The Girl from Cobb Street Read online

  The silence in the room was complete and, despite her determination, her eyelids drooped. As she began the slow drift into sleep, a thought burrowed its way into her mind, and jerked her awake. It was a thought she didn’t want but it would not be dislodged. Hadn’t Gerald said that all the men under his command were Indians? They would be unlikely to have the name of Minns or to hail from Spitalfields. So why did he have this missive?

  She got to her feet and walked back to the desk, fingering the letter again, turning it this way and that, trying fruitlessly to solve the conundrum. A wave of irritation hit and she wiped her forehead dry for the twentieth time that morning. She was getting obsessed by trivialities because she was too hot and too tired to think rationally. But as she turned to replace the letter, the thought that she had married a man of whom she knew almost nothing, returned with unwelcome force.

  ‘Lunch is ready, memsahib.’

  She jumped at the sound of the voice. The man was only a few feet from her, his eyes fixed on the letter she’d been holding. She had not heard him approach on bare feet and had no idea how long he’d been watching her.

  ‘Thank you, Rajiv.’ It was a struggle to keep her voice calm. ‘The sahib isn’t home yet and I’ll eat when he arrives.’

  The servant bowed his head slightly, his eyes cast downwards, refusing to meet her glance. Then as quickly as he’d appeared, he vanished through the side door, which led directly to the kitchen.

  When he’d gone, she slumped back into the wicker chair, her heart thumping a little too loudly. She hadn’t realised the man was in the room. Had he been spying on her? He had seen her hand on the letter, but did he realise she knew its contents? She must talk to Gerald as soon as possible, admit that she’d been reading his correspondence. There was probably no mystery to it, there was probably a simple explanation. But … a siren voice whispered in her ear. Her husband just might have some small thing to hide and if he did, it would make her own confession that much easier.

  Another half hour dragged by. The ugly Victorian clock half-hidden in the corner of the room chimed twice and she made a decision. Rajiv appeared almost immediately she rang the small brass bell, as though he had been waiting just the other side of the door, and her feeling of unease intensified.

  ‘I’ll eat now, thank you,’ she said briefly, ‘but we should keep some food aside for your master. He’ll be here soon, I’m sure.’

  ‘The sahib does not come.’ The man turned to go and she caught at his gown. He looked coldly down at her hand and she retrieved it immediately. ‘What do you mean the sahib isn’t coming. How do you know?’

  ‘He send message.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘This morning.’

  ‘This morning? You knew that he wasn’t coming and yet you didn’t tell me?’

  He said nothing and his face was mask-like in its lack of expression. He would always win a contest of wills, she realised, and it was pointless to remonstrate. Instead she gave him her first order and surprised herself with her curtness. ‘When you’ve cleared the dishes, I would like to take a bath. Please see to it.’

  She was perturbed by Rajiv’s animosity. He was a servant with whom she must share her home, whether she liked it or not, and she felt troubled for the future. She knew just how awkward a difficult servant could be for those who shared the same roof. In Bryanston Square one diminutive maidservant had set the whole household by the ears. Ethel had taken the greatest offence when Daisy had been promoted to be Miss Maddox’s personal attendant. As the longest-serving parlour maid, she contended, she was next in line for advancement and the job should have gone to her. She swore she would make Daisy’s life miserable and was as good as her word. Silly, trivial things like hiding Miss Maddox’s special soap, or rumpling her mistress’s silk underwear after Daisy had spent hours ironing it, or spilling coal dust on the carpet after she’d cleaned and tidied her mistress’s bedroom. Worst of all, Ethel had caused division among the servants themselves; if you were for Daisy, you were against her. Daisy had never sought approval from her fellows but the result of Ethel’s poisonous campaign was to turn much of the household against her and make her life even lonelier.

  At least Rajiv wouldn’t be doing that in this household of one. And he was efficient, she had to grant. Within minutes she heard bathroom taps being turned and a pile of sparkling white towels appeared on her bed. Minutes more and she’d slid gratefully into the oval zinc tub and breathed a deep sigh of pleasure. The luxury of hot water! Her knees were bunched, the water barely covering her lower limbs, but she gave herself up gladly to its delights. She would put his unfriendliness out of her mind and savour the fact that, in the middle of a working day, she had the leisure to enjoy this slow bathe.

