‘I didn’t know they ever lived in,’ said Hal.
‘Who?’
‘Love women.’
She and Una had separated the night before without another word and Una still felt she could not speak. At breakfast Hal had looked from Edward to Alix, Alix to Edward until Edward had asked, ‘What is the matter, Hal? Haven’t you seen us before?’ at which Hal went scarlet, Una white. ‘If they had had any sense they would have guessed we had seen them,’ Hal said afterwards, but Edward was too jovial to notice, while about Alix there was a quiet arrogance; it showed in the way she spoke to Dino, told Hal to sit up. ‘You are too old to fidget.’ Now Una was changing for dinner and Hal had come into her room.
‘And I thought it might be Vikram,’ said Una bitterly.
‘It probably is,’ said Hal, ‘as well. Men need women. Sushila and I were talking about it the other day; her father has dozens.’
‘Hal! You don’t know . . .’
‘Sushila should. Una, you’re so innocent!’ Hal was bouncing up and down on the bed. ‘All the same, I think we should keep Alix. At least she is interesting and fun. Suppose she had been some prissy old governess. Why, we might have found a Crackers!’
‘Don’t!’ Una cried out as if Hal had said something unbearable. For her it had been a tragic day.
As she had guessed, on Edward’s coming back, the schoolroom table had been made ready on the verandah. ‘It will be pleasant to work out here,’ said Alix, and it had certainly begun pleasantly. Una had been glad to feel her books, her work-tools, under her hands again; then, ‘Where are your exercise books from Cerne?’ asked Alix.
‘We didn’t do exercises exactly – not in the senior school. We made notes and did our studies on file papers like these.’
‘Oh!’ Alix had looked swiftly through them and as swiftly closed them. ‘Very impressive, Una,’ she said, ‘but we shall have to do things my way.’ Una was silent and, ‘No two teachers are alike, are they?’ Alix had asked. Una had not answered but her hands under the table had been pressed tightly together.
‘Were you praying?’ asked Hal.
‘It wasn’t much use if I was.’
Today we did dictée. In her diary, Hal noted down everything Alix ordained. We did arithmetic revision.
‘But that’s Hal’s book,’ Una had said when Alix gave her the exercise.
‘Una, I find you conceited.’
‘Well, you shouldn’t be so cocky,’ Hal told her afterwards. ‘You made plenty of mistakes in your dictée.’
‘Because she went too fast. She wanted me to make mistakes.’ Una had to write them out ten times. ‘Like a baby,’ she said, writhing. As the week went on, her dismay deepened.
Alix read us Appreciation of Mozart. Una guessed it was from one of her old papers at the conservatoire. ‘Well – if it was?’We did Indian history from the book Crackers gave Una, dreadfully boring, but then we went into the kitchen to Christopher who taught us to make prawn koftas. Yum! Yum! We did English Essay and World Literature.
There had almost been open trouble over the world literature. ‘I have a beautiful book,’ Alix had said. ‘It opens with the first books in the world, scratchings on rocks, or clay tablets, then on papyrus, up to the present day.’
‘Does it include the Indian epics?’ Una was interested.
‘It may include them but it is more important to read what the world has written. I collected this outline in magazine numbers,’ Alix said proudly.
‘Magazine?’ Crackers’s ‘Don’t be a schoolgirl snob’ echoed in Una’s ears. But . . . but . . . she thought.
‘What is the matter, Una?’
‘For literature one needs books.’
‘Isn’t this a book?’
‘Of course it is,’ said Hal. ‘The pictures are splendid.’
‘Thank you, Hal.’
Hal, nowadays, was no help to Una; from that moment on the verandah, when she had seen them, for Hal, Edward and Alix had a rosy aureole of romance. ‘Alix really is lovely,’ she said to Una. ‘Have you seen her with her hair down?’
‘I expect I will,’ said Una wearily.
We went riding, chronicled Hal. Snowball bucked me off but Alix did not mind. Alix took us to polo. Alix is teaching me Funiculi Funicula on the mandolin. Alix . . . Alix . . .
The lessons suited Hal exactly, especially the singing and cooking with Christopher. ‘He says I’m a natural cook.’
