The Pool of Pink Lilies Read online

  She became sharply aware that the Indian was looking across Holly at her, and she steeled herself to look coolly back, becoming instantly aware again of something out of character in this little act of four people... the princeling, his driver, the two passengers. Why, anyway, was a princeling coming to meet Uncle Randall's nieces? Not that he was really a princeling, of course, her common sense told her that, but undeniably he was most extravagantly and pompously turned out, and undeniably the driver was affording him every respect. Then the driver himself — for all his skilled driving he was not a driver. She felt sure of that. To whom did this opulent car really belong, then? Was it all a jest of Uncle Randall's, and since when had Uncle Randall jested?

  Holly, blissfully unaware of any undercurrents, called out in pleasure at a cathedral that the driver corrected her was Victoria Terminus, a rail terminus of which Born Bay was very proud. He said the capital in a clipped way.

  `I know that,' acclaimed Holly of the Born Bay. 'Born is Portuguese for good and it was the Portuguese who were here first.'

  pequena. Yes, little one.' Holly missed his quick correction, but Greer did not. She gave the olive-skinned man a covert look.

  If he noticed, he did not betray it. He waved carelessly across a sweep of bay to what he said was the highest point of the island on which this city was built. Malabar Hill.

  `On the lower slopes are the Towers of Silence,' he said gravely, 'but above are beautiful avenues with fine houses. Very pukka.' He gave a little bow of obeisance that irritated Greer because she knew it was contrived and false.

  `Is that where we go?' asked Holly excitedly, and he turned his attention on the girl . . . a much gentler attention, Greer noted, than the attention he gave her.

  `But no. The days of spacious bungalows are gone for all but a very few. Rich and poor now live in flats, though I myself—' He bit his lip, obviously annoyed at something that had nearly slipped out, though what it was the beginning of Greer would not have known had the child in the back seat not called triumphantly, 'We live in a very large house.'

  Showing an equal coolness to the coolness he had shown her, Greer said to the man, 'The child's family, I suppose. You drive for them.'

  A pause, then: 'Yes. I drive the little sahib.' A smother of laughter again in the back seat.

  Holly's brief disappointment of no spacious bungalow surrounded by trees, lawns and flowers slumbering in the sun, walled courtyards in white stone, arcades, columns and patios disappeared in a slow, exciting drive through a market, little children calling, Tacksheesh,backsheesh!', men selling sweet sesame cakes from brass trays, the big car edging around sacred bulls and sleepers sleeping anywhere where sleep had taken them.

  `It's wonderful!' Holly thrilled.

  Again the driver's quick darting black glance, a glance that Greer unwillingly found she had to answer.

  `Interesting.' Her allotment was intentionally sparse.

  They were climbing themselves now, a far lesser height than Malabar. Even though they had left the city proper, almost the same confusion as in the market remained, and the progress was slow. Men still peddled goods, children still coaxed pennies, women with bunches of hill flowers

  called out, Two annas,' then pointed appealingly to their mouths.

  `During the cholera,' explained the driver, 'a local proverb told that "Two monsoons are the life of a man." It is not so now, of course, but conditions still beg vast improvement, just as those children beg for pennies.' He gave a little shrug, something in the instinctive movement once more raising that vexed query in Greer. She watched him toss out some coins.

  They were approaching compounds of flats that could have been in Australia or anywhere. Greer felt Holly's disappointment and squeezed her hand.

  The driver saw it.

  `I told you,' he reminded her, 'that the day of the bungalow is over. This is much more sensible, I think.'

  `I don't,' called the princeling in the back seat.

  The little tolerant smile flicked again and was quickly wiped off. The car came to a halt at one of the blocks of apartments, and the driver got out and snapped his fingers for service and several men ran out of the verandah shade and nodded as he instructed them where to take the bags. 'I won't come up,' he informed them, and Greer commented coldly, not really knowing why she did, `Naturally, being the driver.' She saw Holly's surprised look, but no flicker at all passed over the man's suave countenance.

