Beneath a Burning Sky Read online

  He left her to it, moving to the centre of the field to watch her, and called out to her to go faster. ‘Give her a kick. You won’t hurt her.’

  Olivia gave Bea’s belly a gentle nudge with the sides of her feet, but Bea just kept on plodding. She tried again. ‘Come on, do come on.’ Nothing. She felt suddenly clumsy. ‘Giddy up.’ It didn’t sound at all right. She raised her voice to Edward. ‘What am I doing wrong?’

  He was standing, tunic off, sleeves rolled up, arms folded. It was so bright, she couldn’t quite make out his face. Was he laughing?

  ‘Edward…?’

  ‘A little harder with the kick perhaps.’

  ‘Like this?’

  ‘No, harder.’

  ‘This?’

  ‘A bit more.’

  For goodness’ sake. She jammed her feet in.

  ‘Yes, that’s it, very good. Now just drop your heels.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Not quite, actually. Pull your toes up. No, your toes not your heels… Heels down. No, they’re further up now. Olly, your feet are sliding on the stirrups, just put them… no, that’s not it. Don’t worry. You’d better stop, I’ll show you.’

  She squinted, watching as he approached across the grass. He mock-shook his head at her. Her legs, they trembled. She tensed her muscles, trying to get them under control. Calm down. He drew closer. She fiddled at Bea’s reins, running the leather across her forefinger, under her thumb, trying to distract herself from the colour she could feel spreading through her cheeks.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘Not too tired?’

  ‘No,’ she said. Then, ‘I’m afraid I’m not being a very good pupil.’

  ‘You’re doing very well. Much better than my lieutenants when they started.’

  She couldn’t help but laugh at that.

  He laughed too. ‘Here.’ He reached for her boot, brushing back her skirts. As he did, his smile dropped. ‘All these petticoats,’ he said under his breath. His tanned face, tipped forward, became creased in concentration. He looked almost stern.

  She felt his fingers skim her calf, their warmth through her stocking. He clasped her ankle, looked up, met her eye. For a heartbeat, she believed neither of them breathed.

  Then he tilted her foot, placed the stirrup on her toe. ‘Like that,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ She managed a small smile. ‘Yes. I see.’

  He took her riding every morning after that. He’d leave the house as normal, always stopping to look up at her window, giving her that salute – a proper one for her, a two-fingered one at her sodding husband – then he’d check in at the ground, start the men on their drills (‘Excellent work, you don’t need me here for this.’) and head back.

  Olly told Alistair that she’d taken to riding Bea – she said it was better that he found out from her – and that she used her for short trips around Ramleh, for fresh air and exercise. When Alistair remarked to Edward that he imagined he didn’t want Olivia tiring his horse, Edward said no, on the contrary, he was more than happy for Olly to borrow Bea. Really, he had had no intention of telling her she mustn’t.

  They stuck to the story of Olly having learnt to ride in England.

  Olly bought herself new riding clothes; she twirled as she came to meet Edward in the stables one day, making a show of the hidden trousers in the skirt. ‘The seamstress was appalled,’ she said, laughing.

  Edward, absorbing her delight, had to take a moment before answering. When he could speak, he told her he thought she looked grand.

  ‘Good,’ she said, beaming.

  ‘What does Alistair think of them?’

  Her face clouded. ‘He was less convinced.’ She forced a shrug. ‘It was nothing.’

  It was clear it hadn’t been nothing. He was about to press her to tell him more, but before he could, she made for Bea. ‘Shall we go?’ she asked.

  Seeing she didn’t want to discuss it, he gave in.

  As the days, then weeks, passed, she got better at riding. A lot better. He taught her to trot, canter, and then to jump; he loved how her face lit up when she cleared the sticks, the way she’d forget for just a few blessed moments how unhappy she was.

  They found other ways to see one another: stolen half-hours in the drawing room before Alistair returned home, snatched evenings whenever he went out to the club. They spoke of so many things, the two of them… It would never be enough. But she started chattering; no more pauses before each word. She stopped apologising for confiding in him.

  He liked the fact that she’d stopped doing that.

