But had he taken it in? From Germany after he got their letter telling him Mabel had died, he’d written: ‘It’s sad news but not a shock because she was getting on. I’m glad my last memory of her is in the garden the time I went up from Ranpur to say goodbye to her and to arrange your accommodation in Pankot once the regiment left for overseas. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to fix up anything better than those cramped quarters in the lines, but Mabel was quite right. Even if she’d given marching orders to that PG of hers the three of you with Mabel would have been just as cramped at Rose Cottage, and however poky a place is there’s nothing like having your own, is there Millie? Anyway I have this picture of you now, moving in to the cottage, all amid the roses and the pine trees. I long to be with you all again and not just have to picture it.’
It was possible that as he stood at the open window of the coupé any picture he had of his homecoming was of the house and garden as he remembered it and that the tennis-court had not penetrated visually, as an idea. Even after all these months Sarah could get a shock when she went through to the verandah and instead of the rose-beds saw the high netting, the lime-marked grass, the centre net or the bare posts if the net had been taken down by the mali. The court was seldom used. Sarah didn’t play well and watching bored her. And the days were gone when her younger sister used a tennis-court and a tennis outfit as two more ways of ensuring that she was the centre of attention. That role had been discarded and the new one precluded violent exercise. Only Mildred, their mother, seemed to get any pleasure out of the court, not by playing, but by having it there as one might have anything that made an invitation attractive. ‘Come up to the house at the weekend,’ she might say to someone new on station, of whom she approved, ‘and if you’re keen bring a racquet and things. We’ve a sort of court you can get a game on.’ And there was usually someone there to protest: ‘Don’t be deceived. Sort of court! Binky swears it’s better than the number one here at the club.’ And then her mother would raise her eyebrows and smile, that characteristic downward-curving smile that Sarah was afraid she might acquire, having once or twice got a glimpse of herself in a mirror smiling in that way. There was a way of sitting too and she had caught herself at that on more than one occasion, on the verandah of Rose Cottage, glancing from the tennis to her mother and recognizing her mother’s attitude as the origin of her own: well settled in a cane chair, legs out-stretched and crossed at the ankles, elbows supported by the chair-arms; and the hands, drooping at the wrists, bearing the burden of a glass of gin-sling. She had sat up, put her glass down, leant forward and folded her arms, but that was becoming a habitual attitude too, and just as defensive.
Up ahead the whistle sounded and presently the train moved, taking the curve. The mist-filled valley flowed away and they entered a cut where the rock-face loomed on both sides. Her father stayed by the open window for a while, breathing in the scent of damp stone, wild ferns and mosses. When the scent became pungent with captive drifting smoke he ducked back in and raised the window. There remained in the carriage an opacity as if some of the eastern light had stayed inside.
He sat down. Unexpectedly he said, ‘I haven’t thanked you for coming to Bombay and for what you’ve done while I’ve been away. Your Aunt Fenny told me what a brick you’ve been, what a help to your mother and Susan. I just wanted you to know before we get in how grateful I am.’
As soon as he began she looked down at the cup in her hands. They had never been a demonstrative family. When he finished he put an arm round her shoulders, very briefly, just long enough for her to acknowledge the embrace by leaning into it for a moment.
‘Shall I pour you another cup?’
‘No thank you, daddy. Later perhaps. What about you?’
‘I’ll wait a while. Keep some in reserve in case we’re held up again and get thirsty.’
‘I’ll rinse the cups then.’
‘No, I’ll do that. Unless you want to go in there.’
‘Not yet.’
He took the cups into the W.C. cubicle, leaving the door ajar. The train was making slow time. She heard him humming. In the past three weeks she had learnt to interpret this as a sign of restlessness, of anxiety to be occupied. She wondered whether it was light enough for a game of chess. She looked for and found the travelling set which he had brought back from Germany and on which he had taught her to play in Bombay. She had a beginner’s enthusiasm and in one case what had seemed like beginner’s luck. No doubt he’d deliberately contrived that, to encourage her; but she felt she had learned enough at least to give him a bit of a game.
Unable to see it clearly she put the set away. She wondered how long it would be before they played again, or whether they ever would. Once home, the pattern of relationship established in Bombay would change. He came back with the cups. She took them from him and put them in the hamper, protecting them with a napkin from contact with the neck of Sergeant Perron’s bottle of whisky; of which he had said, ‘Let’s save some for your mother.’ She doubted that her mother would want any. Not whisky.
He said, ‘If you’re sure you don’t want to go first I think I’ll shave and get done.’
She nodded, watched him potter around – potter was the only word for it – collecting sponge bag, shaving kit, towel, clothes, and finally his uniform from the hook on the wall. His movements were slow, thought out. Perhaps this had always been his habit. She did not remember it but not remembering was probably further evidence of how little she knew him, as little now as she had known him – and her mother – on her return to India in 1939 after the years of unavoidable separation. He switched the light on in the cubicle and this time closed the door but there was no sound of the bolt being shot. Had the Germans ever put him in solitary confinement? If so, for what crime? Attempting to escape? Eventually her mother would question him and get answers or he would regain confidence in his freedom and volunteer information, and then they would be able to put the story of the past few years of his life together piece by piece; as he would be able to put theirs together. But in neither case the whole stories. Probably never that.
