Tiger Hills (48 page)

They had gaped at his request. “But what if we are caught?”

Appu laughed. “Don't worry. This is one theft that will never be reported to the police. Think of the shame. Don't worry,” he repeated insouciantly. “I'll make it worth your while.”

Christmas came around and Appu left for Coorg once more. “Avvaiah,” he said suddenly one afternoon at lunch, “we should change the name of the estate. Nari Malai is so provincial. Let's call it Tiger Hills instead. English.”

“What? Come on, Appu, we are going to do no such—” Nanju began, but Devi looked fondly at this fancy son of hers.

Machu,
she thought,
you would be so amused.

“No,” she said to Nanju, “he's right. We should move with the times. Tiger Hills it is.”

Nanju said nothing more, but he was especially quiet when Appu found him later that afternoon, sitting beside the birdhouse.
When Appu finished a long and especially wicked story about one of the boys at Biddies and Nanju didn't so much as crack a smile, Appu looked at him quizzically.

“Nanju,” he said lightly, “if it means so much to you, call it Nari Malai. It was just a thought, that's all.”

Nanju shrugged, apparently absorbed in the birdhouse.

“C'mon, man, you're—”

“Is there
anything
she won't do for you?” Nanju said suddenly. “Ask her for the sun the next time, why don't you, along with the moon and all the stars in the sky?”

Appu chuckled and, throwing back his head, began to sing the ditty they had come up with at Biddies. It was an ode to the draconian nurse who manned the infirmary. He had taught it to Nanju and they substituted certain key words whenever Devi and Devanna were in earshot; not that Devi would understand anyway.

A rich girl uses vaseline,

A poor girl uses lard.

Nursie likes axle grease,

Her punt is old and hard.

Despite himself, Nanju's lips began to twitch. He sighed, and then cuffing his brother lightly on the head to acknowledge the blatant change of subject, he joined in the ditty as well.

It was the following spring, almost at the tail end of the school year, when the watchmen finally sent word to Appu. A tea boy in one of the plantations had found something that would interest the young sir. The wait had been well worth it, Appu discovered, stunned at the prize the watchmen delivered.

It was a stack of daguerreotypes, each lovingly framed in gilt. There were two women, gently disrobing each other. A creamy shoulder exposed in one frame; a flutter of fingers, a length of leg in the next. A corset, coming delicately undone, until soon they were spread-eagled on a lace bedspread, frolicking
with abandon under the hearts and knots carved into the headboard above.

The daguerreotypes passed into legend at Biddies. For years to come, they would be handed from one graduating class to another, lovingly fondled by so many hands that the gilt frames grew dull, the identities of the two beauties infused by a hundred active imaginations.

They sealed fifteen-year-old Appu's standing at school for good—Dags, the boys now called him, the deliverer of the daguerreotype legacy, and Dags he would forever remain to a certain social circle, even when they were old and grizzled, with barely the strength to walk.

Chapter 32

T
he summer of 1920 dawned especially hot and dusty. Coorg lay parched under rainless skies, the rivers shrunken to trickles of muddy water.

Appu came home for the holidays once more. A school chum invited him to join the family at the Club one evening.

“Come along, don't you want to see what they get up to in that fancy schmancy club?” Appu urged Nanju, but the latter was having none of it.

“No, certainly not, whatever am I going to do there? No, Appu, you go.”

Appu walked into the Club, the easy swing of his stride, the width of his shoulders, and his impressive height all serving to belie his seventeen years. Even Devi had been startled at how much he had grown this past term. She barely came up to his chest now, needing to reach up on her tiptoes to brush his hair back from his forehead, and that, too, only when he indulgently tilted his head toward her. Nonetheless, the gangliness that so afflicted boys his age had passed Appu by. He carried the extra inches well.

He glanced about him, affecting a blasé expression, as if he had been frequenting the Club all his life. He took in the thick red curtains, the pall of smoke that hung over the card tables, the waiters standing ready just beyond the light of the lanterns. “The
billiards room,” his friend's father suggested, “would you boys like to give it a go?” Appu bent over the billiards table, and from the way the balls sped across the green baize, one would have been forgiven for thinking that he had been playing the sport forever.

There was a hearty round of applause at the end of the game. Someone offered to buy both boys a drink. “Ah, it's okay, laddies, you're old enough. Not so long ago, youngsters your age were getting drafted, weren't they?”

Liquid fire.
Appu held the glass of whiskey up to the lamps, examining the pale golden swirl of the alcohol. Suddenly aglow with bonhomie, he threw back his head and guffawed. His voice had cracked the previous year and already it was baking into a deep, rich baritone.

So penetrating was his laugh that it carried into the ladies' cloister. Kate Burnett glanced toward the sound. Who was that? she wondered, as she took in the spreading hulk of Appu's shoulders. There was an air of
youth
about him, like the scent of a new leaf in spring.

Appu caught her looking at him, the frankness of her appraisal making him flush. He turned away in confusion; then, annoyed at how easily she had punctured his composure, he swiveled on the bar stool back toward her. Taking a long, iced swallow from his drink, he returned her gaze, his eyes boldly raking over every inch of her, from the bob that shone like polished mahogany to the pointed tips of her shoes.

Kate arched an eyebrow at his insolence, the corners of her lips contriving to lift slightly at the same time in amusement.

She turned back to the women, ignoring him. To his annoyance, Appu found his eyes returning to her again and again through the remainder of the evening.

He had been unable to get her out of his head when his friend invited him to the Club again the following week. Appu eagerly accepted. He dressed with care, setting Tukra to polishing his oxfords for a good hour, but to his disappointment she was nowhere to be seen that evening.

