To The Coral Strand Read online

  ‘Yes, but no one else did. I wouldn’t have.’

  No, Frances thought, you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t want to push in on a stranger, even though his ideas might possibly produce business. You would remember that you were in the Shipping Department and this was the Coal Department’s pigeon - if it was anyone’s. You wouldn’t risk wasting time you might have spent with a fishing rod. Sensibly, you would have worked out that the chances were a thousand to one against, and you would have been right. Rodney was just lucky.

  ‘The truth is,’ John continued, ‘I am far more likely than you are to be in the first 75 per cent sacked.’

  Rodney said, ‘You can count me out of the musical chairs. I wrote to Graham yesterday, resigning my ... commission in the Imperial Army of Scottish Merchants Trading to the East Indies.’

  ‘You did!’ Frances exclaimed. She laid down her book and gave up the pretence of reading. She smiled warmly at him. Since arriving in Delhi the day before yesterday he had said nothing about her letter. She had been afraid to broach the subject. Rodney was not a man you gave ultimatums to lightly. That was one of the things she liked about him. When they were married, there would be no doubt who wore the trousers. She despised henpecked husbands.

  ‘I did,’ Rodney said. He poured himself a stiff whisky with very little soda. Frances frowned. That was his third already. It was Sunday morning, yes, but hardly half past eleven yet. He was drinking much more than he used to. That was India again. It had a terrible effect on people.

  Rodney said, ‘Roy or no Roy, I’m not going to work for a Marwari-owned firm. I’m not saying they’ll be more corrupt than us, or less efficient. I’m just saying they’ll be different, in method and outlook and thought. I’m too old to change my whole personality.’

  There was silence. Now should she ask, Frances wondered, now should she ask the obvious question - what are you going to do? Better let John ask it, she decided. A few minutes later he did. Frances waited, her hands tensed in her lap.

  Rodney answered with another question. He said, ‘Do you know what kind of jobs M.P. are going to offer us in England?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ John said, ‘but it’s not hard to guess. Something in the City. They’re connected with investment banks and shipping. I imagine we’d have to spend a year or two as glorified office boys, until we find our own level. You needn’t worry.’

  Rodney sat with head thrown back, staring up at the leaves. London, she thought. If he has to go to the City to work, I suppose we’d start in a semi-detached house in one of those ghastly suburbs you get to from London Bridge or Holborn Viaduct. It wouldn’t take Rodney long to reach the top, though, and then they could move out to Surrey. Or perhaps Buckinghamshire. A big house that looked old but wasn’t, with decent plumbing ... a garden with a high wall round it; a tennis court; quiet, leafy roads, errand boys on bicycles, whistling, but not yelling at each other; voices that were never raised, and meat that tasted like meat; peace, and decency, and a soft light, air that did not feel as though they were rubbing sandpaper into your skin; the windows open winter and summer, no snakes or dust storms or howling monsoon rains flooding the drive and turning the lawn into a lake and carrying dead rats down the open drainage ditches ... Her eyes slipped into focus and she found she was staring at the mali. He was squatting over the zinnia bed, the hose in his hand.

  ‘Not now!’ she called. ‘Nahin, nahin! Pichche ... When the sun’s off them.’

  The mali salaamed and dragged the hose somewhere else. How often have I told him? she thought. They don’t listen. Rodney was looking at her, frowning as though in thought. I ought to have learned better Hindustani in my time here, she thought. But I didn’t want to.

  Rodney said, ‘Come out for a drive, Frances. We’ll be back for lunch.’

  She stood up at once. ‘Wait a minute while I change my shoes.’

  She went to her room and looked at herself in the mirror. A little more lipstick, smarter shoes, and ... that dress looked dowdy. She changed quickly into a blue linen suit.

  Rodney was waiting in the driver’s seat of the huge old Bentley. That was a terrible waste of money, she thought. She hoped he wouldn’t try to take it home. Besides costing a fortune in petrol it was rather flashy - not like an American car but ... just too much. It would create a bad impression in England, especially in the kind of place they’d have to live in at first.