‘A natural greedy,’ but Una hardly had the heart to tease and she knew Hal was not listening.
‘My koftas turned out perfectly this time,’ she said. ‘When I marry Vikram he will be surprised.’
‘Don’t be silly. You won’t marry Vikram or he you,’ but things Hal said had a way of coming true and Una would not be surprised.
We did dictée. Dictée seemed to be Alix’s refuge. Today we looked at photographs of books written on papyrus and of The Book of the Dead . . .
‘It sounds interesting,’ said Lady Srinevesan after one of her cross-examinations of Una.
‘It is, but . . .’ and Una was inspired to say, ‘It’s all sugar biscuits and I need bones. Bones!’ said Una desperately.
‘Her French isn’t sugar.’
‘Damn her French.’ Lady Srinevesan was caught unawares by Una’s passion, but, ‘There is nothing,’ Mrs Carrington could have told her, ‘more likely to be furious than a young thing frustrated.’ ‘If it wasn’t for Alix’s French,’ Una yearned to say, ‘Edward wouldn’t have been taken in’ – or would he?
We did needlework, wrote faithful Hal. ‘I’m not asking you to make buttonholes or do darning,’ said Alix.
‘They would at least be useful,’ muttered Una. Alix had bought embroidery frames and found tapestry designs. ‘The chair seat is for Una to make and Hal, this little stool cover is for you.’ Alix spread out the silks. ‘Well?’
‘I like the colours,’ said Una, ‘but . . .’
‘I don’t want any “buts”.’ Alix was crisp. ‘Put the canvas in your frames and start.’ ‘I’m afraid Una objects,’ she told Edward that night.
‘Nonsense. Girls ought to learn to sew.’
‘It isn’t sewing,’ said Una. ‘Edward, do I have to do it?’
‘You will do as Alix tells you.’
‘But Dads . . .’ That private name was only used in moments of real appeal. ‘This is fancy work and there are so many serious subjects I ought to be doing in the time.’
‘But are you the best judge?’ He came and sat beside her and gently put back her hair.
‘Mrs Carrington said it.’ Una was dogged.
‘Mrs Carrington has one person’s point of view. There are others.’ He kept his patience. ‘Una, I do know how hard it is to change methods and schools . . .’
‘You don’t. You didn’t have to. You went straight on. Dads, at Cerne . . .’ She knew she was estranging him again; he had seen Alix’s gesture of despair when she heard the name Cerne and, ‘At Cerne it seems they have made you into an ambitious little prig,’ he said.
Tears pricked Una’s eyes but she held them back. ‘If you can be ambitious, why can’t I?’ but, before she could speak, ‘I am not going to have this, Una. Understand?’ said Edward. ‘Understand?’
Una was beginning to understand – only too well.
Today we did Appreciation of Bach – I don’t appreciate him, wrote Hal. Una had dictée. I found the same dictée in an old book of Alix’s labelled Sainte Marie High School for Girls, Pondicherry. She has been using her old books for us.
Alix had not been pleased. ‘You two ought to have been detectives,’ she said.
‘You left them in the table drawer,’ Una pointed out. ‘Besides, they hardly apply to us.’
‘Why not?’ Alix’s colour had come up; her voice had risen too.
Una did not answer.
‘Why not? Una, I want to know.’
‘They are old-fashioned – and limited, if you want to know.’ Una said it deliberately.
‘Limited?’
‘Yes. If we had stayed at Cerne,’ Una went on, ‘I should have sat my Additional Mathematics at the end of this year. Here, in two weeks, we haven’t done one hour, not one hour, of maths.’
‘Indeed we have,’ said Alix. ‘Haven’t we been revising your arithmetic . . .?’
‘Decimals, fractions, percentages. I did those when I was nine. I need mathematics, Alix, pure and applied.’
‘Pure and applied . . .’ Alix’s voice rose higher and, below the verandah, a dark head with a red cloth tied round it looked up from the flowerbed.
‘Pure and applied mathematics and Latin as well as your French. There are examinations, Alix.’
‘Examinations are not the be-all and end of everything.’
