Flowers For the God of Love Read online

  He felt that what he had said disturbed her and Quenella was silent for some moments before she said,

  “I have – dreamt too.”

  “You would not be human,” Rex agreed, “if you had not thought one day that the Fairy stories would come true and you would find Prince Charming and live happily ever afterwards.”

  “That is – only a story.”

  “But it happens.”

  “And now we know it cannot – happen to – us.”

  Before he could answer she added,

  “It may happen to – you. After all Lady Barnstaple said – ”

  “I think you are aware,” Rex interrupted, “that we are talking of a very different type of love from what Lady Barnstaple chatted about and that is the common currency of the gossip-mongers.”

  “You are quite certain that it is different?”

  “Absolutely certain!” Rex replied. “The flirtations and the heartaches that are part of a man’s and a woman’s growing up are only a shadow of the real thing.”

  She looked at him with startled eyes and he went on,

  “It is like the foothills of the Himalayas, which, as you will see, are very beautiful, but when one is there one is always deeply conscious that above and out of reach are the peerless peaks and the untrod snows that challenge every man who sees them.”

  “I understand what you are saying,” Quenella murmured, “but no one yet has reached the summit of the highest mountain of the Himalayas,”

  “I used it just as a simile, but the more you read and the more you study human beings, you will find that some do attain the unattainable.”

  He knew by the expression on her face that that was what she wished to do. As he watched her across the table, he thought that most of the women he had known had been very content in the foothills and had no wish to go any higher.

  As soon as dinner was finished, Quenella arose, saying,

  “It has been a long day and we were late last night. I think we would both be wise to retire early.”

  “I have some work to do,” Rex replied, “but I hope that that you will sleep well.”

  “I usually do on a train,” Quenella replied. “The movement and the mumble of the wheels rock me to sleep.”

  “Then goodnight, Quenella. I hope what we see tomorrow will interest you.”

  “I am sure it will,” she responded.

  She moved with perfect balance through the door that led into her sleeping compartment.

  Rex watched her go, then, although he opened a despatch case that was standing by his side, he found it difficult to settle at once to the papers that required his attention.

  She was certainly different, he told himself, different from the withdrawn, icily cold woman he had married, who he knew had been tense with fear or hatred every time he came near her.

  Tonight Quenella had talked to him in a relaxed manner and he had the feeling, although he could not be sure, that, when they had spoken of love, her thoughts had not immediately turned to the Prince.

  Perhaps she was forgetting and perhaps the horror the brute had aroused in her was receding.

  If anything could effect the miracle of forgetfulness, Rex was certain that it was India.

  It was strange, he told himself, that Quenella should feel that she ‘belonged’.

  If any other woman had said such a thing he would have suspected that she did so intentionally to focus his attention on herself or, more insidiously, just to please him.

  Quenella had spoken in a manner that told him that it was the truth which came from her lips.

  Unlike Kitty and the other women he had known intimately, she had never made the slightest effort to attract him or hold his interest.

  ‘Whatever her feelings for me,’ he said to himself, ‘I find her a strange and interesting phenomenon, not so much as a woman but rather as a human being.’

  *

  In her own compartment Quenella allowed her maid to undress her and put on a very fine muslin nightgown inset with lace.

  Light though the material was, it still was restricting in the heavy heat, which made the cabin seem stifling despite an electric fan.

  Quenella thought with commiseration of the passengers in the Third Class compartments, who, packed like sardines, would find it hard to breathe let alone to sleep.

  “One is never grateful enough,” she remembered her father saying once, “for the small comforts of life.”

  She thought as she lay down on her bed, her back against the soft pillows, that this was indeed quite a big comfort.

  She turned on her reading lamp and picked up some of her books.

  There was so much more, she thought, that she wanted to ask Rex, but she had no wish to bore him and he had been so exceptionally kind in teaching her Urdu all the time they had been sailing to India.

  She supposed now her lessons would end and she thought that however many other teachers she might employ, they would none of them have the same capacity for making everything they discussed so interesting.

  Rex also gave her in every lesson something personal and intimate to take away.

  At night she would go over and over again everything they had discussed and she knew that because he had been her teacher and had told her what she longed to know, she had ceased to be afraid of him as a man.

  ‘Papa would think that I was very lucky to have married him,’ she thought to herself.

  Just for a moment the terror the Prince had evoked was there, his evil face staring at her from the shadows of the compartment.

  Then it seemed as if Krishna, the God of Love, was with her.

  She could see his slim figure, the exquisite grace of his hands playing on his pipe and a smile on his lips.

  Krishna, God of Love!

  Almost without her consciously willing it, as the vision appeared in her mind, she prayed,

  ‘Give me love, Krishna. Lord Krishna, give me love!’

  *

  Quenella must have slept until she awoke as the train rumbled into a Station and there was the usual hubbub on the platform, which by now she had heard half-a-dozen times.

