Where Earth Meets Sky (33 page)

For the first time she lost control of herself. Weeping, she hammered on the door, bruising her fists as she raged at it.

‘Let me out! Someone come and get me out, please! Oh, please don’t leave me in here any more! Prithvi? Jane? Help me!’

Still no one came. There was only silence from the house. Three o’clock. Sam would be waiting. She knew that kind of expectation he would be feeling, the way she felt every time she waited to see him. And she would not come. The next two hours passed in an agony as she thought of the Fairfords’ bungalow, imagining what was happening there and what Sam might be feeling and thinking of her. If only she could get a note delivered to him, but there was no one she could ask! Once more she wept helplessly.

By the late afternoon, as the sunlight faded to coppery pink, she had sunk into a state of lassitude. She had eaten very little that day, she had only been able to relieve herself in the chamber pot, which badly needed emptying, and any hopes for the day had been dashed. She thought about all the violent things she would like to do to Dr McBride. Sam was leaving for Bombay to catch his ship in two days and she had already missed a precious afternoon with him, thanks to the doctor! All she could think of now was seeing Sam before he left.

All night her thoughts span with anxiety. Surely the doctor would come to his senses and let her out in the morning? How was he explaining her absence to the rest of the household? But this was a worry. The title ‘doctor’ commanded such power! He could give them some trumped-up explanation for her absence and no one would even question it, possibly even Jane Brown. Lily felt panic rise in her. What if Dr McBride had really lost his senses and was planning to keep her here for as long as he liked, to play with her?

The pink dawn brought a new sense of hope and balance. Of course he’d let her out! He came to her with a tray of breakfast, having neglected to give her dinner the night before. Scrambled eggs and toast and a banana fortified her, but he barely spoke, despite her pleas to him to forgive her and let her go, to tell her what he planned to do. Once more the door was closed and the bolts slammed into place.

The day passed in an agony of uncertainty. Lily sat, half in a trance, or paced the room, losing all sense of time. When the doctor next came in, soon after four o’clock, she had a plan.

‘Ewan,’ she said, very gently as he put the tray of tea down. ‘I wonder if you would allow me to do something. As you know, the Fairfords, my employers in Ambala, are here in Mussoorie, but they’ll be leaving tomorrow. You’ve been so kind and generous in letting me spend some time with them but I wonder now if they won’t be thinking me awfully rude for just disappearing without a word. I wondered if I might just go out to see them, perhaps, to say goodbye? Their holiday is almost over and they’ll be going back. Might I, d’you think, just walk out along towards Gun Hill for a little while?’

He eyed her, as if considering her proposal seriously, and then, as if to a small child, said, ‘We’ll see. Let’s just see how you behave yourself until then, shall we?’

This gave her a chink of light, of hope, and she dared to ask, ‘I don’t suppose there has been any message for me, has there? A note, perhaps?’

He poured her tea and handed her the cup. She saw that the soft skin under his eyes looked more puckered than usual with tiredness.

‘And who might that be from, Lily?’ He spoke with that teasing, ominous tone again and she could hear how suspicious he was.

‘From the Fairfords, of course,’ Lily said brightly. ‘Mrs Fairford has been very kind to me and she was expecting to see me yesterday afternoon. She’s the sort of person who might worry – she might even come to the house to enquire . . .’

‘No. Nothing has come for you,’ he said, going to the door.

‘Doctor – the chamber pot needs emptying, badly!’ she blurted.

Silently and with distaste, he took it and brought it back empty. Then, abruptly, he left the room again.

The rest of the day passed. At times, Lily grew severely agitated and then at others, simply flat and hopeless. She tried to sleep as much as possible, to pass the time so that she could avoid the agony of feelings that came upon her. Sam was leaving tomorrow. She had not seen him and he had evidently not attempted to contact her. Surely the doctor would have challenged her over it triumphantly if any note had arrived? She could hardly bear to imagine what Sam must think of her. That she had been playing with him and had deserted him? And why had he not come to see her? She racked her brains desperately for a way she could get out to see him tomorrow.

