The Peacock Spring Read online

‘I am not a member,’ said Alix with edge in her voice and, ‘Edward isn’t a club person either,’ Una had said quickly.

  Their group among the many on the lawn, sitting at tables under sun umbrellas, had attracted attention. ‘Those must be the Gwithiam girls – there, with the Paralampurs. You know, Sir Edward Gwithiam. I had heard he was bringing them out.’ Several women smiled graciously but presently Una had become aware that two, sitting at a table close by, were not smiling; one, middle-aged – an American, Una guessed – solid in her linen dress, had a skin unbecomingly freckled, but her eyes were brown – and honest, thought Una instinctively. She was looking at them with an even more particular interest than the other and, I have seen her before somewhere, thought Una, but where – and when? The other was a fine small Indian, alert, perhaps a little mischievous and wearing a superb silver-grey sari that matched the grey of her hair. They were looking, not at Una, but at Alix. Sushila, Hal and the other girls were chattering; perhaps Una had seemed left out because, ‘Come,’ the kind old Maharajah had said to her, ‘Let me show you our club.’ He heaved himself out of his chair; Una followed, but at every table, it seemed, the Maharajah had to pause, and she found herself standing behind the two ladies; they were talking in low voices but, as she strained her ears, she could hear.

  ‘I should have thought,’ the silvery Indian had said, ‘Edward would have brought a governess out from England.’

  Edward! Then she must be a friend, thought Una.

  ‘I am surprised he did not consult me. Who is this woman?’ asked the other. Yes, her voice was American.

  ‘She calls herself Miss Lamont. She was with Chaman Lal Sethji – you know, the Marwari millionaire.’

  ‘That shouldn’t condemn her,’ but the American’s voice was troubled.

  ‘No, that shouldn’t.’ The inflection on the ‘that’ had given a meaning that was unmistakable.

  ‘She looks quiet enough to me.’

  Throughout the morning Alix had been self-effacing; she was dressed in dark blue which did not become her – ‘You are playing your cards carefully,’ Vikram had bantered her when he joined them – but, ‘Quiet?’ the silvery lady had laughed. ‘With those eyes, and that fairy-tale hair? Watch young Paralampur.’

  ‘Vikram, won’t you come and play with us?’ Hal had beseeched, standing ready with her racquet. ‘Won’t you play?’ coaxed Hal, but, ‘I’m too lazy,’ Vikram had said. ‘Go and play with Shila and Bunny and Jo,’ – to Una and Hal’s puzzlement, these Indian girls had English nicknames – ‘I will stay here and plague Miss Lamont in your place,’ and, It isn’t Alix’s fault that Vikram is chasing her, thought Una. And Edward chose her. What right have they to speak of her like that?

  Back at the table, ‘Who are those ladies?’ she had asked.

  Alix looked across the terrace. ‘They are friends of your father’s. One is Mrs Porter, from the American Embassy. The other is Lady Srinevesan.’

  ‘Are they nice?’

  ‘Two old busybodies,’ said Alix.

  They did not look busybodies, even in her indignation Una had seen that.

  Three

  Edward’s three or four days in Japan had stretched to a fortnight. ‘Didn’t you miss me?’ he was to ask them. ‘We hadn’t time,’ would have been the truthful answer or, for Una, rather, ‘I was out of time.’ She felt she might have been in India for an aeon. ‘Well, the Hindi words for “yesterday” and “tomorrow” are the same,’ Alix had told her, ‘and the “day before yesterday” and the “day after tomorrow”.’ Time seemed to have disappeared.

  The girls had had their ears pierced in a jeweller’s where, for an hour or more, they watched mothers, grandmothers, aunts, cousins choosing jewellery for a young bride. ‘March is the month for weddings,’ Alix told them. ‘They will spend a crore of rupees.’

  ‘What is a crore?’ asked Hal.

  ‘Ten million rupees.’

  ‘Ten million!’ Una and Hal’s small gold earrings were too everyday to think of by comparison but, ‘I don’t know what Edward will say.’ Alix was uneasy.

  ‘It’s too late to say anything.’ Hal tilted her head to see their effect in the looking glass. ‘Besides, I don’t think he’ll care when he sees how much we are enjoying ourselves.’

