Jane Steele(73)
“I should like to read the Guru Granth Sahib,” I declared. “It would explain so much about your character.” Mr. Thornfield sat writing a letter in his study as I watched him, pretending to be reading Balzac.
“There is neither an adequate explanation for my character, nor a copy of the Guru in the English language.” He dipped his pen without raising his head. “Apply to Sardar, he can recite damned impressive heaps of the stuff.”
“I shall. I can’t give any credence to the Bible because so many villains quote it.”
This was not true; I simply wished for something freshly shocking to tell him. Though the Bible dictated my mother and I would be listening to each other’s skin crackling for eternity, and my former headmaster had been cruelty incarnate even as he called upon God’s Name, I thought many of its teachings beautiful.
Mr. Thornfield’s eyes narrowed in amusement. “Never read the thing, though Sardar has lobbed plentiful passages at me—my parents are more for cheap novels when they can get ’em. Whale blubber and seal pelts and nor’easters. Damsels, you understand.” He coughed charmingly. “Heaving bosoms.”
“There are plentiful bloody bits, and even some sensuous parts, I suppose,” I said idly, passing fingers along my hairline. “Song of Solomon is about a pair of lovers. ‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!’ It’s quite salacious material.”
“I’ve heard better. Now kindly shut your head whilst I finish congratulating my father on his latest swindle.”
Helpless to stop myself, I tried again the next day, discovering him reorganising books in the library and (predictably enough) offering my assistance.
“Are there any Punjabi books in the house?” I wondered, sorting through several volumes of Medieval spiritual poetry I suspected belonged to Mr. Singh and not Mr. Thornfield.
“Oh, certainly.” He craned his thick neck upwards, wearing a frown as he lifted a stack of unbound folios. “But they kept turning up missing, don’t y’know, great gaping holes in the collection, and when Sardar found ’em circulating at a jaunty clip in the servants’ wing, we installed proper shelves where they were wanted.”
“That was good of you.”
“Of course it wasn’t. I can march over there whenever rereading Chandi di Var* tickles me, can’t I? I have legs, and so does Sardar.”
Finished, I began sorting through the Renaissance plays. “Your servants are very interesting. They must know you both well, I take it, since they worked for Mr. Singh before? Mrs. Garima Kaur, for example, seems most devoted to him, even for a confidential secretary.”
Mr. Thornfield glanced up from where he was kneeling, eyes lit with the wistful shade of earnest. “You know how she came by that extra bit of facial ornament, then?”
“The scar? How should I?”
“She saved his life once.”
“No!” I exclaimed, kneeling to mirror him. “Oh, do tell me how.”
“Nasty business,” he owned, frowning. “Sardar was twenty-three, I believe. He was overseeing the delivery of—what was it, indigo or ivory? damned if I can recall, ivory it must have been—across town by the Bright Gate, and he was set upon by thieves. Not your friendly book-borrowing type either, the picking-their-teeth-with-tulwars kind, and Garima was accompanying him to keep records. Sardar is a tiger, but it was five on one, and incapacitating suits his delicate sensibilities better than slaughter. Anyhow, Garima threw herself into the fray and did him a few good turns with the knife she carried before taking that slash over the brow. She’d be dead but for his skill, and he’d be dead but for her help.”
He fell silent, sifting through titles.
“I would fight like that, if I cared enough for the person,” I confessed with endless devotion in my eyes.
Mr. Thornfield quirked a smile, granting me the merest glance. “You would have eaten their hearts in the marketplace afterwards. Just fetch me the magnifying glass on the desk there? Damned if I can make out this inscription.”
So it went; day after day he gave me smiles rather than scowls, and at times I tilted my head up at the perfect evening angle when he passed my chair to refill our glasses of Scotch, and still my lips went unkissed and my questions unanswered. Despite these obstacles, I was achingly fulfilled over the simple act of wanting—having passed so much time seeking necessities, a combatant in an arena where to lose is to die, possessing the leisure to lie awake yearning after caresses I did not merit felt like an extravagance in and of itself.
That is, until work upon the cellar was completed a fortnight after Sahjara’s weapons demonstration.
? ? ?
The pinging of distant hammers and circular progression of workmen hauling rubble out the back exit had been a torment, and I do not mean in the sense of peace disrupted; I yearned to know what was below; and when one day I came downstairs for breakfast to discover profound silence save the ticking of the standing clock, I quickly inferred that the men had, at last, finished.
“Congratulations.” I took the tea Mr. Singh offered me, containing a splash of milk and one lump of sugar, exactly as I liked it.
“Might I ask upon what account, Miss Stone?”
“The completed renovations downstairs.”
Mr. Thornfield stirred his coffee, transfixed by the newspaper; Mr. Singh nodded graciously, whilst an uncaring Sahjara yawned over her bowl of spiced porridge.