The Sapphire Widow Read online

  ‘I can do that.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Have a lovely evening, Pa.’

  As she crossed the small back hall leading to the kitchen she passed the open door of Elliot’s study and, pausing, saw he was in there with a man she vaguely recognized. A dark-haired Burgher, that much was clear, with untrimmed eyebrows and an impassive face, one of the descendants of the Portuguese who had first discovered Galle. She was surprised Elliot hadn’t mentioned inviting him to the party, and took a step forward to introduce herself. Elliot spotted her and frowned. Something about his irritable look troubled her, but before she’d had a chance to speak, a sudden movement caught her eye and she glimpsed a purple-faced monkey slipping into the kitchen. She’d have to have a firm word with the staff right away; certain windows and doors should not be left unlocked. The monkeys were clever and if you gave them an inch they’d take a mile. She hardly dared recall that her father had once said something similar about Elliot.

  3.

  Early on Christmas Eve morning Louisa left her home in Church Street, carried on down the road, crossed Middle Street, and went to call for Gwen as arranged. They were to meet in the hall of the Regency-style New Oriental Hotel, imposing with its three-foot-thick sandstone walls. Louisa glanced up at the high wooden ceiling. The hotel had been built in 1684 by the Dutch as a barracks to house army officers, and now it was where visiting planters and traders stayed, as well as a steady trickle of tourists in more recent times. The impressive entrance hall, stuffed with ebony easy chairs and sofas, with just a few woven-rattan recliners dotted among them, was already busy.

  Beeswax and cigar smoke impregnated the walls, along with just the faintest tang of yesterday’s whisky, and a huge pine tree took up star position, hung with baubles and small candles in holders. Though pretty, it was such a fire hazard that the candles, once lit, needed watching constantly by one of the houseboys. Last year the boy had been caught napping and narrowly escaped being responsible for the entire place catching alight.

  She loved the hotel with its dramatic towering front, facing the harbour, and had sketched it and most of Galle’s buildings at one time or another. She always enjoyed drawing and had longed to become an architect, but there had been nowhere in Ceylon for a woman to study. She might have gone to Europe or America, but hadn’t wanted to leave her father alone and so, enchanted by architecture and buildings, interiors had become her passion. She’d often be found sitting at the beautiful mahogany cabinet of her Singer sewing machine, running up curtains or making cushion covers until late at night. Or if not that, she’d be creating intricate line drawings and watercolour washes of Galle’s buildings to hang on her walls. Ruining her eyes, as Elliot’s mother, Irene, would say.

  Irene’s brand of suburban snobbery and pretentiousness was typical of certain Europeans, and Louisa hardly dared admit how relieved she felt that she wasn’t coming for Christmas this year. The Reeves, Irene and Harold, a civil servant, had been invited to Christmas with friends in Colombo and so it would just be Elliot, Louisa and her father.

  A moment later, Gwen appeared wearing a cotton dress with a fluted shin-length skirt and a large sunhat. ‘Morning,’ she said and kissed Louisa’s cheek before twisting the brim of her hat. ‘Not very Christmassy, is it? I need to wear it all the time. With skin like mine I burn quickly.’

  Louisa glanced at her own tanned skin. ‘Luckily I don’t have that problem. I’m on my bike so much I always look as if I’ve been left out in the sun.’

  ‘At least it’s fashionable these days.’

  ‘So,’ Louisa said as they walked through the cobbled streets, passing low-built bungalows with gorgeous ornamental lintels over the main doorways and terracotta roofs held up by rows of columns providing shade to the verandas. ‘Tell me what you get up to on that tea plantation of yours.’

  ‘Well, we’re quite remote so don’t tend to socialize a lot. Just the odd trip to Colombo or Nuwara Eliya for a ball. Although we did once go to New York for a month.’

  ‘That must have been fun.’

  ‘It was quite a time. We were in the process of turning Hooper’s Tea into a proper brand.’

