Where Earth Meets Sky Page 19

  As they walked along the corridor she calculated that the most dangerous moments were over. He had begun to hit her, just once or twice. Both times he had caught her on the arm, where the bruises did not show, but she was afraid of worse and constantly alert for his more violent moods. And she knew how to pacify him. It was an instinct deep in her from her years with Mr Horne, from trying to be whatever other people needed her to be. Once they were in the study with the door shut, he started to weep in earnest, sinking down on his chair beside the desk.

  ‘Oh God, one day I’m going to hurt you, Lily. I don’t know what comes over me!’ She tried to quiet him, her hands on his shoulders, looking down at the thinning crescents of hair at the top of his head. She saw that her hands were bonier than they used to be.

  ‘I’m not a violent man – never have been. It’s something you do to me. You’re like a demon – you’ve possessed me, body and soul, woman! I can’t bear to think of you with anyone else. It would tear me apart – do you understand?’ He turned to face her, full of anxiety. ‘I don’t mean to hurt you, my dear. I wouldn’t harm you for the world. But when I think of you leaving me, of you in another man’s arms, it’s as if I’m blinded . . . Can you forgive me?’

  ‘Of course,’ Lily said, mechanically. She tried to make her voice warm and forgiving, though she felt nothing.

  ‘Do you, my dear – really?’ Now he was almost like a child.

  ‘Come – sit on my lap, my sweet, and give your foolish old man a kiss.’

  Lily slid round on to his lap and he pulled her close, hands moving greedily on her body. Over his shoulder she looked out at the sunlight slanting over the hills, her mind out on the paths and tracks bright with flowers. Dr McBride was already highly aroused and Lily knew she was not going to get away with just a quick embrace to put things right for him. His hard penis was pressing against her and his breathing was fast and urgent.

  ‘God, woman, I need you!’ His breath was hot on her neck and he began fumbling to unfasten his clothes. He gestured towards her and she knew he meant her to remove her underclothes and she obeyed, knowing she must be quick or she would summon another of his rages.

  He beckoned to her to straddle him, and he groaned and sighed as he found release and afterwards he clung to her.

  ‘Don’t ever go away from me, my Lily,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t ever leave me.’

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  There was a period, in the February, when Muriel McBride revived for a time and was able to sit up. Lily saw the transformation in Jane Brown as well, a lightness and sense of hope, that she was not necessarily party to an inexorable and tragic slide downwards to death. Lily saw her smile more, and she even became rather humorous in her dry way.

  ‘Mrs McBride would like to see you,’ she said to Lily one afternoon when they were in the kitchen again. ‘That is, of course, if you’re not too busy.’

  Lily could see the twinkle in Jane Brown’s eye.

  ‘I think I could manage to fit it in,’ Lily quipped. ‘But why on earth does she want to see me?’

  ‘Oh, I expect she’d just like a change from looking at me all day long.’

  Both of them laughed, and exchanged an unusually fond look. Whatever Jane Brown knew or thought, Lily realized, she was not one to sit in judgement.

  ‘I’ll come and see her today,’ she promised.

  She went to the sickroom and found Muriel McBride propped up on pillows, looking out at the sunlit view. As Lily came in, she smiled. There was a strange down of fair hair on her cheeks and her skeletal form seemed thin enough to let the light through. She didn’t look any more substantial, but she did seem to have a fraction more energy.

  ‘Come and sit by me, Lily,’ she said in her reedy voice. She raised one of her stick-like arms to gesture to a chair and Lily saw the blue veins under her skin.

  Lily obeyed. Jane Brown hovered in the background tidying up and Lily liked her being there. The room was light this afternoon, seeming more cheerful, and Lily felt her own spirits lift. She only occasionally realized how much the sad presence of this sick woman dampened the atmosphere of the house.

  They talked a little about Muriel’s health, though she seemed hardly to acknowledge that she was ill. It was almost like something separate from her that she had no interest in.

