A Moment Comes Read online

  I swallow my disappointment, think better of telling her how much her daughter has taken to the pickled mangoes, and disappear into the kitchen as she sails toward the front door to greet her guests.

  CHAPTER 13

  * * *

  MARGARET

  This dress feels like a bloody cilice after the deliciousness of the silks Mother made me abandon. Why am I always the one who ends up suffering for Mother’s obsession with what people think of us? I sip at the chai Anu has set out. I’d better not mention to Mother how much I’ve grown to like it, finding the taste of the spices growing familiar and welcome. The sweetness and the cardamom roll together on my tongue, loads better than plain old tea with milk. But if Mother found out she’d surely make me quit the stuff altogether.

  Going native. Honestly.

  “We’re quite delighted to see you both,” she says again for the hundredth time to Lady Mountbatten and Pamela, who sit side by side across from us on the divan.

  “Not as delighted as we are to see you,” Lady Mountbatten says. I like her instantly. With her little white dog she’s been slipping bites of samosa to, her face all angles and interesting lines, her limbs spindly but sure, she puts me in mind of Katharine Hepburn in that picture with Cary Grant and the leopard. “We need the expertise of good men like Mr. Darnsley in order to tie this up.”

  Father hems, looks abashed by the compliment.

  “And how pleased I am to see you’ve brought young Margaret with you,” she adds, turning to me. “I’m sure you’ll have to come and stay with Pamela in Delhi soon, or even come abroad with us.”

  I answer, knowing neither will ever come to pass. “Thank you.”

  Mother, however, is all silent vindication, arching one brow, shooting me her I told you so look. She sits taller. “But what brings you here? Your call caught us most unawares.”

  Lady Mountbatten laughs. “Yes, well, the post isn’t quite as efficient here as in England. And I hate the telephone. I’ve given up trying to warn folk if I’m stopping by. But Pamela and I were on our way to Amritsar to visit a camp there and see how the work is going. You were on our route and we thought we might pop in and see how you were faring?”

  “Quite well,” Mother says. “Though we haven’t been so lucky as you in finding places to help.” She tells her about our morning at the camp, the cholera, and how we’ve been stuck at home since.

  Lady Mountbatten smiles sympathetically. “You’ll find something, I’m sure.” She is elegant in her own way, in the way that finds its home in someone so direct. There’s little that’s coy about this woman, and I’m beginning to understand why so many describe her as so beguiling. My eyes drift to her daughter and I search for the same trademarks. She’s a bit softer at the edges than her mother, and content to let her carry the conversation. But she holds herself with ease, and her interest in the talk seems genuine. Lady Mountbatten goes on, “I do applaud your persistence. I’ve always thought the more conspicuously the people see us striving to meet the needs of those suffering, the safer we all will be.”

  “Of course, Lady Mountbatten,” Mother says.

  “Edwina,” Lady Mounbatten says over her teacup. “Please call me Edwina.”

  Mother beams and forgets to speak for a moment.

  Father fills the silence. “I’m to go out into the hill country next week. Survey expedition. I’ve been quite cooped here, you see, so I’m very eager to examine a bit more of the place I’ve come to know through all these maps.”

  “As well you should. India is remarkable. And those with a keen appreciation of its people and beauty will no doubt do her justice in this difficult business. I told Dickie time and again how shameful it is that we don’t have more people to do the survey work. These decisions on the boundary award feel so rushed and arbitrary.”

  Father nods. He’s complained about the same thing. But the viceroy and the British government have been adamant about keeping to the timetables, about transferring sovereignty on the fifteenth of August, whether they’ve made a thorough job of the partition itself or not.

  Mother reaches for a slice of cucumber on her plate, still glowing from Lady Mountbatten’s invitation to address her by her first name. And for all Mother’s silly hopes about bringing me to India and making me respectable, it’s easy now to see what she was after. Edwina Mountbatten is impressive. I suppose I was expecting a woman who was playing at the role of humble aristocrat, performing her noblesse oblige. Someone doing what she could to look good in all those photographs. I wasn’t expecting to like her. Or believe her. Or admire her.

