Читать книгу Secrets and Lies - Jaishree Misra - Страница 7

DELHI, 2008

Victoria Lamb sealed the last of her letters and placed it on top of the small pile. Then, steadying herself on the arms of her wooden swivel chair, she eased herself up from the writing bureau where she had been sitting since dawn and walked across to the French windows. Flexing her stiff hand, Victoria parted the old curtains at their faded central strip and blinked as Delhi’s sharp summer sunshine flooded in. The rose garden, denuded of flowers, lay thorny and colourless, dust stubbornly clinging to everything: the leaves, the trees, Lily’s stone grave at the bottom of the garden. Beyond the hedge and through the smog haze, the mansard roof of the school building with its squat clock tower was just visible. Emptied of its student population, the old Edwardian building had lain silent for the last six weeks, with only the occasional flitting figure of a nun disturbing the dark peace of the convent’s corridors.

Tomorrow the new term would start in its usual clamorous manner, beginning with the distant rumble of school buses approaching the gates. A pleasant enough sound, but one that unfailingly lapsed into belligerence as the bus drivers competed with the private cars that brought the more affluent pupils to school. That was when the ear-shattering revving and grinding of engines invariably began. The bus drivers were mindful of Miss Lamb’s strict ‘No Horns’ policy but, despite the occasional sternly worded home-circular, there was little she had been able to do about the strident car horns, the expression of self-importance that flowed from Delhi’s wealthy to their chauffeurs.

Far more forgiveable were the children’s shrieks that would assail Victoria’s ears at precisely half past seven, when the first of the school buses would disgorge its passengers just as she was sitting down to her breakfast of one poached egg and a slice of unbuttered toast. But the girls knew well enough to keep their voices hushed once they were inside the school building, or when they saw Miss Lamb passing through the grounds from the cottage at the edge of the school. That was indeed the best time of the day for Victoria—and had been for many years—the moment at which she cut across the quadrangle, saying hello and sometimes stopping to speak to a passing student, while the aroma of coffee wafted in the air alongside muffled laughter from the staff room. Victoria felt a small rush of gratification at the thought that she would be experiencing that familiar glow at roughly this time tomorrow. And then she reminded herself that tomorrow was to be the very last time she would be at St Jude’s to see the start of term.

Victoria sighed, not for the first time in the day, before turning away from the window. How could she pretend it would not be hard to leave all this? Fifty years at Jude’s; it had become her life! Her smile was rueful as she walked slowly around the living room of her little cottage, making mental notes about what she would need to give away or pack. Not that she would miss everything about the life of a school principal, of course. The job had been robbed of some of its joys along the way, not least because St Jude’s—with its very old reputation of turning out stylish and well-spoken young ladies—had in recent years become the choice of noveau-riche Delhi business families who merely wanted their daughters to speak English properly, thereby acquiring a sheen of sophistication. The school population had certainly enjoyed a more healthy mix when Victoria had first arrived here, college professors and government servants then seeming more able to afford the fees for their children than these days. But competition from those exclusive day-schools springing up in South Delhi had led to St Jude’s management deciding to install air-conditioning in its gym and library ten years ago, and now a gleaming indoor swimming pool was being built on the site of the old chapel. Victoria had tried to argue that the soaring fees would invariably lead to falling academic standards, but the only concession management would make was to increase the number of scholarship students from one a year to two. Her point had been amply proven over the years, but it brought no satisfaction to Victoria whenever she saw how the quality of Jude’s alumni had fallen. Running a finishing school was not what Victoria had had in mind for herself at all!

Back at her bureau, Victoria riffled through her small stack of letters, studying the names and addresses. She had tracked them down more easily than she had initially thought possible. Her girls. Somehow she continued to think of them as her special girls, despite the thousands that had since passed through the school. They had, in fact, been dubbed ‘Miss Lamb’s crème de la crème’ the year the school had performed The Prime of Miss jean Brodie as a play. She corrected herself: ‘Lamboo’s crème de la crème’, for that was what the girls had always called her. Never to her face, good God, no! Far be it for her to allow that kind of familiarity. Besides, her popularity notwithstanding, the students respected her too much to take those sorts of liberties. She had never particularly minded being called Lamboo. It wasn’t malicious, merely an affectionate twist to the Hindi word that aptly described her tall and willowy figure. Victoria Lamb had, in fact, discovered her nickname from one of her first batches at St Jude’s, once they had passed out of the school and returned en masse to pay their respects one day. Yes, one way or another, they always came back. Even if only to seek admission for their own daughters.

Victoria tapped the envelopes on the wooden surface, her face turning pensive as she remembered her batch of ’93 and the dreadful events of that year. She had another night to decide whether to post these letters or not as the school peon would turn up on his bicycle at nine o’clock to take her mail to the post office. Agonising over this decision for days, she had tried imagining how the letters would be received by those four girls who had so deliberately never returned to the school.

Victoria still saw them in their grey-crested blazers and knee socks, even though they would be in their early thirties now, women of the world, married…some with children, she knew, and husbands and jobs. Every so often, a snippet of news about one of them would arrive, either via one of their old classmates, or in the pages of those glossy gossip magazines she leafed through while sitting in the dentist’s waiting room.

Victoria understood perfectly why they had never come back, of course. The reason lay in that lonely grave at the bottom of her garden. Why, she herself had nearly left St Jude’s after Lily’s death, unable for weeks to step into the rose garden without remembering that terrible December night—and the sight of Lily as she lay on the damp earth speckled with freshly fallen petals. The picture had been imprinted on Victoria’s memory forever: Lily’s sequined dress pooling around her body like water and her face, her beautiful face, not yet drained of colour, turned up to the sky as though admiring the stars.

It was Lily’s unblinking eyes that had first given it away.

That, and the blood seeping over the side of her head.