Dark Road to Darjeeling. Deanna Raybourn

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СКАЧАТЬ his hand. Like his aunt’s it was calloused, which spoke of hard work, but he was dressed like a gentleman and I noticed his vowels were properly obedient.

      “Mr. Cavendish. I am Lady Julia Gr—Brisbane,” I corrected hastily. After nine months, I was still not entirely accustomed to my new name. “My sister, Lady Bettiscombe, and my brother, Eglamour March.”

      He shook their hands in turn, and I noticed his aunt’s gaze resting upon him speculatively.

      “Are you missing someone?” Miss Cavendish asked suddenly. “Seems like there ought to be another. I thought Jane said to expect four.”

      A moment of awkward silence before I collected myself. “My husband. I am afraid he was detained in Calcutta at the viceroy’s request,” I explained hastily.

      Just then a native man, a butler of sorts I imagined, appeared with a tiny gong, and I blessed the interruption. He was dressed in a costume of purest white from his collarless coat to his felt-soled slippers, with an elaborately-wound turban to match. He wore no ornamentation save a pair of heavy gold earrings. He was quite tall for a native of this region, for he stood just over Plum’s height of six feet, and his cadaverous frame seemed to make him taller still. His profile was striking, with a noble nose and deeply hooded black eyes which surveyed the company coolly.

      With a theatrical gesture, he lifted his arm and struck the little gong. “Dinner is served,” he intoned, bowing deeply.

      He withdrew at once, and Portia and Plum and I stared after this extraordinary creature.

      “That is Jolly,” said Miss Cavendish, pursing her mouth a little. “I have told him such dramatics are not necessary, but he will insist. Now, we are too many ladies, so I am afraid each of you gentlemen shall have to take two of us in to dinner.”

      I was surprised that the customs should be so formal in so distant a place—indeed, it seemed rather silly that we must process in so stately a fashion into the dining chamber, but I took Mr. Cavendish’s left arm and kept my eyes firmly averted from Portia’s. I knew one look at her was all that would be required to send us both into gales of laughter. Fatigue often had that effect upon us, and I was exhausted from the journey.

      But all thoughts of fatigue fled as soon as I stepped into the dining room.

      “Astonishing,” I breathed.

      Beside me, Harry Cavendish smiled, a genuine smile with real warmth in it. “It is extraordinary, isn’t it? My grandfather always kept pet peacocks, and he commissioned this chamber in honour of them. It is the room for which the house was named,” he explained. The entire room was a soft peacock blue, the walls upholstered in thin, supple leather, the floors and ceiling stencilled and painted. Upon the ceiling, gold scallops had been traced to suggest overlapping feathers, and upon the walls themselves were painted pairs of enormous gilded birds. Most were occupied with flirtation or courtship it seemed, but one pair, perched just over the fireplace, were engaged in a battle, their tails fully opened and their claws glinting ominously. Each eye had been set with a jewel—or perhaps a piece of coloured glass—and the effect was beautiful, if slightly malevolent. A collection of blue-and-white porcelain dotted the room in carefully fitted gilded alcoves, and provided a place for the eye to rest. It was a magnificent room, and I murmured so to Harry Cavendish.

      “Magnificent to be sure, but I have always found it a bit much,” he confessed, and even as I smiled in response, I saw Miss Cavendish draw herself upright, her stays creaking.

      “This room was my father’s pride and joy,” she said sharply. “He had it commissioned when he married my mother, as a wedding present to her. It is the jewel of the valley, and folk are mindful of the honour of an invitation to dine within its walls.”

      Before I could form words, Harry Cavendish cut in smoothly. “And well they ought, Aunt Camellia. But even you must admit the artist meant us to fear that fellow just there,” he said, nodding toward the largest of the peacocks, whose great ruby eye seemed to follow me as I took my chair. “Just look at the nobility of his profile,” Harry went on. “He is a fellow to be reckoned with. Just as Grandfather Fitz was.”

      At this mention of her father, Miss Cavendish seemed mollified. She gave Harry a brisk nod of approval. “That he was. He carved this plantation from the wilderness,” she informed the rest of us. “There was nothing here save a ruined Buddhist temple high upon the ridge. No planters, no village, nothing as far as the eye could see to the base of Kanchenjunga itself. A new Eden,” she told us, her eyes gleaming. “It was my father who named this place, for he said so must have the earth itself appeared to Adam and Eve.”

      She left off then to ring for Jolly and dinner was served. To my astonishment, there was not a single course, not a single dish, to speak to our surroundings. We might have been dining in a rectory in Reading for all the exoticism at that table. The food was correctly, rigidly English, from the starter of mushrooms on toast to the stodgy bread pudding. It had been cooked with skill, to be sure, but it lacked the flavour I had come to appreciate during my long months of travel. I had learnt to love oily fishes and pasta and olives and any number of spicy things on my adventures, and I had forgot how cheerless British cooking could be.

      Harry gave me a conspiratorial nod. “It is deliberately bland because we must preserve our palates for tasting the tea. There are bowls of condiments if you require actual flavour in your food,” he added. I spooned a hearty helping of chutney upon my portion to find it helped immeasurably.

      Over dinner, Miss Cavendish related to us the disposition of the valley.

      “We are the only real planters in the valley,” she said proudly. “There is a small tea garden at the Bower, but nothing to what we have here. Theirs is a very small concern,” she added dismissively. “Almost the whole of the valley is entirely within the estate, and we employ all of the pickers hereabouts. Doubtless you will see them along the road, although I will warn you they can be importunate. Do not give them anything.”

      Portia bristled. “Surely that is a matter best left to one’s own conscience,” she said as politely as she could manage.

      “It is not,” Miss Cavendish returned roundly. “With all due courtesy, Lady Bettiscombe, you do not have to live amongst them. Our policies towards the local people have been developed over the course of many decades, and we cling to them because they work. Money is of no use to them for there is nothing to buy.” She warmed to her theme. “There have been planters, English planters, who have been foolish enough to meddle with the ways of the mountain folk. When it has gone awry, they have found themselves without pickers. The natives simply vanished, passing on to the next valley and leaving them with a crop and no one to pick it. They have failed and lost everything because of one moment of misguided compassion,” she said sternly. “That will not happen at the Peacocks.”

      I noticed Jane said little, simply picking at her food. I wondered if she felt poorly, or if her nerves had simply gotten the better of her, and I was as relieved for her sake as mine when the meal was over, signalled by Jolly ringing his gong and announcing, “Dinner is finished.”

      We rose and Miss Cavendish turned to us. “We keep planters’ hours here, I am afraid. We seldom engage in evening entertainments, and you are doubtless tired from your journey. We will say good-night.”

      Upon this point we were entirely agreed, and the party broke up, each of us making our way upstairs with a single candle, shielded with a glass lamp against sudden draughts. A sharp wind had risen in the evening, and the house creaked and moaned in the shadows and every few minutes, a piercing shriek rent the night. “Peacocks,” I reassured myself, but I shivered СКАЧАТЬ