Where Earth Meets Sky Read online

  ‘D’you see the height of the floorline?’ He was full of it now, rattling on at full speed! ‘Well, if you look at any of the models that went before, the floor’s been lowered considerably so it’s easier to get into the seats – especially for the ladies, of course. Now, you might be thinking, well that’s no good, because we’ll be scraping the car’s belly along the road at that rate.’

  He looked round at Charles Fairford and saw he had his complete attention.

  ‘Well, yes, so you would think . . .’

  ‘Ah – well, this is the thing. Just take a look underneath her.’

  As requested, Captain Fairford knelt and peered under the car. Sam noticed the sallow colour of his skin at the back of his neck, edged by his strong mahogany-coloured hair. From living out here, he thought. Never really goes white like the rest of us

  ‘See? Good clearance off the road, isn’t there?’

  ‘Well, I don’t have much to compare with . . . But it seems very good.’

  ‘Lower frame, but more road clearance – so, how have we done it? By raising the engine higher up in the frame, that’s how! The gearbox is lower because we reversed the position of the gearshaft and countershaft. So – the great thing is, you gain more stability and reduce the amount of dust raised off the road. Two things which will be of great importance out here. Quite a thing, wouldn’t you say?’

  The captain looked genuinely impressed. ‘Splendid! Thoroughly splendid.’

  They spent a very comfortable couple of hours, kneeling, prodding, peering into the engine, like two schoolboys with a Meccano set. Sam took him through every detail of the engine, cooling system, gears and the springing, which was another of Daimler’s proudest developments: springs four feet long – marvellous! And he could see the captain was hooked.

  ‘All I can say is, Captain, you’ve made an excellent choice,’ Sam finished. It was ten o’clock by now, the sun was well up and the air pleasantly warm. A sweet smell of flowers drifted from the beds and pots.

  ‘Well.’ The captain straightened up. ‘If Daimler’s good enough for the king I assumed it would be for me. You’ve painted a damned fine picture of the workings – thank you, Ironside.’

  ‘More than a pleasure, sir.’

  ‘Fancy breakfast?’

  ‘I thought I’d already had that.’

  Charles Fairford laughed. He was a handsome so-and-so, Sam had to hand him that.

  ‘Ah – that was just chota hazri, a sort of minor breakfast I take before my ride. It’s about time for bari hazri. Breakfast major, let’s say!’

  As they stood there, there came a flurry of running feet and the boy, Cosmo, came tearing round from the back of the house.

  ‘Pater! I want to see the car!’

  Close behind, looking flustered, there she was again: Miss Waters, no longer in riding gear.

  ‘I’m sorry, Captain Fairford!’ She was blushing, though in her eyes Sam saw elements of mischief on the boy’s behalf. ‘He’s been trying to get out here with you all morning. I couldn’t hold him any longer.’

  ‘Not at all,’ the captain said easily. ‘Of course he must see it! Come here, Cosmo, old chap!’

  He swung the boy up into his arms, and into the driver’s seat. Cosmo laughed with glee, jumping up and down on the seat, holding on to the steering wheel.

  ‘Make it go, Pater! Make it go fast!’

  ‘Not now, Cozzy. You just have a look for the moment. But we’ll get Mr Ironside to take us for a spin later on, shall we?’

  They all stood watching the boy for a few moments, with all his four-year-old, full-hearted glee. Miss Waters’s eyes were fixed on him with a rapt smile. But for a moment Sam saw her gaze turn towards him with frank curiosity. He looked back, giving a faint smile, but she fixed her eyes on the boy.

  Captain Fairford turned to them.

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve met Miss Waters? She’s Cosmo’s nanny – doing a sterling job too, I might say. Miss Waters, this is Mr Ironside, from the Daimler Motor Company, who has provided us with this splendid machine.’

  They turned to one another again and Sam extended his hand.

  ‘How d’you do, Miss Waters?’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Ironside.’

  She gave him that shy, yet somehow vivacious, look. He had never seen eyes contain more energy and depth. Then she looked quickly away again. Her hand was small and soft and he shook it so carelessly then. He had touched her for the first time, simply as a social formality. Sam had no notion that morning of the extent to which, engraved on his future, would be the mark of his longing to touch her again.