  Her maid had pulled down the dark blinds and Quenella knew that the moment the train stopped, the soldiers who accompanied them as guards would stand in front of Rex’s carriage and hers.

  The screaming voices seemed to increase and she thought that there were several men shouting louder than the rest.

  She would have liked to look out, but, knowing that it was indiscreet to raise the dark blinds, she rose from her bed to go to the other side of the carriage.

  It was impossible while they were travelling to have the window open because of the dust, which would blow in like a heavy film and settle on everything.

  But it was worthwhile even for a few moments, Quenella thought, to breathe air that was not being churned round and round by an electric fan.

  She pulled up the Venetian blinds and opened first the gauze curtain and then the glass window. Across the railway tracks she could see another platform, but there was no commotion on it, only piles of luggage and a number of dark bodies rolled up like carpets, which she knew were men asleep.

  She raised her eyes and saw the stars brilliant in the sky above.

  The air was heavy and, although she breathed deeply, she still felt almost suffocated by the heat.

  Then suddenly she heard a whisper from below her and someone said in English,

  “Open the door! For God’s sake open the door!

  She peered down, but it was impossible to see anything in the darkness.

  She thought that she must have been mistaken in what she had heard.

  But then it came again,

  “Open the door, I beg of you! Quickly! There’s no time!”

  Because the plea was in English, Quenella did not stop to think but did as she was told, lifting the throwover catch that was fitted to all Indian carriages.

  Even as she did so, someone pushed past her into the compartment.r />
  The reading lamp by the bed was the only light and it was covered by a heavy green shade, so for the moment it was difficult to see who had entered.

  But she realised that it was a man.

  He closed the door and pulled down the blinds so quickly that it was almost in one movement.

  Then as he turned towards Quenella she stared at him in horror.

  She saw that he was dark-skinned and there was a cut on his face, which was pouring with blood.

  His clothes, which were exceedingly dirty, were torn and bloodstained.

  As he looked at her, she tried to scream, but she was too shocked and horrified at the moment for any sound to come from between her lips.

  Suddenly he staggered, doubled up in a strange manner and collapsed in a heap at her feet.

  Then she knew that she must scream, but before she could do so he muttered,

  “Daviot – fetch – Daviot!”

  The mere fact that he was still speaking English despite his appearance prevented Quenella from calling for the guard on the platform outside the carriage.

  Instead she looked down at the man sprawled on the floor and saw that blood apparently coming from his side was staining the carpet.

  His eyes were closed, but his lips moved and once again he called out,

  “Daviot!”

  Trembling so violently that it was hard to open the door into the sitting room, Quenella managed it and found that the room was in darkness.

  Guided by the light that came from between the blinds that covered the windows, she moved on her bare feet towards the door that led to Rex’s compartment.

  Because she was so frightened and bemused she did not knock.

  A reading light illuminated the bed and she saw that he was lying asleep, a number of papers beside him.

  He was naked to the waist and she knew that like herself he had been trying to avoid the oppressive heat.

  She had no time to think of anything, not even the fact that she was seeing her husband unclothed for the first time.

  “Rex!”

  Her voice was strangled in her throat and it was obvious that he had not heard her.

  Without thinking what she should do, she put her hand on his arm,

  “Rex,” she called again.

  He was in the heavy sleep of a man who is exhausted, but his eyes opened and instantly he was awake with that alertness which comes to those who are constantly in danger.

  For a moment he stared at her incredulously.

  Then he exclaimed,

  “Quenella!”

  “There is – there is a – man in my – compartment.”

  “A man?”

  Rex sat up abruptly and Quenella felt that he might be about to call one of the soldiers posted outside.

  “He asked for you – by name. He is wounded and bleeding.”

  Without a word Rex sprang off the bed and, tightening the loincloth he wore round his waist, he entered the sitting room and Quenella followed him into her own compartment.

  The man was lying where she had left him and she thought that he must be dead for, even allowing for the darkness of his skin, his face seemed bloodless and his lips were almost white.

  Rex knelt down beside him.

  “Who are you?” he asked gently.

  “E 17 – sir. They almost got – me.”

  The words came with difficulty from between his lips.

  Supporting the man with one arm under his head, Rex looked round at Quenella,

  “There is a first aid box on the table by my bed.”

  Quenella ran back to fetch it and when she returned she saw that Rex had put a pillow under the man’s head and had pulled off the dirty garments he wore above the waist.

  Quenella now saw that he was bleeding from a knife wound in his side and the blood from the cut on his cheek was running onto his chest.

  “Water,” Rex said “But first open the box for me.”

  Quenella did as she was told and then fetched some water from the bathroom in a small basin and a sponge.

  “Towels! As many as you can find,” Rex commanded. “There are some more in my compartment.”

