—40—
Nina loved a picnic. On Saturday, she arranged for all of us to go to the beach at Brighton.
The whole house party was transported by car and carriage five miles down the road to the beach.
She’d ordered an extravagant tent erected, with flags flying above it, in honor of a royal’s tent, and a Moroccan rug covered the sand.
Chairs within were arranged with draperies of patterned silk.
The whole was policed by a pair of grim servants in vaguely military uniforms and turbans unlike any I’d ever seen before.
They kept onlookers moving with beetle-browed shakes of the head.
I rode with Tanveer and Rocky and his beau Grayson, all of us a little drunk on sunshine after the storm. As we climbed out of the car, Tanveer remarked, “Extravagant, isn’t it?”
“Well there are no elephants, but I suppose the tent is a little much.”
He had the grace to tilt his head with a faint smile. “Touché.”
“Do you ride on elephants, Prince?” Grayson asked, tossing his hair from his face.
“I have,” he said. “More often I use a motorcar.”
“Do you have motorcars in India these days?” He bent his head into the wind to light a cigarette. “I’ve never been there, mind. But my imagination is filled with the things you hear.”
“I’m sure they’re all entirely accurate.”
“My father was there when he was young, though, of course, he was sent back at six, to avoid the language issues and so forth.”
“Language issues?” Tanveer asked calmly. “Like mine? Like Elsie’s?”
“Oh, no, man. You speak the King’s English. It’s remarkable, really.” Grayson winked my way. “Elsie, on the other hand . . .”
“Mmm.” Tanveer gestured to me. “Shall we see what lies within?”
I realized I’d been holding my breath. “Yes.”
We ducked into the cool of the tent. More servants manned the feast laid out on the table—little crabs and iced cakes, cold venison pasty, chicken sandwiches with yellow curry powder, an aspic already speckled with sand.
The servants had plumes of peacock feathers in their hats.
I glanced at Tanveer and pulled my lips into my mouth to avoid commenting.
Nina swirled over. “There you are! What do you think? Have I got some of it right?”
“It’s lovely,” Tanveer said. I glanced at him, and could read nothing. “I shall enjoy every morsel.”
“I did ask if there were things you mightn’t be able to eat, so I hope it’s all delicious.”
“It will be wonderful. Thank you, Nina. It will be a day to remember.”
Rocky joined us. “Grayson’s an ignorant bastard, but he means nothing by it.”
Tanveer inclined his head, in acceptance or rejection, it was unclear.
I filled a plate with little cakes and fruit and sandwiches, and we carried them to a round table with several chairs. As we sat down, Peter approached. “Do you mind if I join you?”
“Certainly not.” I gestured toward an empty place.
The weather was stellar, hot and sunny. We all swam and ate tiny crabs and fresh bread with sweet butter. The others drank, but Tanveer never drank alcohol, and so I didn’t, either. Late in the afternoon, we lounged on chairs beneath big umbrellas and watched the waves roll in.
“I’m enchanted by the sea,” I said, one knee propped up.
“What do you like about it?” Tanveer asked. He let his foot fall sideways into the top of mine. I wiggled my toes to acknowledge him.
“Aside from the obvious beauty, it’s reliable, isn’t it? Wave after wave, one after the other, for as long as time has existed. It’s untamable. It’s bigger and wilder than anyone, or anything.”
“Like the desert.”
I looked at him. “I never thought of it that way, but I suppose so.”
Peter and Grayson were on the other side of Tanveer. “I’d like to see the desert,” Peter said. “Have you been to the Sahara?”
“Afraid not,” Tanveer said. “Though Elsie once imagined she might have been one of the builders of the Pyramids. Perhaps she’ll remember that former life for you.”
I smiled, unbothered by his teasing, and closed my eyes. “I didn’t remember, I just hoped.”
“Really, Elsie,” Peter said, “are you interested in the Pyramids?”
“Oh, very! Who would not be?”
He sat forward eagerly, facing me over the body of Tanveer. His nose was quite sunburned, and his hair had gone askew with salt. He was in some ways much younger than the rest of us, though I couldn’t have said just why. His earnestness. Guilelessness. “They’re a remarkable feat of engineering.”
“Enough slaves, you can do anything,” Grayson said.
“Just ask England,” Tanveer said lazily, eyes closed.
“You’re not suggesting England enslaved the colonies?” Grayson frowned.
Restless discomfort rose in me, and I sat up, ready for—what?
Tanveer raised a brow. “Am I not?”
“Indians aren’t enslaved, and anyway, you have your own servant class, caste and all that.”