  `Salaam.' He bowed and went back to the car.

  The two girls watched him turn the car, watched him turn his head and nod gravely to them . . . watched the surprising spectacle of the princeling suddenly leaping from his enthronement at the back to sit instead beside the driver.

  `He's nice,' said Holly of the man.

  `He's an enigma.'

  `Well, even that's different, isn't it?' Holly could not be dismayed.

  But she was some minutes later when they were led up several flights, then shown into a distinctly indifferent

  back room. The room could have been anywhere at all, it looked out on a blank wall that could have been any wall. There was nothing at all, unless you counted the humid heat, to indicate that this was India. Even a child crying Backsheesh' would have done, a woman selling flowers for two annas.

  The room itself, too, was characterless. No exotic touch, simply a room, and a room unwillingly . . . Greer had that sensation at once . . . allotted.

  `It's all we have.'

  The voice came from the door of the room, a cold, frankly disliking voice, and even as she turned to meet Uncle Randall's wife Arlene . . . for who else would it be standing there? ... Greer knew that their invitation to Bombay had not been seconded by her.

  `Randall is not here. I'm going out myself as well. Settle in, we'll talk later.' Green eyes flicked to Holly, and the woman commented, 'Bit exhausted, isn't she?' with more than a hint of malicious satisfaction at the girl's drained, wan looks. Then, turning and looking Greer up and down, not so exhausted, neither drained nor wan, with unconcealed malice, she added, 'But don't settle in too much. Understand?'

  She stood a hard challenging moment still looking at Greer, then she left the room. From the sound of steps and the banging of doors she also left the flat.

  `What does she mean?'

  Holly was standing like a bewildered child asking it of Greer, appealing piteously to her, and Greer's mind ran back to the first time she had met her stepsister and how Holly had stood looking uncertain and wistful, and how her heart had gone out to her.

  Stephen had told Greer about his little daughter after he had told her he was going to marry her mother, be her father if she would have him. If she would have him! She loved Stephen. She could not remember her own father, but Mother had said that the two men could have been

  brothers and that was why...

  `It's been a long time alone, Greer,' Mother had said, `and I get so tired and discouraged. But with Stephen . . Her face had lit up.

  Holly, Stephen had explained to Greer, is not like you at all; you should be the holly, Greer.

  She had told him gravely that Greer meant the Watch-Woman, and he had asked would she be a watch-girl for his Holly. It hadn't been hard to promise Stephen, and it hadn't been hard when she had met Holly. They had been a happy family: only it hadn't lasted long enough, not for Stephen, not for Mother, not for—

  `Darling, don't take on, she just means this room is a temporary measure,' Greer said with the confidence she always practised on Holly, and Holly brightened at once.

  `It's not that there's anything wronwith it,' she responded cheerfully, 'it's just that I expected—'

  `You expected India,' smiled Greer.

  `Do you want to rest or do you want to venture out and find India?' Obviously a rest was called for, the girl looked exhausted, but Greer was thinking all at once on Doctor Jenner's lines. That – 'Why not?' . . . 'May as well'

  . 'After all . .

  Besides, had they not been warned not to settle
too much?

  `Oh, Greer, India,' Holly begged.

  Greer would have liked to have had tea before they set out, but the Indian servant when she went into the hall gave her such a hard look that she did not dare ask. Like mistress, like maid, she could not help thinking. Arlene . . . I expect it's Arlene ... has imbued those in her service with her own flinty attitude. She supposed they would find a tea-house on their exploration, and clutchin, her money purse she took Holly's hand.

  A street from the block of apartments they found themselves in the India that Holly had dreamed about. The shadow of past magnificence that still persisted through the present-day shabbiness only needed a little

  imagination to bring all the glamour flooding back again. Holly had plenty of imagination and Greer smiled fondly as she heard her whisper ecstatically: 'Holy scrolls. Peacock thrones. Amber palaces with ebony pillars and ivory frescoes!'

