Ryman, Rebecca (41 page)

She
smiled. "I would like to know more about these travels on which you
received such a comprehensive education in women," she suggested. "It
might suffice to wipe out your crippling debt to me."

He
laughed. It was one of those rare mornings when nothing disturbed the harmony
of their communion, when he was willing
to open up to her at least that part of
his life that he considered dispensable. Gratified even to be admitted into the
fringes of his carefully camouflaged world, Olivia listened entranced. With
charm, with humour, he regaled her with anecdotes of his adventures in China,
in America, in the Pacific, tantalising her with mention of women who had
crossed his path but without ever elucidating, obviously pleased with her
occasional displays of stabbing jealousy.

"You
should be ashamed of making so many immoral admissions," she told him
petulantly at one point.

"Would
you be better pleased if I were celibate?"

"I
don't think you could be, even if you tried!"

"Not
so." Not even a dent showed in his complacency. "I could be anything
if I tried."

"In
that case, try not to be so conceited!" she snapped.

"You
see? You
do
ask the impossible!"

It
was a flawless morning. Olivia wanted it never to end, but then it did. He
swept her up in his arms and held her close, that hated leash loosening in a
rare moment of impulsiveness. His cheek against hers was stubbled but in that
roughness there was such sensuality that Olivia felt almost giddy. "We
might have been in the same town in America and not know it, do you realise
that, Jai?"

"Unlikely.
I would have known; the wind would have carried your scent to me."

She
went weak with the feel of his flesh, with the caress of his groping fingers.
"Even though I might have been in pigtails?"

"Even
though you might have been unborn. Olivia, I . . ." The words stuck in his
gullet like a fish bone that would not be expelled.

Say
it, say it, please my darling one ...

He
could not. Instead, he smiled and shook his head and, one last time, kissed her
with that fragile restraint hanging by a thread. And then he was gone. But with
gratitude Olivia swept up the crumbs he had left behind; when starving, even a
morsel or two helps.

Borne
aloft on clouds of uncertain direction, in her linear preoccupations Olivia
noticed little of what was happening in the house. She was vaguely aware that
her aunt and Estelle barely
spoke to each other and that her uncle was seldom
home except at night. Therefore, it was with a considerable sense of shock that
she returned from her ride one morning to find Lady Bridget crying. Olivia had
never seen her aunt in tears. It was a sight that she found horribly
distressing. She knelt and took her aunt in her arms, plunging straight into
the heart of the matter. "Estelle?"

Lady
Bridget nodded but it was some time before she could speak. "I don't know
what to do with her, Olivia, I just do not know what to
do!"
Eyes
streaming, she blew her nose and looked at her beseechingly. "He's a
frightful
man, Olivia, that Hicks. You've met him; you saw how he slurps his tea and
drops his aitches. I couldn't understand anything he said! And Estelle seems
besotted
with him, at least with the idea of going on that stage ..."

For
all Olivia's sympathy for her aunt, it was difficult to know how to console
her. Despite the unsavoury Mr. Hicks, whom she had met once when he came to
tea, she couldn't help feeling it was all rather an overblown storm. Also, as
she pointed out now to her aunt with as much diplomacy as she could muster, if
most of her friends had been given roles in the pantomime, what was the harm if
Estelle had too?

Lady
Bridget smarted. "I'm
surprised
that Celia Cleghorne should allow
Marie such licence! One could not, of course, expect any better from the Smitherses
considering . . ." Her mouth tightened as she broke off.

"But
Charlotte is a very good friend, Estelle says. Surely—"

"Good
friend, my eye! She's meeting Clive behind my back, you know. Jane Watkins saw
them on the river one evening. He was holding her hand."

Loyally,
Olivia tried to salvage the situation. "Clive is a fine young man, Aunt
Bridget. With his commission in the Navy he has a good future ahead of
him."

"You
don't understand, Olivia!" She looked aghast. "Herbert Smithers might
be a big gun in the Company but it's no secret that his grandmother was the
daughter of a native woman who kept boarders, one of whom happened to be a
Smithers. Of course they deny it, but blood tells, you know. Sooner or later
they'll have a tarred baby in that family, mark my words, and I'd rather
strangle
Estelle than risk her being its mother!" Suddenly her anger vanished
and, with a quiet sob, she buried her face in her hands. "Oh God, oh
God,
how I wish we had never come to this bloody, benighted country!"

Olivia
was taken aback by the obvious depth of her aunt's
unhappiness;
she had never known Lady Bridget to curse before. "Estelle is going
through a difficult transition," she said comfortingly. "It's a
passing stage; she'll get over it soon. We all did, you know."

"You
did?"
Her aunt's puffy eyes welled again as she pressed her hand. "My dear,
there was a time when I was concerned about your influence on Estelle, but I
was wrong. You have come as a blessing for her. If she is refusing to benefit
by your example, it is she who is to blame. How I wish Estelle had some of your
moral strength!"

Olivia
flushed and quietly left the room.

