—25—
We enjoyed a few nights of quiet in October, all of us getting a solid night of sleep several days in a row.
On this dark, rainy afternoon, I felt clearheaded and even mildly optimistic—maybe the Nazis would continue to be stymied by the dark, stormy nights—and Mother sat up in bed, her cheeks pink.
I read to her most days. She’d asked me to find things set in India, and after discovering we could not tolerate the arrogance of Kipling, no matter how good his descriptions, I found a much-thumbed copy of A Passage to India at the lending library.
Both of us were enjoying the trip down memory lane, and, although Nainital had not been much like Chandrapore, the writing was excellent and the divisions between British and locals were familiar.
The kittens frolicked over the bed, little balls of wild happiness, all still clumsy with too-long claws getting caught in the cloth of her blanket, shrieking their little hearts out when they were caught.
Mother patiently freed one, then another, and they often curled up in various hollows of her body, for Bastet had firmly decided she was the finest human in the household and draped over her belly at every opportunity, purring.
“Never mind that I’m the one who feeds you, young traitor,” I said, stroking her multicolored back.
She purred happily, but didn’t move. Tanveer had told me once that purring was a healing sound, like chanting or singing.
If Bastet could pour healing into my mother’s failing system, I would help her purr all day.
I read for a little longer, then settled the book in my lap. “How did you and the maharani become friends, anyway? Wasn’t that social suicide?”
“Oh, Elsie, what did I care about the club and all the gossip? So many of those women were bored to tears, and I had things to do.”
“But wasn’t it odd from her side, too?”
Her long white hand slid down Bastet’s spine.
“It might have been, but we found common ground in our interest in women’s health, and in truth, her husband had begun to court his third wife, so he found some peace in her taking up residence here.
” She blinked. “I mean Nainital.” Her smile was thin.
“I find it all blending together of late. The maharani and Nainital and Herewich, and Santa Fe and London.”
“So many adventures.”
“Not like yours. The Pyramids and the Buddhas of Bamiyan. India in the twenties, when everything was changing so quickly. It must have been so exciting.”
“I was far away from all that, really.” The piercing layers of the time I spent in India in the twenties were secret even from my mother. How desperately I had wished to stay there. It had been, in part, my mother’s need that drew me back to England, and Peter, and all that I had come to loathe.
“Channan was on bed rest,” I continued, “and I spent most of my time with her. And I painted a great deal.” I glanced up to one large canvas that had emerged from that period, both saturated and soft, a hazy painting of our old house in Nainital rendered with an almost abstract eye.
Three children played on the steps while two women took tea in the shade. All of us.
She made a sharp move, as if stabbed, and cried out softly. I leapt to my feet, but she waved me down. “A stitch,” she said, pressing her hand to the spot. “Nothing more.”
“Would you like some tea?”
“No, just read to me a little more, will you?”
I picked up the book to do just that when a clatter came from below, and then leaping footsteps on the stairs.
Peter appeared in the doorway, looking cheerful and flushed, carrying a bag.
“I bring gifts! A beef rump roast big enough for an army, and”—he drew out a flat dish I could smell five feet away—“an apple pie. An actual apple pie, not a mock one.”
“Oh, Peter, how miraculous!” my mother cried.
“How on earth . . . ?” I asked.
“Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies, my dear.”
“Ah.”
“I must return to headquarters, so I’ll take this down to Betty, shall I?”
“Surely, you’ll be back to share it with us?” Mother asked. She’d always been very fond of Peter.
I rose. “I’ll come down with you.”
On the landing, I paused. “Are you well?”
“Yes, wife, I am. It’s a tonic to try to thwart the bastards. I think we might have turned a corner at last. They lost so many planes on the fifteenth.”
I nodded, not quite convinced. He could be mercurial, but I saw that his eyes were clear, and he smelled of aftershave rather than gin.
A new love interest perhaps? He’d ever been given to crushes on beautiful young women, mostly to worship from afar, as he had done with me until we married. “All right, then. Thank you for the roast. Mother has not been at all well.”
“I know.” He started down the stairs, then turned. “Jonathan said to remind you of the party on Friday evening. Seven p.m.”
“Ah.” That was where the black-market goods had come from. “I shall have to see how Mother is doing.”
“Surely she’ll be all right with Betty for the evening? You know she’d want you to get out.”
“I worry there will be a raid, and they’ll be here alone.”
He rested a hand on the banister. “We cannot allow the Nazis to keep us from living our lives, Elsie. Otherwise, we’re already dead.”
The thought of a party did lift my spirits. “All right. Will you meet me there?”
“Let’s go together, shall we? Will you wear the blue dress?”
His mood was so much improved that, for a moment, I searched his face, feeling a sense of warning. He had at times been dangerously unstable, but to be fair, that was a long time in the past.
Perhaps his nerves were adjusting to the reality of the bombings, just as we all were.
“Of course,” I said finally. “I’ll ring Nina and find out what I might bring.
” Wartime shortages made it acceptable to ask.
At any other time she would never have tolerated such a question.
She had been known for her talents as a hostess, and she’d been quite clever about bringing together our circle of bohemians and eccentrics.
Without her, I would never have found Rocky.