What if, when the doctor came in with a tray of tea, she could throw it over him and escape while he was standing, scalded and shocked? The next time he came in she was almost on the brink of doing it, trembling at the thought, but she could not quite find the nerve. She thought of writing a note for Prithvi or Jane Brown and slipping it under the door, but of course that was no good. The doctor would most likely find it when he next came to bring her food. Again and again she opened the window and stared down, desperately trying to see if there was any ledge, any staging point big enough that she might lower herself down on to it, hoping every time that she had perhaps missed something. Each time all she could see was the sheer drop down the side of the house and the monkeys’ playground of the trees and roofs below in the valley, and she knew that to try and climb down would almost certainly lead to her death. There were moments when even that seemed preferable to staying a prisoner here.

The morning of the day Sam was due to leave, she was awake before dawn. She left the bed and as she did so many times in the day, turned the handle of the door, pushing on it and hoping, vainly. Once again the bolts were fastened. There was no way out. That was the moment when she decided that whatever it took, she was going to get past Ewan McBride, even if she had to scald him or knock him unconscious to do so.

Dressing herself in readiness, she waited as the light changed from an uncertain haze of grey to the strong colours of morning. It was a beautiful day, the mountains touched with gold, and tiny wisps of cloud strewn across the valleys. Lily sat on the bed and breathed in deeply, watching the light change, thinking how many times she had seen that sight.

I won’t be here soon to see it, she told herself. She had no fixed idea of what was going to happen, except that she felt strong and desperate and somehow she was going to get out of there and never return. How could she stay with Dr McBride now? She would go and find Sam, travel with him, run away with him and somehow beg a passage on the boat back to England . . . In those moments anything seemed possible. She was full of a vibrating energy. All she had to do was to wait for him to come and she would spring at him. Whatever she had to do, she would be free, and she would go to Sam, be with Sam forever . . .

But he did not come. He brought her no breakfast, not even a cup of tea. He must, surely, come with tiffin, she reasoned, beside herself with anxiety. Was he punishing her in some new way? And if so, for what? Hadn’t she been punished enough? When the hour of tiffin came and went she became frantic again. Sam would be leaving on an evening train from Dehra Dun. If she didn’t leave the house by mid-afternoon there was going to be no chance of seeing him. He would be gone, thinking the very worst of her, and she’d never see him again. Desperately, she hammered on the door, weeping and begging to be let out.

No one came. The day crawled agonizingly past and by the late afternoon she knew with a dull numbness of despair that she had missed him. Sam Ironside would be gone, with the Fairfords, driving away from her down the twisting mountain roads and bearing in his heart feelings of utter betrayal and anger towards her. Perhaps he would think she had been playing with him, that this was her revenge for his leaving her last time. He would be angry that she had not kept her promises to come. And she ached for his suffering. But then she felt angry and betrayed herself. Why had he not come to the house to find her? Not moved heaven and earth to make sure he saw her? All she had now were the torn ends of unanswered questions and she felt a terrible despair. All the future held was life without him, without love or happiness, and it was a future in which she had no interest. Now he had gone for certain, she scarcely cared whether McBride let her out of the room or not. She had nothing to leave for.

She lay on her bed, facing the wall.

The days turned into a week, then two weeks.

No one came near her except Dr McBride, who sometimes brought her food at the normal times, and sometimes not. She realized that this was a calculated means of keeping her in uncertainty. Now and then he brought her a jug of fresh water for washing, emptied her chamber pot and even, once, brought fresh sheets for her bed.

‘Why does no one else come and see me?’ Lily asked him soon after Sam had left. ‘Where do they think I am?’