  ‘Is Una?’ Alix asked slyly. Una did not answer but she had to admit there were compensations in being in Delhi: the sun and the flowers; the carefree feeling of light clothes; being driven in the big Cadillac by Chinaberry – ‘In Teheran we went in buses’; to have servants attending to the least lift of her finger; Mouse and the spacious house; her Moghul chess set; prince and princess friends. She and Hal helped Alix desultorily in the house; there was no mention of lessons. They read what they chose; Hal played the piano or her mandolin and sang with Alix. They went sightseeing – no protest from Una now – visited the Paralampurs, sometimes watched polo at Vikram’s invitation.

  Every evening, too, they went to the Bodyguard lines where the horses were stabled, ‘to see all is well,’ said Alix, watching each syce’s grooming with critical eyes, approving food and giving the horses titbits of apple or sugar. Vikram sometimes appeared there too. ‘Had to look at a nag,’ he would say – he used oddly dated words – or, ‘See a pony for a friend.’

  ‘Don’t encourage Vikram,’ Alix asked it again.

  ‘It’s just Vikram I want to encourage,’ said Hal.

  Una had found out the young gardener’s name, asking not directly but craftily. ‘What is the name of the sweeper?’ she had asked Dino.

  ‘Him Mitchu.’

  ‘And the cook’s mate?’

  ‘Him Paul.’

  ‘And the man who washes the dishes?’

  ‘The masalchi? Him from Kashmir; he called Subhan.’

  ‘And the second mali?’

  ‘Him Ravi.’

  ‘Ravi.’ She tried it on her tongue and liked it. She asked Sushila what it meant. ‘Ravi means the sun,’ said Sushila. Sun. That suited his golden colour.

  Beyond the garden pavilion and set in the wall of the lower garden of Shiraz Road, there was an old summer house, almost buried in a tangle of Japanese honeysuckle and climbing roses that curtained it from the house and upper garden. Una had found it and adopted it. She liked to sit there hidden, reading at the rough wooden sun-dried table and, often, she looked into the humble lower garden with its seed house, flower patches, bamboo turrets of sweet peas, its rows of lettuce and tomato plants. There was the colony of seedling chrysanthemums Ganesh was carefully nursing in pots, and a medley of hoses, sprinklers, bundles of bamboos; it was chiefly in the lower garden that Ravi worked.

  You wear a red rag bound round your head to keep the sweat out of your eyes. Una had become crafty too at watching him. If you think no one sees you, you will take off your shirt; your loincloth is always tightly wrapped round your thighs. Ravi wore, as Edward had said, the Brahmin sacred threefold thread. Now and again, thought Una, Ganesh sends you to the house to do the house flowers. I can guess you don’t like that; you stay proud and silent as you squat on your heels surrounded by bowls and vases – and you don’t arrange the flowers at all well. I can guess you despise us, thought Una.

  Every evening at dusk you come out of your hut and set a light under your courtyard bush. Why, wondered Una, do you do that?

  Hem had asked the same question. ‘You used to call these superstitions. You cried out against family customs, yet here in Shiraz Road you light your deeva for this silly little tulsi tree that you call sacred.’

  ‘Old habit,’ said Ravi, yet with Ravi it was more than habit; it was an affinity that went far beyond ritual, that was in his poetry and gave it depth and life. ‘I do not know, consciously, why I light my deeva, make my early morning prayer and ablutions, but if I did not … ?’ Even he, a poet, could not put it into words, but something would be missing, ‘Something cosmic, other world, bigger world,’ said Ravi.

  ‘If you don’t know why you do it, is it sense?’ asked Hem.
<
br />   ‘It is not sense. Perhaps it is percipience, beyond sense. You don’t believe it.’

  ‘No,’ said Hem but added, ‘I wish I did.’

  When Una saw the tiny light she knew it meant Ravi had gone into his hut and she slipped down among the shadows in the garden to look through the screen of flowers, to watch him at his desk.

  ‘Of course you must go,’ said Alix of Lady Srinevesan’s party. ‘Her husband, Sir Mahadeva, is a minister.’

  To Una there was something touching in the way Alix added, ‘She can see you meet the right people,’ and, when she left them at the Srinevesan house, ‘I wish you were coming too,’ said Una.

  ‘And how is it, Ally, with that so disagreeable girl?’

  Alix had driven straight to the Paradise Hotel. ‘Come to see Mummy?’ Mr Lobo, as usual on the landing, had asked his usual question, his eyes happy. ‘That’s nice.’ Alix did not answer but swept on to her mother’s room.

  ‘My God, Ally, I thought I was never to see you again.’

  ‘So did I.’

  ‘Did you bring any … ?’

  ‘Sssh, Mumma!’ and Alix said in Hindi, ‘Terala, go down to the cookshop; I could do with some real food, and I’m thirsty. Have you any coconut milk?’ She took notes out of her purse and gave them to Terala.