‘No, but they may be the beginning. I want to go to university . . .’
‘Want, always want,’ said Alix. ‘What you want, Una, regardless of anyone else. Couldn’t you think of Edward? Of Hal? Of me?’
‘Don’t you want things – all of you? Of course you do.’ Una still spoke quietly, but her eyes were dangerously green. ‘Anything else is cant.’
‘Una, you had better stop. Stop now,’ Hal whispered urgently.
‘I can’t stop,’ but Una found that, oddly, she was out of breath.
Ravi waited with interest. There was something in the way this foreign little creature stood up to the Mem that found a fellowship in him – he had not forgotten Alix’s ferocity with the durzi and, ‘That girl is brave,’ he told Hem afterwards.
Then Alix spoke, not with the force she had used on the durzi, but as if Una were an animal that might bite. ‘Una, I – I sympathize . . . and I will see what I can do, if you will settle for a little interlude of . . . less ambition.’
‘Una, please,’ begged Hal.
Una did not know where she found the necessary hardness but, ‘I haven’t time for interludes,’ she said. ‘Mrs Carrington would tell you . . .’
Then Alix lost her temper. ‘Mrs Carrington! Mrs Carrington! My God, your Mrs Carrington! It was she who taught you to behave in this arrogant way. May I remind you that Mrs Carrington isn’t here and I am,’ and recklessness possessed Alix. ‘You want to do mathematics. Very well. You shall do them and do them and do them. Give me the books you were using at Cerne.’
‘I was using this Elementary Mechanics.’
‘What,’ Alix’s look seemed to say, ‘can mechanics have to do with mathematics?’
‘We had reached this page,’ Una showed her.
Alix turned the pages, trying to control her fingers. ‘Take this down.’
‘That’s too far on.’
‘Take it down.’
‘May I take it from the book?’
‘No. I shall dictate it,’ and Alix began: ‘An inclined plane is such that the line of greatest slope makes an angle of 30° with the horizontal. Given that the acceleration due to gravity is 10 m/s vertically downwards . . .’
Ravi’s head was up from the border. ‘That girl does quite senior mathematics,’ he told Hem. He was caught unawares with surprise and this time Una saw him. He can’t understand English, of course, but he knows there is trouble, thought Una.
‘A ball is thrown . . .’went on Alix with more directions and finished, ‘Find the time when the ball meets the plane again and the range of the ball up the plane.’ She shut the book and said, ‘You can work through that on your own.’
‘On my own?’ Now the dismay was on Una’s side. ‘I haven’t done inclined planes before. I need to be taught.’
‘Take it out to the pavilion and try.’ It was obvious Alix wanted Una out of her sight. ‘Try. Then, if you can’t . . .’
‘If I can’t, you can’t show me, can you? Can you?’ Una demanded. Alix did not answer, her fingers were openly trembling as she pretended to arrange her pencils. ‘Teach!’ said Una scornfully and threw the book over the verandah rails. ‘You couldn’t teach a junior. I don’t believe you have ever taught. You have never studied projectiles or even calculus, have you?’
‘N-no,’ said Alix.
‘You may have been at the conservatoire,’ said Una, ‘but I don’t believe you ever set foot in the Sorbonne. This is a . . . governess sham!’ She did not know where she found that word, but Alix paled – from fear? or fresh anger?
‘Go to your room.’
‘I should prefer it.’
‘You will stay there until I tell you to come out.’
To be treated like a child suited Una. The more Alix did that, the more she played into Una’s hands – but presently Hal came tiptoeing in.
‘Una – Alix cried.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘She has tried so hard,’ pleaded Hal. ‘Una, she is nice.’
‘Is she?’
‘Everything is so happy and easy.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes. Why can’t you be? Why do you always have to be so prickly and difficult? Why?’
‘Because I am honest, that’s why. I wish I were not, but I am.’
‘Is that why you called it a sham?’
Una nodded with her back to Hal. Her throat felt too choked to speak.
Hal was perplexed. ‘Edward and Alix are lovers, but that’s not really our concern.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘Una, do stop answering questions with questions.’