She lit a cigarette now and settled closer to the window. In her imagination she had often rehearsed the circumstances of her father’s return but had not pictured them like this, with the two of them travelling alone from Bombay to Pankot. He confessed he had rehearsed them too but said there had always been a moment when his imagination failed, the moment following the actual reunion, and that this was probably because the scene of reunion was not determinable in advance: a railway station, a dockside, even an airport, the old house in Kabul road in Ranpur, the front verandah of Rose Cottage, the compound of the grace and favour bungalow in the lines of the Pankot Rifles depot. The reunion itself was the important thing, one did not think beyond it. He told her of a fellow prisoner-of-war, a Catholic, who had shocked a padre by confessing that he had always wondered what after spending six days creating the world and then resting on the seventh God had done on the eighth. The day of reunion was like the seventh day. Today, Wednesday, was the seventh. She could not visualize tomorrow except as a continuation, an emotional perpetuation, of today which of course it could not be. One thought about a day of reunion but the reunion itself was only a moment in a day. She and her father had had that moment in Bombay. He had another to come this morning but of this she would be no more than a spectator; perhaps not that because he had asked that no one in the family should be at the station. His request that the families of the sepoys and havildar should also be dissuaded from coming to the station, his warning that the only reception committee he wished to find would be at most the depot adjutant, Kevin Coley, plus an NCO and a truck to take the men back to the lines and some kind of transport for himself and Sarah, was an indication of his fear of any kind of scene that might affect him.
It would be nice, he had said, just to drive from the station with her in whatever transport could be arranged and to arrive at Rose Cottage much as though he had simply come home for
breakfast after early morning parade. She had conveyed this wish to her mother and knew that it would be respected. She was prepared to let him go into the bungalow alone and busy herself outside in the garden or on the side verandah where probably little Edward would be, in Minnie’s charge, playing with the new Labrador puppy.
Neither Sarah nor her mother had wanted the puppy. It was Susan’s idea that they should have one, as like as possible to Panther who had been little more than a puppy himself when her father went abroad on active service. Susan said it would be a nice surprise for him and persisted until their mother said they’d see, but that black Labradors weren’t to be had just like that. Susan then played her trump card. Maisie Trehearne knew some people down in Nansera who had some puppies ready.
The job of trying just once more to talk her out of it had fallen to Sarah, but when she tried she drew nothing except the look of hostility with which she was now familiar but had never got used to, so in the end she went down to Nansera with old Maisie Trehearne who loved dogs and had seen Panther die, and who made the morning’s car journey down tense by continually referring to that episode, and the afternoon journey back exasperating by talking incessantly to the trembling little creature that was Panther’s successor and had cost two hundred rupees and was guaranteed house-trained, a qualification which it showed evidence of being unaware it possessed by making a mess in its own basket, perhaps out of fright or a combination of fright and uncertainty about which of the two women abducting it was to be its new owner. Do pet it, Sarah, Maisie kept saying, in between bouts of petting it herself. But Sarah refused. ‘It’s Su’s dog. I want Su to be the first to show it affection.’ ‘Of course, you’re right. Isn’t she, little fellow?’
And Susan had shown it affection. For a while the old Susan was there, on her knees, flushed and pretty, pushing a dark curl from her forehead with one finger and holding out her other hand, invitingly, caressingly, letting the puppy squirm up to her and sniff, bending down until her face was close, allowing it to lick her cheek, then hugging it and taking it to introduce it to Little Master who was sprawled on a rug on the verandah, dabbing at a toy dog, and who, after a moment’s disbelief in this confrontation with a real one, screamed, so that the puppy – already named Panther the Second by Susan – backed away, puzzled, wholly at a loss until he found Sarah’s by now familiar-smelling feet. He sat down against them and stared at the strangers. Susan stared back at him and then up at Sarah, so that on impulse Sarah pushed the puppy away with the side of her shoe and went to the verandah rail.
Ayah was comforting the child and Susan turned to help her. From the rail Sarah watched the puppy. Noting how it looked from the three on the rug to her and back again and then settled on its haunches on the spot where she had left it, ducked its head down and up again but made no sound, she realized that it had character and that she must harden her heart against it for both their sakes. She went indoors and called for Mahmoud to tell the bhishti to draw her bath. From the bedroom she heard Susan taking the little boy to task for being afraid of a puppy. The child had not yet learned to speak. Sometimes Sarah wondered whether he ever would, whether he knew whose child he was; his mother’s, Ayah’s or Sarah’s. With the puppy it would be different. Dogs made their own decisions in such matters, as Panther 1 had done, choosing Susan as the owned and owning object of adoration despite her variable response to him and, finally, her absolute neglect.
She had always had that power, still had it, a power of immediate attraction for animals and people, and Sarah understood her sister’s own attitude to that power, her inability to believe that she truly possessed it and something of the terror she felt knowing that she did. ‘Come on, puppy,’ she was calling. ‘There. Nice puppy. Mummy’s not afraid of puppy, see? Puppy loves mummy already. Come on now, stroke puppy. Show mummy what a brave boy you are.’
