Where Earth Meets Sky (10 page)

As March arrived it grew hotter. The
punkah-wallahs
began their work on the verandas, pulling fans to keep the rooms cool. And Charles Fairford decided that he was now enough of a driver to take the family out for a spin and a picnic tea. They readied the car at four, once tiffin was well digested.

The ladies appeared for the jaunt, erupting from the bungalow and across the veranda in a swirl of skirts, parasols, scarves and fidgeting children. But Sam’s eye had only interest in one detail. Was
she
coming? He was not disappointed. With a leaping heart he saw her there behind her mistress.

‘Are you ready for us, Charles?’ Susan Fairford called. ‘We can’t keep Cozzy at bay any longer!’ Isadora, it appeared, refused to get dressed and was staying behind with the
ayah
.

‘Yes, darling – all ready.’ He stood smiling, relaxed, one hand resting on the bonnet. He was wearing loose, dust-coloured clothing.

The women had dressed up for the occasion, Mrs Fairford in white, with a very wide-brimmed hat tied under her chin with diaphanous lengths of chiffon. She came sweeping across the drive, but Sam had no eyes for her. Miss Waters followed with Cosmo, who was skipping with excitement. She was dressed more or less as usual, in a long dark skirt and white blouse and a straw hat, of a more modest size than her mistress’s, with a strip of soft brown cloth tied round it, forming a bow at the back. It suited her. God, she was a beautiful woman, Sam thought. He had to tear his gaze away so as not to stare. She seemed to have taken up occupation in his mind. It was her eyes which he kept seeing, especially when he lay under the mozzie net at night: those deep, brown eyes, sad in repose, but which could change in a second into dancing life. He ached to see her smile directed at him. And then, ashamed, he would think of Helen, waiting at home to give birth to his child. Good old Helen.

Cosmo broke free from her grasp at last and ran to his father.

‘Hello there, old chap!’ Captain Fairford laughed. ‘Ready for the off?’

‘Want to go now. Can we go fast, Pater? Can I drive it?’

To begin with, Sam sat up front beside Captain Fairford, and Mrs Fairford and Miss Waters sat behind with the boy on Miss Waters’s lap, yelping with excitement.

Sam watched the captain as he released the brake and set off, steering the car through the gate to the road, face tense with concentration; Sam couldn’t help a tinge of envy at the first-class competence of the man. He had everything it took: breeding and money, no struggle to work his way into the right position like the rest of the herd. Charles Fairford had told him that the two portraits hanging either side of the fireplace in the hall were of his father and grandfather, both astride their horses in full military regalia, both also in the 12th Royal Lancers, the same cavalry regiment as himself. His father had been born shortly before the Mutiny began in 1857, to a father who was killed by cannon fire during its suppression, at the Siege of Lucknow. You could hardly compare, Sam thought, his own father, a cycle engineer, and a grandfather who had been a shopkeeper. It didn’t lift you so high up in the world’s stakes. Yet he felt a stubborn pride in them as well. They had done well, according to their position.

Steering the car along the road was easy enough, except for the erratic traffic of Indian roads, natives scurrying here and there, pedlars,
dhobis
with huge bundles of washing, native children who ran away from the car but turned to wave from a safe distance, bicycles and
tongas
, dogs and cows.

They bowled along for a time, passing some of the military administrative quarters and the parade ground. The air was lovely, and mellow afternoon light shone through the trees edging the road. Sam began to relax. The driving was not going to present any problems, and if trouble of a mechanical nature arose, he knew he could deal with anything. In fact, he half hoped that something would. Cosmo was chattering constantly with the women behind, and Sam enjoyed the sensation of knowing that if he turned his head far enough to the right he could glimpse Lily. He heard her soft replies to the boy’s questions.

‘No, Cosmo,’ he heard her say. ‘You can’t sit with Pater today. Your father needs to have the mechanic sitting there.’

Being called ‘the mechanic’ felt somehow chilling, but he reasoned that he and Miss Waters had barely exchanged more than a word. He was determined to change that.