  She told him more about her school, about the nuns. The way her grandmother had behaved over the years, how it was Mildred who’d helped Alistair find Olivia in the first place. (‘She gave him my address, the only person she ever told where I was.’) Edward despised Mildred, despised them all, and himself too – for being here, doing nothing, when he could have been helping her.

  He told her stories of his own childhood, more to see her laugh than because he had any desire to recollect the way his sisters had dressed him up in their frocks. And when she did it, laughed, he laughed too, loving that he’d made her do it.

  At the end of April, he went to see Tom. He asked if there was any way of getting out of his transfer to Jaipur.

  Tom sank his head into his hands. ‘Dare I ask what’s brought this on?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I suspect it does.’ Tom ran his hand down his lean face, brushing over his moustache. ‘Doesn’t have anything to do with your riding lessons, does it?’

  ‘My… How do you know about those?’

  ‘Imogen told me.’

  ‘Imogen? How does…?’

  ‘Imogen knows everything, old man.’

  Edward looked to the ceiling. Cloth punkahs swayed back and forth, batting the heat.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Tom, not unkindly, ‘her maid saw you once, that’s all. You know how Imogen worries over those girls.’

  Edward sighed, nodding. Imogen had told him herself how close she’d been to Olly’s mother, Grace. The years she’d spent trying to find out what had happened to Olly. I wrote, so many times, to that woman, Mildred. She refused to say a word of what she’d done, where Olivia was.

  ‘I’ll offer you a word of advice if I may,’ said Tom. ‘Best not to try and change the unchangeable. Accept what’s what.’

  ‘Are you speaking about India?’

  ‘Not exclusively.’

  ‘Can I get out of it or not?’

  ‘Not.’

  ‘Right.’ Shit. ‘Don’t tell Olly I’m going.’

  ‘I didn’t want to hear that.’

  Edward, already on his way out of the office, didn’t reply.

  ‘She’s married, Bertram. To an unutterable bastard. She’ll be the one who pays in the end. Leave well alone, old man.’

  It wasn’t advice Edward was prepared to take.

  He longed to ask her to go with him, leave Alistair, leave it all. But then he’d see her talking with Clara at the house, at parties, their heads tilted towards one another, fair against brown – so much more at ease together than apart. He’d watch Ralph run towards Olly whenever Clara brought him over, breaking away from his mama’s hand, Aunt Livvy, legs pumping, up, down, Olly opening her arms. And he knew it would be unspeakably selfish to break them all apart. He didn’t think he could do it, not now they’d found one another again.

  Every night he went to sleep imagining her sleeping above him. He didn’t let himself think of the man by her side. He longed to touch her for himself, hold her; his need sharpened with every day. He thought perhaps she wanted him to – the way, at times, her whole body would go still where she stood, the careful rhythm of her breath. But he forced himself to hold back. Until she gave him some cue, he’d have to be content with simply knowing her. She’d already had so much to contend with in life. What kind of a boor would it make him to ask adultery of her? She’s married, Bertram, to an unutterable bastar
d.

  No, she had to be the first to cross that line.

  Chapter Three

  ‘I need you to go to Montazah.’

  Edward turned at the voice behind him. It was Jeremy, framed in the timber doorway of the parade ground stables, hands in the pockets of his expensively cut three-piece. His face, as he looked across at Edward, was pensive. The golden May rays oozing through the slatted roof highlighted his ashen skin, the puddles beneath his grey eyes. There’d been a ball at the house of Imogen’s brother, the famous hotelier Benjamin Pasha, the night before. Benjamin, like Alistair and Jeremy, was one of the wealthiest men in Alex, and he’d thrown a lavish celebration for the queen’s seventy-second (Happy Birthday, old Victoria). If Jeremy had slept at all in the hours since, it clearly hadn’t been for long.

  ‘Can you go?’ Jeremy asked. ‘Now?’

  ‘Good morning,’ Edward said, returning his attention to tacking up his stallion. ‘I believe that’s the traditional mode of greeting someone you want a favour from.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Jeremy’s smile only just managed to reach his bloodshot eyes. ‘Morning.’

