Читать книгу The Jasmine Wife: A sweeping epic historical romance novel for women - Jane Coverdale - Страница 7

The shoreline moved closer still, and the mirage formed into a blinding reality. They would be there soon. Sara pulled a mirror out of her bag and examined the clear light topaz eyes squinting back at her. They appeared unimpressive in that harsh white glare, but she knew they would be lovely again once she was in a softer light. Her eyes were the only feature on her face she wouldn’t change, and the rest of it she found more acceptable now, with the miraculous clearing of her skin and an equally miraculous dramatic weight loss.

The first small signs of improvement had come soon after the marriage ceremony. She had lost at least fifteen pounds in only two months, forcing her to buy a completely new wardrobe, and her doctor pronounced her excess weight and her skin condition as being based in nervous tension, hinting it was not unusual for single women to improve in looks with the marriage state.

She didn’t tell him that, even though she was a wife, she was still technically a virgin, and perhaps the real reason for the improvement was she was no longer made to feel ashamed whenever the subject of marriage was mentioned.

After being at sea for eight weeks, including a further month spent in the Canary Isles due to having to mend a split mast, where she’d gorged herself on fresh fruit and vegetables, the almost constant faint rash around her nose had miraculously disappeared. Then the fine red bumps on her cheeks and forehead had faded completely, revealing a surface with the fresh even tone of rich cream.

Her true beauty however, lay in her bone structure, a beauty that would last long beyond the freshness of youth. Without the excess weight, her face became more refined, making her eyes appear much larger. Her posture had always been good, and her straight back and long neck gave her elegance, far from the clumsy girl of her youth.

Though it was the new shape of her once heavy eyebrows that gave her the most pleasure. Never could she have imagined such a small change could have produced so dramatic an improvement to her face. The mysterious ritual of threading, performed by an Arab woman in a tent in a Canary Isles market, had turned her shaggy brows into a blackbird’s wings, giving her face a striking new beauty. Now she secretly plucked them to keep their shape, knowing her aunt would be horrified had she known, believing a lady must learn to live with her imperfections, and any thought of artifice was vulgar in the extreme.

Sara had no such feelings as she smiled at her reflection and smoothed her skin with a cautious finger. She hoped fervently the hated rash had been banished forever, though; it seemed the further she travelled from England, the healthier and lovelier she became.

Her much improved looks were a novelty still, and sometimes she found herself studying her face in the mirror for longer than necessary.

Though, as time wore on, she trained herself not to think too much about her new-found charms, but secretly enjoyed the long slow looks men gave her as she passed them on her walks around the deck of the ship.

She snapped the mirror shut and slipped it back into her bag. While she’d been dreaming, the shoreline had drifted closer still. The clear blue waters had changed to a dirty yellow, and the once vague outline of the distant bank had turned into buildings set amongst tall waving palms and enormous trees spreading their branches along the baking paths like engorged pythons.

Some of the structures were prosperous and ornate, more bizarre, romanticised reflections of their respectable English cousins, while others, mere piles of other people’s cast-off rubbish and the fallen branches of coconut palms, were turned into little caves to huddle under for a moment’s respite from the merciless sun and the endless mass of humanity.

Towering over even the grand buildings of the British were the temples, shimmering through the damp heat, many storeys high, barbaric and mysterious, intricately carved with unlikely gods and decorated with gaudy impossible colours and gold leaf. There were dozens of them, punctuating the tropical landscape every few hundred yards and soaring towards the heavens like the wild and fantastic imaginings of a dream, monumental and overwhelming.

Remembered snatches of whispered stories of ancient and primitive rituals carried out in the dark recesses of the temples crept back into her mind, making her shiver: stories too horrible to be spoken of out loud, used as a weapon by the servants when she was naughty, to frighten her into good behaviour.

Sara stared out towards the shore, her eyes squinting in the fierce sun. There, rising and falling with the motion of the waves, something floated on the surface of the water.