‘But isn’t it? Don’t you see,’ Una choked. ‘She said I wanted things. Edward wanted Alix living here with him, but he couldn’t have her, not while he is God Almighty, Goddamn-blasted Director of United Nations Environmental Research for Asia.’ Una mocked the titles that had filled her, as much as Great-Aunt Freddie, with pride, ‘and Secretary of the Conference and Sir Edward Gwithiam, KCB . . .’
‘Why couldn’t he?’
‘Because of Lady Srinevesan and Mrs Porter and Bulbul and – yes, the Paralampurs; because of Delhi, because of the world. There was only one way to make it respectable,’ Una almost spat out the word, ‘and that was to bring us out from Cerne and say Alix is our governess. He is so in love he couldn’t wait. He didn’t think of us.’
‘Sushila says he’ll get tired of her,’ Hal offered. Hal, of course, had told Sushila at once. ‘She says they always do.’
‘I don’t think Edward will,’ said Una hopelessly.
‘He got tired of Louise,’ said Hal.
‘No, she got tired of him. Edward is . . . faithful.’ Una said it even more hopelessly.
‘Will he marry her?’ Sushila had asked.
That had startled Una. ‘Would Vikram?’
‘Vik!’ It had been Sushila’s turn to be startled. ‘Of course not. Besides, Vik will soon be betrothed. Papa is arranging it. Our family is traditional but English people are so different.’
‘I thought Edward was.’ Una had said it in a whisper, and now, ‘He wrote that he was lonely.’ Her voice was so thick with tears that the words came unsteadily. ‘He said he needed me to talk to – needed us. Now I think he would like us to go to bed at eight so he could be alone with her. He said he and I would play chess.’ She looked down at the chess set she had loved so much standing untouched on its board: the kings in their howdahs on the elephants; the palanquinned queens holding their bunches of roses; the bishops on camels; the knights’ horses; the bowmen. ‘I suppose it was meant as a consolation prize. Booby prize!’ said Una. ‘He hasn’t played chess with me once!’ and she swept the pieces on to the floor.
‘Wake up. Please, wake up.’
Una was heavily asleep after the dragging miserable day. Hal had brought lunch to her on a tray, taken it untouched away. At four o’clock Alix had come in. ‘You are playing tennis at the club with Bulbul Misra. Get dressed; and Una, this afternoon Edward makes his long speech to the ministers; there will have been a great deal of argument and he will be tired and strained. He is not to be worried. Do you hear?’
Una had said, ‘I hear,’ but that evening, when she had changed for dinner, Ram Chand’s ‘May I in-coming?’ sounded at the door of her room. ‘Tsst!’ He had found the chess set on the floor and was picking up the pieces; those that were unbroken he put back on the squares, the ones that were shattered or splintered he wrapped in his soft duster. ‘I take and get mended.’
‘Throw them away,’ said Una. ‘I don’t want them.’
‘No, Missy, no,’ and the old bearer had said, ‘Our hearts much sorry for you, Miss-baba,’ and Una had seen why Alix had not let the servants come near her. It seemed there was a rising tide amongst them against Alix. Why did they dislike her? And why should they like me, wondered Una? She could have understood it if it had been Hal. Already Hal knew of all their families, their home villages; she was knitting a jersey for the sweeper’s, Mitchu’s, little boy, and had bestowed her new pink cardigan on Ram Chand’s granddaughter who was getting married; English woollens were prized, but Ram had made Hal get Edward’s permission before he would accept it. Una had done nothing, said almost nothing. Like her? Why did they not dislike her too? Yet Monbad had followed Ram bearing something on a silver salver; the salver was a sign of honour – Monbad, nearer their age and less punctilious than Ram, usually handed things to the girls. ‘The mali found this in the garden. It is Miss-baba’s book.’
Una nearly said of it too, ‘Throw it away. I can’t use it,’ but their sympathy, chiefly unspoken, made her feel less forlorn and she had taken the book and had not, as she had meant to do when she reached the privacy of bed, cried; instead, almost too tired to care, she went straight to sleep. Now someone was shaking her, speaking through the clouds of sleep. ‘Una, wake up. Una. Una.’ Struggling with sleep Una opened her eyes; kneeling by her bed was Alix, Alix in a kimono, the famous hair down and streaming over it. Una could catch the fragrance of her skin, see her white face. ‘Is anything . . . the matter?’ Una asked stupidly.
