After Clare Read online

  Shortage of money was not a circumstance that ever needed to be considered in the Vavasour family; it was always there, and it had never crossed Emily’s mind to discuss such mundane matters as her inheritance when she and Paddy had talked about their wonderful future together. And neither did Paddy mention it.

  The dreaded hurdle of her father’s acceptance having been surmounted without much pain, Clare’s fierce opposition came all the harder.

  ‘It’s too ridiculous – you don’t know the first thing about him!’ she declared, appalled, not to say incredulous, that Emily could be so naïve.

  ‘Enough to know that I love him and he loves me. And if Papa has no objections, why should you?’

  ‘Oh, Emily, you’re such a child! Papa will do anything to avoid confrontation. Haven’t you found that out yet?’

  Stung as she was by these aspersions on her youth and general imperceptiveness – and with a mere two years’ difference in their age! – Emily knew there was some truth in this final point, though nothing would have made her admit that was the reason Anthony had given his consent so easily.

  She looked at her sister imploringly, ‘Please be happy for me.’

  ‘How can I possibly be, if you insist on throwing your life away – and that’s just what you will be doing, with someone like Paddy Fitzallan. He’s nowhere near good enough for you.’

  But then, no man would ever be good enough, in Clare’s opinion, Emily thought sadly. For Emily, though even more for Clare herself. Since it was an argument she would never win, she did not pursue it. ‘Paddy is leaving for India in less than a month. And he wishes me to go with him, as his wife. Which I shall do, Clare. Nothing you can say will stop me.’

  Clare made one last attempt. ‘Well, on your own head be it, if you insist on ruining your life. But at least think of Hugh. Don’t do this to him, Emily. You’ll break his heart. As well as your own, when you’ve come to your senses. He’s the best man you’ll ever know.’

  Telling Hugh was what Emily had been dreading most. She shrank from it, though she knew it had to be done, and quickly; she couldn’t leave him to hear it from someone else, though absolutely the last thing she wanted to do was to hurt him.

  When she did tell him, on a heavenly night of June and roses, sitting in one of the ‘sentry boxes’ below the terrace, with the little fountain tinkling away, she was for a moment frightened when she saw his face. Yet Hugh, who could be counted on always to do the correct thing, merely asked, after several long moments, ‘Are you sure, Emily, absolutely certain?’, and when she replied yes, she could not be more so, he said stiffly that in that case he had to hope she would be very happy. Though somehow it didn’t sound like Hugh, his voice as distant as if it came from another planet.

  Rather unconvincingly, she tried to believe that he could not have loved her, not as Paddy loved her, otherwise he would have made more objections. She had forgotten the joy, the quiet certainty she’d had that he really cared for her, that the quite proper kisses he had given her once or twice had meant as much to him as they had to her – then.

  Because all that had been before Paddy. She hadn’t known then that the kisses of a handsome Irishman could make stars explode in your head, or light up your mind with dreams.

  Progress along the road to Watson’s Hotel was surprisingly steady, considering the number of times the rickshaw man, trotting on at a tremendous speed, had to dodge nimbly between lumbering bullock carts, swaying cows, other rickshaws and the noisy press of barefoot humanity that surged out onto the road: women wearing saris in rainbow hues, their kohl-rimmed eyes downcast, or shielding their faces, men clad in dhotis and turbans of all colours, children darting everywhere, half-naked, black-eyed, while between them sellers of water sold tea and sweetmeats from trays suspended around their necks. Smoke thickened the air from burning braziers cooking strange-smelling food at the thronged roadside, among stalls that appeared to sell everything.

  Emily could see few white people, other than those she suspected were Englishmen, in lightweight shantung suits and solar topees, their ladies in wide, shady hats, but they were riding in horse-drawn carriages which cleared a path by driving smartly along in the centre of the road, kicking up dust. Behind the road, to one side, stretched a great huddle of lanes and alleys of broken-roofed shacks. And right there on the sidewalks, amongst the discarded rubbish and the feet of the crowd, crouched unidentifiable sleeping bundles of rags, sharing the space with maimed and limbless beggars, holding out supplicating hands. Many of them were children.

