‘If this was all there was to it,’ Joe thought, ‘I could be happy here.’

‘Is this Lasra Kot?’ he asked. ‘Is this where we’re to meet the ferryman?’

‘It’s Lasra Kot, yes, but we’re not here to meet a ferryman.’

‘But didn’t your note say…?’

‘I did but it wasn’t true about Naurung’s message. There was no message. I made it up.’

‘But why?’

‘I thought we had deserved a day off from police work. I wanted you to see India as it really is. I know you have no time for it and are rather desperate to go home but I just didn’t want you to disappear with Calcutta and the station as your lasting, your only, impressions of the country. The station is unreal. It’s more British than Britain, an invention, a parade. Calcutta is unreal – two extremes of wealth and poverty, both disgusting to a man I am beginning to think of as seeing as I do in spite of his being a policeman.’

A young girl in a bright red-bordered sari came hurrying from one of the houses and spoke to Nancy in what Joe guessed to be Bengali.

‘This is my friend Supriya,’ said Nancy. ‘And there are other people here I ought to see. Why don’t you tie the horses and take a seat? I shan’t be very long.’

She indicated a small temple, little bigger than a summer house. ‘Take a seat over there.’ She unpacked some small parcels from her saddle bag and Joe led the ponies away to stand in the shade.

Gladly he went over to the temple to sit in the shade himself. He lit a cigarette and watched as a girl in an azure sari emerged from one of the houses and spread a carpet under the peepul tree and invited Nancy to sit.

At once a shy procession began to form up. Mothers – themselves little older than schoolgirls – with babies in hand or babies at the breast, infants tugging at their skirts, began to gather round Nancy. Each child in turn was led up for her inspection. She looked at eyes, she looked at ears, she felt limbs, lifted draperies and ran an exploring hand over fat brown stomachs, the whole operation accompanied by gales of giggles from the children and laughter from their mothers. From time to time she took a tin of ointment from her pack and gently spread it over an affected part; she applied drops to sore eyes; with a skilled hand and a tight cotton noose, watched by the interested Supriya, she dealt with the ticks that she explained were endemic in the valley.

‘Conjunctivitis and diarrhoea,’ said Nancy over their heads to Joe in a businesslike voice, ‘those are our main problems. You can’t teach these people anything about “personal hygiene” – they’re probably the cleanest people in the world – but, oh boy! are there things they should learn about culinary hygiene and if only I could teach the children not to do their tuppences all over the place we’d be half-way to solving their problems. Still, I think I’m making progress and Supriya here is becoming my valuable assistant.’

She turned and spoke to Supriya who blushed and wriggled, bowed and salaamed with much gratification. Joe watched her with tenderness as, after each inspection, Nancy planted an affectionate kiss on each brown cheek which was immediately proffered to her. Briefly Joe remembered her speaking of the American soldier: ‘He had, in a way, become my baby,’ Were these small brown children elected to fill that gap?

As her inspection drew to a close, Nancy was obviously subjected to a barrage of questions most of which seemed to relate to Joe himself.

‘They assume,’ said Nancy, ‘that you are my husband. And look, Joe – seriously now – for the purposes of this conversation we have to be married. The idea of an unmarried lady in the deep jungle with an unmarried gentleman would be incomprehensible and impossible.’

‘Isn’t that rather awkward?’ said Joe. ‘Supposing the Collector should call?’

‘Oh, he often does. They assume he’s my father so that doesn’t present a problem. But the fact that we have no children does. That they can’t understand, and perhaps you’d like to know that they assume that it’s all your fault!’ She turned and, speaking in Bengali, obviously had this confirmed in a shrill chorus.

‘One of their problems,’ she said, ‘is that they’ve never seen such a white sahib before. It’s all right though – they guess that you come from the far north. They assume the scar on your forehead is the mark of a wild animal, a panther perhaps. Oh, no – there’s going to be a legend about this!’ And judging by the flood of questions which ensued and the peals of laughter which Nancy ’s responses elicited, the legend was growing.

‘I don’t mind,’ thought Joe.

‘Aspirin and quinine,’ Nancy said in an aside to Joe as she handed packages to Supriya. ‘I’ve taught her how to administer them. They’re beginning to trust me. They call me in now for eye problems, ticks and tapeworms and for childbirth. It was difficult at first to make them understand that it’s not wise to wait for four days when a girl is in labour. Trouble is, they think it’ll turn out all right if they say enough spells. The first baby I delivered here was four days overdue, it was the girl’s first baby and it was my first baby if you see what I mean. Terrifying! I added my prayers to their spells and got busy. They worked on the top end, combing her hair and plaiting charms into it, and I worked on what you might call the business end. It was a boy and they both survived. And now they think I’m very good at delivering boys and if they call me in it’s likely to be a boy. Supriya is able to help me now and her little sister, Malobika, is keen to learn too. So maybe I’m having a beneficent impact, or something of the sort.’

More sticky cakes were produced from one of the huts and another bowl of milk. Nancy explained that as a child she would not have been allowed cakes or sweets. ‘What a lot of nonsense!’ she said. ‘Mind you, if they’d been lying open in the bazaar with all the flies in Bengal on them it would be a different story, but up here what harm can it do?’

They took their farewells at last, remounted and, accompanied by a contingent of children to the edge of the village, they turned their ponies to follow a track which led to the stream that fed the village water wheel.

‘Well, what did you think of the real India?’

‘I thought Lasra Kot was charming. But I wouldn’t call it the real India.’

‘No?’ she asked in surprise. “Then what is?’

He shook his head, wishing he had not so casually introduced a false note into their day, but Nancy waited for him to go on. ‘I’ve been spending my lonely evenings in Calcutta reading, trying to understand this strange place where I’ve fetched up. I came across an Indian writer called Sri Aurobindo…’

The tightening of Nancy ’s lips gave away her opinion of Joe’s reading matter.

‘Yes, I know he was imprisoned by the British – all the best people are at some time or other! – and he’s generally considered a trouble maker, an insurgent, whatever word you’re using at the moment, but he had something to say which has stayed with me – “We do not belong to past dawns but to the noon of the future.” Naurung, his father, their friends, they are the noon of the future, if you like. Not a romantic vision perhaps and certainly not a reassuring one but, for me, that’s where the real India lies.’

He instantly regretted having spoken the truth. Her look of shining confidence was for a moment dimmed by foreboding and he feared that he might have spoiled their day. But she recovered her good humour quickly and said cheerfully, ‘Then I haven’t shown you enough. Come this way. We’ll take the road into the hills.’

They went on to climb beside a rushing stream. The track became more stony and led between great creeper-clad boulders until it ended by a pool and a waterfall.

The tension between them was by now extreme.

Nancy threw her leg over the horse’s head and slid to the ground, leading him to the water to drink.