She peered over the side of the ship, then reeled back, shaken and drained of colour. Afloat in her funeral bier, a woven basket lined with a mass of faded flowers and wrapped in white gauze, slept a perfect child of a few weeks old.

A loving hand had placed the fragrant flowers around the halo of the child’s head and over the little body, before releasing it into the sea. An unwanted girl, perhaps, who’d died conveniently, but had clearly been loved by someone in her short life.

The child floated past, an image of unbearable loneliness at the beginning of her journey. Sara’s eyes followed the little voyager, smarting with painful tears till the yellow water turned deep blue again, and for a brief moment she was comforted by this.

Then her stomach lurched, and for a moment she thought she was going to be sick. She clutched the rail and squeezed her eyes till she saw stars, praying with a sudden fervent superstitious fear, to crush the image lingering in her mind.

She began to pace again, now with a more urgent step. It seemed they would never reach land and the shore was further away than ever.

Then, slowly, as she watched, the scene before her sprang to life. A tree swayed in the gentle breeze, and the thousands of coloured dots moving along the shore evolved into human beings.

Children began to play, running back and forth on childish missions. Thin wisps of grey smoke rose from the cooking fires where women sat, draped in vivid saris, their movements impossibly elegant for such humble everyday tasks.

Then the first sounds, laughter and shouting in Hindi, and Tamil, and music, a strange off-beat medley to western ears. There was a procession somewhere.

The handful of European passengers appeared on deck one by one. Already there was a distance between them, making it clear their relationships had been held together almost solely by the confines of the voyage.

Secretly, Sara intended to keep few of her promises of undying friendship if she could help it, though, much to her regret, with Cynthia Palmer there might be no choice.

Sara watched Cynthia with mixed emotions as she moved through the crowd on the deck, languid and unhurried, smiling her goodbyes, her white toy poodle, recently bought in an elegant pet shop on the Rue de la Paix, clutched in her small gloved hands, stopping now and then to speak to a friend, her voice hardly ever raised above a quiet murmur. Sara crushed a pang of rising irritation. If only she could believe in the value of such self-control it would have made her life so much easier.

A sweet young girl’s voice, heavily laced with the rounded vowels of the well brought up, called out her name, and Sara looked up with a start from her daydreaming.

“Cynthia, how fresh you look. How do you do it, in this heat? I’m melting already.” Her voice sounded false even to herself, and she wondered how Cynthia could not fail to notice it.

But then, Charles had made a point of how important it was for her to become friends with Lady Palmer and, even more so, her daughter Cynthia. She recalled his words in his letter: “I’m sure you’ll become as fond of them as I am for, as we often say in our little community, it’s impossible not to love Cynthia and her mamma.”

Sara was fairly sure she didn’t love either of them, and at times positively disliked Lady Palmer, though she was clearly outnumbered.

Cynthia was as pretty and fragile as a Dresden figurine, though it soon became clear her fragility was misleading, disguising an unbending core combined with a steely determination, at least when it came to having her own way. Though there was never any need to exert any pressure when it came to getting what she wanted; it seemed to happen naturally, as though it was always meant to be.

She had a habit of grasping the arm of the person she wished to beguile, holding them rigid, like a fox with her teeth on the neck of a rabbit, but, as a kind of compensation, she held them under the impression they were the only person in the world worth knowing. When she wished to move on, her small white hand would relax, releasing her captive, now limp with admiration, and left with a desire to be singled out by her again as soon as possible.

Though, when away from her mother and alone with Sara in her cabin, they could spend almost happy hours together as each girl talked of their hopes of the future with their respective husbands. Cynthia’s intended would join her in Madras in a few months’ time, where they’d be married before returning to Europe for their honeymoon and a new life in England. She’d met her fiancé William when he’d stayed with her parents in Madras and he’d fallen in love with her then. His health was precarious though, and more than a few months in India was dangerous for him. Cynthia’s face would take on an almost childlike radiance as she spoke of her husband’s country estate and her hopeful future away from the hell of India. It was at these times Sara could sympathise with the girl, knowing from personal experience how painful it was to be trapped and powerless, and at the mercy of another person’s demands.