  ‘I’m quite all right really,’ she said, closing down Lily’s enquiries. ‘Nothing much to say about it. I must say, Lily, you are looking rather thin and tired. Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, perfectly, thank you,’ Lily said, though Mrs McBride was not the first person to comment on her loss of weight. ‘I feel very well.’

  She tried to think of a few things to say about her work, even though Dr McBride no longer liked to think of her as employed as housekeeper any more. And she said how lovely it was outside now the weather was changing. It was a friendly conversation, but after a time she saw Muriel McBride still looking rather intently at her with her huge blue eyes.

  ‘I wanted to say something to you, Lily.’ She paused and Lily could feel Jane Brown listening somewhere behind her. ‘Just to mention that my husband is a man who can tend to run to extremes. Over the years I have seen a number of people affected by it. Just be careful.’ These last words were spoken very sadly. Then she looked up, sharply. ‘By that I don’t want you to think I mean myself. What I have done, I have done to myself. I can’t help it, not now. But it’s no fault of Ewan’s. You, though, Lily – you don’t have to stay here. You are free.’

  For some reason the words brought tears to Lily’s eyes. She did not understand why and she looked down for a moment in confusion, her cheeks burning.

  After that, they talked about ordinary things again.

  You are free. The words stayed with her, like birds fluttering in her head. She did not feel free, not at all. Every part of her day was hedged in by Ewan McBride, by his need to parade her in public in her finery, his demand for her in bed, and by his rages if he thought she was running out of his control, until she felt like a prisoner in the house. One day, when he was out on his rounds, Lily was about to slip out for a walk when Jane Brown came out of the sickroom, looked hurriedly back and forth and beckoned Lily to her. In a low, urgent whisper, she said, ‘Lily, I feel terrible saying this, but he’s told me not to let you go out.’

  Lily, who had been buttoning her blue velvet coat in readiness for a walk, gaped in disbelief. ‘Dr McBride? But he hasn’t said anything to me.’

  ‘He says he doesn’t want you going out unless you’re accompanied by either me or himself. He knows perfectly well that I’m not free to accompany you anyway . . .’ The words were left unspoken. In other words Lily was not allowed out at all without the doctor.

  ‘But I have to go out. I can’t just stay in here all day!’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Jane Brown said, her eyes troubled. ‘But I’m just warning you. I didn’t see you go.’

  Lily went out anyway, slipping quietly along to her favourite spot along the Camel’s Back Road, but she felt very shaken. More and more often she had reason to feel afraid of Ewan McBride. For the first time she thought seriously about leaving, but the idea of having to start in yet another strange place was so wearying, just when she had made friends here and felt, at least in some ways, secure.

  So far he had not found out about her morning walks and they were her one piece of real freedom. She could settle for this, she decided, at least for the moment. She had grown to love Mussoorie very much, seeing its beauty in all the seasons.

  One day, she thought, I’ll get out of here, but not yet. What she was not prepared for was a change that was approaching even as she stood looking out over the valley that day, one which would turn her life upside down all over again.

  Lily was in her room that morning, and as it happened she was writing a letter to Cosmo. He wrote to her, very occasionally now, telling her about rugby and cricket and about boys whose faces she would never know. Though she tried to tell herself that Cosmo had
not grown into a stranger, in sad moments she wondered if she would even recognize him now he was almost seven. Of course she would, she told herself. She kept the photograph of herself taken with him on her dressing table.

  She heard, distantly, the knock at the front of the house but ignored it. Mrs Das or Prithvi could deal with it and she took no notice of the voices in the distance. But in a moment there was a tap on her door.

  ‘Miss Lily?’ It was Prithvi, standing outside with her usual air of apology. ‘There is a man,’ she said. ‘He is asking for you.’

  Lily frowned. No one ever came calling at the house for her. She did not have that sort of social life.

  ‘Well who is it, Prithvi?’

  ‘I do not know, Miss Lily. But he is asking for you by name.’

  She walked along to the hall and saw a man standing, looking down at his feet as she approached, hat in hand. Hearing her step he looked up, and it was only then she knew him. Her walking stopped, abruptly.

