The Girl from Cobb Street (21 page)

‘We must try to get out of here,’ Jocelyn said, her voice a little shaky. ‘I don’t like the way things are going.’

But they were still hemmed in on all sides, and the horse, docile until this point, began to toss his head impatiently and paw at the ground, clearly unsettled. There was now a pitch battle going on just yards in front of them. Bodies threshed in anger and curses were hurled, along with bricks and soda water bottles. Sticks were wielded, cracking down on unprotected skulls with a sickening crunch. A figure caught her eye. It was Grayson Harte. He was not engaged in the fighting, but seemed to be trying to find a way through to the small circle of protestors who had begun the mayhem. A slightly built young Indian was by his side, and neither of them was making headway through the sprawling mass of fighting men.

Then soldiers appeared out of nowhere. Not mounted, for the cavalry had left the maiden before trouble had taken a real hold, but soldiers with rifles. The police had been unable to quell the disturbance and they had been summoned, no doubt unwillingly, to restore order. They made no attempt to infiltrate the crowd but instead herded them, pushing them back into a tight circle by dint of dropping their rifle butts on thinly shod feet. The once belligerent crowd were cowed, and began to file away as the soldiers directed. But then one Indian disentangled himself from his fellows and, escaping the circle, began again to shout the inflammatory slogans that had started the riot. The soldier nearest him swung his rifle butt and the air echoed with the thud of wood on bone. The man slumped to the ground. For a minute the crowd held its breath, then that howl of anger again, and people surged forward, fists and feet flying.

Jocelyn was shaking and Daisy held tightly to her friend’s hand. The people on either side of them had faded away, trickling from the maiden in ones and twos, intent on escaping the violence that had shattered the day’s pleasure.

‘We should be able to get out now,’ Daisy urged the girl.

The carriage might just squeeze through the space that had been left. It would mean executing a sharp right turn into the road but Jocelyn was no doubt an accomplished whip. Daisy strained her eyes, trying to chart a passage for her friend, and there coming towards them was Grayson Harte, supporting the young Indian who had been by his side. The boy had blood trickling down his forehead and matting his hair. Grayson was half-pulling, half-carrying him out of the crowd. Jocelyn hadn’t noticed. She seemed numbed with fear. This was something she had never before encountered, Daisy reasoned, and as the only two European spectators left on the maiden, they were clearly vulnerable.

In an almost hypnotic trance, the girl took hold of the reins just as Grayson arrived at the side of their vehicle, blue eyes blazing. He appeared uninjured, but his shirt was plastered to his body by sweat and his face looked grim.

‘Daisy, Miss Forester,’ he panted. ‘My colleague—he’s been hurt quite badly. Could I impose on you? I must stay but would you take him to the Infirmary? He needs immediate treatment.’

Jocelyn looked blankly down at him. ‘You know the way, Miss Forester?’ he said urgently. ‘If I try to keep the crowd back, you should be able to turn the carriage.’

The girl didn’t answer, seeming to be in another world entirely, and Daisy felt forced to pinch her hard. Jocelyn sat up suddenly alert.

‘Mr Harte, what are you doing here?’ It was a question that Daisy herself would have liked to ask.

‘It’s no matter. My colleague needs to go to the Infirmary,’ he repeated. ‘Can you help?’

‘Yes, yes of course. Daisy, if you could clamber into the back …’ Her wits, it seemed, were returning.

Daisy wedged herself into the rear of the trap, and with some difficulty, Grayson heaved the young man into her arms. The crowd was very much thinner but those who remained had nothing now to lose, their voices thrumming in anger, their faces set in retribution. Grayson managed to clear a space to one side of them and Jocelyn, her face tense, manoeuvred the pony and trap backwards and forwards until they were facing the narrow street they had travelled only a short while ago.

‘Take this. It might help.’ He passed Daisy a large, white handkerchief and then turned to go.

