“But you left,” he said. “Without saying goodbye.” She looked out of the window and he took the opportunity to study again the curve of her cheek and the thick lashes of her brown eyes.
“I had allowed myself to daydream,” she said. “A fleeting sense of wonder.” She smiled at him. “I woke up to find myself a practical woman once more and I realized something else.” Her smile faded and she looked serious, like a swimmer who commits to dive in, or a soldier to whom the order to open fire has just been given. “I threw in my lot with the Ali family a great many years ago and it was time to pay that debt.”
“When you sent back the Kipling, I thought you despised me.” He was aware that he sounded like a wounded child.
“Sent it back?” she asked. “But I lost it in the move.”
“Abdul Wahid handed it to me,” he said, feeling confused.
“I thought it was in my small bag with all my other valuables, but after I got here I couldn’t find it.” She widened her eyes and her lips trembled. “She must have stolen it from me.”
“Who?”
“My mother-in-law, Dawid’s mother,” she said, nodding toward the back room. The Major tried to share her outrage, but he was too happy to discover that she had not meant to return his book.
“Your letters go missing, you are kept from your nephew’s wedding, you are asked to leave your home,” he said. “You cannot stay here, my dear lady. I cannot allow it.”
“What would you have me do?” she said. “I must give up the shop, for George’s sake.”
“If you’ll allow me, I will take you away from here right now, today,” he said. “Under any conditions you like.” He turned and took both her hands in his. “If this room were not so ugly and oppressive, I would ask you something more,” he said. “But my need to get you out of here is more important than any considerations of my own heart and I will not burden your escape with any strings. Simply tell me what I have to do to get you out of this room and take you somewhere where you can breathe. And do not insult me by pretending that you are not suffocating in this house.” His own breath came heavy now and his heart seeming to knock about in his chest like a trapped bird. She turned on him eyes wet with tears.
“Are we to run away to that little cottage we once talked about? Where no one knows us and we send only cryptic postcards to the world? I should like to go there now and be done with everyone for a while,” she said. He gripped her hands tightly and did not turn when he heard a wail from the other room, which was the old lady gabbling in Urdu and calling “Dawid! Come quick!”
“Let’s go now,” he said. “I shall take you there, and if you want we’ll stay forever.”
“What about the wedding?” she asked. “I must see them safely married.”
“Or we’ll drive to the wedding!” he shouted happily, abandoning all sense of decorum in his excitement. “Only come away now and I promise, whatever happens, I will not abandon you.”
“I will go with you,” she said quietly. She got up and put on her coat. She picked up the bag of groceries. “We must leave now, before they try to stop me.”
“Shouldn’t you pack a bag?” he asked, flustered for a moment by the transformation of a momentary passion into cool reality. “I could wait for you in the car.”
“If we stop for reality, I will never leave here,” she said. “It is too sensible to stay. Aren’t you expected in Scotland? Am I not to help with dinner and then read the Qur’an aloud? Is it not raining in England?” It was in fact now raining, and the fat drops splattered on the window like tears.
“It is raining,” he said. He looked out the window. “And I am expected in Scotland.” He had forgotten all about the shoot and now, glancing at his watch, he saw that assuming they kept the usual absurdly early hours, he would likely not make it in time for dinner. He turned to see her teetering on her feet. At any moment she would sink onto the bench and the madness of running away would be gone. Her face was already losing its animation. He recognized the tiny moment before his failure would be understood and accepted. He hung in the space of the room, on the cusp of the silence between them and the wailing from the back room. Feet pounded in the hall. Then the Major leaned forward, reached out a hand, and fastened it around her wrist, hard. “Let’s go now,” he said.
Chapter 22
“I need to find a telephone,” he said. They were out of the city, heading west, and already, through the slightly open window, the gloom of the afternoon seemed colder and cleaner. “I’ll have to find a pub or something.”
“I have a phone.” She rummaged in her shopping bag to produce a small cell phone. “I think they got me one to keep track of me, but I make sure never to turn it on.” As she fiddled with it, the phone gave a series of jangled beeps.
“Horrible things,” he said.
“Ten phone messages,” she said. “I suppose they’re looking for me.”
At an exit that said “Tourist Information,” he pulled into a small car park with toilets and an old railway car turned into an information booth. It was closed for the winter and the car park was empty. While Mrs. Ali went to use the facilities, he poked at the tiny number buttons and managed, on his second attempt, to reach the right number.
“Helena?” he said. “Ernest Pettigrew. Sorry to call so out of the blue.”
By the time Mrs. Ali came back, her hairline damp from where she had splashed her face with water, he had detailed directions to Colonel Preston’s fishing lodge and knew that the key was under the hedgehog by the shed and that the paraffin lamps were kept in the washtub for safety. Helena had been graciously uncurious about his sudden need to use it, though she had refused the excuse of his offer to fetch the Colonel’s fly rod.
“You know perfectly well if he ever got hold of it, he would have to face the fact that he’s never going to use it,” she said. “I’d like him to keep his dream a little longer.” As he said goodbye, she added, “I won’t tell anyone why you called,” and he was left looking at the phone and wondering whether the Colonel’s whispered stories about Helena might be correct after all.
“We’re all set,” he said. “It’s another hour or two’s driving, I’m afraid. It’s just—”
“Please don’t tell me where it is,” she said. “That way I can disappear even from myself for a while.”
“No heating, of course. Probably a bag of coal in the shed. Not much fishing in the winter.”
“And I brought food,” she said, looking at the shopping bag as if it had suddenly appeared. “I didn’t know what I was doing, but apparently I’m making us a chicken balti.”
He put the bag in the boot, the better to keep the milk and chicken cold. He saw a glimpse of tomatoes and onions and he smelled fresh cilantro. There seemed to be some spices and dried leaves in small plastic bags and he felt the squashy contours of a bakery bag containing something that smelled of almonds.
“Perhaps we should stop and get you some—some things,” said the Major, stumbling over images of ladies’ underwear in his mind and wondering where to find the shops.
“Let’s not spoil the madness of escape with a trip to Marks and Sparks,” she said. “Let’s just drive right off the map.”
The lodge was more a tumbledown sheep shed, its thick stone walls topped with a crooked slate roof and its original openings crudely filled with an assortment of odd windows and doors, salvaged from other properties. The front door was heavy oak and carved with acorns and a medallion of leaves, but the neighboring window was a ramshackle blue casement, fitted with several extra pieces of wood on one side and missing glass in one of the panes.
The light had all but gone from behind the mountains looming in the west, and a gibbous moon was making its humpbacked way into the sky. Below the lodge, a rough lawn led down to a narrow cove on a lake that seemed to open out like a sea in the darkness. The Major peered at the soft darker rounds of the trees and bushes crowding the property for a sharper silhouette that might signify a shed. He was about to announce a grid-by-grid search for the promised stone hedgehog when it occurred to him that the broken window might allow entry.
It was cold now and Mrs. Ali stood shivering in her thin wool coat, the tail of her scarf flapping in a sharp wind off the lake. She had her eyes closed and breathed deeply.