‘We’ll be on the Grand Trunk Road soon!’ the captain said. ‘It goes all the way from Calcutta, across here to Amritsar, Lahore – right up to the Khyber Pass.’ Charles Fairford glanced at Sam quickly, then back to the road. ‘We call it the “Long Walk”. Have you read any Kipling?’

‘No,’ Sam admitted foolishly. He’d never been much of a reader.

‘Read
Kim
. It’s a marvellous yarn and he passes right through here.
Um
ballah, he calls it. He writes about the GT Road, says it’s “a river of life such as exists nowhere else in the world”. You’ll see what he means in a moment.’

Once they had turned on to the wide road, elevated a little above the surrounding fields, they were among a busy stream of carts pulled by stoical-looking white bullocks; of horses, of men and women carrying pots and bundles, some of the men stick thin and strangely dressed, faces painted with white and coloured powders.

‘Holy men,’ the captain said. ‘The road leads to Benares, one of the holiest places in India, on the Ganges.’

People working close to the edge of the fields looked up, their relative peace jarred by the roar of the engine. They passed one or two other cars also and waved at them.

No Daimlers, Sam noticed. A Wolseley and a De Dion – both fine models, of course, even if Daimler was the best. He was tuned in to how the car was running, almost as if it was part of his own body, and she was going well, especially now they were on a superior road. And once again, as with the railways, he thought, My goodness, what an achievement of the empire this is, this great road, stretching hundreds, if not thousands, of miles.

‘We’ve done them a great service here!’ he shouted to the captain.

‘Who?’ he frowned, keeping his eyes on the road.

‘Our engineer boys – putting this great road in.’

The captain glanced round, seeming amused.

‘We didn’t build this, you know! It was here long before we arrived. It was built three hundred years ago, or more, by the emperor of the time – fellow called Sher Shah Suri. He wanted to connect up his own provinces. We’ve made a few improvements, of course, but it wasn’t one of ours. There was plenty going on before we got here. British people so often forget that.’

This stung. Sam felt put in his place. But of course he
had
thought of it like that: India as a backward, primitive place that they were civilizing, with engineers and soldiers and missionaries; a blank sheet to be written upon by the British Empire.

He kept being challenged to see things with new eyes, and was beginning to realize why one could become captivated. The fields spread away on either side, flat and patched with varying shades of greens, dotted with mud huts, haystacks and trees and the movement of small, colourful figures, all dwarfed by the pale arc of the sky

‘It all looks so big.’

‘Takes getting used to,’ the captain said. ‘You’ve been bred on a small island! You should come to the mountains.’

‘I’d like to,’ Sam found himself saying, to his surprise.

He felt the women listening to their loud conversation from the back and hoped he hadn’t made too much of a fool of himself.

They happened on a picnic spot by chance, a charming spot, a clearing shrouded by several gnarled old banyans with a great many of the vine-like shoots hanging from them.

‘How lovely!’ Sam heard Miss Waters exclaim. ‘It feels almost like a church!’

But that Fairford woman had to go and sour the moment. The captain and Miss Waters were pulling out the things they had brought from the back: a modest hamper, a tarpaulin and rug, and Captain Fairford, gentlemanly as ever, began to help spread the tarpaulin on the dry mud. Susan Fairford stood by the car, adjusting her bonnet and complaining that they hadn’t thought to bring chairs. Sam was by the car, giving it a look over to check all was well, and she looked across at him and said, ‘It’s very strange for us, you see, to be out without the
native
servants to do anything!’

That’s telling you
, Sam thought. God, the insufferable snobbery of the woman! It was bad enough in England, but it seemed fossilized here. One day it would all have to be knocked down, the whole blessed system, he thought furiously. He hurried over to help Miss Waters with the tarpaulin. She was just picking up a green woollen rug to spread over it.

‘Let me help.’ He spoke rather sharply, because he was still angry.

‘Thank you.’ She stood back, as if obeying an order, and he felt apologetic then, but said nothing.

