It was very far from all about her; there were reserves behind that demure face and those cool, thoughtful, purple-black eyes that would take half a lifetime to explore.
‘So you’ve actually known each other, apart from letters, only a matter of days? We’re all starting more or less equal,’ said Larry. ‘I picked up Dominic in Madras only five days back. We’d corresponded, just fixing things up for the trip, but we’d never seen each other until then.’ He took a banana from Patti’s hospitably offered bowl, a bulbous bow in an incredible colour between peach and orange and old rose. ‘This at least I’ll never forget about India, the fruit. Did you ever see such a shade as that in a banana before?’
‘Never!’ she agreed vehemently. ‘And I’ve seen them all kinds and sizes, from the three-inch curvy ones like a baby’s fingers, to hedge-stakes a foot long and pale, greenish lemon. I saw these when we passed the stall in the bus, and we simply had to walk back and get some.’
‘Where was that?’ Larry asked. ‘I never noticed any stall as we drove up.’
‘It was getting dusk then, and he hadn’t lighted his little lamp, you wouldn’t notice us. But we saw you go by. Two turns down the road – I expect he’s packed up long ago, probably just after we were there, there wouldn’t be much traffic up here after dark. One turn down the road there’s what’s left of a shrine of Siva. It looks pretty old, too, the carving’s nearly worn away, but they still bring oil and marigolds.’
‘No, really? As close as that? I might take a flashlight down and have a look at that presently.’
‘Wouldn’t tomorrow morning do?’
‘Not a hope! We’ve got to be afloat before six, or we shall miss the best of the show. They might not hold the boat for us, either – don’t forget it’s Sunday. The best times, the two periods in the day when the animals come down to water, are from six on in the morning, and about half past three in the afternoon until dusk. And it takes a little while to get out to the best vantage-points – there’s a whole lot of lake up there.’
The Bessancourts were withdrawing, with polite good nights to the Manis. They passed by Larry’s table on their way to the door, and bowed comprehensively to the company, uttering in assured, incongruous duet: ‘Au ’voir, m’sieurs, m’dames!’ Everyone turned to smile startled acknowledgement, for once united: ‘Good night, m’sieur, madame!’
‘The French,’ said Patti with conviction, as soon as they were out of the room, ‘are formidable!’ It was a good word for the Bessancourts. ‘What can they want here?’ she demanded in a feverish whisper. ‘What brought them here? I don’t understand!’
Dominic, still charmed and touched by that courteous departure, so reminiscent of a respectable couple quitting a small restaurant in St Dié or Chaumont, wondered if it was so vital to understand. Wasn’t it their business? Why not just be glad about that impressive, three-dimensional reality of theirs? But Patti wanted to recognise, to docket, to know all her landmarks.
‘Where did you first see them?’
‘At Mahabalipuram, among all that fabulous free sculpture. In the Mahishasura-Mardini cave, actually, standing like another rock, staring at the sleeping Vishnu. She looked exactly as if she was studying the joints in a butcher’s window before buying, but I’ll swear for ten minutes and more she never moved. Her old man stands just as still and gazes just as attentively, but in a different way. As though he were standing respectfully but impregnably in a church that wasn’t his own, but still he saw the point for those who belonged there.’
‘You like them,’ said Priya suddenly, in her soft, detached voice, and smiled at him with her eyes as well as her lips.
‘Yes, I like them.’ Heaven knew he wouldn’t have the art ever in this world to achieve communication with them, short of a miracle, but he believed confidently there was everything there to like.
The Manis were leaving, too, in a series of short, abortive starts and stops. ‘Sushil Dastur, my bag – you have left it behind!’
‘Sushil Dastur, please arrange about the breakfast and early tea…’
‘Sushil Dastur, don’t forget you must see to that letter, there will be a post from the hotel… And the alarm at five, remember!’
(‘That goes for us, too, don’t forget! ’ Larry warned in an undertone. )
They passed in procession, pausing momentarily to exchange valedictory compliments.
‘You’ll be making the morning run?’ asked Larry politely.
‘Ah, but not with the public launch! ’ Mr Mani wagged a triumphant finger and beamed his superiority. ‘We have an introduction to an influential resident here. He has a villa on the lake, and the hotel places a boat at his disposal. He has invited us to be his guests tomorrow. It is a great honour.’
‘A privilege!’ sighed Mrs Mani, adjusting her green and silver sari over her plump and tightly-bloused shoulder. ‘He is a most distinguished man – and wealthy!’
‘A business associate of Ganesh, our son-in-law. Ganesh has very important connections…’
They departed in a cloud of self-congratulation, and Sushil Dastur, trotting behind, turned his lustrous eyes in a timid smile and said: ‘Good night, ladies – gentlemen!’ with almost furtive goodwill, as if he feared he might be doing the wrong thing.
And with that the evening ended, since the next day was to begin at five. Except that Larry had sufficient energy left to light himself down the two coils of road between the black, perfumed walls of the forest, to examine the Siva stele. Lakshman felt it to be his duty to go with him, and even to repeat, very seriously, his warnings about never going out in the dark in open country without a strong torch, for fear of snakes.
When they came back, Dominic and the girls were still standing beside the Land-Rover, looking up at the immensely lofty black velvet sky coruscating with stars, and festooned here and there, as in India only the hill-skies and the shore-skies normally are, with coiling plumes of cloud.
‘That’s a find you made down there, Patti,’ Larry said approvingly. ‘I want to stop off before we go down again to Madurai, and get some slides. I’d need to consult somebody who knows more about style than I do, but my guess is that figure wasn’t carved any later than about the seventh century. It could even link up with some of the stuff at Mahabalipuram, to my mind, only it’s had a rougher passage.’
‘I suppose the sadhu isn’t still sitting there?’ said Patti idly, withdrawing her zircon-blue eyes from the heavens.
‘Sadhu?’ said Larry in vague surprise, dropping his torch into the front seat of the Land-Rover. ‘What sadhu?’
Two
Thekady: Sunday
« ^ »
The hotel stood on slightly rising ground, the length of a dark, moist drive from the road, and resembled nothing so much as an over-sized and under-maintained mid-Victorian rectory, complete with untrimmed shrubberies and too tall trees growing too close to the windows. Even the hard earth drive and the few slightly ragged flower-beds fitted into the image. And though they had climbed over the crest of the ridge and begun to descend again, there was still no sign of the lake; nothing but forest, sometimes thick as a creeper-draped stone wall on either side of the road, sometimes opening into what was almost park-land, with lush turf in which the trees stood gracefully spaced, waist-deep in grass.
Larry was a fanatical time-keeper, having learned the necessity the hard way. They had been the first party away from the bungalow and would probably be the earliest afloat here. The few people moving around at parked cars in the hotel grounds, or in and out of the open door, were almost all staff.
‘If you will wait five minutes for me,’ Lakshman said, scrambling out from among the gear stowed in the back of the Land-Rover, ‘I must check in with the hotel desk, and find our boatman.’