Mourning Raga

But it was for her. Her landlady’s voice called up to her with the promptness of a derisive echo, and she went down resignedly to fend off the inevitable. Distant and guarded, gruffer than usual with defensive tension, her miniature baritone eddied up the staircase:

‘Tossa Barber here – Oh, yes… hullo, Mother! How are you? How is the shooting going?’ Side-track her back into her proper sphere, that was the strategy; but Chloe could always talk twice as sweetly and three times as fast. ‘Yes, well, darling, you know we were going up to Midshire…’

Were going! Dominic stopped wrestling with the recalcitrant lock of Tossa’s big case, and conveyed himself across the room and halfway down the stairs in a hurry, to a position where he could sit and brood balefully over the conversation, and make entirely sure that his interests were not forgotten. Every time she raised her eyes she could not help but see him, shamelessly listening and willing her to harden her heart. Chloe had a particularly annoying way of erupting just when they were all set for a holiday.

Computing the total content of a telephone conversation from one end of it, and the passive end at that, is never easy. With a kingfisher mind like Chloe’s at the far end of the line it was next door to impossible.

‘Yes, I remember you said she had… terribly interesting! Oh, really! Well, but what can I…’ A long interval of the distant purring, while Tossa’s eyes took on a stunned and glazed look first of shock and then of total non- comprehension. Something fearful was going on. Dominic loomed threateningly, and she flashed him a helpless glance and shook her head at him to show she hadn’t forgotten everything they had arranged between them. ‘Where? But… No, but you’re serious? I… well, of course I do see how marvellous, but… So far! And I’d be scared, alone! Oh!… Oooohh!’ she breathed in a long, awakening sigh, and a gleam came to life, far behind the glassy astonishment of her eyes, and grew and grew, like a moonrise. A hint of excited colour flicked her cheeks. Drat the girl, she was falling for it, whatever it was, after all her years of experience with that infuriating, lovely mother of hers. Dominic shuffled his feet and cleared his throat menacingly, and Tossa looked up and smiled at him with the eerie bliss of a sleepwalker. ‘But would she really… for both of us? Well, of course, I do realise it’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance… But, gosh, Mother, I don’t know! I would love to… I bet he would, too… Look, let me talk to him and call you back…’

‘Yes,’ said Dominic grimly, just too quietly to be heard at the other end, ‘you do that! Get her off there and give me a chance to get some sense into you. That Chloe!’

‘A quarter of an hour, Mother, yes, I promise. Give me that number again…’

She cradled the receiver and came drifting up the stairs muttering it to herself, and Dominic gave her his ball- pen to write it down, before she lost herself among the digits. She looked a little drunk, on what manner of intoxicant he couldn’t imagine. She was usually the one who had all the evasions ready when Chloe sent out distress signals. She, after all, could be as cynical as she liked about her own mother; Dominic knew better than to venture on the same terms. He had an instinct for the exact line where his privilege ran out, and he was light on his feet, and could always stop short of it. He took her by the hand and towed her back into her own room. Her knees gave under her; she sat down dreamily on the bed, staring through him into the pale December sky.

‘Now, look, we were going to my parents in Comerford, remember?’ Help, she’d got him talking in the wrong tense now! ‘We are going!’

‘Yes, of course! I haven’t forgotten anything. If you say so, when you know… if they say so, that’s where we’re going. I wouldn’t ditch them for anybody in the world. You know that. But wait till I tell you what she offered us…’

‘Us!’ Yes, give her that, Tossa had made sure that he was included.

‘It isn’t what you think, she doesn’t want us to go to her for Christmas! Not a thought of it! She’s totally taken up with this film, all they’ll do about Christmas is throw a party right there on the set, and get as high as kites, and then go right back to work. That’s the stage they’re at, I’ve seen it all before. No, this is something that only happens once. That’s why I didn’t just say no. I couldn’t! I mean, with only one lifetime, and money not all that easy to come by… Well, what would you have said?’ she challenged warmly.

‘How do I know, until I know what you’re talking about? What does she want us to do?’

‘She wants us,’ said Tossa, her voice growing faint with mingled wonder and disbelief, ‘to take a little girl to India.’

Dominic sat down abruptly on the suitcase and the stubborn lock, as if electing itself a sign and portent for the occasion, clicked smugly into place, ready for off. Though it wasn’t as simple as that; for India, at this time of year, you’d want… what? Not the winter casuals of workaday Oxford, at any rate. Cottons? Light sweaters? Good lord, what was happening? He was taking it seriously, and it could only be some sort of mistake, or somebody’s idea of an elaborate joke. He sat staring at her warily, and pushed resolutely out of his mind visions of temples and royal palms, and the legendary beach at Kovalam, and…

‘You did say “India”? And you’re sure that’s what she said?’

‘I asked her again. She said it twice. She said “Delhi”, too. There isn’t any mistake.’

‘And both of us can go?’

‘She said so. I said I’d be scared alone.’ That was a useful formula, and he knew it; what it meant was: ‘Not without Dominic!’ and he was duly grateful for it. There were many things of which Tossa was wary and suspicious, after her experiences with parents and step-parents, but very few of which she was scared.

‘All expenses paid?’ That was how it had sounded.

‘Money’s no object.’

‘But whose money?’ The only little girl Chloe had was sitting there on the edge of the bed, staring at him with eyes so wide in wonder that the highlights in them soared into silvery domes like the Taj Mahal. And in any case Chloe spent her money as fast as she earned it, not to mention making formidable inroads into her husband’s as well.

‘Dorette Lester’s. It’s her little girl we’re supposed to escort to Delhi.’

‘Who’s Dorette Lester?’ demanded Dominic, unaware of his blasphemy. Only Julie Andrews shed more sweetness and light, but then, the few films he did see never seemed to be that kind of film.