  The crowds lessened somewhat as their rickshaw neared the city centre, the road grew wider and was lined with shady trees; more and more conspicuously splendid buildings appeared, magnificently embracing Eastern and Western architectural styles, no doubt meant for purposes of colonial administration or where the nawabs and other rich Indians lived. There were sounds of tinkling water and hints of quiet gardens behind walls which shielded them from the teeming street-life and the poverty outside their gates.

  Watson’s, when they reached it, had its own grandeur – its soaring atrium and the way it discreetly and expensively catered for the comfort and well-being of its solely white clientele. Indian servants stepped forward immediately to relieve them of every article of baggage, others stood by ready to anticipate any further wish. Paddy, approached by the manager, was obviously relieved to be told Sir Daniel was here at the hotel, though he was in his room, confined to bed. He had unfortunately been indisposed for some time, and was still far from well.

  ‘I see.’ Paddy nodded, his smile disappearing. ‘In that case, we must go to him at once.’

  Emily hung back. ‘You should see him alone, Paddy.’

  ‘No, come with me. He’ll want to meet you.’

  The fever that had taken hold of him had abated but had left Daniel weak as a kitten and still not altogether back in his head from the places he had inhabited for – how long? Days, weeks? No telling, but he was lucid enough now to know that he must have been ranting aloud, and God knows what he’d been telling the world. If a drowning man sees his life before him, he had been drowning, that was for sure, and the tatters of his life, the footloose, wandering years had come back through his delirium, sometimes to torment him, though he seemed to recall hearing himself laughing aloud at times. And why not? It hadn’t all been bad. Not at first. Moving across continental Europe, doing anything he could to scratch a living: teaching music to spoilt little girls in Italy; copying scores in Vienna when he was at rock-bottom, acting as accompanist to a lieder baritone who travelled the Continent; Paris for a time, where he had been the lover of an operatic diva . . .

  He dozed, and dreamt again of himself, frittering about on the edges of the music world, suddenly sick of it. Meeting this man home from India, a tea-planter, and becoming fired with the notion of doing something different, a man’s job, amongst other men, giving him a purpose, and perhaps another chance, if it wasn’t too late.

  It hadn’t turned out like that. Did things ever turn out as one wished? he was asking himself as he woke, fretful, needing to remember something elusive, on the edges of his consciousness. He struggled to sit up. It was too hot. He let himself fall back on the pillows.

  What in the name of God had he been thinking about, coming to India? From the first, he had hated it: the flies, the dust, the heat, and most of all the relentless bloody rain – although the climate of Assam was better than here in Bombay. He could not understand the customs, the language or the people. The food made him ill. The only white men he met were the military and government officers, who were not to his taste at all, nor he to theirs, their wives and daughters off-limits to him.

  It came to him as he struggled to remember. Paddy, whom he had sent away, was coming back! This time with a new bride. Good for him! The boy needed someone to look after him. He, Daniel, had never been good at that. Loved the boy, yes – oh God, yes – but that wasn’t always enough. He had needed a mother, but Daniel hadn’t needed a
wife – and sickly, demanding Philomena would have been a feeble wife or mother for anyone. Being with his father had been a more attractive proposition, not only for the boy, but for Daniel as well. At least Paddy had had the good sense to marry somebody with money . . .

  Daniel began to think that he might, after all, get better.

  The wide, sweeping staircase took them up to Daniel’s room, where they found him propped up in bed. Paddy’s face went rigid with shock. It did not take much for Emily, too, to see that his father was not merely indisposed; here was a very sick man indeed. Against the pillows was a ghost of the handsome, gay and dashing fellow Aunt Lottie had remembered, a grey and gaunt wreck of a man, thin to the point of emaciation. ‘Good to see you, my boy,’ he whispered.

  ‘And you, too, Father. What have you been up to this time?’

  ‘Bad bout of jungle fever, that’s all. Over now.’

