hell.

Ronny had been a drug, so fast was the rush of infatuation to her head. Cambridge, for which she’d worked so hard, disappeared under his wooing into a hazy, meaningless distance. What was Cambridge compared to Ronny’s big brown eyes staring into hers, telling her she was beautiful? And not just that, but talking to her about the birdlife in the forest all around, the history of the house, Partition – all kinds of stuff that fascinated her. He’d even elicited her sympathy and budding professional interest by discussing his type 1 diabetes. She’d felt so grown up.

No point in doing anything to stop him now. Even screaming was pointless. The stables were a good hundred yards from the Guest House. She couldn’t make much noise anyway as there wasn’t enough air in her lungs. She didn’t dare. He hadn’t been violent but his eyes were empty and she had no friends nearby. Just a bunch of stoned Australian strangers. The stable walls were thick and the door closed.

Mortified, she remembered Caroline who’d left that very afternoon fed up with Damson’s flirtation. Caroline the not-really-schoolfriend she’d met up with in Goa. Caroline, whose grandparents had ‘served’. She bored Damson to tears with her tales of durbars and elephants and dire warnings about caste and manners and appropriate dress and keeping a distance and on and on. So many of her sentences had started with, ‘I don’t mean to be racist…’

She’d been company of a sort. They read about the Vhilaki Guest House in the backpackers’ bible, and the free horse riding had hooked them in. The guidebook hinted that the owner was some relation of a local big wig’s. No one knew much about it but Rhonap ‘Ronny’ Viphur was definitely a ‘character’. Educated in England, he offered a taste of the Raj for nostalgic backpackers on a budget. The Guest House was difficult to reach, in the grounds of the Vhilaki Hunting Lodge up in the hills served only by a rack train. You got off at Hunters’ Halt, a station built for grand hunting parties at some point during the reign of Queen Victoria. Determined and adventurous backpackers with a love of riding found their way up there, but there wasn’t much detail and the guidebook requested more feedback. The girls detected that it might not be very comfortable, but they were young and used to discomfort and the prospect of riding in the hills was enough compensation.

Damson thought that Ronny didn’t seem to mind one way or another whether he entertained a crowd or a trickle, and only ran his Guest House for the ‘company’.

She’d rejected the older girl’s warnings as jealous spite. She’d suspected that Caroline was a bit Raj-minded too and believed it demeaning to have a relationship with a ‘native’. That made Damson even more defiant. Shades of
The Jewel in the Crown
, which she’d watched on television, tinted her vision all the more rosily. Who wouldn’t fall for Hari Kumar? She didn’t let herself think about what had happened to Daphne.

Damson had watched while Caroline stuffed her clothes into her rucksack any old how, in contrast to her usual meticulous folding.

‘You should come with me you know,’ she’d said.

‘But I’m happy here, I want to stay for the full week. We paid for it. I still don’t understand why you’re going so early.’ Damson did know perfectly well. But she was harbouring her own secret fantasy of staying on much longer, of being a blonde princess in the Indian mountains – all very
Far Pavilions
. Maybe she could effect a reconciliation between Ronny and his mysterious important relations. They could leave the Hunting Lodge and live in the city.

‘I’m not enjoying watching you making a fool of yourself with Ronny. It’s so inappropriate, Damson. He’s a big, fat, middle-aged, divorced chancer and you’ve got all your life ahead of you. You’re meant to be going up to Cambridge in October aren’t you? What on earth do you think you’re doing?’

Caroline kept nagging at her to leave right up to the end, when Damson could see she was red in the face with irritation. Caroline had turned at the gate, ‘Damson, please come with me. There’s nothing for you here. It can’t possibly be real. He doesn’t care for you.’

‘He’s does. He’s lovely. I’m having a wonderful time.’

Damson had been wavering, had thought of running back, chucking her stuff into her rucksack and tagging on to the tiresome familiarity of Caroline.

‘Why would he be interested in someone like you? Except for the obvious.’

It had been Caroline’s spiteful last words that pushed a tender place already bruised with overuse.

‘Please, Damson. I’ll wait. You can go and get your stuff.’

Damson turned her back and walked away.

In their no-longer-shared room, lying in a sensuous stupor on the charpoy, it was easy to banish Caroline to the back of her mind. Nasty cat, she told herself, she’s just jealous. And she gave herself up to dreaming. What should she wear for the promised moonlit ride? Perhaps she should have a bucket bath with that sandalwood soap from Mysore?

Now she was lying on her back once more and no one gave a damn how she smelled. She wondered for a moment if the stable’s occupant might be ridden back in to her rescue but it was too late for anyone to be out.

Tears slid out of the sides of her eyes and into the hair on her temples and a crying headache started in her forehead. She hadn’t wanted it, had she? Or was this what it was always like the first time? Uncomfortable, embarrassing and frightening? At least she was getting rid of her virginity – and she hadn’t even had to make a decision about it.

Damson couldn't breathe properly. Her last thought before she blacked out was, ‘How many others?’

Surfacing to find herself being carried, Damson’s instincts kicked in and she stayed limp in his arms, hoping he wouldn’t realise she was conscious. She felt sick as she inhaled Ronny’s distinctive smell – spicy sweat mixed with eau de Cologne – that she’d found so attractive and reassuring.

She prayed that her brief tensing as she returned to consciousness had been undetectable. There was no sound apart from his breathing and the soft fall of his feet in the dust. Where to? Nothing seemed real, and she wondered in a detached way how he would do it. Strangle her? Those enormous hands with which he would try to encircle her waist, how much more easily would they fit around her neck? Her best chance was to appear unconscious. Then she must seize her moment when he put her down – as he must at some point, at least to shift his grip. If she could run towards the Guest House and scream, someone would surely notice and come to her aid.

Right at the bottom of the mess that was her mind lurked terror, but she couldn’t allow that boiling slime to erupt or she would come apart. She needed to be in one piece if she was going to get out alive.

Ronny gasped and something wet dripped on to her face. She didn’t dare react although it itched.

Then he stopped. Resting her weight on one raised knee, he turned a handle and opened a door.

Where were they? She didn’t dare look.

It was cooler but stuffy and darker than the warm starlit navy of the night outside. Ronny wore riding boots and she could detect that he was walking on a hard surface. She was no lightweight, even for a man as strong as Ronny, and he was moving less cautiously now. Progress was quite slow as he had to stop and open doors. Wood sounded underfoot. Then they were going up carpeted stairs. Damson had stayed down in the Guest House, which was a relatively modern bungalow in the grounds floored throughout with worn linoleum. She must be in the Hunting Lodge itself.

If he had taken her indoors, it was unlikely he was going to murder her, wasn’t it? Better to play dead. Did he have servants living in? She had no idea. At the top of the stairs he turned right. He opened another door, walked across the floor and laid her gently down on a soft, quite high surface that smelt of the dust dislodged by the weight of her body.

She let her limbs flop as if still in a faint. To her surprise he seemed to be wrapping her in velvet. He whispered, ‘Are you awake?’

She didn’t answer. Lay deliberately limp, desperate for him to go away. He waited, probably looking down at her in the moonlight that streamed through the window. He touched her wrist as if checking her pulse and pushed away the hair that had fallen across her face. She hardly dared breathe. Then she heard him shift his balance and couldn’t help tensing up. He sighed, and then he startled her by saying, ‘I am so sorry, it’s not what I meant. Sleep now. We’ll talk in the morning.’