Fields of Gold Read online

  Brent looked over at the dhobi’s son climbing down from the vehicle, the back of the cart half filled with bundles of laundry. ‘You tell the dhobi that I will kick his bony arse if he sends back laundry that is inferior. I will ensure he gets no work from the memsahib if he lets me down again.’

  ‘I will, Dr Brent. Matron has asked me to watch everything they do and report back,’ he lied.

  ‘Good.’ He cupped Robbie’s chin in a parody of intimacy. ‘Remember what I said. I want you to leave Arabella alone. I don’t want you filling her head with thoughts of life beyond the orphanage. I’m actually quite surprised you didn’t try to leave with her brother.’

  ‘But this is my home, Dr Brent,’ Robbie said in an injured voice. ‘There is nowhere else for me.’

  He glanced again at the dhobi’s cart. Time was so short. He had to get away from Brent or the whole plan could go awry. He cast a silent prayer that Bella was precisely where she should be and hidden from anyone who might be looking for her.

  ‘Fetch me some water before you go, would you?’

  ‘Of course. Let me replenish your jug.’

  Robbie fled, first to the chokra boy by his bullock cart to give him some instructions to wait. How his heart was hammering. The plan was in motion. All he had to do now was hold his nerve and somehow keep Bella convinced this was all just a game.

  He ran around the back of Brent’s house, to the tiny outhouse. He’d already seen Matron leave for the day to oversee the purchase of the month’s fresh dry supplies. She would be gone for at least another hour. Logically there should be no one anywhere near the house, other than Brent himself, and he had no reason to come here at this hour until his midday tiffin. Robbie was counting on it.

  ‘Bella?’ he whispered.

  She emerged from behind the outhouse. ‘Here I am.’

  ‘Hello, Bella. Well done,’ he said, relief flooding him. ‘Do you remember our plan?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ she said, playfully. ‘You’re going to bundle me up in a sheet and we’re going to escape.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said, nerves fluttering like a flock of birds in his belly. ‘But, Bella, you have to stay silent – not a groan, not a giggle, not a sneeze. Any sound at all might give you away. And if you’re found, Dr Brent will become enraged. You haven’t seen him angry.’

  ‘What will he do?’ she asked, wide-eyed.

  ‘Nothing to you. But me? He’ll whip me, maybe send me away for good. He hates disobedience.’

  ‘Oh, Robbie, let’s not do this, then.’

  ‘No, listen to me. It’s going to be fun. We can meet Ned, have the ice-cream and you’ll be back before anyone knows we’re gone.’

  ‘Hurry, hurry, then. Tie me in,’ she whispered.

  Robbie nodded and fetched the bundle of sheets he’d already stashed. ‘Not a sound, Bella. And you only get out when I tell you it’s safe.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Only when you hear my voice, Bella. Promise?’

  ‘I promise.’

  Bella was tiny, almost elfin, and her limbs folded into themselves with ease until she was wrapped deep within the sheets. Robbie tied her in. She looked like a beautiful butterfly just before it emerges from its cocoon.

  ‘Stay loose and floppy,’ he warned. ‘No elbows or knees must poke anywhere. You need to imagine yourself as a bundle of sheets.’ He heard her giggle. ‘Hush now, Bella. It begins. Not another word until we get there.’

  She made no further sound and Robbie hefted the bundle onto his back, glad his wiry body had done enough hard work to build strong muscles. He checked their reflection in a window as a last-ditch effort to reassure himself this mad plan could work. He held his breath and walked, reminding himself it was about confidence. From a distance no one would think anything was odd about this scene.

  As light as Bella was, Robbie could feel her dead weight on his back. He forced himself to walk slowly so she didn’t bang against him. He was almost at the cart when the voice he dreaded most called to him.

  ‘Pardon, Dr Brent?’ he called back, putting down the bundle.

  ‘Come here, boy!’

  Robbie had to approach the enemy. Brent stood perhaps thirty feet in front of him but it felt like the longest walk he’d ever made. The heat was already scorching the earth and he should have thought about a hat for Bella – if she survived the heat inside that bundle. He felt rising panic, his mouth turning dry. Robbie was convinced that guilt was written all over his face. Brent knew, he was sure of it, and now he was going to make Robbie pay.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Brent demanded.

