Zahra’s eyes rounded. ‘Gone,’ she breathed, staring at the perch and then the empty air.
The three women looked on. Prita was fondly smiling and even Caroline’s pale, tense face had briefly softened and coloured.
Rainer beckoned to Zahra and she went straight to him. He touched his finger to his lips before blindfolding her with the red handkerchief.
Nerys remembered afterwards how Zahra had laughed, showing no fear, and stretched out her hands to try to grab Rainer as he gently turned her three times in a circle.
Off came the blindfold again. The cage was still empty. Rainer mimed perplexity, but then his hand shot into the same pocket of the tailcoat and, with a flourish, he tossed into the air first one white dove and then the other. The birds flew up over Zahra’s head and settled on an open shutter.
Nerys clapped, and Caroline and Prita joined in.
Zahra was too delighted to move. She gazed at Rainer in awe. He held out his arm and the birds obligingly came back to roost.
‘More,’ Zahra whispered.
‘Rainer …’ Nerys began, intending to say that there were important things to discuss. He was rummaging through the box. Out came his magician’s cape, embroidered with occult symbols. ‘
Rainer
…’
They all heard the slap of bare feet on the stairs. Farida burst into the room. ‘Hands-out man.’ She held up four fingers. Four men.
Nerys ran to the window that looked away from the river. Through a crack in the shutters she saw them, and recognised one of the faces. It was the beggar who frequented the alley behind the mission, only he didn’t look like a beggar any more. And at the end of the narrow street she could just see the polished silver radiator grille and shiny black bonnet of an opulent motor-car.
‘Ravi Singh’s here.’
There was a thunderous knocking at the door. Caroline backed up against the wall, hands to her mouth. ‘Oh, God. Don’t let them in.’
Rainer didn’t hesitate. Smiling, he held up the red blindfold. Ready for another trick, Zahra jumped into his arms. He signalled her to silence, wrapping the blindfold again. The knocking at the door grew more insistent. Rainer enveloped himself and Zahra in the swirling cape. Prita was at his side too, hanging on his arm. He muttered one sentence to her and she slid behind his back.
Downstairs there was a crash as the door burst inwards. Shadowed by Prita, Rainer picked up the box of tricks with his free hand and calmly walked to the head of the stairs. Ravi Singh’s men clattered up to him and he waved them on into the room overlooking the river. Caroline stood frozen, but Nerys had crossed to Prita’s chair and taken up her discarded
sewing. As the four men tipped into the room she put in a careful stitch and glanced up at them in surprise.
‘Good day,’ she said in Kashmiri. And in English, ‘This is a private house, you know. How can we help you?’
Ravi Singh stood framed in sunlight in the street doorway, his dark shadow thrown on the old wooden floorboards. He wore dazzling white
kurta pyjama
and a high-buttoned coat of pale buff linen, every inch the haughty Kashmiri aristocrat.
‘Hello there,’ Rainer cheerily called down to him. ‘What’s all this?’ Not waiting for Ravi’s answer he skipped down the stairs to meet him.
As his foot touched the bottom step he seemed to trip and almost overbalance. The box of tricks flew open and a shower of glittering rings, metal cups, scarves, coloured balls and gewgaws cascaded at Ravi’s feet. Rainer’s extravagant cape, the opposite of a muted
pheran
, swirled about him as Ravi stepped backwards with an exclamation of startled annoyance. He was scowling in distaste at this display of heathen arcana.
‘How clumsy of me.’ Rainer sighed. One-sidedly he bent to scoop up a coloured ball, but at the same instant two doves escaped from within his cape. Their wingbeats were loud in the confined space. Ravi leapt further backwards, crashing against the door edge, his arms flailing to beat off the birds. Prita’s white pashmina shawl fluttered as she enveloped herself within it and drew a fold over her bowed head. She slipped past Ravi Singh and out into the street.
‘So sorry.’ Rainer laughed. ‘I am training the birds. You see we have some way to go.’
Casually he unhooked his cape and let it drop from his shoulders. He folded it neatly and placed it inside the box, then piled the fallen items on top. Finally he took off the tailcoat and closed the lid of the box on everything. In his shirtsleeves he stretched out his arms and the doves flew back to him.
‘Is this a social call?’ he asked the glowering Ravi.
‘It is not. I have come for the child.’
‘For this five men burst into my house? Child? Which child is this?’
