The Lady and the Unicorn by Rumer Godden

Author:Rumer Godden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2016-10-06T04:00:00+00:00

13

Mrs Anthony, the Madrassi ayah, came to help to nurse Blanche, and in the evenings she stayed late gossiping with auntie, for Mrs Anthony loved a good gossip even more than the tea and chew of betel she would presently buy from the pan-seller on her way home. She wanted to find out from auntie where Belle had gone.

‘She has gone for a secretary to a gentleman,’ said auntie guilelessly, and Mrs Anthony’s eyes narrowed. And who was Rosa’s friend, this tall English boy? Mrs Anthony wanted to know that.

‘He very pretty,’ she said to Rosa, ‘his hair like moonshine.’

‘You mean sunshine.’

‘Too pale for sun, but he very pretty sahib.’

‘Am I pretty?’ Rosa teased her.

‘Very pretty, darling. So pretty, my Missy Rosa!’ said Mrs Anthony, who did not think so at all, too thin, too dark and little; she liked a blonde, fat cheeks, dimples and curves, in a blue dress with sequins and pink roses.

Rosa was very pale, the last of her colour had gone in the heat and the strain of Blanche’s illness; her eyelids had a lilac tinge that gave her a look of fragility, and she seemed to Stephen like a flower at night when the dusk has taken its colour and hidden its leaves in darkness, when only the shape of the flower is left, a ghost of itself.

There was something of dusk in these days. The rains were late, but for a week the sky had shown no colour, only a brooding grey, and the sun had not come from behind the clouds. The city seemed like a dream under that heavy sky. Stephen in his office, Rosa going about the house, were part of that dream, caught in each other; when Stephen came in the evening he could not bear to meet her before other people and he called her into the garden.

In the garden those Indian nights, it was hot and still and the moon was full, the parting of the palms shone like silver in the brilliantined leaves and the cassia trees dropped their petals on the drive with a sound like footsteps pattering up it. Everything had its shadow on the grass; the flying foxes across the sky, the convolvulus along the palm stem, the shadows of lily spikes and cockscombs and the steps with angles of darkness; and the shadows of Rosa and Stephen walking on the grass beside the sundial, where the jasmine was in full flower on the stone.

A firefly rested in the dark leaves, circled to the trees, and Rosa, watching it, said: ‘Look, Stephen, a flying star,’ as seriously as in a dream. If a star had blown down at her feet, she would have picked it up and given it to Stephen without surprise.

They walked now without talking, not looking at one another, not touching their hands. Stephen felt a spring of love and tenderness for this small Rosa, the anguish had gone, he had come to quiet and surety. In her a tide crept up, strong and fierce, and now it did not frighten her but filled her with a strange deep joy.

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