  Somehow Robbie held his nerve. ‘I told you, Dr Brent, Matron asked me to make sure the chokra took all the laundry because he’s been unreliable for the last couple of months. I was just helping to speed things up.’

  ‘I see. You look anxious, Robbie. And my, my, you are perspiring hard this morning. Anything wrong?’

  Robbie took a slow breath. ‘Actually, I don’t feel especially well, Dr Brent. I slept badly. I think last night’s dhal upset me.’

  ‘No one else is complaining.’

  ‘It will pass. I will take more water.’

  ‘Speaking of which, I thought I asked you to fetch me water.’

  ‘I just thought I’d get the cart loaded up first.’

  ‘You seem awfully eager to get away on the bullock cart for some reason.’

  Robbie’s insides froze. He hoped his fear was not reflected on his face. He couldn’t feel it any longer – everything was numbed. ‘I … I didn’t want to let Matron down,’ he stammered. Then reached one last time for a lie. It was his final parry. He had nothing more if Brent called this bluff. ‘She said that if I ran all my errands before the dhobi sent back the washing this afternoon, I could visit the temple and make an offering for my mother.’

  ‘Did she indeed? And why this treat, Robbie?’

  ‘Because I’ve been so helpful to her recently, and she praised me for assisting with the Sinclair children.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  Robbie nodded.

  ‘Well, I shall have to have a word with Matron. We can’t single you out too often, especially as you have enjoyed my favour for so long.’

  Robbie’s pulse pounded in his ears and his head ached from the pressure in his body. If this continued, he was sure he would quite simply explode in front of Brent.

  ‘Arabella Sinclair has still not turned up to her lessons. I’ve got the servants looking for her. Did you see her?’

  ‘Yes,’ Robbie shocked himself by saying. ‘I told her to hurry back to her classroom. She was hiding in a cupboard in the dorm. She was crying, Dr Brent, and I did my best to comfort her but I’m in a hurry, as you can see.’

  ‘Yes, yes, and …?’ He clicked his fingers before Robbie’s face.

  Robbie’s head snapped back. ‘I think you’ll find she’s already with the others.’

  ‘Good. Well done. Now fetch my jug of water, jaldi, jaldi!’

  Robbie glanced at the bundle of laundry, sitting in full fierce heat, and realised there was nothing he could do for Bella at this moment.

  He ran to the kitchen. The ayah was busy at her work, crushing garlic, ginger and onion on the grinding stone held nimbly between her crossed legs. She was humming to herself, her back to him.

  He asked her if the water had been drawn from the well.

  ‘There is some boiled water left, not much,’ she replied. ‘The rest is cooling.’

  Robbie nodded and moved to the big pail where the boiled, cooled water was kept. His despair, his years of yearning to be free, his desperation to escape poverty and his desire to protect Bella against the monster that was Brent all joined to form a dark ball of festering hatred. It settled in his belly like a cancer that would consume him if he didn’t heal himself by taking revenge. And there was only one way to heal his thirst for revenge.

  Water.

  Robbie had already lifted the lid on the pail of boiled wa
ter but now he replaced it quietly, hardly daring to breathe. Could he really do this? He needed to think it through but time was his enemy. Make a decision, Robbie.

  Quickly Robbie filled the jug with unboiled water from the other container and, without a giving himself a moment to reconsider, he ran back to Brent’s office.

  ‘Here we are, Dr Brent.’

  ‘Look at you sweating, Robbie. I do believe I’ve never seen you look so unhealthy.’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘No, we can’t have that,’ Brent said. ‘Here, take a drink,’ he said, pouring out a glass of the newly arrived water.

  Robbie wiped his face with his shirtsleeve. ‘I’m not thirsty, Dr Brent.’

  ‘Well, you certainly look it.’

  ‘I can have some on the journey. I really must —’

  ‘Drink, Robbie. I insist,’ Brent replied.

  He had no choice. To defy Brent now would be to seal his and Bella’s future. He could not permit that to happen. He reached for the glass, hoping his hand didn’t tremble.

