The Peacock Spring (22 page)

‘Clean pyjamas . . . in the chest,’ Una was able to gasp. Hem was washing her face and hands and neck.

Ravi brought only the pyjama top. ‘Never mind,’ said Hem and to Ravi, ‘Go outside.’ Then Hem undressed Una, taking off her shoes, drawing off the jodhpurs, her socks and
underclothes; with careful gentleness he put her arms into the jacket, drew it round her and buttoned it with his skilled dark fingers then, lifting her, carried her to bed. The dummy he dumped in
the wardrobe. Then he gave her a pill and a drink of water. ‘You will be more comfortable now, I think.’

‘Hem.’ Una caught his hand. ‘I tried to do it . . . for poor Dino . . . but she was too strong, Hem. I tried to make her tell.’

‘She will tell,’ said Hem, ‘because she will have to.’

‘Hem, thank you for . . .’ Una choked.

‘No more now,’ said Hem. ‘I will come again tomorrow night and give it another dressing – if Ravi thinks it safe. You will be very stiff and sore but let us hope there is
no infection. Try not to disturb the pads; do not go to bathe; also, keep out of the sun.’ Gently he unloosed her clasp. ‘Now go to sleep.’

He found Ravi outside on the verandah, waiting in the shadows. ‘I think she will sleep now. I have given a sedative,’ then, as Ravi moved, ‘Don’t go in, bhai. Let her
sleep.’

‘Is that . . . one of your poems?’ whispered Una.

‘It is a lullaby, older than the hills. My ayah used to sing me to sleep with it every night.’

‘When you were a little boy?’ Hem’s pill was working and Una was growing sleepy. ‘When you were a little boy.’

‘Not even a boy – in my babyhood.’

‘ “Nini, baba, nini . . .” ’ It was as soft as the hum of a spinning wheel, drowsy as the rhythmical pattings – only the patting was by a young man’s hand,
which perhaps was why Una did not quite fall asleep. Ravi was almost tranced by his own song when suddenly he stopped, raised his head to listen.

Neither of them had noticed that the house had quietened, that the party must be over, the last guest gone. Two people – Alix and Edward by their voices – were coming down the
verandah. Swift as a snake, Ravi slid under the bed and pressed himself against the wall. Una, suddenly wide awake, lay still, her eyes ostensibly closed, but watching the doorway under her
lids.

‘I told you so. She’s asleep.’ Edward’s voice was loud and slurred.

‘We ought just to look—’

‘N-nonsense. C-come, cara.’ His arm drew Alix away. ‘Come to bed.’

After they had gone Una broke into uncontrollable weeping. There were no more nursery words. ‘Una – not to cry. Not to cry.’ Ravi was lying on the bed beside her, kissing her.
The tears, salt and warm on his lips, moved him to a passion of pity.

‘Do not cry. They are not worth it, let them go.’

‘Ravi. Ravi.’

‘You are so little I’m afraid to touch you.’

‘Touch me. Come closer.’

‘But . . . if I hurt your back.’

‘Let it hurt. Oh Ravi! Come close.’

When Una woke she was sure it was a dream, but, turning her head, she smelled a faint scent on her pillow, Ravi’s coconut oil.

It was spring: the strange warm Indian spring when the imported English winter flowers had wilted and the tropical ones came into their own – hibiscus, oleander,
poinsettia; a mauve creeper had flowered on the walls – Edward called it petrea – and the brilliant orange-fingered ‘golden-shower’ bignonia spread far across the porch,
while the bougainvillaeas were like fountains; in every road, park, garden were flowering trees; the scarlet flowers of simul trees whose pods would swell and burst into cotton. ‘The flowers
must be picked or the cotton blows everywhere,’ said Ravi. There were soft fuzzes on the rain trees; coral trees in bloom while the kadumbo was covered in honey-scented balls of yellow fluff.
‘You will see the kadumbo in paintings of Krishna playing his flute. I think,’ said Ravi, ‘he is playing his flute for us.’

Ravi’s desk was deserted; the poems, as with Una’s mathematics, forgotten, but in the early hours Una had to steal back from the hut to the house, often only just before dawn, and
each time it was harder to go. Am I like the girls in the Keats poem, ‘creeping thin with lust’? If so, she did not care; and I’m not thin; indeed, she thought her whole body was
altering. ‘Id-eal-ly, if you were Indian, your silly little breasts should be soft and swelling as the pods on the simul trees,’ Ravi teased her.

‘They are getting bigger, I’m sure they are.’