With a growl of impatience Ravi pushed him aside and took the stairs two at a time. Nerys still sat with the sewing in her lap, but when Ravi appeared she got up and went composedly to meet him. Caroline stood like a ghost against the window as the four men hunted through the room.
‘What are you doing?’ Nerys demanded.
Ravi strode to Caroline. ‘Where is the child?’ he shouted.
Rainer came back and put the doves into their cage. ‘Would our guests like some refreshments?’ he asked.
Nerys slid to his side. Rainer flicked a glance at Ravi’s half-turned back, then cupped Nerys’s face in his hands. He whispered to her, ‘She will be safe. Don’t worry if you hear nothing for a while. And I will come back, I promise you.’
His lips brushed her forehead. Before Ravi angrily swung away from the trembling Caroline, Rainer had melted away.
Vanished, as if into thin air
. Nerys inwardly smiled.
‘Search the house,’ Ravi ordered. ‘Where has the Swiss gone? Bring him back.’
His furious expression indicated that he knew he was already outwitted. The men ran to do as they were told and Ravi confronted the two women again.
‘The girl was here an hour ago,’ he said. ‘Where is she now?’
‘She?’ Nerys innocently asked. She had trouble not smiling, and she realised that she was actually enjoying herself. She took Caroline’s cold hand and drew it under her arm so they presented a solid front against Ravi. ‘We have had some mission children to visit. They love the magic, you know. But they have all gone home now. Is it one of them you mean?’
Ravi came one step closer but Nerys only raised her chin and held on to Caroline. Nerys’s look said plainly, I may be only a woman but I am British, a missionary’s wife. You are a powerful man, but what do you think will happen if you lay a single finger on either of us?
He stopped short, with his hands clenched at his sides.
‘Who was the Indian woman?’
‘I think you must be referring to Mrs Stamm. I am sorry you didn’t give me the chance to introduce you. Perhaps there will be another opportunity.’
Ravi’s handsome face was contused with anger, but he managed to speak coolly enough. ‘As you well know, Mrs Watkins, the child I am looking for is actually my own daughter. I have decided that neither Mrs Bowen, nor her husband, nor your little Christian mission is fit to care for her. I am going to take her into my own household.’
Perhaps as a slave to one of your sisters – or quite probably much worse than that, Nerys mentally supplied. ‘I’m afraid you are too late. The child is no longer in Srinagar, and will soon be leaving India.’
‘You cannot remove an Indian native from her own country and people.’
Her level gaze retorted, It’s still wartime. India has thousands of orphans, starving or abandoned. Do you think one child will be missed among so many?
But she didn’t make the attempt to contradict him.
Two of the men came back. The house was empty and their search hadn’t taken long. Presumably the other two were combing the streets for Rainer and Prita. Nerys felt no anxiety on that score.
Ravi flung a last glance at Caroline. ‘Do you still imagine that you can outwit me?’
Only Nerys could feel how violently Caroline trembled.
With his men at his heels, Ravi left them.
As soon as they were sure he had gone, Nerys took the distraught Caroline in her arms. ‘Don’t worry. Zahra will be safe. Rainer will see to that.’
But she thought that Caroline’s mental state had slipped beyond anxiety for Zahra or even for herself. She was shaking, and biting her lips so hard that toothmarks showed in the thin skin. She seemed eaten up by a black terror that had no rational
roots in her real difficulties, and by deep unhappiness that flooded all her being. All Nerys could do was hold her tight, murmur disjointed words that did not comfort, and hope that her despair might eventually lighten.
‘Sit down,’ she murmured to her. ‘I am going to make you some tea, and then take you home.’ She guided Caroline to Prita’s chair.
Farida appeared in the doorway. The girl marched straight to Nerys, her eyes burning. Nerys gripped her shoulders. ‘You did very well, Farida. Zahra will be safe from bad men now.’
But Farida only swung out at Nerys with two fists. She beat them on Nerys’s body. ‘Zahra. I want Zahra.’ She wouldn’t ever give way to tears, but the depth of her distress was plain.
Nerys could only catch at her wrists to restrain her, and say, ‘I know, I know you do, but she has had to go away. I hope she’ll come back, Farida, but I don’t know when it will be.’
The girl tore herself free and ran to the door. With a heavy heart, Nerys watched her go. It would be hard for all of them until they knew what Zahra’s future was likely to be, but hardest of all for poor, loyal Farida.