  When finally she regained the bedroom, she saw that her soiled dress from yesterday was no longer where she’d abandoned it and the contents of her suitcase had been hung in the cupboard on an ill-assorted clutter of hangers. Perhaps it was a peace offering. She hoped so, though it no longer seemed to matter. She was utterly fatigued. Outside the heat was reaching its crescendo but she hardly felt it. She sank limply down onto the bed. In the distance she thought she heard the sound of water, water splashing faintly over the hanging mats of fragrant grass. The slightest breeze was playing across their surface, sending a sweet-smelling coolness into the room, and rocking her gently to sleep.

  It must have been the sleep of the dead, for when she next woke it was the middle of the night. She stretched her arms wide but there was no answering body lying close. She lifted her head from the pillow. Gerald wasn’t there and in the stabs of brilliant light which stippled the room, she could see that the bed beside her had not been slept in. She panicked. Had he suffered an accident and this was another message Rajiv had decided to keep from her? She peered down at the watch she still wore on her wrist. It showed four o’clock, which meant she had slept at least twelve hours. But where was Gerald? Surely if anything bad had happened to him, she would have learned it by now. In the distance she could hear the screech of night birds and the barking of dogs, echoing from village to village for miles around. Should she go looking for him? He couldn’t be too far away. But then another sound intervened, much closer this time. A rasping cough. Gerald? No, it couldn’t be Gerald. It was the cough of someone who smoked heavily and it seemed to be coming from the garden. She slipped noiselessly out of the bed and over to the window, guided by the pinpricks of light which shone through cracks in the woven tatty. Very carefully she rolled up the edge of one of the plaited blinds and gazed out across the veranda to the jungle of garden beyond. The sky above was black but studded with diamonds, the starlight piercing in its clarity and illuminating the scene as though it were the stage of a theatre. You could read by those stars, she thought. The garden stretched before her, silver and magical, the tall grasses erect and hardly moving. She must have imagined the noise after all and turned to go back to bed.

  But there it was again. A harsh clearing of the throat and then the unmistakable sound of someone spitting. She crouched down and pressed her face to the glass. There was a figure, she was sure, but she was granted a glimpse only, and then there was nothing but the grass and the deep velvet sky and the brilliant moon and stars. Could it have been Rajiv walking in the garden at this very early hour? She could not be sure as she’d seen virtually nothing. A faint outline alone. But if it wasn’t Rajiv, then it must be an intruder. There were no other houses nearby and she felt suddenly vulnerable. Gerald needed to be here, holding her hand, reassuring her, and she couldn’t understand why he was not. Had he heard the intruder, perhaps, and gone in pursuit? If so, he must be sleeping elsewhere in the house. More evidence of his indifference, if she needed it. Saddened, she padded back to the empty bed. But might it be worse than indifference? Her stomach tightened at the thought. If Rajiv had alerted his master to the fact she’d read his private correspondence, Gerald might be extremely angry. She closed her eyes, determined not to indulge her misgi
vings. She badly wanted to believe that all would be well between them and in the moments before she fell back into sleep, she tried to find comfort. It was possible that when her husband had returned from work and found her sleeping so heavily, he hadn’t wished to disturb her. It was possible he’d been thinking kind thoughts.

  When she woke again, the sun was already climbing the sky. She had forgotten in the night to roll down the woven mat and the room was awash with its glare, a searchlight striking her through the eyes and travelling like the sharpest of arrows to pierce the very back of her head. Swiftly she moved to lower the panel. There was no sound in the house and she knew herself alone again. Another solitary day beckoned, another day of enforced idleness. Since the age of fourteen she had worked for a living; even as a small child at Eden House she had been given her daily chores, and woe betide if they were not performed to the Superintendent’s satisfaction. It felt utterly wrong to be this lazy. At least she could still dress herself. She tugged open the door of the wardrobe and saw with surprise that her silk dress had reappeared, washed and beautifully pressed. How had that happened? She’d heard nothing and yet someone—Rajiv, it must have been—had glided in and out of her room, in and out of her wardrobe, and left not a hint of his presence. The sense of unseen hands ordering her life was disquieting. But for the moment there were more pressing worries. What to wear to stay cool, or what passed for cool. She shimmied herself into one of the only two light cotton frocks she possessed. The choice was sparse for she had been able to afford few clothes for her trousseau, and she could see now that those she had chosen were mostly wrong.