‘Maybe, but you haven’t elephant hips. Now elephants are really very graceful.’

‘And I’m not?’

‘You! You are stick insect – trinakit.’ Then he grew serious. ‘If I love you too much, I shall kiss you away.’

Hem, as he had promised, arrived for nightly dressings but after a week he ceased to come; the back was healing – And love with Ravi does not hurt me any more. Indeed, in these days Una
had an easy laxness she had never felt before. Thoughts of Dino, thoughts of Alix, had receded into the background. There was nothing she could do about either. She had tried, tried all she knew,
and been defeated, but there was something restful in being defeated; unlike her little doll, Una was content to be knocked down. One day, she knew, she would have to get up again but for the
present all she wanted was to lie out in the garden, in the shade, as Hem had advised, and let the warm quiet hours slip by.

‘Una, the Maharani is on the telephone.’

‘Tell her I’m not well.’

‘Mrs Mehta wants to know if you would like to go to the Kuchipudi dance drama.’

‘It’s a lovely name, but no.’

‘Lady Srinevesan says she will call for you and take you to the Kabul exhibition.’

‘No thank you.’

Bulbul, when – out of curiosity, thought Una – she arrived uninvited at the house, asked, ‘What has happened to you?’

‘I had a fall.’

‘It wasn’t on your head, was it?’

‘No. Why?’

‘You are different.’

Everything was different. ‘Mrs Porter hasn’t rung. I was sure she would. Why hasn’t she?’ Alix was so timorous one might have thought it was she who had had the beating,
not Una.

‘Need we tell her today?’ Alix had asked Edward that morning after the dinner. Must it be today?’

‘Do you want her to hear it from Bulbul Misra – or Lady Srinevesan, or Gussie Porter?’

‘Then let me tell her.’

‘It’s better from me,’ said Edward. ‘You can write to Hal but Una and I have always been close.’

‘I know.’ But, Alix had thought in terror, suppose . . . She felt her neck and hands cold while Edward beside her was debonair, cheerfully unaware. ‘Just plain happy and
proud,’ he would have said, but perhaps he began to sense something, because he had bent forward and taken her hands. ‘What are you afraid of, cara? Una is not easy, I know, but once
you are part of the family she will give you her loyalty – and no one is more loyal than Una,’ but when Una had come hobbling along the verandah, Alix had had to put the coffee pot
down; her hand was visibly trembling. It trembled more when Una had let herself down into her chair with a grimace of pain. She was, as Hem had said she would be, so sore that when she moved the
pain from the welts made her set her lips not to cry out; and there was another soreness: Ravi had been carried away – I carried him away. I, insignificant Una, whom Vikram treats as a child,
I can give Ravi joy, and she had bestowed such a radiant smile on Alix that Alix was transfixed.

‘Una,’ said Edward. ‘We want to tell you ourselves before you hear it from anyone else – expect it’s all over Delhi even now. Alix and I are going to be
married.’

‘Married!’ Una had known it, of course, but now it had come she felt a curious shock – and dismay. ‘No, Edward, no,’ she wanted to cry. ‘Don’t do it.
Please, please don’t. There isn’t one person who loves you or even knows you – even Hal – who won’t be sad, and there are things that, if you knew – you will
have to know them – will be tragedy for you. I can tell you . . .’ Then why don’t I tell you? Sitting there, Una knew with certainty she had power to stop this, to save Edward.
Then why not? Alix’s eyes were fixed imploringly on her but it was not Alix that stopped her; as if she had been given new eyes, Una was seeing Alix as Edward saw her, not only as beauty but
a cornucopia – the word seemed to suit Alix – of sweetness, warmth, comfort, things he had lacked perhaps all his life; strongest of all in him was desire and how can I, now, be the one
to spoil that for Edward – after last night, thought Una? Perhaps, she thought, I’m the only person in Delhi who can understand this, and aloud she only said, ‘Could I have some
coffee while you tell me about it?’

‘Alix got her decree—’

‘The day you gave her the ring,’ Una finished for Edward.

‘You guessed—’

‘That wasn’t difficult. We don’t have many diamonds in our family, do we? Certainly not brown ones.’ Una said that for Alix; it meant, ‘Don’t think I am won
over. I’m not.’

‘The term of waiting has been shortened, owing to my circumstances,’ Edward went on. Then, almost pleadingly, he asked, ‘Couldn’t you be a little happy for us?’

How can I? Don’t you know
anything
? thought Una. Yesterday, it would have driven me to despair; now it hardly seems to concern me – or does it? A thought had struck her that
made her start; the Tagore Prize, and she asked anxiously, ‘When will it be?’