  It’s inspiring, to tell the truth. And it makes me want to do something as well even more.

  “Might you indulge me in a stroll about the grounds, Margaret?” Pamela asks abruptly, setting her chai on the table and looking at me.

  “Um . . . ” I look at Mother.

  Pamela presses on. “It’s just that I saw the most beautiful bougainvillea tucked away in the corner of the garden. I’d like to have a closer peek. Would you mind?”

  “Pammie loves her flowers like I love my Prince,” her mother says, digging playfully into the space between the dog’s ears. “We all like something pretty, something useless—particularly in a place like this.”

  I look to Mother, who realizes I’m still waiting on her permission. “Oh!” she says with a start. “Go! Before the rain starts up again!”

  So Pamela Mountbatten, daughter of the viceroy of India, my cousin by too many branches removed, and I leave the room and the shade and the tea and the adults and venture into the garden.

  “You don’t have a cigarette, do you?” she begs as soon as we’re far enough from the house.

  And suddenly I like her even more than her mother.

  I grin and look back just to make sure Mother and Lady Edwina haven’t decided to follow us outside. “This way,” I say, leading her to the small bench behind the squat tree in the far corner (opposite the one with what I guessed was the bougainvillea). “Just a tic,” I say as I crouch beneath the leaves and lift up a rock as big as my two hands together, revealing the small bowl I’ve scooped out of the sandy soil.

  Pammie gasps. “Brilliant.”

  “I’m nearly out,” I tell her as I fiddle with the lid on the tea tin. Last time I came out for a smoke I had only three left.

  “Welcome to India,” she groans. “Where it apparently is impossible to find cigarettes unless you’re a man who’s willing to roll his own.”

  The top comes off with a jerk, sending cigarettes and my matchbook flying.

  Pammie giggles and bends down to collect the cigarettes.

  I just stand there for a few seconds staring at the dirt, puzzled.

  “You’ve got loads!” Pammie says. “And they’re Luckies!”

  She’s right. I do. They are. But I know there were only three there before.

  How did they get there?

  I stoop down and grab up a few that Pammie hasn’t gotten to yet. We dump them into the tin, and I count them up quickly. Eleven.

  It doesn’t make any sense. I figure Mother knows about my stash, but she certainly wouldn’t restock it for me. Same for Daddy. And Anu’s a dear and all, but I don’t think she could be the one who did this. She hasn’t left since her day off on Sunday except to take me to the market, and these cigarettes weren’t here yesterday afternoon when I came out. It seems even less likely that the gate guard or the housekeeper or her husband would leave me this windfall. So short of some garden fairy who leaves cigarettes willy-nilly, it could have only been one person.

  Tariq.

  He’s the one who comes and goes from the house all the time. He’s the one who’s seen me out here.

  He’s the one who held my arm and steered me to the car the other day when things got dicey at the refugee camp.

  Tariq.

  They couldn’t have been cheap, these cigarettes. They’re getting easier to come by with the war over, but still. Luckies? Here?

 
They’re almost better than a dozen roses.

  I realize I’m smiling when Pammie reaches for a cigarette and the matchbook—a relic from a sweet shop on Bond Street back home. “What are you so dreamy about?”

  “Nothing,” I say quickly, replacing the lid on the tin and nestling it back in its hole.

  Pammie has already lit the cigarette. She takes a long pull, sighs as she hands it off to me.

  “Thanks ever,” she says, in a rush of smoke.

  “Not at all,” I say, putting the cigarette to my mouth. “And I won’t even tell your mother.”

  She laughs, passes it back to me. “Oh, Mother knows. I’m surprised yours doesn’t.”

  I shrug. “She does. We pretend she doesn’t. She picks her battles. I’ve been rotten enough in other respects to make this vice seem minor.”

  Pammie’s brows lift in appreciation. She grins sideways at me. “So that bit I heard about you and the American?”

