Shadow of the Moon (55 page)

‘That is not a thing that I should care to count on,' said Alex, regarding him under drooping eyelids.

Kishan Prasad shrugged his shoulders: ‘But of course not. Did I not say that there is always an element of risk? It is for that reason that one should take particular precautions when ladies are of the party. But there can be few ladies who would care to go on such a shoot during the hot weather, and I do not imagine that Mrs Barton will be with us then. I feel sure that she will have removed to some hill station to escape the worst of the heat. I have just been warning the ladies that Lunjore can be a veritable furnace in the months before the monsoon breaks, but coming from Europe they have as yet little idea of how fierce our Indian hot weathers can be.'

‘I shall do my best to impress it upon them,' said Alex.

‘I am sure you will, Captain Randall,' said Kishan Prasad with a smile. ‘Though I fear your warnings are doomed to be disregarded. You will find that those ladies who have not yet experienced a hot weather will be sure that you are grossly exaggerating the discomforts, while those who have will have forgotten just how bad they can be. So you see I am really quite safe in playing traitor to the climate of my native land.'

Delia said brightly: ‘Maudie Chilton, who has spent four seasons in Lunjore, says that it is best not to think of such things while it is cool, as once it becomes hot there is nothing to be done about it, and when it is over one can forget all about it until the next time.'

Winter could see nothing amusing in the remark, but both Alex and Kishan Prasad laughed, and their laughs contained a disturbing and identical note of grimness. It was almost, thought Winter uneasily, as though their casual conversation had possessed two separate and distinct meanings, and that each knew exactly what the other had implied. She looked at the two men, and for a fleeting moment it seemed to her that there was a strange likeness between them. A likeness that had nothing to do with colouring or feature, but that went deeper than externals.

Kishan Prasad rose at the approach of Mrs Cottar and presently walked away with Alex, amicably discussing the forthcoming duck shoot, and Winter decided that she was letting her imagination run away with her. Yet she had not, after all, left the party early that night. She had stayed for the first time; watching Alex and Kishan Prasad, and telling herself that there was nothing there - nothing. That Kishan Prasad had not blandly presented Alex with some obscure piece of information or warning, or Alex recognized it as such.

The Commissioner had as usual drunk too much, and had eventually abandoned cards in favour of lolling upon a sofa at the far end of the room with his arm about Mrs Wilkinson's waist - Major Wilkinson being at present in no state to resent such behaviour, having succumbed early to the effects of the Commissioner's port.

Winter looked at her husband's coarse, flushed face with its pale, protuberant eyes and drooping brandy-sodden moustache, and watched him fondle Chrissie Wilkinson's plump bare shoulder while he whispered something in her ear that sent her off into peals of laughter. She knew that she should not remain and lend her countenance to such proceedings, and that she need not even trouble to make any excuses for her removal, since few if any of her guests would notice that she had gone. Yet she did not go. She sat stiffly upright, the yellow silk flounces of her wide skirt spreading out from below her slim waist like the petals of an overblown rose, and the same small frozen smile on her face that she had worn during the nightmare hours that had followed her wedding.

She could not leave, because Alex was there, and all at once it had become enough to be in the same room with him: to be able to watch his face and to hear his voice and his laugh. To realize, having visualized him dead, that he was alive and safe and real; and to feel the ache of loving him tug at her heart. Tomorrow, or the next day or the next, he might meet with another carefully planned accident, or die of cholera or typhus or black-water fever, or any one of the deadly diseases that ravaged India. Life was cheap in such a country, and a face seen laughing across a luncheon-table one day might well lie slack-mouthed in death less than twenty-four hours later, and be hidden under six feet of earth before another sun had set.

Death was an all too familiar visitant, and as Maudie Chilton had said of the hot weather, it was better not to think of such things. But there were also other and less disastrous things that could remove Alex from her orbit just as effectually. He might be transferred to some other district, or be returned to regimental duty. He might fall in love and marry some pretty creature like Sophie Abuthnot who, with infinitely more sense than Winter, had wasted no time over falling in love with him. Or someone like Delia— No, surely not Delia! He had never been more than polite to Delia. But he was being more than polite to her now …

Winter watched him unobtrusively across the width of the room and suspected him of being a little drunk. His eyes were very bright and his thick dark hair was ruffled, and he appeared to be in excellent spirits and to have no objection to entertaining Miss Gardener-Smith - or, for that matter, Mrs Josh Cottar. Josh Cottar, who had the reputation of being able to drink any man in Lunjore under the table and still remain sober, was discussing a business deal in a far corner of the room with one of the Commissioner's Indian guests, but Colonel Moulson, who was seated at Delia's left, was showing every sign of losing his temper.

