Daisy's Long Road Home - Merryn Allingham

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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

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