‘I suppose he has got his hands full,’ Tossa said dubiously. ‘And after all, he is only a cousin, and you could hardly hold him responsible as long as we’ve got Dorette to go back to, could you?’
‘I expect,’ said Anjli cynically, ‘he’s just holding his breath and keeping his eyes shut in the hope that if he doesn’t look at us or speak to us we’ll go away.’
On the second evening there was still no message. They had spent the afternoon prowling round all the government and state shops in New Delhi, among the leathers and silks and cottons and silverware and copperware and ivory carvings, well away from the banks of the Yamuna where the rites of death are celebrated. Nobody mentioned funerals. Everybody thought privately of the little, shrunken body that had hardly swelled the bedclothes, swathed now in white cotton for the last bath and the last fire. By the time they came back to Keen’s Hotel, after a Chinese meal at Nirula’s, Purnima was ash and spirit.
And there was no message for them at the desk, and no one had telephoned.
‘Maybe he’s got a whole party of funeral guests on his hands still,’ said Tossa, ‘and hasn’t had time to think about us yet. I don’t know what happens, there may be family customs… I know there don’t seem to be any more near relatives, but there must be some distant ones around somewhere… and then all the business connections, with a family like that…’
‘We’ve got to find out,’ said Dominic. ‘I’d better ring him, if he won’t ring us.’
He made the call from their own sitting-room upstairs. A high, harassed voice answered in Hindi, and after a wait of some minutes Cousin Vasudev’s agitated English flooded Dominic’s ear with salutations, apologies and protestations, effusive with goodwill but fretful with weariness and hagridden with responsibilities.
‘It is unfilial, one cannot understand such behaviour. Everything I have had to do myself, everything. And into the bargain, with these newspapermen giving me no peace… It is a decadent time, Mr Felse, in all countries of the world duties are shirked, family ties neglected… The old order breaks down, and nothing is sacred any longer. What can we do? It is left for the dutiful to carry other people’s burdens as well as their own…’
It seemed that Dominic’s question had not merely answered itself, somewhere in the flood of words, but also been washed clean away on the tide. Nevertheless, when he could get a word in he asked it.
‘Do you mean that Anjli’s father has not come home? Not even for the funeral?’
‘He has not. Everything is left to me. One cannot understand how a son could…’
‘And he hasn’t written, either? After all, he might be abroad somewhere…’
‘I assure you, Mr Felse, certain preliminaries are necessary before Indian citizens go abroad. The authorities would know if that was the case, and of course I did, very discreetly, you understand… strictly private enquiries… My aunt did not wish it, but I felt it to be my duty… No, there has been no word from him at all. The position as far as that is concerned is quite unchanged…’
Dominic extricated himself from the current, made the best farewells he could, and hung up the receiver. They looked at one another, and for some minutes thought and were silent. Not because they had nothing to say, but because what was uppermost in two minds was not to be expressed in front of Anjli. Why, thought Dominic blankly, did it never occur to us until now to wonder whether he really did go of his own will? And whether there might not be a completely final reason why he hasn’t come back? And has that really never occurred to Cousin Vasudev, either? In all this time, and with that much money at stake?
‘He may not have seen the papers at all,’ said Tossa sturdily. ‘I know people in England who almost never look at the things.’
‘He can’t have seen them,’ amended Anjli with emphasis, ‘or he’d be here.’
‘But what do we do now? We could hang on for a few days longer, certainly, maybe even a couple of weeks, but if he’s as unavailable as all that what difference will two weeks make? And in any case, that would be a gamble, because we can’t do that and pay for a single ticket back to London for Anjli. So we’ve got to make up our minds right now.’
Anjli dropped the tiny packet of damp tissue-paper she was just unwrapping, and gaped at him in consternation for a moment; but she was quick to recover her own reticence, which in some unquestioned way had become curiously precious to her here in Delhi.
‘You mean you want me to go back to England with you?’ she said with composure.
‘What else can we possibly do?’ said Dominic reasonably. ‘We can’t deliver you to your father, which was the object of the exercise, or to your grandmother, which would have done as a substitute. The only legal guardian you have is your mother – for the time being, at any rate. I don’t see any alternative but to take you back with us… do you?’
‘We could go and stay at Grandmother Purnima’s house for a while, at any rate. He did ask us. That way, we needn’t pay hotel bills, and we’d still have enough for my ticket back if it came to that in the end.’
‘We couldn’t. He didn’t ask us, he asked you. And you said you didn’t want to live there. And in any case,’ said Dominic, smiling at her ruefully, ‘you don’t suppose we’d really hand you over to a man we don’t know at all, and just fly off and leave you, do you?’
She owned, after a moment’s thought, that that was too much to expect of them. ‘Well, all right, then, what’s the answer?’ But she knew, and she knew he was right, by his standards and by hers. Somehow standards seemed irrelevant to this new world; what governed action was something just as valid and moral, but more inward, and not to be discussed or questioned. She picked up the little moist packet, and carefully unwrapped the exquisite bracelet of white jasmine buds Dominic had bought her in Chandni Chowk, strung neatly on green silk cord the colour of the stems. ‘Tie it on, would you, please?’
Three days ago Dominic would have suspected that confiding gesture of her wrist towards him, and the way she inclined her head over the dewy trifle as he tied the green cord. Now she seemed three years older than her age, and every touch and sound and look of hers he accepted as genuine. She turned her wrist, leaning back to admire. ‘They wear them in their hair, don’t they? I could do that, too, if I put mine up, there’s plenty of it. A big knot on the back of my neck, like this, and the bracelet tied round the knot… Imagine all those gorgeous flowers, in winter! Did you ever see such gardens?’
‘The answer,’ Tossa said, watching the two of them with a faintly ironic smile, ‘is that we all go back to London. There’s nothing else we can do. We’ll have to see about your ticket and the flight in the morning.’
‘You’re the boss,’ said Anjli, ‘All right, if you say so, that’s what we do. Now, if you folks don’t mind, I’m going to put our bathroom light on and alert the enemy to get right out of there, and in about five minutes I’m going to have my bath.’
She had to go out into the corridor to go to the suite she shared with Tossa, next door; and in the corridor she met her least favourite room-boy, bearing on a pretentious inlaid tray a very grubby folded scrap of paper. His grin – it was a curious side-long grin, the antithesis of Kishan Singh’s radiant beam, and his eyes never met hers for more than a fraction of a second, but slid away like quicksilver – convulsed his thin dark face at sight of her, and he bowed himself the remaining four yards towards her, and proffered the tray.