Secrets and Lies

‘It’s like I’m married to her rather than him, Sam!’ Bubbles was wailing again, taking another slug from her flute, whose edge was now encrusted with almost as much lipstick as was left on her mouth.

‘I know, I know, darling,’ Sam consoled, ‘but couldn’t you persuade Binkie to take you to the Paris flat when the schools close next month? The children will be going up to their summer camp in Switzerland as usual, won’t they?’

‘Bobby will be at camp in Montana, although Ruby’s still trying to make her mind up. But, you see, Ma’s already arranged for me to be in the Bahamas with her and Auntie Poppy and Poonam Maasi…I told you about that cruise for Papa’s sixty-fifth. She’s hired a 300-foot yacht and is taking her whole family, and obviously I have to be there.’

‘Oh yes, of course, you did say,’ Sam said, subsiding back into silence, remembering how they had dissolved in giggles at the thought of a bunch of Punjabi matriarchs sunning themselves in voluminous one-pieces when Bubbles had first mentioned it.

‘How about we go somewhere together after the summer then? Just us girls,’ Anita offered, rousing herself briefly. ‘We’ve only ever talked of it so far, and now that both your kids are old enough to be left with their nannies, it should be fine, shouldn’t it?’

Sam’s face wore a doubtful expression. ‘I don’t know…Akbar doesn’t much like the concept of girlie holidays…’

‘Oh, fuck Akbar,’ Anita replied crisply, ‘about time you told him where to stick those fine concepts of his.’

‘I’m not sure Binkie would like it either—you know how he seems to think my main role in life is to keep his mother company. Unless…’ Bubbles’ face was starting to clear. ‘The only place I can get away to without any of them in tow is my parents’ house.’

‘Delhi,’ Anita exclaimed, ‘now there’s a plan.’

‘No one can stop us from going to see our parents, I guess,’ Sam said slowly.

‘Be too bloody hot till November though.’

‘You weren’t thinking of December, were you? I mean…Lamboo’s invitation…?’

The three women looked at the letter, still lying on the table before them, and then at each other in the candlelight. Bubbles’ eyes suddenly looked like hollows in her head, and Sam, wrapped in her cream pashmina, was a sad and portly ghost. Anita shuddered, feeling uncharacteristically nervy. She was dying for a cigarette. ‘I’ve never been back there since we left school,’ she muttered.

‘Nor me,’ Sam said softly after a pause.

‘I’ve been past those gates, oh, I don’t know, at least a hundred times,’ Bubbles said. ‘Every time I go to Papa’s Connaught Place shop, in fact. And, you know, it’s like a bad habit, but I still cross my heart and mutter “Our Father” when I see the school church. But I’ve never once stepped through those gates since we left. I’m not sure I’ll be able to take it, actually’

‘Look,’ Anita cut in, sitting up and trying to sound more brisk, ‘I know there’s good reason for us never having gone back. But I’m not sure it’s really helped, y’know. Sometimes things just seem to get worse the longer you leave them.’

Her two friends were silent for a few seconds before Bubbles spoke up. ‘My therapist sometimes says I’ll only make real progress when those old issues are resolved…’

‘It’s more than that for me,’ Sam said. ‘More like…atonement.’

‘Well, if we don’t do it now, we never will,’ Anita said, taking Sam’s hands in hers. ‘I get some leave around Christmas, so shall we try to go together by, say, mid December? Let’s see what it is that Lamboo wants. We owe her that much. Time to try and lay some of those ghosts to rest.’

Chapter Three

DELHI, 1993

‘Have you heard? We’re getting a new girl in class,’ Sam said, putting her satchel down on her chair to take out her lunchbox and flask of iced lime juice and position them carefully in the inner recess of her scuffed wooden desk.

Even Anita, slumped lifeless over Flaubert at the back of the classroom, looked up, shoving her glasses back up her nose as various classmates started instantly to quiz Sam.

‘Who?’

‘Where’s she from?’

‘I hope she’s not pretty, yaar.’

‘Or over-smart.’

In her usual calm manner, Sam ignored them all until she had hung her satchel on one of the hooks on the back wall and started arranging the exercise books on the teacher’s table into a neat pile. Finally, she said, shrugging, ‘Dunno, I haven’t met her yet. But Lamboo stopped me in the quadrangle to say that a new girl was joining our class to do her final year here. She wants us to be nice to her because she’s been recently orphaned, I think.’