  Rodney turned into the road and trod on the accelerator. The warm air rushed past and she put her hand to her head as her hair began to shake loose. Faster yet, the engine making a continuous burbling roar, bicyclists all over the road as usual, talking, hands on each other’s shoulder, never looking where they were going, never thinking of giving a signal...

  ‘Rodney!’ she cried. ‘Please go slower. It’s not safe here in Delhi.’

  Rodney whipped the Bentley round a traffic circle in a long, squealing skid, hurling gravel far out on to the grass lawns beyond. He slowed down. ‘You are quite right,’ he said gravely.

  She tried to pat her hair back into place. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘The Red Fort,’ he said.

  She felt a small twinge of unease. The Red Fort was very imposing, no one could deny that. It was not picturesque, like an English castle - it was just huge, with a gigantic wall all the way round. He would want to walk about inside it, among the formal gardens and mosques. If only he’d told her, she would have put on a pair of wedgies instead of these heels.

  The car slipped noisily through the teeming traffic and soon drew up in the parking area outside the main entrance to the Fort. After helping her out Rodney stood awhile, gazing up at the Congress flag tugging gently at its staff. Then he walked on fast. She hurried to catch up with him, and laid her hand on his arm to slow him down. Sikh sentries stood stiff as ramrods, bayonets fixed on their rifles, beside the entrance. She thought Rodney would speak to the sergeant and other men standing nearby - he usually did, when he met Indian soldiers - but he passed without even looking.

  Inside the arched gate they walked down the middle of a high- roofed bazaar. On either side shopkeepers called, and thrust out examples of their wares. Files of school-children scurried by, shepherded by young teachers in cheap, pretty saris. There was an overpowering smell of jasmine perfume.

  Rodney said, ‘You don’t want to stay in India.’

  She tightened her hand on his arm. What a place he’d chosen to speak about something so terribly important. She had rehearsed, many times, what she would say when this moment came. Now she found she had to search for words , and go very carefully. She said, ‘I - honestly, Rod, I don’t. I haven’t been here long enough. Lots of people say you always spend your first five years hating India. I don’t know enough, the way you do. It can’t be home for either of us, of course ... but it’s been, well, a special place for you ... Not for me.’ She hesitated and then got it out in a rush: ‘It can’t be such a special place for you any more now, can it? Darling, I do know what you feel, but there isn’t anything else we can do, now, is there?’ He did not answer, and she said again, ‘Is there?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, there is,’ he said. ‘The question is not Can, but Will. I’m still not certain what I’m going to do. I’ve never felt like this before in my life. I will do something, I mean I will make a decision - but I don’t have any idea what it will be or what will cause it.’

  He looked down at her, his face suddenly inquiring and almost anxious. ‘Do you love me?’ he asked.

  She ought to cry out, ‘Of course I do, I love you, I love you!’ She could not say the words. She said, ‘I don’t think I honestly know what love is, Rod. I’ve never lost my appetite, or not been able to sleep, or felt simply swept away ... the things that are supposed to happen to people.’

  They were passing under another huge arch of pink stone, walking down wide steps on to a gravelled walk between green lawns. ‘I respect you,’ she muttered, ‘I like you, more than any man I’ve ever met. I know that I will come
to love you ... and surely that’s the only real love, the kind that comes slowly, after years, by living together and having affection and respect and - and mutual interests?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  She cried, ‘But that’s why we became engaged! I never pretended. I could have!’

  ‘No, you never pretended,’ he said wearily. ‘It is entirely my fault.’

  I should have lied, she thought in anguish. It’s no use trying to be honest with men, not even Rodney. She would love him, it would come, deep, true, real love ... but how was she to pretend to have a ‘fever’, to shiver and shake and yearn, when she felt nothing of the kind - now? And the small nervous voice inside her whispered, I don’t want to shiver and shake and yearn and be miserable...

