threat had passed, once for all, would she part company with Purushottam.
She went back into the house, which was full of voices, and made her own quiet voice cut through them all, clapping her hands under her chin with a bright, apologetic smile. Purushottam had been trying for half an hour to raise his courage, and find the right words in which to request that she might be allowed to travel on to the Cape with them, and even in this liberating atmosphere he had found it a hard thing to do. Yet if he did not make some move now to continue the acquaintance, how could he hope to revive it later through the good offices of his one surviving aunt, who in any case would think the match most ill-advised? But Priya simply raised the pitch of her soft voice a couple of tones, and said deprecatingly: ‘I am so sorry, but it is quite time that we should think of leaving now. Please forgive us!’ and everything was resolved.
Ten
« ^ »
On the last eight miles to Cape Comorin the Western Ghats had been left behind at last, the country opened level and green with paddy-fields and palms, broken only, here and there, by small, astonishingly abrupt, mole-hill- shaped mountains that erupted out of nowhere like the remains of old volcanic activity. Most of their area was bare, bluish rock; only in the scanty folds of their lowest slopes did trees and bushes cling.
‘You didn’t tell us,’ said Parushottam, in the back of the Land-Rover with Priya, ‘that you were a Christian.’
She did not take her eyes from the road unrolling dustily behind them; but she smiled. ‘I’m not sure that I am. Not sure
Still she watched their wake; she had been watching it ever since she had guided them out of the town by bewildering lanes and alleys, and round by cart-tracks to reach this southern highway at last. But there was no vehicle in sight behind them.
‘Why are you watching the road so carefully?’ he asked.
‘To make sure that we’re not followed.’
His mind had been too full of other thoughts to have any room for the consideration of his own safety. He had forgotten, temporarily, that it had ever been threatened. ‘We shan’t be followed now? Why should we?’
‘I hope not,’ she said. ‘But there’s no harm in keeping our eyes open.’
The tall gopuram of a temple showed ahead, rearing out of the palms. A large grove of trees surrounded it, but the tapering, gilded tower stood out far above the fronds of their crests, covered with carvings and alive with colours. In five minutes more they reached the gates, and the broad, ceremonial path that led into its courts. There were several cars standing before the entrance, and at sight of the rearmost of them Dominic laughed, and slapped a hand lightly on the wheel.
‘This is where we came in! What did we say? Provincial France has caught up with us again.’
There was no mistaking that old, sky-blue Ford, with the scratches of some ancient skirmish ripped across one door, and dabs of red retouching on the rear wing. The Bessancourts must be inside the temple enclosure with their box camera, doggedly making up the record of their travels. A tall, rangy young man in khaki shirt and shorts and a white headcloth sat on his heels, leaning back comfortably against the enclosure wall, his arms embracing his legs and his head pillowed on his knees, contentedly asleep, though they could only assume that his job was to guard the parked cars and discarded shoes.
‘Shall we stop? Do you want to have a look at the temple?’ asked Dominic, slowing down.
‘No, let’s go on,’ said Larry. ‘If everybody’s going to be making for this hotel at the Cape, maybe we’d better get there ahead of the rest. Not much doubt we’ll be seeing the Bessancourts this evening, is there?’
They could smell the sea, and trace the direction of the wind by the slant of the trees, before they came within sight of village, temple or cape. There were roofs of buildings ahead, more palmyra palms, and then a crossroads where a battered bus had just turned, clearly having reached its terminus. A few houses, small and modest, and a stall selling fruit and drinks, the cheerful stall-holder brandishing a machete to behead the coconuts, and slice a way through to the three pockets of sweet juice in the palmyra fruits for his customers. And that was all.
‘Here we must turn to the right,’ said Priya. ‘Look, that big house – that is the hotel.’
A lane brought them to its gates, and to a parking-ground within. The house was quite un-Indian; it might have been more at home in any expensive Victorian suburb of any northern commercial town in England, and indeed it had once been a British Residency; but it had broad, grassy surroundings, and a few windswept flower-beds, and it looked solid, spacious and comfortable.
‘The first chance I have had,’ said Purushottam buoyantly, ‘to be a proper courier for you.’ And he led the way inside to book rooms for them all. They followed more slowly, and in the dimmer light within looked round them among the panelling and potted palms, glimpsing through open doors and rear windows a sudden dazzling vista of sand, flowing in undulating dunes along the edge of a half-buried road; and beyond that the glitter of water. The Indian Ocean, which had seemed still far away from them, was almost lipping at their back doorstep.
Their rooms were on the first floor. As usual they were all double rooms, but because of Priya’s presence they needed three, so that one of the men was also privileged to enjoy a room to himself. ‘You take that one,’ Dominic said, and took Larry’s bag from the room-boy and dumped it within.
‘Suits me,’ Larry agreed accommodatingly, and followed his belongings.
Purushottam caught Dominic’s eye, and smiled. ‘You feel responsible for me?’
‘No sense in taking any unnecessary chances, you’d better share with one of us. Doesn’t matter which.’ But it did. He was the one who would feel answerable to the Swami for Purushottam’s safety, and that mattered a great deal.
Priya’s room and Larry’s were neighbours, and faced east. The third room was approached by a small side- corridor of its own, and faced south. All three of them opened on a long balcony with railings of ornamental ironwork, supported on painted iron pillars from below. Purushottam tossed his bag on the left-hand bed, and unzipped it in search of a clean shirt. For verisimilitude he had brought away the bag which belonged to Lakshman, but he had put in his own toilet articles and pyjamas and a change of clothes. After the dusty journey he wanted a shower.
