Where Earth Meets Sky (30 page)

‘For God’s sake – you’ll set the place alight! Get that candle away from me. How
dare
you come in here and behave like this?’

But he was not easily deterred. He reached over to put the candle down on the washstand and stood up to fling the mosquito net over the wooden frame before lunging at her.

‘Don’t go all prissy on me. I know you’re his mistress. It’s obvious. If you go about dressed up like a bitch on heat, what do you expect? I haven’t had a woman in months and it’s no way for a man to live. I want you, Lily, and I’m going to have you. By God, if you can give yourself to that old dog, you can give yourself to me too . . .’

He seized hold of her, pressing himself against her with frantic urgency, pushing his tongue in her mouth, his hands groping at her breasts. He took hold of her shoulders and tried to force her down on to the bed. Lily found her mind working faster than she had ever known it. Knowing how drunk he was, she leaned her weight against him. Duncan McCluskie took this as being the response he wanted.

‘That’s it . . .’ He breathed whisky fumes into her face. ‘I knew you wanted it. Get on the bed, lie down so I can have you . . .’

Lily drew back as if she was about to obey, but then stepped fast towards him again and shoved him as hard as she could. For a moment the doctor wavered, then toppled over backwards on to the bed.

‘You scheming bitch!’ he growled.

‘Get out,’ Lily hissed, standing over him. ‘Or I’ll wake the whole house. Is that what you want? How
dare
you come and behave in this disgusting way? Now you get up and get out of my room!’

He sat up, groggily, seeming stunned, as if coming to his senses.

‘All right, I’ll go – I’m sorry.’ He got up off the bed. ‘Don’t say anything, will you? I’m sorry – it’s just been so long . . . I got it wrong . . .’

Lily opened the door without another word and waited for him to leave.

‘You won’t tell Ewan?’

Lily had no intention of telling Ewan McBride because she knew far better than Duncan McCluskie what his jealous anger was like. But she said stiffly, ‘So long as it doesn’t happen again.’

Lily did not see Dr McCluskie the next morning, but what had happened in the night and the way she had stood up for herself made her feel stronger. In any case, her mind was full of thoughts of Sam.

She spent a pleasant teatime hour at Zinnias with Susan and Srimala, playing with Isadora, and in a snatched moment, she and Sam arranged to meet at the beginning of the Camel’s Back that night.

Lily ate her dinner alone. After last night’s events she had wondered how Dr McCluskie would be able to face her, and her only sighting of the two men was that evening. As Lily was standing in the hall exchanging a few words with Jane Brown, the doctors came in out of the dusk. Lily saw a shade of emotion pass across Dr McCluskie’s face, a reflex of extreme embarrassment, which was then converted into a superior contempt.

‘Good evening, Miss Waters,’ he said coldly.

She nodded. ‘Mr McCluskie.’ It had not been deliberate, omitting to call him ‘doctor’ but she saw the insult register with him.

However, she spent most of the evening fretting in her room about whether she would be able to leave the house without anyone seeing. She thought about trying to climb out of the window, but, like so many Mussoorie houses, it was built clinging to the edge of the hillside and outside, apart from a narrow ledge, was nothing but a steep drop into darkness. She would have to get through the house as best she could.

At five to eleven her heart was beating so fast she could hardly bear it. She had been pacing the room trying to find an outlet for all her pent-up energy, and at last she opened the door of her room very quietly and crept out into the corridor. She had even left the pillows in her bed to look like her sleeping shape. As she crept along the corridor she heard the two doctors’ voices in Dr McBride’s study, could smell whisky and pipe smoke and hear their drink-laced laughter. They would be carrying on like that for hours to come. She went to the front door and slipped out into the mild, sweet-scented darkness.

Her steps sounded loud out in the street and she realized that she was never out at night unaccompanied and was unused to the deep darkness, lit only by a crescent moon.

