to be taken ashore. She’d been there for some time, wilting in the stifling glare of an unbearable heat with the muddy waves slapping with an uncomfortable violence against the sides of the boat. She was jammed between a fat matron holding a bird cage containing a fast wilting canary and, on her other side, a fretful seasick child, all due to a dispute as to whether Cynthia’s poodle should or should not be caged for the trip ashore. The purser was insistent it should be so, and Cynthia was equally insistent that it should not be. The other passengers were becoming increasingly irritable at the long delay, though Sara was almost thankful for the wasted time as it put off the inevitable a little longer.
She scanned the indistinct mass of faces on the distant shore, her stomach a tight knot of nausea, not knowing if her misery was due to anxiety or seasickness. Was Charles there amongst the crowd, staring out to sea, perhaps regretting his choice of bride or, worse, lying dead somewhere from an all-consuming tropical disease, as her uncle had often predicted? Was she abandoned before even beginning to be a wife? It was impossible to know. Charles was a poor correspondent and during the space of the fourteen months since she’d seen him last he’d written perhaps only half a dozen letters. In vain she’d scanned them for the passionate declarations of love she so longed for. But the contents of his notes were usually about the terrible state of the weather or graphic details of the outbreaks amongst the various castes. She wondered sometimes if he was trying to put her off coming at all, but at the bottom of the page there was his usual declaration, “Love Charles”. That one word kept her hopes for future happiness alive.
At last, Cynthia made her way to the head of the ladder leading down to the longboat, her poodle in her arms and a self-satisfied smile on her face. She had won, as she knew she would.
A group of Indian workers, hired to help the passengers with their luggage, hovered around the launch, their fragile boats rising and falling with an uneasy violence at each surge of the waves, and it seemed must be thrown into the dense yellow water any moment. They watched the passengers with anxious eyes as they jostled for position. Charles had written the region was in the grip of famine and it was clear these men were hungry … hungry with a desperation that made them careless.
Halfway down the ladder the dog began to struggle, being all at once aware of being poised above water. She made a frantic attempt to hide her head under her mistress’s arm, thinking in her dog mind that if she couldn’t see the danger then it wasn’t there. Her struggles became more frantic, the dog’s hard little legs working with a mindless terror, clawing for a more secure foothold against the shiny silk of Cynthia’s gown.
Her mistress let out a piercing scream as the dog threw itself into the air with a yelp of fear.
The poodle fell like a stone. At first sinking from sight, then emerging from the muddy sea where a little wet head could be seen swimming in useless circles just out of reach of the boats. Some of the Indians laughed.
Their lives were too harsh to care about the fate of one small dog, though the shrewd amongst them saw it as an opportunity sent from the Gods.
Sara watched transfixed as one old man stood with shaky determination in the prow of his boat, letting go of his hold on the side. He was a tragic knight, his armour a useless rag serving as a kind of cloak knotted around his painfully thin body and his weapon a gnarled walking stick. Sara cried out in a whisper, “Don’t! Please don’t!”
He was too old to be out competing with the younger men. He should have been resting under the shade of a tamarind tree, smoking a cheroot and enjoying the last years of his life in peace and tranquillity. But, with desperation driving him, fate had decreed otherwise.
His smile was of an unusual sweetness as he reached out towards the dog, murmuring words of comfort and encouragement.
But there lay his mistake; by now, the others had realised the value in saving the dog and all rushed at once to get to the prize first. A sudden lurch of the boat and the old man fell like a shot bird over the side, his ragged cloak black against the sky, barely making a splash. He recovered quickly and swam towards the dog, his arms stiff awkward paddles. There was a hideous battle, an almost comic game of catch-me-if you-can, as the dog seemed to almost deliberately swim further out of his reach.
“Mother! Do something! Poor Fanny!” Cynthia covered her eyes and fell back in a faint.
Lady Palmer called out the price of the dog’s life, and there was a sudden desperate jockeying to reach the dog first, and the old man was forgotten in the rush. An untimely swell from one of the larger boats drove him further away and he called out, a weak and almost apologetic cry. A couple of boats halted, looking first at the old man and then at the dog, but the prize made the decision an easy one.
The old man made a last feeble attempt to save himself, a hollow snatching at thin air, then there was a sudden jerk of his head as though something unseen was pulling at him from underneath the waves.
The thick water rose in a swell and he rolled with it. His face appeared for a moment, and Sara caught the full impact of the certainty of his own death.
Her scream seemed to recall him to life, and he struggled for breath with the last of his strength.
For a transient moment they made eye contact and in his look was a pleading that cut through to her soul. She leaned out towards him as far as she could, stretching out her fingers in a futile attempt to reach him, her eyes fixed on his.
“Try! You must try!” His eyes widened for a brief moment, then flickered and closed, as though resigned to his fate.
A cry, more like a sigh, rang out. “Prema!” Then, with a final thrashing on the surface, he sank under the yellow water.
There was a flurry of panic on deck as the captain ordered a lifebuoy to be thrown. It hit the water near where he’d disappeared, but the old man did not surface again.
The crowd rushed to the side of the ship, peering down into the old man’s tomb, some of them trying not to show how they were enjoying the drama and congratulating themselves on their good fortune to be alive while the old man was with his Gods.
Surely, Sara thought, suddenly hopeful, it’s a trick … The old man’s a fakir and any moment he’ll rise up and the crowd will reward him with a few coins. But he didn’t appear; his life was over in a terrible paltry moment.
The trip to the shore was made in an uneasy silence. The dog was back in her mistress’s arms, unaware of the catastrophe it had caused. Cynthia, though, was a little shaken out of her usual self-control.
“The silly old man …” Cynthia straightened the dog’s wet pink ribbon “… I do feel sorry for him, but what could he have been thinking of? And now he’s paid the price of his foolishness.”
Her mother sat close, patting her daughter’s arm with clumsy affection and murmuring, “My poor child, how dreadful it might have been.”
“It’s all right, Mother. Don’t fuss! It turned out all right after all. Fanny is safe, aren’t you, darling …” she cooed as she wrapped the wet squirming dog more tightly in her pink cashmere shawl.
“It didn’t turn out so well for the poor old man!” Sara spat the words with a bitterness she couldn’t hide. She couldn’t help it, even though she knew the words were the first nails in the coffin that sealed her social fate. Both women turned to her with unmistakable dislike—she had shown her true colours and they’d never forgive her.
She turned away, pressing her palms into her aching eyes, trying to drive the image of the old man’s last moments out of her mind.
“What was he trying to say to me? Prema? What could it mean?” Malika would have called it a bad omen and rushed to place an offering at the temple to ward off further bad luck, but she, as a civilised English woman, could only try to crush the horror of the event she knew would haunt her forever.
News of the disaster had reached the shore, though there were no obvious signs of grief from the crowd, only an air of quiet resignation. From some quarters there was almost an air of gaiety, as though the old man’s death, not necessarily a misfortune