Ryman, Rebecca (39 page)

"I'm
going to travel, Olivia. I'm going to do real things, meet real people."
Estelle crushed her with a look and added loftily, "I'm going to be
independent."

"To
be independent you have to earn your own living."

"You
mean give piano lessons and take in sewing and read aloud to rich invalids and
that sort of thing?" She was appalled. "I'd die, just
die
if I
had to do all that!"

Olivia
laughed. "Then how would you keep body and soul together in that wonderful
state of independence—send your bills home to Papa? I don't call
that
being
independent!"

"There
are other ways, you know." Estelle's round, baby face assumed an
expression of superiority.

"You
mean marry John and let
him
foot your bills?" Olivia's eyes
twinkled. "That isn't exactly independence in my book either."

Estelle
gave her cousin a look of pity. "I could ingratiate myself with a rich old
gent and get him to keep me in the style to which I am accustomed." She
patted her hair and put her nose up in the air.

Olivia
hooted. "Well, make sure he's rich enough to buy you all the chocolates
you want so that you won't have to bribe the cook to steal them from the
store-room!"

At
this reminder of her secret pact with Babulal, Estelle muttered a proscribed
oath, flung a pillow in Olivia's direction and, grumbling under her breath,
flounced out of the room.

Jai
Raventhorne did not surprise Olivia again until a whole week of leaden-footed
days and nights full of tormented dreams had passed for Olivia. Sir Joshua
recovered from his heat boils and resumed his hectic activity at the office,
and Estelle's mood of rebelliousness kept getting steadily worse, with Estelle
secure in the knowledge that since her father had little time to worry about
domestic trivia it was only her mother she had to contend with, and that was
done easily enough. And Olivia received her first letter from Greg. It was a
warm, affectionate but thankfully unsentimental letter; the news it contained,
however, worried her. There was a distant chance, he wrote, that her father
would allow him to make an offer for the ranch. Greg had always wanted to
become a homesteader himself, Olivia knew, but it came as a surprise that her
father was thinking of selling out. Also, it hurt that he had not told her so
himself. He had mentioned, of course, that he was considering buying land in
Hawaii. Obviously, the two matters were connected, but what was making her
father take such a drastic step? And in her absence? Anxiously, Olivia
waited for
another letter from her father that would perhaps explain everything, but in
the meantime she felt depressed and again isolated from everything she held
truly dear.

It
was in a remote flower market veined with narrow lanes and gullies that Jai
Raventhorne suddenly materialised at Olivia's elbow when she was least
expecting him. She was standing in front of an open stall laden with marigolds,
admiring their perfection of form and dazzle of colour when she heard his voice
behind her.

"Do
these flowers please you?"

Olivia
almost fainted with shock as her hand flew to her throat and her head whirled
with sudden dizziness. "You should have been an Irishman," she
gasped, spinning on her heel to face him. "There is much that you share
with the leprechauns!"

"I
like to surprise you," he said, casually tucking a hand under her arm.
"You look like a startled gazelle whose grazing has been rudely
interrupted. And those eyes," he paused to stare into them, "I like
to see them melt like molasses in the sun."

She
felt weak with happiness. "For someone who doesn't much care for
surprises," she murmured, already delirious, "you take some quite
unforgivable liberties."

"But
you will nevertheless forgive me?"

"Yes,"
she breathed fervently, "oh yes . . ."

The
bazaar was a riot of colour and fragrances almost too overwhelming for the
nostrils. Olivia's head swam even more as they walked leisurely among the
tiered stalls heavy with zinnias, cocks-comb, heliotrope, phlox, larkspur,
bunches of budding roses and the ubiquitous marigolds. They stopped before a
stall that was vibrantly different from the others and Olivia gave a small cry.
"Orchids?"

"Yes.
Wild orchids."

The
owner of the shop, a funny, shrivelled man with a skin like crushed brown
paper, gave them a toothless smile and his eyes lit up. "Jai?" He
peered closely, then half rose and caught both of Raventhorne's hands in his,
shaking them vigorously.
"Tumi keneke asa, mor lora?"

Raventhorne
smiled, replied in a language Olivia could not understand but could tell was
not Hindustani, and pointed to a trailing vine with exquisite, waxy mauve-blue
blossoms and rich green leaves. "Do you like these?" he asked her,
reverting to English.

"Yes,
they're beautiful—what are they?"

"The
blue Vanda. They grow wild up in the hills." He spoke again to the old
man, who gleefully picked up an armful of the vines and started to tie them up
in a length of jute sacking. "If you pack the roots with wet earth, then
wrap them with the sacking around a branch in your garden, they will continue
to grow and flower." He collected the bulky parcel and dug his hand into a
pocket to pull out a fistful of coins, but the old man waved them away. Raventhorne
cajoled him gently, pressing the coins into the man's hands. Finally, with a
resigned shake of his head, the flower seller accepted. He glanced slyly at
Olivia and made a remark at which Raventhorne laughed.

"What
did he say about me?" Olivia asked as they walked away. She was still
dazed not only by Raventhorne's presence but also by the accidental glimpse
into his life. There was no doubt that the flower seller knew him well.

"He
said you didn't look like a horse, like other European women he has seen."

"Oh."
She giggled. "What was the language you spoke to him?"

"Assamese."
It was said curtly, with reluctance.

