The Peacock Spring (14 page)

‘How is it, Ally, with that disagreeable girl, m’n?’ Mrs Lamont asked again.

‘I think I have the measure of her,’ said Alix. ‘If I give her time for study and respect her precious dignity.’

‘Heavens! Your patience.’

‘Yes, I think I have won. At least now and then I can take my eye off her,’ said Alix.

‘Two mortars are placed side by side and fired simultaneously with the same speed and same bearing. One shell is fired at 70 degrees to the vertical, the other at 70
degrees to the horizontal. Prove that they both land in the same place and compare the heights to which they rise.

‘Now try and work it through,’ Ravi told Una.

‘I shall not come again,’ Hem had said to Ravi after that first time.

‘But you must.’

They had been back in Ravi’s hut and Hem had been in what Ravi called ‘an unreasonable temper’. ‘I do not like this and it is no good.’

‘It is every good,’ said Ravi. ‘Hem, please. Please!’ and, in the end, they had compromised. Hem would teach Ravi, Ravi could teach Una. ‘But how much
mathematics?’ asked Hem.

‘Prove that they both land in the same place and compare the heights.’

Ravi tapped his pencil against a trail of honeysuckle and a shower of minute ants fell on the paper. ‘When I was a little boy,’ said Ravi, ‘I used to eat ants because someone
told me they would make me wise.’

‘And did they?’ asked Una.

‘Hem says not.’

‘Tell me about when you were a little boy.’

‘I was only child. They did not let me go away from home, so I suppose I was alone, but we had a gardener,’ he said, looking at the garden, ‘an old man not unlike your Ganesh.
I used to follow him everywhere he went. I remember one day he bought me a toy watering can with his own money and he must have had most little. I used to water his feet – nice grateful
child. His feet were dark and cracked and horny. He was my best friend; perhaps it was he who made me like gardens and gave me the idea of this.’

‘Go on,’ said Una.

‘Our garden, though, is not at all like yours. Apart from the vegetable patch it is straggling, dusty; no one bothers about English or special flowers; we have only a few hibiscus,
oleanders, cosmos, marigolds, and there are cows tethered on the grass.’

‘Cows?’

‘To most Indian people cows are much more important than flowers.’

‘Tell about your house.’

‘It isn’t like the houses you see nowadays; it is made of old Punjabi bricks which are smaller than ordinary ones and have good colours. The roof has colours, too, of old tiles.
There are verandahs all around; you would not approve of them, every day their rails are hung with bedding – we
air
our bedding.’ Ravi was lofty. ‘The front verandah is for
my father; his day-bed is there, spread with a durrie and sheet and a heavy white takia to support him.’

‘A pillow?’

‘No – big, round and long.’

‘A bolster.’

‘We say takia. My father sits there in the evenings looking out over his lands. The land is flat; he can see for miles and all that he sees is his. In his father’s time it was more,
much, much more, but at his death divided out among his three sons – that is our law – but my father’s land will not be divided as I am only son.’

‘Then it will all be yours.’

‘Yes, and more – one uncle has no children but I do not want it. Most people want to live in a little patch,’ said Ravi. ‘I want to live in the world.’

‘But this – it’s the family estate.’

‘There should not be estates. Our fields are let out to peasants; you do not know how small those fields are – they have low clay walls built round them and are irrigated by hand
from a well where the water is scooped out by a ladle on the end of a pole and let, one ladle after another, through the fields. Men and women work in the fields all day, go back to their huts at
night. I should rather have a hut than my home, so I shall give the house away – maybe make it a hospital, give the peasants their fields. Keep only one or two for me. I remember,’ said
Ravi, ‘when my father bought a new camel. She turned out bad-tempered but we lend her out for ploughing.’

‘Plough with a camel?’

‘Certainly. She gives trouble but her driver loves her. I loved her too and used to ride on her. I bought her a necklace of blue and white beads and called her Rowena. My mother was
reading me your Walter Scott’s book,
Ivanhoe
. I might keep Rowena,’ said Ravi. ‘We grow mustard and wheat but if I kept all the land, cooperatively of course, I should grow
roses professionally.’

‘But do they grow them here commercially?’

‘For export, best roses in the world. Ask your father to take you to the rose farms; it is the only industry I like. Yes, perhaps I shall do that . . .’ But Una was seeing a low
house in a chequerboard of bright green and yellow fields, the shining water falling from the scoop as it was pulled up and down on its ropes; she saw a shaggy camel looming against the sky, high
above a small brown boy hand in hand with an old man. ‘Our gardener did not hold my hand.’ Ravi had an uncanny way of reading her thoughts. ‘He held me with his thumb and finger
round the wrist, as most Indians prefer.’

