The Girl From Cobb Street. Merryn Allingham

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СКАЧАТЬ the throat and then the unmistakable sound of someone spitting. She crouched down and pressed her face to the glass. There was a figure, she was sure, but she was granted a glimpse only, and then there was nothing but the grass and the deep velvet sky and the brilliant moon and stars. Could it have been Rajiv walking in the garden at this very early hour? She could not be sure as she’d seen virtually nothing. A faint outline alone. But if it wasn’t Rajiv, then it must be an intruder. There were no other houses nearby and she felt suddenly vulnerable. Gerald needed to be here, holding her hand, reassuring her, and she couldn’t understand why he was not. Had he heard the intruder, perhaps, and gone in pursuit? If so, he must be sleeping elsewhere in the house. More evidence of his indifference, if she needed it. Saddened, she padded back to the empty bed. But might it be worse than indifference? Her stomach tightened at the thought. If Rajiv had alerted his master to the fact she’d read his private correspondence, Gerald might be extremely angry. She closed her eyes, determined not to indulge her misgivings. She badly wanted to believe that all would be well between them and in the moments before she fell back into sleep, she tried to find comfort. It was possible that when her husband had returned from work and found her sleeping so heavily, he hadn’t wished to disturb her. It was possible he’d been thinking kind thoughts.

      When she woke again, the sun was already climbing the sky. She had forgotten in the night to roll down the woven mat and the room was awash with its glare, a searchlight striking her through the eyes and travelling like the sharpest of arrows to pierce the very back of her head. Swiftly she moved to lower the panel. There was no sound in the house and she knew herself alone again. Another solitary day beckoned, another day of enforced idleness. Since the age of fourteen she had worked for a living; even as a small child at Eden House she had been given her daily chores, and woe betide if they were not performed to the Superintendent’s satisfaction. It felt utterly wrong to be this lazy. At least she could still dress herself. She tugged open the door of the wardrobe and saw with surprise that her silk dress had reappeared, washed and beautifully pressed. How had that happened? She’d heard nothing and yet someone—Rajiv, it must have been—had glided in and out of her room, in and out of her wardrobe, and left not a hint of his presence. The sense of unseen hands ordering her life was disquieting. But for the moment there were more pressing worries. What to wear to stay cool, or what passed for cool. She shimmied herself into one of the only two light cotton frocks she possessed. The choice was sparse for she had been able to afford few clothes for her trousseau, and she could see now that those she had chosen were mostly wrong.

      She wandered into the sitting room, as quiet and grave-like as the rest of the house. Gerald had come and gone without a word. In the night she’d comforted herself with the notion that he was anxious she should sleep out her fatigue, but why had he left again without seeing her? A morning kiss, a fond goodbye, wasn’t that part of being married? Not for Gerald, it seemed. She had realised yesterday, as they’d travelled in isolated silence, that it would take time for him to adjust to a new way of life and she must help him all she could. She would help him. But there was a growing emptiness that she couldn’t quite repress, for the path ahead seemed so very steep—even before she’d told him the news he wouldn’t wish to hear.

      There was no sign of Rajiv and she wondered whether he, too, had deserted. It seemed an age since he’d surprised her at the desk, riffling through papers she had no right to read. The letter she’d found, though, had stayed with her, its memory lodged deep and only temporarily blotted from view by the overwhelming disappointment she’d been feeling. But it was back now, sitting squarely before her, and a thought caught at the edges of her mind. It trembled there for several seconds, then burst into full flowering. She had begun to think the unthinkable, she realised. She found herself shaking her head as if to signal a warning not to entertain such ideas. Her suspicions had to be mere fancy.

      But what if Gerald were the real recipient? If the letter had been meant for Gerald, what Pandora’s box would that open? She knew all about Pandora, and where her curiosity had led her, from the reading she’d done with Miss Maddox. If Gerald had been the intended recipient, he must be the Jack Minns addressed. And that meant he must be two people. Which was absurd. Why would he be two people? She told herself not to go on with this train of thought, but somehow found herself continuing. If he were Jack Minns, which was quite mad, it would mean that Gerald had a mother and father alive. He had told her that sadly his parents had died together in a car crash five years ago. It would mean he had lied to her. And if he’d lied about something as important as his family, he might have lied about other things too.

      She would not think it, yet the notion continued to niggle. If he were Jack Minns, then some of his childhood at least had been spent in Spitalfields, a stone’s throw from Eden House. He had not played in the spacious rooms of a manor house, as he’d told her, or run carefree through its Somerset estate. The repercussions of such a lie were too enormous to take in. So she wouldn’t. She definitely wouldn’t. She would dismiss them as ravings brought on by the sun. But she had enough of Pandora about her still, to want to discover why that letter was on Gerald’s desk.

      Except that it wasn’t. Not this morning. The papers that were left were conspicuously tidy, a small, neat pile placed carefully in the middle of the desktop. And she could see at a glance that the letter from Spitalfields was not among them. She had been right about Rajiv. He had told his master what he’d seen, and Gerald had acted. He had squirrelled the document away to ensure there would be no discussion. And if she dared to ask questions, she felt sure he would deny the letter’s very existence.

      Rajiv came in bearing tea and fruit for her breakfast and she wondered if she dared mention her night-time experience. A mysterious letter and an unknown intruder were not the most cheering of introductions to her new life. Since she’d arrived, the sense of being watched had grown on her and, though she recognised that solitude and an unnerving servant could be making her foolish, a strange man in the garden did nothing to soothe. If, in fact, there had been a man. She was beginning to wonder if he was part of a dream, a figment of sleep, and decided to put it to the test.

      ‘Were you walking in the garden last night, Rajiv?’ She looked directly at him.

      His eyes did not meet hers and his face was without expression. ‘Last night,’ she repeated, ‘were you in the garden? I’m not cross. Perhaps you couldn’t sleep. But I need to know.’

      ‘No, memsahib.’

      ‘You’re sure you didn’t walk there in your sleep?’ This was getting laughable.

      ‘No, memsahib.’ Rajiv was looking decidedly anxious and no wonder. He must think he had gained a madwoman for a mistress.

      ‘Thank you,’ she said feebly. ‘That’s all I wanted to know.’ He slipped silently away, leaving her no wiser but feeling a great deal sillier.

      She had barely finished the tea and fruit when she heard footsteps on the veranda and a knock at the door. Anish Rana was standing on the threshold and greeted her with a smile.

      ‘I hope you slept well, Mrs Mortimer.’

      She was surprised at how glad she was to see him. ‘Thank you, I’ve slept for hours Mr—Lieutenant Rana,’ she corrected herself. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t give you your proper title yesterday.’

      ‘That is no problem for me. I am an Indian officer, you see, and we do not stand on ceremony. My name is Anish.’

      ‘And mine is Daisy,’ she said shyly, aware of the slightest edge to his voice. But his smile appeared sincere and she thought him a most engaging character. ‘Gerald is not home,’ she continued. ‘I’m afraid you must have missed him.’

      ‘It’s not Gerald I came to see, but you. I wanted to make sure you had survived the journey and your first day in India.’

      ‘I СКАЧАТЬ