The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [107]
‘I may as well tell you,’ declared George loudly, ‘that as she is not wearing your ring, I do not regard her as irrevocably bound to you, and I shall do my best to make her change her mind. After all, “All's fair in love and war” you know, and I was in love with Belinda before you were. Have another drink?’
Ash refused, saying curtly that he had ordered lunch and did not intend to keep it waiting. But George was impervious to snubs and merely said that he too was feeling peckish and would join him. The meal was hardly a convivial one; Ash did not talk at all while George never stopped talking, and judging from his conversation, he appeared to be very much persona grata at the Harlowes' bungalow. He had already squired Belinda to a picnic in addition to accompanying her and her mother on a shopping expedition, and that very evening was to dine with them and go on afterwards to the ‘ Saturday Hop’ at the Club.
‘Belinda says I am quite the best dancer in Peshawar,’ observed George complacently. ‘I daresay I –’ he broke off abruptly as a new and obviously disagreeable thought struck him. ‘Oh, I suppose you are going to be there tonight. Well, you won't find many people there. I believe it's no end of a crush when the military are in town, but as most of 'em are marching around the Kajuri Plain just now, the hops are pretty small affairs. I can't think why Belinda didn't mention that you'd be coming. But perhaps you don't dance? I believe some of the fellows don't, but for my part –’
George continued to talk his way steadily through four courses, and Ash was profoundly relieved when at last he took himself off. A post-luncheon silence descended upon the Club, and he returned to the deserted lounge and the unread copy of Punch, and watched the hands of the clock crawl slowly round the dial until at last it was time to leave.
Mrs Harlowe was waiting for him in her drawing-room, and although she greeted him kindly enough, she appeared ill at ease and plunged at once into a disjointed flood of small talk. It was plain that she did not intend to discuss personal matters and was determined to treat his visit as nothing more than a social call, and she was becoming a little breathless by the time her daughter tripped in, wearing white muslin and looking enchantingly young and pretty.
Framed in the doorway of that common-place bungalow drawing-room with its drab-coloured chintzes, numdah rugs and Benares-brass trays, Belinda glowed like a freshly blown rose in an English garden, and Ash forgot the proprieties and the fact that her mother was present, and ignoring her outstretched hand, caught her in his arms and would have kissed her if she had not turned her head away and twisted free.
‘Ashton!’ Belinda's hands flew to her hair, patting her curls into place as she backed away from him, blushing vividly, and uncertain whether to laugh or be scandalized: ‘Whatever will Mama think? If you are going to behave so abominably I shall go away. Now do sit down and be sensible. No, not over there. Here, beside Mama. We both want to hear about your Regiment and Mardan and what you have been doing with yourself.’
Ash opened his mouth to protest that he had not come to talk about such things, but he was foiled by Mrs Harlowe, who rang for tea; and in the presence of a hovering khidmatgar there was nothing for it but to give a brief account of his doings, while Belinda poured and the khidmatgar proffered plates of cakes and sandwiches.
Listening to his own voice, it seemed to Ash that the day had taken on a queer dream-like quality in which nothing was real. Their whole future, his and Belinda's, was at stake; yet here they sat, sipping tea and nibbling egg sandwiches, and talking trivialities as though nothing else mattered. The entire day had been a nightmare