there somewhere, too nearly palpable to be a figment of her imagination, ‘I don’t know what to call you, but since you must be everything in any case, what does it matter? You know all about us, all of us, I needn’t tell you anything.
She had begun to be aware, while she closed her eyes upon this emphatic wrestling with God, that the images were forming in her mind in a kind of insistent but disciplined rhythm, as though the tabla had just struck into the improvisations of the sitar for the first time, halfway into a raga; the key moment when the first acceleration begins, and the first formal excitement. It took her some moments to track this drum-note down, even after she opened her eyes; it was soft and private, felt rather than heard, like the tabla, a vibration rather than a sound. She sensed it throbbing in her spine, gently insistent, and sprang into full consciousness with a shock of wonder and disbelief.
It really existed, and deliberately it was hardly a sound at all, only a very soft, steady, rhythmic pressure, barely even a tapping, against the matting wall at her back. Once she had grasped its source, she began to trace it to its exact location; it had reached the thick, woven wall right behind her, and just above the level of her bound hands. When first she had become aware of it, it must have been approaching, slowly and stealthily, from her right side, testing and waiting all the way for a response. Someone was outside the hut, feeling his way to where she was, demanding an answer from her, while she had been demanding an answer from whatever God was.
The mat wall pressed once, twice, against the small of her back. Painfully she hoisted her bound hands, grown prickly and numb from the tight cord, and thrust outwards with them, once, twice, three times, tapped with impotent fingers, scratched with her nails against the fibre.
Hard fingers pressed back against her fingers in recognition and reassurance. The rhythm of the tabla ceased. Whoever he was, he had found her.
‘He will come,’ whispered the man with the rifle, turning his featureless cotton face towards her for a moment. She saw light – already, even in this enclosed place, there was light of a kind – flow down his sinewy arms and long torso, and die into the pallor of the sadhu’s cloth twisted round his loins. ‘He will come, and this time he will be mine. You want to see him die, you, woman?’
Behind Priya’s back, with aching, insinuating gentleness, the tip of a knife eased its way between the stitches that seamed the coconut-matting wall. She felt the steel touch her arm, sliding by above the wrist without grazing. She heard the first fibre of the first stitch part, and thought it a terrible and wonderful sound, like the trumpets outside the walls of a city under siege. Very carefully she shifted her position a little, sitting forward on the coils of net, and posing her body steadily between her captor and the knife.
They reached the loftiest rise of the dunes, and Purushottam’s headlong march wavered as soon as the ridge- thatch of the distant hut broke the suave undulations of the sand like a clump of stiff grass. He turned and looked at Dominic, seemed to be searching hopelessly for something to say by way of good-bye, and then would have walked on without a word, after all, because there was nothing left to say. But Dominic laid an arresting hand on his arm.
‘No, not yet. Look, it’s only just after half past six. Take every moment you safely can.’ Safely! How could they be sure that the word had any longer a meaning for any of them? How did they know, even, that Priya was still alive? Dead hostages are quiet hostages, make no attempts at escape, identify no suspects. But in so far as there was still any hope at all, they had to preserve it as long as they could.
‘He must see me coming before the deadline,’ said Purushottam, in the level, low voice that had hardly varied its tone since they had found the note. ‘Before seven, not at seven.’
‘He’ll see you the minute you go over that crest. Forty yards. Even if you go at ten to seven, you’ll be nearly halfway to him by the hour. Wait till then.’
He shook his head, but he stayed. ‘Does it matter?’
‘Yes, it matters. The one moment we throw away may be the one that makes the difference. At least give it a chance.’
‘You expect a miracle?’ said Purushottam, with the most painful of smiles. ‘I’ve been thinking – he must have a gun, don’t you think so? I think a rifle. Because he’s set me up as a target he can hardly miss, even at long range. The one thing moving in all this space, and no cover anywhere. Not that I’m looking for cover. And the sea right there at his back – that’s the way he means to get away.’
If he’s a poor enough shot to want me at short range before he can be sure of killing me, he thought, unable to break the habit of hope, I might be able to rush him yet. He wouldn’t be able to take his eye off me then to turn on Priya, and inside a hut that size a rifle will be an unwieldy weapon. If I could reach him, hit or not hit, I might at least be able to give her the chance to get away.
The sun was already well above the horizon behind them, climbing with amazing speed. The dunes put on colour, and became a rippling sea of lights and shadows.
Dominic shook the arm he held. ‘Give me until ten to seven. Promise!’
‘What are you going to do?’ he asked it indifferently, for he knew there was nothing his friend could do to help him. They were all bound hand and foot; for at the least wrong move, Priya would pay.
‘Try and work round by the shore, if I can. I give you my word I’ll keep out of sight.’
‘Impossible. You’ve seen how indented the coast is. It would take you hours.’
It was true; he was only reaching out for something he could at least seem to be doing, to avoid the one thing he could not bear, having to stand here and watch Purushottam walk out to his death without raising a hand to help him. No Sidney Cartons here, even supposing one could be that sort of hero; whoever was in that hut knew very well the appearance of the young man for whom he was waiting. Nobody else would do; and the mere sight of another person approaching would mean the end of Priya. No, there was nothing at all left for him but to watch.
‘Even if you swam every bay and climbed over every headland,’ Purushottam said gently, ‘you couldn’t possibly get near by seven o’clock. You don’t know these seas. It would be suicide to try it.’
Their eyes met, and improbable as it seemed, they both smiled pallidly. ‘Coming from you at this moment,’ said Dominic, ‘that’s good.’
‘If Priya dies,’ said Purushottam simply, ‘I don’t want to survive. But I shouldn’t like to have to apologise to –
