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CHAPTER 3

Bombay and Jasirapur, early April 1948

It was hot, scorchingly hot. After ten years, Daisy had forgotten the intensity of an Indian summer. She walked along the quayside to the waiting car, feeling herself wilt beneath the sun’s glare and her limbs drain of energy. But it wasn’t the heat that was bothering her most. It was memory. Again. Memory that was sharp and painful and minted afresh. She’d guessed this moment would be difficult but she hadn’t foreseen just how difficult. It was as though she were once more living through that long ago April day. She felt it all: bewilderment as she’d waited in the noisy reception, the one she could see now, just over her shoulder; her nervous smoothing of the silk dress for which she’d saved so hard but which the heat had crumpled to a rag; the sick uncertainty when the man she was to marry was nowhere to be seen. And then out into the crowd. The sheer overpowering energy of India, its people, its colours, its smells, met for the first time. Above all, the memory of Anish Rana. He had been the one who’d accompanied her to church, delivered her to a drunken bridegroom. This morning there was to be no church and no wedding. Instead a slow carriage drive, sandwiched between Mike and Grayson, through Bombay’s congested streets to the Victoria railway station.

The journey to Jasirapur took as long as before and was almost as tiresome, the train bumping its way across a sprawling landscape on rails laid down when Victoria was Empress of India. But bump though the train might, travelling was not as uncomfortable as ten years earlier. This time first class meant a little more luxury. There were sleeping bunks and a courteous attendant who brought them food and drink, and bowls of water to wash with. It was badly needed, for heat was still the enemy. The sun hung huge and golden in the sky, burning through the dusty haze to broil the plain beneath, and, despite thick linen blinds, it permeated every crevice of the compartment. Handles on doors soon grew too hot to touch and the studded leather benches turned slimy beneath damp limbs.

Once again, the train stopped at every small station to allow the waiting crowds to clamber aboard, a noisy hustle accompanying every halt they made. Despite the clamour, and despite the heat and the dust, she felt sufficiently relaxed to fall asleep on her narrow bunk during the night’s darkest hours. She was grateful to have the compartment to herself. It was impossible to keep from remembering but there was a solace in travelling alone for much of the journey. Occasionally, her companions would put their heads around the door, once or twice they drank tea with her, but otherwise she was left in peace.

And it was a kind of peace, she realised. The future might still be uncertain, but it was an uncertainty she could accept, a lifetime away from the wrenching hesitancy of her last journey to Jasirapur. This time there was no need to watch covertly a new husband’s expression or examine every word she said before she spoke it. No need, in fact, to placate the man she had married but hardly recognised from their courtship in London. How callous Gerald had been. It was only now that she saw the depth of his unkindness. She’d been so desperate to fit in, desperate to please him and not do or say the wrong thing. Of course, she’d failed on every count. It was never going to be any other way. The odds were stacked against her from the very beginning.

But this time, when an hour after dawn Grayson helped her down from the train at Marwar Junction—the station’s sign was still crooked, she saw—she found she could walk to the waiting jeep with an untroubled heart. There was no man to tangle with her thoughts. Gerald was long dead and Grayson had kept the promise he’d made on that fleeting visit to Brighton. Not a word of marriage had come from him, not even a suggestion that he’d ever been her lover. The journey had brought them closer but closer as friends—three friends, in fact—bound together by their Indian adventure.

Though it was barely six o’clock in the morning, the sun was already burning a path through the platform’s paving, its heat piercing the thin soles of her shoes. Creased and weary from the journey, she climbed gratefully into the stuffy jeep. In a few minutes, luggage had been loaded and directions given.

‘Let’s hope the house isn’t too far. This heat is appalling.’ Mike mopped a dripping forehead. ‘I’m in desperate need of a shower.’

‘Amen to that, but we shouldn’t be long getting there,’ Grayson replied. ‘I asked them to put us within easy reach of the town.’

He had spoken truly. Within a blink, or so it seemed to a still half-asleep Daisy, they were coming to a halt outside a large, whitewashed bungalow, its trim garden stretching into the distance on either side of a long, winding drive.

