other offerings in the folder and selects, at random but not quite, a wad of handwritten letters bound in string. He turns the photograph facedown again and makes the match. The writer of the letters is also the writer of the illiterate inscription on the back of the photograph. Dealing the letters onto the eiderdown, Mundy counts off six. The longest is eight unnumbered sides. All are scrawls, all are painfully, atrociously spelled. Marks of dignity and erudition are conspicuously absent. The earliest start _My dearest__ or _Oh Arthur,__ but the tone quickly deteriorates: _Arthur, bloody hell, for the love of God listen to me!__
_The bastad that done this to me is the same barstad that your Nell gave herself willing and week to, your Gods judgmint on me, Arthur, don't bloody deny it. If I go home ruined my dad will kill me. I'll be a scarlit whore with an illigitment to feed they'll give me to the nuns and take me baby I've heard what they make you do for repintince. If I stay in India its me with the halfcarst prostutes in the market God help me I'd rather drown meself in the Ganges. Confessions not safe here, nothing is, that dirty bogger Father M'Graw would as soon tell Lady Stanhope as put his hand up your skirt and that Housekeeper stayring at me belly like I've stolen the lunch off her. Are you pregnant by any chance, Nurse Nellie? God help me Mrs. Ormrod whatever makes you think such a thing, it's all the good food you're feeding us in the servants hall. But how long will she believe that pray Arthur when I'm six months gone and still swelling? And me playing the Holy Virgin Mary in the staffside Christmas tablo for Christs sakes, Arthur! But it wasn't the Holy Spirit done it to me, was it? It was you!__ _THEYRE FOCKIN TWINS ARTHUR I CAN FEEL THEIR BLOODY HARTS GOING HEAR ME!__
Mundy needs a magnifying glass. He borrows it from a first-year student on his staircase who collects postage stamps.
"Sorry, Sammy, something I need to look at a bit closer."
"At fucking midnight?"
"At any fucking time," says Mundy.
He has focused his attention on the lower step and is searching for a tall girl in nurse's uniform with her eyes closed, and she isn't hard to spot. She's a sunny, overgrown child with a head of black curls and her Irish eyes clamped shut exactly the way she says they are, and if Mundy ever wore a nursemaid's drag and a black wig and squeezed up his eyes against the Indian sun, this is what he'd look like, because she's the same age as I am now, and the same height, he thinks. And she's got the same damn-fool all-weather grin I'm wearing while I gawp at her through the magnifying glass, which is the closest I will ever be to her.
Or hang on, he thinks.
Maybe you're smiling out of shyness because you're too tall.
And there's something of the wild spirit about you too, now I come to look at you more closely.
Something spontaneous and trusting and joyful, like a tall, white Rani full-grown.
Something that is actually a great deal more to my taste than the stuck-up, tight-arsed aristocrat of dignity and erudition that I've had shoved down my throat from the day I was old enough to be lied to.
* * *
Personal and Confidential to Yourself
Dear Captain Mundy,
I am directed by Lady Stanhope to draw your attention to your obligations to the person of Miss Nellie O'Connor, a nursemaid in Her Ladyship's employ. Her Ladyship asks me to advise you that if Miss O'Connor's position is not promptly regulated in a manner befitting an officer and gentleman, she will have no alternative but to apprise your Regimental Colonel Commanding.
Yours faithfully,
Private Secretary to Lady Stanhope
One marriage certificate, signed by the Anglican Vicar of Delhi in what looks like rather a rush.
One death certificate, signed three months later.
One birth certificate, signed the same day: Edward Arthur Mundy is hereby welcomed to the world. He was born, to his surprise, not in Murree but in Lahore, where both his mother and his
_The bastad that done this to me is the same barstad that your Nell gave herself willing and week to, your Gods judgmint on me, Arthur, don't bloody deny it. If I go home ruined my dad will kill me. I'll be a scarlit whore with an illigitment to feed they'll give me to the nuns and take me baby I've heard what they make you do for repintince. If I stay in India its me with the halfcarst prostutes in the market God help me I'd rather drown meself in the Ganges. Confessions not safe here, nothing is, that dirty bogger Father M'Graw would as soon tell Lady Stanhope as put his hand up your skirt and that Housekeeper stayring at me belly like I've stolen the lunch off her. Are you pregnant by any chance, Nurse Nellie? God help me Mrs. Ormrod whatever makes you think such a thing, it's all the good food you're feeding us in the servants hall. But how long will she believe that pray Arthur when I'm six months gone and still swelling? And me playing the Holy Virgin Mary in the staffside Christmas tablo for Christs sakes, Arthur! But it wasn't the Holy Spirit done it to me, was it? It was you!__ _THEYRE FOCKIN TWINS ARTHUR I CAN FEEL THEIR BLOODY HARTS GOING HEAR ME!__
Mundy needs a magnifying glass. He borrows it from a first-year student on his staircase who collects postage stamps.
"Sorry, Sammy, something I need to look at a bit closer."
"At fucking midnight?"
"At any fucking time," says Mundy.
He has focused his attention on the lower step and is searching for a tall girl in nurse's uniform with her eyes closed, and she isn't hard to spot. She's a sunny, overgrown child with a head of black curls and her Irish eyes clamped shut exactly the way she says they are, and if Mundy ever wore a nursemaid's drag and a black wig and squeezed up his eyes against the Indian sun, this is what he'd look like, because she's the same age as I am now, and the same height, he thinks. And she's got the same damn-fool all-weather grin I'm wearing while I gawp at her through the magnifying glass, which is the closest I will ever be to her.
Or hang on, he thinks.
Maybe you're smiling out of shyness because you're too tall.
And there's something of the wild spirit about you too, now I come to look at you more closely.
Something spontaneous and trusting and joyful, like a tall, white Rani full-grown.
Something that is actually a great deal more to my taste than the stuck-up, tight-arsed aristocrat of dignity and erudition that I've had shoved down my throat from the day I was old enough to be lied to.
* * *
Personal and Confidential to Yourself
Dear Captain Mundy,
I am directed by Lady Stanhope to draw your attention to your obligations to the person of Miss Nellie O'Connor, a nursemaid in Her Ladyship's employ. Her Ladyship asks me to advise you that if Miss O'Connor's position is not promptly regulated in a manner befitting an officer and gentleman, she will have no alternative but to apprise your Regimental Colonel Commanding.
Yours faithfully,
Private Secretary to Lady Stanhope
One marriage certificate, signed by the Anglican Vicar of Delhi in what looks like rather a rush.
One death certificate, signed three months later.
One birth certificate, signed the same day: Edward Arthur Mundy is hereby welcomed to the world. He was born, to his surprise, not in Murree but in Lahore, where both his mother and his
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