Tossa sat dour and silent in the Mini for some moments after they had made their way out of the lot and turned north for Midshire and Dominic’s blessedly normal home. Then she said in a dubious voice: ‘Of course, for all we know the father may be no better. But at least he ought to have his chance. And anyhow, this one’s contracting out, so somebody has to do something.’ And in a moment, with reviving optimism about the general state of man: ‘We’ll see what your people say about it.’
All Dominic said was: ‘I still don’t see where the catch is, but there has to be one somewhere.’
What Dominic’s people said, almost in unison though they were tackled separately, was: ‘Of course go! You’d be crazy not to. Always say yes to opportunity, or it may never offer again.’ And his mother, viewing Tossa’s grave face with sympathy, added: ‘If the worst comes to the worst, bring her back. We can fight out the rest of it afterwards.’
So they were all there at Heathrow to meet Anjli’s plane, Dorette in mink and cashmere and Chanel perfume, Chloe booted and cased in leather dyed to fabulous shades of purple and iris, with something like a space helmet on her extremely shapely little head and Ariel’s formidable and lovely make-up on her clever faun’s face, Dominic and Tossa top-dressed for the frost outside, but with their modest cases full of hurriedly assembled cottons and medium-weight woollens, mostly organised out of nowhere by Dominic’s mother. Who now had her feet up at home, a drink at her elbow and a paperback in her hand, and only the mildest regrets at facing a quieter Christmas than she had expected. It was a long time since she’d had her husband to herself over the Christmas holidays. And what fools these children would have been to pass up India, upon any consideration, when it fell warm, aromatic and palpitating into their arms.
In the arrivals lounge the privileged crowded to the doors to see their kin erupting through passport control. Dorette swooped ahead in a cloud of pastel mink and subtle fragrance.
‘Darling! Oh, honey, how lovely to see you!’
The girl turned an elegant head just in time to present her left cheek to the unavoidable kiss, adjusted her smile brightly and extricated herself more rapidly and dexterously than Dominic would have believed possible.
‘Hi, Mommy! How have you been? Gee, what a flight, I’m about dead on my feet. Oh, hi! You must be Miss Bliss, Mommy’s told me so much about you, and all about this darling film. My, that outfit’s keen, you know that? It’s just a dream…!’
If ever the selfconscious and phoney and the real and eager and young met in one voluble utterance, this was the time. But it took somebody Chloe’s age to respond to all the nuances at once, and Chloe had relegated herself deliberately to a back seat, and didn’t mean to be turfed out of it. Let Tossa, who prided herself so on her maturity, make her own way through the quicksands. Chloe smiled, kissed the pale golden cheek and made a cool neutral murmur in the small, fine, close-set golden ear.
‘And here’s my daughter Tossa, who’s coming with you to Delhi… And Dominic Felse, a friend of Tossa’s… a friend of all of us…’
‘Why, sure,’ said the clear, thrilling little voice, aloof as a bird, ‘any friend of yours! I just hope I get in as one of the family, too.’ She put a thin, amber hand into Tossa’s, smiled briefly and brilliantly, and passed on to Dominic with markedly more interest. ‘Hullo, Dominic! Gee, I’m lucky, being so well looked after. I sure appreciate it, I really do.’
So this was the poor little girl! Little she was, in the physical sense, well below average height for a fourteen-year-old, and built of such fine and fragile bones that she contrived to seem smaller than she was. She wore a curly fun-fur coat in a mini-length, and a small round fur cap to match, in dappled shades of tortoiseshell, like a harlequin cat. Her long, slim legs were cased in honeycomb lace tights and flexible red leather boots that stopped just short of her knee, and the honey of her skin glowed golden through the comb. A fur shoulder-bag slung on a red strap completed the outfit. But the accessories of her person were every bit as interesting. Her fingernails were manicured into a slightly exaggerated length, and painted in a pink pearl colour, deeper at the tips. The shape of her lips had been quite artfully and delicately accentuated and their colour deepened to a warm rosy gold. A thick braid of silky black hair hung down to her waist, a red ribbon plaited into it. Half her face was concealed behind the largest butterfly-rimmed dark glasses Dominic had ever seen; but the part of her that showed, cheeks and chin, was smooth and beautifully shaped as an Indian ivory carving, and almost as ageless. Sophistication in one miniature package stared up at Dominic unnervingly through the smoke-grey lenses. The obscurity of this view suddenly irked her. She put up her free hand in a candid gesture of impatience, and plucked off her glasses to take a longer, clearer, more daunting look at him.
The transformation was dazzling. Thin, arched brows, very firm and forthright, came into view, and huge, solemn, liquid dark eyes; and the face was suddenly a child’s face as well as a mini-model’s, eager, critical and curious; and presently, with hardly a change in one line of it, greedy. No other word for it.
She was at the right age to wish to be in love, and to be able to fall in love almost deliberately, wherever a suitable object offered. Dominic was a suitable object. He saw himself reflected in the unwavering eyes, at once an idol for worship and a prey marked down.
Over Anjli’s head he caught Tossa’s eye, marvellously meaningful in a wooden face. They understood each other perfectly. No need to look any farther for the catch; they had found it.
II
« ^ »
I was here, once,’ said Anjli, unfolding the coloured brochure of Delhi across her lap with desultory interest. ‘In India, I mean. But I can’t remember much about it now, it’s so long ago.’
‘Your mother didn’t tell us that,’ Tossa said. ‘Was she with you?’
‘No, only my father. She didn’t want to come, she was filming. It was the year before she divorced him. I was only just five. I used to know a little Hindi, too, but I’ve forgotten it all now.’
Her voice was quite matter-of-fact; she felt, as far as they could detect, no regrets over America, and no qualms or anticipation at the prospect of India. She had been brought up largely by competent people paid to do the job, and she was under no illusions about her own position or theirs. A child in her situation, intelligent and alert as she was, would have to acquire a protective shell of cynicism in order to survive, thought Tossa. Anjli knew that there was money on both sides of her family, and that however she might be pushed around from one parent to the other, that money would have to maintain her in the style to which she was accustomed. As for the cool equanimity with which she had parted from her mother at London Airport, who could be surprised by it, when she had spent most of her young life as isolated from her mother as from her distant and forgotten father?
‘He brought me to see his mother, I think, but I don’t remember her at all. I guess she must have been pretty upset at his marrying in America, like that, and staying away all that time. They’re very clannish, aren’t they?’
‘Very much like the rest of us, I expect,’ said Tossa. ‘She’ll be pleased enough when she has you on a more permanent basis, I bet.’
The Indian Airlines plane hummed steadily towards Delhi, half its passengers dozing, like Dominic in the seat across the gangway from them. Strange, thought Anjli, without resentment, almost with appreciation, how neatly Tossa had steered him into that place, though Anjli had designed that he should sit beside her, as on the long flight over. This small reverse she could afford to take in her stride; she had time enough, she calculated optimistically, to detach him from his Tossa before they left Delhi again. As yet they were only one hour inland from Bombay. The adventure had hardly begun.