Kishan Prasad had left at midnight, but his departure had not been the signal for any of the other guests to leave, since the Tuesday parties seldom ended before three and sometimes four o'clock in the morning. But shortly before one o'clock the Commissioner, who had passed successively through the convivial, the amorous, the quarrelsome and the maudlin stages of intoxication, finally arrived at the unconscious; and as though he had been waiting for that, Alex put down his unfinished drink, flung his cards face upwards on the table, and rose.

‘Where are you going, Alex?' demanded Mrs Cottar.

‘Bed,' said Alex briefly. ‘And so are the rest of you.'

Unbelievably, he had managed to get rid of them. Winter did not know how he had done it, but within a quarter of an hour the last carriage had rolled away down the drive and only Alex remained. He had looked thoughtfully at the Commissioner's snoring bulk and then at Winter and said: ‘Do you need any help?'

Winter had not been entirely certain as to what he had meant by that question, but she had chosen to put the obvious interpretation upon it and had said a little stiffly: ‘You need not trouble. Ismail will help him to bed.'

Alex shrugged his shoulders very slightly and had been turning to go when she had stopped him.

‘Captain Randall—'

Alex turned back. ‘Mrs Barton?'

Winter said: ‘Did you know that the Rao Sahib would be coming to the house tonight?'

‘I had heard that he might be.'

‘Is that why you were here tonight?'

Alex regarded her with raised brows. ‘My dear Mrs Barton, I was here tonight because your husband invited me.'

‘But you would have refused if you had not thought that the Rao Sahib might be coming.'

Alex shrugged again, ‘Perhaps. Why do you ask?'

‘Why did you want to see him?'

Alex's lazy glance dwelt reflectively on her for a moment or two and then he said: ‘Because I happen to be interested in him. There is a reason for everything that Kishan Prasad does, and it is always the same reason. He is a man with only one idea.'

‘What idea?'

‘My dear girl,' said Alex with sudden impatience, ‘you know as well as I do. You once saw his face in the raw when we passed the wreck of that transport. He has only one aim in life. To throw off the rule of the Company. And to achieve it he would, if it were necessary, be prepared to cut the throat of every white man in this country with his own hands - with one possible exception.'

‘You mean - yourself? But you thought that he had told those men to kill you. You told him so! That is what you meant, didn't you?'

Alex shook his head. ‘No. He will not deliberately take my life, or plot to take it, because I once made the grave mistake of saving his. But if someone else should do it, that would be quite a different matter.'

Winter sat down again a little abruptly. She said, looking up at him: ‘What were you talking about? It sounded just like ordinary talk, but it wasn't, was it?'

Alex subsided onto the sofa opposite her and drove his hands into his pockets. He said slowly: ‘Not exactly. I think that he intended to do you a service - or me - and that he is sufficiently sure of himself to be able to afford to do so. Perhaps he is right.'

Winter said: ‘I don't understand,' and Alex looked at her under lowered lashes.

‘That may be just as well. Are you going to the hills this summer?'

‘No. I do not think that I shall mind the heat so much. Why are you changing the subject?'

‘I'm not. I think you should go, and I shall do all that I can to see that you do. Are you so particularly anxious to stay?' His gaze wandered to the sofa on the far side of the room where her husband lay and snored.

‘Yes,' said Winter, watching the turn of his head against the lamplight. Had that been what Kishan Prasad meant? Had he been hinting that there might be trouble in Lunjore in the coming months? But if that were so, how could she go to the hills, knowing that Alex would still be in Lunjore?

She said almost inaudibly: ‘There are times when - when one would so much rather not be sent away.'

Alex misinterpreted the hesitant words. He turned sharply, his mouth suddenly white. ‘Are you going to have a child?' he inquired bluntly.

Winter did not move, but he saw her face set in a dreadful silent stare and felt the shudder that went through her body as clearly as though she had been touching him instead of separated from him by a full two paces.

