Echoes of a Promise (7 page)

‘Really?’ Victoria appreciated that insight into Maud’s line of thought. It made her feel slightly less guilty about any attempt she might make to manipulate Nigel’s choice of a new wife.

Once Lady Phillips and Mrs Moncrief had made their calls, the other British ladies came in twos and threes throughout the next week. Victoria was required to do no more than chat, and Duleep was delighted to be kept busy serving tea and cake to the visitors.

Victoria’s new acquaintances were eager for her to join their card
parties, luncheons, croquet games, china-painting groups and book readings. Did Mrs Latham enjoy shooting?

‘You’ll find some very good game up there in the mountains at this time of the year. We’re setting up a hunting camp next week. Would you like to join us?’

‘Thank you, but no – I don’t ride and I know nothing about guns.’

She heard the news that rehearsals for the Amateur Dramatic Society’s new production of
The Scarlet Cloak
were going well, and that the new ballroom being built onto the clubhouse at the polo field would soon be completed. A committee had plans well in hand for its inaugural ball on the Queen’s birthday.

‘How we all miss dear Maud at a time like this!’ Victoria often heard that remark. ‘Now there was a lady who knew how to organize a splendid function!’

Victoria’s diary was soon filled with invitations, and though she told Duleep that she could easily walk the short distances to any of these houses in the cantonment, he clearly disapproved of the notion and insisted on rousing Maud’s little old syce to harness the pony trap for each visit.

‘Pelham-memsahib never walked!’

As Victoria watched how her new acquaintances occupied their days, they reminded her of a tribe marooned on an island, snuggled tightly together, hugging their Englishness close, and doing their best to ignore the great tide of Kashmiri humanity swirling around them.

They lived their lives in neat rows of well-tended gardens planted with English flowers, comfortable in bungalows filled with English furnishings, and servants for every domestic task. There was no reason why a memsahib would do a stroke of any kind of work, apart from organizing entertainment and trying to keep in step with everybody else.

Most sons, and some daughters, were sent off to schools in England at the age of seven or eight. ‘Yes, it’s heartbreaking to part with them,
Mrs Latham,’ said the regimental doctor’s wife seated beside her at lunch one day, ‘but children are inclined to become far too attached to the Indians if they remain here. Yes, they must—’

‘Shh!’ The magistrate’s wife frowned at the speaker and nodded towards a thin woman who was sitting nearby and staring expectantly out the window. ‘M’dear, please take care not to talk about children within Mrs Buckley’s hearing.’

While the topic of conversation at the table quickly turned to the latest catalogue that had just arrived from England, the doctor’s wife whispered to Victoria that poor Mrs Buckley’s little daughter had been kidnapped several years previously. ‘Not surprisingly, Rose Buckley quite lost her mind with grief, and it’s only lately that she’s even been able to leave her house.’

‘That’s dreadful. How did it happen?’

The doctor’s wife shook her head. ‘Child stealing is a very old and well-organized business in this part of the world. The kidnappers work swiftly and probably sell the child to one of the beggar masters in some big city. Or worse. Thank heavens, it doesn’t happen often now, but we must remain vigilant.’

Victoria began to play tennis once a week; and three officers she’d met at a garden party called on her regularly as a trio. They flirted with her lightly, invited her to watch them play polo, and escorted her to the regimental band concert. She found their company pleasant enough, but when she gave them no encouragement, they went off to find other more lively targets.

The people she met in the cantonment and the invitations she accepted were all perfectly pleasant and agreeable, and Victoria came to feel a prickle of guilt at her own desperation to escape from this tight little circle and explore further afield. Kashmir must offer much more than this corner of England, she thought. Where were the three marvellous old Mogul gardens that Martin had told her about?

‘Oh nobody visits them now, Mrs Latham,’ said Mrs Simpson, the rector’s wife. ‘My husband took me to the Shalimar Gardens once, but we found them to be in a very poor, overgrown state. I’m sure I saw a snake.’

Victoria continued to wake early each morning, lying in the
half-light
and waiting for the now familiar hoofbeats to come pounding past the house. It was easy to recognize the sound of the splendid chestnut as it galloped off into the dawn, and by the time the man in the blue jacket came riding steadily back to town – always close to nine o’clock – she was up and dressed and standing at the window to watch him pass.