  She must be sensible ... He didn’t like cities much. He was an open-air man. He liked mountains and sea. Perhaps it was the idea of the City, and suburbia, that was weighing on him. ‘You don’t have to take a McFadden Pulley job in London,’ she said, speaking rapidly. ‘We could go to Cornwall. Or Devon. Or Somerset. Don’t ex-army officers often become chief constables of counties? ... We could have a boat in Fowey, and a cottage on Bodmin Moor. You’ve talked a lot about Cornwall... the gorse on the cliff paths, the wonderful beaches ... Tintagel...’

  Rodney had stopped. He was looking at a white mosque close in front of them. He said aloud, ‘If there be a heaven on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here.’

  She tugged at his sleeve. ‘Rodney ...’

  He said, still gazing at the mosque, ‘This is the Pearl Mosque, the Moti Masjid. Which Mogul emperor had those lines inscribed? Was it here or at Shalimar? “If there be a heaven on earth … “ ’

  She cried, ‘But oh, Rod, it isn’t, not any more, not for you!’

  Rodney began to walk round the mosque, his head up and turned, examining it. Before she could catch him or warn him he had walked into a party of Indians coming in the other direction, knocking one man down.

  Rodney glanced at the man as he struggled to get up. It looked like a cold, supercilious stare, but Frances knew that really there was no emotion in it of any kind. Rodney’s feelings were somewhere else. He had not yet realised that it was he standing there, he who had knocked the man down.

  The man was on his feet, dusting off his dhoti and adjusting the Gandhi cap on his mane of grey hair. He was a dark-visaged man with a heavy, square face, thin lips, and deep-set eyes. He snapped, in good but accented English, ‘Do you expect Indians to hurry out of your way, still? There is Independence here now, you know.’

  Rodney said, ‘I didn’t see you.’ In another second, she was sure, he would have apologised, but the Indian didn’t give him time: ‘Because you are drunk! I can smell the whisky on your breath from here.’

  The others of the group, two men and a pretty, languid woman, stood a little back and behind the speaker, as she stood behind Rodney.

  Rodney said, ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, shut up, and go away.’

  One of the other men stepped forward pompously. ‘Do you realise who you are insulting? This gentleman is L. P. Roy, M.L.A.’

  Rodney stared at L. P. Roy, and bowed slowly. Straightening up, he said, ‘And I am Rodney Savage, O.B.E., M.C.’

  Frances watched, anxious yet aware of a warm glow of certainty. This must convince him.

  The two men examined each other, the Indian tensed and angry, the Englishman loose, staring down, grinning with teeth bared.

  Roy suddenly relaxed. He said, ‘An employee of McFadden Pulley, I think. I saw your name on the list in the prospectus. Well, I am on the board to see that people like you do not continue to fatten on India.’

  Rodney took her arm under his and walked away, towards the outer wall. Here, on a wide walk, marble water channels, but empty, ran under gateways of marble carved with such delicacy that they seemed to be made of lace. Rodney said, ‘The women of the emperors sat here. The water flowed in the channels then, green and cool. The emperor sat on the gaddi on that marble bench, facing the crowd, some of them in the open and some under the pillars in the shade ... Now, you must see how impossible it is.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t go. I will fight.’

  She felt weak, and sat down on a bench. A passing Indian couple examined her curiously. Below her the wall dropped sheer for fifty feet. The ground down there was bare and brown and dusty, covered with thorn scrub. Ragged strips of canvas spread from thorn to thorn made a little shade for a gipsy family engaged in cooking their meal. Black-and-brown goats wandered among the thorn, standing on their hind legs to pluck leaves from the higher branches. Beyond, the haze of heat enveloped the view in a grey pall that united earth and sky.

  He said, ‘I have asked you to marry me. But we will stay in India.’

  He stood beside her, but still not looking at her. He looked out over the land, to which he seemed to be speaking.

  She was desperate for a place as a married woman. She could say yes, and hope he would change his mind.

  The land out there, and the sky, and the grey haze densely enveloping them both, was hot and uncomfortable, full of dust. Sun and glare, anger and lust, and starved women lying dead in the gutter. She could not do it. There was no happiness here for her.