  Paddy stood stiffly by the bed, then bent and dropped a kiss on the haggard forehead. As he straightened, his eyes went to the bottles on the bedside table. Daniel managed a smile – or perhaps rictus might have been a more apt description. ‘Won’t find anything there but medicine.’

  After a moment, Paddy murmured, ‘Glad to hear it.’

  The sick man turned his head. ‘So this is Emily. Come here, Emily,’ he croaked.

  Ashamed of her reluctance, Emily slowly approached the death’s head on the pillows. With astonishing strength, he caught her hand and held it so tight she thought her fingers might break. ‘Think I’m going to like you, Emily. Young, but promising. You’ve nice, steady eyes. You’ll be good to my boy, won’t you? Better than I’ve been, eh?’

  What sort of answer could one give to a question like that? ‘I – I hope so.’ With an effort, she was able to smile and not wrench her hand from that ghastly, fleshless clutch of dry bones. But he could not sustain the effort of holding on and presently let it drop.

  Emily slept the heavy sleep of exhaustion that night, the supplicating hands of the beggar-children peopling her dreams, and when she opened her eyes she found Paddy was already awake, lying on his back, staring into the darkness that was lit by the dawn light coming faintly into the room, and further dimmed by the swathes of mosquito netting suspended above their bed.

  She reached out and he let her take his hand, but there was no warm, answering pressure. Last night, after their talk with Doctor McLellan, he had not seemed able to accept the comfort she offered. She hoped for better things this morning, but he seemed as far away as ever.

  It must be so hard for him. In England, the prospect of being with his father again had filled Paddy with a scarcely contained joy that had sustained him halfway across the world – only to be met with a situation like this.

  ‘Doctor McLellan said the quinine he’s been administering is doing its work,’ she reminded him. ‘Your father’s going to get better.’

  A mosquito zinged outside the netting that shrouded the bed. From somewhere beyond, in this never silent city, there came sounds – shouts, the distant, spine-chilling howl of a hyena, a temple bell tolling. Emily thought she caught, faintly, the strains of plaintive, twanging music. A bird woke to the day with a shriek.

  Paddy said, ‘Oh, he’ll recover from the malaria, I have no doubt. For now.’

  To Emily’s inexperienced eye it had looked as though Daniel Fitzallan was not long for this world, but McLellan had briefed them on the illness that held Sir Daniel in its grip, its prognostications, its treatment. Malaria could, and regularly did, kill countless thousands here in India. This bout of Daniel’s had been very serious, and although it would probably recur, he was on the way to recovery. This time, he had qualified, eyeing Paddy thoughtfully.

  He said now, ‘My father’s dying, Emily. Not only of the malaria. He’s dying of years of too much drink and there’s no recovery from where he is. The doctor knows it, he knows it himself, and he knows that I know. He’s tried to stop from time to time, but it never lasts. That was why we . . . why he sent me away, I think, why he came to India alone. He was ashamed to let me see.’

  Day after day, cooped up in the steamy heat of the hotel, where Daniel, although slowly gaining strength, still kept largely to his room, Emily had looked anxiously for news from home. The letters she longed for should have followed them and been here by now – mail came regularly by the steamers which plied across the seas – but there was nothing. Her own letters had not been answered. It seemed to her she might well have sailed across the ocean and dropped off the edge of the world, for all anyone seemed to care at home. It didn’t surprise her overmuch that Anthony hadn’t written. He was no hand at letter writing, but why had Clare not done so? She had not troubled to hide the fact that she was angry and upset over this marriage, but she had in the end put her own feelings to one side and embraced Emily when they parted, saying that she prayed she would be happy, truly, and promising to write.

  Emily was finding homesickness unexpectedly hard to bear, and she was made more unhappy by Paddy’s lack of understanding, so absorbed in his own unhappiness. ‘Oh, there’ll be letters soon enough, plenty of time yet,’ he said dismissively.

  ‘It’s not like them. They must know I’m longing to hear from them. They’re my family, after all.’

  ‘Your family,’ he repeated, looking at her oddly. ‘No, Emily, we’re your family now, my father and I, aren’t we? You’d better get used to that idea.’

