Where Earth Meets Sky (13 page)

‘Oh, well that
is
good news.’

‘Yes.’ She looked up for a second and gave him another faint smile, but then dropped her eyes again, seeming filled with confusion. There was a terrible silence in which both of them were at a loss. But then she seemed to collect herself. Looking across at him, she said, ‘How long will you be staying with the Fairfords altogether?’

‘It was envisaged that I’d be here for up to six weeks. The captain has taken to the driving and looking after the car like a duck to water, so I can’t imagine it will be more.’ Sam kept talking, out of his own nerves. ‘Strictly speaking, we ought to make a longer trip since he is thinking of taking it on tour. It can be a problem here, you see – what the roads do to the tyres, for a start. The good roads,
pukka
, I suppose they’d say here, like the Grand Trunk Road – they’re made of laterite. It’s a metallic material, lots of iron in it, and if it breaks up – well, you’ve got trouble: knife-edged bits of road that slash the tyres to pieces. And of course another thing is all those bullock carts. Get a whole train of those going along a laterite road and you’ve got eight-inch ruts. It’s not the rainy season now, but when it comes, the water washes the ruts out and Bob’s your uncle – knife edges again! Your tyres go and your inner tubes . . . We need to get out there and try it all out a bit more. And that’s only one thing . . .’

He was about to launch into a catalogue of other besetting problems of dust and accumulator leakage but caught himself in time. Why was he prattling on in this crazed fashion about something a woman would have not the least interest in?

‘Sorry,’ he said foolishly. ‘I get a bit carried away when you get me on to cars.’

But she smiled then, seeming more comfortable.

‘I’ve heard. Mrs Fairford says you’re like an endlessly babbling stream on the subject. Oh!’ She blushed deeply, putting her hand to her mouth. ‘How terribly bad mannered of me to repeat that! I’m so sorry!’

‘It’s all right,’ he laughed. ‘I’m surprised she didn’t say something even worse. I don’t think she takes to me very much.’

The look on Lily’s face and her lack of denial of this made him laugh more. He didn’t need her to tell him of Susan Fairford’s snobbish attitude to him!

‘Tell you what,’ he said impulsively. ‘D’you fancy a spin now?’

‘You can’t, can you?’ she looked alarmed. ‘Just take the car out as you like?’

‘Don’t see why not.’ He was all for getting to his feet. ‘Just round the roads again, maybe?’

‘No – really, I can’t. I’m supposed to be keeping an eye on Cosmo. Today especially. I really should be in there now.’

‘Of course.’ Sam sat back. ‘How silly of me.’

They sat for a few more moments, talking of day-today things about the household, laughing about the sour-faced Mussulman cook, but Sam was in an agony. Time felt as if it was rushing by so fast and he wanted to say things to her, loving, affectionate things, but he could not seem to begin. A few moments later he saw Hassan stirring in his sleep as if he might wake. How difficult it was to be alone!

Leaning forwards he spoke to her urgently. ‘Last night, Lily – what I said to you. I meant it, you know. Every word. Ever since I’ve been here in Ambala I have noticed you and wanted to know you better. If I was here for longer it might be different, but there isn’t much time . . .’

She looked pleased, or worried, or both. But her eyes told him: she wanted him too, he knew it! God, he was in a state. It was the very look of her. And it wasn’t how it had felt with Helen (whom he kept trying not to think about). Lily had such a full, graceful figure, and my goodness he’d have loved to take her in his arms, but it wasn’t the same animal sort of desire he’d had before bedding Helen. That was there too, of course, he couldn’t deny it, but it was more like adoration. He wanted to kneel before her, have her take his head and rest it on her full breast.

Breathing in deeply, he said, ‘I’ve never met anyone like you before, Lily. You must think me very forward, rude, even, but you just . . . You captivate me. I don’t know what else to say . . .’

She was watching him intently and her face showed confusion, as if there was a struggle going on, which he could not make sense of in this beautiful woman who was at once so bold and so shy.

‘You’re very kind,’ she said, looking down into her lap, where her hands were tightly clasped. ‘You really are, Mr . . . Sam. I don’t know what to say. Except that . . .’ And she looked very directly at him, her dark eyes intense. ‘You don’t want to know me. I don’t have any background – nothing to offer . . .’

