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Authors: Ellis Peters
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all across the front of the house, and a sort of loggia, with a marble floor. And in the middle of the lawn there’s a big fountain.’
There were all these things. There was also a gardener in shorts and drill shirt, dipping water from the fountain basin and watering the flowering shrubs in the scattered round beds, sleeping shrubs only just hinting at budding. Isolated in the emerald green turf, tethered to long, thin snakes of hosing, two sprinklers tirelessly squandered Delhi’s precious water supply on preserving the texture and colour and freshness of the Kumar grass.
In a thirsty land privilege can be reckoned in water. Plantation economy, Dominic thought, chilled and daunted, and wondered into what arid byways they had found themselves drawn, aside from the actual life of this painfully real and actual country. It didn’t begin with us, he thought, and it hasn’t ended with us. We were only an aberration, a contortion of history, suffered almost in its sleep. India twitched a little, and scratched a momentary itch, and that was the coming and the going of the British. But they still have this to reckon with.
‘It must be terrible,’ said Anjli, suddenly, her fine brows knit in consternation, ‘to be so rich!’
As far as they could see, beyond the long, low, pale facade of the house, just coming into view, the artfully spaced trees deployed their varying shapes as decoration, flowers used their colours to punctuate the restful green ground, creamy-white creepers draped the columns of the loggia. Before they reached the curving sweep of the steps that led up to the colonnade and the open double doors within, they had counted five garden boys, watering and tidying and clipping back too assertive leaves, taming and shaping and reducing all things to order. Under the awning of the loggia roof stone urns of flowers were spaced, and out of the open doors a scented smoke filtered. The bell was a looped rope of plaited red silk, but at least there was a bell; they had a means of informing this palace that strangers were on the doorstep, that the outer world did exist.
‘I don’t want to live here,’ Anjli burst out in ill-timed rebellion. In Rabindar Nagar she had looked upon everything, and made no protest, rather advanced a step to look more closely.
‘You needn’t stay, if you don’t want to,’ said Dominic, listening to the receding peal of the bell, eddying back and back into the apparently unpeopled recesses of the house. ‘We can always take you back with us. Don’t worry about anything. But if your grandmother’s ill, at least we must enquire about her. And find out if they do know anything here.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Anjli, strongly recovering, and dug her heels in faithfully at his side.
Someone was coming, hurried, quiet, obsequious feet sliding over polished floors. A turbaned house-man in white cotton, austere but imposing.
‘Shri Vasudev Kumar?’ said Dominic, evading lingual difficulties.
The man stepped back, and wordlessly waved them inside, into a large hall half-darkened by curtains and palms, and panelled in aromatic dark wood. Far to the rear a staircase spiralled upwards, intricately carved and fretted. The servant bowed himself backwards out of sight through a door to their right, and left them there among the exotics and the impersonal evidences of money and loneliness. Beyond the staircase the room receded to a large window, and beyond that again they caught a glimpse of a half-circle of paved courtyard, and two large cars standing, and occasionally the passage of scurrying figures. Beneath the civilised quietness there was a deep tremor of agitation.
They waited for some minutes, and then a door opened, somewhere out of sight, and let through the murmur of subdued but troubled voices. Then a man came hurrying in by the door through which the servant had disappeared, and confronted the three visitors with patent astonishment. He was not above medium height, but his hard,
There were all these things. There was also a gardener in shorts and drill shirt, dipping water from the fountain basin and watering the flowering shrubs in the scattered round beds, sleeping shrubs only just hinting at budding. Isolated in the emerald green turf, tethered to long, thin snakes of hosing, two sprinklers tirelessly squandered Delhi’s precious water supply on preserving the texture and colour and freshness of the Kumar grass.
In a thirsty land privilege can be reckoned in water. Plantation economy, Dominic thought, chilled and daunted, and wondered into what arid byways they had found themselves drawn, aside from the actual life of this painfully real and actual country. It didn’t begin with us, he thought, and it hasn’t ended with us. We were only an aberration, a contortion of history, suffered almost in its sleep. India twitched a little, and scratched a momentary itch, and that was the coming and the going of the British. But they still have this to reckon with.
‘It must be terrible,’ said Anjli, suddenly, her fine brows knit in consternation, ‘to be so rich!’
As far as they could see, beyond the long, low, pale facade of the house, just coming into view, the artfully spaced trees deployed their varying shapes as decoration, flowers used their colours to punctuate the restful green ground, creamy-white creepers draped the columns of the loggia. Before they reached the curving sweep of the steps that led up to the colonnade and the open double doors within, they had counted five garden boys, watering and tidying and clipping back too assertive leaves, taming and shaping and reducing all things to order. Under the awning of the loggia roof stone urns of flowers were spaced, and out of the open doors a scented smoke filtered. The bell was a looped rope of plaited red silk, but at least there was a bell; they had a means of informing this palace that strangers were on the doorstep, that the outer world did exist.
‘I don’t want to live here,’ Anjli burst out in ill-timed rebellion. In Rabindar Nagar she had looked upon everything, and made no protest, rather advanced a step to look more closely.
‘You needn’t stay, if you don’t want to,’ said Dominic, listening to the receding peal of the bell, eddying back and back into the apparently unpeopled recesses of the house. ‘We can always take you back with us. Don’t worry about anything. But if your grandmother’s ill, at least we must enquire about her. And find out if they do know anything here.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Anjli, strongly recovering, and dug her heels in faithfully at his side.
Someone was coming, hurried, quiet, obsequious feet sliding over polished floors. A turbaned house-man in white cotton, austere but imposing.
‘Shri Vasudev Kumar?’ said Dominic, evading lingual difficulties.
The man stepped back, and wordlessly waved them inside, into a large hall half-darkened by curtains and palms, and panelled in aromatic dark wood. Far to the rear a staircase spiralled upwards, intricately carved and fretted. The servant bowed himself backwards out of sight through a door to their right, and left them there among the exotics and the impersonal evidences of money and loneliness. Beyond the staircase the room receded to a large window, and beyond that again they caught a glimpse of a half-circle of paved courtyard, and two large cars standing, and occasionally the passage of scurrying figures. Beneath the civilised quietness there was a deep tremor of agitation.
They waited for some minutes, and then a door opened, somewhere out of sight, and let through the murmur of subdued but troubled voices. Then a man came hurrying in by the door through which the servant had disappeared, and confronted the three visitors with patent astonishment. He was not above medium height, but his hard,
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