The Distant Kingdom Read online

  It was a profoundly emotional moment. The four of them stood there in silence, as though unable to find a way of breaking it. Then Charlie said imperiously:

  ‘Mama, Annie and me are very hungry. When’s tiffin?’

  The pattern broke, the adults laughed, and life seemed to re-form around them all. Edward started to urge his son-in-law forward again, saying over his shoulder to his grandson:

  ‘It’s ready now. And we’ll all have it together today in the dining room.’ He turned to his daughter: ‘I thought you’d prefer that to banishing them to the nursery today, Perdita.’

  ‘Thank you, Papa. I don’t think I could have done that, after … I mean, just now.’ Charles put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a brief comforting hug before letting her go to pick up Annie and carry her towards the dining room.

  It seemed very strange to Perdita to be sitting at a smooth, polished table once again, drinking claret as: smooth as butter from stemmed crystal glasses, and eating thin slices of chicken in a delicately spiced, creamy sauce from flowered porcelain plates with silver knives and forks. The contrast brought the memories she was trying to bury rushing back and she found it difficult not to cry out. To steady herself, she said something to Charlie and then noticed that he and Annie had forgotten the weeks at Jellalabad and had reverted to the manners they had learned in the village and were pushing the food into their mouths with their fingers. Marcus, too, had some trouble finding the food on his plate to cut it up and fork it to his mouth without dropping bits into his lap. Conventional table manners seemed so unimportant after the events of the last months that Perdita could not rebuke the children; but she looked apologetically towards Edward. His smile and gestures made it very clear that he understood.

  None of them talked very much. There would be questions later, but for the moment he was content simply with the knowledge that they were all safe. Their gaunt faces, and a certain, wild, bruised look in Perdita’s eyes, as much as the tenseness of her smiles, gave Edward some idea of what must have happened to them all. He had heard reports of the retreat and it horrified him that his daughter and the children should have had to witness such things. For Marcus he had tremendous sympathy, but he was, after all, a soldier and such risks were part of his chosen way of life. But for Perdita, who had been frightened almost into imbecility by infinitely less, he was seriously worried. He and young Byrd would just have to try to help her relax and forget what she had seen.

  During the days that followed, Edward and Charles Byrd did their best to create an atmosphere of normality while Perdita and Marcus did their best to respond, but both found it difficult, for with relaxation came a whole army of troubling emotions. Perdita came to feel that she was cut off from her father and Charles by what had happened, and she was angry, too, that they seemed not to understand that. She realized that when they talked of unimportant things or laughed at trivial pleasantries they were trying to help, but it felt like insensitivity. Longing to talk of what had happened, she did not know how to start and could not believe that either of them would understand. Frustrated and unhappy, she tried to concentrate on helping the children and Marcus over their own difficulties of adjusting back into normal life.

  Once the first euphoria of return was gone, they were all at a loss to fit into the life they had known before the war. They had become used to spending all their energies to stay alive, working out how to conserve their food and organize their clothes for enough warmth to prevent death from exposure; it seemed impossible to either that they should once again spend their lives in visits, pleasure parties and polite conversation. Marcus had his blindness to battle with, as well as the difficulty of coming to terms with what had happened, and Perdita ached for him as he tried to learn his way about the house, feeling gingerly along the walls and coming to grief all too often as he misinterpreted one of the sounds, scents or touches that he had to use for signposts. Each time it happened, she would be there to help and he clung to her as the only safety in his dark world.

  One morning Perdita was just leaving the breakfast room with Edward when they heard an ominous crash from the drawing room. She left her father to run into the long sunny double room.

  ‘Marcus, are you hurt?’

  He was standing by the little golden table between the windows. It had once held a beautiful plain Chinese vase, whose celadon glaze picked up the green in the silvery silk rug on the floor. But now the broken porcelain was scattered around Marcus’s feet like the petals of a dead flower. One of his hands gripped his stick so tightly that his knuckles stood out sharp under the skin; the other covered what had once been his eyes.

  ‘No, just vilely clumsy,’ he answered. ‘Whitney?’

  ‘Yes, Beaminster, I’m here. Don’t even think about the vase. It is easily replaceable,’ he said, looking at the pretty shards with regret.

  ‘I am most desperately sorry. I … I was just feeling it, trying to see what this house looks like: smooth, lovely as I remember it, civilized. And then I stumbled or something. I shall keep my hands to myself from now on.’

  Edward walked over to his son-in-law and took his arm.

  ‘My dear boy, don’t talk like that. The vase is of no consequence. Your doing whatever you want to find your way here matters far more. We all know …’ He stopped, thought for a moment or two, choosing his words carefully, and then said, ‘We all know how difficult it must be for you, although we can only imagine what it must feel like.’

  Marcus said formally:

  ‘You are very good.’ He turned his head as though searching for his wife. She went to him immediately and when he felt her touch and smelled the scent of the rosewater she had used ever since their return, his hands relaxed. She led him to one of the sofas and talked gently to him. Edward left them to go in search of Charles Byrd.

  He found him in the cool library, trying to get to grips with his work. Charles looked up as the door opened and, seeing Edward, he closed his books and laid down his pen.