No, she corrected herself. It was the beautiful horse that held her attention. Just who its stern-faced rider was, or where he went, was neither here nor there. There were often days when the sight of that animal tempted her to go out and buy a horse of her own, then have someone teach her to ride it. She needed to broaden her horizons and discover for herself what lay around the bend in the road. But the idea came to nothing.

The more time Victoria spent in Srinagar, the more futile she saw her mission to steer a new Mrs Pelham into Nigel’s arms. He gave no signs of a particular interest in any of the pleasant ladies they met at the evening card parties and dinners they attended. After all, hadn’t Nigel told her plainly on the train that he was not a passionate man? And with Duleep to oversee everything in the house – even reminding
Pelham-sahib
of his appointments and laying out the appropriate clothes for each occasion – a new Pelham-memsahib in Nigel’s life seemed to be rather superfluous.

Victoria wasn’t sure how long her visit to Kashmir would be, but she made a determined effort to step warily through the tangle of military and civil cliques which she saw constantly forming and reforming amongst the wives in the cantonment. It was a delicate business, but for Nigel’s sake she was careful to remain on good terms with them all.

A feeling of impatience hit her again this morning as she stood at the window and watched the man on the chestnut horse riding past at nine o’clock. To date, she’d seen nothing of the city beyond the cantonment and the residency compound. On impulse, she sat down and wrote a note of apology to her tennis group, saying that she’d be unable to play today.

‘Duleep, I’m going for a walk into the market, so please have this note delivered to Mrs Chambers. I’ll be back for lunch.’

She didn’t stop to hear his protest, but she suspected that he sent one of the young servants to shadow her into the old town – a jumble of lanes and tall, narrow brick buildings with timber balconies overhanging the street. It lay a mile away, sprawling around one arm of the lake and well out of view of the British community.

As soon as she entered the lanes, she was struck by the intangible and rich odours of the place – the smell of humanity, sweet and sour, of dust and refuse and boiling ghee. Surprised stares were thrown her way, but they were not unfriendly, and she made her way slowly through the throng of men and veiled women, overloaded donkeys and handcarts bringing cherries, peaches and mulberries to the market.

She was intrigued by everything she saw around her. Shops on either side of the street opened directly onto it, with men sitting cross-legged on the floor while they worked at their crafts. She was aware of being watched by families living above and when she smiled up at the women and children standing on their balconies, they called down a greeting. At least, it sounded to her like a greeting.

She admired the rolls of fabrics in the silk merchant’s shop, as well as a display of the finest of woollen shawls woven with paisley motifs in the next one.

A dentist, flanked by an audience, performed his work on a patient sitting on a chair in his doorway, while a few yards away, a barber was shaving a customer out on the street. A pile of jewel-coloured carpets caught her eye, and she paused to marvel at the speed of the grain
merchant’s fingers as they flew to and fro, clicking the beads of his abacus as he sat crosslegged on the floor of his shop.

A herd of goats trotting down the narrow road forced her to step aside quickly, and around the next corner she stopped at the sight of the familiar chestnut horse standing outside a woodcarver’s workshop on the opposite side of the lane. A lad held its reins while the rider was talking with the crafstsman inside.

From this position, Victoria had her first clear view of the tall Englishman’s features. Whenever she’d seen him riding past the house, she’d always considered his expression to be somewhat forbidding, but now his sun-tanned face appeared to be – if not handsome – at least good-looking, despite the thin white scar running down one cheek. He looked younger, as well. And that was especially so as he flashed a wide smile when the toymaker brought out a brightly decorated wooden elephant standing well over eighteen inches high. She found herself smiling, too, when she saw the craftsman position a
gold-painted
howdah
on the back of the toy. The Englishman picked up two small wooden figures to sit in it, and then a
mahout
to place astride the elephant’s neck.

When the Englishman pulled the toy across the floor, she noted how cleverly the trunk had been made to sway from side to side as the wheels turned. What child wouldn’t be delighted with such a toy? She could just imagine how excited Emily’s little boys would be if she arrived home with a gift like that for them.

The man gave a boyish laugh, ran the toy several times again up and down the small floor of the workshop, and then shook the toymaker’s hand.

