The Governor's Lady (15 page)

Sir Gardnor, for his part, took it all in his stride. He was imperturbable. It was always the same, he said, after every wet season; year by year, disaster followed close upon the heels of disaster. But, he pointed out, the rains were now easing. The sky in places was already blue again.

His long projected
safari
, he added, would be able to take place, as planned, in four or five weeks at the outside. In the meantime, he was only sorry that Lady Anne should have gone down with another of those inexplicable illnesses of hers.

Because of the climate, he had already been forced to send his son back home to England. And if Lady Anne's health did not materially improve in the near future, he would—he openly admitted—have to make the ultimate sacrifice, and ask her to leave him as well.

‘But how can you possibly think I'm well enough?' she was saying. ‘I haven't been outside the place once since it happened.'

‘It'd do you good,' Harold told her. ‘Get you out of yourself.'

Lady Anne did not reply immediately. She was lying back on the long couch with the cushions all piled up behind her. In between answers, she closed her eyes and appeared to be sleeping.

‘She's not asleep really,' Sybil Prosser told him. ‘She's enjoying herself.'

Harold turned to Lady Anne.

‘Would you rather we left you?' Harold asked.

Lady Anne opened her eyes for a moment.

‘I don't mind either way,' she said. ‘It makes no difference to me. I'm still half dead. That's what you don't realise.'

‘She probably wants a drink.'

It was Sybil Prosser who had spoken.

Lady Anne's eyes were closed again.

‘Drinking won't help me to come to life again,' she replied. ‘It simply makes me feel a little bit less dead.'

With her hair loose over her shoulders, and in the plain white dress that she was wearing, it might have been an exhausted schoolgirl who was lying there. It was only the hands that were not schoolgirl's hands. The blue pattern of the veins was too plainly stamped there.

‘I'll give her another one,' Sybil Prosser said in her flat, unraised voice from which all emotion had been drained long ago. ‘If I don't, I'll only have to get it for her after you've gone. I'm tired out.'

Lady Anne was looking at Harold now.

‘You didn't believe I'd do it, did you?' she asked. ‘I told you, and you didn't believe it.' She reached out her hand for the drink. ‘But as soon as you heard you decided to stay on. That's all that matters. That's what I keep telling myself.'

There was a chair beside the couch, and Sybil Prosser sat down on it. She crossed her long legs. Then she uncrossed them. Yesterday, it was her hands that had been giving her trouble: she had kept clasping and unclasping them. Today, it was her legs. She couldn't keep them folded over on the same side even for five minutes.

‘Well, are you going on
safari
, or aren't you?' she asked abruptly. ‘Don't forget, I'm the one who has made all the arrangements.'

‘I'm too tired,' Lady Anne replied. ‘I can't stand the journey. Besides, there's no point in it. I don't enjoy killing things. He does. I don't.'

Sybil Prosser stirred. She re-folded her legs the way they had been.

‘There's no point in staying here,' she said. ‘Everyone else is going.'

Lady Anne took a sip of her drink, and put the glass down on the table beside her.

‘Not everyone,' she replied, with a little half smile. ‘Not me. And not Harold. I haven't given him permission to go. Not yet, I haven't.'

‘But I've said I'll go,' Harold told her. ‘I said I would when H.E. asked me.'

‘Then you may have to change your mind. I don't know yet. It's too
early.' She gave a little sigh. ‘But don't worry. There's plenty of time. We've still got a fortnight. We're bound to have heard by then.'

‘Heard what?'

‘About India.'

Lady Anne suddenly roused herself. She was sitting up on the couch now. The smile had disappeared completely.

‘Are you blind, both of you?' she asked. ‘Why the hell should Gardie' —it was the only occasion on which Harold had heard her call Sir Gardnor by his pet name—'want Harold with him? It stands out a mile if only you could see.'

She had closed her eyes as she was speaking.

‘Now please go away both of you,' she said. ‘Go away, and leave me alone. I don't want to talk to either of you. I just want to go to sleep.'