  Greer heard herself adding in as caught-up a voice : The Pool of the Pink Lilies.'

  'Oh, Greer!' A shiver of delight from Holly.

  `Yes, darling, but try to take it calmly, won't you?' Greer led the way.

  For it was a case of leading now. The further they got away from the apartments the more people... and cows, donkeys, goats, old cars and bicycles ... crowded in on them. But mostly people. There was teeming, seething life all round them. Women walking along with baskets balanced on their heads, shopkeepers sitting cross-legged in front of their stores, now and then a man suddenly kneeling in prayer, children begging with liquid tongues and liquid eyes, some cartwheeling in the hope of a reward, a young mother crying `Chota baby, chota baby' and pushing forward a little brown atom in appeal, tray-sellers thrusting sesame cakes on them, fortune-tellers, snake-charmers, open-air barbers, pedlars peddling rugs, lacquer, brass and ivory, flower 'jewellery' offerers of delicately strung jasmine, all crying their wares, and, punctuating their persuasive voices, a child's persistent shrill 'Shoe shine! Beautiful shine. Very good shine!'

  They passed by a cow looking smugly back at them knowing it had the right of way. Some eye-catching silks halted Greer, and for a moment she stood enchanted, then always Holly's watch-girl, she turned to check on her little sister, saw her equally enchanted by some delicate silver filigree, smiled to herself and moved across.

  As she got closer to Holly, though, she saw that the girl was a little pale, yet that could have been the greenish light cast by the market umbrellas and awnings, dimming and changing as they did the almost brazen enamel blue sky.

  `All right, darling?' — But these were the last words that Greer was to speak to Holly for several hours... anxious hours, for all at once everything seemed to happen.

  Actually, she was to learn later, it now became the hour of the day when the workers not already working at shopkeeping, tray-selling, fortune-telling, barbering or shoe-shining emerged from their places of employment to snarl up the already snarled street. Like a flood they encompassed her, parting her from Holly, sweeping her along in a current of people. People, people, people. Bearded Sikhs, Indians wearing turbans of many colours, women in bright saris, women in subdued ones, girls in sarees, that very provocative Ceylonese garment with its three inches of brown stomach, both men and women wearing plastic raincoats, children in practically nothing, and all dodging sacred cows or sleepers on mattresses or men having their hair cut, and in the middle of it all, Greer, struggling to get back to Holly, struggling even to see Holly. Calling to Holly. Attracting the tray-sellers' attention by her frantic calling. The shoe-shiner's attention. 'Very good shoe shine, lady.' The flower jewellery pedlar. 'A string of jasmine for madam.' Then: 'Tellpardy?' This was from a sesame cake seller. `Chota baby.' Another mother was thrusting forward a little brown child.

  `Holly! Holly!' Now Greer could not see further than a few yards, the crowd around her was so dense. She knew that she and Holly had taken one of the back ways of Bombay, and she experienced a moment of panic. All at once she seemed in a prison of people, people circling her asking her to buy, touching her clothes, her hair.

  `My sister,' she managed miserably, and then did the worst thing she could have done, she opened her purse. She should have had more sense. She knew that wretchedly and too late as the crowd around her thickened. This would be a basic area, and pennies would be like oil on a fire. She heard the voices shrill around her, and turning blindly ran in the direction she believed she had last stood

  with Holly.

  In her blind anxiety she did not see the tall man barring her way, and even if she had she would not have recognized him, for now he wore no dark blue turban. The khaki drill had been changed, too, to light slacks, silk shirt and cravat. But the eyes, had Greer looked up, were the same . . . except that instead of chill now they were hotly angry. A hand shot forward and Greer was brought to an almost savage halt.

  `Let me go! I have to get to Holly. Let me go or I'll –I'll—' By this time Greer had looked up and recognized the man.

  `My sister . . .' she appealed.

  `Isn't it a little late to concern yourself over her?'