  ‘Charles, I’m sorry to disturb you, but it’s important. Would you take her out somewhere this afternoon?’

  ‘Of course, sir, if she’ll come; but every time I’ve tried to suggest such a thing she’s refused. She seems to want to spend every minute with Beaminster or the children.’

  ‘I know, but it can’t go on. She hasn’t been out of the house since they got back. She looks terrible; I know she’s not sleeping. If she can’t lay down responsibility for them all and try to learn to forget what has happened, I am afraid she will be really ill.’

  ‘That’s what worries me, too. She seems so locked in, as though you and I hardly exist for her. And she won’t talk about any of it, although he will. She may need some persuading to come with me.’

  ‘I’ll get Beaminster to help,’ said Edward, and went to find him. As soon as they were alone, Edward explained what he wanted.

  Terrified at the idea of being without her, even for a few hours, Marcus nevertheless understood and, suppressing his instinctive protests, said:

  ‘Yes, I’m sure she should get out for a while. Ask Byrd to take her somewhere where there are flowers. Hush, now. I think that’s her step.’

  They both turned towards the door and it was indeed Perdita who opened it. Marcus held out his hand and when she had taken it, said, ‘Your father has just offered to take me for a drive this afternoon so that I can get out for a while. Will you be all right? You could always ride somewhere. I expect Byrd would take you.’

  Edward watched her immediate recoil and quickly said:

  ‘There isn’t room in the curricle or I’d ask you to come with us, but you won’t mind, will you? Beaminster badly needs to get out of the house for a spell.’

  ‘Of course not. Marcus, I am so sorry that I didn’t realize.’

  He smiled and shook his head.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Perdita. But ride with Byrd; it would do you good.’

  It seemed too exhausting to argue when they were both so set on t
he plan.

  ‘Very well,’ she said apathetically. But later, when she was riding beside Charles away from the house, she wished she had refused.

  Protected in Whitney House, she had not realized that the Simla season was in full swing around her, and she was appalled by the number of people who greeted Charles and tried to waylay them both. She recognized very few, but everyone seemed to know who she was and they all wanted to say something about the war.

  They were full of congratulation for her escape and apparently sincere concern for her health, but she found them horrible. She had felt cut off from her father and Charles by their ignorance of the things that had wrenched her out of the cocoon of their old comfortable life together, but now it seemed that the Simla set who greeted her so curiously stood on the far side of a deep dramatic chasm, and she looked at them with fear and incredulity.

  They were so like their predecessors in dress and manner that behind every one she could not help seeing the ghosts of the dead. Maria Jamieson, who had once stood just there by Stirling Castle in just such a buttercup-coloured promenade gown and leghorn bonnet, had been thrown out of a camel pannier into the snow, shot, and then set upon and mutilated by tribesmen armed with knives. These people, with their smooth faces and hands and their eyes empty of everything but trivia, knew that men and women had died, but they did not know how. Fears they had, but they had never seen their most nightmarish fears made manifest.

  Their compliments filled her with disgust and their questions with terror. Before she and Charles Byrd had even reached the edge of the town, she whispered to him:

  ‘Charles, I can’t bear this. Will you take me home?’

  ‘Hang on a little longer, Perdita. We’ll be out of the town in another ten minutes and then there won’t be any more people.’

  Her blue eyes darkened and she said:

  ‘I hate the way they look at me.’

  ‘It is only because they know a little of your story and are full of sympathy.’

  ‘They know nothing,’ she answered and turned her head away.

  Charles looked sideways at her pale, set face and wondered how he was ever going to break through to her. Like her father, he was convinced that she would have to talk about what had happened to her before she could come to terms with it and lose the brooding despair that he could see in her eyes. But he was sure, too, that any probing on his part would drive her further back into silence.

  He found it almost unbearable to have to watch her like that, longing to help, yet unable to reach her. Sometimes he thought that if he seized her and woke some physical response in her she might be shocked out of her frozen isolation, and he had an idea that her father felt the same. But some quality of her silence made her inviolate, and he could not touch her.

  He had decided that it would be useless to take her to the falls, in spite of their joint memories of the valley, because it would be full of picnic parties and promenaders, and so they turned off the road, up a steep path to the left towards a tiny upland plateau he had discovered. It had no river or waterfall to excite the curiosity of the Simla visitors and no one ever went there.

  When they reached it, he helped her dismount and, with a strange sense of déjà vu, tethered the ponies and urged her to walk with him to the far end of the little meadow, where white roses fountained up the grey rock of the mountainside. Perdita seemed to breathe more easily now that they were alone, and he thought that she looked around with pleasure. But when she had reached out to pick a spray of roses and held it to her nose for a moment to inhale its sweet, sad scent, she looked at him helplessly and said:

  ‘Oh, Charles. It is all so lovely, but I have no place in it any more.’

  Very much at a loss, he walked towards her until they were only about a foot apart. He did not touch her, but said quietly:

  ‘Why not, dear?’

