‘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.’
More moved than he could imagine, Joe lifted her face and turned it towards him. He kissed her gently and then kissed her open-mouthed. A small murmur, a small cry and they were standing.
‘What do we do now?’ Nancy asked awkwardly.
‘Well, I’ve got a perfectly good bedroom over here somewhere,’ said Joe waving a hand vaguely.
‘And I’ve got one over there. Shall we spin a coin?’
‘No,’ said Joe. ‘Come with me.’
Chapter Fifteen
He awoke in a cocoon of disordered bedclothes. Not only disordered bedclothes – clearly the mosquito net had been in some way detached during the night as witnessed by a large number of bumps along his back. The bed beside him was warm from Nancy. His mind was a turmoil, remembering the innocence and the excitement with which Nancy had joined him in the night and remembering the smiles and gentle laughter, the tender clenching of her body as she lay with him. He supposed that everyone in that large household would know exactly what had occurred. And if they knew, it was to be assumed that it would be no time before the Governor would know. He had tried to talk about this with Nancy but she had been unable to acknowledge that there might be social implications to their tempestuous night. What, he wondered, would be the reaction of the Governor? “Ship this bloody policeman home on the next boat!” He didn’t think so. He thought her uncle was well aware of what would be the consequences of his so careful sleeping arrangements, to say nothing of his well-chosen wines. He even supposed that the Governor had brought this about for a purpose of his own. His mind ranged widely, seeking what may have been the purpose. He had, at their first meeting, spoken deprecatingly of Andrew Drummond. Feeling sorry for her, could he be putting a little distraction his niece’s way, condoning adultery? Joe had heard the stories everyone had heard about the looseness of morals in tropical India and wondered whether he had been too quick to dismiss them as wishful nonsense. All the same, there was something here he did not understand.