Her last sight of him was plunging back into the rioting crowd, this time accompanied by two burly soldiers, their rifles raised. She heard shots ring out, but there was no time to worry over what was happening. She had a more urgent concern. As Jocelyn concentrated on driving as fast as she could along the narrow street, Daisy used the square of linen to try and staunch the boy’s blood. It was flowing far too freely and she resigned herself to the ruin of her dress. But it was the young man who took all her attention. His face was waxen and he appeared to have lost consciousness. She felt thoroughly scared, for she was not sure they would get to the Infirmary in time.

It was fortunate the building was situated on the very edge of the civil station and a notice announcing Indian Medical Service was reached within minutes. That was just as well, Daisy thought, cradling the boy’s limp form in her arms. She had tried to keep the blood from trickling into his eyes and mouth, but she could see that beneath the dark plaster of his hair the wound he’d received was very deep.

‘Hallo there,’ Jocelyn was calling out. ‘Dr Lane, we need help please. Help!’

Her voice crackled through the silence that lay over the civil station. Surely someone must hear. She called again and again until finally a harrassed-looking man, grey-haired and spectacled, emerged from the door and looked at them in surprise.

‘There’s been an accident,’ Jocelyn began, and then without warning, tears flooded down her cheeks. The fright she’d suffered was taking its toll.

‘I can see that.’ The doctor’s tone verged on irascible. At least, Daisy imagined, he must be the doctor. He called to some people behind him, and two large orderlies appeared and very gently extricated the young man from the back of the carriage.

Daisy climbed down from her seat but when her friend, still tearful, made to do the same, she stopped her with a grateful clasp of her hand. Jocelyn had been scared half to death but had driven them out of danger.

‘You’ve done enough today. And you’ve a long journey tomorrow. You should drive home and get some rest.’

‘But the man …’

‘He’s in good hands. The doctor will put him right in no time, I’m sure. And I’ll stay for a while in case there’s anything I can do.’

‘I have to return the pony and trap to the Adjutant.’

‘Of course you have. Go now before he gets worried. News of the riot will already be circulating.’

Jocelyn nodded but still seemed reluctant to leave. ‘How will you get home?’

‘I’m sure I’ll manage. I’m on the civil station, not in the wilds of the jungle.’

Her companion smiled weakly. ‘If you’re really sure.’

‘I’m really sure.’

The girl picked up the reins and then smiled down at Daisy, almost her old self again. ‘I do wish you were coming with me. To Simla, I mean. Promise that as soon as I get back, you’ll come over and see me, or invite me to tea at the bungalow.’

‘I promise. You’ll have plenty to tell me.’

‘I certainly will, though I won’t be home for long to do the telling. Just a few weeks.’ She said it with regret. ‘But we’ll make the most of them.’

‘Why, where are you going?’ Daisy was disconcerted.

‘Back to England. Once we’ve returned from Simla, I’m to be packed off again. To Sussex this time. Ma has family there, and I’m to spend the winter enjoying myself. Or at least that’s what she says. I’m sure there’s quite a different scheme though. One that involves me finding a husband!’

‘Wouldn’t India be a better place to find one?’ That seemed to make a lot more sense. ‘There must be plenty of young officers desperate to marry.’

‘That’s the problem. I can’t be seen to favour anyone in the regiment, not with Pa as the Colonel.’ She screwed up her nose. ‘And to be honest, none of them interest me sufficiently.’

‘None of them?’

‘There
was
a young man a few years ago.’ Jocelyn’s cheeks grew pink. ‘He was on the Unattached List. He was with us while he decided which regiment he wanted to join. In the end he got into Skinners Horse. He
was
very good at his job. Either that or he had the right connections.’

‘Did you lose touch then?’

‘Yes, at least we did until a week ago. He wrote to me out of the blue.’ The pink had changed to a fiery red. ‘Actually, that was why I fell over the doormat. I saw the envelope lying there and recognised his writing—he’d written me a few notes while he was here. I couldn’t quite believe he’d got back in touch.’

‘And where is he now?’

‘Well, that’s the thing. He thought I was back home. I was supposed to be returning to England when I last saw him but, for one reason or another, I never got there. Anyway he was waiting until he got home leave before he contacted me. He’ll be in England next month.’