‘Lily?’ His voice came from the shadows and her whole being leaped with happiness at the sound.

‘Sam!’

He caught her immediately in his arms and they clung to each other, at last alone and able to express their feelings.

‘God, girl, I love you,’ he said into her neck. ‘I love you so much.’

‘And I love you. Oh, Sam, what are we going to do?’

She wanted to pour out all her fears, but this was not the time to talk and for those moments all they wanted was to stand in each other’s arms. But then they heard whistling, and footsteps coming from the Camel’s Back Road, and they stepped apart.

‘Come on – the car’s parked below the Kulri Bazaar. We’ll get out of town.’

‘
Can
we?’ Lily was amazed. ‘Surely we can’t just take it?’

‘Lily.’ His voice came out of the darkness. ‘This is something that doesn’t happen except once in a lifetime. And terribly soon I’ll have to be gone – back on the ship. What could be the harm?’

‘I can’t believe it – us just being able to be on our own!’

‘All week it’s been all I’ve been able to think about. Come on.’ He reached for her.

They walked hand in hand through the winding bazaar, all shut up for the night now, and down, past poor native houses, hearing the sounds of families crowded inside, the cry of an infant, voices, a man singing. And all around, the smells of dung fires, incense and spiced food. Lily breathed in the smells of India, and everything was made lovely because Sam was walking beside her, holding her.

The car was parked in a low building which looked and smelled like a stables. When Sam cranked up the engine the noise seemed to explode into the quiet, and he jumped in and released the brake, switching on the bright headlights.

‘Right – we’ll find a spot just for us.’

She couldn’t see much as they drove along except for moving shadows, aware sometimes of the tall trees above, and of their delicious smell, and of the switching bends in the road. They didn’t speak much, not then. Sometimes, as he drove, Sam reached across and touched her hand, pressing it gently.

‘You’re here – you’re really here!’ she said once, full of love, drinking in the wonder of his presence.

At last he stopped in what appeared to be the edge of a little clearing and as the engine died the silence expanded round them, broken by the high squeak of some woodland creature. The thin moon looked down on them through the trees which moved gently in the breeze.

‘We’ve been here before – d’you remember?’ he said. ‘The picnic a few days back.’

‘Have we? I couldn’t tell on the way.’

‘The one with the little stream running between the trees. Where Isadora got her clothes sopping wet.’

‘Oh yes!’ she laughed. ‘Yes, of course I remember!’

Sam got out of the car and was foraging in the back for something.

‘I’ve got a surprise for you. Come on. We’ll make it nice.’

She could see very little, but followed him over the soft woodland earth and to the place he seemed to have in mind and she heard a small clanking sound as he put something on the ground.

‘I’ve got wood and paper, matches, a lamp – even tea and cake,’ he said. ‘We’ll have a nice little fire and make it cosy. And there’s a rug in the car. I’ll just nip and get it.’

‘Don’t leave me here!’ Lily said, alarmed. ‘I’m coming with you!’

Sam laughed. ‘Well, I’d better bring the bag back with me as well, or we might never find it again.’

Holding hands, giggling like two children, they hurried back through the trees to the motor car to collect the rug.

‘Like babes in the wood,’ Sam said.

‘Isn’t there supposed to be a gingerbread house?’

‘No.’ He thought about it. ‘I think that’s a different story – I couldn’t be sure, though!’

In their clearing he laid the fire and got it burning, and the wood caught gradually, the flames building and glowing in the night, sending off their warm light and dancing shadows. Lily busied herself spreading the rug on the ground, feeling that although they were outside, with no shelter and the most basic of provisions, she had never before experienced such a sense of luxury. She unpacked the bag, the bottles of tea and bananas and slabs of cake wrapped in waxed paper.

‘How completely wonderful!’ she said, amazed by the careful preparations he had made.

‘I picked up quite a bit camping with the captain,’ he said. ‘I don’t think there are too many animals up here to worry about, but they don’t like fire anyway.’

