The Counterfeit Guest by Rose Melikan

Author:Rose Melikan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2009-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

BEFORE SEEING CHAMPIAN Hall, Holland had been prepared to dislike it as something belonging to Crosby-Nash. Once he had seen it, his dislike increased. He hated the gaudy decoration—not what he associated with “proper” Indian furnishings at all—and the remnants of Tudor opulence did not improve matters. On her arrival Mary had likened the Hall to an Indian palace; to Holland it conjured up a very different image.

His memory of the place was clear, although more than five years had passed since he had left India. Perhaps it had once belonged to a prince, but in Holland’s time it was known as “Missie Amber’s House,” and its residents—”the little sisters”—dispensed hospitality to gentlemen of the European community in Madras. Missie Amber actually hailed from Shoreditch and had come out to India as a naive young girl attached, more or less, to a minor functionary in the East India Company. At some point he had faded from the scene and, lacking the means and the inclination to return to England, she had gone into business for herself. In the years that followed, her desire to create a vision of the Arabian Nights (her knowledge of geography was somewhat lax) and her inability to pass up a bargain had resulted in her “House” becoming a strange amalgamation of East and West.

The respectable female section of Madras society had strongly disapproved of Missie Amber and her little sisters and had thought that her House ought to be closed down. Holland, who had been a young subaltern at the time, had certainly not shared this view. However, he did not now like the idea of Susannah living in a place that reminded him of it so vividly, even though it was not a comparison that she would ever draw. He felt awkward and embarrassed, as if Susannah—and Mary Finch too, for God’s sake—had somehow wandered into a place where they ought not to be, and his own presence made it worse.

This particular feeling of uneasiness disturbed him as he came down to breakfast, and when the two ladies joined him his spirits sank further. Susannah maintained a flow of undemanding small talk, but as soon as Holland started explaining his appearance at Champian Hall he found the casual lies, and Susannah’s unquestioning acceptance of them, deeply depressing. Mary said almost nothing, but her silence was equally painful. She looked distracted, even troubled, and as she was sitting across from him, he could not help but see her whenever he lifted his eyes from his food.

They were surrounded by the incongruous decorations that everywhere characterized Champian Hall. On one side was an ornately carved sideboard of dark oak graced by two massive copper ewers. A rosewood chair with embroidered seat cushion stood in the window bay, and from this vantage a spectator might observe the breakfast arrangements: a mahogany table set with plates bearing a heraldic device and ebony-handled cutlery. The morning sunlight streamed in through a roundel of stained glass, but otherwise the walls

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