  ‘Chin-chin,’ Brent said, with a glint of pleasure. ‘Finish it up and be on your way. Can’t have you passing out from dehydration.’ He laughed. Robbie steeled himself and drained the glass.

  ‘Goodbye, Robbie,’ Brent said. It sounded final.

  Robbie left the hut, the sun not yet high enough to bake the earth but more than hot enough to send a pale-skinned little girl, unused to the heat, to an early death. He ran to the bundle still untouched by the cart. He couldn’t say a word to Bella because the chokra boy was suddenly alongside and flinging his own linen onto the cart.

  He hefted Bella, trying to make it look careless and easy, but stopped just short of flinging her.

  ‘Bella?’ he murmured, desperate for any sort of response. He glanced at the boy impatiently waiting for him to clamber up onto the bench.

  The bundle remained ominously silent.

  15

  They finally arrived at the laundry with the bullock cart manoeuvring its ponderous way through the streets without incident. Robbie felt dizzyingly short of breath in his fear for Bella.

  He leapt off the cart and as the dhobi himself came out of the gloom of the shop, yelling at his son and accusing him of lingering too long at the orphanage, Robbie was first to haul off the bundle that contained Bella. He made a show of adjusting the load, and in the meantime father and son had hefted their bundles onto their backs and were lurching into the laundry, still arguing.

  It was Robbie’s chance. He stumbled around to the side of the building, struggling with the knots that seemed to have tightened from the weight they held. He felt his panic take hold and fly.

  ‘Bella!’ he screamed. ‘Answer me.’

  He heard a soft groan and his poor, hammering heart stuttered momentarily with relief. She was alive! In a fever he bit through the fabric and ripped open the top sheet and there she was – his golden angel – bathed in sweat, her soft hair clinging like limp snakes to her face.

  ‘Bella,’ he whispered into her ear.

  She moaned softly again. ‘Ned?’

  ‘It’s Robbie. Come on. Can you stand?’

  Her eyelids fluttered open and then closed again. She was dazed and Robbie feared heatstroke, which could kill.

  ‘Bella, put your arms around my neck. Please, Bella, please. Help me.’

  With an effort, he lifted her and staggered into the shop’s entrance, darting around people ironing, and between sheets and shirts hanging from every inch of the shop, hollering for the dhobi.

  The older man came hurrying out from the back, demanding to know what was going on.

  In Hindi Robbie explained that he was bringing in the laundry when this young memsahib had collapsed. Two of the dhobi’s women rushed to Robbie’s aid, deferring somewhat to his paler skin and obvious Western blood, perhaps surprised by his fluency in their language.

  Everyone began fanning Bella and fresh water was brought.

  ‘Boiled?’ Robbie demanded, covering Bella’s mouth.

  The wife batted his hand away. ‘Of course!’

  Life-giving water was dribbled between Bella’s swollen lips and gradually she came back to them, her eyelids finally opening. She looked momentarily frightened by the dark faces looming over her, but then she saw Robbie and her confusion eased. Her eyes were bloodshot but she managed a smile. ‘Is this where we get our ice-cream?’ she murmured.

  The dhobi seemed to grasp the last two words and grinned, revealing few teeth left in his head.

  Robbie maintained his story that she was simply a passerby. He began discussing with the dhobi and his wife the possibility that Bella must have somehow become separated from her family and disorientated by the heat. Going by the concerned waggle of their heads, no one around him seemed to think the story implausible.

  ‘What shall we do?’ the dhobi asked.

  Bella had closed her eyes again and was clearly of no help.

  This was the opening Robbie needed. ‘I shall take her into Rangoon.’

  But the man frowned. ‘Pah!’ he said. ‘How will you find the family she belongs to in Rangoon?’

  ‘Easy enough. This girl is English, so the big hotel – The Strand – will be able to track down her people. Help me get her to The Strand. I can sort it from there.’

  The dhobi looked doubtful but his wife prodded him.

  ‘Hurry up, you fool,’ she said. ‘Get that bullock cart moving and get this girl to the hotel.’ She wagged a finger in his face. ‘If she dies here, you’ll make lots of trouble for us.’

