‘Namaste, Grandmother Purnima!’
The fading brightness watched her; there was no other part of Purnima that could express anything now. Anjli slid to her knees beside the bed, to be nearer, and that movement, too, had a fluid certainty about it.
‘Grandmother, I am Anjli, your son’s daughter. I have come home.’
For one instant it seemed to Dominic and Tossa, watching, that the ancient, burned-out eyes flared feebly, that they acknowledged the stooping girl and approved her. Anjli pressed her joined hands into the Naga coverlet, and laid her face upon them. A tiny, brief convulsion, so infinitesimal that it might almost have been an illusion, heaved at the powerless fingers of Purnima’s right hand, moved them a fraction of an inch towards the glossy black head, then let them fall limp. The blue coverlet hung unmoving, subsided, lay still again, and this time finally. The doctor leaned to touch the old woman’s eyelid, to reach for her pulse again. One of the women in white began to wail softly and rock herself. Tossa pushed past Dominic, and took Anjli gently by the arm, raising her and drawing her back from the bed. ‘Come away now, leave her to them! Come! We’d better go.’
There was no need to tell her that Purnima was dead. Of all the people in the room, Anjli had been the first to know it.
IV
« ^ »
Vasudev overtook them in the loggia, almost running after them with fluttering hands and a dew of sweat on his forehead. The thin line of his black moustache was quivering with agitation.
‘Please, one moment! This is terrible… I do not know how… I am so sorry… such a distressing home-coming for my cousin. Let me at least fulfil my responsibilities thus belatedly. You understand, I could hardly believe, so suddenly, with no warning… Of course Anjli must come to us, this is her home. Allow me, Anjli, to offer you the freedom of this house, until my aunt’s estate is settled and proper provision made for you. My aunt’s women will take good care of her, Mr Felse, I do assure you. We have an adequate domestic staff. Really, I insist!’
‘I couldn’t think,’ said Dominic very rapidly and very firmly, ‘of intruding on the household at this moment, you must allow us to keep Anjli with us at the hotel for a few days. Until after the funeral. You will have your hands quite full until then, and I think it is better that she should not be involved.’
‘I am so upset… so inhospitable and unwelcoming, you must forgive me. Perhaps, however, if you really prefer…’
‘For a few days, until after the funeral, I’m sure it would be better…’
He was not really sorry to let them go, though insistent on making the offer with all punctilio. Perhaps he was at as great a loss as they were about what to do next. As for Anjli, she walked down the long drive between her temporary guardians, silent and thoughtful, but completely composed. What she had done had been done naturally and candidly, and now there was no more she could do for her grandmother, unless…
‘I suppose funerals happen pretty quickly here, don’t they?’ she asked practically.
‘Not necessarily at this time of year,’ Dominic said, accepting this down-to-earth vein as the best bet in the circumstances. ‘Maybe I ought to have asked him. I expect there’ll be a notice in the papers by this evening, at least about her death.’
‘Do you think we should go to the funeral? I know I didn’t know her at all, but still she was my grandmother. And she understood what I said to her, I’m sure she did. What do you think, ought we to go?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know exactly what happens. We might only be in the way, not knowing the drill.’
‘I guess we might,’ she agreed after due consideration, and sensibly refrained from insisting. And the more he thought about her general behaviour, the more he realised that for years she had been standing squarely on her own feet, for want of mother and father as well as grandmother, and for all her compensatory posturing she had never lost her balance yet.
They walked back to the hotel, for Purnima’s house was down in the rich and shady residential roads in the south of town, not far from the golf links, no more than ten minutes’ pleasant walking from Keen’s. Not one of them said: ‘What are we going to do now?’ though they were all thinking it.
They waited for the evening papers to arrive, and there it was, the announcement of the death of Shrimati Purnima Kumar, the arrangements for her funeral; imposingly large in the type, as was fitting for so prominent a citizen, and such a rich one. And in every paper alike, at least the English-language ones.
So now they had all the facts flat before them; and while Anjli was taking her bath they could look each other squarely in the face and consider what was to be done.
‘We can’t possibly leave her here with Cousin Vasudev,’ Tossa said.
‘No, we can’t. Of course he may be all right, a thousand to one he is, but with no father here, and no grandmother, and seemingly no wife for Vasudev – I could be wrong, of course, did you get that impression, too?’
‘What difference would it make?’ said Tossa simply. ‘Wife or no wife, we couldn’t possibly hand her over to somebody who seems to be next in the running for the family fortune, somebody whose interests, if you look at the thing that way, she definitely threatens. I mean, if Satyavan inherits everything, then even supposing he never turns up, some day they’ll have to presume his death, or whatever they do here, and Anjli is next in line. But if there’s no Anjli…’ She let that trail away doubtfully, and kept her voice low. ‘But that’s being pretty melodramatic about it, wouldn’t you say? He doesn’t look the wicked-uncle type.’
‘No, he doesn’t. And I don’t suppose they’re any more common here than in England, anyhow. And yet, with all these millions of people around, it would be awfully easy for one little one, a stranger, to get sunk without trace. The thing is, unless we find her father, then the next move is Dorette’s responsibility, not ours, and we’ve no right to appropriate it to ourselves.’
‘Dorette,’ said Tossa with awful certainty, ‘would dump her on Vasudev and never think twice.’
‘Maybe she would, but she isn’t going to do it by proxy. Not these proxies, anyhow.’
‘Hear, hear! So what do we do?’
‘I tell you what, I think we’d better ring up Felder and ask his advice. After all, he did offer to help.’
When he got through to the villa near Hauz Khas, it was Ashok Kabir who answered the telephone.
‘They’re not in yet, they’ll probably be late. And they’re off to Benares early in the morning. Is it urgent? Why not tell me, and I’ll pass the problem on to him and ask him to call you back when he does get in?’
Dominic told him the whole story of Satyavan’s defection and Purnima’s death, down to the last detail that seemed relevant, and then sat down, a little cheered by Ashtok’s evident concern and sympathy, to wait for Felder to call him back. Presently Anjli sauntered in from the bathroom of the suite she shared with Tossa. In a flowing cotton dressing-gown, and with her black hair swirling softly round her shoulders, for the first time she looked Indian.
‘Watch your step when you go for your bath, Tossa, we’ve been invaded. Two huge cockroaches – I suppose they come up the plumbing. Put the light on five minutes before you go to run your bath, and I bet they’ll take the hint and run for the exit.’ She was being, perhaps, deliberately cooler than she felt about these hazards, just as she probably was about her experiences of the morning; but the slight over-statement was merely that, not a falsification. Presented with a burden, she practised the best way of carrying it. Confronted by a problem, she would walk all round it and consider how best to grapple with it. They were beginning to understand their Anjli.