The Peacock Spring (8 page)

She watched Alix go through his ties, picking some out to be dry-cleaned, heard her scolding the washerman for a broken button on one of his shirts, then she sewed on another. ‘We
didn’t think of touching his clothes,’ said Hal in wonder.

‘Well, it hardly came into your province, did it?’ asked Alix. Does it into yours? Una wanted to retort but, instead, ‘Edward likes to look after himself,’ she said.

Alix calmly went on sewing. Then, ‘Don’t you think someone as burdened as Edward needs these little things done for him?’ she asked. She looked up and must have caught the
displeasure – or was it jealousy? – in Una’s eyes because, ‘Remember he doesn’t know I do this.’

But he knows he is better looked after, more comfortable than he has ever been in his life. Una did not say it aloud but it was the unpalatable truth.

They were to explore the Old City and, ‘Which shall it be?’ Alix asked them. ‘The Red Fort or the shops in the Chandni Chowk?’

‘The Chandni Chowk,’ said Hal, while Una said, ‘The Red Fort.’

‘Una is the eldest,’ Alix decided. ‘She shall have first choice,’ and, She’s placating me, thought Una. She doesn’t find me so easy, thought Una with pride.
‘Now you are here,’ said Alix with the same placation, ‘we must read some Indian history.’

‘Mrs Carrington gave me a book on Indian history as a parting present,’ said Una. She did not meant it snubbingly, but it sounded like a snub. ‘Then I am probably
superfluous,’ said Alix.

‘Alas, no water runs in the channels now,’ said the student guide in the Red Fort. ‘The fountains do not play.’

‘The Moghul Emperors all made water gardens,’ said Una. ‘Babur, the first Emperor, even made the melon beds along the Jumna river.’ She was standing on one of the lawns
of the Red Fort, looking at the shapes of fountains, domes and pillars against the blue Indian sky.

‘Here the Peacock Throne was kept . . . this roof used to be silver . . . look at this inlay in the marble.’ Una would have loved to linger, listening to the guide. One pavilion
ceiling had inlays of morning-glory flowers in lapis lazuli; a panel had carnations in cornelian. Everywhere were carvings; the soft sandstone had even been cut into delicate trellis screens. She
could almost smell the sandalwood, the attar of roses, and the sweat of bowmen, the stronger smell of horses, elephants, camels. Birds flew in and out of the buildings; some were ordinary birds but
there were parakeets, as there were in the Shiraz Road garden, darting in their brilliance – and there ought to be peacocks, thought Una. Doves were cooing ‘as they must have done three
centuries ago.’ Una scarcely knew she had spoken aloud but, ‘Miss Una doesn’t need a guide,’ teased Vikram.

‘I shall send you passes,’ he had said of the invitation to polo. ‘My sister, Sushila, will be there – she will like to meet you both. I will call her this
morning.’

‘He has Americanisms as well as English,’ said Una when he had gone.

‘I don’t suppose he knows which is which,’ said Alix. ‘How could he? He hasn’t been out of India.’ She said it as if this gave her a secret satisfaction.

‘Not to school?’ asked Una. ‘I thought the young rajahs went to Eton or Harrow.’

‘Vikram went to Ajmer, the College of Princes.’

‘College of Princes!’ Hal’s eyes were starry but, remembering Edward and his passion for accuracy, Alix had to say, ‘They call it the Mayo College now.’

‘The Mayo College! Poor little prince!’ said Una, but Vikram did not look at all poor, either at polo – ‘He had at least four ponies,’ Hal was to tell Edward
– nor when, in spite of Alix’s frown, he invited himself and Sushila back to Shiraz Road for tea. ‘I didn’t think you would be so easily impressed,’ Alix reproached
Una.

Sushila had come to them at the polo match and sat with them on the tiered benches. She was, Alix said, like her father, the Maharajah of Paralampur, thickset and heavy, with heavy spectacles.
‘I should have been the boy, Vik the girl,’ she said. ‘He is so very pretty,’ but Una found the little princess touching, far more likeable than her brother. They both spoke
English without a trace of accent; true Indian, though, were Sushila’s nails with their brownish underskin, and she wore a small ruby stud in one nostril. Una forbore to mention it but Hal
asked at once, ‘Did it hurt to put that ring in your nose?’

‘I was three months old,’ said Sushila, ‘so I don’t remember it,’ and Vikram taunted, ‘You haven’t even had your ears pierced, you backward
girls!’

‘English girls of the upper classes do not have their ears pierced or wear earrings.’ Alix was lofty but, ‘Nonsense,’ said Una at once. ‘We shall have ours done
tomorrow. Alix, will you take us to a jeweller’s?’

‘I will take you both,’ said Vikram and soon, ‘The Paralampurs seem to be with us every day,’ Alix complained.

‘We like them,’ said Hal.

‘Especially Vikram?’ suggested Una.

‘Of course.’

All the same Una wished she could have come to the Red Fort with Edward, or alone.

‘This is the Emperor’s winter bath which took for each bath eight hundred pounds of wood to heat. The queen’s bath – see, the floor is inlaid with tiny fountains that
jetted rose water.’

‘What are those niches for?’

‘Soap, I expect,’ said Alix.