  ‘Lily? It is you.’ His voice was gentle, wondering.

  There again, with no warning: Sam Ironside.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  ‘Oh Lord, why are you here?’ she heard herself say.

  Sam stepped towards her. He looked just the same, as if he had never been away. The three years since she last saw him evaporated and in those seconds she wanted to pour out all the things she had never been able to say to him, but it was impossible. Her chest felt tight, as if she’d been running.

  ‘Lily?’ He stood before her, seeming unable to say any more either, his eyes searching her face. And then he retreated into formality. ‘I hope you don’t mind my calling.’

  ‘We must get away from here.’ It was the first thing she could think of. She could not let Dr McBride come home and find her here talking to another man, let alone one who meant so much to her.

  ‘Well, if that’s what you’d like,’ Sam said, startled by the urgency in her voice. ‘Whatever’s convenient.’

  ‘We must go – quickly . . .’ Frantic, she snatched up her coat and hat and hurriedly put them on, words tumbling from her lips. ‘We’ll go along the Camel’s Back Road. I walk there often and it’s fairly quiet. He won’t come there but we must be back by midday . . .’

  She saw Sam looking strangely at her and when she’d led him, half running, up the steps out of the garden and turned right along the path, he stopped her, putting a hand on her arm, in a way which felt so familiar she almost wanted to weep.

  ‘Lily, what’s the matter? You seem in such a state – all nerves, and so pale and thin! Not like before. What are you so frightened about?’

  It was only then that she felt how true that was, how overwrought was her constant state living with the McBrides and how frightened she was of the doctor. But she couldn’t begin to put this into words.

  ‘I’m not in an easy situation here in some ways,’ she said abruptly. She still felt they were too near the house and she wanted to stop him asking difficult questions. ‘Let’s walk on. Why are you here? To deliver another motor car?’

  ‘Yes – to the Fairfords again. He wanted the latest model . . . The thing is, they’re here, Lily. Staying in a house about a mile away. It was all rather sudden. I asked after you, of course, and they said you were up here. And it was Mrs Fairford – she suggested that they come here instead of going to Simla. I don’t think she’s all that keen on Simla and she wanted a change, and she said she’d like to see you. She’s very taken with the way you’ve kept up the contact with young Cosmo all this time. I rather think she misses you.’

  ‘Yes, I hear from her now and then,’ Lily said. ‘I missed her when I first came here, and Cosmo, of course, but I haven’t missed Ambala and the cantonment life much. You can see why they all want to get away from it.’

  ‘It seems very nice here.’ Sam looked across at the scene unfolding to their right from the Camel’s Back Road. ‘This is a beautiful place. My goodness, it is.’

  They walked for a moment in silence. Lily was wearing a skirt in dark red wool. She became acutely aware of everything: the movement of her skirt, the sounds of their boots on the path, of the astonishing fact of Sam here beside her after all this time, his left hand at his side, so close, and of the huge, longing ache which rose in her which she knew she must suppress.

  ‘How is your wife?’ she asked, sharply.

  ‘She’s well, thank you. Yes, going along all right.’

  ‘And children?’ She didn’t look at him, but ahead, at the gateway to the cemetery which they were approaching, with its monsoon-stained paint.

  ‘Yes. We have two daughters, Ann and Nancy.’ Sam’s tone was stiff, as if somehow he did not want to give her the information.

  ‘How old?’ She wanted to drill him, to make him suffer, yet she knew it would be herself who suffered the most from hearing about his family.

  ‘Ann is two and a half, Nancy just over a year.’ He did not look at her, but peered at the plaque inside the cemetery gatehouse: MDCCCXXVIII – I am the Resurrection and the Life.

  ‘And do they look like you?’ She glanced at him then, those familiar, intent eyes, the dark moustache. How close she had once been to every detail of him. A kind of tremor went through her, remembering the feel of his body as they had held each other. Stop it, she raged at herself. It should never have happened. They were passing the grounds of the cemetery on their right and both of them instinctively walked towards the fence and leaned on it.