  Edward adjusted the girth.

  Jeremy said, ‘So will you go to Montazah?’

  Edward sighed. He was on his way to take Olly for a lesson and had absolutely no intention of changing his plans for the morning, certainly not to ride back up the coast. ‘What’s in Montazah?’ he asked. ‘Other than some sore heads at Benjamin and Amélie Pasha’s?’

  ‘A worker of mine,’ said Jeremy. ‘Tabia’s her name. It’s bloody awful. She’s been killed. A peasant’s horse, apparently, mowed her down sometime around dawn.’

  Edward looked up. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘She’s no husband, two children. The man whose horse trampled her turned himself in at the Pashas’ first thing. Benjamin came, told me…’ Jeremy broke off, drew breath. ‘I want to see that her children are all right, but you know I can’t be seen to be helping. Favouritism and all that. Will you help?’

  Edward hesitated before answering, uneasy somehow. It wasn’t the request in itself that bothered him. He knew Jeremy liked to look after the worst-off of his employees, on the quiet of course so Alistair didn’t get wind of it. Edward wished Jeremy would give as much thought to his own family’s well-being once in a while – Clara’s specifically – but over the years he’d passed on more than one package of money on Jeremy’s behalf, made arrangements for medical care following a mill accident. Still, there was something in Jeremy’s eye this morning that needled at him, a shadow of something hiding.

  ‘Please, Bertram,’ said Jeremy. ‘They’re alone.’

  Edward ran his hand over his face. ‘Where can I find them?’

  Jeremy’s face relaxed, he gave Edward the directions.

  Edward nodded, resigning himself to not seeing Olly for another couple of hours at least.

  ‘Make sure they have whatever they need,’ said Jeremy. ‘Just pass the bills on.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Edward knew the drill. ‘I’ll take Fadil with me, the children will be scared when they see a British soldier coming.’

  ‘Thank you, Bertram. And if you can keep it quiet.’

  ‘I always do.’

  ‘It’s more important than ever this time.’

  Edward frowned. ‘Why?’

  Jeremy gave him an awkward look. ‘I just can’t have anyone knowing about it,’ he said, then turned to go.

  Edward stared after him. Certain by now that there was something amiss, he called for him to come back. ‘Gray? Gray, wait…’

  But Jeremy was already gone.

  Edward and Fadil had to scout around for some time before they found Tabia’s hut. It was a tiny ramshackle affair, visible from neither the road nor the beach, hidden as it was within the mile-long dunes behind Montazah Bay. The air around it was silent, the surrounding sandbanks deserted. A crooked fence outside the mud hut protected a gaggle of chickens. To the right were children’s playthings: a dusty red ball; a truck, rusted, its paintwork faded. One of the wheels was broken.

  The day was clear, but out in the distance, somewhere at sea, thunder rolled.

  ‘Like your navy’s guns,’ said Fadil.

  Edward nodded, remembering.

  They drew closer to the hut.

  ‘Is anyone there?’ Edward called in Arabic. His voice echoed all around.

  Silence.

  ‘Hello?’ Edward called again.

  This time there was movement within. Edward took a step forward, hand moving instinctively to his pistol; Fadil did the same. But then a girl stepped out from the hut’s doorway, and Edward’s hand relaxed.

  She was twenty, or thereabouts, with the dark colouring of the locals. Her black hair was tied at the nape of her neck. She wore a maid’s uniform: navy dress, white apron. Edward noticed how her eyes refused to meet his, but darted around him, taking in everything but his stare. She held a child to her, a boy of perhaps three or four. His head was a strange shape, and it lolled against her chest – he wasn’t able to control it.

  A much younger girl stuck her head out from behind the maid’s skirt, peering up at Edward and Fadil. She was a startlingly pretty child.

  ‘Go inside, Cleo,’ the maid said to her.

  The little girl didn’t move.

  Edward asked the maid her name. She told him it was Nailah. He asked her what relation she was to the children, and she replied that she was just their minder, helping for now.

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear about their mother,’ Edward said.