  ‘Just because an Indian insulted you,’ she said heavily. ‘You’re mad, Rodney.’ She gathered strength. ‘What are you going to fight? The Indian Government? L. P. Roy? You can’t win. They’ll break you, and the longer you hang on the worse it will be ... John bends, but you won’t. You’ll break.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said; ‘there’s always that chance.’ He spoke as though going into a battle, acknowledging the possibility of death. ‘Have you fallen in love with someone else?’ she asked suddenly.

  He said, ‘I have loved two other women. Hopeless cases from the beginning. I have met another. A generous, curious woman. I could manage to forget her if I left India.’

  ‘Then...’

  ‘Would you arrange to forget your right eye? Leave it behind on a hilltop and walk away?’

  ‘If it hurt enough.’

  He shrugged. ‘That’s the eye I see beauty with, and everything that’s valuable and wonderful. The other one’s for earning my living, protecting myself, all the necessary, material things.’

  She burst out, ‘How can you ask me to marry you if you are in love with someone else?’

  He said, ‘You are not promising me your love, are you? Respect and affection, remember? I can give you that ... And, I told you, I do not love her - yet. Thank God. It looks like another hopeless case. But it’s possible that I shall. It won’t be the first time love has grown out of sex.’

  She felt cold. ‘Did you ... have her?’

  He said, ‘Yes. After I got your letter. She is stimulating, and independent, and her views on sexuality are original. Well, I suppose they’re not really, they’re just old-fashioned - Hindu old- fashioned - but not immoral. She has no morals, of that kind.’

  ‘Did you say ... Is she an Indian?’

  He turned then and looked at her. His expression was very sad.

  He said, ‘You were on the point of saying “native”, weren’t you? And meaning it ... My poor Frances, you should never have met me. Yes, she’s Indian.’

  Frances groaned. Indian women. Natives. Of course, she had met scores of them socially, beautifully dressed, sophisticated, charming . . . and never been able to erase from her mind the idea that they were only disguised and painted sisters of the dark dirty beggar women with the matted hair, and the brown and wrinkled sweeper witches who cleaned the filth from the streets.

  Rodney said, ‘If we marry I shall stay physically faithful to you. But it must be in India. I can live without physical union with this woman - and others - but I cannot live without the atmosphere wherein they exist - this air, this dust, these smells, these skies ... We’d better go back. It’s nearly lunchtime.’

  ‘Lunch!’ she cried, but she got up. An American with a funny whit
e cap was staring at her. She walked at Rodney’s side, drying her tears with the back of her hand.

  So it was sex. She had known from the beginning that Rodney was supposed to be a great lady’s man. When he began to pay her attention she expected an early attempt at seduction. She had been glad, and delightfully surprised, that he had made no such attempt either before or during their engagement. She would not have agreed, anyway. She was a virgin and meant to remain one until they were married; but he had not even tried. Even his kisses had always been gentle and proper. She had seen nothing of the Casanova in him ... but it must have been there all the time, held in check by God knows what will power, if he was desperate enough to turn to Indians. Had she driven him to such a thing? He must be frantic. If they did get married, she’d have to live with and assuage this beastly, animal side of him ... yet she could not, would not give up the idea of marriage. Marriage was her only goal in life. No one but Rodney had asked her. She was twenty-nine.

  She drew a deep breath and said, ‘Rod ... we don’t know each other...’

  ‘Eh? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear.’

  She felt the hot flush covering her face and neck. She couldn’t talk about it, she just couldn’t. But she could do it.

  She sat preoccupied, trying to conceal her trembling, during the drive back to the house at the far end of New Delhi. Before lunch she quickly downed two pink gins. John looked at her with eyebrows raised, for normally she never drank during the daytime; but Rodney did not notice. During the traditional curry and rice meal - why must we have it every Sunday? she thought - she drank two gin and tonics. Afterwards, still queasy at the stomach but exhilarated and determined in mind, she caught her brother’s arm and muttered, ‘Take a drive, John. A long one. Rod and I have to talk.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, all right.’ Now it was John who blushed and she thought crossly: the wretch! Does he think I do this all the time, that I can’t wait till bedtime now that Rod’s back, even after what presumably happened last night? But of course, with Rod’s reputation, that’s probably what he did think.