Tiger Hills (49 page)

His heart thudded painfully as he thought of Mrs. Burnett. He knew what to do, of course, he had practiced puckering his lips against his arm, and his pillow, but still … He dragged his sleeve across the beads of sweat forming on his forehead, glancing once again at the package resting on the seat of the car. It was a set of lace handkerchiefs that someone had given to Avvaiah. She wouldn't even notice they were gone. It would be okay, he told himself, patting the FLs in his coat pocket.

She was there in the doorway, shushing the dogs and raising a cupped palm to shade her eyes from the sun as she called a playful greeting. She looked devastating, her dress of some devilish material that sparkled as she moved. She kissed him on the cheek as she accepted the hankies, a light touch that tied his stomach in knots. She sat him in the piano room, asking him numerous questions about school, how old he was—“Eighteen,” he lied—and his family. Appu dutifully answered all her questions, shifting uncomfortably in the thin-legged love seat as he sipped his coffee and tried not to stare at her legs. And then, to his utter confusion, she stood up, and extending a cool hand into his, led him to the door. “We must do this again,” she told him gaily, “it has been
ab-so-lutely
lovely.”

Kate invited Appu over for tea thrice after that. Each time, she personally supervised the menu, making one of her rare appearances in the kitchen. Cucumber and tomato sandwiches, crusts removed and cut into triangles. Raisin scones and custard. Coffee marble cake, jam tarts, and tiny cocktail sausages, the kind that
came in a tin at Hans's trading shop. Eggy hot pots, and a summer fool with mulberries from the estate. “Remember now,
moisten
the tea cloth before you wrap the sandwiches in it,” she instructed the cook. “Oh, and you can take the afternoon off. Tell the other servants as well.” He threw her a look so filled with knowing insolence that her voice had faltered for an instant. “What is this?” she had snapped then, pointing at an overflowing pail of vegetable peels. “I don't pay you to keep my kitchen like a pigsty. Clean up around here
at once.
”

He had scurried to do her bidding, “Yes, madam, doing now only, madam,” but even so, when she had marched from the kitchen, her cheeks were hot.

Appu had accepted each invitation with alacrity, sweating under his collar and thrusting a sprig of wildflowers from the Tiger Hills gardens into her hands one time, a tin of violently colored sweets the next. She toyed with him, just a little bit more each time, letting the hem of her dress ride up ever so slightly, the sequins at her knees catching the light as she leaned across him for a spoon.
The scent of his skin, like freshly mowed grass. The scent of spring.

Each time, temptation moistening her legs, sliding through her insides, as she debated taking that final step across the line.

Finally, Appu took the decision out of her hands. He had grown increasingly angry with her questions, with this silly game they seemed to be playing. After the umpteenth pointless query, he slammed down his cup, sending the coffee sloshing into its porcelain saucer. Striding over to Kate, he hauled her from her chair.

“Oh,” Kate began, startled, and then his mouth came down on hers.

For all of Appu's practice, that first kiss was still more ardor than skill. Nonetheless, despite the wetness of his mouth, Kate's breath came hard and fast as she pushed him away. Raising her arm, she slapped Appu across the face with all her tennis-toned strength, so hard that he rocked back on his heels, his hair flopping onto his forehead. She turned toward the door. “Mrs. Burnett,” Appu began shakily, and then he stopped as, rather than
storming off as he had expected, she shut the door all the way and locked it.

So young.

Taking a deep breath, she lifted her arms again, this time as if in supplication. “It's Kate.”

He was at her side in an instant, fumbling as he tried to undo her shift, then pulling it up and over her head instead. He flung it from him and it floated down, a whisper of chiffon and silk pooling on the floor. He looked befuddled at her brassiere and she laughed nervously.
Her mouth felt so dry.
“The Symington Side Lacer,” she whispered, moistening her lips, “just the thing to flatten one's bosom into the proper silhouette.”

Her heart was racing, her legs so weak she could barely stand.
His lashes were so ridiculously long.
She took his hands in hers, gliding her thumb over the half moons of his nails and the veins throbbing in his wrists. She raised his palms to her chest, staring deep into those dark, fringed eyes.

“Here,” she said. “The lacings, untie these.”