‘Our home for the duration,’ Grayson announced. ‘Number six Tamarind Drive.’

Her eyes were at last properly open. ‘However did you manage to bag this?’ She was used to living in cramped spaces and the house seemed extravagant.

He gave a shrug. ‘It’s government owned and currently empty, so why wouldn’t they want to house us in style?’

A man, dressed in a long white kurta, came hurrying down the veranda steps to greet them. It was all so reminiscent, she thought. Except that this servant’s smile appeared genuine. He tucked her bags under his arm and straightaway escorted her to the room that would be hers. It was refreshingly cool. Well kept, too, she noticed, with furniture that looked almost new. At first she’d thought the scene a replay of that earlier one ten long years ago, but she had only to remark the smile on the young Indian’s face, the pleasant interior, the manicured garden, to know that it was not at all the same.

She plumped down on the bed and eased her feet from shoes that had tightened their grip. The house was as large as it had seemed from the road and there was plenty of space in which to lose themselves. Until now, she hadn’t thought how necessary that might be. On-board ship, they had led carefully demarcated lives and seen little of each other. A few drinks, the evening meal, an occasional gathering in the bar of all three of them. But now they were under the same roof and would be thrown together far more often and far more closely. How awkward would that prove to be? So far Grayson had shown no inclination to resurrect their old relationship and that was a comfort. From tomorrow, too, his work would take him into town for most of each day and then no doubt he’d be on the road, scouring the countryside for Javinder.

‘Ahmed will cook for us,’ Grayson said, when they re-emerged from their rooms a short time later to a tray of cold drinks. ‘Here, have some lemonade, Daisy. I’d forgotten how invasive this red dust is. I’ve a throat that feels like sandpaper.’

‘Let’s hope Ahmed proves a better cook than Mrs Hoskins,’ Mike said dryly. Mrs Hoskins was Mike’s turbulent landlady. He’d amused them from time to time on-board ship with anecdotes of Mrs H., as he called her, and her many tribulations.

‘I’m sure he’ll be excellent,’ Grayson said easily. ‘I think we’ve been given a cleaner as well and a man for the garden. So not too much for us to do.’

‘Except concentrate on the search for Javinder Joshi.’ Mike’s tone was not hopeful.

‘Exactly.’

Daisy felt Grayson looking directly at her. She knew he was wondering what she would be doing while he and Mike were involved in the search. She’d had trouble convincing him that it was a good idea she travel with them. There had been several angry spats before he’d accepted he wasn’t going to dissuade her. He’d argued vehemently that it was unsafe for her to visit India at this time, to which she’d retorted that it must then be unsafe for him, doubly so since he was there to investigate a likely crime. He’d argued that it was the wrong time of the year, but she’d pointed out that it had been April when she’d landed in Bombay to marry Gerald. He’d argued that she would be bored, but she’d told him to leave that to her. She would find ways of filling her time. At that he’d looked suspicious. Then she’d had to play her ace, the wartime promise they’d made each other during that one wonderful weekend in Brighton, the promise to return to India together.

‘I was wrong. I shouldn’t have promised,’ he’d said. ‘I shouldn’t have encouraged you to go back. You’re going on an insane whim. Your mother had only the slightest of links with India and yet you’re preparing to travel thousands of miles in the mad hope of discovering a few fragments of family history. The only thing you’ll find in India is disappointment. And what then? You’ll be launching yourself into the next search and the next one, and so it will go on. You’ll never be at peace.’

‘Even if I find nothing,’ she’d reasoned, ‘I need to go back. I need to lay the ghosts from my past. You said so yourself. And once I’ve done that, I’ll be content. I promise. I’ll have to accept that I’ll never know who I truly am.’

‘You’re Daisy and that’s all I need to know. It matters not a jot to me who your mother and father were.’

‘But it matters to me.’

