The Peacock Spring (12 page)

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.