  When she returned with the towels, the man’s eyes were open and she saw Rex give him something to swallow.

  He began to murmur,

  “I’m – sorry, sir. They – were on to me yesterday. I – escaped and travelled here in – a bullock cart – but there were three of them at the – Station.”

  It was obviously very difficult for him to speak and yet whatever Rex had given him was beginning to make it easier and he went on,

  “There is – information I have to – get to B 29 in – Delhi.”

  “I will see that he gets it. Where is it hidden?”

  “In my hair.”

  Rex undid the dirty turban and the man’s hair, not very long but so black that it might have been dyed, tumbled round his blood-stained cheeks.

  Quenella saw Rex take a small piece of paper from it and place it in the cloth that encircled his waist.

  Then he said,

  “You will have to get off the train. They will suspect you might be on it.”

  “I doesn’t – matter, sir, now that you – have the information,”

  “Of course you matter,” Rex said. “We cannot afford to lose anyone in The Great Game.”

  “No, sir – but you must – not be involved – with me.”

  “I don’t intend to be.”

  Quenella stared at Rex in horror.

  Surely he was not going to leave this man bleeding and utterly exhausted when there were enemies outside who were obviously intent upon killing him?

  Then she saw her husband smile.

  “I had better change your appearance a little. Do you feel like sitting up?”

  The man gave a weak smile.

  “I am – much better. How much opium did you – give me?”

  “Enough to take away the pain,” Rex replied. “When did you last eat?”

  “Two – it might have – been three – days ago. It’s hard to remember.”

  Rex looked up at Quenella.

  “We cannot ask for anything,” he said, “but there might be something on the side table.”

  “I will go and look,” Quenella offered.

  She went into the sitting room, switched on one of the small lamps and began to search.

  There was a table where the waiters had placed food when they had served their dinner. Now it was empty except for a white cloth.

  Then she saw that, with the rocking of the train, one of the thick slices of bread that had been served at dinner was lying on the floor.

  She picked it up.

  It might not be very hygienic to eat it, she thought, but at least it was better than starving.

  She took it to Rex and saw that he was skilfully, in a way that told her he was an expert, bandaging the wound in the man’s side.

  “You must get to a doctor and have this stitched as soon as possible,” he said.

  “There is a – doctor who will help me if I can – reach the next town.”

  “You will manage that,” Rex added confidently.

  “This was all I could find,” Quenella said, holding out the piece of bread.

  The man on the floor took it from her and devoured it hungrily like a dog who has not eaten for a long time.

  “I have remembered that there is some chocolate in my dressing case,” Rex said, “and will you at the same time bring me my razors?”

  She looked at him in surprise, but again she obeyed without question.

  She found the razors in a neat leather case and the chocolate was in a packet such as was issued to soldiers when they are on manoeuvres.

  She took it back to her compartment and as she entered she saw to her astonishment that Rex was cutting the man’s hair with a pair of scissors that had been in the first aid box.

  The small pieces fell to the floor round him.

  “You are going to be a Buddhi
st monk,” Rex said. “No one will touch a Holy Man and there is a cover on my bed that is almost the right colour.”

  This time Quenella did not wait for the order for her to fetch it, but went back into Rex’s bedroom. She found the bedspread, which was an attractive golden yellow, and laid it down on her own bed.

  The man was now devouring the chocolate almost as quickly as he had wolfed down the bread.

  Rex was shaving his head, making him as bald as the Buddhist monks she had seen in their golden robes moving through the crowds in the streets of Calcutta.

  “That is a good dye you are using,” Rex observed as he worked.

  “It’s the one – recommended,” E 17 replied, “but I put it on rather – thicker than – usual. It is going to be a devil of a job to remove it.”

  “When are you due back?” Rex enquired.

  “In another two weeks. The C.O. is very understanding. I don’t know who spotted me – but how do we ever know?”

  “How indeed,” Rex nodded.

  He had finished shaving the man’s head and he now looked very different from the man who had entered Quenella’s compartment.

  Some salve that Rex had applied to his face had stopped the bleeding and the opium had dilated his eyes, giving him an entirely different expression.

  “See if you can stand on your feet,” Rex suggested.

  Without being told, but knowing that it was expected of her, Quenella withdrew to the sitting room.

  A few minutes later Rex came in to pass through to his bedroom.

  “We have another four minutes before he must leave here,” he said. “It would be a mistake to run it too fine.”

  She longed to ask him half-a-dozen questions, but she knew that he was too busy to listen.

  He came back from his own bedroom with money in his hand and now because she was curious she followed him into her compartment.

  The man she had saved was standing on his feet and certainly it would have been hard to recognise him.

  The yellow bedspread was draped over his shoulder. Above it, his head, shaved of every hair, gave him the benign aesthetic appearance of the priestly followers of Buddha.

  Rex gave him the money and several tablets, which Quenella knew were opium.