And so they’d argued, back and forth, until eventually she’d worn him down and he’d agreed to take her, as long as Mike had no objections. Mike hadn’t. On the contrary, his friend appeared delighted to have her alongside. She would have to pay her own passage, Grayson had warned. She suspected that he hoped the proviso would put a stop to her dream. But she’d managed to pay for her ticket, though it had taken every penny of her savings. And she was glad she had.

She’d known for months that her life was going nowhere and Jocelyn’s letter, Grayson’s visit, had stirred her to action. She was ready to leave an unsatisfying job in an unsatisfying town, ready to throw her world to the winds. The practical choice was a return to London. Instead, a sixth sense had taken over and brought her this far from home. She’d found herself propelled like a compass point searching out its magnetic home, to where she knew she had to be. The strength of that compulsion was extraordinary. For years, she’d tried to stifle it, but finally it had broken free. It had been the moment that Grayson had picked up his coat ready to leave her small, drab cottage, that she’d been certain. Certain that how she lived the rest of her life depended on her returning to India, depended on her scrubbing her memory clean of the past and finding a future that was waiting to be found. And so she’d retraced the miles she’d believed she would never travel again, and now she was back, here in India, here in Jasirapur.

She glanced across at Grayson and noticed that the cool room and a glass of lemonade had given him a new energy. She wished she could say the same but her eyes were heavy with tiredness, and within minutes she had slipped away, back to her own room.

She lay down on the cool white counterpane and breathed in the newly familiar smells, tasted the warm, thick air and felt the heat suffusing her bones. With delight, she listened to the calls of the birds beyond the shutters. Later, she would go on to the veranda and see how many of the birds she’d grown to love inhabited this new garden: cheerful little bulbuls with red and yellow rumps she hoped, hoopoe birds with their art deco plumage, and perhaps even paradise flycatchers with tails like long, white streamers, nesting in the trees that she’d noticed marked the boundaries of the property. After the monsoon, she knew, the garden would truly live again. There would be butterflies almost as big as the birds, dressed in their peppermint green and primrose yellow. Meantime there were months of the most incredible heat to live through. She would doze a while until the heat of the day had faded and then go on an inspection tour. Instead, she slept for the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon.

When finally she ventured into the sitting room, it was to find Ahmed setting the table for dinner.

‘Gentlemen will be back very soon, memsahib.’ He smiled at her. ‘They begin work already.’

She felt a fraud. Grayson and Mike must have gone into Jasirapur to organise their office while she had done nothing but sleep. And, sure enough, minutes later, she heard the sound of the jeep’s wheels crunching along the gravelled drive. She went out to meet them.

‘Sleeping Beauty, I presume,’ Grayson mocked. ‘I looked in to say goodbye but you were well away.’

Mike followed several paces behind his friend and she noticed he smiled no greeting. Instead, he looked tired, defeated almost. She guessed the journey was beginning to take its toll.

‘How were things at ICS?’ she asked, as Ahmed finished serving the inescapable curried chicken.

‘Everyone was very helpful,’ Grayson replied, ‘without actually being very helpful.’

She looked enquiringly at him. ‘They’re a nice bunch, the new officers,’ he said, ‘but they’ve no idea about Javinder’s whereabouts and only the haziest notion of his work. So staying in the office is not going to get us too far.’

‘I’m the one who’ll be staying,’ Mike said heavily.

Grayson looked across the table at his colleague. Mike’s tone had evidently surprised him. ‘Mike will be staying in the office,’ he echoed, ‘as logistical backup. And I’m certainly going to need some. They’ve given us Javinder’s old room and we’ve made a start getting the place set up. Mike has three filing cabinets and a ton of files to sort through. Hopefully our man might have left some indication of where he was going. The first job, though, is to get the telephone company to install an extra line. One that doesn’t go through the main switchboard. We need to be able to talk privately, once I’m on the road.’

Daisy felt a small sinking in her heart. ‘When will that be?’

‘In a day or so, I imagine. Tomorrow I’ll begin making enquiries—someone may know something.’

‘But where will you start?’ It seemed to her that a search for a lone man somewhere in the huge expanse of Rajasthan would be more difficult than for the proverbial needle.