  ‘Ann does, yes. Nancy favours her mother.’ They looked down at the stone crosses and angels among the tall conifers, sunlight shining between the branches and white flowers scattered like stars in the grass.

  ‘And what does her mother look like?’ Lily was relentless. She knew she was being hostile, but she couldn’t manage the hurt she felt any other way.

  ‘She’s . . . Well, her hair is sort of, I suppose you’d call it toffee-coloured . . .’ He was tremendously uncomfortable, she could see. For a moment he stared ahead of him, tapping one hand on the fence in an agitated way. Then abruptly he turned to her.

  ‘Lily, for God’s sake – I had to come and see you. Don’t keep on like this!’

  ‘Like what? I’m asking about your family, that’s all. The family you somehow didn’t think to tell me about the last time you were here.’

  She didn’t meet his eyes. A lump had come up in her throat which made it hard to speak and her cheeks were aflame. How humiliating to show this emotion, all the feelings that had erupted back up in her that she hoped she had long ago laid to rest.

  ‘I know,’ Sam said wretchedly. The long pent-up words poured out of him. ‘It was wrong of me – utterly wrong. But I was in love with you, Lily . . . So in love in a way I’d never been before – and never have been in my life apart from with you. You bring out feelings in me which no one else . . . I had to get to know you, had to love you. If I’d told you then you would never have had anything to do with me, would you? It would have been terrible . . .’

  ‘And it’s been terrible ever since!’ It came out in an anguished wail, and she found she was overtaken by sobs, quite unable to hold back. She put her hands over her face, her shoulders shaking. ‘Oh God, Sam, I wish I’d never met you so I didn’t know how it was possible to feel . . .’

  ‘Oh, Lily . . . Lily, my sweet love . . .’

  She moved her hands away from her cheeks, which were running with tears, and saw the anguish on his face.

  ‘My lovely Lily. I just . . . I didn’t know what to do, to say . . . You were so angry and I knew I’d done wrong. When you left the house in the tonga that day I felt as if I was being torn apart . . .’ He seemed about to weep too, but controlled himself.

  ‘I married Helen because I thought I loved her. I’ve tried to be true. I’ve been a good husband in every other way – we don’t go short. We have our children, our house . . .’ He stopped and drew in a deep breath. ‘And not a day goes by when I don’t think of you, Lily. I told myself it would wear off
, that I’d forget – you know, knuckle down, get on with my work . . . But it’s been like that ever since I left, and I try . . . The thought of you is like an ache that I can never seem to lose.’ Daring to move closer, he put his hand on her shoulder and said helplessly, ‘You’re the woman I love. But . . . in another way it’s all wrong! I’m married, responsibilities . . . I just don’t know what to do. I just love you – that’s all I know.’

  ‘Oh, Sam!’ Lily felt her hurt and anger melt away in the face of his sadness and her heart was filled with tenderness. She drank in the sight of him, so full of sorrow and so lovely to her. ‘I was so hurt, so sure you’d deceived me just to play with me, as if I was a little diversion while you were away from home. And I didn’t want to believe that because I felt so much for you. But you were married – what was I to think?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He took his cap off and rubbed his head as if to try and order his thoughts. ‘You couldn’t have thought any different. How could you know whether to trust me? And why should you have trusted me when I wasn’t telling you the truth?’ He replaced his hat and looked into her eyes. ‘I’m so sorry. You have my heart, Lily. But even now . . .’

  ‘You’re still married,’ she finished for him, soberly.

  ‘But, my God, I don’t want to be, not to her.’ There was great sadness and regret in his voice. ‘Seeing you again . . . Oh, my love, you’re really here . . .’

  He was looking down at her, seeming about to kiss her when a giggling group of Indian girls from one of the local schools came past, dressed in red and navy-blue uniforms. Lily and Sam turned and looked down over the cemetery again until the children had moved on.

  ‘I mustn’t be long,’ Lily said, remembering with a jolt of panic. For those moments Dr McBride had seemed like another life. But here she was and he was horribly real.

  ‘You seem so nervous. What’s wrong?’ Sam was concerned.