  That threat galvanised the dhobi into action. He blasted orders at the chokra boy, who nodded continuously at both his father and Robbie. Finally, the boy beckoned.

  ‘I’ll take you now,’ he said to Robbie.

  They helped Bella to her feet. She was unsteady and claimed to be dizzy but Robbie could see that his prayers had been answered – Bella would recover. But there was always the lurking threat that Matron Brent might decide to pass by the laundry.

  ‘Come on, Bella,’ he whispered. ‘We have to meet Ned. Take more water.’

  ‘I can’t. I can feel it all sloshing inside me. I’ll burst. Perhaps I should go to a bathroom.’

  Robbie nearly laughed, hysteria just a moment away with his nerves strangled and Bella’s belief that a place like this would even have running water.

  ‘We’re going back to The Strand. Can you hold on until then?’ he asked, imagining what she’d have to squat over if he asked if she could relieve herself here. It would be worse than the orphanage.

  She nodded.

  ‘It will be cool in the hotel,’ he said, guiding her out to the bullock cart and helping her into it. ‘Now we must shield you with this cloth. The sun on you again,’ he said, looking up into the fierce light, ‘is very dangerous.’

  The bullock pulled out laboriously into the bustling traffic and the dhobi’s farewell was swallowed up into the cacophony of the city.

  Ned wandered aimlessly around the bazaar. He was a familiar enough figure now and some of the stall owners chanced a smile at him. He’d filled his grumbling belly with a bowl of irresistible, silky-pale broth. He’d seen the soup simmering for an hour or more in a huge pot, so he knew it was safe to eat, and its exotic aroma made his mouth water.

  Unlike his mother and Bella, Ned didn’t mind the heat of chilli and the foreign tastes of ginger and garlic. The ship’s galley had begun serving some Indian-style food once they’d left the Suez Canal behind, to get people acquainted with the spices and herbs they were likely to encounter further east.

  Ned had been entranced by the rich colours of the curries, the rices striped with saffron and crispy onions, fried sultanas and little kidney-shaped nuts called cashews. On the evening called the Maharajah’s Banquet, when everyone dressed in their finest, he had noticed with delight that the huge platters of rice were draped in tiny glittering foils of silver. One of the old waiters had assured him it was real.

  Silver
leaf, he’d called it. ‘If this were a real banquet, for a real maharajah, this would have been one hundred per cent gold leaf.’

  ‘Really?’ Ned had exclaimed.

  ‘No word of a lie. Gold means everything to these people. You’ll see for yourself. Even the poorest people wear their money – a peasant woman will wear twenty-four-carat gold bangles. They even eat gold … but only royalty, mind,’ he’d said, tapping his nose.

  Ned bought a few bananas with the annas he found at the bottom of his pocket, mindful only to show the smallest change. In the hotel he’d taken the precaution of taping the bigger notes to his chest. He had no intention of using them for anything other than their passage out of this place.

  Once his hunger had been sated, he began prowling, never straying far from the flower stalls. He’d lost count of the times he’d circled this area of the bazaar, his gaze roving constantly for any sign of trouble but mostly for Robbie and Bella.

  And so it was a moment of enormous wonder, his emotion welling up from somewhere deep inside and rushing out of his throat in a triumphant whoop, when he saw two familiar, slightly ragged figures stumbling into the hall of flowers.

  Their reunion was brief. Ned forced them both to take a bowl of soup as neither had eaten since breakfast and it calmed them both down. Bella seemed to have forgotten about the promised ice-cream, or had lost interest. Her complexion was pale, her skin dry and hot, no longer clammy. Robbie looked little better and seemed to be hiding something.

  As Robbie drank the last of his soup, Ned asked the big question. ‘What about Brent?’

  ‘Don’t worry about Brent.’

  ‘Don’t worry? You’re joking, aren’t you? He’d know by now.’

  ‘Know?’ Robbie jeered. Then he sounded suddenly sad. ‘He already knew, Ned. He let us both go too easily. The one thing I don’t think he’d counted on was us taking Bella as well. Now, that will make him mad.’

  ‘What do you mean he knew?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. We’re here now. He won’t think about the docks immediately, and by the time he does, hopefully it will be too late. If we can find a ship to take us, we should go tonight.’