Grayson was undaunted. ‘Where I always start. The town. The bazaar.’

She brightened. At least he should be safe for a few days. And the idea of a visit to the bazaar and its delights was an attractive one.

‘Can I drive in with you?’ It would give her the chance to ask questions of her own under the guise of some innocent shopping.

‘You can, but I have to warn you, I’ll be leaving very early. You’ll have to forgo the Sleeping Beauty routine.’

She smiled at his teasing. ‘And what if my prince hasn’t hacked his way through the forest by then?’

‘I’m afraid you’ll have no choice but to abandon him and make do with me,’ he retorted.

She saw Mike frown and realised with a shock that they had come close to flirting. It would be too easy, she knew, to fall back in love with Grayson and she must guard against it. There was no such thing as a perfect man, any more than a perfect woman, but he came close. Nearly perfect men, though, had their own plan for life and she had hers, and the two were never going to fit. She must be careful. She had no wish to complicate this trip and neither did she want to upset Mike. This evening he seemed to be in a strange mood, his expression morose, his liveliness depressed. Not too many quips about Mrs H., she thought. It might be the effect of the country on him. She had loved India from the start, but she understood that it was not the same for everyone. And she knew, too, that Mike had worries back home. She would need to be extra vigilant in her dealings with Grayson. If Mike were forced to play an awkward third in their relationship, it was unlikely to make him any happier.

Grayson, too, had been surprised to find himself falling back into the easy relationship he’d once enjoyed with Daisy. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, though he had no illusions. The long months of absence had taken their toll on both of them. Once upon a time, she had given him her heart and given it completely, but that moment hadn’t lasted. When he remembered those heady few months after the Sweetman debacle, months when they’d lived only for each other, he felt a pain that stung. And it was still there. He should have realised the truth then, of course. Daisy had saved his life and, in doing so, come close to death herself. Because of the Sweetman affair, they’d been living in an oddly heightened state and that very fact had encouraged them to step into a whirl of emotion they couldn’t control. They had thought they couldn’t live without one another. Except that the war had dragged on for another three years and they’d been forced to. Between Daisy’s nursing shifts and his punishing hours at SIS, they’d met infrequently and, when they did, they were both exhausted from the pressure of work. He’d hoped that when peace came, things would be different. They would pick up the pieces and finally make a home together. He’d told his mother he intended to marry and she’d been content. She had met Daisy on several occasions and liked her. The girl’s background hadn’t been the stumbling block he’d feared, for his mother had proved far more open-minded than he’d expected. And she’d admired Daisy for the way she had made something of her life out of so very little. But even if that had not been the case, his mother would never have rejected the girl who had saved her son from certain death.

Mrs Harte had not been the problem. Mrs Harte’s friends, clustered in their small, genteel enclave of Pimlico, had not been the problem. It had been Daisy herself. His proposal had stunned her. It was as though a stranger had asked to be her husband. After the first shock of rejection, he’d felt angry. Gerald Mortimer had died in dreadful circumstances but that had been seven years ago and, long before then, Daisy had come to know him for what he was—an adventurer, a liar, a betrayer. Memories of her dead husband could not be preventing her from saying yes, so what was? It was hard to swallow but he was forced to the simple conclusion that Daisy had no desire to marry. She was determined to stay a single, independent woman. She had no wish to share her life in any meaningful way. It was sufficient for her to see him from time to time, but she wanted no greater commitment. He’d told her plainly what he thought of that arrangement and the next thing he’d known, she’d taken a job fifty miles away and moved there without telling him. He’d lost heart then; it was better to let her slip away. His mother had been consolatory. She had begun to think that Daisy saying no was a good thing. The girl had been harmed by her harsh upbringing and would never settle to married life. After all, she had never known a family had she, so how could she create a successful one of her own?