  ‘But have you brought any, m’n? Have you?’ Mrs Lamont was a slavering child.

  ‘Of course, but tell Terala to hurry. I haven’t too much time; it takes so long to get here with such traffic, but it’s good to have even two hours off.’ Alix kicked off her shoes and sat down with a contented sigh. ‘My God! I wasn’t born to be a nursemaid,’ but when the booty Alix had brought had been made over and Terala had brought the hot savoury food, there was the usual controversy.

  ‘Mumma, where is your cutlery?’ asked Alix.

  ‘Cutlery? Cutlery?’ Mrs Lamont looked vaguely round. ‘You mean knives and forks and spoons? I don’t know … somewhere … but you can eat with your fingers, Ally. It’s so much more easy.’

  ‘Where are your standards?’ Alix flashed. ‘Oh Mumma! How often and often have I told you.’

  ‘I have my standards.’ Mrs Lamont also had dignity, but Alix was not listening.

  ‘Mumma! Why won’t you go to that nice home I found for you in Almora? It is run by the Sisters. Think,’ said Alix, coaxing, ‘it is called the House of Rest.’

  ‘I don’t like rest.’ said Mrs Lamont.

  ‘But you do. My God, don’t you sit here all day long? You could have your own things, your own room and you know how you love the nuns.’

  ‘But not to live with,’ Mrs Lamont would have said. She had fathomed weeks ago that Alix would rather she were not in Delhi at this time – fathomed? It was transparent, but Mrs Lamont kept that unpleasant thought out of her mind and, ‘Ally needs her Mumma,’ she would have said. ‘A girl must want to see her mother, surely?’ And how could she, Mrs Lamont, shut away in Almora, have kept tab – an avid tab – on Alix’s doings so as to regale them, splendidly enhanced, to the other inmates of the Paradise Hotel? Mrs Lamont liked the ragamuffin young Westerners from overseas who wandered in and out and were amused by Mrs Lamont as she was amused by them. She gossiped with the Indian women, gave sweets and nuts to the children and was paid state visits by Mr Lobo. She liked the hotel’s comings and goings, its noise and that of the bazaar; above all, she liked the smells, human, animal, and of food. Food!

  ‘See, girlie,’ she said. ‘Terala has brought enough for two – your favourite korma curry, meat pulao, chapattis and green-mango pickle. So much better you will feel when you have eaten. We can eat Indian fashion or Western. Why? Because we belong to both. I think that’s nice.’ ‘Nice’ was a word she shared with Mr Lobo but, ‘Nice!’ Alix said it with disdain yet, already, with long accustomed skill, she was mixing the food with her fingers, scooping a little up, then, with a flick of her wrist, bringing it to her mouth. When she had licked the last crumb from her fingers she could not help belching contentedly.

  ‘But you haven’t told me,’ said Mrs Lamont. ‘How are you and she getting along?’

  Alix surveyed her still sticky fingers and smiled. ‘I think I can say that soon she will be eating out of my hand.’

  ‘You ought to have come, Alix,’ said tactless Hal. ‘There was a wonderful buffet – chicken tandoori and curries and puris, and you should have seen some of the saris.’ ‘But if we had worn what you wanted us to wear we should have been overdressed,’ Una could have told her. Alix could not get used to the faded jeans and old jerseys Una and Hal liked or to what Edward called Hal’s ‘raggle-taggle dress’, a long one of limp cotton that she cherished.

  ‘Your daughters, your daughters, should surely have English clothes?’ Alix had said to Edward – she had nearly said ‘shop clothes’. Until she went to Paris, Alix had never had a shop-bought dress and few enough even then – but, They are coming to a poor and starving country, Edward had written to Great-Aunt Freddie. ‘I am here to organise, among other things, relief. Their clothes must be inexpensive, but Alix had been allowed to send a list, and for the Srinevesan party her idea of what was due to a Gwithiam would have been touching if it had not been so inflated. ‘Those dresses are meant for the evening,’ Una had said. ‘It will be a big and fashionable luncheon party,’ Alix protested, but Una was thankful she had not listened as she saw Lady Srinevesan take in with approval their plain linens. Una had had a fight too with Hal over beads and bangles; as it was, the gold earrings made her look oddly adult; in imitation of Alix she used polish on her nails and scent. ‘Just let Edward smell you, that’s all,’ threatened Una. She knew at this luncheon that they would be on parade. ‘Well, I don’t mind,’ said Hal.