There was another flurry of interest:

‘Orphaned! Bloody hell…’

‘Who’s an orphan?’

‘The new girl we’re getting, man, why don’t you listen!’

‘Christ that’s bad, poor thing.’

‘Where’s she coming from, Sam?’

‘One of the hill schools, Lamboo said—Mussourie, I think?’

‘I hope she’s nice. Some of these hill-school types think no end of themselves.’

‘Yeah, almost as though they’re little English missies…they wear stockings and hats and things. Imagine!’

‘Those hats are called “boaters”,’ Anita offered. ‘Actually it’s the hill stations that are the real relics of our colonial past.’ She looked around and saw that, as usual, her classmates were all ignoring her to concentrate on the crass and the mundane.

‘Whatever,’ Zeba growled from the bench next to Anita’s, ‘she had better not try lording it over us.’

‘Yeah, I really hope she’s nice.’

‘Of course she’ll be nice,’ Sam said, adding, ‘well, more importantly, we have to be nice to her. Must be awful to have lost both parents.’

‘Both together?’

‘Must have been a car accident or something.’

The conversation was brought to a halt by the clanging of the office peon’s iron rod on the brass bell in the quadrangle outside. The class shuffled to their feet as Mrs Menon, their teacher, sailed in, orange and black sari pallav fluttering after her.

‘Good morning, Mrs Menon,’ the class intoned.

‘Morning, morning…good weekend?’ The teacher smiled briefly before sitting down to unlock the desk drawer and pull out the class register. A few indistinct mumbles greeted her query but she had obviously not been expecting any replies as she looked up with a blank expression to take the roll call in a brisk voice.

‘Anita Roy?’

‘Present, Miss.’

‘Arpana Singh?’

‘Present, Miss.’

‘Ashwathy Pillai?’

‘Present, Miss.’

‘Bubbles Malhotra?’

Mrs Menon looked up and scanned the class over her reading glasses before repeating, ‘Bubbles Malhotra? Not here?’

A voice piped up from the back. ‘I think she’s coming, Miss. Must be late…’

‘She wasn’t on our bus this morning,’ someone volunteered.

‘Well, she’s always missing the bus. Last week we had to wait while she came running down the road with her two servants following her, one carrying her bag, the other her water-bottle,’ someone else said to general titters.

‘Enough, enough, let’s move on. Maybe she’ll come later.’ Mrs Menon returned to her ledger. ‘Damini Mehta?’

‘Present, Miss.’

As predicted, there was soon a kerfuffle at the door as Bubbles Malhotra stumbled in, red-faced and sweaty from her exertions. ‘Sor-ry, Mi-ss,’ she puffed, ‘missed the bu-s, Miss…’

‘Really, Bubbles, you must try harder than this to be punctual. This must be the third time already this month that you’ve been late.’

Bubbles performed a small apologetic shimmy, still standing uncertainly in the doorway while trying to catch her breath. Her indecision only seemed to annoy Mrs Menon further, who snapped, ‘Okay, come in, come in, what are you waiting there for now?’

Anita rolled her eyes as Bubbles flopped onto the bench next to her. Bubbles was in a right old state, her tie askew, socks sagging over grubby trainers and a pair of new zits ballooning on her chin. Anita listened to Bubbles wheezing for a few minutes as she recovered from having run up two flights of stairs to the senior school before rather unkindly scribbling ‘Lose Weight!’ on a note that she pushed across the table towards her. She and Bubbles had been bench-mates for a few years now, both choosing to inhabit the last row for completely different reasons—Bubbles so she could hide behind girls cleverer than her, and Anita so she could read novels during the maths and science lessons. They had eventually managed to overcome an initial mutual suspicion of each other to become unlikely friends, mostly because it massaged Anita’s ego no end to have Bubbles so desperately need her crib-sheets to keep from flunking every exam.

An hour later, Mrs Menon was droning on, drawing geometric shapes on the blackboard that made scant sense to most of the sixteen-year-olds seated before her, when they were interrupted by a knock at the door. All heads were raised as the principal walked in, a girl wearing a patterned smock and sandals following a few paces behind.

‘I am so sorry to interrupt the lesson, Mrs Menon, but I wondered if I might take my session early. I’d like to introduce a new girl to the class.’

