Ellis Peters - George Felse 09 - Mourning Raga Read Free Page A

Dominic revised a half-conceived notion of what Dorette must be like; she might not be a gifted actress, but she was an intelligent diplomat who could make what gifts she had do just as well.
    And talk! She could talk the hind leg off a donkey!
    ‘… and then, you see, Tossa — Oh, forgive me! May I call you Tossa? You see, I feel I know you already, your mother has talked so much about you. And you’re so
like
her, did you know that?’ Tossa knew it, and could hardly fail to be flattered by it, even though she often looked in the glass to find the homely, reassuring outlines of her father’s face, less obviously but just as surely there behind the delicate flesh, and the straight, bright, luminous gleam of fun in the eyes that could only have come from him. ‘…and then, his family made it quite impossible, you know. Oh, Satyavan was simply the new India in person, travelled, educated, sophisticated, brilliant and already rich in his own right… he had a company making beautiful cosmetics, and another one running travel agencies all over the east and the Middle East. The family were rupee millionaires even before him, but that was all in textiles, cottons and silks, and they really looked down on anything else. An old family, too, and these Punjabis are very proud. So
I
was the undesirable one, you see. His mother was broken-hearted when he married me. She’d been widowed for two years then, and Satyavan was the only child, and of course, you know,
sons… Hindu
sons… Sometimes I think that if only Anjli had been a boy… But she wasn’t, and then there weren’t any more children.’ She wiped away, discreetly and with great dignity, a non-existent tear. ‘Really we never had a chance to bridge the gulf. And it
is
a
real
gulf, one would need a lot of patience, and love, and craft… and luck! And luck we didn’t have.’
    Dominic hedged his bet still more cautiously. Only a very clever woman would have used the word ‘craft’ just there. Moreover, Chloe, delicately fanning, her wide eyes on her fictional sister with all the critical admiration of a second watching his expert principal in a duel (and without any qualms whatsoever about the outcome), had raised one eyebrow with a connoisseur’s approbation, and the corners of her very charming and very knowing mouth had curled into an infinitesimal and brief smile of pleasure. What chance had any husband with women like these?
    ‘And he didn’t even try to get custody of Anjli?’ Tossa had seen the omens, too, and reacted with a blunt and discordant question; simply, thought Dominic, to see what would happen.
    Dorette’s damask cheek bloomed into the most delicious peach colour, and again faded to the waxen white perfection of magnolias. Dominic was fascinated. The magicians of the world would go grey overnight, worrying how she did that in full view of her audience, at a range of a few feet, and in harsh film lighting.
    ‘Tossa, you must be charitable, you must understand… Poor Satyavan, you mustn’t think he didn’t love her…’ (Or why, thought Dominic ruthlessly, would you be shoving her off on to him now, you being the loving mother you are?) ‘Yes, he did try… indeed he tried very hard. But you see, at that time we were so bitter, both of us. And I fought just as hard. Perhaps it was simply that I was American… for after all, there is an understanding, don’t you think so?… of one’s own people? They gave her to me. That was all that mattered then. I didn’t think of him… of his mother… To an Indian woman sons and grandsons are everything, but even a granddaughter would be such joy… But it’s only afterwards that one realises the cost to other people. You mustn’t think I haven’t thought about this for a long time, and gone through agony. All these years, ever since she was six years old. I’ve had the joy of her, and he… My poor Satyavan…’ She made a little poem out of the name this time, the first ‘a’ muted to