What was this nonsense she was talking? It made him feel abundantly tender towards her.

‘If you’re not worth knowing,’ he teased gently, ‘then why have you come out here to see me?’

She sighed, seeming remote. ‘I don’t know. Because I wanted to . . . Very much.’

Sam felt like a man meeting a roe deer at the edge of a clearing: that he must not move, hardly breathe, because it would leap back at his slightest twitch. He longed to reach out and take her hand, but he held back, full of respect for her and said gently, ‘Well, I’m glad of that, at least.’

She was beginning to smile, and said, ‘You’re not like anyone I’ve ever . . .’ when there came a moaning cry from inside, and she leaped up, murmuring, ‘Cosmo! I’m sorry – I must go!’ and was away along the veranda.

Her cry roused young Hassan, who sat up blearily and began to pull on the
punkah
, trying to look as if he had been doing precisely that all the time.

Isadora was writhing on her bed, screaming and tearing at her red, flayed skin.

‘
Ayah
– the calamine lotion. Where is it, you silly girl? Oh, Izzy, be quiet, for the love of God!’ Susan Fairford was close to tears as she tried to quieten her flailing daughter. ‘
Stop
it, Isadora! Oh, Lily, what’s going to become of her?’ she wailed despairingly.

Lily fetched the jar of calamine lotion and handed it to Srimala. Every year Isadora suffered terribly from prickly heat as soon as the winter was over, and these distressing scenes had repeated themselves since she was very young. Lily knew it was the time Susan Fairford dreaded the most.

‘It’s all right,’ Lily soothed her mistress. ‘You know how it is – the lotion will help a little.’

‘Oh God . . . If we could just get up to Simla, away from this godforsaken place . . .’ Susan Fairford sank down on the nursery chair, putting her head in her hands.

‘What is it?’ Lily knelt down, looking up into her face. She knew Susan well, her despair over not being able to love Isadora, her grief for the little girl whose life had fluttered away in her arms when she was only eight months old, and her sense of never being a good enough mother to Cosmo. Haunting her also was the knowledge that whatever she did or said, once he was five he would be torn away from her. Susan had, over time, allowed Lily to see her at her most emotionally raw – and, as well as the children, there was the pain of her marriage.

‘I don’t even know where he is!’ she sobbed one night, in Lily’s arms when Charles had disappeared again after dinner. He had also not visited her room for any intimate contact for a long time. Susan was a woman who hungered for love and for understanding, and weeks could go by without his ever requiring such union with her.

‘Charles only married me because he knew it was the form to have a wife. I was really the only girl he knew,’ she told Lily when she was a little calmer. ‘My brother was at Eton with him – they educated Lewis, of course. They hadn’t the funds for Audrey and me. I met Charles when I went to a prize-giving. The first time I saw him he was standing under a pink blossom tree and he looked like a god! I remember I thought he was very handsome and charming, but we hardly knew each other. And I suppose he just thought I was suitable. He was supposed to choose a wife from home and I was the first resort rather than the fishing fleet.’

The ‘fishing fleet’ consisted of girls who caught the steamers to India for the winter season in search of eligible men to marry, and the love-starved bachelors of the army and police, the trades and civil service were all expected to take their pick. The disappointed fisher girls would have to get back on a boat home at the end of the season, still single and without prospects.

‘I don’t know if he even likes me, quite honestly,’ Susan told Lily despairingly that night.

‘Of course he does,’ Lily said. She was baffled by the whole situation. ‘He’s always so nice to you!’

‘He’s
polite
to me,’ Susan retorted. ‘Of course, we can both put on a good show. But other than that, he’d rather be in the mess, where he’s got the men round him. He needed me to have children, of course. I was his brood mare. But now he’s got the son he wanted, he hardly ever comes anywhere near me. And I feel so
useless
. Some days I just can’t bear the thought of life going on and on like this . . .’

Lily knew now that so much of Susan Fairford’s tense, angry manner arose through her unhappiness and that there was a lonely, girlish person inside. Today she seemed close to despair.