Her mother, Lady Palmer, was a big woman with coarse sallow skin, large features and a passion for extravagant clothing, who seemed constantly astonished to have given birth to such a fair and dainty child. Her main concerns, apart from her daughter, in whose life she took an almost unnatural interest, were the comings and goings of Madras society and all who moved within it. She set the standards of behaviour and it was up to everyone else to observe and follow, and woe betide anyone who didn’t.

“I expected Charles would have married one of the girls at home …”

Lady Palmer had scrutinized Sara shamelessly through her lorgnette. “Personally, I saw no need to look further than our little community, and there were many girls I thought more than suitable for him to marry.” This was said with such an air of wounded outrage Sara had laughed aloud, then said, “Well, why didn’t he then if they were so suitable?” causing Lady Palmer to glare in return.

“It’s no laughing matter, my girl. Marriage is a serious business.

However,” she conceded, “I’m sure dear Charles had his reasons. Indeed, I do believe at one time he might have asked Cynthia. Charles always seemed to pay her such particular attention, and we are so very fond of him.” She frowned, as though recalling past times. “We’ll miss him to balance the table at dinner. He was always so useful as a single man.”

Sara could only laugh, knowing with a sure instinct nothing she could say would alter Lady Palmer’s behaviour. Her role was supposed to be to endure and smile, but so far she had only questioned and scowled.

Their relationship was bordering on disastrous but, just in time, a small voice in Sara’s head had cautioned her to be careful. All those years in an English boarding school had taught her it was vulgar to express what one really thought, and she would give Lady Palmer another chance, for Charles’s sake.

Sara sat in the longboat, waiting to be taken ashore. She’d been there for some time, wilting in the stifling glare of an unbearable heat with the muddy waves slapping with an uncomfortable violence against the sides of the boat. She was jammed between a fat matron holding a bird cage containing a fast wilting canary and, on her other side, a fretful seasick child, all due to a dispute as to whether Cynthia’s poodle should or should not be caged for the trip ashore. The purser was insistent it should be so, and Cynthia was equally insistent that it should not be. The other passengers were becoming increasingly irritable at the long delay, though Sara was almost thankful for the wasted time as it put off the inevitable a little longer.

She scanned the indistinct mass of faces on the distant shore, her stomach a tight knot of nausea, not knowing if her misery was due to anxiety or seasickness. Was Charles there amongst the crowd, staring out to sea, perhaps regretting his choice of bride or, worse, lying dead somewhere from an all-consuming tropical disease, as her uncle had often predicted? Was she abandoned before even beginning to be a wife? It was impossible to know. Charles was a poor correspondent and during the space of the fourteen months since she’d seen him last he’d written perhaps only half a dozen letters. In vain she’d scanned them for the passionate declarations of love she so longed for. But the contents of his notes were usually about the terrible state of the weather or graphic details of the outbreaks amongst the various castes. She wondered sometimes if he was trying to put her off coming at all, but at the bottom of the page there was his usual declaration, “Love Charles”. That one word kept her hopes for future happiness alive.

At last, Cynthia made her way to the head of the ladder leading down to the longboat, her poodle in her arms and a self-satisfied smile on her face. She had won, as she knew she would.

A group of Indian workers, hired to help the passengers with their luggage, hovered around the launch, their fragile boats rising and falling with an uneasy violence at each surge of the waves, and it seemed must be thrown into the dense yellow water any moment. They watched the passengers with anxious eyes as they jostled for position. Charles had written the region was in the grip of famine and it was clear these men were hungry … hungry with a desperation that made them careless.

Halfway down the ladder the dog began to struggle, being all at once aware of being poised above water. She made a frantic attempt to hide her head under her mistress’s arm, thinking in her dog mind that if she couldn’t see the danger then it wasn’t there. Her struggles became more frantic, the dog’s hard little legs working with a mindless terror, clawing for a more secure foothold against the shiny silk of Cynthia’s gown.