‘In about five weeks – the fourteenth of April is the first possible day. Next day is Baisakhi, the Hindu new year, a new beginning. We will have a honeymoon later when I go back to
Japan.’

‘That will suit me very well.’ Incautiously Una had said it aloud and, ‘What do you mean?’ asked Edward.

‘I mean you won’t be needing me any more. I – can go back to school,’ and, to head them off, Una said, ‘You see, I know quite well why I am here. It was
inconvenient at the time but I bear no malice.’

‘Of all the chits!’ exploded Edward, but for a moment Una beamed at him. ‘I hope you will be wonderfully happy.’ The beam faded. ‘Oh, Edward, don’t,
don’t . . .’ she could have cried, but he had got up. ‘I must go to the office. Goodbye, you impertinence.’ He bent and kissed her, then kissed Alix, who rose. ‘I will
see you to the car.’ She doesn’t want to be alone with me, thought Una but, when Alix came back, Una was drinking coffee, calmly eating buttered toast. ‘I must say,’ said
Alix, ‘that, as Edward says, you are loyal.’

To him, not to you, and Una said, ‘Alix, from now on you will do exactly as I wish.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘You would like me to show Edward my back? Tell him about those bottles?’ and Alix was silent. ‘For one thing we shall give up the pretence of any schooling,’ said
Una.

‘Very well.’

‘You will take Mouse for yourself.’

‘Very well.’

‘And keep out of my way.’

‘Very well.’

Una ordered Alix, ‘When you go to see your mother or if you ride,’ – Alix now sometimes rode with Edward in the early mornings or, if he were too busy,
exercised both horses in the evening – ‘you can drop me in the Lodi Gardens. The rides are dusty now. I should rather walk there.’

From the first time she had walked in them, Una had loved the Lodi Gardens; to her they were the most beautiful of Delhi’s flowering parks. She had been there with Edward, Alix and Hal,
now and again with Bulbul and Som – they liked to walk out after dinner. ‘I must have some air,’ said Som. Paths of paved stone wound under the trees, beside water channels that
opened into a pool with a fountain; the breeze scattered spray from its tall plume far across the lawns.

Even birds seemed peaceful there, waterbirds quietly wading, parakeets and mynah birds quiet too; and the peacocks kept their trains folded, the feathers glinting green and bronze while their
necks shone unbelievably blue as they pecked and scratched. It seemed an unique place for a friendly – or loving – stroll and, ‘You can fetch me on your way back,’ Una told
Alix.

‘But walk there alone?’

‘Heavens! Haven’t I been in the country nearly two months?’ And Una was not alone. There were hidden walks and oases of bougainvillaea so dense ‘that no one could see us
there, or hear if we talk quietly,’ said Ravi.

‘You are running a risk if you want to keep this secret,’ said Hem.

‘You can keep watch for us.’

‘Thank you, bloody no!’ Hem was often disagreeable these days.

‘A pity when we are so agreeable,’ said Ravi.

All the same, Hem kept watch for them. ‘Una . . . Ravi . . . The Misra’s sweeper is walking their poodle,’ and Una, alone, would stroll past, taking the sweeper’s salaam,
patting the poodle, though she did not lose sight of Ravi, waiting among the trees. When it was safe, Hem would tactfully disappear while she walked with Ravi; and into Una’s mind would come
a picture of herself in class at Cerne, serious pale Una in Cerne’s green jersey and pleated skirt, and here was this nymph, her thin dress blown against her bare legs by the breeze as she
walked hand in hand with Ravi in his deep blue kurta and fine-white-muslin salwar pyjama. It seemed to make it more real that they should walk here in daylight. ‘One day we can walk as we
please. No one need keep watch,’ said Una, yet she wondered if ever again she would know a spring like this – spring not only in the world, thought Una, spring in me.

There were some pale trees with delicate mauve and white blossom. ‘Kachnar,’ said Ravi, ‘but you must never plant one near a house or it will steal its soul.’ Una
treasured the things Ravi told her about trees and flowers, though she knew he had learnt them from Ganesh or that old gardener of the Bhattacharya’s. ‘Never pick flowers in the
evening. It is cruel to pick them then – they are going to sleep.’ ‘I wish you were a flower,’ said Ravi. ‘I would be cruel and pick you and keep you all
night.’

‘Oh Ravi! Ravi!’

Then, suddenly, one evening when she and Alix had just come in, Edward arrived home early. ‘The conference is closed. We leave tomorrow,’ he said.