The Governor's Lady (47 page)

‘Why not? I like it here.'

He got up, and went over to her.

‘I'm not going to let it happen.'

She moved away from him; drew back in her chair as if she did not want to be touched.

‘There isn't anything you can do. Not any longer.'

‘Everything's going to be all right,' he told her.

He tried to put his arms round her, but she pushed him away from her.

‘That's what Sybil used to say. And it wasn't all right, was it?'

She lifted her head, and he was looking down into those astonishing, deep eyes again.

‘It's no good,' she said. ‘We'd better just give up.'

He started to speak, but she stopped him.

‘I'm finished. That's what you don't seem to realise. I'm finished. I'm no use to anybody. Not after what happened.'

He thought for a moment that she was going to start crying. But instead she reached over, and took up one of the photograph frames from the table beside her chair. As she held it in front of her, the lines around her mouth softened.

She passed the photograph to him.

‘Look at that, and you'll see what I mean,' she said. ‘That was me at eighteen. I'd only just met Gardie. Don't you wish you'd known me in those days? I was something, I can tell you. That was before I knew how it was all going to turn out. That's the way I like to think of me.'

He put the frame back onto the table.

‘I'll take you as you are,' he said.

Her head was to one side, so that the long curve of her neck was showing.

‘I believe you would,' she told him.

He glanced down to look at his watch, but Lady Anne put her hand over it.

‘You're not to look at your watch,' she said, ‘and you're not to go. I've been horrible to you. I've talked about myself all the time. I didn't mean to. Really, I didn't. It's just that I haven't seen anyone.'

She was already holding her arms out to him; and he could see that her hands were trembling. It was always the same: the trembling and the catch in her voice went together.

‘I don't see why you've got to go at all,' she said. ‘It means that we shall both be alone then. Don't go back to that dreadful hotel. Stay here with me. Tell me you'll stay.'

She began to stroke his cheek again, very slowly this time.

‘Poor, poor eye,' she kept saying. ‘And I didn't know. It's all my fault. And I didn't know a thing.'

‘It wasn't your fault it happened.'

‘Oh, but it was. I should have warned you.'

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘It was an accident. I moved.'

She let her hand rest on his cheek, fondling it.

‘You wouldn't have believed me, so I didn't tell you.'

‘Tell me what?'

‘That Gardie meant to kill you. It's what I was afraid of all the time.'

The housekeeper had grown reconciled to the new arrangement; even rather liked it, in fact. Having a man in the house gave a feeling of security and permanence. Admittedly, there was more cooking to be done. But anything, she reflected, would be better than a lifetime spent endlessly waiting on a single lady.

‘And they're beautiful letters,' Lady Anne was saying to him. ‘I've never had letters like that before. Gardie was a terrible letter-writer. I didn't always finish his.'

She was leaning over the back of his chair while she was speaking, and she kept stroking the sleeve of Harold's jacket.

‘If I'd ever had them, I don't think I'd have been ill again. I don't see how I could have been. But that's what Sybil wanted. She didn't want me to get well. Then I'd have been independent.'

She reached down and put her hand over his.

‘I don't know what she told you about me but, whatever it is, it isn't true. She was just a wicked old woman who went round inventing things. You'll always believe me, and not Sybil, won't you?'

She turned so that he could kiss her. She was looking down at him, and her face was half hidden by a wing of dark hair that fell across her forehead.

‘She didn't tell me anything,' he said.

The letters, thrust back into their envelopes, were spread out on the rug in front of them. Lady Anne had gone down on her knees, and was gathering them up again.

‘I shall keep these for always,' she said. ‘I'll let you look sometimes. Just to remind you when you've got tired of me. But nobody else is ever going to see them.'

She was holding them up against her bosom as she said it.

‘I'm glad Sybil only opened the first one,' she added. ‘I couldn't bear to think of her touching any of them.'

She had put the envelopes very carefully together, smoothing out the crumpled corners as she did so. Then she tied them up again. It was Sybil Prosser's piece of ribbon that she was using.

‘They're too precious to get lost,' she said.