  Nailah looked to her toes, shifting awkwardly on the spot. Her face was set, no sign of grief.

  Edward thought, Perhaps she didn’t know Tabia well. And then, So what is she doing here?

  He was aware of Fadil staring at the girl, as though he too was trying to work her out.

  A wind wisped over the sand. The chickens clucked.

  Edward told Nailah why they were there, that he wanted to help in any way he could. He asked her if she needed anything. No? Nothing at all? ‘What about the child?’ he said, nodding at the boy in her arms.

  ‘Babu?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, he looks very ill.’

  ‘He is,’ she said, ‘but he always has been. If that’s all…?’ She began to back away.

  ‘Wait.’ Edward brought out a notebook, scribbled an address on it. Sensing Nailah didn’t want him to get any closer, he tore the paper off and placed it on the sand, weighting it with a stone. ‘It’s the details of a good doctor,’ he said. ‘Take Babu to him. Socrates might be able to help. Go, don’t worry about a thing.’

  Nailah thanked him again. ‘I really should get on.’

  ‘Are you sure there’s nothing else?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Nailah said. She turned, making it clear she wanted them away.

  Edward felt a strange pull to stay. But, since he couldn’t see any good reason to do so, he nodded to Fadil. As they led their horses on, back over the sand to the road, Edward looked over his shoulder at the hut. But Nailah and the children had already disappeared inside. He could feel them, though, watching from behind the door.

  ‘What was that?’ he said to Fadil.

  ‘Fear,’ said Fadil. ‘She was afraid.’

  ‘Of what? Us?’

  ‘I don’t know, sayed.’ Fadil paused. ‘I don’t think just us.’ He scratched his bald head, then looked down the road, frowned. ‘Is that…?’

  Edward turned, following Fadil’s gaze. There was a figure, about two hundred yards distant, hunched on the sandbanks, staring out to sea. ‘What the…?’ She was still in the same gown she’d worn for the Pashas’ party. Her hair was loose, in disarray, blowing in the building wind.

  ‘I’ll go on shall I, sayed?’

  ‘Yes,’ Edward said, ‘yes. I’d better see if she’s all right.’

  As Fadil galloped off, he led his horse over to where she sat.

  She raised her eyes to his as he approached. Her face was pale, blotchy. Her expression
didn’t move. She didn’t appear especially surprised to see him. She didn’t look as though anything could surprise her at all.

  ‘Clara?’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Oh, Teddy,’ she said. Then her face folded, her voice broke. ‘What am I going to do? What on earth am I going to do?’

  Olivia waited in for him all morning, but he didn’t come. Clara didn’t call either, and when Olivia saddled Bea up and rode over to her house, it was to discover she’d come back not an hour before and was sleeping.

  For want of anything else to do, Olivia returned home, cantering to beat the rain. A wind had blown up, clouds clotted the horizon; rather a pain for the committee who were organising the Sporting Club’s party that night: yet another do in celebration of the queen’s birthday. Olivia barely had the energy for it after the Pashas’ ball. She’d cry off were it not for the prospect of seeing Edward there, Clara too. She wanted to talk to Clara. She’d been in such a strained mood the night before, very distracted, not a hint of her usual smile. Olivia had tried to engage her in conversation several times, practically chasing her around the ballroom with any excuse to talk. But Clara had given little more than nondescript murmurs in response. Her eyes had darted around the dance floor constantly, only to settle from time to time, but on what – or whom – Olivia couldn’t make out. It was only Alistair watching Clara too, his own eyes like slits, that had stopped Olivia taking her sister by the hand then and there and insisting she finally open up and admit what was wrong.

  She frowned, her worry a weight in her chest. She came to a halt in the driveway and dismounted, sliding down to the gravel, leading Bea on.

  Edward’s stallion wasn’t in the stables. Olivia’s heart sank. She’d been so hoping he’d be home. She stood for a moment, forehead pressed against Bea’s warm leather saddle, absorbing the disappointment.

  Just one morning not seeing him, and she was a mess, an anxious, hollow mess. She drew a ragged breath.