The Game

exclamations of surprise, but then she remembered that I was safely married, and invited me to join them.

“My, Mary, haven’t you gone dark!”

You don’t know the half of it, I thought, and accepted the invitation to coffee with some remark about the strength of the sun at these altitudes.

It was Sunny who asked the question. “Where is your husband this morning?”

“Oh, nothing would do but that he had to go off and climb some mountain or another, can you believe that? So vexing, he’s simply abandoned me here at the end of the world. No offence meant, Captain Nesbit.”

“None taken; I agree there is not much to occupy a young woman in Simla at this time of year.”

“Come with us,” Sunny piped up. I forbore to look at my wrist-watch, but out of the corner of my eye I saw Nesbit pull his own watch from his pocket and note the time; I had to agree, even for me thirty seconds was something of a record for the manipulation of innocent victims. I beamed at dear, fresh, pretty, boring little Sunny.

“Oh, I couldn’t do that. What do you call it, ‘crashing’ your party?”

“Oh baloney. Mama, tell her she has to come along. Tommy’s friend would think it was posalutely nifty.”

I blinked, but the phrase seemed to indicate affirmation, and although I couldn’t imagine having the temerity to invite myself to a maharaja’s house party, that is precisely what I seemed to be doing. I put on my most lost and wistful expression to say, “Well, it would be perfectly lovely. What do you think, Mrs Goodheart?”

Had I been an unmarried woman, she’d have abandoned me in the snow without a gram of compunction, but a matronly companion for her daughter might have its advantages. By providing contrast to the child’s looks and sparkle, if nothing else. “It does seem a bit forward of us, but . . . I know, I will ask Thomas to cable his friend, and see if we might bring another guest. Seeing as how we’re stuck here for the day, anyway.”

Sunny clapped her hands and I said, “That is very generous of you, Mrs Goodheart,” and to the disappointment of both women Nesbit took his leave, pleading the demands of work. Mrs Goodheart eyed the heaps of snow with no enthusiasm and declared her intention of returning to the hotel, but I suggested that Sunny might enjoy a walk through the town. The older woman hesitated, then concluded that I was capable of guarding her baby girl from harm in broad daylight, and agreed.

We began at the skating rink, hiring skates and edging out onto the uneven ice. It had been so long since I had been on blades, I clung to the rail like a child, but to Chicago’s daughter ice was a lifelong companion, and she sailed merrily back and forth, her cheeks pink as a china doll’s, her teasing laughter ringing across the trees. My ankles were watery when we turned in our hired skates, and we paused to drink a cup of sweet tea sold by the establishment.

I used the moment of leisure to question my young companion. “It was a lovely surprise to see you,” I told her. “But I can’t really imagine what you’re doing here.”

The innocent did not hesitate to answer. “I know, Simla’s not much compared to Jaipur or something. But Tommy wanted to see it, and the maharaja isn’t at home until tomorrow. We had thought to go to Khanpur today, or at least go back down today and head for Khanpur tomorrow—what a fantastic train ride, isn’t it? All those tunnels? But then today the coolies wouldn’t work, so we’re here for longer. I’m glad; it gives us a chance to see something of each other. Have you finished? It’s pretty chilly, sitting here.”

We returned our cups, and Sunny tucked her arm into mine as if we’d been friends for years.

“I have to say, it’s absolutely fantabulous of you to have found something that I can do better than you. I’ll bet you planned it out.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Oh, Mary, you can do just everything. You know everything, you’ll talk to anyone, you do all these things that just give me the heebie-jeebies, sometimes I feel about six years old around you. But I am so glad you’re coming with us to see Tommy’s maharaja—a genuine maharaja, for gosh sake! I just know that when I stand there in front of him my lips will just freeze up, but with you there it’ll make it easier, sort of following your lead.”

I looked down at her fur-covered head, astounded. Although why should I be? Elaborate fronts were often constructed to conceal doubts and insecurities. I laughed, and said, “Just think, you’ll probably be the first Flapper to reach Khanpur.”

