Daisy's Long Road Home

He came to sit beside her and she smelt the sharp tang of his cologne. It was a smell she’d always loved and the urge to nestle into him was strong. But that was one stupidity she wouldn’t commit. As he’d pointed out, she had made an escape of sorts and she should keep to it.

‘So come back to London,’ he was saying. ‘Find a different job—something that challenges you in the way Beecham’s doesn’t. But don’t cut me out of your life. If I promise no more persuasion, no more pressure, will that help? We could try it when I get back from Jasirapur.’

When she didn’t respond, he got up from the sofa and pulled her to her feet. ‘I’ve missed you—enormously. And you’re probably right about marriage. I don’t really know why I was so keen. No doubt a reaction to having survived some very dangerous years.’

He kissed her gently on the cheek and picked up his coat to go. ‘Until we met, I never thought I’d want to marry and I know very well that you’ve had your fill of weddings. So probably not my brightest idea. But if you come back into my life, I’m willing to sue for terms - whatever you decide.’

The offer was attractive. To be back in the hum and thrum of London again, the city of her birth. To be working in a busy teaching hospital, learning something new every day, growing in confidence again. And, once he was back from India, and he would come back she promised herself, Grayson would be there, close by. Nothing too heavy. Nothing too committed. Just there.

She thought about it and was still thinking when he reached the front door. He turned on the threshold, a wry smile on his face. ‘If you do make the move back to town, leave your address at Baker Street. But be prepared to see me on your doorstep as soon as I get back.’

‘There’s no “if”,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m handing in my resignation. Tomorrow.’ She’d known for weeks it was the right thing to do but Grayson’s visit had proved the spur.

‘What good news to take away with me.’

She wondered if he’d think so when he knew what she intended. Her plans had just been radically revised and weren’t quite as he imagined. A new job in London was certainly tempting, but something else was more tempting still. Something that could lay to rest her fears, her doubts. Her obsession, as he called it. Finally.

He was half in and half out of the door, when she said, ‘I’ll be giving in my notice, but I’m not going to London.’

He stopped in surprise. ‘Why ever not? Surely, the pick of nursing jobs are there. Or have you decided to give work a miss altogether? I know what it is—the purse Jocelyn sent was a magic one and you have all the money you’ll ever need.’

‘It was magic,’ she said slowly. ‘But not in the way you mean. Magic because it’s helped me discover what I really want to do.’

A deep crease cut across his brow. ‘I thought we had a decision on what you wanted to do.’

‘You had a decision,’ she pointed out. ‘I was still deciding. And now I have. Mine is to go back to India. I’m coming with you and Mike.’

CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_9f3fdcdf-b273-5bab-99aa-7c7ebb391d6c)

Bombay and Jasirapur, early April 1948

It was hot, scorchingly hot. After ten years, Daisy had forgotten the intensity of an Indian summer. She walked along the quayside to the waiting car, feeling herself wilt beneath the sun’s glare and her limbs drain of energy. But it wasn’t the heat that was bothering her most. It was memory. Again. Memory that was sharp and painful and minted afresh. She’d guessed this moment would be difficult but she hadn’t foreseen just how difficult. It was as though she were once more living through that long ago April day. She felt it all: bewilderment as she’d waited in the noisy reception, the one she could see now, just over her shoulder; her nervous smoothing of the silk dress for which she’d saved so hard but which the heat had crumpled to a rag; the sick uncertainty when the man she was to marry was nowhere to be seen. And then out into the crowd. The sheer overpowering energy of India, its people, its colours, its smells, met for the first time. Above all, the memory of Anish Rana. He had been the one who’d accompanied her to church, delivered her to a drunken bridegroom. This morning there was to be no church and no wedding. Instead a slow carriage drive, sandwiched between Mike and Grayson, through Bombay’s congested streets to the Victoria railway station.

The journey to Jasirapur took as long as before and was almost as tiresome, the train bumping its way across a sprawling landscape on rails laid down when Victoria was Empress of India. But bump though the train might, travelling was not as uncomfortable as ten years earlier. This time first class meant a little more luxury. There were sleeping bunks and a courteous attendant who brought them food and drink, and bowls of water to wash with. It was badly needed, for heat was still the enemy. The sun hung huge and golden in the sky, burning through the dusty haze to broil the plain beneath, and, despite thick linen blinds, it permeated every crevice of the compartment. Handles on doors soon grew too hot to touch and the studded leather benches turned slimy beneath damp limbs.