‘I meant what I said in the letters,' he reminded her. ‘I meant every word of it.'

‘Even the cross, rude ones when you hadn't heard from me?'

‘Even the cross, rude ones.' He reached out and pulled her closer, so that she was resting up against him. ‘And are you going to marry me?'

She turned her face towards him. Her eyes seemed larger than ever now.

‘You know how much I want to,' she said. ‘I want it more than anything.'

‘Then …'

‘But I can't. Not yet. You must see that.'

‘Why not?'

‘It's too soon. Much too soon.'

‘It's nearly a year.'

‘People would start talking.'

‘There isn't very much left for them to say.

‘It's you I'm thinking of. They can't say anything new about me.'

She gave a little laugh as she said it; her old Residency social laugh that didn't mean anything. And she began pulling his wrists away from her. Then she stood up, running her hands down her dress where it had become crumpled. She was completely composed again.

‘We've just got to be sensible,' she said. ‘There's no point in rushing things. I couldn't marry you while Old Moses is still alive. I just couldn't. It wouldn't seem right somehow.'

‘Old Moses may live for years.'

Lady Anne shook her head.

‘Not much longer,' she said.

‘And we can get married then?'

She had her head on one side, smiling at him.

‘Haven't I got you into enough trouble already?' she asked.

ii

It was the one train of the day; and, at Nucca terminus, the restaurant car was already being loaded up with ice, fresh vegetables, sea food, liquor, hot rolls. By the time the passengers got there, most of the ice would have melted: there would be large pools of steamy water underneath the kitchen coaches.

‘I don't see why you've got to catch it at all. Why can't you just stop here with me?'

She stubbed out the cigarette that she was holding. Inside the ashtray, it went on smouldering.

‘I've got a job to do,' he told her.

‘Is it much more important than I am?'

‘Not to me, it isn't. Only to other people.'

‘I'm sick of other people.'

She pushed the ashtray away from her while she was speaking.

‘I didn't want it,' she said. ‘I don't know why I took it. Sybil was the one who smoked, not me. I must have been thinking about something else.'

She was smiling again; not directly at him, but quietly, contentedly to herself.

‘It was about us. When we're married, we can be together all the time. You won't ever have to go away again. We can just forget about other people. We needn't bother about anything.'

‘There'll still be my job.'

‘Not unless you want it. Gardie was awfully rich, really. Timothy gets most of it. But there's still plenty left over. It was the settlement part that Gardie couldn't alter.'

She spoke as though she had been at pains to make sure: he suddenly saw her going over the will carefully, clause by clause; with Sybil, possibly.

‘But I don't want to live on Gardie's money.'

He realised as he said it that it was the first time he had ever called him by that name. It was as though already Harold had become one of the family; but, in a strange way, it was still Gardie's family.

‘He wouldn't have minded. Gardie liked you.'

‘Last time you said he tried to kill me.'

‘So he did. That hasn't got anything to do with it.' She paused. ‘Gardie was quite mad, you know.'

She spoke as though it were something which, between friends, she would have expected Harold to have realised.

‘That's why I was so frightened of him.' She broke off to brush away some ash from the cigarette that she hadn't wanted. ‘He'd killed somebody already, remember. Miles committed suicide. Gardie drove him to it.'

Harold was watching her closely now. She seemed unconcerned enough; even not concerned enough, perhaps.

‘I don't believe it.'

‘It was before you came out,' she said simply.

She spoke as though that disposed of the whole matter, made it not worth talking about any longer.

‘You never had to live with him, did you?' she added. ‘You never knew what he was really like.'

‘We got on very well together.'

She laughed. It was a quick, unamused sort of laugh.

‘Oh, that wouldn't have stopped him killing you.'

The travelling clock on the table beside her gave a little ping. It was the half-hour. Harold looked down at his watch. The first of the passengers were probably already seated in the train by now.

‘He knew all about us,' she said. ‘The A.D.C. told him. That's what he was there for. And Gardie just couldn't let it go on, could he? You must see that.'

‘I still don't see why he should have wanted to
kill
me.'