Victoria stood where she was until the painted elephant had been wrapped in calico and the man had ridden off with it. Then she approached the woodcarver and attempted – with every pantomime gesture she could produce – to tell the craftsman that she wished to buy a toy just like the one he had sold to his last customer.

When the man shook his head repeatedly, she wasn’t sure whether it was because he was unable to comprehend her request, or whether he was refusing to oblige her. Finally, she gave up and retreated in frustration. If only she could speak a few words of Urdu – just a few.

‘Nigel, I’m afraid that I upset Duleep this morning.’

He smiled when she told him during dinner that night about her unescorted visit to the markets and the impressions she brought away. ‘Strange smells, yes, but I found it all quite fascinating – and the people seemed to be friendly.’ She didn’t mention the Englishman she’d seen at the toymaker’s.

He smiled and clicked his tongue at her. ‘Vicky, English ladies don’t go down there to shop. If you want to buy something, simply tell Duleep and he’ll have the merchant bring his entire stock up to display on the veranda for you. That’s the way it’s done here.’

‘Yes, but before I leave for home, I’d like to see more of the real Kashmir. Martin told me about the old Mogul pleasure gardens on the other side of the lake but the rector’s wife said that the one she visited some time ago was completely overgrown. What do you know about them?’

‘Haven’t seen them for years, Vicky. Not quite Maud’s cup of tea, you understand.’

When Victoria tactfully suggested to her art group that a painting excursion to the Shalimar Gardens next week would be a novelty, only quiet little Mrs Simpson, the rector’s wife, was willing to forego their usual Tuesday morning still-life exercise.

Thinking that the outing might be beneficial for poor Mrs Buckley
whose daughter had disappeared three years ago, Victoria asked her if she’d like to join them, too. But the suggestion only increased the woman’s distress. ‘Oh, no, I mustn’t leave the cantonment. What will my little Margaret do if she comes home and finds that I’m not here?’

Duleep was clearly not happy when he heard that the memsahibs intended taking no servants on their outing in a
shikara
, the little canopied punt rowed by a
manji
standing at stern with his oar. But Victoria had made up her mind, and once he’d organized the loading of their picnic basket, rugs, umbrellas, Mrs Simpson’s easel and two satchels of art materials, he was forced to watch anxiously as the little craft pushed off from the
ghat
and skimmed silently out onto Dal Lake.

Sunlight danced on the water and Victoria experienced a bubble of delight bouncing inside her as she lounged under the scalloped canopy while they drifted through a blaze of floating lotus blossoms with the flashing blue and gold and green of kingfishers and bee-eaters diving amongst them.

She shared a smile with Mrs Simpson. On a day like this, it was such a relief
not
to have a companion who chattered constantly. With a frieze of snow-capped peaks circling the valley, the shallow labyrinth of waterways that made up Dal Lake meandered for miles, sometimes spreading widely, sometimes narrowing in places where arms of land reached from opposite banks and causeways were built across with little arched bridges for water traffic to pass under.

She watched merchants in their
shikaras
rowing to and fro around the lake with baskets of fruit and vegetables, sacks of grain and flowers and doing business with farms and hamlets sitting on the banks. A melon-seller pulled close and held one out to them, but they shook their heads and he skimmed off towards a small farm on an island.

At one point they passed a long wooden houseboat being poled along slowly by four men. Every inch of visible wood was carved with delicate patterns of trees and blossoms.

‘How lovely,’ Victoria said as they drifted past. ‘Are all the
houseboats on the lake decorated in a similar way?’

Mrs Simpson nodded. ‘Some are very splendid indeed, and there’s a truly magnificent one that’s sometimes moored near the Shalimar Gardens, so I hear. It belongs to the wealthy widow of a khan and she spends each summer up here. Not that we’ve ever been invited aboard. I mean, it just wouldn’t do, would it?’

‘It wouldn’t? Why?’

‘Why? Well, because we’re English, and while the begum might be considered a very grand lady, she’s of mixed blood.’ The rector’s wife dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘They say that her mother was Persian and her father a Frenchman! So you see that a clergyman and his wife could not – would never—’

Victoria made an effort not to smile. ‘And does this lady visit anyone ashore?’