‘Una, you’re not awake. Wake up. I had to come to you.’
‘Why?’
‘To beg you.’
‘Beg?’ Una was still stupid.
‘Beg you not to tell.’ Alix was weeping now, her hands clutching Una. ‘I know it was wrong. It’s true – I cannot teach you, but I didn’t know how high the standard was, even that there was such a standard. How could I know? You are quite right – I didn’t go to the Sorbonne, but the nuns sent me to the conservatoire with the idea I should come back and teach for them, but it all went a little to my head and I . . . left after a year. I have always been counted so clever and I thought I could get away with this but I didn’t know what clever meant until I met Edward and you.’
At that Una wriggled uncomfortably under the bedclothes. ‘I’m not clever,’ she muttered, ‘just ordinary.’ She was awake and clear now.
‘You are brilliant, you and Edward. If you tell him, he will send me away.’
‘Not while he’s like this,’ but Una did not say it, only, drearily, ‘He won’t.’
‘He will. I am – only new,’ and, for a moment, Una almost took Alix into her arms to comfort her – almost, not quite. ‘You have had his love from the day you were born,’ Alix was saying. ‘It’s – rooted. You are secure. You don’t have to build your life on lies.’
‘I wouldn’t, not if I were a sweeper’s child,’ but Una did not say that either.
‘You don’t know what it’s like to be poor, to grow up in squalor.’
‘Not squalor,’ objected Una. ‘It couldn’t have been squalor.’
‘You can’t imagine, can you, what the poor parts of an Indian city are like to live in? Not just to look at, but to live in; or what it is to be a nobody and have to fight for every chance you get? Be shut out, swallow people’s insults – and their charity.’ Una knew how Alix’s nostrils widened when she was angry. ‘I know I sometimes used . . . doubtful means, but I had only my wits and, Una, I have an old mother to keep who is helpless. It has been bitter, sometimes disgusting.’ There was a ring of truth in that and Una raised herself on her elbow to look at Alix. ‘You mean Mr Chaman Lal Sethji?’ she asked.
‘Who told you about him?’ Alix flared. ‘That vulture Srinevesan!’
‘It wasn’t Lady Srinevesan. I – heard,’ and Alix bowed her head.
‘I suppose everybody knows. Yes – Sethji.’ She shuddered. ‘But now . . . when I met Edward, I couldn’t believe my luck. I thought we were all happy. I tried . . .’
‘I know you did.’
‘Then why break it?’ asked Alix. ‘Oh, Una, if you will have a little patience, I will talk Edward round, be able to explain. We can get you professors or, perhaps, I can persuade him to let you go to the American International School. We can make some pretext but let me do it in my own time – in my own way. Una, promise – I beseech you. Promise you won’t tell.’
Una had had enough. ‘I won’t tell,’ she said, lay down and turned her back.
‘Mrs Porter, may I ask you something?’
The weather had turned unexpectedly warm and they were at the American Embassy pool. ‘The first swim of the season,’ Alix had said. ‘Soon all the pools will be open.’ Mrs Porter had invited them and, ‘I have asked Wilbur and Terry, our Ambassador’s twin boys, to meet you. They are just your age,’ Mrs Porter told Hal. ‘Older,’ said Una, but Hal looked coldly at the two freckled thirteen-year-olds, with their tow-coloured heads, shy grins, at their jeans and sweatshirts printed with names ‘of baseball teams, I suppose,’ and crinkled her nose. She played ping-pong with them but treated the boys loftily and hardly spoke at tea when they devoured doughnuts, ice cream and glasses of milk. Wilbur after Vikram Singh! Hal’s nose had been eloquent, but now she was swimming and diving happily with them. Una was not bathing; as usual, when any trouble came, her menses came too, ‘out of period’, as Matron at Cerne would say, and this afternoon Una was looking pallidly plain and hollow-eyed in a way that seemed to touch Mrs Porter’s capacious heart and she was so kind that Una could gather herself to say, ‘May I ask you something?’