It would be absurd to say that Winter had never contemplated such an eventuality, for she had often imagined herself as the mother of Conway's children. But that had been before her marriage. It had, incredibly enough, never once occurred to her since; perhaps because, subconsciously, she could not believe that anything could be conceived as a result of happenings that inspired only fear and repulsion. Alex's abrupt question had faced her with something that filled her with sick horror; as though she had been a sleep-walker waking to find herself balanced on the lip of a yawning gulf. The colour drained out of her face, leaving it pinched and sallow. That could not happen to her - it could not! Children should be born of love—

Alex said: ‘Are you?' The harshness of his own voice surprised him.

Winter steadied her white lips with an effort, too shaken to resent the question. ‘No.'

Alex stood up abruptly, and crossing to the table that was still littered with cards and dice, picked up his unfinished drink. The brandy burned his throat and he drank it as though he were parched with thirst, and refilling the glass at a side-table by the door, came back with it in his hand and stood looking down at her:

‘I'm sorry. Perhaps I should not have asked you that.'

Winter did not raise her eyes further than the glass in his hand, and noting the direction of her gaze he smiled a little wryly: ‘No, I am afraid I don't get drunk. It does not happen to be one of my failings, so I cannot excuse myself on that score. I thought that was what you meant, and it seemed to make it even more necessary that you should remove from Lunjore for the hot weather.'

Winter did not look at him. She said: ‘I only meant that I will not run away.'

‘From what?'

‘From - from anything.'

‘No,' said Alex thoughtfully, ‘I don't believe you will.'

He sat down again, and stretching his legs out before him, leant his head against the back of the sofa, and the silence lengthened and drew out and filled slowly with small sounds; the Commissioner's stertorous breathing, the ticking of the clock, the chirrup of a gekko lizard and the monotonous fluttering of a large moth that had found its way in from the night and was battering its wings against the glass of the large oil-lamp, throwing whirling, wavering shadows across the walls and the high white ceiling.

Winter sat motionless, her body still rigid from shock. She did not look at Alex's face where it lay thrown back against the gold-coloured brocade of the high-backed sofa. She looked at the hand that held his glass: brown, thin, long-fingered and nervous; a hand possessed of unexpected strength and equally unexpected gentleness; and she seemed to see beside it the damp, fleshy, unsteady fingers of the man she had married. She knew then that she could not bear children to Conway. To do so would be the ultimate indecency. She would go to Lucknow as he had suggested. Not to the house that had been her father's, but to the one that had been her only home. To the Gulab Mahal. To Ameera, who might understand, and even if she did not, would be loving. If she could only get back to the Gulab Mahal she might be able to see things clearer; to stand back and get them into some sort of perspective. She could not do that while Alex was here and her need for him was so great. While Conway was here and her shuddering aversion for him filled her with such sick despair. She would go home …

She saw Alex's body relax, slackening perceptibly until the glass that he held tilted a little as his fingers loosened about it, holding it only lightly. He was still silent, but his silence was as devoid of tension as his body, and the familiar sense of safety and reassurance that his presence could bring her gradually smoothed out the turmoil in Winter's mind. The taut rigidity left
her and she leant back tiredly against the furry plush upholstery of the tall chair-back, feeling the strain and tension of the last twenty-four hours seep slowly away from her.

The drawing-room smelt stalely of cigar-smoke and spirits, of fading roses and the heavy violet scent affected by Mrs Wilkinson, and the furniture still stood pushed out of the way of the card-table and against the walls. The room looked as cluttered and untidy and forlorn as any room when a party is over and the guests are gone, but despite its unattra ctive aspect it was all at once curiously peaceful. Alex had always been able to give her this feeling of security, and looking at his abstracted face Winter thought how strange it was that this should still be so. Surely, now that she had discovered that she loved him, she should feel embarrassed or shy or ashamed in his presence? She was a married woman, and it was shockingly improper of her to allow herself to fall in love with another man. She should by rights be overcome with shame. But then she had not allowed herself to fall in love with Alex. She had only discovered the fact when it was far too late to do anything about it. She had not even had sense enough to realize it when he had kissed her. She wondered, now, why he had done so? Had it only been a sudden impulse, born of the romantic beauty of the warm moonlight and the strains of a sentimental song? Or had he after all loved her a little? She knew that he had felt responsible for her and that the feeling of responsibility had irked him. She knew too that it had not died with her marriage. Sitting relaxed and silent she watched his quiet face and wondered what he was thinking of.