  ‘Has it been a success?’

  ‘Pretty much, though I’m not really involved in the business. Mainly I make cheese.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘If you ever come to visit you must try some. It’s delicious, if I say so myself.’ She smiled and her sparkling eyes reflected the sun.

  All the houses they passed had shutters, either open or closed; twisted frangipani trees grew in the passageways and monkeys grunted as they swung in their gleaming branches.

  Louisa thought back to when she and Elliot had first moved into their home, soon after Elliot had been placed in charge of her father’s gem cutting and polishing house. Her father had taken some persuading to employ Elliot at all, but in the end, despite Jonathan’s lingering reservations, Elliot had proved himself. It was an important post with full responsibility for all the records of all the gems that went through their hands.

  The two women chatted as they sauntered past Buddhist monks, as well as Muslim men in white with woven caps on their heads, and Louisa nodded at them all.

  ‘I haven’t got long,’ Gwen said. ‘We need to leave earlier than I expected.’

  ‘We’ll just slip down here, shall we? Then let me take you to the ramparts. Elliot and I often walk around them just before the sky turns indigo at dusk and then darkness falls.’

  ‘How romantic. You are lucky. You have everything you could ever want here.’

  Louisa smiled but didn’t reply.

  ‘I think it’s very pretty, magical in fact.’

  They smelt the fish before they came upon it, flapping in the breeze where it had been hung from a beam outside a shop to dry in the sun. The same shop also sold tuna sauce which was kept in large highly pungent barrels. It was still early enough to see the fish seller, who waved as he passed by, balancing large panniers of fresh fish either side of his bicycle, and with a trail of cats following behind. Everyone greeted Louisa.

  ‘The fish man delivers anywhere you want in the Fort and tosses the heads and tails to the cats,’ she said. ‘As you can see, they are all rather fat.’

  They passed an enormous, softly scented frangipani tree and soon reached the old walls built from corals, lime and mud, where they looked out across the glittering ocean stretching as far as the eye could see.

  ‘This is so beautiful,’ Gwen said. ‘And I love the smell.’

  Louisa laughed. ‘Of fish?’

  ‘Yes, fish, but it’s the gorgeous salty smell of the ocean too. We live by a lake, but I’ve often wondered what it might be like to live close to the sea.’

  ‘It’s always changing. I love that. Sometimes it’s silvery and serene, soothing to just sit and stare, sometimes, as now, it’s speckled with gold.’

  As they sat on the wall Louisa felt more relaxed than she had for a while. She had longed to confide in someone, but hadn’t found the right time or the right confidant either. Gwen was the first person she felt she might be able to trust not to gossip.

  ‘You asked if I was happy,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, the truth is, I’m getting there. Two months ago, I had a miscarriage.’

  ‘Oh goodness. How awful for you.’

  ‘But that was not my first.’ She swallowed hard before speaking. Her stillborn and her miscarried babies were people to her, little people she still grieved for. Children who should have filled her arms and her heart. It wasn’t an easy thing to say and she didn’t want to talk about it, but found she couldn’t remain silent either. ‘I had a stillborn child a little over two years ago, and a previous miscarriage too, eight years ago.’

  Gwen’s face darkened. ‘I am so sorry … it must have been terrible.’

  Louisa murmured her thanks.

  Gwen nodded slowly as if deciding what to say. ‘I lost a child too,’ she ev
entually said. ‘I still find it hard to talk about. Probably why I didn’t tell you when we met for tea in Colombo. I just couldn’t speak of it.’

  Louisa bit her lip to try to stop the stinging in her eyes.

  ‘It’s a long story. We kept it very much to ourselves. Her name was Liyoni,’ Gwen carried on. ‘Her loss broke my heart.’

  Louisa understood. ‘But at least you have your lovely little Alice now.’ And even as she said it she knew it had sounded all wrong. ‘Oh, gosh, that was clumsy. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean …’

  Gwen glanced at her. ‘Don’t worry. But nothing can replace what you have lost, as I’m sure you know.’