  This time she tried to speak but could find no words. The roses dropped to the grass and she brought both hands up to cover her face. He put his hands gently round her wrists and pulled them down. She let him do it, but said:

  ‘You see, I can’t talk even to you. It’s as though there is an abyss between me and everyone else. I am cut off from anyone who was not there.’

  ‘There are bridges, Perdita, that can cross anything.’ He looked at her bent head, knowing that if he said the wrong thing now, it would take him weeks to get back to the position they had reached. He kept his hold on her wrists.

  ‘What is between us is enough to build any kind of bridge if we want it enough.’ She looked up and he was shocked at the despair in her tired blue eyes.

  ‘Help me, Charles. Please help me.’

  At that he released her wrists and gathered her into his arms.

  ‘I’ll help you, Perdita. Trust me.’

  She let him hold her and for a few blessed moments the snow and ice and blood she saw everywhere were pocked out. He murmured softly:

  ‘I love you. I can help you if you will let me. I love you so.’ Then her moment of peace ended. She stiffened and withdrew from him. He let her go, but took her left hand in his right.

  ‘Let’s walk a little.’

  ‘All right,’ she said and took a deep breath. ‘Oh, Charles, it is so wicked of me to behave like this when no one has done anything to me, but I can’t make myself stop. There is Marcus, who suffered all that so bravely while I, unwounded, can’t pull myself together. There is nothing to fear any more but I can’t sleep. We are all four safe, but I weep all the time over nothing. I feel so weak.’

  ‘My dearest, even if nothing was done to you, what you have seen is enough to stop anybody sleeping; and you must be so tired that of course you cry. But weak? Only physically, Perdita, from privation and anxiety. No one who has done what you did could be described as weak.’

  She stopped and rounded on him, her sad eyes darkly angry.

  ‘What do you know of what I did? What can you possibly know?’

  Taken aback by her sudden passion, Charles could only say doubtfully:

  ‘Only what Beaminster told me last night after you’d gone to bed. My dear, don’t look like that. He told me that without you, he and the children would be dead; that it was your courage and endurance that kept them all going. And your forethought in making an ally of that groom of yours. I have known very many women in my life, but none who could have done what you did.’

  She shuddered and turned away from him. But he caught the glint of tears on her cheek. Concerned, deeply puzzled, he walked on a little way. Then he turned back to where she stood looking up towards the hills, with her upper lip clenched between her teeth and her hands gripping each other.

  ‘Perdita, tell me, please tell me.’

  She shook her head dumbly. Then she released her lip, and he saw that she had actually bitten into it, that there was a smear of blood on her teeth.

  ‘I can’t, Charles. Don’t you see? Don’t you understand? Unless you were there, you can never know what happened. No one can begin to understand who was not there.’

  Mastering a sudden equally angry retort, he took off his gloves and pulled out his handkerchief to wipe first her tears and then, very gently, the blood from her cut lip. He peeled away her yellow kid gloves so that she could feel the warmth of his hands and said:

  ‘Perdita, I know that I left you in Caubul when you were so frightened, and that while you faced hell in those passes I was safe in Lahore, and because of that I have no right to speak to you of anything that happened in Afghanistan. I understand that by leaving you to suffer alone, I have forfeited any position I might have had in your regard, your life; but you must believe that I want only to help.’

  She heard real grief in his voice and somehow that broke through her own. Aghast at how she had misled him, she poured out words of apology.

  ‘Charles, Charles, that wasn’t what I meant. You must believe me. I never even thought such a thing. I used to wish desperately that you were with me, so that I should not be alone, that I coul
d rely on you to tell me if I was right or wrong. But all the time I was also glad that you weren’t. No one who saw what happened could ever have wished another human soul to be there. You can’t think I blame you for not being there.’

  His voice was hoarse, and she saw him blink once, twice, as he answered:

  ‘What else could I think?’

  She leaned forward against him, and put her arms round him, one hand stroking the back of his neck, wanting now to comfort him for what she had only just understood. Then she let him go, and went to sit on a flat, sun-warmed rock at the edge of the valley. When he joined her, she said:

  ‘Charles, there is such an immense distance between the person I was when you knew me and what I have become now that I don’t think I could explain to anyone who was not there how it happened. The gulf is too wide.’ His tense features relaxed a little. She went on: ‘You have always been so independent, so untouched by the things people say, that I did not imagine you could have thought such a thing.’ She was relieved to see a trace of his old mocking smile sliding into the green eyes that had always been so expressive.

  ‘Well, I have never felt like this before. I haven’t any practice. I’m sorry, dear,’ he said, slowly coming to understand that his unhappiness had reached her as his concern and care never had. He tried to go further. ‘I suppose it is because I have felt so guilty at leaving you.’

  She was touched by that too, for she of all people knew what guilt could do, and she let her head droop sideways on to his shoulder. He put his arm round her and they sat, silent and at peace for once, until a growing coolness reminded him of the time.

  ‘Come on, Perdita, if we’re to reach Simla by dark, we must go now.’

  She got up quickly, remembering Marcus and her children, who had been out of her thoughts for the first time since their escape. Charles bent down to brush the bits of grass and fallen rose petals from the skirt of her habit. Then he fetched their gloves and went to collect the ponies.