  `She was here beside me. I mean I was beside her. I mean ... Oh, where is Holly?' Greer tried to run again, but once more the hand stopped her, a hard masterful hand.

  `Please control yourself,' he advised.

  `These people—'

  `They will not hurt her. All the same—'

  Something in his voice sent Greer's eyes flashing upward in apprehension.

  `All the same?' she barely breathed.

  `It would have been wiser not to have made her sight-see like this with you, not so soon. If you couldn't wait for yourself surely you could have advised the child.'

  Angry words rushed to Greer's lips. What right had this man to criticize? It was true that they should have rested, but when Holly had turned her little bleak face after Arlene's flinty words how could she have not done what she had?

  `You don't understand,' she said dully.

  `I certainly don't. That girl is frail. Don't you realize that?'

  Realize it! Realize Holly's fragility! That fragility around which her own life always had circled! Almost Greer laughed, laughed hysterically.

  He must have sensed that she was overwrought, for definitely, firmly, he drew her out of the crowd, the sellers even parting deferentially for him, then he was guiding her . . . though it could almost have been pushing her .. . up a lane, and there at the other end was the large car in which they had travelled earlier with Holly's little princeling. There was no princeling now, though, but a young fair man, he was in the roomy back seat and he was .. . he was .. .

  Tearing herself from the man's light but intentional grasp, forcing herself so abruptly that he was taken by surprise and let her go, Greer ran frantically forward.

  For the fair man in the big limousine was bent solicitously over Holly. Holly was lying back against cushions and her eyes were closed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  GREER struggled with the door handle and succeeded in turning it. She did not get in the car, though. The man bent over Holly looked round and shook his head. But he shook it in a kind and sympathetic way that stayed Greer more than that other person's imperative hand had done.

  `She's all right . . . that is, she will be ... but just now Oh'... a swift, contrite smile ... 'I'm a doctor, by the way.'

  `Thank you.' Greer stepped back – and stepped on to the man who had detained her, or had tried to. She did not apologize.

  He in his turn did not speak to Greer. He spoke quickly with the doctor in a language she could not follow, though it certainly did not appear an Indian dialect, more – more Spanish, she thought, and at that thought she thought of something else : this man on their journey from the ship to the flat smiling at Holly and saying 'Sim, pequena? Yes, little one?' Wasn't pequena ... wasn't it ... Then that continental shrug of his, didn't it suggest ... ?

  The doctor answered the man but far less fluently, less – well, less natively. The man turned to Greer and said, 'We will take
a taxi. It will leave them more room. My driver will see to the doctor and your sister.'

  'See them to where?' Greer demanded. 'I don't think the flat—'

  'No, not there.' His voice was definite, almost flintily

  so.

  'Then – then – not a hospital?' Oh, what had the young doctor answered just now to this Indian?

  'No.' Impatiently. 'My home.'

  'Your home?'

  `Please to come. Your sister is already leaving.' He nodded to the big car. The young doctor was supporting Holly in the back seat and the driver was edging the limousine carefully forward. Holly's eyes were still closed.

  A taxi had sidled up to them; Greer marvelled at her companion's quickness in getting what he had said he would. Looking around at the vast throngs it seemed impossible that he could have caught a taxi-man's attention, let alone persuade him to come down the lane for them. But . . . a quick glance at the firm face.. . this man would always get what he wanted.

  He was seating her now, seating himself beside her. He directed ... in dialect, she judged, not that other tongue he had used with the doctor . . . an address, directed it rather aloofly.

  The taxi moved out of the lane into an equally thronged but wider lane. It rendered their passage a little easier, though ambling donkeys, goats, cows and cycles still held them up. But soon they were turning into a main street, and Greer did not need to be told that that edifice on their left, looking very much like pictures she had seen of London's Marble Arch, was the fabled Gateway of India. She thought the dock-workers resting beneath it rather less than colourful, but the sea beyond was so brilliantly, almost hurtingly blue that their drabness provided a perfect foil.