Merryn Allingham - Daisy's Long Road Home

‘And who is being particularly petty?’ He was as perceptive as ever.

She allowed herself a small sigh. ‘Miss Thornberry—the matron.’

‘Ah!’

She read his exclamation rightly. A hospital’s matron was always key. They could be fiercesome women, but most were dedicated to their work and fair in their dealings. This one, though, had beaten her. The woman was constantly niggling; sly remarks that suggested that Daisy, as a newly promoted sister, wasn’t quite up to the job. For months she’d taken the criticisms in silence but today she’d had enough and let fly.

‘I expect the latest trouble will blow over.’ Her voice had a false brightness to it.

Grayson stirred his tea and waited for her to go on. He knew there was more to say and so did she. The job had certainly proved a disappointment, but the real heaviness in her heart came from elsewhere. For years, she’d lived a solitary life and felt proud of her independence. But a moment had come, and quite recently, when she’d had to accept the truth. She wasn’t just alone, she was lonely. A thirty-year-old woman who still hadn’t got life right. She missed the camaraderie of wartime, though it had taken her a while to realise it. And she missed the comfort of a good friend. If Connie were here, she could have confessed her loneliness. But Connie was now Mrs Lawson and living a new life in Canada with her doctor husband. Together they’d decided the old Empire offered better prospects than a ravaged and debt-ridden England. And then there was Grayson. How long had that taken before she recognised how large a void he’d left in her life? But that was something else she wouldn’t admit.

He’d been silent all this time and she felt impelled to speak, to fill the empty air with words, any words. ‘I’m sorry. None of this is important and you haven’t travelled miles to hear me moan. It’s only that today has been particularly difficult.’

‘Don’t give it a thought.’ His gaze finally relaxed. ‘Why have friends if you can’t complain to them?’ There was a studied emphasis on the word ‘friends’, and she was trying to think how best to respond, when a loud burst of music clattered through the adjoining wall.

‘Your neighbour?’

‘She has a gramophone and she likes to play it.’

‘Noisy as well as nosy then. She watched me as I walked along the road — every step of the way.

Next door, Peggy Lee was delivering her final flourish, making it impossible for them to speak. But when the last strains of ‘ Mañana ’ had died away, Grayson nodded his head towards the drab cream wall that separated the two cottages. ‘I take it you’ve tried to negotiate?’

‘I have, but it made little difference and unless I’m to have a stand-up row with her—look, Grayson, forget my neighbour, instead tell me why you’re here. You said nothing about coming.’

He rocked back on the hard chair, his hands in his pockets. ‘If I’d given you advance warning, you might have made an excuse for not seeing me.’

‘I wouldn’t have done that.’

He looked fixedly at her once more, and she found herself lowering her eyes. ‘Things haven’t been good between us, you must admit,’ he said. ‘And I wasn’t sure I’d see you. It was important that I did.’

‘You’re seeing me now.’

She knew she sounded impatient. She hadn’t liked the reminder of how bad things had become. And now she was over the first shock of his appearance, the first rush of pleasure at seeing again the face she’d loved so well, annoyance was uppermost. She was tired and hungry and, she thought confusedly, a little scared. Something bad was about to happen, else Grayson would never have made this trip.

He stood up and stretched his long frame. ‘Can we talk somewhere more comfortable?’

She thought it unlikely. The cottage was rented and the landlord a skinflint. What furniture he’d provided had almost certainly been bought at auction at rock-bottom prices.

‘Will this do?’ She gestured towards the narrow sofa crouching beneath the windowsill, its red moquette worn so thin as to be almost colourless. Grayson followed and perched precariously on the seat’s hard edge. He half turned so he was looking directly at her. ‘I’m going back to India. Not permanently, but I’ve no idea how long I’ll be. I thought it only courteous to a lover, or should I say a former lover, to bid her farewell.’

Daisy’s mouth dropped open. She was stunned, too surprised to speak, too surprised to dwell on being demoted to a former lover. In any case, he spoke truly. Their love seemed to have gone missing somewhere along the way, and right now she hadn’t the energy or the will to try to recapture it.

‘But why?’ she stumbled. ‘Why go back? Why go now?’

She felt stupidly upset. Twice this week India had swum into her world, seemingly out of nowhere, and left her bewildered. Ever since the package from Jocelyn had dropped through her letter box, she’d felt it burdening her mind. And now Grayson had arrived with India on his lips and the burden had just grown heavier.

He leaned back against the unyielding sofa cushion and took his time to answer. ‘Why now? Because there’s trouble. And I’m needed.’

That did nothing to calm her nerves. ‘Trouble? What trouble?’

‘You must have read about the situation—what’s been happening in India since Independence.’

‘You mean the killings? Yes, I’ve read about them. It’s been awful. But what have they to do with you?’ An unspecified fear tightened her face, until she felt her skin drawn hard against her cheekbones. Her voice must have sounded panicked because he tried to soothe her.

‘Most of them have nothing to do with me and, at the moment, the country is generally peaceful. It was the speed of Partition that caused so many problems—huge swathes of the population suddenly on the move, Hindus and Sikhs going east, Moslems west. But people are more or less settled now. Most of them have got to where they want to be, and there are only a few areas where all the old horrors—murder, arson, rape—are still going on. But they’re going on in one spot that interests me in particular.’

If he was trying to soothe her, he wasn’t succeeding. ‘And where’s that?’ Somehow she knew without asking.

‘Yes, you’ve got it.’ He’d read her mind, as he so often did. ‘Jasirapur. At least not the town itself but an area of Rajputana some distance away—sorry, I should say Rajasthan now.’

‘I still don’t see what it has to do with you,’ she argued stubbornly. ‘The Indian authorities must be in charge.’

‘Javinder has to do with me. Do you remember him?’ Grayson smiled as he put the question to her. She knew he was recalling the time they’d spent together at the cantonment hospital.

‘Of course, I remember.’ Javinder Joshi had been Grayson’s assistant in Jasirapur. She had helped nurse him back to health after he’d been badly hurt in one of the riots that had been frequent before the war.

‘He’s gone missing and, since he’s one of our intelligence officers, London is interested in finding him. Which is where I come in. I was the SIS man in Jasirapur before Independence and a close colleague of Javinder’s. They reckon I have the best chance of discovering what’s happened to him.’

‘I don’t see that at all.’

Why was she so anxious to stop Grayson going, she wondered, when she’d allowed herself to drift from him with hardly a backward glance? And what could he do if he went to India? The country was vast, Rajasthan was vast. If the people on the ground hadn’t been able to find Javinder, why should Grayson be successful?

‘Surely, someone in the local office must have searched for him?’