Daisy's Long Road Home. Merryn Allingham

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СКАЧАТЬ had spoken truly. Within a blink, or so it seemed to a still half-asleep Daisy, they were coming to a halt outside a large, whitewashed bungalow, its trim garden stretching into the distance on either side of a long, winding drive.

      ‘Our home for the duration,’ Grayson announced. ‘Number six Tamarind Drive.’

      Her eyes were at last properly open. ‘However did you manage to bag this?’ She was used to living in cramped spaces and the house seemed extravagant.

      He gave a shrug. ‘It’s government owned and currently empty, so why wouldn’t they want to house us in style?’

      A man, dressed in a long white kurta, came hurrying down the veranda steps to greet them. It was all so reminiscent, she thought. Except that this servant’s smile appeared genuine. He tucked her bags under his arm and straightaway escorted her to the room that would be hers. It was refreshingly cool. Well kept, too, she noticed, with furniture that looked almost new. At first she’d thought the scene a replay of that earlier one ten long years ago, but she had only to remark the smile on the young Indian’s face, the pleasant interior, the manicured garden, to know that it was not at all the same.

      She plumped down on the bed and eased her feet from shoes that had tightened their grip. The house was as large as it had seemed from the road and there was plenty of space in which to lose themselves. Until now, she hadn’t thought how necessary that might be. On-board ship, they had led carefully demarcated lives and seen little of each other. A few drinks, the evening meal, an occasional gathering in the bar of all three of them. But now they were under the same roof and would be thrown together far more often and far more closely. How awkward would that prove to be? So far Grayson had shown no inclination to resurrect their old relationship and that was a comfort. From tomorrow, too, his work would take him into town for most of each day and then no doubt he’d be on the road, scouring the countryside for Javinder.

      ‘Ahmed will cook for us,’ Grayson said, when they re-emerged from their rooms a short time later to a tray of cold drinks. ‘Here, have some lemonade, Daisy. I’d forgotten how invasive this red dust is. I’ve a throat that feels like sandpaper.’

      ‘Let’s hope Ahmed proves a better cook than Mrs Hoskins,’ Mike said dryly. Mrs Hoskins was Mike’s turbulent landlady. He’d amused them from time to time on-board ship with anecdotes of Mrs H., as he called her, and her many tribulations.

      ‘I’m sure he’ll be excellent,’ Grayson said easily. ‘I think we’ve been given a cleaner as well and a man for the garden. So not too much for us to do.’

      ‘Except concentrate on the search for Javinder Joshi.’ Mike’s tone was not hopeful.

      ‘Exactly.’

      Daisy felt Grayson looking directly at her. She knew he was wondering what she would be doing while he and Mike were involved in the search. She’d had trouble convincing him that it was a good idea she travel with them. There had been several angry spats before he’d accepted he wasn’t going to dissuade her. He’d argued vehemently that it was unsafe for her to visit India at this time, to which she’d retorted that it must then be unsafe for him, doubly so since he was there to investigate a likely crime. He’d argued that it was the wrong time of the year, but she’d pointed out that it had been April when she’d landed in Bombay to marry Gerald. He’d argued that she would be bored, but she’d told him to leave that to her. She would find ways of filling her time. At that he’d looked suspicious. Then she’d had to play her ace, the wartime promise they’d made each other during that one wonderful weekend in Brighton, the promise to return to India together.

      ‘I was wrong. I shouldn’t have promised,’ he’d said. ‘I shouldn’t have encouraged you to go back. You’re going on an insane whim. Your mother had only the slightest of links with India and yet you’re preparing to travel thousands of miles in the mad hope of discovering a few fragments of family history. The only thing you’ll find in India is disappointment. And what then? You’ll be launching yourself into the next search and the next one, and so it will go on. You’ll never be at peace.’

      ‘Even if I find nothing,’ she’d reasoned, ‘I need to go back. I need to lay the ghosts from my past. You said so yourself. And once I’ve done that, I’ll be content. I promise. I’ll have to accept that I’ll never know who I truly am.’

      ‘You’re Daisy and that’s all I need to know. It matters not a jot to me who your mother and father were.’

      ‘But it matters to me.’

      And so they’d argued, back and forth, until eventually she’d worn him down and he’d agreed to take her, as long as Mike had no objections. Mike hadn’t. On the contrary, his friend appeared delighted to have her alongside. She would have to pay her own passage, Grayson had warned. She suspected that he hoped the proviso would put a stop to her dream. But she’d managed to pay for her ticket, though it had taken every penny of her savings. And she was glad she had.

      She’d known for months that her life was going nowhere and Jocelyn’s letter, Grayson’s visit, had stirred her to action. She was ready to leave an unsatisfying job in an unsatisfying town, ready to throw her world to the winds. The practical choice was a return to London. Instead, a sixth sense had taken over and brought her this far from home. She’d found herself propelled like a compass point searching out its magnetic home, to where she knew she had to be. The strength of that compulsion was extraordinary. For years, she’d tried to stifle it, but finally it had broken free. It had been the moment that Grayson had picked up his coat ready to leave her small, drab cottage, that she’d been certain. Certain that how she lived the rest of her life depended on her returning to India, depended on her scrubbing her memory clean of the past and finding a future that was waiting to be found. And so she’d retraced the miles she’d believed she would never travel again, and now she was back, here in India, here in Jasirapur.

      She glanced across at Grayson and noticed that the cool room and a glass of lemonade had given him a new energy. She wished she could say the same but her eyes were heavy with tiredness, and within minutes she had slipped away, back to her own room.

      She lay down on the cool white counterpane and breathed in the newly familiar smells, tasted the warm, thick air and felt the heat suffusing her bones. With delight, she listened to the calls of the birds beyond the shutters. Later, she would go on to the veranda and see how many of the birds she’d grown to love inhabited this new garden: cheerful little bulbuls with red and yellow rumps she hoped, hoopoe birds with their art deco plumage, and perhaps even paradise flycatchers with tails like long, white streamers, nesting in the trees that she’d noticed marked the boundaries of the property. After the monsoon, she knew, the garden would truly live again. There would be butterflies almost as big as the birds, dressed in their peppermint green and primrose yellow. Meantime there were months of the most incredible heat to live through. She would doze a while until the heat of the day had faded and then go on an inspection tour. Instead, she slept for the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon.

      When finally she ventured into the sitting room, it was to find Ahmed setting the table for dinner.

      ‘Gentlemen will be back very soon, memsahib.’ He smiled at her. ‘They begin work already.’

      She felt a fraud. Grayson and Mike must have gone into Jasirapur to organise their office while she had done nothing but sleep. And, sure enough, minutes later, she heard the sound of the jeep’s wheels crunching along the gravelled drive. She went out to meet them.

      ‘Sleeping Beauty, I presume,’ Grayson mocked. ‘I looked in to say goodbye but you were well away.’

      Mike СКАЧАТЬ