The Lotus and the Wind (16 page)

She sat up with a jerk. He couldn’t be teasing her on purpose; he wasn’t Rupert Hayling. It was lucky she loved him. She suppressed a giggle and said, ‘I’m not going to argue with you, Robin. I’ve been in India nearly as long as you have, remember. But the chicken will be boily-roast.’

The bearer soon brought in the first course, taking the tepid dishes from the bungalow watchman on the verandah. The watchman, who was also the cook, had walked the better part of a hundred yards with them from his kitchen across the compound. She ate slowly. She wanted the meal to end, but she feared the actual moment when the bearer would say, ‘Anything more to-night, sahib?’ and Robin would answer, ‘No,’ and the bearer would put his hand to his forehead in his curt Pathan way and say, ‘Salaam, sahib. Salaam, memsahiba,’ and leave her to the lamp and the flickering fire and the strange man and the beds lying on the other side of the warped door.

She would be ‘brought to bed of a fine boy.’ It was a funny phrase, really, and of course she didn’t mean that. What she meant was--she’d be brought to bed of twins, love and trust, and she knew that she would have to struggle to give them birth. Before her first talk with Caroline Savage, early in those three weeks, she had been in despair. She had hunted her love and brought him down, and when he lay at her feet and she saw the mysterious nature of him she did not know how she could prove to him, in life, that she was not really his huntress but his heart. Where was her strength, where would she find persuasion, when her man looked out of different windows, knew fear but no strife, and was encased in crystal armour? In her innocence she had not known, and she hated her mother for not telling her before and for making the secret out to be so tawdry when she did.

Her body could be proof and power and persuasion. There was no other way of showing Robin that not everyone who came close to him suffered hurt thereby. Mrs. Savage had told her about the physical hurt, but that would be nothing. In her joy of possession, at the finding of this weapon of love, her body, she would notice no pain. That she knew.

She knew because . . .

‘Salaam, sahib. Salaam, memsahiba.’

She was in one of the chairs. She must have eaten her way through the menu, and it must have been as forecast, except that there was a taste of curry in her mouth--chicken curry instead of roast chicken. And she must have been talking, because Robin was answering something she had said.

She knew because ... Caroline Savage had greeted her in the big drawing-room of the big bungalow at the other end of Peshawar cantonment. In that room it was cool, almost cold, and yet the light flooded in cheerfully. Servants moved about all the time during her visit, and the door was open and the windows open. Yet she was certain that no one would intrude or even overhear. More, she wouldn’t care if they did. It was soon after the engagement, when every weapon she tried to use to prove her love melted in her hand.

Caroline Savage had white hair and a small face, young, and firmly boned. She said, ‘I’m glad you helped make up Robin’s mind for him. You are the best hope he’ll ever know of happiness as you and I understand it. And he is your best hope of real happiness, greater than any other man can give you. You know that, I can see. I would never have forgiven you if you had faltered. Mind, I don’t say he and you will be happy, I say it’s his only chance and your best. He knows.’

Startled by the intensity of the words and the calmness of their delivery, Anne listened more attentively. She had come prepared for platitudes, or to be upbraided, and had deadened her mind in readiness. Mrs. Savage continued. ‘He doesn’t like me very much, but that’s neither here nor there. He is not an ordinary young man.’

‘People don’t understand him,’ Anne murmured. ‘He’s a cat.’

‘Who gave you that idea? Major Hayling? He’s a wise man. But, my dear, you must not think that people are your enemies, that you have to fight them on Robin’s behalf. I fear that your foe is in Robin, and I think you will need the help of people, not their enmity. If it is a sort of melancholia, you’ll win. If it’s--something else, you won’t.’

‘What “something else,” Mrs. Savage?’

‘I don’t know. The wind?’ Mrs. Savage faced her seriously. ‘All the Savages are passionate, Anne. If it isn’t for women, it’s for something else--action, money, drink, even death, I’ve heard. Neither his father nor I can make out what Robin’s passion is, though we have tried--tried too hard, perhaps. I hope and pray that it will be women--a woman--you! Do you know what passion is, Anne?’ She looked her in the eye. ‘Have you had sexual experience?’

