Love in the Clouds Read online

  Chandra had travelled too often on small and uncomfortable ships in Second and Third class accommodation not to appreciate the best when she found it.

  She told herself that, whatever else happened, even if she was sent home immediately she met Lord Frome, she would at least have had the excitement of the journey to remember.

  When after the ship had left port, she went to the dining saloon for dinner, she looked at her fellow passengers with interest.

  It now took only seventeen days to reach India and she knew that for those seventeen days the people she was now looking at would be cooped together in a small world in which all the usual emotions and passions of the great world outside would be enacted in miniature.

  There would be sudden friendships and violent quarrels, there would be those who would use shipboard acquaintances as a means of social promotion and those who would isolate themselves for the very reason that they did not wish to be imposed upon.

  There would also be those who would fall in love, and very likely out of love again, before the voyage ended.

  ‘That,’ Chandra added to herself, ‘is something which is very unlikely to happen to me!’

  Because she was travelling alone, she had been allotted a place at the First Officer’s table. This was not as grand as the Captain’s, which was kept for the most distinguished passengers.

  There were several Army Officers and their wives returning to India after a short leave at home which they had doubtless spent with their children, who had to be left behind and two elderly ladies who were going out to stay with their sons and daughters who were married and settled in India.

  There was one oldish man who looked as if he might be a scholar of some distinction, although Chandra was not sure, and two Officers who were apparently unattached, but she thought did not appear to be the type whose intentions towards her would worry Ellen.

  Immediately after dinner Chandra returned to her cabin.

  As she unpacked the books she had brought with her, she told herself the best thing she could do on the voyage was to concentrate on learning the language of Nepal, which her father had told her was different from those she had spoken in the past.

  As was to be expected, the voyage was very much the same, if more comfortable, as those she had taken before.

  There were bad storms in the Bay of Biscay, the weather was warm and pleasant in the Mediterranean and extremely hot and humid in the Red Sea.

  The food, which had seemed to be of high quality the first week at sea, gradually became monotonous and acquired a tastelessness which was characteristic of food that had been kept in cold storage, a modern invention that had just been added to the P & O Liners.

  Although the other passengers did not ostracise Chandra in any respect, they did not go out of their way to solicit her friendship or make any kind of overtures that she found alarming or embarrassing.

  She told herself that, because they were a nondescript crowd, she was nondescript too and that was how she wanted it.

  At the same time when they reached the Red Sea and the stars were brilliant overhead, she thought that nothing could be more romantic except that she had no one to be romantic with.

  It was only when they saw the outline of the Indian Continent that Chandra felt as if the overture to the play was over and now the curtain was rising on the drama itself.

  At this point there was no need for her to go on with her pretence of being a widow and she could be herself, her father’s daughter, and persuade Lord Frome that she was as necessary to him as he believed her father to be.

  The first step was to find Lord Frome’s servant and, knowing how very important servants were to their Masters in India, Chandra knew it was something that she must tackle with charm and diplomacy.

  Lord Frome’s first report on her would come from the servant to whom he thought he was entrusting her father.

  As the ship docked at Bombay, there was the usual colourful crowd awaiting its arrival, the cheers and noise of the port and little boats encircling the steamer as if they were small fish escorting a whale.

  Chandra moved from her cabin towards the Purser’s office.

  This, she knew, was where Lord Frome’s servant would enquire for her father and she waited eyeing the crowds coming onto the ship and leaving it.

  There was a kaleidoscope of colour, scarlet uniforms, yellow priestly robes, loincloths, saris, turbans of every hue and the noise of a thousand voices like the Tower of Babel shouting, it seemed, in a thousand different languages.

  Then, as Chandra waited, a man wearing a colourful turban approached the Purser’s office and she heard him ask for Professor Wardell.

  She stepped forward.

  “Have you come from Lord Frome?” she enquired.

  He bowed and raised his hand to his forehead.

  “I Mehan Lall, Memsahib. The Lord Sahib send me, meet Professor Wardell.”

  “I am the Professor’s daughter,” Chandra explained. “My father is ill and so I have come in his place. Will you please take me to Lord Frome?”

  She saw the surprise on the Indian’s face and there was a distinct pause before he said,

  “Memsahib wish speak Lord Sahib? He not in Bombay.”

  “I know that,” Chandra replied. “He was to meet my father at Bairagnia,”

  The Indian nodded.

  “Then that is where I will see him.”

  “Memsahib come to Bairagnia?”

  “Yes,” Chandra said firmly, “I am coming to Nepal in my father’s place.”

  Indian servants carry out instructions exactly as they are given and they are not prepared to argue or to improvise. Chandra knew that if she was firm that the Indian would carry out his orders as efficiently as if he was attending her father.

  She realised, however, that he was worried and perturbed that she was a lady and not, as he had expected, a gentleman.

  He did not express his fears, but merely collected her luggage, ordering the porters in a manner that made them hurry to do as he wished. When they left the quay it was in a comfortable open carriage that had obviously been procured before the boat docked.