  Chapter Twelve

  One afternoon, when he had not been in Ambala many days, Sam went for a stroll in the garden while he waited for Captain Fairford. The captain was obliged, naturally, to spend parts of each day working with his regiment on administration, parades and so forth. By three-thirty or so he was usually free, and Sam instructed him, and Arsalan, on the workings of the engine.

  The hottest part of the day was rather like English summer, and when Sam approached the house, sweating a little in the afternoon sun, there was a commotion going on outside on the veranda. The two children were there with Mrs Fairford and Miss Waters. He lost his stride for a second, as he didn’t relish seeing the captain’s wife at any time. It was bad enough having to have dinner with her every night. However, the girl, Isadora seemed to be screaming blue murder, so they weren’t taking any notice of him.

  ‘Ayah – where is Ayah?’ Susan Fairford’s voice was shrill. ‘Lily, fetch the wretched girl. Fetch her at once!’

  But before Miss Waters had moved more than a step the ayah appeared.

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake, take her indoors until she’s quietened down. This is unbearable!’

  The ayah led Isadora screaming into the house and Mrs Fairford flung herself down into one of the chairs. She was dressed to go out, in a white, lace-trimmed dress and hat.

  ‘Oh, it really is too much. Just when she was ready. That child will be the death of me. I can’t bear it!’

  Miss Waters was kneeling with her back to Sam, with Cosmo, whose shoelaces she appeared to be fastening, in front of her on a chair. But then Mrs Fairford caught sight of Sam.

  ‘Mr Ironside.’ She sat up, only just managing to regain her formal composure. In fact, she sounded annoyed at having another thing to contend with. ‘You’ll have to forgive us. We are just taking the children out to a party.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Sam said. ‘Don’t let me get in your way.’

  ‘Do come and sit down,’ she instructed, distractedly. ‘Charles will be back at any moment.’

  He went into the shade of the veranda and sat on one of the lounging chairs, with wooden arms long enough to rest one’s legs on, though Sam kept his feet on the floor. He was not far from Miss Waters. She stood up, her attention fixed on the boy, who was looking the image of the perfect gentleman child in a sailor suit. Sam saw a faint smile on her lips, as if she was pleased with her handiwork. Not once did she turn and acknowledge him.

  ‘Don’t want my shoes on,’ Cosmo was saying, petulantly.

  ‘Oh glory – don’t you start as well!’ Mrs Fairford snapped, exasperated. ‘You see, dressing Isadora to go out is the most awful ordeal. The child would run around naked all day if we let her. The moment we begin on petticoats and so forth, all hell breaks loose!’

  Sam could hear her trying to make light of the problem, but there was a desperate note in her voice. She had a printed card of some sort in her hand and was fanning herself with it and he noticed she looked pale and unwell.

  ‘As ever, the only person who can make her see any sense is the ayah.’

  ‘So what is her secret, do you think?’ Sam asked. He didn’t really give a damn what the answer was, but he was trying to be civil.

  ‘Heaven knows,’ she replied languidly. ‘So long as she gets her out here with her party clothes on, I couldn’t care less.’

  But his question
provoked a reaction from Miss Waters.

  ‘The ayah sings to her,’ she explained, quietly. ‘She sings her into her clothes.’

  ‘With her native mumbo-jumbo, no doubt,’ Mrs Fairford snapped.

  ‘She just sings about each item of clothing as they put it on,’ Miss Waters said. ‘And Izzy gets caught up in it, like a game. Srimala is rather clever like that.’

  Her face was as calm and inscrutable as ever, but Sam saw a momentary light in her eyes as she looked down at Susan Fairford. She can’t stand the woman either, was his first thought, because that was what he wanted to think. He felt a complicity with Miss Waters, since they were both bracketed together as the ‘lower orders’. But immediately he saw that it was not that. There was something rather tender in her expression and he was puzzled. Sam wanted to catch her eye and smile, but she didn’t look at him. The boy was swinging his feet vigorously, kicking the legs of his chair and she laid a hand on his shoulder to still him.