  Of course she’s heard. Mother would be mortified and triumphant all at once. “All true,” I say.

  “How wonderful!” Pammie says.

  I wince. “Well, it was. For a while.” I don’t say more.

  Pammie looks sympathetic. “Sorry,” she offers. “But I envy you. I wish I could be in love. Just once. I wouldn’t mind a scandal, even.”

  I laugh. “The scandal part sounds better before you’re in one.”

  She shrugs as if she’s not so sure as she reaches out and takes back the cigarette. “Anyway, I doubt I’ll ever get to find out. Mummy seems bent on using up our family’s share of indiscretions.”

  I tilt my head, study her. Wonder how long I’ll have to wait before she volunteers the nature of those.

  Not long.

  Pammie leans in close. She whispers. “She’s taken a lover.”

  I don the appropriate look of surprise, letting my mouth fall open in a pantomime of shock, but with just a half smile curling at the corner.

  “Father, too,” Pammie says casually. “Several, really. But nothing near as scandal worthy as Mother’s paramour. Hers is a bit more platonic than Father’s have tended to be, but shocking nonetheless.”

  “Double standards,” I say, then draw on the cigarette. It’s half-gone already. “A man can rut about all he wants before marriage, run away and ruin the country girl, and it’s quite overlooked, but not us.”

  Pammie shrugs. “Quite. But Mother’s is a bit more complicated.”

  I wait.

  “Hers is Indian.”

  I pause. “You mean—”

  “A native,” she says, nodding. “And not just any native, but the most famous one in all of India—”

  “Ghandiji?” I gasp. The withered little man in his baggy white dhoti and the movie star–like Lady Mountbatten?

  She wrinkles her nose. “Perhaps second most famous.”

  I can’t think of another, my mind still shaking free of the wicked notion of such an odd pair. I shrug.

  Finally Pamela whispers, “Nehru.”

  Now my surprise is real. Completely and utterly real. “The Congress Party leader?”

  She nods. “He’s a dear, really. And it’s not hard to see why Mother’s smitten with him. He’s no use for Father, and if it weren’t for Mother, he’d probably hate poor Daddy as much as Jinnah does.”

  “Your mother and Nehru—”

  “Just letters and long walks and things. But there’s something there. Something they might act upon—”

  “Girls!” comes my mother’s shout from the path leading to the house. Pammie tosses the cigarette to the ground and crushes it with the toe of her shoe as Mother comes into view.

  “Ah, there you are!” she says. “Pamela, your mother wants you. Says you two might be off soon.”

  Pammie smiles, takes my hand, and leads me back to the house, following my mother, who I’m sure is beaming at the notion that Pammie and I have become such fast friends. But I know better. There’s no other girl for Pamela to confide in. Just me.

  “Remember,” she whispers, “not a word about this to anyone.”

  “Does it bother you?” I ask her without thinking.

  She lingers back, letting my mother get farther out of earshot. “That Mother has a lover or that he’s an Indian?”

  I hesitate, somehow embarrassed that it’s the latter. Fat drops of rain begin to fall. But if today’s rain is like the showers that have come before, it will do this for a good spell before dumping out in earnest.

  She shakes her head, leans closer, and whispers as if we were the oldest of chums, “In either case, no. And if you could see Nehru, you might forget the color of his skin altogether, if you understand my meaning.”

  We reach the edge of the drive, several steps behind Mother. Up ahead, Tariq emerges from the house and says something to the chauffeur, who starts up the great motorcar. A slow smile breaks across my face. I take her arm and whisper back, “I think I know exactly what you mean.”

  CHAPTER 14

  * * *

  TARIQ

  The mountains are bigger than anything I’ve ever seen, and if I stand in the right spot, ahead of Mr. Darnsley and away from his table and transit, I can’t see another person or building anywhere. It’s amazing, really, being so isolated up here. I know I should be impressed, and I am. But not the way I ought to be.

  Not when all I can think about is Anu.