Olivia
knew better than to question further. They slipped into an easy silence,
strolling idly through gnarled lanes knotted with people. Occasionally, low
palanquins would brush past carried by coolies with jogging, measured steps
that seldom faltered. Standing cheek by jowl with some of the thatched huts
were one or two fine residences with grilled windows and ornate wrought-iron
balconies. Under a thatched roof a stern Brahmin in a sugar white dhoti rocked
back and forth chanting and conducting a class of young students who sat
cross-legged on bamboo mats and chanted in unison. Walking with his hands
clasped behind his back, Raventhorne answered her neutral questions willingly,
his speech clear cut and economical, his explanations patient and precise.

"Calcutta
might be a village but it is a village of palaces," Olivia remarked when
they had passed by yet another lordly mansion, this one with a beautiful garden
and cupolas on the roof. She felt a stab of apprehension. "Are these
European homes?"

"Europeans
do not live next to Indians, or vice versa. These belong to
zamindars,
or
Indian merchants who have flourished in the wash of British success."

She
threw him a sidelong glance. "Like you?"

"I
suppose so," he conceded with surprising ease. "I have no qualms
about making money out of the British—on the contrary. It's the only
justification I can see of their presence here."

"But
you
have a home next to a European."

"A
work place, not a home. I need to entertain business associates from overseas
and to have a place to put them up. I suffer European neighbours for purely
practical reasons." Perhaps in view of her outburst the last time they had
met, he answered her questions readily enough, even with affability. Having
vowed never to overstep her bounds again but emboldened by his amiability, she
asked one more question.

"Then
what to you is . . . home? Assam?" She had looked up the atlas to familiarise
herself with its location north-east of Bengal toward the Himalayas.

They
had left behind the congestion of the bazaar to arrive near a large,
rectangular water tank on the banks of which women washed utensils and clothes
and men performed morning ablutions. Raventhorne stopped, surveyed the scene
seemingly without attention and kicked a small stone down the steps that
surrounded the tank.

"They
say home is where the heart is," he evaded.

"And
where is your heart?"

He
smiled. "At the moment, with you."

"At
other moments?"

"Other
moments." He turned the phrase under his breath as if tasting it.
"There are no other moments. It seems you have appropriated for yourself
far more than wisdom tells me to give."

The
flicker of annoyance that crossed his eyes did not affect Olivia as, euphoric,
she added another small gem to her treasure. Jai Raventhorne was becoming the
nub around which her every moment, waking and sleeping, revolved; that she too
had a place in his thoughts, in his heart, was a gift more blessed than any
from heaven. And if her "appropriation" was causing him
irritation—well, why should she be the only one to suffer?

At
the moment of parting where they had left their horses in the charge of a
disreputable-looking urchin who grinned cheekily as he accepted his rather
handsome reward, Raventhorne asked her, "Do you still wish to see me
again?" He did not touch her.

The
traces of anxiety she sensed were to her balm for the soul. "Why do you
ask me that each time we meet?" she countered, basking in the happiness
nothing had marred this morning. "Do you truly believe me to be that
fickle?"

"If
only you
were
fickle," he granted, thrusting his hands into his
pockets as if to keep them well out of trouble, "I wouldn't have to make
all these damnable decisions I'm having to now! It would settle the matter
quite neatly."

She
knew his restraint was deliberate, for she could almost feel the tightness with
which he held himself back, but that too she acknowledged with tremors of
excitement. It was enough that he desired her, that touching her gave him
pleasure, that by forcibly denying himself he suffered a sense of loss, that
merely by her presence she could provoke in him hungers duplicated within her
own body. Even these minor triumphs Olivia was learning to cherish. Jai
Raventhorne gave nothing of himself to anyone; at least he was giving her
these.

With
radiant eyes she bridged the distance between them. "When . . .?" It
was beyond her will-power not to ask that recurring question.

He
sighed. "Tomorrow."

Tomorrow?
Olivia was filled with rapture. He had never seen her two days running!

Mirage
or man, shadow or substance; whatever the game, it was insanely exhilarating.
It was as if Jai Raventhorne was devising for her some competition for stakes
that he was mischievously keeping secret from her for the present. That the
stakes might turn out to be exorbitantly high Olivia never even considered.
Whatever the cost she was willing to pay it.

The
game intensified.

True
to his word, Jai Raventhorne met Olivia again the following morning, and then
every morning after that. For her each day dawned with the promise of an uncut
diamond waiting to be faceted into perfection. She never knew when he was going
to appear, but like a shadow he always did. His instincts regarding her
whereabouts were unerring; he seemed to know everything she did, everyone she
met, almost every thought fermenting in her mind. Whether in person or not, she
was always within his focus. Many times she tried to outwit him by hiding herself
in unfrequented corners of the city, in little-known alleys and gullies, but
she never succeeded. Home is where the heart is, he had said; and like a homing
pigeon he always found his way to her, defeating and delighting her in the same
moment.

Olivia
began spending her nights in cursing the sun for not rising, and her days in
counting the hours until dark. She lived only for those few speeding minutes of
the lavender and saffron dawn when she would receive from him the elixir that
would carry her through the rest of the hours when he was not with her. And
until that magical instant when he actually did appear in her vision, not as a
fantasy but as flesh and blood, Olivia died a thousand deaths of panic in case
his unpredictability had finally taken him off elsewhere.