The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [468]
He pushed Anjuli away with a savage thrust that sent her reeling against the wall for support, and said gratingly: ‘Well, from now on you're going to let the poor girl rest in peace, instead of encouraging her to haunt you. You're my wife now, and I'm damned if I'm going to share you with Shu-shu. I'm not having two women in my bed, even if one of them is a ghost, so you can make up your mind here and now; myself or Shushila. You can't have us both. And if Shu-shu is still so much more important to you than I am, or you blame me for killing her, then you had better go back to your brother Jhoti and forget that you ever knew me, let alone married me.’
Anjuli was staring at him as though she could not believe what she had heard, and when she could command her voice she said with a gasp: ‘So that is what you thought!’ – and began to laugh: high-pitched and hysterical laughter that shook her emaciated body as violently as Ash's hands had done, and that went on and on… until Ash became frightened by it and slapped her across the face with an open palm, and she stopped, shuddering and gasping for breath.
‘I'm sorry,’ said Ash curtly. ‘I shouldn't have done that. But I won't have you behaving in the way she did, as well as making her into a sainted idol.’
‘You fool,’ breathed Anjuli. ‘You fool!’
She leaned towards him and her eyes were no longer blank and frozen, but bright with scorn. ‘Did you speak to no one in Bhithor? You should have done so, and learned the truth; for I cannot believe that it was not common talk in the bazaars. Even if it were not, then the Hakim-Sahib should have known – or at least suspected. And yet you – you thought I was grieving for her!’
‘For whom, then?’ asked Ash harshly.
‘For myself, if anyone. For my blindness and folly in not seeing what I should have seen many years ago; and my conceit in thinking that I was indispensable to her. You do not know what it has been like… no one can know. When Geeta died there was no one left whom I could trust… no one. There were times when I thought that should go mad from fear, and others when I tried to kill myself and was prevented – because she did not want me to die – that would have been too easy. You warned me once that she was the Nautch-girl's daughter and that I must never forget it. But I would not listen to you. I would not believe…’
Her voice failed her and Ash took her hands and drew her towards the nearest chair and pushing her down in it, fetched a cup of water. He stood over her while she drank it, and then sat down opposite her on the edge of the bunk and said quietly: ‘I never thought of that. It looks as though we have been at cross-purposes. You had better tell me about it, Larla.’
47
It was a long and ugly story, and listening to it Ash was no longer surprised that the widow whom he had snatched from Bhithor bore so little resemblance to the bride he had escorted there barely two years previously.
For he had been right about Shushila. She had indeed proved herself to be a true daughter of Janoo-Rani – the one-time Nautch-girl who had never let anything stand in the way of her own desires, or had the least compunction in eliminating anyone she considered to be a stumbling block in her path.
Anjuli told it as though she had known Shushila's mind from the beginning, though that was not so. ‘You must understand,’ she said, ‘that I did not discover this until almost the end. And even then there were many things that only became clear to me after we had escaped from Bhithor and I was lying hidden in the hut behind your bungalow, where I had nothing to do but sit alone and think – and remember. I believe that I