The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [463]
Ash had hoped to get married with the least possible delay, but he could see the sense of Captain Stiggins's argument, and in any case he had no option but to agree to his terms. It was decided that the ceremony had best be postponed until such time as Sind and the mouth of the Indus lay well astern and the Morala was headed north towards Ras Jewan. In the meantime, Red gallantly placed his own cabin at Anjuli's disposal and moved in with his mate, one McNulty, for the duration of the voyage, though in the event all three men (and everyone else on board for that matter) elected to sleep on deck, and only Anjuli kept to her cabin.
The Morala only boasted four cabins, and though Red's was certainly the best of these it was far from large and at that season of the year was stiflingly hot. But Anjuli spent the first part of the voyage in it, because she proved to be a poor sailor, and succumbed to a bad attack of sea-sickness that lasted for several days, by which time they had crossed the Tropic of Cancer, and were sailing through a sea that was stained with the silt brought down by the Indus and its four great fellow-rivers of the Punjab.
Gul Baz, who had insisted on accompanying Ash, had also been most vilely ill, but it was not long before he acquired his sea-legs and was up and about again. Anjuli, on the other hand, made a slow recovery. She spent the greater part of the day sleeping, for she was still plagued by bad dreams, and as she found these less frightening by day she stayed awake at night and kept two oil lamps burning from dusk to dawn, despite the fact that they greatly increased the heat in the cramped little cabin.
Ash had nursed her and waited upon her, and he too took to sleeping by day so that he could sit up with her for at least part of the night. But even when she had recovered from her sea-sickness he found that she was still disinclined to talk, and that any reference to Bhithor or the immediate past, however oblique, would make her stiffen into rigidity and bring back that disturbing frozen look to her eyes. He therefore confined himself to speaking only of his own doings and his plans for their joint future, though he suspected that half the time she did not hear what he was saying because she was listening to other voices.
He had confirmed this on several occasions by breaking off in mid-sentence, only to find that she was unaware that he had stopped speaking. Asked what she was thinking of, she would look troubled and say, ‘Nothing’… until one evening, when that question had broken into her silent brooding so abruptly that she had been startled into an unguarded reply, and answered ‘Shushila.’
It was hardly reasonable of Ash to hope that she would by now have stopped tormenting herself with thoughts of Shushila when he himself was unable to do so. But he had got up without a word and left the cabin, and half an hour later it had been Gul Baz and not Ash who had knocked on her door bringing the evening meal, for Ash had been otherwise occupied.
He had taken his problems to Captain Stiggins, and fortified by the Captain's ferocious brandy, was engaged in pouring the whole story into that gentleman's sympathetic ear. ‘The trouble is that her sister has always come first with her right from the beginning,’ explained Ash bitterly. ‘I used to believe that I was the only one she really loved, and that it was only affection and a strong sense of duty that made her stay with Shu-shu. But it seems I was wrong. I tried to make her run away with me before, you know, but she wouldn't do it because of Shu-shu… God! how I came to hate the very sound of that name.’
‘Jealous, were you,’ nodded Red.
‘Of course I was. Wouldn't you have been, in my place? Dammit Red, I was in love