Daisy's Long Road Home

He drifted away towards the window and seemed to be watching the small boy on the pavement opposite trying to launch his new kite on a near windless day. But she knew he wasn’t seeing the child; in thought he was back in India and very soon he would be there in body too.

‘Sorry, daydreaming,’ he said apologetically. ‘You still haven’t told me what was in this mysterious package.’

She joined him by the window and, side by side, they stood looking out on the now empty street. She was back in control of her feelings and able to tell him calmly what she knew.

‘When Jocelyn finished working on the bungalow, the colonel asked her to sort out the regimental stuff. Not the obvious things that were to be shared between the two countries—equipment, furniture, pictures, the mess china—those kinds of things. But the odds and ends that no one knew what to do with. It’s not only bungalows that collect unwanted stuff.’

At the thought of those odds and ends, that unwanted stuff, the tight control she’d forced on herself began to waver and it was a little while before she could go on. ‘Anish’s belongings were there.’ Even now it hurt to mention him.

‘I see.’

She knew that he did. More than anyone, Grayson was aware of how Anish’s death had haunted her over the years.

She struggled to find a lighter note. ‘The adjutant was tired of trying to find someone who would take them, so he was delighted when Jocelyn put in an appearance. Apparently he’d spent a lot of time attempting to trace relatives, only to discover when he found them—I believe the mother’s family live not too distant from Jasirapur—that they wanted nothing to do with it. Anish may have been a hero to his regiment, but he was someone his family wished to forget.’

‘That’s hardly surprising, is it? You told me yourself there was a deep rift between Rana and his uncle.’

‘There was, but it’s still painful to think of.’ The silence stretched between them before she began again. ‘After that, the adjutant looked for someone in the father’s family. But that failed too. The Ranas are somewhere in Rajasthan, but he couldn’t locate them. Captain Laughton sent several messengers around the region, but no one came forward. I don’t believe Anish had any contact with his family, not after his father died.’

‘So Jocelyn sent you his things?’

‘Not things in the plural. Just one thing. The rest were auctioned for regimental funds. She sent me something she thought I might like. She said she knew how close I was to him.’

Her voice had dropped to little more than a whisper. ‘It was a purse, a small pink purse made from the softest leather and fastened with a crimson drawstring. When I unpacked it, it smelt of India. The purse was very pretty,’ she went on quickly, ‘though not terribly practical. But I don’t believe it was ever supposed to be. It must have belonged to Anish’s mother, perhaps the only thing of hers that he kept.’

Grayson looked at her for a moment and then said gently, ‘I can see that Jocelyn’s letter has dredged up bad memories for you.’

She was grateful for his understanding. ‘I’ve pushed them away, you know. The memories. All these years since I left India. Tried not to think what happened there, tried to keep those months separate from the rest of my life. But opening that package brought it rushing back.’

‘It is just a purse,’ he reminded her.

She shook her head. ‘It’s more than a purse, more than a keepsake. It’s a jab in the ribs, a reminder that I always intended to go back. To exorcise the ghosts, wasn’t that what you said?’

They fell silent, remembering the pledge they’d made to each other when their love had been new and intoxicating. ‘But you chose Brighton instead,’ he joked, trying to dispel the tension.

She turned away from the window and switched on the battered standard lamp that hunched in one corner. The small windowpanes let in little light and the day was already waning. Then she looked across at Grayson and spoke the thought that had been gathering in her for weeks. His arrival had only sharpened its edge. She knew she had to get out of this poky cottage, away from her noisy, nosy neighbour, away from Miss Thornberry and her constant carping.

‘I’m thinking of going back to London.’

‘Back to London?’ He sounded bemused but angry too. ‘You’re going back to town the very moment I’m leaving?’

The light was dim but it didn’t stop her seeing the bitterness in to his face.

‘But how convenient for you. I won’t be in London, so you won’t need to find an excuse for not meeting me. Did you plan this stroke of genius while we’ve been talking? I’ve got to hand it to you, Daisy, you can be utterly ruthless when you need to be.’

The injustice stung her. She stood back from him, her small figure stiff with outrage. ‘That’s unfair, dreadfully unfair. If you must know, the idea has been in my mind for weeks. I wasn’t sure whether I should cut my losses and leave, but when I saw you today, I knew I had to.’

‘Why?’ His tone was pugnacious.

‘I don’t know. I came to Brighton for the wrong reasons, I guess. I knew my mother had nursed here and I had some stupid idea that if I followed in her footsteps, worked in a local hospital, lived close to where she’d lived, I would feel her presence. That somehow I’d discover more about her. More about me. But it was a crazy idea and it’s been a wretched failure. I haven’t felt her near me for one minute and I’ve found nothing to remind me of her, nothing to say she was ever even in the town. Except the entry we saw years ago in the Pavilion archives.’

He looked at her measuringly. ‘So Brighton wasn’t about promotion after all?’

‘Only very slightly,’ she confessed. ‘And that hasn’t worked either.’

The bitterness had vanished from his face and, in its place, there was the beginning of warmth. He reached out and took her hand and she felt it lying cold in his palm. ‘You won’t want to hear this, but it seems to me that your drive to uncover a past you can’t know has brought you nothing but upset. I wish you’d get this identity thing out of your hair. It’s messing up your life.’