The practical arrangements for the forthcoming safari were already well in hand. An air of anticipation, almost of foreboding, hung over the whole Residency; and those, like the A.D.C. who had been through it all before, knew what they were still in for.

That was because Sir Gardnor insisted on personally supervising everything. His personal tent—it was marquee-size to begin with—was having another complete section laboriously stitched into the middle of it; an electric generator unit delivered by the Royal Engineers had been rejected out of hand because it was too noisy; Army Signals, quite unnecessarily in their view, were carrying out extensive tests with lash-up aerial masts, under what Sir Gardnor referred to as ‘service conditions'; and another telegram—a peremptory one tins time—had been sent to the gunsmiths in London demanding that the telescopic rifle sight, returned for some minor optical adjustment, should be flown back out immediately.

Nor was this the only telegram that had passed. Ever since his last recall, the exchange between Amimbo and the Colonial Office had become incessant. The word ‘India' was never once used: Sir Gardnor was extremely strict about that. But phrases like ‘contingent situation', ‘matter we discussed' and ‘foreseeable changes' appeared daily; and, from the Whitehall end, ‘nothing to report' and ‘no development to date' turned up in the replies with monotonous regularity.

In conversation, however, Sir Gardnor was altogether less discreet; quite light-heartedly so, in fact.

‘Westminster is like that,' he bad just remarked. ‘The delays are endless. And deliberate, I fear. But they'll have to say something some time. One can't leave India in suspense for ever.'

It was a small dinner party. There were only six of them, including the A.D.C. Harold had an uneasy feeling that he had been invited simply to keep up the numbers.

‘I see Lord Eldred's name mentioned in
The Observer,'
Sir Gardnor continued. ‘I'm not surprised. You could hardly say he's been happy in Ceylon, could you? It's his manner that puts people off, I suppose. Not that he means it. His friends speak very well of him. It's only surprising that so few people seem to know him. In some circles he's quite unheard of. What do you say, Mr. Frith?'

The question was unfair because Mr. Frith was temporarily enjoying one of his cherished moments of relaxation. He had sunk lower and lower in his chair, and his eyes were closed. He raised his head with difficulty.

‘I thought it was the Earl of Delmer, sir,' he said.

He had struggled upwards as he was speaking; and, now that his chin was above table-level, he wanted to show how acute and well-informed he was.

‘It was one of the Sunday papers that had it, sir,' he explained.
‘The Observer
, I think it was. It mentioned your name, sir, and Lord Eldred's and'—he was visibly slipping downwards again—'the Earl. The one I said just now.'

Sir Gardnor's smile was immediately cut off at source.

‘But Delmer's scarcely suitable, would you say? It's been a most undistinguished career throughout. Passed over every time, in fact. And Lady Delmer, let's face it, has hardly been an asset. Quite the reverse, in fact. Can you seriously imagine either of them in Delhi?'

Sir Gardnor paused, and appeared to be making the supreme imaginative effort. But it proved to be too much for him. He frowned, and shook his head decisively.

‘Unthinkable,' he said. ‘Quite unthinkable. It would simply make us a laughing-stock. The Indians aren't savages, remember. They're a highly-civilised people. They'd spot the shortcomings immediately. Besides the poor fellow drinks too much. That's why they sent him to the Caribbean. It's not so conspicuous out there. But you could hardly offer Delhi to a drunkard, could you? India's not just another Colony to be administered. It's an entire sub-continent waiting to be governed.'

He had extended his arms while he was speaking, and seemed to be embracing something.

‘The Viceroyship,' he went on, almost as though speaking to himself, ‘is the supreme Imperial appointment. And it presents the ultimate test. It calls for an unusually able and dedicated man at the very height of his
powers.' Here he gave his nervous, rather shrill little laugh, and smiled on Harold for a moment. ‘It is, I suppose a reflection on the age we live in that my name should even have been considered.'

Harold wondered if he was expected to reply. It was Mr. Frith, however, who replied for him. He had sunk down dormouse-fashion in his chair, and his chin was resting on his black tie, crumpling it. But he managed to get the words out.