  She wandered into the sitting room, as quiet and grave-like as the rest of the house. Gerald had come and gone without a word. In the night she’d comforted herself with the notion that he was anxious she should sleep out her fatigue, but why had he left again without seeing her? A morning kiss, a fond goodbye, wasn’t that part of being married? Not for Gerald, it seemed. She had realised yesterday, as they’d travelled in isolated silence, that it would take time for him to adjust to a new way of life and she must help him all she could. She would help him. But there was a growing emptiness that she couldn’t quite repress, for the path ahead seemed so very steep—even before she’d told him the news he wouldn’t wish to hear.

  There was no sign of Rajiv and she wondered whether he, too, had deserted. It seemed an age since he’d surprised her at the desk, riffling through papers she had no right to read. The letter she’d found, though, had stayed with her, its memory lodged deep and only temporarily blotted from view by the overwhelming disappointment she’d been feeling. But it was back now, sitting squarely before her, and a thought caught at the edges of her mind. It trembled there for several seconds, then burst into full flowering. She had begun to think the unthinkable, she realised. She found herself shaking her head as if to signal a warning not to entertain such ideas. Her suspicions had to be mere fancy.

  But what if Gerald were the real recipient? If the letter had been meant for Gerald, what Pandora’s box would that open? She knew all about Pandora, and where her curiosity had led her, from the reading she’d done with Miss Maddox. If Gerald had been the intended recipient, he must be the Jack Minns addressed. And that meant he must be two people. Which was absurd. Why would he be two people? She told herself not to go on with this train of thought, but somehow found herself continuing. If he were Jack Minns, which was quite mad, it would mean that Gerald had a mother and father alive. He had told her that sadly his parents had died together in a car crash five years ago. It would mean he had lied to her. And if he’d lied about something as important as his family, he might have lied about other things too.

  She would not think it, yet the notion continued to niggle. If he were Jack Minns, then some of his childhood at least had been spent in Spitalfields, a stone’s throw from Eden House. He had not played in the spacious rooms of a manor house, as he’d told her, or run carefree through its Somerset estate. The repercussions of such a lie were too enormous to take in. So she wouldn’t. She definitely wouldn’t. She would dismiss them as ravings brought on by the sun. But she had enough of Pandora about her still, to want to discover why that letter was on Gerald’s desk.

  Except that it wasn’t. Not this morning. The papers that were left were conspicuously tidy, a small, neat pile placed carefully in the middle of the desktop. And she could see at a glance that the letter from Spitalfields was not among them. She had been right about Rajiv. He had told his master what he’d seen, and Gerald had acted. He had squirrelled the document away to ensure there would be no discussion. And if she dared to ask questions, she felt sure he would deny the letter’s very existence.

  Rajiv came in bearing tea and fruit for her breakfast and she wondered if she dared mention her night-time experience. A mysterious letter and an unknown intruder were not the most cheering of introductions to her new life. Since she’d arrived, the sense of being watched had grown on her and, though she recognised that solitude and an unnerving servant could be making her foolish, a strange man in the garden did nothing to soothe. If, in fact, there had been a man. She was beginning to wonder if he was part of a dream, a figment of sleep, and decided to put it to the test.

  ‘Were you walking in the garden last night, Rajiv?’ She looked directly at him.

  His eyes did not meet hers and his face was without expression. ‘Last night,’ she repeated, ‘were you in the garden? I’m not cross. Perhaps you couldn’t sleep. But I need to know.’

  ‘No, memsahib.’

  ‘You’re sure you didn’t walk there in your sleep?’ This was getting laughable.