Driven
by guilt at her thoughtless negligence and her aunt's painful sufferings,
however trivial, Olivia determined to tackle Estelle without further delay.
With her cousin's increasing absences from the house, the evening sorties along
the Strand had become infrequent. Now, manipulating another carriage drive,
Olivia plunged into her self-assigned duty with blunt lack of preamble. "Are
you sincerely interested in Clive, Estelle, or is it just another frivolous
flirtation?"

Estelle's
smile was secretive. "Wouldn't you like to know!"

"Yes,
I would! You're being dreadfully unfair to John, who isn't here, and you're
making your mother very unhappy."

"Good!
I'm sick of people taking me for granted."

"Nobody
takes you for granted, Estelle. On the contrary—"

"Papa
does! He doesn't even know whether I'm dead or alive."

"That's
self-pitying nonsense! He's been very busy with all these problems at work. As
for your mother—"

"I'm
going to do that pantomime, Olivia," her cousin interrupted, her chin set
with stubbornness. "Mama will not stop me
this
time! Hicks has
agreed to all the costume changes Mama wanted, but you can't go on stage
without these special cosmetics, Clarissa says ... Oh, hell and
damnation!" She slumped back angrily and crossed her arms. "I can't
understand what all the blasted fuss is about."

As
a matter of fact, neither could Olivia. "Well, it's not
me
you have
to convince," she said, sighing wearily. "Why not put it to your
father and get
him
on your side?"

"Papa?"
Estelle's laugh was ugly. "Papa can't see beyond that precious coal of
his. He certainly can't see
me
anymore!"

"But
you know that coal is important to him, Estelle."

"Oh
yes, I do know that—
far
more important than his daughter!"

Olivia
searched her cousin's face, suddenly surprised to see in it signs she had not
noticed before. There were dark smudges beneath her usually sparkling eyes, now
dull and listless. Her childish features were drawn, her moon face somehow
thinner. Unhappiness, tension—these were now writ large across her expression
instead of mere brattish discontent. Estelle was obviously as unhappy as her
mother: That she had not had the sensitivity to observe that before filled
Olivia with renewed remorse. Quickly, she pulled her cousin into her arms.

"You
must never, never think that your father doesn't love you anymore,
darling," she said, now identifying the nub of Estelle's brooding misery.
"You are dearer to Uncle Josh than anything else in his life, you must
know that."

Slouched
against her shoulder, Estelle's body trembled. "Not anymore, Olivia, not
anymore." She began to sob.

"You
silly goose. People who love you don't always
tell
you that they do, do
they? The language of the heart is often silent, you know."

Estelle
paused in her sobs. "It . . . is?"

"Of
course. One just has to close one's eyes and listen."

"But
that isn't
enough . . .!"

The
carriage was clip-clopping leisurely along the river front. Unconsciously,
Olivia gazed over her cousin's shoulder to where the lofty multi-masts of
Raventhorne's provocative clipper raked the low-slung clouds. "Sometimes
one has to
make
it enough, Estelle ..."

Sitting
up to dry her eyes, Estelle seemed to accept Olivia's well-meaning platitudes.
"Yes, I suppose you are right," she said with a long sigh that was
wistful and resigned. "I too will try to make it enough for me."

Olivia
shifted uneasily at the blithe facility of her cliches: Had
she
been
able to make it enough for herself . . .?

Without
saying anything further to her woebegone cousin, Olivia decided to accost her
uncle with his aberrations towards his daughter some day soon.

Jai
Raventhorne did not appear by her side the next morning, nor the morning following
that. Balanced precariously over an abyss of doubts and uncertainties, Olivia
was devoured by conjectures and apprehensions. Was he ill? Merely too busy?
Suddenly no
longer caring...? It was this last with which she punished herself into renewed
fear and penitence. Had she offended him in any way, said something that had
made an unwonted dent in that seemingly unbreakable carapace? Had he
tired
of
her, perhaps?

Once
more Olivia panicked. Jai Raventhorne to her now was like an addiction as
deadly and as demanding as that of the opium he despised so passionately. She
could no longer survive through the day without even those pathetically
fleeting moments upon which hung her sanity. He had become her opiate, her
daily ration of fulfilment both physical and mental. And in the realisation of
her mortifying dependence on his whims, anger stirred and stayed. He had no
business to subject her to such arbitrary and undeserved torture. She had every
right to seek him out and demand some straight answers. She could not,
would
not, continue with these debasements—waiting upon his fancies, dancing to
his tunes, sublimating her good sense in the erratic patterns of his
perversities. She had forgiven him too often. She would not do so again.

Against
all her better judgements, Olivia did something she had never done before. She
rode out to Chitpur early one morning and banged resolutely on the large black
gate. The man who irritably swung back the smaller inner opening was neither
Bahadur nor any other of Raventhorne's staff she could recognise. "I wish
to see the Sarkar." Spurred by the anger she no longer took trouble to
conceal, Olivia spoke firmly in Hindustani and referred to Raventhorne as she
had heard others of his staff do. But behind her haughty mask there was
diffidence; was he perhaps still in bed? With Sujata . . .?