Gradually the boy had lost his terror and for a day or two the puppy was petted, played with, fed on the verandah by Susan and overseen by Minnie or Mahmoud during his periodic visits to urinate and defaecate, which he announced his intention of doing by going to the head of the steps into the garden and trying to get down them. The veterinary officer, Lieutenant Khan, came up from the Remount depot, examined his mouth and teeth and ears and gave him injections and powders which made him look miserable but did not dampen his playful spirit. Returning at lunch times and in the late afternoons from her work at Area Headquarters, Sarah noted the situation but knew that it would change.
On the fourth or fifth day (she could not remember which) she came back for lunch, was aware of the puppy’s absence but said nothing until Susan went to their room for her afternoon nap and she and her mother were alone. ‘I didn’t see Panther Two,’ she began. ‘Is he all right?’ Her mother supposed he was all right. Mahmoud had him in the servants’ quarters. He had made a mess on the verandah. That’s all her mother knew; that and that there had been a scene with Minnie crying and the child crying and Susan angry and then retreating into one of her moods. ‘Do you have to go back to the daftar this afternoon?’ her mother asked.
‘I’m afraid I do. Why?’
Why didn’t matter in that case, her mother said, and got up and left her alone. Sarah knew why and knew her mother knew she knew. But oppressed by the apparently unalterable rhythm of life at home she felt justified in pretending not to and it helped to get out for a few more hours. Nothing would happen during them. It took some time for a crisis to build up, if there was to be a crisis.
Her father came back into the compartment.
‘There, all done.’
‘How smart you look.’
‘Dressed for the part.’
In the old days he would never have said that. He seemed to have acquired a sense of charade. He wore KD with Sam Browne, collar and tie. The rainbow ribbons above the left breast pocket added colour to his occasion. He had on one of the pairs of hand-made shoes which he had left behind in 1940 which throughout the war Mahmoud had kept dubbined and had recently polished to a deep conker-brown. She had taken two pairs to Bombay. This was the first time he had worn them.
‘Are they comfortable?’
‘I think,’ he said, ‘my feet have lost weight too. But they’re good and soft.’
‘I’ll get dressed,’ she said, ‘then we’ll have the other cup. Unless you’d like it now.’
‘No, I’ll tidy up here, then we’ll have more room.’
Tidy up was one of the new expressions. He had become used to doing things for himself. In Bombay Nazimuddin had been scandalized by the sight of Colonel Sahib cleaning his own shoes, washing out pairs of socks, drawing his own bath, packing his own cases. Rather than tell him that in England many Sahibs were used to looking after themselves Sarah tried to explain that doing such chores helped her father get well again after being so long a prisoner in Germany.
He had left the W.C. cubicle immaculate. The hand-basin glistened, the speckled mirror gleamed. The stone floor looked newly swept. At Pankot the sweepers would have nothing to do but clear up after her. She wondered how her father had achieved such spotlessness. There was no brush or mop or cloth. Perhaps he had used handfuls of toilet paper.
In her valise which she set down against the door she had her civilian skirt and blouse and her WAC(I) uniform. While sitting on the closet smoking another cigarette she wondered which to wear. He had not seen her in uniform yet. She’d intended to wear it this morning, partly as a compliment to him and partly because she anticipated there being a moment when it might be better for her to leave her mother and father and Susan together and go down to the daftar to report back and arrange the day and time to resume duties. Which were not onerous. Never had been.
She decided on the uniform and emerging later and finding him with his head out of the farther window stood waiting for him to become aware of her, turn round and react. It was years since she had considered to what extent two girls had been a disappointment to him, years since she had been conscious as the first-bo
rn of being under some sort of obligation to make up to him for not being a boy; but standing there in uniform she realized that putting it on, today, was also partly an act of contrition, a way of saying: It’s the best I could do. She was seeking approval as a boy might have done and this embarrassed her suddenly. She heaved the valise up on to the upper-bunk, heard him move, felt his appraisal. She glanced round.
‘I say,’ he said.
She faced him, smiling, awkward.
‘How nice,’ he said. ‘How very nice. But you didn’t tell me about the third stripe.’
‘It’s very recent.’
‘All the same. Sergeant. Jolly good.’
‘I’ll get the tea. Would you like a cold bacon sandwich?’
‘Cold bacon?’
‘Cold fried bacon. I got some last night in Ranpur from the station restaurant.’
‘Did you, now! Then you ought to have a crown as well.’
She laughed and opened the hamper which he had lifted on to the seat in readiness for breakfast. She loved train journeys. In England as a child she had been disappointed to find how quickly they were over. In an Indian train one could put down roots, stake out claims, enjoy transitory possession for a day or so of a few cubic feet of carriage which even a change of trains did not seem to interrupt.
The hamper belonged to Aunt Fenny and was zinc-lined, with compartments for flasks, cups, knives, spoons, forks and food. The cold fried rashers for sandwiches were in greaseproof paper.
‘And a new loaf!’ her father said.
‘I got them to slice it. I hope it isn’t dry.’
‘When was all this?’