‘Yes, of course, of course, Miss Lamb,’ Mrs Menon said, hastily putting her chalk stub down and backing away. ‘I was just finishing anyway. Please, please do come in.’

Anita had often wondered at the nervousness Miss Lamb seemed to evoke in most of their teachers, speculating on whether it was merely because she was principal or whether her being British had something to do with it too. Old Lamboo had always seemed to Anita to be like someone who had fallen out of an E.M. Forster novel, her foreignness accentuated in a curious way by her not having left India when most of her countrymen and women had. The first time Anita had the opportunity to use a carefully learned big word had, in fact, been with reference to Miss Lamb, when—soon after winning the St Jude’s scholarship as a seven-year-old—she had informed her amused father that the new school principal was ‘quintessentially British’.

Anita now watched while Miss Lamb waited politely for a harassed Mrs Menon to collect her books and bags. The new girl stood behind Miss Lamb, wearing an impassive expression on her face. She was tall, like Lamb herself, and athletic and astonishingly pretty, Anita thought, sneaking a glance at Zeba and her best friend, Natasha, sitting in the third row, who had always fancied themselves as the school beauties. It satisfied her to see that they were gazing at the newcomer in open-mouthed wonder too. This girl was much lovelier than either of them, her skin tanned to the kind of gold that was rarely achieved by white skin, quite unlike Miss Lamb’s florid summertime pink. Anita saw too that the girl’s eyes were a strange blue-grey colour, their only flaw being that they were set a little too close together in a heart-shaped face that ended in a pointed chin. She didn’t look pure British, more likely Anglo-Indian, as someone had surmised earlier. Their eyes met for an instant and Anita was shocked at the sudden frisson she felt run through her, which was followed by instant revulsion. She knew a lot of girls at school often developed crushes on other girls but, even as a junior, she had prided herself on never having been at either end of such ridiculous infatuations, saved from them—she would have been the first to admit—by being scrawny and bespectacled and not sporty at all.

Mrs Menon departed in a flurry of apologies and chalk dust and Miss Lamb now stepped forward, clearing her throat in the way she did when she wanted their total attention. This was not a problem today as the class sat rapt before her, silenced by their curiosity. The last new girl this particular batch had received was Natasha Walia, whose father had been posted back to India after a long stint abroad in the diplomatic service—and that had been a good six years ago.

‘This, my dear girls,’ Miss Lamb said to them, ‘is Lily D’Souza. Lily is new, not just to our school, but indeed to Delhi, having just moved here from Sacred Heart convent school in Mussourie. I know some of you are quite familiar with Mussourie, travelling up there for your summer holidays, so I do not need to tell you what a big change this is for Lily, who has never been to Delhi before.’

Anita noticed that the girl next to Miss Lamb remained unsmiling, plucking absently at the canvas strap of the bag she was carrying slung across her torso as though it were a guitar.

‘My dear girls,’ Miss Lamb continued, ‘I know I don’t need to tell you to make Lily comfortable and welcome. Now, where can we find room for Lily to sit?’ Miss Lamb scanned the room and nodded approvingly as she saw the dependable Samira move up on her bench in the front row to make room. As the principal gestured, Lily walked hesitantly towards the rows of girls, unslinging her bag and holding it ahead of her. Anita observed Sam smiling warmly, even using her tissue to clean Lily’s side of the desk, but she could now no longer see the face of the new girl, only a ponytail of straight brown hair that hung down her back all the way to her waist. The girl sat down, shoving her bag between herself and Sam, and, as the bell went, Miss Lamb opened her tattered copy of Macbeth to begin her lesson.

Anita’s concentration was poor in the hour that followed, even though Lamb’s classes were always the high point of her school day. Today the principal was wittering on about the nature of ambition and did not seem to be quite herself either, gripped by a preoccupied air that was infecting the whole class with a kind of listlessness.

When the bell finally rang for the lunch-break, Miss Lamb looked as relieved as everyone else, setting the group an essay on the banquet scene as homework, before leaving for the dining hall. Anita got up and stretched with a loud groan. She scanned the room. Sam seemed to have taken the new girl under her wing already, opening up her foil pack of cheese sandwiches and offering her one.

Anita and Bubbles joined the small group that had already gathered around Lily and Sam’s desk.