  ‘No, memsahib.’ Rajiv was looking decidedly anxious and no wonder. He must think he had gained a madwoman for a mistress.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said feebly. ‘That’s all I wanted to know.’ He slipped silently away, leaving her no wiser but feeling a great deal sillier.

  She had barely finished the tea and fruit when she heard footsteps on the veranda and a knock at the door. Anish Rana was standing on the threshold and greeted her with a smile.

  ‘I hope you slept well, Mrs Mortimer.’

  She was surprised at how glad she was to see him. ‘Thank you, I’ve slept for hours Mr—Lieutenant Rana,’ she corrected herself. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t give you your proper title yesterday.’

  ‘That is no problem for me. I am an Indian officer, you see, and we do not stand on ceremony. My name is Anish.’

  ‘And mine is Daisy,’ she said shyly, aware of the slightest edge to his voice. But his smile appeared sincere and she thought him a most engaging character. ‘Gerald is not home,’ she continued. ‘I’m afraid you must have missed him.’

  ‘It’s not Gerald I came to see, but you. I wanted to make sure you had survived the journey and your first day in India.’

  ‘I did, as you see.’ She pinned a smile to her face, unwilling to show how downcast she was feeling, and quickly changed the subject. ‘Did you travel back with us on the same train?’

  ‘No. There were people I had to see in Bombay. I decided to take the later train and return overnight.’

  ‘You must be very tired then. Perhaps I can offer you some breakfast?’

  ‘A cup of tea only. That would be wonderful.’ He settled himself in a seat opposite her. ‘So now that you are recovered from the journey, how do you intend to pass the day?’

  She looked blankly at him. ‘I’ve no idea except … if I could get to a shop, I might buy some material.’ She saw him looking puzzled. ‘To make a dress, you know. I’ve not brought enough lightweight clothes. It was stupid of me.’

  ‘No one has sufficient clothes for this climate, so you’re not alone,’ he said easily. ‘You must visit the bazaar, that’s the answer. It is a paradise of materials. Why don’t I take you? I’ve commandeered the regimental transport this morning, complete with chauffeur. If you crane your neck, you can see him through the window.’

  ‘That enormous tree is in the way but I ca
n just see him, I think.’ Through the branches she glimpsed a flash of brass buttons and the very top of a turban sporting a highly starched and pleated plume.

  ‘That enormous tree is a banyan. You will see them everywhere and know them by their forest of roots. But surely you cannot intend to sew your own dresses?’ He sounded almost shocked.

  ‘I’m not so bad with a needle,’ she defended herself.

  ‘An English lady sewing her own clothes! It is unheard of. You must employ a durzi. A tailor.’

  ‘But won’t that be costly?’ Instantly she regretted the words uttered unthinkingly. She had no wish to advertise her poverty and Gerald would hate her background to become common knowledge.

  ‘It will be very cheap, I promise. And very good. You will not be wanting to work in these temperatures,’ he said in the manner of a reproving schoolmaster. He was probably right, though it would have given her occupation.

  ‘Thank you, Anish, you are very kind.’

  ‘Not at all, and it is a good plan.’ He was warming to his idea. ‘Simla is much cooler, of course, but you will still need plenty of summer dresses there. The social life is very jolly, I believe.’

  She frowned at his words. She seemed to have missed a vital link in the conversation. ‘Simla? I am going to Simla?’

  ‘Everyone goes to Simla. All the ladies at least. It is in the foot of the Himalayas as you call them, a mountain paradise with magnificent views. And the warmth is of the gentlest. There are gardens everywhere, filled with English flowers. You will love it. You will be able to ride out every morning and enjoy good company every evening.’

  She wasn’t too sure about the riding but otherwise it sounded a paradise indeed and she was already looking forward to it. ‘When does the regiment leave?’ she asked innocently.

  He laughed. ‘The regiment does not leave, Mrs Mortimer.’

  ‘Please, call me Daisy.’

  ‘Thank you—Daisy. We men have work to do, we must toil on the plains. It is for the ladies to go. Some are already there but the rest of the womenfolk will leave shortly and you will be able to travel with them.’