— Don’t I at least deserve an explanation?
He was holding the books out to her and she refused to take them. With a sigh, he placed them on the ground in front of her so he looked as though he were touching her feet in obeisance. He took the piece of slate from the top of the pile and kissed Atlas’s wrist, before setting it gently back down.
— That was a gift. Am I so disdained that you must return my gifts?
He straightened, and placed the slate piece in his tunic pocket.
— It’s nothing like that. Please don’t think I’m ungrateful.
— But I must think that if you don’t offer me any other thought with which to replace it.
— It’s just that. . it’s not right, you see.
— What? That you’re missing lessons with the maulvi? Is that what this is about?
He touched his upper lip, the fuzz on it which had started to appear over the last few weeks.
— I’m becoming a man. It isn’t right for me to be here, alone with you.
She looked at the boy, the child, and beyond him to the broad-shouldered man. He was too far away to hear; these words were Najeeb’s, uttered because he believed them.
— Then bring your sisters next time you come.
— My sisters? What will they do here?
— I’ll teach them, just as I teach you.
— But they don’t know any English.
— You didn’t know any Greek four months ago. I didn’t know any Pashto. What are you shaking your head about?
— Miss Spencer, they’re girls.
— What do you think I am, for heaven’s sake.
— You’re English.
Then he was walking backwards along the pathway, his eyes on her face with the same concentration with which he had met the Buddha’s gaze. His right hand raised to shoulder level, fingers together, palm outwards in a gesture of protection learned from a man of stone.
— Goodbye, Miss Spencer.
As the afternoon became evening she remained standing at the window, looking out onto the slate mountains through which the man with the fig circlet had entered the Peshawar Valley, the whole, unexplored world his to claim.
— Is it true you’ve lived among the Turks?
The judge leaned across the table of the Peshawar Club, raising his voice to be heard above the music.
— I’m sure she hasn’t lived among anything of the sort — any more than I’ve lived among Pathans.
The judge’s wife, seated beside Mr Forbes, gestured around the capacious interior of the Club where the upper echelons of British Society in Peshawar had gathered for the Winter Ball. The bearers had all disappeared into the kitchen, so the only Pathan to be seen was the one stationed beside the mounted deer’s head whose task for the last fifteen minutes or so had been to retrieve the one napkin holder which a swaying man had been trying to toss onto the antlers. His aim had been growing steadily wilder, or perhaps he was deliberately aiming for the Pathan’s head now.
Viv dispatched the judge’s question with an inclination of her head which said his wife had correctly summed up the situation and returned what remained of her faltering concentration to the no-longer-young bachelor who was trying to impress her with some story about his valour during an encounter with fanatics along the Khyber Pass. She stood up abruptly in the middle of his story — catching Mr Forbes’ look of sympathy — and, saying something which was tone rather than words, walked rapidly out to the arched portico and drew the night air deep into her lungs.
Fairy lights strung all around the garden gave the impression that the starlit sky had lowered onto the treetops.
— You’re in a mood tonight.
She didn’t even turn at the sound of Remmick’s voice.
— And you’ll be in trouble when you go home if you stand out here much longer, she said.
— A minute in your company is worth an hour of trouble at home.
— Stop it, she said sharply.
— Don’t lose your friends, Miss Spencer, he replied, and walked away.
She called him back apologising, and told him what had happened that afternoon with Najeeb.
— A Pathan is a Pathan at any age, he said, but with sympathy rather than any triumph at having been proved right.
— I’ve been arrogant. Thinking I knew better than everyone who lives here.
— I have to say, it’s a relief to hear you say that. You see now why this plan of yours — to go excavating on the outskirts of Peshawar — is such a bad idea?
— In what way?
— I’ve said it before. A woman leading a team of Pathan workmen. .
— Not everyone in the Peshawar Valley is Pathan.
— Aren’t your days full enough? We could find you some teaching, if you miss it; Native students, English students, whichever you prefer. Or there’s plenty of cataloguing needed at the Museum. You’d be valued there.
A certainty announced itself, so clear, so well-defined, she knew it had been there for a very long time, lurking in the corner of her eye.
— You aren’t actually doing anything to sort out the leasing problem of Shahji-ki-Dheri, are you?
A little shrug, a gesture of defeat.
— I did make enquiries. No one’s particularly interested. General opinion has it the best finds of the site have already been discovered.
— All this while you’ve been lying?
— Oh come now, Miss Spencer.
— Oh come now, Miss Spencer?
He gestured to her to lower her voice, the air of command so unmistakable she wondered how she’d ever thought this was a man who would simply do anything she asked of him, merely because she asked it. Even so, she wasn’t prepared for what came next.
— We’re long past the point when the smiles you flick at me are compensation enough for everything I do for you. I found you a house, staff you could trust, I’ve allowed you to use all the privileges at this club that are usually reserved for a member’s wife. Now you expect me to go to the Deputy Commissioner and tell him he needs to push through complicated negotiations about a crumbling piece of land simply because you’re curious why a statue was white rather than grey?
— The Forbeses were helping me to find a house when you came along and told me you had the perfect one. I didn’t ask you to provide me with staff — you just wanted to keep an eye on me. Oh yes, I know they report to you, Remmick, how foolish do you think I am? If you weren’t going to do this for me, why didn’t you just say so?
He laughed, a little bitterly.
— What man doesn’t want a beautiful woman to keep believing he can do anything he sets his mind to?
— There is no shortage of men who would choose honesty over dissembling under all circumstances.
— You speak of honesty? Very well, let’s be honest. There is a dance of men and women; we all recognise its rules. You, with nothing more than your smiles as reward, you were the first to break those rules.
— The dance of men and women! You make it sound so finely balanced. But you always lead, don’t you?
He was standing very close to her, his hand on her waist as though it had a right to be there.
— Allow yourself to be led, Vivian. You’ll enjoy it far more than you think, with the right partner.
She pushed him, hard.
— Not you, she said. Never you.
She stalked back inside, and told Mr Forbes she was feeling unwell, would he be good enough to escort her home?
That tree in Regent’s Park which she could see from her bedroom window would have turned yellow-leafed by now. Every year she would walk out with Papa when there were more leaves on the ground than on the branches, and carefully, deliberately, they’d choose the most beautiful of the leaves and take it home to preserve it in a scrapbook she’d made with YELLOW LEAF printed on the cover in a child’s hand.