‘Are you related to Miss Lamb?’ Natasha was asking the new girl.

Anita saw Lily hesitate for a minute before a set of invisible shutters descended over her face. She pursed her lips, suddenly acquiring a mean expression as she said with more vehemence, ‘No, we’re not related. I’m nothing at all to that horrid old bat.’

There was a collective horrified intake of breath. No one ever spoke about Miss Lamb in that tone of voice. Even the nickname of Lamboo, used by generations of St Jude’s schoolgirls, was only ever employed affectionately.

Sam hastily changed the subject. ‘Oh, Bubs, one of your pimples has just burst,’ she said.

Attention turned to Bubbles, who clamped a piece of tissue, spotted with blood, back to her chin. ‘Oh God,’ she mumbled through her clamped jaw, ‘I had just two pieces of cashew burfi last night, y’know, and see the reaction!’

‘Let’s have a look,’ Zeba said, ‘I may have some Clearasil in my bag.’

Bubbles gingerly removed her hand, eliciting a chorus of moans.

‘Christ, that’s a prize one,’ Natasha said.

‘And look, there’s a new one sprouting right next to it.’

‘Clearasil won’t work, those need Dettol.’

‘Or DDT even!’

Sam’s ruse had successfully drawn everyone’s attention away from the new girl and Anita noticed that even Lily was now smiling, although she couldn’t tell if Lily’s subsequent attempt at humour was malicious. ‘Etna and Krakatoa, that’s what those two are,’ she said.

‘Who?’ Bubbles enquired, nonplussed, but Lily shook her head, smiling to herself.

Anita stepped in to rescue her friend. ‘Okay, everyone, stop treating Bubs like a prize exhibit. We’re off to the dining hall now, if anyone wants to join us for some five-star world cuisine.’

Victoria Lamb decided not to join the throng in the dining hall, as was her usual custom. Instead, she walked down the southern corridor and past the music room, where the sound of a trombone was blaring tunelessly over the lunchtime hubbub. She had this morning given Lily money to buy a hot lunch in the canteen but would herself return to her cottage, which lay on the far side of the rambling school grounds. Lakhan would rustle up a sandwich for her, which she would eat quietly in her study overlooking the rose garden. She deserved a little peace and quiet after the traumatic events of the past few days, not made any easier by Lily’s difficult behaviour.

Victoria unlatched the small wicket gate that led to the rose garden and walked to her cottage, dipping her head to avoid damaging the flowers of the madhumalati that were dangling crimson over the door. She turned on the cooler, still thinking of Lily’s obstreperous conduct since her arrival. The rusty old machine sent a welcome blast of cool air through the cottage and Victoria exhaled in relief, relishing the respite, not just from the heat but also from the past few days of argument and tears. Who could blame the poor child, though? What Lily had undergone lay beyond the bounds of most people’s imaginations, certainly her own, and what the girl most needed now was stability and quiet, unquestioning acceptance. Love and other such things would gradually follow in their own time. Victoria certainly hadn’t thought it prudent to tell Samira more than what was absolutely necessary this morning, of course. Heaven knew what the girls would make of the whole thing, if they found out. Or, for that matter, their parents! An exclusive and well-reputed school such as Jude’s really couldn’t afford a scandal of any sort.

Victoria popped her head into the kitchen, startling old Lakhan who was pottering at the stove, probably brewing his fifteenth cup of tea.

‘Mere liye bhi ek cup chai, Lakhan,’ she said, ‘Aur sandwich. Kya hai fridge mein? Tomato? Ham?’ She paused, waiting while her Nepali cook rummaged around inside the cavernous old fridge, emerging finally with a rather shrivelled cucumber. ‘Accha, cucumber sandwich theekh hai,’ she said resignedly.