Once again, the train stopped at every small station to allow the waiting crowds to clamber aboard, a noisy hustle accompanying every halt they made. Despite the clamour, and despite the heat and the dust, she felt sufficiently relaxed to fall asleep on her narrow bunk during the night’s darkest hours. She was grateful to have the compartment to herself. It was impossible to keep from remembering but there was a solace in travelling alone for much of the journey. Occasionally, her companions would put their heads around the door, once or twice they drank tea with her, but otherwise she was left in peace.

And it was a kind of peace, she realised. The future might still be uncertain, but it was an uncertainty she could accept, a lifetime away from the wrenching hesitancy of her last journey to Jasirapur. This time there was no need to watch covertly a new husband’s expression or examine every word she said before she spoke it. No need, in fact, to placate the man she had married but hardly recognised from their courtship in London. How callous Gerald had been. It was only now that she saw the depth of his unkindness. She’d been so desperate to fit in, desperate to please him and not do or say the wrong thing. Of course, she’d failed on every count. It was never going to be any other way. The odds were stacked against her from the very beginning.

But this time, when an hour after dawn Grayson helped her down from the train at Marwar Junction—the station’s sign was still crooked, she saw—she found she could walk to the waiting jeep with an untroubled heart. There was no man to tangle with her thoughts. Gerald was long dead and Grayson had kept the promise he’d made on that fleeting visit to Brighton. Not a word of marriage had come from him, not even a suggestion that he’d ever been her lover. The journey had brought them closer but closer as friends—three friends, in fact—bound together by their Indian adventure.

Though it was barely six o’clock in the morning, the sun was already burning a path through the platform’s paving, its heat piercing the thin soles of her shoes. Creased and weary from the journey, she climbed gratefully into the stuffy jeep. In a few minutes, luggage had been loaded and directions given.

‘Let’s hope the house isn’t too far. This heat is appalling.’ Mike mopped a dripping forehead. ‘I’m in desperate need of a shower.’

‘Amen to that, but we shouldn’t be long getting there,’ Grayson replied. ‘I asked them to put us within easy reach of the town.’

He had spoken truly. Within a blink, or so it seemed to a still half-asleep Daisy, they were coming to a halt outside a large, whitewashed bungalow, its trim garden stretching into the distance on either side of a long, winding drive.

‘Our home for the duration,’ Grayson announced. ‘Number six Tamarind Drive.’

Her eyes were at last properly open. ‘However did you manage to bag this?’ She was used to living in cramped spaces and the house seemed extravagant.

He gave a shrug. ‘It’s government owned and currently empty, so why wouldn’t they want to house us in style?’

A man, dressed in a long white kurta, came hurrying down the veranda steps to greet them. It was all so reminiscent, she thought. Except that this servant’s smile appeared genuine. He tucked her bags under his arm and straightaway escorted her to the room that would be hers. It was refreshingly cool. Well kept, too, she noticed, with furniture that looked almost new. At first she’d thought the scene a replay of that earlier one ten long years ago, but she had only to remark the smile on the young Indian’s face, the pleasant interior, the manicured garden, to know that it was not at all the same.

She plumped down on the bed and eased her feet from shoes that had tightened their grip. The house was as large as it had seemed from the road and there was plenty of space in which to lose themselves. Until now, she hadn’t thought how necessary that might be. On-board ship, they had led carefully demarcated lives and seen little of each other. A few drinks, the evening meal, an occasional gathering in the bar of all three of them. But now they were under the same roof and would be thrown together far more often and far more closely. How awkward would that prove to be? So far Grayson had shown no inclination to resurrect their old relationship and that was a comfort. From tomorrow, too, his work would take him into town for most of each day and then no doubt he’d be on the road, scouring the countryside for Javinder.

‘Ahmed will cook for us,’ Grayson said, when they re-emerged from their rooms a short time later to a tray of cold drinks. ‘Here, have some lemonade, Daisy. I’d forgotten how invasive this red dust is. I’ve a throat that feels like sandpaper.’

‘Let’s hope Ahmed proves a better cook than Mrs Hoskins,’ Mike said dryly. Mrs Hoskins was Mike’s turbulent landlady. He’d amused them from time to time on-board ship with anecdotes of Mrs H., as he called her, and her many tribulations.

‘I’m sure he’ll be excellent,’ Grayson said easily. ‘I think we’ve been given a cleaner as well and a man for the garden. So not too much for us to do.’

‘Except concentrate on the search for Javinder Joshi.’ Mike’s tone was not hopeful.

‘Exactly.’