‘Miss Waters – Lily!’ Mrs Fairford cried, shrilly. ‘You must watch Cosmo – he’s already right over there, and there might be snakes! Oh, hurry up, do!’

Miss Waters looked dismayed. The boy had already toddled off some distance away.

‘Don’t you worry – I’ll go after him.’ In moments, Sam was beside Cosmo.

‘Hello, old chap,’ he coaxed. ‘We’re going to have cakes and lemonade. And afterwards, you could help me drive the car a little way.’

Cosmo’s face lit up. ‘Me drive it? Can I? Oh,
can
I?’

‘We’ll have to ask your father,’ Sam said. ‘But if I say you can sit on my lap and have a go, I expect you can drive us back to the big road.’

He had Cosmo in the palm of his hand immediately, and warmed to the child for loving something he loved too. By the time they joined the others they were friends.

Both the Fairfords were standing a short distance from the rug. The captain was enjoying the view across the fields and smoking a cheroot. The smell of it wafted pleasantly on the breeze. Mrs Fairford stood, sipping from a cup, quite near her husband, Sam thought, as if she was still preserving her rank and not wanting to sit down with the rest of them. Miss Waters, though, was seated on the rug, unpacking cakes from the hamper. Sam saw his chance and took Cosmo to sit beside her.

‘I’m going to drive the motor car!’ Cosmo burst out.

The smile which she gave the boy was still on her face when she looked up at Sam and it was the first full, unreserved smile he’d seen her give. Her lovely, though sometimes melancholy, features lifted, the brown eyes shone. That was the moment, he knew later, when he fell, if that’s what you could call it. More like being shot through the heart with no mercy or explanation.

‘You seem to have a way with children, Mr Ironside.’ The smile had faded.

‘I’m not sure that’s true.’ He sat down beside her. ‘I think this young one would do almost anything to be put behind the wheel of a motor!’

She looked astonished, but delighted as well. ‘You really are going to let him take the wheel! But how?’

‘Oh, I can guide him.’ Sam eyed the Fairfords to see if they were moving closer, but they were standing a little apart from one another in the leafy shade. Like Helen and me, he thought, startled. Not ever really close. The thought came as a shock. But he did not want to think about that: he wanted more time to talk with Miss Waters alone. Cosmo settled happily beside her and she handed him a cup to drink from.

‘How long have you been with the family?’ he asked.

Immediately the words were out, he sensed a change in her, as if a veil, which had been lifted just a second, came down again. He did not feel she was unfriendly, but there was guardedness about the way she spoke which puzzled him. He tried to guess her age but it would have been hard to say. Perhaps like himself, just of age?

‘I’ve been here almost two years,’ she said, stroking Cosmo’s head of curls. ‘They wanted a European nanny for the children, but of course, with Isadora being the way she is, they have had to keep Srimala – the
ayah
. She’s been so very good with Izzy. She looked after both of them for a time – and the baby . . .’ She hesitated, then, to Sam’s surprise, glanced round to see if they were overheard, then whispered, ‘There was another child. Two years after Izzy. She died at eight months. That’s why Mrs Fairford is so . . . particular. They think it was water, or some milk she was given. It makes her very nervous about what they eat and drink.’ Sam could see this was a plea for Susan Fairford, as if she had seen his dislike and wanted to say, she’s not so bad really. ‘It has made her nervous about everything.’

‘I suppose it would,’ he said, looking back into her eyes. God, she was lovely, that was all he could think about. Being a man, and with such slim experience of these things then, he didn’t appreciate the impact of such things: childbirth, the death of a baby, or what they can build or destroy between a man and woman.

‘And you like it here?’

‘Oh
yes
!’ She looked up from arranging little cakes on a plate edged with flowers. The way her eyes moved, that flicker of the lashes, captivated him further. ‘I
do
. I liked India straight away. And I’ve been able to do so many things – like being able to ride. I suppose you’re riding with the captain? I’ve never seen you.’