  Louisa nodded. With these shared confidences, something had shifted between them and Louisa felt a strong affinity with Gwen. ‘Thank you for telling me,’ she said.

  As tears filled her eyes, Gwen reached out and the two women sat together in the silence that eased around them.

  The next evening, both still replete from a prolonged and very late Christmas lunch with her father, Louisa and Elliot walked out to the ramparts together to sit near where she had been with Gwen the previous day. People were eating snacks as they sat on the walls, and Louisa glanced at the crows lying in wait, eagle-eyed, watching for scraps of food to fall.

  ‘I think I have drunk rather too much brandy with your old man,’ Elliot said and closed his eyes.

  ‘The fresh air will help,’ she said, feeling a touch disappointed.

  As the temperature dropped the locals began streaming out for their evening constitutional.

  Regaining her equilibrium, she smiled at him. ‘The party was great, wasn’t it? I’m so glad you invited Gwen and Laurence. But why didn’t you invite the man I saw you with in your study to stay on? The Burgher.’

  ‘I did, but De Vos had other commitments.’

  ‘You seemed annoyed when I almost interrupted you.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘So, what did he come for?’

  ‘A bit of business.’

  ‘Oh Elliot! You promised no business over Christmas.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He linked his arm through hers. ‘Let’s not talk about that. Let’s just enjoy the evening. We’re happy, aren’t we? You’re managing?’

  She leant against him again. ‘I am.’

  As the sun began to set, the sky flared into an astonishing display of fiery scarlet and pink, and then they heard the melodious call to prayer coming from the mosque. Suddenly, all the men in white turned on their heels and hurried off in its direction.

  Louisa loved the dusty peacefulness, though at times the atmosphere was almost tinged with sadness. Because Galle was certainly quieter these days. Her father remembered when five hundred passengers a day had arrived by steamer, spice vessels had crowded the docks, and fighting flotillas had come to replenish their supplies. Now some of the cosmopolitan Europeans still made it their home, at least for part of the year, and though it remained a trading centre for jewels, cinnamon and rubber, much of the tea trade had moved to Colombo.

  Meanwhile, Louisa enjoyed meeting the merchants who still came from Malaya, India and China. Galle just about held its own, and she loved to hear the repetitive melancholic Islamic call to prayer at dawn, at midday, in the middle of the afternoon, just after sunset, and two hours later. The sound had been around throughout her life and though there were fewer Muslims now – most of the Sinhalese were Buddhists – they lived in harmony with each other. She knew about the occasional outbursts against the British, everyone did, but they happened far less frequently now everyone had the vote, and there were far fewer than in Colombo. Yes, things had changed in Serendip, as Ceylon was once called – the island of jewels – and for the better.

  4.

  A week after Christmas, on New Year’s Day, Elliot had gone to dive off Flag Rock, which stood at the southernmost point of Galle Fort. Louisa thought it a risky pastime, but danger was Elliot’s addiction. Along with driving too fast and racing a dinghy, he took life at a ferocious speed. Although she tried, Louisa found it hard to keep up, but then Elliot didn’t internalize things in the way she did. Hating the tension he sometimes saw in her face, he called it unnecessary dwelling. She had asked him to bring her back a surprise from the market where he’d found the sapphire hair clip he’d given her. Imitation, of course, and he could easily afford the real thing, but they liked to find each other gifts from the various markets and bazaars. It had been their custom throughout the years, though he had been too busy lately.

  Last week he had been away at Cinnamon Hills, a cinnamon estate in the countryside a little over twenty miles from Galle, where he owned shares in the business. The estate had been neglected by previous owners, Elliot said, and as it needed extensive work to get it back on its feet, he had been helping out. Last month he’d also been in Colombo, checking up on his spice trading business there, and that was as well as having a full-time job in her father’s firm.

