She’s probably still trying to work out how she feels. Whether she can fit me into a slot between resentment and gratitude. I understand. It was the same with me in Jaipur: ladies of privilege to whom I automatically said yes, Ji, and of course, Ji, no matter how unreasonable their requests because they were paying me, giving me the money I needed to build my house. I swallowed my pride until the day I finally said no, never again to Parvati Singh. I close my eyes. That’s all in the past now. What’s the use of crying when the birds ate the whole farm?
Nimmi is missing Malik. I miss him, too. His easy way with people, making them feel comfortable—safe—around him. But he is miles away in the Rajasthani heat.
I shake my head and make some notes on my clipboard about how much fertilizer we need to purchase.
“Have you forgotten?” At the sound of Jay’s voice, I turn around.
He’s walking toward me from the back door of the hospital. His curly hair, which used to be merely threaded with gray, is now more silver than black. He’s wearing his white doctor’s coat, a stethoscope peeking out of one pocket. There’s something about the way he looks at me that always makes me smile.
“Clinic starts in five. Tea first?” he asks when he reaches me. He removes a leaf from my hair where it must have caught on my bun.
I look at Nimmi. “Nimmi? Tea?”
She straightens and gives Jay one of her rare smiles. When she glances at me, her smile disappears, and she shakes her head. “I want to finish this.”
Jay takes the gloves I’m removing from my hands and walks with me into the shed where we store tools and supplies. I’m putting the gardening sheers on their peg when I feel his fingers trail the back of my neck, starting at my hairline, down to the scalloped edge of my blouse. I close my eyes, feel that delicious tingle. His familiar scent of lime and sandalwood is so comforting. I turn to face him, raise my lips to his. “I thought you wanted to get to the clinic.”
He laughs lightly, tapping my nose with his finger. “Ah, yes. So I did.”
The Community Clinic was not doing well the first time I stepped through its doors twelve years ago. That was right around the time my sister, Radha, gave birth at the adjoining Lady Bradley Hospital. While we waited for Radha to recover, Jay—Dr. Kumar, as he was known to me then—suggested that I use what I knew about herbs and their healing properties to treat the local hill people. Without my henna business to support me, Radha and young Malik, I needed the work he was offering. True to his word, Jay secured the funds to start the Lady Bradley Healing Garden. He found a house for Radha, Malik and me on the periphery of the hospital grounds. It wasn’t lush, but we weren’t used to lush; the house I’d built in Jaipur was but a single room. I could afford to buy the small cottage Jay found; I had money from the sale of my Jaipur home.
From the beginning, Jay was respectful, kind; he listened to my ideas. We worked well together; he would help decipher the tribal languages of the patients so I could administer the appropriate poultice, lotion or food remedy. We got into the habit of having a glass of scotch in his office at the end of the workday (I’d started with chai but eventually switched to his Laphroaig when I discovered that I liked its smoky taste). We started to attend plays at the Gaiety Theater together, hike to Jakhu Temple with Radha and Malik, play cribbage (all four of us are competitive!), and cook together. At that time, Malik boarded at Bishop Cotton School for Boys nearby and Radha was at Auckland House School, both of which Samir Singh funded to atone for his son’s indiscretion.
Then, six years ago, on a fine Sunday evening, Jay and I were returning from a long hike. Radha had moved to France the year before with her husband, Pierre, a French architect she met when she was nineteen and he was on holiday in Shimla. Malik was away, playing in a cricket match in Chandigarh, an overnight trip with his school.
On our walk, Jay and I had been trading proverbs—one of our favorite games—trying to best each other.
“Giving jewels to a donkey is as useless as—”
“—giving a eunuch to a woman,” I said, laughing.
Jay raised his brows in surprise, then smiled, pleased. “Hmm. I was thinking dancing for the blind, but yours trumps mine.” We were standing on the front veranda of his house, a tiny but comfortable bungalow his aunt and uncle had left him. They’d raised him in Shimla after his parents died.
“Cribbage?” I asked. We usually ended the evening with a game.
Instead of answering, he looked at me for a long moment. I felt my face flush. Then he turned, unlocked the front door and pushed it open, stepping back—just slightly—so that I had to brush against him to enter. When I did, I felt his fingers, as light as breath, on the back of my neck. I stood still, felt a jolt run down my spine, every tendon, every muscle in my body quivering. The last time I’d felt a sensation that intense was the night I’d succumbed to Samir Singh’s charms in Jaipur—once and only once—six years before. That same year Samir had introduced Jay to me—quite by chance—and neither of us could have predicted what happened next.
Jay placed a warm hand on my hip, on the exposed flesh just above my sari. He drew me gently toward him so I could feel the heat of his chest against my back. I felt his lips graze that tender knob at the top of my spine. I let out a soft moan. I couldn’t help myself—it had been so long since I’d been touched this way. So long since I’d trusted any man. My sister, Radha, had teased me for years: Dr. Jay is smitten with you! But I’d been wary. Having left a bad marriage at the age of seventeen and then finding that I was nothing more than a distraction for Samir Singh, I didn’t want to be made vulnerable again.
Jay pulled on my earlobe with his teeth. “Lakshmi,” he whispered, “we’re not playing tonight.”
No sooner had he ushered us inside the house than I whipped around and kissed him on the mouth, my tongue searching for his, my pelvis, aching, arching toward his. I pressed my breasts against his chest, clutched his buttocks through his trousers. I was surprised at the depth of my want, at the urgency of it. His hands found the hooks on the back of my blouse, undid them.
When Jay pulled away to free me from my blouse, he and I were breathing hard. A lazy smile played about his lips, as if to tell me he had always hoped that this would happen, known it would. And though he’d had to wait, it had. Finally—it had.
Finally. I put my lips against his mouth again, massaged his nipples through his shirt.
He whispered against my lips, “Rumors have been circulating for the past six years about us. Don’t you think it’s time we put an end to them?”
Before the week was out, we’d married, in a simple ceremony at the civil court in Shimla. Radha and Pierre came from France. Malik wore his best suit and his wing-tip shoes for the occasion. (In Jaipur, he had never owned a pair of closed-toed shoes, but private school had changed his tastes.)
Our marriage didn’t change our working relationship. Jay continued as a physician at the Lady Bradley Hospital and remained director of the adjoining Community Clinic. I was in charge of the Healing Garden. Three afternoons a week, I worked with him at the clinic with a nurse and a few sisters, assisting with patients. We eventually sold our bungalows so we could buy a larger home together where Malik could stay when Bishop Cotton closed for holidays and, after he graduated, live with us, if he wished to.
Madho Singh, the Alexandrine parakeet gifted to Malik by the Maharani Indira of Jaipur, had pride of place in our new drawing room and kept watch on all comings and goings. Whatever Malik happened to be doing at the time, I made sure to share his latest news with Madho Singh.