“It’s true there is a caste system in India, but Sikhs do not believe in it, and while Indians are not technically enslaved, they are treated by the British like children who couldn’t possibly run their own country.”
Grayson opened his cigarette case and tapped one against the hard surface. “Fair enough, man, but for the sake of argument, why haven’t they got off their arses and tossed the colonials out?”
Alarmed, I tried to think of what I might say, but felt tongue-tied and nervous. Perhaps this wasn’t my battle. Tanveer could stand up for himself.
“I believe they have tried,” Tanveer said. “I believe they are still trying.”
I expected him to say what he believed about independence, and almost boasted on his behalf, and then realized I had no idea what the stakes were in this conversation. It was above me, outside of me.
“Natives around the world are making these noises,” Grayson said impatiently. “It’s purely economic. The textile trade would collapse without Indian cotton and jute. We face the same in the Congo, the rubber trade.”
“Another trade that’s famously just,” Tanveer said with savage sarcasm.
Peter said, “At least the British have created some semblance of colonial government. King Leopold simply took the entire country.”
Nina suddenly appeared, clapping her hands. “Boys, boys, boys. No more politics. Let’s all go for a swim to celebrate the day, shall we?”
Tanveer looked at me, shook his head infinitesimally. A burn of color touched his cheeks and temples, and I realized he was very, very angry. “I’d like to walk,” he said.
When the others trooped out to the water, I asked, “Would you like to be alone?”
“For a little while,” he said.
I watched him go, sun gilding his form as he walked barefoot away from the party. The others had forgotten it already and danced in the waves, splashing each other. I stayed where I was, betwixt and between, a sense of that dense gray fog rising from the ground one more time.
That evening, there was a dinner party, and everyone was meant to dress up like fairies.
Tanveer declined, arriving only as himself, in a kurta and pajamas with his sandals.
I was dressed in a diaphanous gown and wings, with glitter falling off the fabric at every step.
When I saw Tanveer, I felt immediately foolish, like a little girl.
He joined me and said quietly, “You look lovely.”
A hot aura came off him, and I wished I could run upstairs and change immediately.
As I looked at the room, I felt embarrassed of my friends, frivolous and rather too loud, some of them barely glazed by fabric, the fairyland theme an excuse for discarding the strictures of society.
I’d known it would be that way, and yet, seeing it through Tanveer’s eyes, it reeked of spoiled children, misbehaving because there was no reason for them to behave.
“Prince,” Nina cried, joining us. She wore whispers of red that showed off her taut midriff and a lot of lean leg. “Where’s your costume?”
“Oh, but it is a costume. My native dress, you know.”
She smiled a little uncertainly. “Ah, well, I hope you’ll enjoy our little soirée.”
“Are you all right?” I asked quietly. We had not spoken about the scene at the picnic, but had gone to our rooms after returning to the house. I slept for an hour after the soporific sun and salt of the day, and assumed he’d done the same, though honestly, I had expected he might join me.
He caught his hands behind his back, and surveyed the room. “It is not what I expected.”
“I did warn you.”
“You did,” he agreed. “Because we are so close, Elsie, I think we are of one mind. And then I remember again that we are not.”
Stung, I frowned. “Of course we’re not. How could we be?”
“No, I know. I see that.”
An undercurrent of darkness wove through our conversation, and I felt something cold in my chest. A warning. “What are you saying, Tanveer? Speak plainly. That’s been our pact, always.”
He was silent for a long moment. Then: “Walk with me.”
We stepped into the mild evening. The sun had not yet set, and I thought of the lake where I’d seen Rocky swim. “This way.”
On the forest path, we walked in silence. Birds called out evening songs, robins and sparrows and the punctuating low notes of mourning doves. “The first time I walked through here,” I said, “I realized that forests like this are the settings of the fairy tales my mother told me.”
“And what sort of fairy are you tonight?”
I fluttered my fingers through the airy fabric. “I am not sure. A tree fairy, perhaps?”
“Did she ever read you tales from India?”
“No,” I said. “My ayah told them to me.”
We stepped into the clearing of the lake, and I could not have asked for a more splendid view. An egg-yolk sun had half sunk into the water, creating a spill of deep yellow over the lake. Trees framed it with feathery black, and there was even a swan floating gracefully across the scene.
“Perhaps this is what you should be painting,” Tanveer said.
“It is beautiful,” I said, “but perhaps not to my taste.”
“Oh, perhaps you’d rather paint the tent this afternoon?”
I frowned at him. “Are you angry with me?”
“Not angry, exactly. Just—” He sighed. “Disappointed, perhaps.”