Mrs Simpson tipped her head towards the Hari Parbat Fort looming on the hill across the lake. ‘Well, I’ve heard that she sometimes visits the maharaja and the ladies of his
zenana
.’ She leaned closer to Victoria. ‘Actually, when we first arrived here nearly twenty years ago there was a great deal of gossip concerning the begum and a certain senior officer in the regiment who, um….’ She raised her eyebrows suggestively.

‘You mean that the begum and a British officer had an affair?’

Mrs Simpson coloured. ‘You must understand that the begum’s background is obscure, so that kind of thing is just not done, my dear. It does no good for the races to mix.’

Victoria bit her tongue.

However, a pleasant surprise was waiting for them at the Shalimar Gardens when their
shikara
nudged in beside a grand one already moored at the
ghat
.

‘Oh, splendid! The grass has all been cut since I was here last,’ Mrs Simpson said, looking around her. ‘How pleasant it looks now with the trees and roses pruned.’

The glory of the Mogul garden might have faded a little in the 300 years since it had been built by the son of the great Akbar, but the sound of running water and splashing fountains met the ladies as they stepped ashore. Like all Persian gardens, these were divided into quarters by spring-fed water channels and planted with lines of poplars and fruit trees. In the distance, a marble pleasure-pavilion stood at the end of a long, straight path, with terraces climbing the high hill behind it, and all linked by tumbling cascades.

Victoria and Mrs Simpson spread their rugs in the shade of a gnarled pear tree and the rector’s wife immediately began to set up her easel and stool. ‘Look at the light on the hill over there! I must catch that before it goes.’

Victoria looked about. ‘This place is absolutely enchanting. Would you mind very much if I leave you to go off and do a little exploring? I won’t be long.’

How much she would have to tell Martin and Emily about this delightful setting, she thought, as she wandered along well-tended paths that ran past rose gardens and beside long water channels with their lines of bubbling jets. There was no sound but a distant call of birds and the splash of fountains.

Far ahead lay the entrance to a white marble pleasure-pavilion. When she reached it, Victoria found the interior dim after coming in from the glare of the garden. She’d taken only two steps over the threshold before she collided hard with a small girl who was running to the doorway, dragging a wooden elephant on wheels.

The child slipped and the toy tipped onto its side, spilling little figures from the
howdah
. Victoria quickly scooped them up and held them out to the child. ‘Don’t cry, little one. Look, they’re not hurt.’

‘Annabelle!’ a deep female voice called from the other side of the pavilion, and a statuesque, grey-haired woman wearing a blue and gold sari swept across the black marble floor. ‘Oh, madame, I do apologize for the child’s carelessness. Annabelle, you must tell this lady that you
are very sorry for not looking where you were going.’

The words were duly whispered in a strong French accent, and Victoria smiled into the child’s big amber eyes. ‘Thank you, your apology is accepted.’ She leaned closer. ‘I think that if I had a beautiful elephant like yours, I’d find it hard to keep my eyes off him, too.’

The little honey-skinned girl tugged at the strand of brown hair curling over her shoulder and studied Victoria shyly for a moment. ‘He’s my special friend.’

The serenely beautiful woman gave Victoria a warm look and took the child’s hand. ‘Thank you for your forbearance, madame. I bid you good morning.’ She signalled an
ayah
to pick up the toy and to follow her and the little girl from the pavilion.

A Sikh servant who’d been hovering in the background, needed no instruction. He was a giant of a man, middle-aged, and sporting a moustache of monumental proportions, along with a large black pistol tucked into his belt.

Victoria was intrigued as she watched the group moving in formation down the path to their
shikara
waiting at the
ghat
.

How interesting to find that little girl playing with a painted elephant. Had it come from the man on the chestnut horse? Or perhaps there were dozens of children in Kashmir who owned painted elephants. But was it possible that the regal lady she’d just encountered had been the legendary begum? Mrs Simpson had said that her houseboat was sometimes moored in this area.

Urged on by curiosity, Victoria walked to the rear entrance of the pavilion and began to climb the long flight of steps leading up to the four terraces built into the hill behind it. She was puffing hard by the time she reached the top, and grateful to find a stone seat at the head of the cascade. Looking out from this height, she had a splendid view over the lake and she could see the grand
shikara
being rowed towards a huge houseboat moored off the far bank. The melon-seller they’d encountered earlier was paddling his way towards it, too, but as soon
as the party was aboard, four men with long poles began to move it. Within fifteen minutes, it was out of view, with the melon-seller drifting in its wake.

