The Track of the Wind. Jamila Gavin

I am so glad you are enjoying the navy.

       I wish I could go on a boat again, but I don’t expect I ever will.

       I am so happy to hear that Ma and Kathleen and everyone have moved into a house. I hope Kathleen will write to me soon and tell me all about it. I expect Kathleen will be a bridesmaid if Michael is getting married. Lucky thing. Will Ma make her a beautiful dress? I wish I could be a bridesmaid with her. Joan Palmer sounds very nice. No wonder Michael loves her if she looks like Doris Day. Will you be able to go to the wedding?

       No, I’m not married yet, though my father thinks I should be. He keeps looking out for someone. He even put an ad in the city newspaper; but no one has asked for me. It’s because I went to England alone, with only Jaspal, so now they think badly of me. I’m glad. Remember how you said you couldn’t marry someone you didn’t love? But if someone asks for me and my father says I must, then I won’t have a choice. I hope people go on thinking I’m bad, then no one will ask for me.

       Yes, I’m still playing the violin, though my father doesn’t like me to. He thinks it turns people away too.

       If your ship stops in India, I hope you will come and visit us. Jaspal would love to see you too. He remembers going to the baths on your motorbike. He would love to have a motorbike more than anything. He is attending school here, but hates it. He always hated school in England too. He’s a very wild boy and I worry about him. Perhaps he should go into the navy.

       Please come and see us if you can.

       Much love from,

       Marvi

      She had brought her writing materials to the palace, – a dip pen, a pot of ink and a writing pad. She kneeled on the flag-stoned floor of the upper terrace, crouching over the paper, thinking out her sentences and trying not to smudge. She chewed the end of her metal-nibbed pen, then dipped it into the ink pot.

      Marvinder finished writing. She placed four small stones on each corner of the page, then decided to play her violin while the ink was drying. She pulled the violin out of its hiding-place and climbed the last small set of steps which took her to the very highest point of the building. She drew the bow across the strings. The sound vibrated all the way deep inside her. It was a good sound – and she wished old Dr Silbermann could hear it.

      After a while, she came back down. The ink would be dry. She was about to remove the stones she had used to hold down the page and take up her letter, when something caught her eye. She stopped, puzzled. She remembered the stones. They had been different shades of grey and white and one was red. She was sure she had put the red stone in the bottom left-hand corner, but now it was up at the top.

      A shadow moved across the wall as silent as a cloud.

      Marvinder hung over the page like a bird caught in a current of air, her thoughts hovering. The eyes without lashes or the protection of eyebrows and lids watched her.

      Marvinder drew back from her letter. She leaned her body hard against the wall and closed her eyes. Perhaps she slept or half slept. The stones seemed to breathe. Strange reverberations shivered through her back like whispers. She fancied that she heard odd words which didn’t come from her brain or out of her mouth, but were whispered through the thick walls. It was as though her own thoughts were translating themselves into sound. They rose and fell out of a babble of murmuring voices like a crowd of people speaking in many different tongues – all foreign to her – except that every now and then a word would rise, make sense, then fall again.

      ‘I want . . .’

      She turned and pressed her mouth to the stones. ‘Did you say, I want?’ she sighed. ‘I don’t know what I want.’

      Time drifted. The ink dried. At last she roused herself. She took away the four stones from the letter and arranged them in a row. From left to right she placed them in order of shade from darkest grey to white. The red one she placed last, just a little apart from the rest. She re-read her letter to Patrick. She put the letter into the violin case. Gathering up her violin and cloth bag with her writing materials, she left the palace roof, gliding down and down the steps, terrace by terrace, till she reached the courtyard at the bottom. Before she went out through the main gateway, she glanced up. A sapling swayed as if held aside. She stared at it without knowing why. A squirrel suddenly spiralled to the ground.

      The next time she returned to the palace and examined the stones they had been re-arranged, left to right from white to darkest grey. The red one was still placed last.