‘So far as they’re concerned, you have a fever, a highly infectious one, from which they need to keep their distance,’ the doctor told her, genially. He seemed happy now, as if convinced Lily’s spirit had surrendered to him. She no longer put up much of a fight about anything. Now she knew that Sam was gone, that he had not even tried to contact her before leaving again forever, nothing else seemed to matter. She lay for hour after hour, feeling she had no energy to care about anything. Occasionally she would rouse herself to eat, or wash herself, or to sit by the window, looking out over the mountains and hearing the distant children’s voices from the school. Every so often, almost absent-mindedly and without hope, she tried the door. But it never gave.

‘How long are you going to keep me here?’ she asked one day.

‘Until you’re better,’ he said, sitting by her bed and taking her hand. ‘You’re not very well, are you, my little one?’

Lily sighed. It was true, she didn’t feel well. Certainly not the robust health she was used to. She found it hard to eat much and her innards felt sluggish. She had so little energy that sometimes it was hard to rouse herself from the bed.

‘Perhaps if I had some fresh air and exercise I’d feel better,’ she said.

‘Oh, I don’t think that would be a good idea,’ he said, concerned. ‘You mustn’t do anything to weaken yourself further, Lily, my dear. We want you back in the best of health as soon as possible, don’t we?’ He was speaking to her in the wheedling, childlike voice that he had started to use with her all the time.

Lily felt a chill go through her suddenly. Where had she heard that before? In Muriel McBride’s bedroom, the day the doctor had come in and sat beside her with such tender concern, looking down in to his wife’s eyes as if she was the most important person on earth. Lily stared back at him, at his heavy form leaning over her, and big soulful eyes, full of the same concern. Inside her, there came a surge of revival. Somehow, she saw, the doctor had made Muriel McBride the way she was and now he was starting on her. He
wanted
her to be ill! She felt herself flood with energy.

Calmly she said, ‘You’re right, of course, Ewan. I do think I’m not myself at the moment. Perhaps the best thing I can do is sleep for an hour or two.’

‘Very wise, my darling,’ he said, patting her shoulder. ‘And I’ll sit with you while you sleep. I love to watch you.’

Lily tried not to let her alarm show. ‘There’s no need,’ she said, forcing a rueful smile on to her face. ‘In fact, if you were here I should want to stay awake and be with you. So it might be said you wouldn’t be doing your patient much good! Why don’t you go and see your wife? She must be missing you.’

‘As long as you promise you’ll rest, Lily, darling. I don’t want you coming to any harm, ever.’

‘Of course I shall.’ She lay back obediently, as if ready for sleep and he left the room, casting a look back at her as he did so, as if checking on her.

Lily lay still until his footsteps had receded along the passage. Only then, she realized, she had been holding her breath.

From then on she continued to act her part as the feeble invalid, but now, instead of allowing herself to slip into the poorly stupor which Dr McBride seemed to encourage, Lily’s mind was working constantly on plans for escape. Her frustration and anger returned multiplied since her renewed determination did not make it any easier to actually find a way out of the room. Then, one afternoon, she heard a timid little tap on the door and leaped up from the bed.

‘Miss Lily?’

‘Is that you, Prithvi?’ Lily ran to the door.

‘Yes. Are you sick, Miss Lily? Dr McBride said you are very sick and must not be disturbed. He said we must not come near. But I was feeling so sorry for you and he has gone out. I came to see if there is anything you need.’

‘Prithvi, I’m not sick, I’m all right!’ Lily cried. She was trembling wtih excitement. At last, a way out! ‘Open the door, will you! He won’t let me come out. Just pull the bolts back, Prithvi, please!’

There was a pause.

‘The doctor is saying that we must not open the door. That you are not to be let out under any circumstance whatsoever.’

‘But I’m not ill!’ Lily pleaded desperately. ‘He just wants me to be, to keep me here, but I’m perfectly all right, honestly. He’s the one who’s not well!’ As she said this, thinking of the controlled face the doctor showed to the rest of the world, she realized how crazed it sounded. ‘Oh, please just let me out and you’ll see – just for a moment!’