‘I had seen others die and was to see more but, somehow, this really entered my heart. He had, in a way…’ She paused for a long time and then resumed, ‘Maybe you’ll find this ridiculous but he had, in a way, become my baby. And his passing left a gap in my heart that the years have not filled. Dammit! I don’t even remember his name!
‘In tears I called for stretcher bearers and while I was waiting for them my attention was called to another man lying nearby. His service dress cap was on the bed beside him. Idly I picked it up. He was an officer – rather unusual on that ward. He was in the 23rd Rajputana Rifles, the Raj. Rif. as we used to call them. I thought he was dead or at the very least, dying. He looked up, reached out for my hand and said, “Well done!” Just that – “Well done.”
‘He was in pretty bad shape. He was my first Indian army casualty and as best I could, I made a tremendous fuss of him. His wound was terrible.’ Nancy hesitated for a moment, her thoughts slowed by the weight of memory. ‘His leg was practically shot to pieces. Multiple fractures and the flesh was cut to ribbons. We all thought it would have to be amputated but the young doctor who dealt with him had only just arrived and hadn’t yet begun to bargain limbs against speed and efficiency. He made a heroic effort and the Raj. Rif. officer began to mend. Eventually – after about a month, I suppose – there was talk of moving him back to the base hospital in Rouen. I tried to keep him – very selfish of me. We used to talk about India and I told him the only thing in the world I wanted was to go home. He understood and we talked about it a lot.
‘One day he had an official-looking sort of letter. He asked me to read it to him. He’d been in the ICS before the war and this was an offer. The Collectorship of Panikhat, can you believe it! He was quite upset. “This would have been just what I wanted,” he said, “if I weren’t a cripple.” And I went for him! “Just what you wanted? Then take it! I haven’t wasted six months patching you up to have you at the end of the day turning down an offer like this! You’ll walk again. You’ll ride a horse again. Take it!”
‘He was very amused and then he said something so extraordinary, something that actually transformed my life. “Do you really want to go back to India?” and I said, “Yes, more than life.” And he said, “Give you a first class, one-way ticket if you like.” And I said, “What on earth do you mean?” He said, “Marry me. It’s not much of an offer… you know the state I’m in… but marry me and be the Collector’s lady.”
‘I couldn’t believe it! Still can’t sometimes.
‘Shortly after that Raj. Rif. wounded began to come in and we found ourselves talking to them, writing letters for them, listening to them and all the time telling them they were going to be all right. And the Collector-Elect of Panikhat persuaded the authorities to allow him to stay in the forward hospital (quite irregular, of course). He said, “I can do more good here talking to the chaps than I would sitting on my bum in base hospital in Rouen playing bridge all day long.”
‘I really loved him, you know. And I still do.’
She fell silent, her eyes in the candlelight shimmering with tears, and Joe waited, finding no words to speak, sensing that she had almost got to the end of her story.
‘The war was on its last legs by then, though we didn’t know it. There were miles of red tape to unwind so it was two months before we could get married. As soon as we could we said our goodbyes and suddenly everybody was going home – all the Yankee boys, the British singing “Auld Lang Syne” and the Raj. Rif. just smiling. Quite a lot of us were crying including me and then we were off in a train to Paris for a honeymoon. From there to Marseilles, on to a P & O steamer to Bombay and all my dreams came true.’
‘All your dreams?’ asked Joe quietly.
Chapter Thirteen
‘All my dreams?’
Nancy repeated his question slowly and her eyes slid away from his to focus on the single orchid which stood in a slender silver vase between them. She was silent for a long while, gently stroking its silken petals and, from her silence, he understood that she was considering his deeper meaning.
‘No. Not all my dreams. But most of them. Such as they were at the time. India was still white and gold and all that I had hoped for. The people smiled and the sun shone. The blood and the pus and the misery, the noise and the squalor, they were all far behind in France. I remember saying to myself, “I’ll have clean clothes every day!” And, of course, in India you do have clean clothes every day. I was coming alive again. But then…’
Her face suddenly grew bleak as memory returned. ‘Peggy Somersham, my best friend. There was I in India surrounded by the peace and comfort that I’d longed for and suddenly here was my friend lying dead in her bath. I knew that somebody had come into my paradise and murdered someone close to me for no reason I could think of. And why Peggy? Why not me? I was back with death. I was back with blood. And more than I have ever hated anybody or anything I have hated the man who was responsible for this!
‘I imagined how he’d done it and tried to reconstruct it. I didn’t get a scrap of co-operation from Bulstrode, condescending bastard that he is! If I tried to interest him or suggest he ought to look a bit further, he would just give me that irritating laugh, the laugh that said, “There, there! Don’t you dirty your pretty little hands. This is man’s talk. You wouldn’t understand.” So I rang Uncle George and we talked about you and about the forensic techniques and criminal character analyses we’d heard you lecturing on and we agreed – “That’s the man for us!” And Uncle George – he’s very good at that – pulled a few strings and here we are. He’d take it as a personal triumph I think if you could pull this off!’
She reached out and took Joe’s hand in both of hers and said, ‘It’s transformed the world to have you here!’
Joe looked with tenderness into her excited face. ‘Nous gagnerons parce que nous sommes les plus forts!’ he said.
‘Who said that?’
‘It’s what the poor old frogs said at the beginning of the war. Never lacking in confidence! But then, in the end, I suppose they did win out.’
The khansama slid into the room, taper in hand, and proceeded to relight the candles. Nancy stayed him with a gesture and one by one they flickered and went out. The tiniest, discreetest shuffle in the corner of the room marked the appearance of ayah and, in a gentle voice, Nancy dismissed her. In moonlit silence with the mutter of the city drifting up from the street below, the bark of a dog, the call of a night bird, a sudden clamour from the market as suddenly cut short, seemed only to accentuate the silence that had fallen between them.
She looked up, at once both innocent and alert. Her innocence left Joe longing to hold her close, ruffle her hair and kiss the tip of her nose, to draw her down on to his lap, to sleep with her, to wake with her, but the air of alertness delivered an entirely different message. His mind went back to a bar in Abbeville and to an officer in the French Women’s Army. She’d downed her second cognac and, staring closely into his eyes with that same concentrated alertness, had whispered a phrase whose crudity had left him breathless, ‘Baise-moi, Tommy!’
What would he say if Nancy had said the same? He knew exactly what he would do. In desperation, he made a half move towards her but she anticipated him and, falling to her knees beside him, she put her arms round his waist and buried her face in his lap. When she looked up her eyes were wet with tears but she was laughing at him.
‘Joe,’ she said, ‘listen! I don’t need to do any explaining, I think. You must have guessed I don’t know much about this. Oh, God! You’re so precious, you’re so special and you’re so absolutely my lifeline – I don’t want to disappoint you and I know that happens sometimes.’