Grayson hadn’t accepted his mother’s logic, but a part of him acknowledged there was some small truth in what Mrs Harte had said. He’d seen for himself that Daisy had not escaped her life unharmed. She’d fought the fight well and to all intents and purposes, she’d come through, but there remained a large void in her which she’d been unable to fill. And he’d been unable to help her. This was why she was here. This was what she was chasing by coming to India, a chase that, in his view, was doomed to failure and could mean only more heartache. He understood how the gaps in her story tormented her, but he couldn’t for the life of him see how coming here could help fill them. His best hope was what he’d always believed—that coming back to India would help her deal with the very bad memories she still carried.

The next morning she was already eating her chota hazri when Grayson made an appearance. He looked at her and she saw him smile.

‘Lovely dress, Daisy. But much too good for the bazaar. ‘

‘On the contrary. I have to compete with some very beautiful women and some very beautiful saris.’ Her polka dot sundress was young and fresh but against the richness of Indian materials, she knew it would go unnoticed.

‘No competition. You’ll win hands down.’ She felt herself flush beneath his gaze. She would have to be careful. She buried herself in the plate of small, sweet cakes that Ahmed had left to tempt her.

Grayson said no more and made no effort to join her at the table, ignoring the customary small breakfast and downing two cups of coffee while he stood by the window.

‘It’s going to be hotter today, if that’s possible,’ he opined. He was looking out at the garden, which was already shimmering in the heat. ‘We’d better get going unless we want to fry in the jeep.’

There were few other vehicles on the road. Several bullock carts passed them, heading out of town, and for a while they were caught behind a small boy who was driving his flock of goats to the fields. Eventually, he peeled away from the main thoroughfare and, with loud yells and brutal whackings of his stick, herded the beasts down the narrow lane leading to their barren grazing.

Grayson picked up speed again and they were halfway to the centre of town when he said suddenly, ‘Would you like to take a look at the old place?’

He meant the old bungalow, she knew, the one she’d shared with Gerald and his malevolent servant, the one that had stored stolen guns for a group of outlawed fighters and nearly cost her her life. She felt beads of perspiration on her forehead.

‘You don’t have to put yourself through it,’ he said quietly. ‘But I thought it might help.’

Would it help? She didn’t think so, yet she knew she had to see the house again. For years, she’d hoped she could break free of its frightening shadow. Grayson seemed certain that she had, that she’d coped with the past far better than she realised. But she knew differently. She hadn’t coped with it. Not really. Not deep down. She’d muffled it in bandages, layer upon layer of them. And though she’d wanted to come back to India, secretly she’d been sceptical that a return could act as any kind of purification. But here she was, and she owed it to herself to take whatever chance offered to lose the millstone she carried.

‘Yes, let’s take a look,’ she said, as casually as she could.

It was a shock when she saw the place. The garden had always been unkempt, Gerald having little interest and even less money to keep it under control. But now the alfalfa grass had grown almost to the roof line and a weed she couldn’t put a name to had started its inexorable colonisation, gripping the whitewashed walls in iron tentacles. Rajiv’s quarters to the right were almost submerged beneath the wilderness. As she looked across at the rooms he’d inhabited, she could conjure no clear picture, no clear vision of him emerging from his door, sullen-faced, suspicious, hostile. That was good. That particular image was rubbed clean.

‘It looks pretty dilapidated,’ Grayson said.

‘It never looked anything else.’

‘Not quite as bad as this though. In the ten years since you left, I don’t think it’s had a lick of paint. And see, several of the shutters are off their hinges. They won’t afford the house any kind of protection—and there’s a hole appearing in the thatch. Come the monsoon, the rain will pour through that roof and drown the interior. I imagine rot has already set in. A few more years and the house will crumble inwards.’

‘A waste of a bungalow,’ she remarked, though privately thinking that crumbling was exactly what was needed. If the house lay in ruins, she would be happy. It had only ever been the garden that she’d loved and that was beyond saving.

‘It is a waste. It would have made someone a good home. I made a few enquiries.’ That was news to her. So this unscripted visit wasn’t quite so unscripted. ‘The army tried to sell it as soon as they knew the regiment was to disband—they must have acquired the property years ago—and they were willing to sell at a knockdown price. But there were no takers. No one would even move in for free. The locals won’t come near the place.’