‘Go on.’

‘No. Hem will be cross with us. Back to your mortars, Miss,’ but, how odd! The mathematics for which Una had fought with such bitterness did not seem in the least important now.

‘Una, where have you been?’ They had stayed too late; Ganesh was old and slept long in the afternoon but on this day he was back and, calling for Ravi, had almost
caught them and, ‘Where have you been, Una?’ asked Alix again.

‘Working in the summer house. Where else?’

Lessons at Shiraz Road had gone on, though, by tacit arrangement between Alix and Una, in an attenuated form; Una worked at her
dictées
and French reading, her Indian history,
enjoyed cooking with Christopher, but the needlework had been put away and only Hal listened to the Outline of Literature. ‘Una, are you sure you are getting on with those problems?’
asked Alix.

Now Una had pulled a spray of honeysuckle and she, too, had jauntily put the flower behind her ear. ‘You don’t look like Una,’ said Hal, staring at her. ‘What’s
happened to you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Something,’ said Hal’s look, though she was too loyal to say it. Perhaps Alix sensed that too, because she said, ‘I don’t like this, Una. We get up earlier now
it’s warmer. You ought to rest too.’

‘None of the other girls here do.’

‘They are used to the climate.’

‘And I’m not used to sleeping in the afternoon. I told you, I can’t do it, Alix. Truly I can’t.’ Una sounded alarmed and Hal cocked a suspicious ear.
‘I’m used to working then.’

‘Why not work on the verandah?’

‘The summer house is shady.’

‘I suppose it’s all right.’

‘Good Heavens! It’s not forty yards from the house,’ and ‘We go out so much,’ said Una with a blandness new to her, ‘that I need the time.’

It seemed that in Delhi even schoolgirls had their social round and Una and Hal had – ‘Willy-nilly,’ said Una – been caught up in it: riding, watching
polo, swimming, going to concerts, charity fêtes. ‘You are Edward’s
daughters
,’ said Alix and Edward, to Una’s surprise, abetted this. He even enrolled them for
flower-arranging classes.

‘Flower-arranging? Us?’

‘Ikebana,’ said Edward.

‘But we are not Japanese.’

‘It is the craze in Delhi this winter,’ said Alix as if that explained it.

‘And Mrs Mehta is running them,’ said Edward, ‘which is why I want you to go. Mehta is an influential man.’

Is this Edward talk? thought Una, mystified. When had Edward been influenced by influence? Every now and then, though, he seemed to surface, breathe his own air. ‘What has happened to
us?’ Una had asked him after one of the big dinner parties at Shiraz Road. ‘We used not to be so grand.’

‘No.’ For a moment he had looked puzzled. ‘I’m a quiet sort of bloke really.’ Edward did not use a slang word until it was so out of date it had come to be ordinary
speech. ‘I don’t know quite what has happened,’ and he ruffled up his hair as if Una had suddenly disturbed him – succeeded in disturbing him – but it did not last
and, too, he was curiously unnoticing – ‘about us,’ said Hal. He had not noticed the rings in her and Una’s ears, Hal’s jewellery or her nail polish, though he did
complain about the scent: ‘This isn’t a hairdresser’s shop.’ ‘But he never noticed when I didn’t wash it off,’ said Hal and she too asked, ‘What has
happened to him?’

Hal was in demand to play and sing, sometimes alone, often with Alix and, Alix is spoiling Hal’s music, thought Una, worried. Hal sang sentimental songs, ‘
Parlez-moi
d’amour
’, or ‘Lucia’. ‘She wasn’t allowed to sing those at school,’ Una objected. ‘Signor Brazzi said she showed real promise,’ and
‘Hal, don’t sing those songs,’ Una begged.

‘Why not?’

‘They’re full of tricks and you are getting a tremor, just like Alix.’

‘Good. That’s what I want to be – just like Alix,’ but Mrs Mehta, patron of the flower-arranging classes, had asked Hal to sing at one of her concerts, and did not ask
her again.

‘Don’t you see?’ said Una.

‘What I see,’ said furious Hal,’ is that with Lady Srinevesan and Mrs Mehta you are getting to be an unbearable snob. What do you want me to do?’

‘Sing,’ said Una, but Hal would not listen.

If Edward were going out, as he often did in the evenings, Hal telephoned Sushila, ‘To ask us to Paralampur House,’ said Una, and protested. ‘It’s hinting.’