  As there was some time to wait before the train left, Mehan Lall took Chandra to a comfortable hotel where she could rest and enjoy a cup of tea.

  It was provided for her in the large rather overcrowded lounge with all the ceremony that a meal required in England and, when she had finished, Mehan Lall paid her bill and escorted her to the carriage that had been waiting with her luggage outside the hotel.

  They drove through the crowded streets of Bombay, which brought back memories of the India she had last known in the company of her father and mother.

  But she could see that quite a lot of alterations had taken place in Bombay since she had last been there, there were many new buildings, new hotels, improvements of the roads, but basically it was the same.

  The Indians in dhotis, in saris, in torn rags, in nose-clips, ankle bangles, turbans, topees and bush jackets were all exactly the same.

  When she reached the railway station, she felt as if she had never been away.

  There were the great trains hissing with steam up, the British engine driver standing grandly at the cab of the mail train locomotive, the British conductor with his checkboard at the First Class carriage door, the British Stationmaster at the end of the platform dressed in dark blue like an Admiral.

  Of course there were British passengers like herself stalking down the platform in a miasma of privilege with their servants and porters shouting and kicking the Indian passengers out of the way.

  These were either scrambling into the train for fear it would go without them or feeding or sleeping on piles of luggage that were not intended to leave the station until far into the dim future.

  As Chandra expected, Lord Frome had engaged for her father a First Class carriage with a servants’ compartment next door.

  Ellen had packed for her a padded quilt and a pillow and Mehan Lall a tiffin baske
t which Chandra was certain would contain whisky, soda water, and perhaps some potted meats.

  As usual in India, the comforts arranged for the conquerors of the country were superb and Chandra had nothing to do but step into the carriage and merely tell Mehan Lall where the porters were to put her various pieces of luggage that she would need on the journey.

  When, with his usual polite bow and his hand touching his forehead, he left her, she sat down and pulled the blind over the window to shut out the hawkers shouting in hollow voices and peering at the travellers with beseeching eyes.

  It was very hot. Chandra took off her hat and wiped her face and, as she did so, she felt the tension go out of her. It had been somewhat of an ordeal, even though she pretended to be very calm, to step onto Indian soil alone, to have her tea alone in the crowded hotel, to travel alone to the station and now to be alone in the train which would carry her from the West coast line to the North-Eastern border, where Lord Frome would be waiting for her.

  ‘If only Papa could have been with me,’ she told herself again.

  She knew they would have been laughing at the crowds on the station and enjoying every moment of being back in the India they had loved in the past.

  But even without her father it was an adventure and in case it did not last long, Chandra told herself that she was going to enjoy every moment of it.

  The train started off with the wheels jerking and clattering and the woodwork creaking.

  The noise from the platform with its hundreds of voices seemed to swell into a great crescendo of sound. Hands were waving, although whether to friends or to the train, Chandra was not sure.

  Then the train was accelerating its speed and carrying her away towards the land where the Himalayas stood with their snow peaks vivid against the blue sky.

  ‘Now I am really on my own,’ she mused and did not find it intimidating but instead stimulating, as if this was a new chapter in her life.

  When she was aboard the ship, everything had seemed to become familiar and repetitive.

  Now, when they stopped at railway stations large or small, Mehan Lall brought her food and drink. Her carriage was cleaned and made tidy for the day, cleaned again and made comfortable for the night.

  Mehan Lall telegraphed ahead for what she required to eat and, the moment they arrived at one of the stations, out of the shadows would appear a man dressed in white, carrying Chandra’s luncheon or dinner on a tray covered with a napkin.

  Whatever she ordered, the food always seemed to be the same, a fiery curry, chutney and onions, chapattis to be washed down with fresh lemonade, which was always either too acid or too sweet, never quite right.

  Chandra remembered that she had to eat fast because, before the train left the station the man in white required his plates back and of course to be paid.

  As the train moved, she could see him bowing perfunctorily as he retreated towards his food stall.

  On and on they journeyed, and now Chandra began to be thrilled by the ever-changing view.

  They passed through plains and jungles, barren stony land and green fields where water-bullocks pulled their ploughs and longed for the evening when they could drop into the village pool and submerge themselves.

  There were little scenes as they flashed past which remained in her memory, almost like the views of a child’s dolls’ house.

  A family of gypsies encamped by the embankment, the metalsmiths of India, the women festooned in bangles, earrings and anklets, their anvils beside them, their black tents pitched in the background.

  Several children playing amongst a flock of small goats all so young that they seemed part of the enchantment of Pan or Krishna, the Indian God who also played his pipe of reeds.

  There was always something new and exciting to see – a flickering oil lamp on a village stall that hinted at unseen mysteries.

  There would be long hours under the stars across plain-like land on which occasionally there would be the silhouette of a round topped Mosque or a caravan camped for the night beneath some overhanging rocks.