Her mother’s ugly, halting explanations that were no more than innuendoes made Anne begin to blush as she remembered them. Then she said humbly, ‘No, Mrs. Savage.’ Mrs. Savage smiled quickly and leaned forward in her chair to kiss Anne gently on the cheek. ‘I think that you know passion but have not had experience. I could wish that you had. I am positive that Robin has not either, and . . .’ She got up, walked slowly to the window, looked out for a time, and sat down again. ‘I am the only mother he has. I cannot have this chance for his happiness, and yours, risked by misunderstandings, shyness, ignorance. You know’--she smiled at Anne--’the best person to tell you would be someone like Major Hayling. It would be less clinical, and he’s a good man. But those days have not come yet. . .

‘Robin’s mother was murdered in the Mutiny; he was only two and a half, and unconscious, but he says he saw it done. Really he remembers what Lachman has told him since, but it’s real to him. Men he had trusted and loved all his short years picked him up by the heels and swung his head against a wall. His father carried him in a sack for hours, and later, with my help, dropped him down a sixty-foot shaft--to save his life, but he didn’t know that. How could he? All he remembers is that we prised his fingers loose and pushed him down.

‘Oh, there were many more cruelties. I am not going to have him saddled with another one, the idea that physical love is degrading to you and brutalizing to him. I am going to tell you that the body of the man you love, in you, is love. Haven’t you ever felt that you wanted to wrap your love around Robin? God made us so that with our bodies we can physically do it. Haven’t you ever felt that you were incomplete without him, that you were empty and aching for his love to fill you? That is love, Anne, and it comes about when passion--lust, I don’t care what they call it--melts you together. You will never know anything more close to God’s kindness, except bearing Robin’s child. I am a nurse--but that’s nothing. I am a mother, a wife, and’--she touched Anne’s head with her fingers--’a lover. My dear new daughter, listen while I tell you the wonderful way God made these things to come about.’

Anne had gone home at last, warm inside and crying happily into her handkerchief so that her mother asked what her high and mighty ladyship had said to hurt her. But Anne could only shake her head and run to her bedroom and lie down and remember. She dozed off, thinking of Caroline Savage’s last words and final, brief smile. ‘Now forget all the details, Anne, You are not going to take an examination for a degree--though some of our fallen sisters do exactly that, did you know?’ Anne thought Mrs. Savage might have winked; certainly her eyes had crinkled up as she continued. ‘You do not have to think physical love into existence, but only to take it--I know it is there between you and Robin--and grow it.’

The lamp on the table sputtered, and the wall at which she had been looking came into focus. She said, ‘Shall we retire, Robin? We’re both tired.’

In the bedroom she turned naturally, in front of the mirror, and asked him to undo her dress at the back. His fingers were slow and cool. ‘There, it’s undone.’ She took off her petticoats and corset and sat down in her chemise in front of the mirror. Her husband stood a little behind her. She watched his face as she combed out her hair, bent her head, and began to brush the long, falling mass, stroking it hard.--’

Robin said, ‘You have beautiful hair. The lights in it run in long bands as if it were made of something solid. It will be difficult to get that effect.’

She said, ‘Painting? Do you--? Oh, Robin!’ She put down the brush. ‘Did you paint those pictures in your room in Peshawar?’

‘Yes.’

‘You never told me. I didn’t know.’

‘I’m going to paint you to-morrow. I’ve never tried to do a person before, but I must.’

‘Thank you, Robin. I shall love it.’ She took up the brush and after fifty strokes on each side of her head put it down. Slowly she took off her stockings. She sat down on the edge of the bed, wearing only the chemise and wide, split-legged drawers. Robin took off his coat.

She stood up and came half a step towards him and looked him in the eyes. His eyes were unchanged, like the moving browns and greens of a river, friendly, unreadable. She bent her head to kiss his hand. ‘Robin, I love you.’ The trust and the utter confidence swelled up inside her and passed through her lips. She did not know what shyness or lust or good or evil were.

He said, ‘I know, Anne. I can feel it in my hand.’ He lifted it up and looked at it, where she had kissed it. ‘There. Now.’ He kissed her hand as she had kissed his. It was only--a kiss, and she looked blankly at him because she knew he loved her, and where, oh God, where was the barrier?