‘I’m not much of a mother,’ she said flatly, staring at her lap as Srimala struggled with Isadora. ‘You’d think I could manage at least to get that part right, wouldn’t you?’

‘Oh, dear Susan,’ Lily said, taking her hand. ‘Cozzy, do come and see your mater and cheer her up.’

Cosmo approached, wide-eyed. He was really more used to Lily’s company and was slightly in awe of his mother, but he did as Lily bade him and came and took Susan’s hand.

‘I don’t feel well,’ Susan admitted.

‘You go and have a lie down,’ Lily encouraged her.

‘Oh, I get so weary with it all,’ Susan said, dragging herself to her feet. ‘This climate, all these sicknesses. I just ache to be at home so much I think sometimes I’ll die of it.’

Lily took Cosmo out on the lawn. She had a big parasol and they sat in the shadow of the tamarind trees, but unlike Susan Fairford, she mostly didn’t mind the heat. She had taken some story books and Cosmo sat beside her on a rug, looking at pictures of animals. Susan insisted that he learn the names of British birds and flowers, although he was surrounded by an almost completely different flora and fauna. He sat in the crook of her arm saying, ‘That’s a robin’ or ‘a blackbird’, as if they were wildly exotic species from another world.

Lily listened with less than half her mind to Cosmo’s reading. She had come outside because she knew that Sam might appear in the quiet time after tiffin and that sooner or later Cosmo would drift off into a nap and they might be alone. And more than anything she longed to be alone with Sam Ironside.

She had never met anyone like him before, and she had certainly never felt like this before. She could think of nothing else these days: of his intense gaze which seemed to burn into her each time they met. She had felt it even before he spoke to her, the way he watched her. She loved his strong, impatient walk, and his love of the Daimler and expertise when anything went wrong. She loved the fact that he was funny and kind. That night they had taken Cosmo to Dr Fothergill’s, she had felt the electric atmosphere between them and found herself more and more affected by him. But she was afraid. Anyone else whom she had even come close to loving had died or disappeared. How could she let herself feel for this man? Yet, when he declared that he loved her, her whole heart and soul longed to answer. Someone loved her! This handsome, interesting man loved her – and she loved him back! Since that night nothing had been the same and, despite her fear, she had fallen more and more deeply in love.

Of course he soon appeared. He knew she would be there, and they could not keep away from each other.

‘Motor-car man!’ Cosmo enthused, seeing a movement at the side of the house.

‘Motor car’ had been one of his first words, very precisely pronounced.

‘Oh yes!’ Lily said, trying not to sound too excited as Sam strode towards them.

‘Hello, young fellow!’ He sat down on the rug beside them and, with mock formality, he doffed his hat and added, ‘Afternoon, Miss Waters.’

‘Good afternoon.’ She tried to sound sober but could not stop the joyful smile which took full possession of her face. He was here, at last!

They sat talking in the quiet afternoon, but Cosmo was not going to be left out.

‘Story! Story!’ he demanded. He loved to hear any tales of motoring exploits.

‘Oh, all right then,’ Sam laughed. ‘Let’s see now. What about the Thousand Miles Trial, eh? That was a good one! You see, Cozzy, when new cars are built they have to be put through their paces to see how fast they can go and whether they can climb hills and so on. So there are all sorts of races and trials to test them. So to test a car over a thousand miles is a very big test!’

Cosmo listened, rapt. They knew he would only understand a fraction of what Sam was saying, but he listened with absolute attention.

‘Just a few years ago – nineteen hundred it was – sixty-five motor cars and motorcycles all met in Hyde Park – that’s in London, Cozzy. There were Napiers and MMCs and Daimlers, of course, and all the foreigners, De Dions, Panhards, Benz . . . They all set off to do a thousand miles – west to a big city called Bristol and then north to Birmingham, Manchester . . .’ He smiled at Cosmo’s fascinated expression. ‘And there were all sorts of mishaps, I can tell you! One fellow had the brakes fail and d’you know how he stopped his car? It was a Daimler like your pa’s, as well – and he ran it backwards into a wall! And there was another good story about a Daimler: a chap called Grahame-White bust up his steering gear by running into a ditch. So, you’ll never guess what he did.’