Outside in the bright afternoon, a woman in a plain white sari walked quickly through the streets with a child on her hip. The child was crying but no one paid the slightest attention to such a commonplace sight. At a sufficient distance, a tough-looking European man in shirtsleeves took the same route. A series of detours through enclosed alleyways and across weedy patches of derelict ground brought the people to the gate of Professor Pran, the Pandit university teacher who was shortly to move away for ever from the beloved city of his birth.
When Caroline and Nerys returned to the Bowens’ bungalow, the worried house-boy was waiting on the step for them. ‘Madam, quick now. Very sorry, Sahib sick. Hospital.’
Julia Dunkeley’s head popped up beyond the hedge. It was her husband who had sent for the doctor while Caroline was
out. She said she would come with Caroline to the hospital, but Nerys told her very firmly that there was no need for that because she would accompany Caroline herself.
The army hospital was a series of single-storey buildings set in scrubby gardens, and in the past weeks Ralph had spent plenty of time there. Now a nurse led the two women to a curtained-off corner of a long ward in which wounded men lay propped in their beds and convalescents read or played cards at a centre table.
Ralph was asleep. His skin was a dark yellow colour and he was breathing in thick gasps through his open mouth. A metal kidney dish stood on the locker. Caroline sank down on the edge of the bedside chair and Nerys told her that she would wait outside. There was a loggia opening off the ward and she went out there where the air was less redolent of clogged dressings and sickness. Small groups of men sat smoking in bamboo chairs. She found an empty seat and sank down, gratefully closing her eyes.
She needed time to assimilate the events of the day.
Later, Caroline made her way towards her. She looked as if she were sleep-walking, even though her eyes were unnaturally wide. ‘The doctor says his liver is failing. He is very ill.’
The bluff MO had made a tent of his fingertips, not quite looking Captain Bowen’s wife in the eye. He had talked about the severe damage her husband’s bodily systems had sustained while he was a captive of the Japanese, and how his life was in the balance.
‘We must hope fervently that he will recover from this crisis,’ he said, and added that for the next few days the outcome was unpredictable. But if and when Ralph was finally out of danger, his life from now on would always have to be highly regulated.
‘You understand me, I’m sure,’ the doctor said. ‘He must keep quiet, watch his diet, drink absolutely no alcohol. There will be a disabled discharge, of course. He is fortunate to have a young wife to care for him.’ Then he had touched Caroline
lightly on the shoulder. ‘This is another shock for you, my dear. But if we do manage to pull him through, the two of you will have your life together. I promise you, we will do our very best for him.’
Nerys led her between the flowerbeds. Caroline’s head hung as she concentrated on the effort of walking. They were almost at the hospital gates when she suddenly jerked upright and began to laugh. ‘He won’t be able to shoot Ravi Singh now, will he? But just to make sure, I’m going to throw his guns in the lake.’
‘It’s all right, Caroline. I’ll speak to Major Dunkeley about the guns,’ Nerys soothed.
She wished very much that Myrtle and Archie were here today.
At the bottom of a narrow ravine choked with rocks and twisted tree roots lay the wreckage of a red Ford truck. Broken glass covered the stones, shards of it glittering in the sunshine.
An Indian Army troop carrier had drawn up at the roadside thirty feet above, and a trio of soldiers scrambled through the chutes of torn earth and uprooted saplings that marked the truck’s descent. As they reached the mangled vehicle the buzzing of flies was the only sound. One of the men stooped and peered into the upside-down cab. A pool of blood had collected in the roof felt and the flies swarmed there. There was much more blood on the grey metal dashboard, and the torn ribbons of a white
dupatta
scarf hung from the twisted wing mirror.
The men searched through the cab and the truck body, picking through open boxes that spilt a few clothes, some metal cups, a bright-coloured ball squashed and dented by the impact. From the twigs of a thorn bush one man retrieved a child’s plaited leather sandal.
There were no bodies to be found, no valuables, only the rifled luggage. The soldiers conferred in low voices and then began the steep ascent back to the road where their companions smoked and waited. This was an under-populated area, too
rocky and barren for any farming, even for grazing animals. There were caves at the upper end of some of these ravines, used as hiding places by Azad Kashmir rebels or other desperate men, and the rocky ground was also home to packs of wild dogs. One of the men said that there were wolves hereabouts too. Further down the mountainside, where shepherds spent the summer months, there were stone-lined pits that had been dug as wolf traps. The others shrugged. Whether this was an accident followed by looting, a roadside hold-up or a murder scene was not their concern, and they had seen plenty of sights more disturbing. The wireless operator reported the incident to their base and gave the map co-ordinates. Then the troop carrier resumed its journey.