‘Of course you may, my dear.’
‘Please tell me what it is you know about Miss Lamont.’
‘What it is,’ not ‘what you know.’ Mrs Porter’s plump freckled fingers drummed on the table and the sun sent flashes from the jewels in her rings – she had unexpectedly magnificent rings. ‘Una, I don’t want to upset the apple cart.’
‘It is upset.’
Then Mrs Porter asked, ‘How old are you?’
‘Fifteen,’ – and today far far older than that, Una wanted to add.
‘Then you should be old enough.’ Mrs Porter looked across the pool; everyone was out of earshot and, ‘She isn’t Miss Lamont,’ said Mrs Porter. ‘She is a Mrs Tanson. They say her husband was a coffee planter who fell in love with her out here – she must have been most beautiful – and followed her to Paris where they married. Perhaps she was dazzled – he, too, was good-looking. He brought her back to India, but it didn’t turn out well, and he disappeared. Of course, she has a perfect right to use her maiden name, and she must have had a hard time, poor girl.’ Mrs Porter spoke as if trying to keep a fair balance in what she said. ‘I believe her father was a Canadian sergeant in the Veterinary Corps; at one time he was attached to the Remount Depot in Calcutta, where the army horses come in from Australia to be broken and tamed. The mother is Eurasian from Pondicherry.’
‘Not French?’ asked Una.
‘Well, Indian–French,’ said Mrs Porter. ‘The girl – Miss Lamont – went to school there to a convent where Amina Srinevesan often gave away the prizes. Amina comes from Southern India too.’
‘I see,’ said Una.
‘Una, those sort of things don’t matter nowadays.’
‘Lady Srinevesan thinks they do. She treats Alix as she wouldn’t treat a servant.’
‘Indians are more suspicious of mixed blood than we are – but with Amina Srinevesan it wouldn’t be that.’
‘What is it then? Mrs Porter, what did Alix do when she was with Mr Chaman Lal Sethji?’
‘I believe she was companion to his wife.’
‘Was she his mistress?’
Una had expected Mrs Porter to be strait-laced but Mrs Porter only said, ‘They say she was – Delhi gossip, which often isn’t true. What is true is that Sethji dismissed her very suddenly.’
‘Why?’
‘Nobody knows but it seems there was – a lack of probity.’
‘Probity.’ It was a grave word and Mrs Porter was grave.
‘I feel it in her, Una, so does Amina Srinevesan; so, I think, do you. That is why I do not like you, Kate’s daughter, and Hal of course, being in her charge.’
‘She isn’t in charge.’ Una would dearly have liked to say that, but could not deny it.
‘Mr Sethji may be sharp in business, but he is an honourable man. I don’t believe he would have done anything unfair; but in any case,’ said Mrs Porter, ‘to pretend you are what you are not, to know what you do not, is lack of probity. Your father has given Miss Lamont his trust, and that’s why I am uneasy. You and Hal are young; no one knows what you may do next, not even yourselves.’
‘We ?’ Una was startled. She had not thought they were talking about her and Hal. ‘What could we do?’
‘You don’t know,’ said Mrs Porter. ‘That’s why, in a strange country like this, Eddie needs someone completely trustworthy.’
Alix, brought up in what Bulbul Misra called ‘old India’, had a siesta every afternoon. Hal, as usual, followed her idol. ‘After all, we are out early.’
‘I wish, Una, that you would rest too,’ said Alix.
‘I can’t sleep in the day.’ Besides, Una liked what she called ‘the empty time’. The servants, off duty, went to their quarters and were probably asleep as were Alix and Hal; even the birds were silent, even the lizards still, the whole garden drowsed in the warmth and sun, but Una was not drowsy; she was too harrowed with despair.
‘You can’t really want to do those ghastly-sounding sums,’ said Hal.
‘They’re not ghastly when you understand them.’
‘But can you?’ Hal asked it doubtfully. It did not seem to her that anybody could.
‘I could if they were explained to me. I have to. They’re – they’re my language,’ said Una.