‘Ah, there you are at last, Mrs Latham,’ Mrs Simpson said, when Victoria eventually rejoined her. ‘Did you discover anything interesting on your walk?’ She dabbed another green leaf onto her
almost-completed
painting.

‘I’m sorry to have been away for so long, but I find everything interesting in Kashmir.’ She decided not to discuss her brief meeting with the woman and little girl.

In her next letter to Emily and Martin, Victoria said that she would soon be making plans to leave Kashmir because there was little more she could do for Nigel.

She put down her pen and looked at those words. No, of course she didn’t belong here, but where did she belong? Her parents’ house in Hanover Square had been leased to a family from York; Cloudhill had been a haven when she’d most needed it, but it was Emily’s home – not hers. The latest statement to come from the London solicitor showed that her wealth was growing fast each year. She could afford to travel anywhere in the world. Or should she buy a house in the country? Buy a farm? Find a useful life!

All week, Nigel had been losing sleep over the prospect of having to play in the annual cricket match between a team from the regiment and the ‘Resident’s Eleven’ – a group of civil servants who were rallied
annually for this match.

‘It’s the same every year, Vicky!’ he said miserably when he came downstairs in his spotless whites. ‘Damn it! Unless I’m lucky enough to trip and break an ankle on the way there, I can’t avoid playing.’ A note of woe crept into his voice. ‘I’ve told Sir Ian that I can never see a ball coming, let alone hit one with the bat. I’m an embarrassment.’

The one bright note in his sorry cricketing saga was the news that this year the Resident had turned a blind eye to the rule book and had recruited his military attaché to play on the civil servants’ team. ‘Perhaps Captain Wyndham might save us from our usual utter and complete disgrace.’

Inside the white picket fence surrounding the cricket ground, Victoria took a seat in the marquee where the memsahibs, dressed in their starched muslins and lace, sat sipping cool lemonade served by barefooted servants. The ladies chatted as the regimental band played jolly tunes to entertain them while they waited for the start of the match.

Victoria noticed a brown-haired, freckle-faced girl wearing a shabby patchwork skirt hovering outside the picket fence. She’d observed this lass sometimes wandering alone past Nigel’s house, and now when the child tried to sidle past the attendant at the gate, the man quickly sent her packing.

‘Who is that girl? Why isn’t she allowed in?’

‘Oh, that’s Molly Collins, and this enclosure is reserved for officers’ families,’ said the woman sitting next to her. Victoria gave a puzzled frown.

‘Molly is living with some family in the ranks until the chaplain can find a relative in Ireland who’ll take her.’ Victoria looked even more puzzled. ‘She’s an orphan. Her father was killed in a skirmish up in the hills, and her mother died three months ago.’

‘The poor child! Is there no other family?’

‘Yes, two younger brothers, but of course the Regimental
Benevolent Fund pays for orphaned boys to be sent down to boarding school in Lucknow.’

‘And what about Molly? Who does she live with?’

‘Can’t say I know exactly, but she’s sure to have been taken in by some trooper’s family. At least for the time being.’

‘Poor child. Does she attend school here?’

The woman shrugged. ‘Probably not.’

‘So what does the Regimental Benevolent Fund do for an uneducated girl like that if some relative doesn’t claim her and provide her with a home?’

‘Oh, she won’t be abandoned. She’ll be given her passage back to England, along with a purse of twenty pounds so she can buy clean clothes and find work.’

‘But Molly Collins is still a child! And if she has no family to offer shelter or protection, do you realize what kind of work she’ll find on the streets of any city?’ Dark memories of death in an East End tenement shot into her mind. ‘Believe me, it would be kinder to smother Molly in her bed tonight than send her to that fate!’

‘Really, Mrs Latham, how you do dramatize the situation! Besides I think that she’s at least twelve. Quite old enough to become a scullery maid.’

Victoria felt herself heating. She was preparing to continue the argument with the well-dressed, well-spoken woman, but at that moment the teams came out onto the field and everyone in the pavilion began to clap.