‘Indeed, no, madam. Flowers were put there by day, mica lamps by night, so that the water flowed over colour . . .’

To Alix, Vikram, Sushila and philistine Hal, the fort, for all its fame, was a place of old, dilapidated buildings and it was true the water channels and fountains were dry, the marble cracked,
gold leaf peeling, paths littered with sweet papers and orange peel, pavilion floors stained red with betel-chewers’ spittle, ‘And those emperors and queens and people are all
dead,’ said Hal, and yawned.

‘I like them better dead, particularly the lovers,’ but Una did not say it aloud; to her, if they were dead, their stories were safe: the Emperor Jehangir and his queen, Nur Jehan
– Light of the World; Shah Jehan and his steadfast love for Mumtaz Mahal. One doesn’t think of an emperor being in love, thought Una, especially with other queens and hundreds of
concubines in his harem – and Una thought of the queens in her chess set, the carved veils and roses in their hands; they too seemed steadfast.

‘Una’s in one of her trances,’ teased Hal.

‘She is
en
tranced.’ The guide was delighted with his own cleverness, but Vikram laughed, Sushila and Hal giggled, and when, next day, Alix, hoping to please Una, said,
‘I thought we should all drive out with Chinaberry and see the Qut’b Minar,’ ‘I don’t want to come,’ said Una.

‘But Una, it’s fascinating.’

‘Have you seen it?’

‘No-no, but it’s an architectural marvel, a tower of victory and there’s an iron pillar there; they say it might have been made for King Chandra Gupta in the fourth
century.’ Evidently Alix had been reading the guidebooks.

‘No thank you,’ said Una. ‘You go with Hal. She’ll bear it if Vikram’s there. I will stay here in the garden.’

A pause, then, ‘I’m sorry, Una, but you will have to come.’

‘Why?’

‘I can’t leave you here alone.’

‘Alone? There are at least a dozen servants here.’

‘That’s partly why.’

‘For heaven’s sake!’ said Una.

‘This is India. Other reasons apart, you are not accustomed to it; you don’t even speak the language; besides, I promised Edward,’ and, ‘Una, Una,’ pleaded Alix,
‘don’t be cross with me. I only do what I am told. You can argue it out with Edward when he gets back. Meanwhile—’

‘Meanwhile?’

‘Don’t spoil Hal’s time, our time. If you don’t want to go to the Qut’b Minar, let’s all go to the zoo and see the white tigers.’

‘
White
tigers?’ Hal, who had come in, caught the word.

‘Yes, these are animals you won’t see anywhere else.’

‘You will,’ said Una. ‘They have them in the Bristol Zoo in England,’ but as she said it she felt ashamed. It was hard, she acknowledged, that someone as beautiful and
accommodating as Alix should have to pander to an ungracious schoolgirl.

‘You’re so horrid,’ said Hal, ‘you are lucky
anyone
should care about you,’ and Una agreed.

Una had not expected flowers in a zoo but inside the gate was a great bank of verbena at least a hundred yards long; the zoo was set below Delhi’s Purana Kila, the older
fort, and the gentle tints of its ancient stones set off the flowers, bougainvillaea and thousands of roses. In the long pools were swans, cranes and the coral-legged flamingoes, their feathers
tinged with pink. ‘This is the most beautiful zoo I have ever seen,’ Una had to say.

The tigers were ivory rather than white, ivory to cream; the stripes were sable, the ruffs white, white paws, the eyes jade-green, cold and cruel. The original pair were Rajah and Rani and there
were some two-year-olds, a yearling and cubs, but the cages were pitifully cramped, the bambooed enclosures too small. Hal and Sushila laughed at the cubs’ antics; Una was wrenched with
pity.

‘But you like them?’ Alix was anxious.

‘They are fabulous – like India; fabulosity itself!’

‘There isn’t such a word,’ Lady Srinevesan was to say. ‘But, Lady Srinevesan, there is,’ said Una. ‘I looked it up in the dictionary.’

‘You and your dictionaries!’ was Edward’s comment when he heard. ‘Here is a girl,’ he told an American delegate staying with them at Shiraz Road, ‘who would
like the whole Oxford English Dictionary, all thirteen volumes of it, for her birthday.’

‘Yes, I would,’ said Una.

Lady Srinevesan had telephoned. ‘I want to give a little luncheon for Sir Edward’s girls.’

‘I won’t go,’ said Una.

‘But you must.’ Alix was shocked. ‘She’s a minister’s wife.’

‘I don’t care. I don’t like her.’

‘You don’t know her,’ but Una had seen Lady Srinevesan – ‘and heard her,’ – at the Gymkhana Club.

Vikram’s mother, Mrs Singh or Mrs Paralampur – ‘Or is she still called Maharani?’ – had asked Alix to bring Una and Hal there to play tennis with Sushila and some
friends.

‘I thought clubs in India were British Raj,’ said Una.

‘Then Indians are more Raj than the British,’ said Alix. ‘The Gymkhana is a great meeting place on Sunday mornings.’ They had been asked for Sunday morning. ‘People
go there to have coffee or drinks, play tennis, or listen to the band. In summer they swim and there is a stall where one can buy fresh vegetables and flowers.’

‘Can you?’

‘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.

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.’