‘Then?’
‘Then nothing. I expect I’m done for,’ and Una tried to shrug.
Long ago, when she was three or four, she had been given a little doll – by Mrs Porter, she thought suddenly. Why, I do remember her! It was in Calcutta; it was really the figure of a doll, so small it had fitted into a matchbox but, cast in metal, it was weighted so that if it were knocked over, at once, or slowly, depending on the hardness of the knock, it stood upright again. ‘A ninepin doll,’ Edward had told her.
‘Ninepin?’
‘Made to be knocked over.’
‘And stand up again.’
Una had made it a private little garden in sand; she remembered the feel of the hot sand as she stuck flowers into it, scarlet and yellow flowers, gōl mohur, she remembered – the gōl-mohur trees with their brilliant sprays would be out soon here in Delhi. She had made a pool from a river shell; the Shiraz Road fountain tinkled into the pool in the pavilion; it seemed to Una much the same as her shell and as secret, but why should she think of it now? The doll had been lost, probably in one of their innumerable packings, but it was as if it sent her a message.
She did not believe for one moment in the professors Alix had talked of, nor that she would go to the International School. At my age, the pupils would be going back to their own countries to take examinations. She was, too, tied by her promise not to tell Edward, but, ‘Don’t just lie down,’said Una to Una. ‘There must be other ways. If you write to Crackers, she might find a correspondence course – there must be such things. Meanwhile, you try by yourself.’ And, the next afternoon, she found her Elementary Mechanics that Ram Chand had carefully put in the bookcase. Someone had cleaned it – she was sure the book had fallen into the wet flowerbed – probably the someone was Monbad – but then she saw it had a marker; neither she nor Alix had put one there; it was marking page seventy-one, not a usual marker, but a feather, a tip feather from a peacock’s train, lucently blue and green, with the iridescent eye in a feathered fringe that scintillated with colour as it caught the light.
Who had put it there? Someone who cares, thought Una. For the first time since the scene with Alix she felt warmed – and titillated; she picked up the book, a pad and her pencils and went out to the summer house.
At first the green and shade seemed cool, inviting and, sitting down to the rough table, she began to work: ‘If the slope of the plane is 30 degrees to the horizontal and the force of gravity vertically downwards,’ she murmured aloud, ‘then the component of the acceleration perpendicular to the plane in the upward direction will be -10 cos 30° m/s2.’ She wrote The cos of 30° is √3/2 so that will make the acceleration -√5/3.
In the same way the acceleration along the plane would be -10 cos 60° or -5 m/s2 since the cos of 60 is ½ . . .
She looked it over and could see no fault in it. ‘But how do I do the next part?’ She knew the formula v=u+at, ‘But how do I apply it to this?’ she asked hopelessly. ‘How can I find t if I don’t know v? The acceleration will be negative but that doesn’t get me far.’ It was closer under the creepers than she had imagined and there was sweat on her forehead. ‘V=u-gt. But where do I go from there?’ She had looked up the answer and knew that the time of flight should be 2/√3 seconds. ‘But how do I get this? How?’
The sun glare from the garden hurt her eyes; the scent of the honeysuckle made her dizzy but she kept doggedly on, writing the equation out again and putting in the value for t, v=u-2g/√ 3, but still it seemed to make no sense, and she sat staring at it. It was hopeless. I can’t, thought Una, I can’t. I’m beaten.
She heard a rustle, as if creepers had been pushed aside, then, behind her, a warmth; there was another soft movement, as of muslin clothes – indeed a muslin sleeve brushed her cheek – and a new smell mingled with the honeysuckle scent, freshly washed skin, a slightly onion-scented breath and something she was to learn was coconut hair oil. Then a hand came over her shoulder; it was a brown hand on a strong wrist that wore an amulet, a darkened silver seal on a red cord, and on to Una’s scrubbed and tormented page it laid another feather with another iridescent eye. ‘Just to tell you,’ said a voice in English, ‘that I am I. Then, please do not be frightened.’
Una was not frightened, not even startled; in the dreamy, scented warmth, the voice simply seemed natural and it seemed natural too when she looked up and whispered, ‘Ravi!’