  ‘Well, whatever she does, let’s hope it doesn’t take too long. I ordered the tonga for half past three. And – oh, my goodness!’ Susan Fairford leaped up. ‘Have we the milk? Really, Lily, you should have reminded me.’

  ‘Cook’s doing it. He said he’d bring it.’

  ‘Well, go round to the cookhouse and ask him to hurry. Quickly! Knowing him, he’s probably only just lighting the fire! Really,’ she exclaimed as Miss Waters obeyed. ‘You have to do everything yourself if you want anything done properly. And really, one doesn’t keep dogs to have to bark oneself, does one?’

  ‘Indeed not,’ Sam agreed, repelled by her attitude. He realized, to his surprise, that he had less respect for her than for the syce, Arsalan. Instructing him about the car, he found that the fellow had a mind like greased lightning; you only had to tell him anything once.

  ‘One can’t trust anyone else’s servants to boil the milk properly, you see. They’re all so lazy and heaven knows what we might all go down with. This country’s full of filthy diseases. So we always take our own children’s milk, to be quite sure.’

  Miss Waters appeared then, holding two bottles of milk wrapped in tissue paper, and a moment later came the sound of hooves and a jingling bell as the tonga came along the drive, pulled by a scrawny pony. With magical timing, the ayah appeared with a tear-stained, but frilly-clad Isadora, and the three women and two children climbed on to the tonga. Cosmo perched on the seat facing the front, between his mother and Miss Waters, and the ayah took the girl at the back. It was Miss Waters who put her arm round the boy to steady him, though, and Sam found himself thinking, She is the one who looks as if she is his mother.

  As the tonga moved off, Miss Waters glanced at him. Their eyes met, though he didn’t think it intentional on her part. He felt she was sizing him up in some way. But there was something in the look, a momentary nakedness in that usually closed face, which affected him. He sat and watched the tonga disappear past all the flowerpots along the Fairfords’ drive and on to the road and found that he was staring for quite some time afterwards.

  Chapter Thirteen

  As March arrived it grew hotter. The punkah-wallahs began their work on the verandas, pulling fans to keep the rooms cool. And Charles Fairford decided that he was now enough of a driver to take the family out for a spin and a picnic tea. They readied the car at four, once tiffin was well digested.

  The ladies appeared for the jaunt, erupting from the bungalow and across the veranda in a swirl of skirts, parasols, scarves and fidgeting children. But Sam’s eye had only interest in one detail. Was she coming? He was not disappointed. With a leaping heart he saw her there behind her mistress.

  ‘Are you ready for us, Charles?’ Susan Fairford called. ‘We can’t keep Cozzy at bay any longer!’ Isadora, it appeared, refused to get dressed and was staying behind with the ayah.

  ‘Yes, darling – all ready.’ He stood smiling, relaxed, one hand resting on the bonnet. He was wearing loose, dust-coloured clothing.

  The women had dressed up for the occasion, Mrs Fairford in white, with a very wide-brimmed hat tied under her chin with diaphanous lengths of chiffon. She came sweeping across the drive, but Sam had no eyes for her. Miss Waters followed with Cosmo, who was skipping with excitement. She was dressed more or less as usual, in a long dark skirt and white blouse and a straw hat, of a more modest size than her mistress’s, with a strip of soft brown cloth tied round it, forming a bow at the back. It suited her. God, she was a beautiful woman, Sam thought. He had to tear his gaze away so as not to stare. She seemed to have taken up occupation in his mind. It was her eyes which he kept seeing, especially when he lay under the mozzie net at night: those deep, brown eyes, sad in repose, but which could change in a second into dancing life. He ached to see her smile directed at him. And then, ashamed, he would think of Helen, waiting at home to give birth to his child. Good old Helen.

  Cosmo broke free from her grasp at last and ran to his father.

  ‘Hello there, old chap!’ Captain Fairford laughed. ‘Ready for the off?’

  ‘Want to go now. Can we go fast, Pater? Can I drive it?’

  To begin with, Sam sat up front beside Captain Fairford, and Mrs Fairford and Miss Waters sat behind with the boy on Miss Waters’s lap, yelping with excitement.