If more than a week went by without him seeing Kate, Appu was unable to sleep, rubbing against the sheets for relief and snapping irritably at everyone, a bewildered Devi included. Nanju tried to draw him out, but he was even less inclined than before to join him in his wanderings around the estate or to help clean the birdhouse.

“We need a club membership,” Appu declared suddenly one evening at dinner, and Devi was so relieved that he had finally said something that she immediately acquiesced.

He haunted the billiards table at the Club, since it enjoyed the best view of the ladies' corner. He scarcely knew which was worse: not seeing her or the knowledge that if she was there then so, too, was her husband.

And then, without warning, one of the bearers would slip a note into his hand—“THURS. 10 a.m.”—and his heart would soar.

“Play for me,” he said once, and she seated herself at the piano, reveling in how comfortable it felt to sit naked upon the stool.

It became a ritual of sorts, for Appu and her. She would play for him as he lay there spent, whatever took her fancy. Dreamy, distracted sonatas, crashing chamber pieces, and intricate waltzes as the skies changed color and the clouds shifted shapes beyond the diamond-paned windows that opened onto the grounds.

“Tell me about your parents,” she said once, as he lay sprawled across her. Appu shrugged. “Not much that I haven't told you already—he wanted to be a doctor before his accident, and she runs the estates … ”

She ran a hand over the warm silk of his back. “I meant your birth parents, silly. Tell me about them.”

“Not much there, either. Father died at the Frontier.” His voice was cool. “Mother died soon after, and my parents … my aunt and uncle, took me under their wing.”

“How did your mother die?”

Appu stiffened imperceptibly. “She was taken ill,” he lied smoothly. He raised himself on one elbow and looked down at her. “And now, no more questions.”

“But—”

He trailed a finger down her stomach, making her gasp. “No more questions,” he repeated, bending toward her.

Kate never quite knew how Edward found out, whether it was that shifty-eyed cook or one of the other servants. He never actually said anything outright, but one day, when she came in from the garden, something was just … different. She had placed the trowels in the gardening basket and reached to kiss his cheek. “Hello, you. I didn't hear you come in.”

“How long?” That's all he asked, without even looking at her.

They talked then, as they had not in some time, as dinner grew cold and the peas congealed in their gravy. She was free to leave, he said. “Obviously I have failed you. You are free to go, I shall
not prevent you. Do you … ” His hands shook slightly, the fork he held clenched in his fist clattering onto the plate. “Do you love this other person?”

Kate burst into tears, astonishing herself. “You!” she told her husband then. “It is
you
I love.”

“Please,” she begged, kneeling by his chair and taking his face in her hands. “Please, darling, look at me. I love you so much, I miss what we had. This … it means
nothing
to me. It was … I don't know … I've missed you so. Oh
God,
Edward, I love you.”

Appu suffered terribly. There was no word from Kate at all. He took to his bed, perking up only in the evenings when it was time once more to go to the Club. He haunted the billiards table with its view of the ladies' corner, but of Kate there was not a sign. Devi grew so alarmed by his lassitude, she even summoned the doctor. “There's nothing the matter with him,” the doctor pronounced. “Adolescent languor, that's all.”

At first Nanju left him alone to brood, but when it seemed that there was no letting up in Appu's melancholy, he tried another tack. “You look like a water buffalo,” he pointed out. “Lying here all day long … ” He flung open the curtains, flooding the room with light. Appu flinched and pulled a pillow over his head.

“Well, buffalo,” Nanju said, seating himself upon the bed, “it's a beautiful day out there. Shall we go fishing?” He waited, but there was no response.

“Ayy,” he then said gently. “Did something happen at the Club? It's that woman, isn't it, the one you talked about?”

Appu said nothing, hardly even seeming to breathe.

Nanju sighed. “Appu,” he began, and then he shook his head. “It
is
a beautiful day,” he repeated simply. He started to get up and that was when Appu moved at last. Face still buried under the pillow, he pushed his foot forward. Not saying a word, the rest of him lying there unmoving, mutely propelling his foot under the sheets until it touched Nanju's leg. Nanju looked at his brother, a mix of fondness, anxiety, and mild exasperation on his face. And then he shifted position,
moving slightly sideways, so that when his leg settled again, his knee lay stoutly over Appu's foot, warm and comforting, as if sheltering some burrowing, vulnerable animal.