‘You know my name?’
‘I asked Dino. I . . . I have been watching you.’
‘I know you have, Miss Spy. Very well, I watched you back.’
‘You write poems,’ she said. ‘That’s why you put the feather as a marker. I should have guessed at once.’
‘And what did you think of my feather?’
‘In England we should say a peacock feather brought bad luck.’ How strange, thought Una, that she should be able to say to this particular young man exactly what she thought.
‘Here not at all,’ said Ravi. ‘On the reverse, the peacock is sacred, very emblem of India; and I hope the book was properly cleaned.’ His pronunciation was a little stilted – ‘proper-lee’. ‘The earth was wet and you threw the book hard. Hard! Ari bap!’ He laughed again and stopped. ‘That Miss Lamont is no good for you, I think.’
‘I knew you were listening but didn’t think you would understand English.’
‘No, Ravi the chota mali shouldn’t understand or speak English. Perhaps I am master spy.’ Una thought she had never seen such white and even teeth.
She seemed small and pale sitting there below him who was so large, brown, golden brown and merry; that was the word that suited him as he stood laughing down at her. I was right, thought Una. He is far more attractive than Vikram Singh, by far the most attractive person I have ever seen.
He moved round and sat on the summer house’s other wooden chair – the honeysuckle and creepers hid them both from the upper garden. ‘I suppose I should ask you, Miss-baba, may I sit down?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ and Una found herself laughing; there was something in Ravi that stirred happy, easy laughter – and I said I should never laugh again, thought Una.
‘I have spoken English since little,’ Ravi was saying, ‘and I was reading it at St Thomas’s College. Had I stayed at college I should have taken a first, probably with honours.’ He said it curiously without conceit, with the assurance of a young cock bird.
‘And you didn’t stay?’
‘No.’ There was a momentary shadow. ‘I – I was persuaded into a – a group the authorities do not like,’ then he cheered. ‘And had I taken a first, immediately everybody would have wanted me to do something: my father would have wanted I come home and manage our estate; my mother that I should become a doctor; my uncle would have wanted me in government service, diplomatic. My group wanted me in politics. But, you see, I did not want any of those things. I wanted writing poems.’
‘Are they good poems?’ Una had been to one of Lady Srinevesan’s evenings where she had stayed mute, watching and listening; she had not, of course, been able to judge the poems in Indian languages, though she had liked their rhythms; but had secretly thought most of those in English worse than poor and, ‘Are yours good?’ she asked warily.
‘Very good.’ He was serious. ‘Better now than I could have believed. I wanted peace in which to write them and it is peaceful in your father’s garden,’ said Ravi. ‘Until someone throws a book into a flowerbed.’
‘I am sorry.’ But Una could not feel sorry.
‘No, no. You were brave,’ and Ravi said, ‘That Lamont! But why do you not tell your father?’
‘I promised I wouldn’t.’
‘Even at your expense?’
‘Even at my expense.’ This seemed so strange a philosophy to Ravi that for a moment he did not talk. Then, ‘Unfortunately,’ he said, ‘I have chiefly forgotten my mathematics but I am arranging for you. I have a mathematical friend, Hem, Hemango Sharma. He is at present in medical school, but he is most good at mathematics. He took them at St Thomas’s. Hem shall come here and teach you.’
‘But . . . how?’
‘At the back of my hut is a loose – do you call it a “paling”?
– in the fence. No one can see, but it is my entrance and exit – and Hem’s. He comes through it to visit with me. Hem will bicycle here one, two times a week in these afternoons when no one is about and slip in here with me.’
‘You will be seen.’
‘Hem and I have the art of disappearing.’ Again there was that shade in Ravi’s voice, ‘and I shall stand guard while he instructs you.’
‘But . . . suppose he doesn’t want to.’
‘What I want, Hem wants,’ Ravi was certain. ‘He will come.’
‘I certainly will not,’ said Hem.
‘Hem, you said yourself she is only a little girl.’
‘She cannot be all that little if she is doing calculus,’ and,
‘Ravi, don’t! Don’t . . .’ pleaded Hem.