Daisy felt Grayson looking directly at her. She knew he was wondering what she would be doing while he and Mike were involved in the search. She’d had trouble convincing him that it was a good idea she travel with them. There had been several angry spats before he’d accepted he wasn’t going to dissuade her. He’d argued vehemently that it was unsafe for her to visit India at this time, to which she’d retorted that it must then be unsafe for him, doubly so since he was there to investigate a likely crime. He’d argued that it was the wrong time of the year, but she’d pointed out that it had been April when she’d landed in Bombay to marry Gerald. He’d argued that she would be bored, but she’d told him to leave that to her. She would find ways of filling her time. At that he’d looked suspicious. Then she’d had to play her ace, the wartime promise they’d made each other during that one wonderful weekend in Brighton, the promise to return to India together.

‘I was wrong. I shouldn’t have promised,’ he’d said. ‘I shouldn’t have encouraged you to go back. You’re going on an insane whim. Your mother had only the slightest of links with India and yet you’re preparing to travel thousands of miles in the mad hope of discovering a few fragments of family history. The only thing you’ll find in India is disappointment. And what then? You’ll be launching yourself into the next search and the next one, and so it will go on. You’ll never be at peace.’

‘Even if I find nothing,’ she’d reasoned, ‘I need to go back. I need to lay the ghosts from my past. You said so yourself. And once I’ve done that, I’ll be content. I promise. I’ll have to accept that I’ll never know who I truly am.’

‘You’re Daisy and that’s all I need to know. It matters not a jot to me who your mother and father were.’

‘But it matters to me.’

And so they’d argued, back and forth, until eventually she’d worn him down and he’d agreed to take her, as long as Mike had no objections. Mike hadn’t. On the contrary, his friend appeared delighted to have her alongside. She would have to pay her own passage, Grayson had warned. She suspected that he hoped the proviso would put a stop to her dream. But she’d managed to pay for her ticket, though it had taken every penny of her savings. And she was glad she had.

She’d known for months that her life was going nowhere and Jocelyn’s letter, Grayson’s visit, had stirred her to action. She was ready to leave an unsatisfying job in an unsatisfying town, ready to throw her world to the winds. The practical choice was a return to London. Instead, a sixth sense had taken over and brought her this far from home. She’d found herself propelled like a compass point searching out its magnetic home, to where she knew she had to be. The strength of that compulsion was extraordinary. For years, she’d tried to stifle it, but finally it had broken free. It had been the moment that Grayson had picked up his coat ready to leave her small, drab cottage, that she’d been certain. Certain that how she lived the rest of her life depended on her returning to India, depended on her scrubbing her memory clean of the past and finding a future that was waiting to be found. And so she’d retraced the miles she’d believed she would never travel again, and now she was back, here in India, here in Jasirapur.

She glanced across at Grayson and noticed that the cool room and a glass of lemonade had given him a new energy. She wished she could say the same but her eyes were heavy with tiredness, and within minutes she had slipped away, back to her own room.

She lay down on the cool white counterpane and breathed in the newly familiar smells, tasted the warm, thick air and felt the heat suffusing her bones. With delight, she listened to the calls of the birds beyond the shutters. Later, she would go on to the veranda and see how many of the birds she’d grown to love inhabited this new garden: cheerful little bulbuls with red and yellow rumps she hoped, hoopoe birds with their art deco plumage, and perhaps even paradise flycatchers with tails like long, white streamers, nesting in the trees that she’d noticed marked the boundaries of the property. After the monsoon, she knew, the garden would truly live again. There would be butterflies almost as big as the birds, dressed in their peppermint green and primrose yellow. Meantime there were months of the most incredible heat to live through. She would doze a while until the heat of the day had faded and then go on an inspection tour. Instead, she slept for the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon.

When finally she ventured into the sitting room, it was to find Ahmed setting the table for dinner.

‘Gentlemen will be back very soon, memsahib.’ He smiled at her. ‘They begin work already.’

She felt a fraud. Grayson and Mike must have gone into Jasirapur to organise their office while she had done nothing but sleep. And, sure enough, minutes later, she heard the sound of the jeep’s wheels crunching along the gravelled drive. She went out to meet them.

‘Sleeping Beauty, I presume,’ Grayson mocked. ‘I looked in to say goodbye but you were well away.’

Mike followed several paces behind his friend and she noticed he smiled no greeting. Instead, he looked tired, defeated almost. She guessed the journey was beginning to take its toll.

‘How were things at ICS?’ she asked, as Ahmed finished serving the inescapable curried chicken.