  If she were here with me now, I could talk to her. Really talk to her. Not like at the house where no one lets me near her. We could—

  Mr. Darnsley’s voice breaks in roughly. “Bring me the charts with the water rights,” he orders without looking up from the map laid out across the folding table.

  I hurry to the car, reach for the map case in the backseat, and slide the chart from the tube as I walk back to the table. Focus. I must focus.

  Darnsley takes the map from my hand, begins to spread it on top of the one he has been studying. I fish around for more stones to hold down the corners against the wind.

  “Damn hot,” he mutters.

  It is not hot. Not really. Maybe to a man accustomed to cool English summers. If I did not worry that it might offend him, I would pull my jacket from my bag.

  I fill the cup from the water jug we’ve brought along, hold it out to him, but not over the table where it might drip on the maps.

  Finally unbending from his study of the charts, he takes it and nods his thanks as he moves back to the transit set up on top of its three-legged stand. The instrument is a kind of scope for measuring angles, attached to a rotating base and then mounted on a tripod. Mr. Darnsley explained it to me once and even trusted me to read the tiny numbers that appear inside to confirm his reading. Right now he has it trained on the peak of Arjuna some four or five miles off. But instead of looking through, he stands beside it, gazing up at the mountain.

  “Madness,” he says, not for the first time as he bolts back the contents of the tin cup. By now I know what he means. Know why he says it as he looks out over the unbroken expanse of foothills and rivers and green valleys, toward the impassable peaks of the Himalayas.

  “Mountains like those should belong to no one but God, wouldn’t you say, Tariq?”

  I look out. Wonder if he cares which God. Start to say so, but instead do what I always do. “Quite right, sahib.”

  He turns. “For the last bloody time, please don’t address me as such.”

  “Apologies, sir,” I say, bowing my head.

  “The British are not the rulers of this place,” he mutters. “The title is unfit, as unfit as it ever was.”

  “Of course, sir,” I say, and somehow the look he gives me makes me think he’s as annoyed by my obedience as he is by the word “sahib.” I take a chance.

  “It is just . . . ,” I begin, “the word perhaps is not so inappropriate as you might believe.”

  He waits for me to go on.

  “It is true that it means ‘owner,’ or ‘master . . . ,’ ” I begin. “But it also means ‘frien
d.’ And it is not a term applied exclusively to the Raj or its representatives.”

  I’ve got him now. I go on, careful to temper my accent, measure my words slowly. I sound too Indian when I get excited or nervous.

  “The Sikhs use it as a term of respect for their gurus; in Islam we use it as you might call someone ‘mister.’ ”

  He considers, his face unreadable. For a moment I am worried I have said too much and presumed far more. To call a white man a friend. But then he smiles. “I believe this might be the first time I’ve heard more than ten words together from you, young man.”

  I duck my head. A move I learned from watching Abbu speak with foreigners in the shop over the years. “Begging pardon, sir.”

  He laughs. “Not at all! I quite like being corrected. So long as it’s not on which tie to wear or how high I ought to seek to trade on a name or a connection several men removed.”

  I don’t lift my head. Instead I hide the grin that breaks across my face. I’ve heard Mrs. Darnsley. Heard enough of her nagging to know that though I may be ambitious, she’s a world-beater.

  For a while the only sound is the wind riffling the dry grass with the promise of rain that will not last. The monsoon has been odd this year, little storms every other day or so, but the great flood of rains holds off. Ammi thinks the delay is a bad omen.

  Darnsley is back to staring at the mountain.

  “George Mallory disappeared in the Himalayas, trying to climb Everest,” he says.

  I’ve heard about Europeans coming here to climb mountains. I’ve never understood why until now, when I see them up close like this for the first time.

  “Do you think anyone’s ever stood up there?” he asks, pointing at the peak.

  I shrug. But when I realize he’s not looking at me, I add, “I could not say.”

  “It’s impossible,” he says finally, but he’s not looking at the mountain this time.

  “Sir?”

  “We’re a world away from Jalandhar. Two days in the car brings us here, where there is honest-to-God snow up on those mountains, rivers purer than anything in England.”