‘So you’ll meet up?’

‘That’s the plan. I don’t know if anything will come of it. It’s ages since we saw each other but I liked him enormously.’

‘I wish you luck,’ she said with sincerity, for every one of Jocelyn’s words had made plain that the girl cherished no feelings for Gerald and never had.

‘You can wish me double luck when I get back from the hills. And you must help me choose the clothes to take to England. It could be a very important journey.’ The tears and fears of a few moments ago had been forgotten in the swirl of a likely romance.

‘You should go now,’ Daisy urged. ‘You must still have plenty to do before you leave.’

Jocelyn bent down and planted a kiss on her cheek. ‘Thank you, Daisy, and thank you for being with me. I couldn’t have got through it without you.’

Daisy watched the horse out of sight, as it trotted towards the straight lines of the officers’ bungalows. Then she walked into the Infirmary. No one was around, and she took a seat in the small, stuffy waiting room, not quite knowing what she was doing there. But she’d promised Grayson, if only implicitly, that she would look after his colleague, and she must keep that promise. She sat staring at the faded cream walls for what seemed a very long time before, at last, the doctor appeared from his sanctum and told her that the patient would need an operation. A small operation, it was true, but a delicate one. Splinters of wood had become lodged in the deep wheal in his skull and each fragment would have to be extracted before they could begin to stitch him together. If Daisy were willing, could she sit with the man while he and his nurse made their preparations? The boy had regained consciousness and was restless and in pain, and needed to be watched. There was no one in the hospital Dr Lane could trust to do it; since Sister Macdonald’s departure, they’d been very short staffed.

The name rang a bell. The bazaar. She’d met the woman in the bazaar, a jolly down-to-earth character, who had spoken baldly of the difficulties Daisy might face with the mems, as she’d called them. Daisy had liked her, and hoped she might get to know her, but that had never happened. The bazaar was to be their one and only encounter.

The doctor was ushering her through the green-shuttered door into another small room, which was almost filled by the stretcher on which the young man lay. Someone had covered him with a blanket—to ward off shock, Daisy guessed—but his hands were all the time grasping at it, twisting it this way and that between his fingers. A ceiling fan turned slowly overhead, but every part of his body that was visible was covered in sweat. She found a chair and pulled it up beside the stretcher, taking his shaking hands in hers, trying to calm him. The bleeding had stopped, thank heavens, and she felt brave enough to blot his forehead with a moist pad that had been left on the small table nearby. He couldn’t speak but looked at her pleadingly. She tried to tell him that everything would be fine, that the doctor was coming soon and all would be well. She hoped fervently that she would not have to sit with him while they picked the pieces of wood from his wound but, if she had to, she would. When the doctor came, though, he was accompanied by the two orderlies who had come out to the carriage. Together they wheeled the man into an adjoining room she hadn’t noticed before and, through the open door, she caught sight of a nurse standing beside a fearsome tray of instruments.

Quietly, she went back to the waiting room, and took her seat again. She felt exceedingly sorry for the young Indian, but it was a compassion mixed with relief—every time she thought of Jocelyn’s words. In a stroke, it seemed, she’d lost at least one of her burdens. It was clear that though Gerald might still hanker after Jocelyn, that young lady had quite other ideas. Whatever fondness he’d imagined the girl felt for him, it had been just that—imagined, an illusion, a fantasy that he’d hoped would come true. She wondered at the nature of his fancy. Did he really love the girl, or was it ambition alone that had led him to think of her as a future bride? She was the daughter of the regiment’s most senior officer and would be a prize for any young lieutenant. But it hardly mattered now. Jocelyn would very soon be on her way to England to find a husband for herself. She may already have found one. And Daisy’s friendship with her could remain unclouded.

An hour passed, then two. She was beginning to think the doctor had forgotten that she was there. It had grown even hotter in the waiting room despite the unaccustomed luxury of an electric fan. But with its endless churning of the same fusty air, it made little difference and she felt trapped in a bubble of stale heat. It was only a sense of duty that kept her in her seat.