“Mrs. Burnett? The pretty, brown-haired one? I suppose she
must be home—her husband travels a great deal, I've heard,” his friend said vaguely.

Appu was surprised at how let down he had felt by her absence. He thought of Mrs. Burnett a great deal over the next days, showing Nanju the package of FLs he had bought,
just in case.

“French letters. You do know what these are for, don't you?”

Nanju nodded sheepishly. “Yes.”

Appu boxed him on the shoulder. “So you do want a few? For the lovelies in your college? It's okay, I have more.”

It took three more visits to the Club before he saw Mrs. Burnett again. He looked anxiously at her, and to his enormous relief, she remembered him. She tilted her head in a mock salute, her earrings swinging delicately against her hair.

Midway through the evening, a bearer handed him a note. Appu excused himself to visit the men's room, where he unfolded the note. “Belvedere Estate,” it said simply. “Tomorrow. 3 p.m.”

The paper smelled faintly of her perfume. Appu held it to his nose, eyes shut, as he took in its fragrance. And then, scrunching the note into a ball, he threw it into the chamber pot.

Catherine Burnett was bored. It was nearly five years since she had first come to Coorg. She had met Edward at a social in London, where the bulk of his frame had immediately caught her eye. It had not been long before they were affianced, and soon he was writing to her from his estate in India, describing cool, lush Coorg, the thick jungles and ancient, forgotten stone temples, the waterfalls that spilled down mountainsides, and the evenings filled with fireflies. Kate had been enchanted, a spell that would last well into their marriage. And then gradually, she wasn't even sure exactly when or why, the bloom had begun to fade from the rose.

“The coffee,” she would correct herself in a private, wistful joke, “the aroma has begun to fade from the coffee.”

Edward had bought another estate, this time in South Coorg, where the soil was particularly fertile and coffee yields were said
to be exceptional. Unfortunately, it meant that he was gone for days at a stretch, leaving Kate to her own devices in their sprawling bungalow. At first she hadn't minded—she had been planning to redecorate anyway, and besides, the separations brought a certain …
frisson
to their marriage. But after she had finished refurbishing, and with the gardens landscaped and manicured to perfection, an ennui had crept in.

Edward would come home, tired and laden with the frustrations of a new estate; he would kiss her absently on the forehead, oblivious to the new dress she had put on especially for him. They went to the Club regularly when he was in town, but even that had grown dreary. The same faces every time, the same gossipy conversations.

The evening that she noticed Appu, Edward and she had had a “disagreement,” as he preferred to call their fights. She had been, oh, she didn't know, a trifle on edge, perhaps, brought on by the fact that he was leaving for the other estate again in a couple of days. He had patiently explained, yet again, that the estate was not quite there yet, another year perhaps and then—

“Another year?” she had protested. “Edward, another year is simply too long for us to carry on like this. You are hardly here, we hardly ever meet … it is simply
far
too long.”

“Come, Katie,” he had said in that calm tone that so deflated her. “Must you exaggerate so? We spend a great deal of time together—why, I have been here all this past fortnight.”

She had stared at him in frustration and then she had sighed.

A vague restlessness had remained within her as they motored down to the Club, and she barely noticed the sunset washing in through the windows of the car. She had smiled wanly at Edward as he escorted her to the ladies' room, said, “Thank you, darling,” and joined the women who were busy dissecting the shoes someone had worn at the summer picnic.

With a fluid movement, Kate moved her own feet under the sofa, contriving to turn and look at the billiards room as she did so.

He had laughed then, right at that moment. He was definitely
not one of the regulars. Very young of course, but there was something about the set of his jaw, the shape of his head …

He had turned and, catching her eye, had quite adorably blushed in confusion. Something had sparked within Kate. The realization perhaps, of the power she wielded over this not-quite-boy not-quite-man, the ability to make the blood rush to his head merely by looking at him.

The women around her were still prattling on when he returned the favor, twisting around at the bar to stare at her. Kate knew she should look away, but she didn't. She held the lad's gaze, unflinching, as he took her in slowly, from head to foot. When she finally turned away, to her surprise, her pulse was racing.

“Five years,” her cousin had said to her once in London. She lived in Kenya—“a continent apart, but we are both bound by coffee,” she had pointed out to Kate. “Five years is how long it takes to develop an attraction for the natives. And, oh Katie, once you do, there's no going back.” Kate had laughed nervously, looking over her shoulder to make sure her mother was nowhere near, before pressing for more details.

It had happened slowly with Kate, just as her cousin had predicted. When Kate first arrived in Coorg, while she had not been
repulsed
by the locals, she had not been attracted to them, either. In the past months, however, she had begun to notice things that she had not before. She watched the husbands of the Coorg women at the Club; the fluidity of their movements, the hair that sprang thickly from their foreheads. The unfreckled skin, tinted tea and clotted cream, honey gold, or a rich, brooding coffee. She stared at their hands, at the shape and girth of them, guiltily imagining them moving over her. She began to flirt with them, just the odd glance, leaning in just a shade closer than was warranted at dances, as she whispered in their ears.

All harmless, of course, and perfectly discreet; she was just keeping herself amused.

So it was that she sent Appu the note.
Just tea,
she told herself,
there's nothing wrong with being hospitable to the lad. What does it matter, really, if Edward is away?

Appu had taken even greater pains to be discreet. He informed nobody of their tryst, merely telling Devi he was going into Mercara. He commandeered the Austin that he had taught himself to drive the previous summer, nodding impatiently through Devi's implorings to be careful. He was giddy with excitement, light-headed almost. He knew how these things worked—why, hadn't Bobby MacGowan come back to Biddies last year full of goondah stories about his next-door auntie?