Finally, unable to bear it any more, disregarding Kate's warning to
never
contact her directly, Appu drove to Belvedere Estate.

“Dags,” Kate gasped, horrified. “Why are you here?”

Appu listened as she explained that she could not see him anymore. “Why?” he asked, and she shrugged, a delicate movement that set her bob swinging as she stared out toward the lawn.

“Why?” he asked again.
“Why?”
Without giving her a chance to reply, he swept the bric-a-brac from a side table and sent it crashing to the floor.

Kate's hand flew to her throat. “Dags! Come on now,
surely
you didn't think … surely you knew this was temporary?”

“I
love
you,” he said desperately, his voice cracking.

“Love?
Love?
What we had was not love, it was lust. I mean, look at us, for God's sake. We come from two different worlds, why I must be at least ten years older than you; that's not—”

He tried to kiss her then, and she wrenched free from his grasp.

“For God's sake. Are you not listening to me? This is over.”

He stood there in her silk-frilled parlor, struggling for the right words and to keep from crying in her presence. “You … you … ” and then he turned and ran for the door. “Whore,” he shouted over his shoulder, “fucking white whore,” as he leaped into the Austin and tore down the drive.

Kate and Edward Burnett left Coorg not long after that. Rubber, they told their friends, they had heard rubber was going to be huge, and after selling their estates they sailed for Malaya. There was talk of them in the Club for a couple of weeks. All those rumors that Kate had been seeing someone behind Edward's back. Nothing ever proved, of course, but still, where there was smoke … Quite the coquette she was, flirting with all the
members beneath their wives' very noses.

Soon though, even the gossip died away and there was little to indicate that the Burnetts had ever been there.

Still, there were legacies that Kate left behind. It was she who completed Appu's introduction into society. It was she who had taught him how to hold his glass properly and to tell crystal by the
pinggg
sound it made when you flicked a nail against it. It was she who had shown him to keep a pocket square ready at all times, ironed to flatness and dabbed with eau de cologne, in case a lady ever had need of it.

It was she who had schooled Appu in the slopes and curves of a woman's body, guiding his hands over the secret places that most men never truly discovered. A tender earlobe. The hollow behind a knee, the delicate skin along the inside of a forearm.

It was she who taught Appu how naïve it was to expose one's heart at all.

Nanju sat beside him as he was packing to leave. “You all right?”

“Why wouldn't I be?”

“Come on, Appu. I know something happened.”

Appu continued to stuff shirts, trousers, and shoes into his trunk. “No. Nothing.”

Nanju sighed. “As you wish. Take care now, you hear?”

“I'm fine,” Appu said, still refusing to meet his eye. “Don't know why you should think otherwise.”

And indeed, once he was back at Biddies, Dags seemed more than fine as he regaled the boarders with his escapades. He described Kate in detail, every minute aspect of their trysts. When he had ripped apart every shred of her dignity, after he had stripped her naked through his words,
that
was when Dags finally started to feel better. She was right, he told himself. It
had
been only lust. He forced Kate from his memory like water through a sieve, until all that remained was a coarse sediment. An essence, as it were, distilled from their time together, fashioned solely from the pleasures of the flesh. He even came up with a sonnet to commemorate their affair, belting it out to the tune of the school song.

Katie, Katie, show me your thighs,

A yard above the knee.

Spread your legs and arch your buns

The better for me to see.

Now when he sneaked to the village, Dags knew what to ask for. “Women,” he said, “older women, young girls, whatever you have available. I will pay well.”

In Appu's final year, Biddies flew into a tizzy over the headmaster's daughter. Rosemary D'Costa was slender, and almond-eyed. She had arrived at the school with her mother, who was too sickly to stay any longer in Madras; Rosie would be schooled at Biddies, it had been decided. The students naturally fell over themselves vying for the affection of the only girl at the school. They left pastries in her desk, and love notes and flowers of every kind, all of which Rosie accepted with a sweet smile, bestowing her affections neutrally upon everyone and no one.