‘Hear, hear,' he said. ‘Quite agree, sir,'

Then he closed his eyes again.

Sir Gardnor did not appear to have noticed. He did not, in fact, appear to be noticing anything. Quite unfocused, he was staring out across the dinner table into a remote Asian world of durbars and gold turbans and Sandhurst-educated Maharajahs.

Lady Anne's new Morris had at last reached Amimbo terminus.

Owing to an oversight at the dockside, the crate had been loaded on to the train upside down, and the little car had travelled the three-hundred-and-fifty miles from the coast with its wheels in the air. The Station Master, understandably perplexed by the large wooden packing-case with all the lettering the wrong way up, was still standing on his head trying to decipher it, when Army Transport arrived for the un-freighting.

Its upside-down journey from the coast had left its cream paintwork practically unscratched; and, standing there in the fierce African sunlight, with its bright brass radiator, the enormous rubber bulb for the horn and the Lucas battery in the gleaming black case on the running-board, it shone out in all its showroom newness.

‘Isn't she a darling?' Lady Anne asked. ‘An absolute darling, I mean. Have you ever seen anything so perfect?'

She had remained where she was in the driving-seat while she was speaking. The car itself was drawn up outside the bungalow. And it was the loud hooting of the horn that had brought Harold out to her.

‘I hear you've decided,' he said. ‘You are coming on safari after all.'

‘Well, you couldn't leave her behind when all the other cars were moving off, now could you?' Lady Anne replied. ‘It'd break her heart.'

She was speaking rather fast, and her voice had just that little catch in it that Harold noticed always came when she'd been drinking.

‘If you're not doing anything, get in,' she said. ‘I'm going for a drive anyway.'

He stood there with his hand on the side of the car, looking at her. He liked her best with her face framed inside the oval of a scarf. And it was the first time he had ever seen her with any colour in her cheeks. It had come suddenly while she was speaking to him.

‘Going to let me drive?' he asked.

She gave a little laugh.

‘It's quite safe,' she said. ‘I'm not the least bit tiddly. I only had a teeny-weeny little one—like that.' She opened her fingers for a moment and then closed them again until they were about a quarter-of-an-inch apart. ‘I wouldn't have dreamed of having a proper drink when I was taking her out for the first time. I'd have been far too scared.'

Harold moved round to the passenger seat.

‘Does Sybil approve of you going out alone like this?' he asked, after he had climbed in beside her. ‘It'll be dark in half-an-hour. Suppose I hadn't been here?'

‘Oh, but I knew you were,' she told him. ‘I could see your light. I often look over to see the light just to make sure you're in. In any case, Sybil's got one of her headaches. I told her to lie down.' Again, the little laugh. ‘As a matter of fact, I told her to have the headache.'

They had already turned down the drive past the sentries, and were now heading west out of Amimbo towards the foothills.

‘Doesn't she run beautifully?' Lady Anne asked. ‘You can tell how much she's enjoying herself.'

‘Where are you taking me?'

‘Anywhere,' she told him. ‘Anywhere that's a long way off, and right away from everyone.' She broke off for a moment. ‘You don't know what safari's like. You haven't tried living in tents. I have. You are right on top of everybody all the time.'

She bent forward and patted the shiny varnish of the dashboard.

‘But this isn't really our treat,' she said. ‘It's hers. I told her we'd take her out this evening. Just the three of us, I said. She understood perfectly. She's a very understanding little car.'

The sun was already slipping down over the horizon, gathering up speed for the final plunge, when they came to the Busimo cutting.

‘This'll do,' she said. ‘Let's go to the Falls. They frighten me. I like being frightened when I'm with someone.'

With the tiresome heat and dazzle of the day almost over, the bush around them was slowly coming to life again. It was time for the local night-shift to take over. A pair of hyaenas, carrying their shoulders high like athletes and dragging their withered rumps after them crossed the road ahead of them.

‘If Gardie was here, he'd shoot them,' Lady Anne said. ‘He always
shoots hyaenas. Just to keep his eye in, he says. Not that it bothers me much. They're just too nasty to mind about.'