The New Collected Short Stories (88 page)

‘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 hardly 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.

J
EFFREY
A
RCHER
, whose novels and short stories include
Kane and Abel
,
A Prisoner of Birth
and
Cat O’ Nine Tales
, has topped the bestseller lists around the world, with sales of over 270 million copies.

He is the only author ever to have been a number one bestseller in fiction (fifteen times), short stories (four times) and non-fiction (
The Prison Diaries
).

The author is married with two sons and lives in London and Cambridge.

ALSO BY JEFFREY ARCHER

NOVELS

Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less

Shall We Tell the President? • Kane and Abel

The Prodigal Daughter • First Among Equals

A Matter of Honour • As the Crow Flies • Honour Among Thieves

The Fourth Estate • The Eleventh Commandment

Sons of Fortune • False Impression

The Gospel According to Judas

(
with the assistance of Professor Francis J. Moloney
)

A Prisoner of Birth • Paths of Glory

Only Time Will Tell

SHORT STORIES

A Quiver Full of Arrows • A Twist in the Tale

Twelve Red Herrings • The Collected Short Stories

PLAYS

Beyond Reasonable Doubt • Exclusive • The Accused

PRISON DIARIES

Volume One – Belmarsh: Hell

Volume Two – Wayland: Purgatory

Volume Three – North Sea Camp: Heaven

SCREENPLAYS

Mallory: Walking Off the Map

False Impression

To Cut a Long Story Short
first published 2000 by HarperCollins
Publishers
First published by Pan Books 2010
Cat O’ Nine Tales
first published 2007 by Macmillan
First published by Pan Books 2007
And Thereby Hangs a Tale
first published 2010 by Macmillan
First published by Pan Books 2010

This collected volume published 2011 by Pan Books

This electronic edition published 2012 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-1-447-22552-2 EPUB

Copyright © Jeffrey Archer 2000, 2007, 2010
Drawings in
Cat O’ Nine Tales
by Ronald Searle

The right of Jeffrey Archer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The Macmillan Group has no responsibility for the information provided by any author websites whose address you obtain from this book (‘author websites’). The inclusion of author website addresses in this book does not constitute an endorsement by or association with us of such sites or the content, products, advertising or other materials presented on such sites.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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