  Sam watched the captain as he released the brake and set off, steering the car through the gate to the road, face tense with concentration; Sam couldn’t help a tinge of envy at the first-class competence of the man. He had everything it took: breeding and money, no struggle to work his way into the right position like the rest of the herd. Charles Fairford had told him that the two portraits hanging either side of the fireplace in the hall were of his father and grandfather, both astride their horses in full military regalia, both also in the 12th Royal Lancers, the same cavalry regiment as himself. His father had been born shortly before the Mutiny began in 1857, to a father who was killed by cannon fire during its suppression, at the Siege of Lucknow. You could hardly compare, Sam thought, his own father, a cycle engineer, and a grandfather who had been a shopkeeper. It didn’t lift you so high up in the world’s stakes. Yet he felt a stubborn pride in them as well. They had done well, according to their position.

  Steering the car along the road was easy enough, except for the erratic traffic of Indian roads, natives scurrying here and there, pedlars, dhobis with huge bundles of washing, native children who ran away from the car but turned to wave from a safe distance, bicycles and tongas, dogs and cows.

  They bowled along for a time, passing some of the military administrative quarters and the parade ground. The air was lovely, and mellow afternoon light shone through the trees edging the road. Sam began to relax. The driving was not going to present any problems, and if trouble of a mechanical nature arose, he knew he could deal with anything. In fact, he half hoped that something would. Cosmo was chattering constantly with the women behind, and Sam enjoyed the sensation of knowing that if he turned his head far enough to the right he could glimpse Lily. He heard her soft replies to the boy’s questions.

  ‘No, Cosmo,’ he heard her say. ‘You can’t sit with Pater today. Your father needs to have the mechanic sitting there.’

  Being called ‘the mechanic’ felt somehow chilling, but he reasoned that he and Miss Waters had barely exchanged more than a word. He was determined to change that.

  ‘We’ll be on the Grand Trunk Road soon!’ the captain said. ‘It goes all the way from Calcutta, across here to Amritsar, Lahore – right up to the Khyber Pass.’ Charles Fairford glanced at Sam quickly, then back to the road. ‘We call it the “Long Walk”. Have you read any Kipling?’

  ‘No,’ Sam admitted foolishly. He’d never been much of a reader.

  ‘Read Kim. It’s a marvellous yarn and he passes right through here. Umballah, he calls it. He writes about the GT Road, says it’s “a river of life such as exists nowhere else in the world”. You’ll see what he means in a moment.’

  Once they had turned on to the wide road, elevated a
little above the surrounding fields, they were among a busy stream of carts pulled by stoical-looking white bullocks; of horses, of men and women carrying pots and bundles, some of the men stick thin and strangely dressed, faces painted with white and coloured powders.

  ‘Holy men,’ the captain said. ‘The road leads to Benares, one of the holiest places in India, on the Ganges.’

  People working close to the edge of the fields looked up, their relative peace jarred by the roar of the engine. They passed one or two other cars also and waved at them.

  No Daimlers, Sam noticed. A Wolseley and a De Dion – both fine models, of course, even if Daimler was the best. He was tuned in to how the car was running, almost as if it was part of his own body, and she was going well, especially now they were on a superior road. And once again, as with the railways, he thought, My goodness, what an achievement of the empire this is, this great road, stretching hundreds, if not thousands, of miles.

  ‘We’ve done them a great service here!’ he shouted to the captain.

  ‘Who?’ he frowned, keeping his eyes on the road.

  ‘Our engineer boys – putting this great road in.’

  The captain glanced round, seeming amused.

  ‘We didn’t build this, you know! It was here long before we arrived. It was built three hundred years ago, or more, by the emperor of the time – fellow called Sher Shah Suri. He wanted to connect up his own provinces. We’ve made a few improvements, of course, but it wasn’t one of ours. There was plenty going on before we got here. British people so often forget that.’

  This stung. Sam felt put in his place. But of course he had thought of it like that: India as a backward, primitive place that they were civilizing, with engineers and soldiers and missionaries; a blank sheet to be written upon by the British Empire.