‘It isn’t. It’s asking,’ said Hal and explained, ‘Vik might be there.’

‘But isn’t this all a bit old for Hal?’ Una had said to Alix.

‘Sushila isn’t much older.’

‘Sushila is fourteen. Hal is only twelve. At Cerne she was a junior. She went to bed at nine o’clock.’

‘Prig! Prig!’ Hal was more furious still and she asked again, ‘What do you want me to do? Play with dolls?’

Sometimes at Paralampur House the girls danced on the verandah to Vikram’s record player, the only new thing in the house, thought Una. In schoolgirl tradition the girls danced with one
another but if Vikram came in he would sometimes dance with Hal. ‘Come along, pussy’, he would say.

Don’t you see – to him you’re just a little girl, but Una did not say it; she could not bear to put out the happiness in her sister’s eyes. It’s Alix he’s
after, but she did not say that either. Did not have to say it, thought Una.

As the darling son of the house, it never occurred to Vikram to do other than he wanted and he soon dropped Hal and went to coax Alix. ‘Come and dance.’

‘I am not here to dance.’

The Maharani always asked Alix with Una and Hal. ‘Well, the Paralampurs don’t have to put up barriers,’ said Alix with disdain for Lady Srinevesan. ‘Aristocrats
don’t,’ yet Una fathomed Alix would rather not have gone.

‘Come and dance.’

‘I have told you – no.’ But there came a night when moonlight flooded the old compound, turning the dusty roughness of its lawns to silver, making shadows under the trees.
Vikram had come from a dinner at the mess, he was wearing the Bodyguard’s dress uniform, white with scarlet pipings, the silver shoulder chains and gold badges catching the light.

‘Alix, come and dance.’

Somewhere in the servants’ quarters, a drum was beating and, from a bush below the verandah, a scent filled the night, the same scent as from the flowers in Ravi’s hedge, and,
‘You can’t want to spend your days – I mean nights – talking to children and old people,’ Vikram had said.

‘The Maharani Sahib is not old,’ Alix answered steadily, ‘and Una and Hal happen to be in my charge.’

‘You could forget them for ten minutes.’

‘Vikram, go away,’ but he came round to where he could see Alix’s face.

‘What if I won’t?’

‘I shall tell Sir Edward you are pestering me.’

‘And if I tell Sir Edward there was a time when you were pleased to be so pestered?’

‘Vikram, go away.’

His voice changed to seriousness. Una could only just catch it. ‘What if I can’t?’

‘Vikram,
please
.’

Music from the gramophone mingled with the drum; the verandah was filled with the pale skirts, dark heads of the dancing little girls.

‘What if I can’t?’

‘Please go away.’

I believed words then, thought Una afterwards. I thought Alix was distressed . . . Threading her way through the dancers she went and stood by Alix. ‘Shall we go home?’ To her
surprise Alix turned on her. ‘Must you cling to me like a limpet? Go and dance with the others.’

‘Yes, run along,’ said Vikram.

Run along! Una retreated, her cheeks as red as if they had been slapped. When she looked back along the verandah, Alix and Vikram had gone.

‘So it is Vikram – or, rather, Vikram too!’

Som Misra, Bulbul’s husband, said he had known Alix in Calcutta – ‘Chilli hot!’ Som had said. ‘He may have known her,’ Mrs Porter corrected when Una, turning
Som’s words over and over in her mind, was driven to ask Mrs Porter if it were true. ‘Young men like to boast. But Miss Lamont is far too – wise’ – Una guessed Mrs
Porter had been going to say ‘clever’ – ‘to become notorious; but, Una dear, why are you asking? Has anything happened?’

‘Nothing at all.’ Una, at once, was closed as an oyster. ‘Only . . .’ she opened a crack, ‘why doesn’t Edward know all this?’

‘I guess your father doesn’t listen to gossip.’

‘It’s a pity he doesn’t.’ Una could imagine Lady Srinevesan saying that.

That night Una had followed Alix to her bedroom and perched on the end of the bed, watching while Alix took down her hair; as she started to brush its dark-red silkiness, it seemed what Lady
Srinevesan had called it, ‘fairy-tale’ hair, part of the whole tale in which she, Una, was so strangely caught up. ‘It must be difficult to be so desirable,’ said Una.

She was thinking aloud and had not meant it as a challenge, but the brushing stopped and Alix looked at her in the mirror.

‘You think you know something, don’t you, Una?’

‘Yes, I think I do.’

‘As it happens, you don’t. While we were at the Paralampurs this evening, I had a message from my mother saying she was ill and I had to go to her.’