  ‘Well, I do.’

  Lady Srinevesan had certainly asked questions, all of them acute. ‘It was a sudden decision of your father’s to bring you out?’

  ‘I think it was a sudden appointment.’

  ‘Not all that sudden.’ As the wife of a minister, Lady Srinevesan knew all about appointments.

  ‘You have a home in England?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose the house is Edward’s,’ said Una, ‘but our Great-Aunt Frederica lives in it. It is at Gwithiam, in Cornwall.’

  ‘Of course. You are the Gwithiams of Gwithiam. I was forgetting.’ As skilfully as if she were picking a winkle out of its shell, Lady Srinevesan was winkling Una.

  ‘That sounds grand but it isn’t,’ Una said hastily. ‘Gwithiam is only a village – it’s spoilt now with caravans and chalets – and our house isn’t really big. Edward – we – sometimes spend our holidays there, particularly since we went to Cerne.’

  ‘But you did not mind leaving your school?’

  ‘Heavens no!’ Hal’s answer was so fervent that everybody laughed.

  ‘You like this new governess?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ That was guarded.

  ‘I understand she was at the Paris Conservatoire for a short while.’ There was an unkind emphasis on ‘short’. ‘But you are not musical?’

  ‘No,’ and Una was moved to say, ‘Alix was at the Sorbonne as well.’

  ‘That ought to be all right.’ Once again the emphasis that made a question of the ‘ought’. Una felt herself prickle but a young woman, as plump as she was delectable and whom everyone called Bulbul, came to Una’s help. ‘The Sorbonne! My goodness! You girls nowadays are far too clever!’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Una quickly.

  ‘No?’ Lady Srinevesan’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Yet Edward told me you were hoping for Oxford.’

  ‘Not now,’ and that particular unhappiness came back. Lady Srinevesan must have sensed it because she said gently, ‘Your father tells me you share my love of poetry, Una. Will you come to some of my poetry evenings?’

  ‘Amina Srinevesan runs quite a salon,’ Bulbul told Una, ‘but she doesn’t ask dunces like me. She must be interested in you – and I am too. My name is Bulbul, Bulbul Misra. My husband is called Som. When you are tired of
the Paralampurs, come and see us.’

  Tired of the Paralampurs! Then does everyone, thought Una, know what we do?

  The Paralampurs were largely her own fault; she could have curbed Hal but her own new wilfulness made Una insist on accepting every invitation that the Maharani – pushed by Vikram, Una was sure – sent or telephoned.

  It was not only the unspoken desire to flout Alix; both she and Hal were fascinated by Paralampur House; it was huge, as seemingly Western as Shiraz Road, but women’s courts led off the public rooms and there were myriad other shut-away rooms, empty of everything but carpets and pillows. The whole house was sinking into decay but Una found something touching in the ugly Victorian furniture and in the remains of old extravaganzas – there was a dining room with furniture entirely made of crystal, the chair backs strung with crystal beads like a chandelier, but broken, dim and dusty; on one landing were life-size wax figures of dancing girls playing instruments, ‘like in Madame Tussaud’s,’ said Hal, marvelling. ‘My grandfather was fond of those,’ Sushila told them. ‘They don’t work now.’ There was an enormous empty aviary, lines of stables, empty too except for Vikram’s child pony which Sushila rode. ‘Vik rides the army horses,’ Sushila explained.

  An elephant stable was bare: ‘Oh, I wish there had been an elephant,’ said Hal, but the howdah lay tilted against a wall, its gilt tarnished, the curtains rotting. Carriages were rotting too, the leather of a victoria’s hood was cracked, a brougham had lost its wheels. ‘I used to play in them with the servants’ children,’ said Sushila. ‘Mama won’t let me now.’

  When we play tennis, Hal wrote in her diary of Paralampur House, there are boys to pick up the balls; they wear blue shorts and shirts with a crest on the pocket; the servants have crests on their turbans too.

  ‘Well, most of their families have been with us for generations,’ said Sushila. Their uniforms were frayed and not overclean.

  The Maharani often lamented, ‘You see what we have come to … Who could have dreamed …’, but Una had a growing affection for silent and courteous Paralampur himself. He was, she thought, like the zoo’s great white tigers; there was the same heavy nobility, the wide forehead, the look of bewilderment as if, like the tiger, he did not know quite what had overtaken him; but Mr Paralampur, as Una felt she ought to call him – though Maharajah suited him much better – was, she thought, the opposite of the tiger; he had been, as it were, in a zoo, and was now forced into the jungle of the world.