Her mistress let out a piercing scream as the dog threw itself into the air with a yelp of fear.

The poodle fell like a stone. At first sinking from sight, then emerging from the muddy sea where a little wet head could be seen swimming in useless circles just out of reach of the boats. Some of the Indians laughed.

Their lives were too harsh to care about the fate of one small dog, though the shrewd amongst them saw it as an opportunity sent from the Gods.

Sara watched transfixed as one old man stood with shaky determination in the prow of his boat, letting go of his hold on the side. He was a tragic knight, his armour a useless rag serving as a kind of cloak knotted around his painfully thin body and his weapon a gnarled walking stick. Sara cried out in a whisper, “Don’t! Please don’t!”

He was too old to be out competing with the younger men. He should have been resting under the shade of a tamarind tree, smoking a cheroot and enjoying the last years of his life in peace and tranquillity. But, with desperation driving him, fate had decreed otherwise.

His smile was of an unusual sweetness as he reached out towards the dog, murmuring words of comfort and encouragement.

But there lay his mistake; by now, the others had realised the value in saving the dog and all rushed at once to get to the prize first. A sudden lurch of the boat and the old man fell like a shot bird over the side, his ragged cloak black against the sky, barely making a splash. He recovered quickly and swam towards the dog, his arms stiff awkward paddles. There was a hideous battle, an almost comic game of catch-me-if you-can, as the dog seemed to almost deliberately swim further out of his reach.

“Mother! Do something! Poor Fanny!” Cynthia covered her eyes and fell back in a faint.

Lady Palmer called out the price of the dog’s life, and there was a sudden desperate jockeying to reach the dog first, and the old man was forgotten in the rush. An untimely swell from one of the larger boats drove him further away and he called out, a weak and almost apologetic cry. A couple of boats halted, looking first at the old man and then at the dog, but the prize made the decision an easy one.

The old man made a last feeble attempt to save himself, a hollow snatching at thin air, then there was a sudden jerk of his head as though something unseen was pulling at him from underneath the waves.

The thick water rose in a swell and he rolled with it. His face appeared for a moment, and Sara caught the full impact of the certainty of his own death.

Her scream seemed to recall him to life, and he struggled for breath with the last of his strength.

For a transient moment they made eye contact and in his look was a pleading that cut through to her soul. She leaned out towards him as far as she could, stretching out her fingers in a futile attempt to reach him, her eyes fixed on his.

“Try! You must try!” His eyes widened for a brief moment, then flickered and closed, as though resigned to his fate.

A cry, more like a sigh, rang out. “Prema!” Then, with a final thrashing on the surface, he sank under the yellow water.

There was a flurry of panic on deck as the captain ordered a lifebuoy to be thrown. It hit the water near where he’d disappeared, but the old man did not surface again.

The crowd rushed to the side of the ship, peering down into the old man’s tomb, some of them trying not to show how they were enjoying the drama and congratulating themselves on their good fortune to be alive while the old man was with his Gods.

Surely, Sara thought, suddenly hopeful, it’s a trick … The old man’s a fakir and any moment he’ll rise up and the crowd will reward him with a few coins. But he didn’t appear; his life was over in a terrible paltry moment.

The trip to the shore was made in an uneasy silence. The dog was back in her mistress’s arms, unaware of the catastrophe it had caused. Cynthia, though, was a little shaken out of her usual self-control.

“The silly old man …” Cynthia straightened the dog’s wet pink ribbon “… I do feel sorry for him, but what could he have been thinking of? And now he’s paid the price of his foolishness.”

Her mother sat close, patting her daughter’s arm with clumsy affection and murmuring, “My poor child, how dreadful it might have been.”

“It’s all right, Mother. Don’t fuss! It turned out all right after all. Fanny is safe, aren’t you, darling …” she cooed as she wrapped the wet squirming dog more tightly in her pink cashmere shawl.