Victoria Lamb walked into the cool of her darkened study and, rather than turning on the light, opened the drawn curtains slightly. Harsh sunshine poured in through the crack and for a moment she closed her eyes tightly shut. Slowly opening them a few seconds later, she blinked uncomfortably, letting her vision get used to the glare. Her eyes wandered over her shorn rose bushes and empty flowerbeds. May in Delhi was a bleak time in many ways. Not the best season to have Lily brought here but there hadn’t really been a choice. Still, in another few weeks it would be the summer holidays. She ought to think of going somewhere with the poor girl—a short vacation. Not to the hills, of course, that would be most injudicious. But anywhere else would be far too hot. Perhaps staying in Delhi would be best; giving Lily time to find her feet and get used to each other and the city. Victoria sat upright on her armchair, unable to physically relax when there was so much on her mind. She absently polished the glasses that hung around her neck. How unusual it would be this summer to have someone around during the long holidays, when everyone else, staff and students, went off with their families to all sorts of jolly destinations. The school building and playing grounds were almost ghostly when emptied of their noisy population. Victoria Lamb looked up at the distant gulmohar tree, the crest of which was aflame with red flowers. Suddenly she felt a little blessed. The dear Lord had strange ways, but it was as though He had understood that, with the passage of the years, she too would need someone to help fill the lonely evenings. And so Lily had been sent to her so unexpectedly, someone to love again, so late in life. Of course, the poor child was savagely angry and resentful, especially at the secrecy that would be required for the time being. The row last night had been quite unbearable, but it was best not to reveal the past—Lily would simply have to understand that.

At the end of her first day at St Jude’s, Lily stood at the first-floor window of her empty classroom, looking at the droves of girls heading down the drive for the cars and school buses that would take them all to their homes. She imagined them being received by their mums at the door and the smell of food that would be emanating from their kitchens. Whenever Lily conjured up images of family life in her head, she saw them like those television advertisements for rice or talcum powder that both fascinated and repelled her, and sometimes broke her heart. Weren’t those the kind of families most people had: mums in pretty saris and aprons serving up steaming bowls of rice, dads driving up to neat little houses in their shiny cars, coming in from work holding briefcases, while children with plump, scrubbed faces sat laughing around dining tables? That was what all those girls streaming out of the school gates had. And they didn’t even consider it as being out of the ordinary. ‘Everyone but you, Lily D’Souza,’ she muttered under her breath, feeling that by-now familiar twist of anger and bitterness in her stomach. All she had was School Principal Victoria bloody Lamb—and there was no way she could think of that scrawny old bat as being even remotely related to her. Certainly not now, when it was too late; much, much too late.

Lily twisted the handkerchief in her hand till she could feel its embroidered edge snap and tear. She turned from the window and blew her nose loudly as angry hot tears fell from her eyes and rolled off her chin. Leaning on the windowsill, Lily wiped her face roughly, wondering how long she could skulk around in the school building before being either turfed out or locked in. She surveyed the empty classroom, the rows of scuffed and ink-stained wooden desks and chairs left all awry, bits of paper littering the floor. To calm the horrible wobbly feeling inside her and have something to do, she walked between the rows, noisily straightening the desks till they formed neat lines, then proceeding to clatter chairs under them until everything was tidy and orderly, the way it was meant to be. She looked at the names and graffiti that had been carved into some of the desks, seeing initials of girls, some coupled with what were probably initials of boys surrounded by heart shapes. Such things were the normal concerns of most girls, she thought as she picked various exercise books and pens off the floor and placed them on a desk. Surveying her handiwork, she wondered if she ought to go to the next classroom and do the same thing there as well. There was something faintly comforting about bringing order where she could. Besides, there was no way she was going back to the cottage where she would have to put up with all that solicitous fake familial behaviour again. Just a week and already it was choking her to death. She wished she could run away from St Jude’s and this horrid noisy city and go back to her beloved Mussourie. It was the best season to be there, when wildflowers came bursting out of the grassy banks and the pine tree outside her window would be heavy with cones…

Lily started to cry again. One thing she knew for sure was that she would never, ever forgive Victoria Lamb for what she had done.

Chapter Four

LONDON, 2008

Sam drove nervously through what was now very heavy rain. She’d volunteered to drop Anita off at her flat in Borough as they left Heebah’s and, perhaps because of the downpour, Anita hadn’t demurred. They were both unusually quiet on the drive south, each sunk in her own thoughts, Anita occasionally providing directions to get to Blackfriars Bridge.

As they drove over the bridge, Sam glanced at her friend’s profile, trying to think of something to say to lighten the atmosphere.

‘Oh, I’ve been meaning to tell you. I saw a really good film the other day. You and Hugh will really like it,’ she said.

‘Really?’ Anita roused herself. ‘Which one?’

Sam racked her brains. This was the trouble, she had got to a stage where she couldn’t even remember the things she liked. At thirty-two!