She watched it burning, and glowed with happiness herself, smiling at him in the orange light.

Once everything was ready they sat together on the rug, faces and hands warmed by the flames. In the firelight Sam turned to her.

‘Lily, I’m so sorry about last time – that I wasn’t straight with you from the beginning. I’m not a liar, not as a rule, only I was so keen to get to know you, so set on you, I knew if I said anything about home and Helen . . . Well, I wouldn’t stand a chance, and I just . . . See, even now, I can talk to you the way I can’t to anyone else . . .’

‘It’s all right.’ She looked into his eyes. ‘It was terrible then. Truly, it was. You broke my heart, Sam. And your wife expecting a child – all of it . . . I never thought I’d get over it.’

‘I never got over you,’ he said with great seriousness.

‘Even now—’ She hated saying it, but it had to be brought out. ‘You’ve children, Sam – your girls.’

Sam stared gravely into the fire and let out a long sigh. ‘Children are a blessing but sometimes . . . I suppose it’s the responsibility, the burden of it, at times. Being a father, I mean. And I wanted to do it well – take care of them. They’re lovely, of course – pretty little things. I could never not take responsibility for them, Lily. But my God, I can’t go on the way I am. Not while you exist somewhere. I feel as if everything stops when I’m not with you. As if you’re what I’m made for.’

Moved, she reached up and kissed his cheek. ‘And you’re the same for me. You’re the only man I’ve ever loved and it never went away, Sam, even though you did.’

‘It’s so strange,’ he said slowly. ‘Because although I love you, I don’t know much about you. You were always a mystery. And you know a bit about me – Coventry, cars and Helen, that’s my life. Tell me about you, Lily – will you?’

Immediately she felt the old reflex of shame for the past which made her want to hide everything, even from him. Here he was, a man she felt so much for and even so, she found it so difficult. But his eyes looked down into hers with intense love and he leaned down and lightly kissed her lips. And as well as the shame, she found herself full of an ache, a longing to talk and share with him who she was and where she had come from and feel accepted for it instead of having to pretend to be someone she wasn’t. And the longing drove her to speak.

‘I don’t know much about my background,’ she began, her heart beating fiercely. It felt like opening a room which had been locked for many years and being afraid of what might be inside. For the first time in her life she started to talk about the things Mary Horne had told her, about them finding her in the street in Birmingham, alone in the cold outside a dismal slum dwelling, and about the things she could remember, living with the Hornes, and Mrs Chappell.

‘I thought I’d never get over it when she died,’ she said, sitting wrapped in Sam’s arms, looking into the fire as she spoke. ‘I thought she was the only person in the world who would ever care for me, and when she’d gone I had no one else. I wanted to get out and start again, to go somewhere new, so that’s when I came out to work for the Fairfords. And there was Cosmo – my beautiful little Cosmo . . .’

Leaning against Sam, warm and cherished, Lily found to her surprise that she wanted to cry, and the tears started coming even though she tried to stop them. She rested her head on his chest, quietly shaken by sobs.

Sam stroked her head. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, gently.

When she could speak, Lily drew back and looked up at him wet-cheeked, and seeing his face bronzed and gentle in the firelight, gazing down at her so lovingly, more tears came.

‘I’ve never known this. Not being held like this.’

‘Oh, Lily, my love . . .’ he said, moved by her and her story. He drew her even closer to him again, his hand on her head, rocking her. For a time they sat quietly, hearing the crackle and spit of the fire, and the breeze gently moving the trees. It felt like sitting in a cave, the light a halo around them, and only darkness beyond. Lily felt warm and loved and alive in a way she never had before. She couldn’t say to Sam that although she had been clasped in Dr McBride’s arms night after night, it had never felt like this. It had been not love, but being used, and this difference, the longing it answered, filled her with emotion. She felt Sam gently kissing the top of her head and she turned and looked up at him with serious eyes.