‘Because of India: that's why.'

Again, she said it as though it were self-apparent; as though anyone who knew Sir Gardnor would have understood straight away.

‘He couldn't go out to India with that hanging over him. They'd never allow a divorce in Government House. A shooting accident, beforehand, when it wasn't his fault, would have been quite different. It would have solved everything.'

Harold was silent for a moment.

‘Did he ever talk about divorce?'

‘Not this time. He did at first when it was Miles. That's when he made me give up seeing Timothy.'

‘What made him change his mind?'

‘I've told you: people started tipping Gardie for next Viceroy. That's what altered everything.'

‘Then why did he bother to save my life the first time?'

‘Because he thought you didn't matter. That's when it looked as if he'd been passed over. India was all he cared about.'

She glanced again in the direction of the clock, and began smoothing down her dress.

‘Gardie wasn't that mad,' she explained, almost as though defending him. ‘He wouldn't have killed you unless there'd been a reason for it. He'd rather you'd finished his book for him.'

Mr. Frith could not have been more genuinely glad to have Harold back.

While he had been absent, the work had piled up quite alarmingly. On his own initiative, the native clerk had divided the files into Very Impatient, Overdue and Extremely Necessary; and what Mr. Frith most wanted to see was some of the paper work beginning to move out again. At the present moment, there was a distinctly disused air to the whole department.

The Drawbridges, too, were pleased that Harold was around again. By now, Mrs. Drawbridge had put him at the top of her stand-by invitation list: she kept reminding him, rather coyly, that though single men were so useful for dinner parties, he must think about getting married himself one day, mustn't he?

The other person who was happy about Harold's return was Mr. Ngono. His swimming pool, his Lido, had turned out a great disappointment. The stream that should have fed it had run dry; and, though the deep end had a good two feet of water in it, the shallow part, which was uncovered, had already cracked and splintered in the sun.

Mr. Ngono was at the moment suing the contractor. It had all been arranged: the contractor would go bankrupt and Mr. Ngono would take over the business. Once he had the lorry, there were endless Government projects for which Mr. Ngono would be able to tender; and he was hoping that Harold would be able to put in a word for him.

Even so, they all noticed that it wasn't the same Harold who had gone away. The change was for the worse, too: he had become moody and preoccupied.

It was really communications with Nucca that were to blame. The telephone service was notoriously unreliable. Floods, landslides, uprooted trees, termites, absent-mindedly wandering elephants, even
high winds, regularly brought the poles crashing down along the route; and, particularly in summer, electrical storms put isolated sections of the long circuit temporarily out of commission.

Nor was the Royal Mail any better. Admittedly, there were the two trains each way every week. But the van from the General Post Office at either end did not always manage to connect with them. The mailbags, on those occasions, simply had to be left neatly piled up at the barrier, and chickens, young children, bunches of fruit, hand luggage and other oddments would be placed carelessly on top of them. The bags themselves would be discovered only when the station staff began clearing up the mess long after the mail train had departed.

It was therefore in batches that the letters always arrived; sometimes in threes and fours, sometimes as many as half-a-dozen all in one delivery. The blue envelopes, with Lady Anne's big, excited handwriting scrawled across them, used to overlap the brass tray on which the boy brought them to him.

The letters told him everything; and nothing. She loved him, she said. It was like being in prison when he wasn't there. She had re-read all his own letters until she knew them by heart. Why didn't he write longer ones? She had practically given up drinking: it was only when she hadn't heard from him that she even thought about it nowadays. When was he coming? Why not next week-end? She had started going to the hairdressers again: some of it had been cut off, but not enough to spoil it for him. He shouldn't have spent all that money on sending her scent, but it was heavenly and she adored it. She was trying to eat more so that she wouldn't get too skinny-looking. Did Harold remember that each night, at eleven o'clock exactly, sjie stopped whatever she was doing and just thought about him? She could tell immediately when he had forgotten, because everything seemed to go dead inside her. Could he possibly imagine how much she was missing him? Did a man ever really understand that kind of thing?