  To Chandra it was all enchanting, all something that had been a part of her life in the past and now she returned to it with the familiarity of a beloved parent.

  On and on they journeyed and now at last the air was much cooler and she required a blanket to cover her at night while in the daytime she no longer felt stifled by the dry airless heat.

  On and on, until finally after an arid plain, she saw in the distance the outline of the mountains.

  Now she felt excited, but also apprehensive and afraid, much more afraid than she had before.

  The train which had changed engines when Chandra’s carriage had been shunted onto the Bengal and North-Western Railway was now much smaller and the passengers were nearly all men which was unusual in this part of India.

  They were coming into Bairagnia and Chandra rose to put on her sensible white hat and to look as she did so at her reflection in the mirror which was fitted into the carriage wall.

  What would Lord Frome think when he saw her, she wondered, and knew without being told that his first reaction would be one of anger because not only was she not her father but she was also a woman.

  Looking at her face, she wondered why he should dislike women so much.

  She thought she looked quite inoffensive, in fact, as she resembled her mother, it was not conceited to know that she was attractive.

  She had rather a serious look, perhaps because she had spent so much time studying.

  Her small nose was straight and it lay between two large very intelligent eyes, eyes that were grey in some lights and almost purple in others.

  Her hair was not fair and yet it was not dark. The colour of a pencil, a girl had once said derogatorily.

  Chandra thought that this was a true description.

  Her hair did look like a drawing that might have been made with a pencil and it was unfashionably straight instead of curly, as most girls took endless trouble to ensure with crimping tongs.

  There was just a gentle wave in Chandra’s hair which parted in the middle, fell on either side of an oval intelligent forehead.

  It was a face, although she did not realise it, that would make a man who was interested in her look and look again, a face that would be difficult to forget, a face that could haunt someone who stared at it for too long.

  But because she did not parade herself as other women did, because in many ways she did not make the best of her looks, Chandra, like an exquisite drawing could be overlooked when there were colourful and larger pictures around.

  Only those who sought quality would really appreciate the lines of her face that bespoke good bones and see that her eyes had a depth that was not to be found in many women.

  Chandra saw little of this. All she was concerned with was what would be Lord Frome’s first impression and that, she told herself, was something she would find out in the next few minutes.

  She pushed her hair under her hat and, although she was very simply dressed, she wished she was wearing riding clothes because they would look more serviceable and perhaps more masculine.

  Then her sense of humour made her laugh.

  If she attempted to look like a man for Lord Frome, she was bound to fail. He had to accept her or repudiate her as she was. It was not her appearance which should concern him but her intelligence.

  Slowly, letting off an immense amount of steam, the train came hissing into the station.

  It was a small station and there were therefore not the huge crowds there had been in Bombay or at other stations where they had stopped en route.

  But there were the usual Indian sightseers, the usual family that would be travelling not today, not tomorrow but perhaps in a week’s time, who had settled down to live on the station in the meantime just in case they missed the ‘puffing monster dragon’ of which they were so frightened.

  Chandra saw Mehan Lall come to the door of her carriage.

  He opened it preparatory to speak
ing to her and as he did so she heard the voice she had heard before in her father’s study say,

  “Here you are, Mehan Lall, and only three hours late, which must be a record! Where is the Professor?”

  As he spoke, Lord Frome stepped in through the open door of the carriage.

  He saw Chandra and froze in his tracks.

  “I beg your pardon,” he murmured. “There has been a mistake.”

  “There is no mistake, Lord Frome,” Chandra replied, holding out her hand. “My name is Wardell. I am Professor Wardell’s daughter.”

  “Professor Wardell’s daughter?”

  Lord Frome spoke slowly as if he was keeping control of his voice and, as he spoke, he looked around the carriage.

  “And where is your father?”

  “That is something I have to explain to you,” Chandra replied. “Do you wish to hear it now or when we have left the train?”

  She thought for one moment that Lord Frome would rebuke her for her impertinence.

  Then he asked and his voice was sharp and abrupt,

  “Are you telling me that your father did not come with you?”

  “He is in England.”

  Lord Frome’s lips tightened and for the first time Chandra was able to look directly at him, taking in his appearance.

  He was good-looking, she thought, decidedly so, in a hard impersonal manner which made her think that she had been right in disliking him even when she had only heard his voice.

  He was tall, broad-shouldered and in a way very English and yet there was something else, something which seemed to exude from him almost like waves of magnetism.

  It was an authority, a determination, willpower, Chandra was not certain which or perhaps all three, but it made him awe-inspiring even though she told herself that there was no reason why he should be.

  “Very well, Miss Wardell,” he said sharply. “Of course I wish to hear your explanation and perhaps it would be best for me to take you to the Dak bungalow where I am staying.”

  Chandra thought for a moment that, as if taken by surprise, his voice was not so peremptory as it had been previously.

  She had the feeling that, if it was possible, he would have liked her to stay on the train. But, as this was obviously impossible, he had to invite her to the bungalow which she suspected would be somewhat inadequate.