  ‘Well, of course you are, but so are they, still. I can’t help worrying.’

  He shrugged and looked sulky. ‘What about me? My father’s been so ill and all you care about is news from your precious family.’

  ‘Paddy!’

  ‘They don’t always come first,’ he went on petulantly, but then, seeing the hurt on her face, he pulled her into his arms, said he was sorry. He covered her face with kisses, patted her hair and then, since his father was sleeping, took himself off to the British Club where he had been accepted as a temporary member and where he could play polo to work off his frustrations. Emily was left alone so much that she thought about contacting Mrs Maybury, but when she had mentioned this Paddy had not been pleased, reminding her they would not be here long enough to form friendships.

  There was no mention of any proposed move to the tea plantation – though of course there was no question of moving out of the hotel until Daniel was much better. The fever kept returning, intermittently, while outside, the rains which had begun in earnest, crashed down, making rivers of the roads and flooding great areas of the city. The humidity pressed down unbearably, like a lid. Emily had a headache that threatened to become permanent.

  Day after day she sat in the hotel, rereading the books she had brought with her, writing her diary and yet more letters home, wondering how long they, too, would remain unanswered. And as she listened to the rain drumming on the roof, she tried to tell herself that it was worry over his father that was causing the change in Paddy.

  When the longed-for letter eventually came, it wasn’t from Clare, nor from Anthony. It was addressed to her in Hugh Markham’s firm, clear handwriting. For a moment, she stared at it and then put it into her pocket, unopened. It was nearing sunset, when the world would be blotted out in an instant, but there was still light and a temporary respite in the rain. She took the letter out to read alone in a tiny, shady courtyard at the back of the hotel, where she would not be interrupted.

  She turned the thick envelope over. Hugh? She slid her thumb under the flap and opened it.

  The blood drained from her face as her eyes jumped from one phrase to another. Then she read it again, forcing herself to read more slowly. She knew now why it was Hugh who had written this.

  The rapid darkness descended and still she sat on the edge of the pool in the centre of the courtyard. A bat, black and silent, swooped before her face, followed by another, huge by comparison with the pipistrelles that used to make their home in the Hecate tree, yet she didn’t flinch. Night time had brought no amelioration of the steamy h
eat, and the little courtyard felt like the inside of a cauldron. The ceaseless noise of India went on around her. A sweeper somewhere outside the hotel cleared the paths with a scratchy broom, scritch, scritch. A Hecate tree so laden with purple blossoms that you could not see its leaves shaded the courtyard. Hecate? Of course not, how foolish. It was a jacaranda, so overwhelmingly laden with purple blossom that it looked artificial, unreal. It was not the Hecate tree. The garden out here wasn’t Leysmorton. There were red and white lotus blossoms and water lilies, richly fragrant and with waxy petals and wide green leaves almost covering the surface of the little pool, but here in this hotel courtyard there were no roses.

  Clare, Hugh wrote, had disappeared from Leysmorton, simply disappeared into thin air. She had left the house, saying only that she was going for a walk, and hadn’t been seen since. Emily was grateful that Hugh had not attempted to hide anything, but had simply stated the facts. Clare had gone, two days after Emily and Paddy sailed, without a word, taking nothing with her and leaving no clue as to when she would be back, if ever. There had been no quarrel, nothing to indicate that she had ever intended to do this. The police had been informed. A search had been made, the river dragged. There one moment, gone the next, as if someone had cast a spell over her and magicked her away, just as Miss Jennett had been magicked away.

  Aunt Lottie had insisted Emily should not be worried with this temporary aberration of Clare’s, for after all, she would have to come home sooner or later, or at least let them know where she was. But as time went by, when it became evident she was not going to come back, or not very soon, Anthony had asked Hugh to write. He was too upset to put pen to paper himself, too distraught; it would have been an impossible letter for him to write.

  ‘I must go home.’

  Paddy stared at her disbelievingly.

  ‘What? Are you mad? All those weeks at sea? By which time your thoughtless sister will most probably have returned. Even supposing you could do anything to find her if she hasn’t.’