He made her sit down again and sat beside her. Then he said, ‘We have two days. After that we won’t be together again until I come back from the training they are going to give me for my job--about five months. I have a lot to learn. When I do come back it may only be for a day or two. Then I’ll have to go again, on the job itself.’

She could not prove anything important to him by sitting here half undressed and holding his hand. Mrs. Savage was wonderful, but even she had supposed that there would be an opportunity. She had said nothing about making one. Anne took her nightdress and went into the bathroom. The nightdress was nothing but a plain white cotton gown with no lace and no frills. She looked at it doubtfully, put it on, and applied some perfume behind her ears. Were these, after all, woman’s weapons and power, as they whispered in the ladies’ rooms and behind the fans? These--line and shape, feel and smell--and not trust, affection, love? Or could not the outward designs serve the inward purpose? She waited, hearing the rustling movements of his undressing. Then there was stillness, and she came out.

He was standing near the light on the little occasional table in the middle of the room. She slipped into her bed, the one nearest the window. He turned down the lamp, and in the tiny glow she saw his face staring down at the wick as it died. Lying stiff as a bolt, she heard him kick his slippers off under the other bed. Then he walked barefoot across the matting floor. His breathing was close above her. His body moved, and she heard the small thump of his knees as he knelt beside her. She reached up tentatively. Above all, she must not seize him. He must forget that the huntress had ever existed; instead he must know that she was his heart and throbbed now in a perfect rhythmical ecstasy of trust, each beat reaching out farther, like a wave, than the one before.

He said, not whispering, so that the words beat very loudly against her ears in the darkness, ‘Anne, I think I’m learning what love is. I couldn’t bear to see you hurt yourself. Is that love?’

She said, ‘Yes, but--Robin, with you I won’t, I can’t. Oh, darling, don’t you see I’m hurt because I can’t get close to you--only this way?’

After a long time he said, ‘I can feel you crying. I shall feel it all the time I’m away. It’ll be worse, it will be impossible to bear, if you come to cry because there is nothing this way either.’

‘There is, there must be.’

‘Anne, I’m frightened. The closer I get to you the more frightened I become--for you. No, that’s a bloody lie. For myself.’

She heard the nawar creak in the other bed. Half the night rats ran around on the ceiling cloth. Boards creaked suddenly in the centre room, and the waning fire crackled. She had not actually wept--Robin had felt those tears inside her--and, she clenched her teeth together, she would not cry now. She would not feel shame or outrage or disappointment--anything.

But it became difficult to order her feelings. In the early hours she saw Robin’s love and trust as apples on top of a wall, beyond her reach. Caroline Savage’s ladder wasn’t long enough, or the ground wasn’t firm enough to set it up--something was wrong. She did not feel the old misery of despair, because there must be a way to climb the wall that was Robin’s nature. Somebody must know. Robin could not bear to hurt her, but because she loved him she would be hurt only if the wall proved to be unclimbable. Then her wound would be most desperate.

She was hunting again. Robin had not sought out her love or forced it from her. How could he know its depth and its power of perseverance? She was like nothing but a lioness, padding up and down, up and down, lashing her tail.

But, dear God, I only want to make him unafraid.

How do you expect him to believe that?

By getting close to him, and--oh, please, please! Someone must know.

Two weeks later, on a Sunday morning, dressed in her best and having come back from church, she told her mother that she was going out calling. Her mother said, ‘Upon whom?’ She answered, ‘Just calling, Mother,’ smiled thinly, and left the bungalow. She was a bride now; in five months and two weeks she would be a matron.

Ten minutes later she turned into Edith Collett’s drive. The bearer came in answer to her call, looked at her in some surprise, but ushered her into a sparsely furnished drawing room and hurried out to announce her. ‘Mrs. Savage,’ she had said her name was. She called after the man, ‘Say, “Robin Savage Memsahib.” While she waited she examined the room with interest. The colours of the furnishings were much lighter than she had ever seen in a house before. Long curtains of light blue swept back in gentle, hanging curves from the windows. None of the wood was mahogany. It was not a cosy place, nor particularly tidy, but it was striking. One would have to notice it.

Edith Collett swept in with a rustle of blue Madras muslin. She sank down on a pouffe as Anne rose, and pulled Anne down with a pleasant laugh. ‘Our most beautiful bride. I am glad you have come. Would you like some tea?’