“It didn’t turn out so well for the poor old man!” Sara spat the words with a bitterness she couldn’t hide. She couldn’t help it, even though she knew the words were the first nails in the coffin that sealed her social fate. Both women turned to her with unmistakable dislike—she had shown her true colours and they’d never forgive her.

She turned away, pressing her palms into her aching eyes, trying to drive the image of the old man’s last moments out of her mind.

“What was he trying to say to me? Prema? What could it mean?” Malika would have called it a bad omen and rushed to place an offering at the temple to ward off further bad luck, but she, as a civilised English woman, could only try to crush the horror of the event she knew would haunt her forever.

News of the disaster had reached the shore, though there were no obvious signs of grief from the crowd, only an air of quiet resignation. From some quarters there was almost an air of gaiety, as though the old man’s death, not necessarily a misfortune for him if he had lived his life well, had spelt good fortune for someone else.

The sharp-eyed boatman who’d saved the dog kept a watchful eye on Lady Palmer, following close on her heels, accompanied by a group of his fellow boatmen who congratulated him on his good luck with open envy.

Lady Palmer kept her eyes averted, her hands clutching her purse with a tight grip despite the man’s pleas for his reward.

“All in good time, all in good time,” she murmured while the man followed behind, all the while grinning and nodding around at the crowd who’d gathered in increasing numbers, sensing a chance for the British ladies to appease the Gods by paying generous baksheesh. The people crushed closer, hands out, grasping and desperate, begging and pleading for coins, fighting each other in the scramble to be noticed.

“Memsahib! Dear and good memsahib! Baksheesh! Baksheesh!”

Sara bit her lip as she began to feel a rising panic.

“Perhaps, Lady Palmer, you could pay the man and the crowd would go away.”

“Well, I would if I had any money,” the woman snapped in return. “It’s just that I don’t have any on me at this particular moment. Indeed, I never carry it. Perhaps you could pay the fellow.”

“Me? I don’t have any money … at least no Indian money, only English pounds and I don’t think that would do.”

“Well, give the fellow what you have,” Lady Palmer replied, dismissing the matter and considering her part in the business now over.

Sara opened her purse and the man moved closer, his eyes fixed upon the contents. She held out a pound note and in an instant the man snatched it out of her hand and at first stared at it with disgust before throwing it down in the dust with a cry of anger. Then, in a flash, a gnarled brown hand darted out through the crowd of dusty bare feet, picked up the note, and someone more knowing quickly disappeared with it.

The boatman then turned all his attention to Sara. Lady Palmer had been forgotten. “Give me!”

Sara was angry now, and wondered how it came to be that she was bearing the brunt of Cynthia’s selfishness and her mother’s stupidity.

The crowd surrounding the besieged women stared with curious fixated eyes made wild with hunger. They crammed more tightly against each other in a tight rancid mass of unwashed bodies, allowing small ragged, almost naked children to scamper like mice over their heads, while the women stood clutching each other for protection in the ever-decreasing circle. The over-excited children, leaping in a grotesque dance on the heads and shoulders of the people, called out in halting English, “Give me money! I have no mother! I have no father!” thrusting their fingers in open empty mouths, while dodging angry snatches at their hard, thin legs from the furious onlookers.

Sara felt a furtive hand touch her thigh, then, as though being assured she was real after all, felt it again, this time with an added hard pinch.

She let out a faint scream of fear as she felt something hard hit the brim of her hat. Her first thought was that they were trying to kill her, then she looked up, astonished to see a glittering shower of coins fly high over her head, followed quickly by another, then another.

The children let out animal-like cries and flew after the path of the coins, followed by most of the crowd and leaving Sara standing alone in a cleared space. Though a number of the onlookers were so overwhelmed by the unfolding scene they froze on the spot, then fell to prostrate themselves at the feet of the man who stood before them, his legs sturdily apart and his commanding arms crossed over his chest.