‘Not any longer. When I go back to London, that will be the end of the story.’ But, even as she spoke, she knew herself unconvinced. The identity thing, as Grayson called it, was just too important. That was something he couldn’t understand, would never understand, but it didn’t make her need to discover the past any less compelling.

‘You won’t give up, whatever you say.’ His contradiction was point blank and his blue eyes held a bleak expression. ‘I can’t see an end to it. It comes between us all the time, and it will go on doing so.’

‘I don’t see how.’

‘Neither do I—at least not clearly. I just know that it will. In your mind, it seems mixed up with India. The fact that an Indian purse can send you into a spin is proof of that. You talk about bad memories, but I think you’ve forgotten most of them. You’ve coped with being kidnapped, you’ve coped with Gerald dying—twice. You may even have coped with knowing that he betrayed you. But Anish Rana is a different matter and it’s evident his death still troubles you. I’ve no idea how it’s connected in your mind with parents you never knew, except for the fact of loss. But I do know it’s a barrier between us and has been ever since Jasirapur.’

He let go of her hand and stood looking at her, his expression marked by disappointment. ‘You shake your head, but I’m right. You were plotted against and you were frightened. Gerald died and you were angry. But this is different. This is something we can’t seem to get over. I thought we had. I really thought we’d made a breakthrough. Right here in Brighton.’

‘We had.’ But she knew she sounded insufficiently certain.

‘It didn’t turn out that way though, did it? I accept the war made things difficult, but since then? Month by month, you’ve slipped away. Maybe not deliberately, but that’s what’s happened. Moving to Brighton might have been an attempt at reconnecting with your mother, as you say, but it was also a way of escaping.’

‘It wasn’t an escape,’ she protested. ‘It was a new start or that’s what I thought.’

‘Without me.’

‘Without the pressure.’

‘And what pressure would that be?’

‘You wanted something I didn’t.’

‘I asked you to marry me. After years of separation, was that so unreasonable? I wanted you with me—for always. But before you answered me with a word, I had only to look at your face to know that a wedding was the last thing you desired. You made me feel as though I’d suggested something shocking. Yet marriage between two people who have loved each other as long as we have—surely that’s the most natural thing in the world?’

She lowered her head, studying the worn carpet intensely. ‘You have every right to be angry, but I was happy as we were. And you wouldn’t let things be.’

‘So you escaped down here—yes, it was an escape, whether you’re willing to acknowledge it or not. And it hasn’t worked out.’

‘No.’ She subsided onto the sofa, her complexion ghostly in the evening light.

He came to sit beside her and she smelt the sharp tang of his cologne. It was a smell she’d always loved and the urge to nestle into him was strong. But that was one stupidity she wouldn’t commit. As he’d pointed out, she had made an escape of sorts and she should keep to it.

‘So come back to London,’ he was saying. ‘Find a different job—something that challenges you in the way Beecham’s doesn’t. But don’t cut me out of your life. If I promise no more persuasion, no more pressure, will that help? We could try it when I get back from Jasirapur.’

When she didn’t respond, he got up from the sofa and pulled her to her feet. ‘I’ve missed you—enormously. And you’re probably right about marriage. I don’t really know why I was so keen. No doubt a reaction to having survived some very dangerous years.’

He kissed her gently on the cheek and picked up his coat to go. ‘Until we met, I never thought I’d want to marry and I know very well that you’ve had your fill of weddings. So probably not my brightest idea. But if you come back into my life, I’m willing to sue for terms - whatever you decide.’

The offer was attractive. To be back in the hum and thrum of London again, the city of her birth. To be working in a busy teaching hospital, learning something new every day, growing in confidence again. And, once he was back from India, and he would come back she promised herself, Grayson would be there, close by. Nothing too heavy. Nothing too committed. Just there.

She thought about it and was still thinking when he reached the front door. He turned on the threshold, a wry smile on his face. ‘If you do make the move back to town, leave your address at Baker Street. But be prepared to see me on your doorstep as soon as I get back.’

‘There’s no “if”,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m handing in my resignation. Tomorrow.’ She’d known for weeks it was the right thing to do but Grayson’s visit had proved the spur.

‘What good news to take away with me.’

She wondered if he’d think so when he knew what she intended. Her plans had just been radically revised and weren’t quite as he imagined. A new job in London was certainly tempting, but something else was more tempting still. Something that could lay to rest her fears, her doubts. Her obsession, as he called it. Finally.

He was half in and half out of the door, when she said, ‘I’ll be giving in my notice, but I’m not going to London.’

He stopped in surprise. ‘Why ever not? Surely, the pick of nursing jobs are there. Or have you decided to give work a miss altogether? I know what it is—the purse Jocelyn sent was a magic one and you have all the money you’ll ever need.’

‘It was magic,’ she said slowly. ‘But not in the way you mean. Magic because it’s helped me discover what I really want to do.’

A deep crease cut across his brow. ‘I thought we had a decision on what you wanted to do.’

‘You had a decision,’ she pointed out. ‘I was still deciding. And now I have. Mine is to go back to India. I’m coming with you and Mike.’

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