“What a nifty title for a book—The First Flapper in Khanpur. When I write my memoirs, I’ll thank you for the name. Where are we going now?”

“Shall we take a look at the native bazaar?” There would be no chance of stumbling across Holmes; he and Bindra would be long gone, on the first train out of Simla to retrieve the travelling show and make for Khanpur, questioning people about O’Hara all the way.

“Oh, that would be fun! I wanted to go into those shops yesterday when we walked through with Mama, but she took one look at them and said they were too dirty and that we’d probably get robbed.”

“I should think they look worse from the outside than they are.”

“And do you know, it was funny to see you come into the tea shop this morning? We’d just been talking about you yesterday.”

“Oh yes?” I asked, warily.

“Yes, Tommy swore he’d seen a native that looked just like your husband, there in the bazaar, can you imagine? I mean, anyone less like an Indian than him, I can’t picture, and he was squatting down at the side of the road like they do, trying to beg some money off Captain Nesbit.”

“It’s not likely to have been my husband,” I assured her mildly, squelching the alarm I felt at Goodheart’s unexpected perceptiveness, but she burst out laughing at the thought.

“Of course not, silly, it’s just that Tommy was reminded of him, and so we were talking about you a little, telling Captain Nesbit about the voyage out, that’s all. Say, do you think we could find a sari in this bazaar? That one you wore on the ship was posatively dreamy.”

“We’d be more likely to find a sheepskin coat than a silk sari, but we can look.”

We found many things, from a dozen bright, rattly bangles for Sunny’s wrist to an embroidered cap for Tommy’s head, including two sari-lengths of silk for the girl, one bright green with a silver border, the other saffron-yellow with a heavy stripe of darker orange, along with their under-skirts and blouses. Next door lay a shop with a dusty display of necklaces in the window, a place dark and mysterious enough to have belonged to Kim’s Lurgan Sahib; with a squeal, Sunny dived inside.

The shopkeeper was no teacher of spies, but we did make him a happy man. Something about his wares, which were rough to the point of primitive, appealed to the girl from Chicago. And I had to admit, she had a remarkable eye for the unlikely treasure, uncovering a shimmering breastplate of opals set in native gold that added five years and a lifetime of sophistication to her face. I was fingering a heavy necklace made of amber beads when she snatched it from my hand, turned me bodily about, and propelled me over to the only clean surface in the shop, a looking-glass. Standing behind me and craning to see around my shoulders, she pushed the silver amulet-charm I wore under my collar and fastened the amber around my neck in its place, chatting all the while.

“I don’t know why you wear that funny old thing, it’s nowhere near as nice as some of the pieces you wore on the boat. There, that’s better,” she said, and exclaimed, “Oh, Mary, amber is so tasty on you!”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Sunny,” I said, reaching behind my neck for the clasp.

She slapped at my hands and urged me at the glass. “I mean it, Mary. Look!”

I looked, and saw a pale-haired, scrubbed-looking woman transformed by a wealth of Baroque colour riding her collar-bones. The uneven stones of the necklace, graduated in size from cherry-pit at the top to a baby’s fist at the centre, were the deep and cloudy orange of good amber, with tantalising slices of shimmering clear stone twisted through them. It looked like nothing I would wear; that, in truth, was a great part of its appeal. Nonetheless, I reached up to unfasten the clasp, and handed it to the man. Sunny, however, grabbed it first and dropped it beside the bangles, the opals, and the other pieces under whose spell she’d fallen.

“We’ll take all of these,” she told him.

“We’ll take none of them,” I corrected her, and when she began to sputter in indignation, I turned to the man and started the age-old bargaining rituals of the East.

In the end, I beat the price down so that the girl had the amber for nothing and saved a third of his original price on the opals. Pleased, she gathered up the heavy orange beads and pressed them into my hands. I protested, and tried to give them back to her, but when she started to look hurt, I thanked her, and subsided.