  She tried not to dwell on her latest miscarriage and keep positive but it wasn’t always easy. She thought about her meeting with Gwen Hooper. There was something fragile about the woman but, though she had also lost a child, she carried on with optimism. What women go through, she thought. What they go through and still manage to smile.

  After a breakfast of fruit, buffalo-milk curd and hoppers – lacy, biscuity baskets, sometimes with eggs inside – Louisa gathered her three springer spaniels together and set off to walk them through the main gate of the Fort and across a channel to the park. As she passed the flower seller on his ancient bicycle, she remembered how when she and Elliot were first married they’d go to the park before breakfast and then walk back to Lighthouse Beach. She remembered how once, they’d dared each other to wade out as far as the reef while the tide was out and the water was shallow. Feeling like children exploring an unknown world and laughing so much they slipped and, clutching each other, fell, they’d then been forced to return wet and sandy, creeping upstairs so the servants didn’t spot them. Life had always been fun with Elliot.

  Her father was a much more serious and thoughtful man than her husband. There tended to be four types of British men in Ceylon: army officers, planters, civil servants and businessmen. Her father was in the latter category. Perhaps losing his wife had made him graver than he might otherwise have been. It saddened her that she couldn’t remember how he had been before her mother died.

  After her walk she lay on her bed under the fan and put a palm on her belly. If only, she thought, but then checked herself. Elliot never showed his sadness over the loss of Julia, but she knew it hurt him. He was a man made for fatherhood, especially as he had lost a younger brother years ago to cholera. The child had only been five and Elliot seven, while their younger sister, Margo, had just been a toddler. That was why, despite everything, Louisa felt sympathy for Irene Reeve, though it was obvious that was not the only reason Elliot’s mother seemed perpetually dissatisfied. Louisa sighed, catching the smoky coconut fragrance of food being cooked. Irene would be arriving from Colombo in time for supper, so it was time for Louisa to calm her curls and tidy herself up a bit.

  Over a typical Sinhalese dish of rice and curry they managed to get by with small talk. Elliot’s father had not been able to join his wife on this extended visit, because of work.

  ‘It’s a pity Harold couldn’t make it,’ Louisa said. ‘We had hoped he might, didn’t we, Elliot.’

  Elliot nodded. ‘Never mind. It’s lovely that you’re here, Mother.’

  ‘Yes, it is, Irene,’ Louisa said dutifully.

  Irene sniffed tetchily – even after all these years, she still seemed displeased at her daughter-in-law using her first name. ‘One does what one can, but you know what he’s like. If he had a more senior position he might have more choice over what he does, but you know your father. He isn’t even a member of the Colombo Club.’

  ‘I’m sure Father does what he can.’

  She smiled. ‘You, dear Elliot, always see the best in people, but I
know your father could have been so much more. But we are where we are, and that’s the long and short of it. You’re very lucky to have married a man like my son, Louisa.’

  Louisa nodded but intended to steer clear of this conversation. It had been repeated so many times she could foretell what would be coming next and while the spotlight wasn’t on her, so much the better.

  Elliot muttered something soothing, as she’d known he would, and then a servant came in to clear the table and the family fell silent. Another servant, a young dark-eyed, dark-haired woman called Camille, brought in a pineapple milk pudding but Louisa shook her head when offered a portion.

  Camille served the others and then left the room.

  ‘I know it’s none of my business,’ Irene said. ‘But don’t you think a milky pudding might put some meat on your bones? Why not get yourself an English cook or maybe even French? I’m sure all this Sinhalese cuisine isn’t good for you. Apart from the puddings, I mean.’

  ‘Actually, we have a French girl called Camille working as a kitchen maid. She just served the pudding. Didn’t you notice her? Although she’s French she usually wears a sari. Perhaps that’s why you didn’t spot her.’

  ‘How very unusual. A European working as a lowly kitchen maid.’

  ‘It’s rather a curious story. Apparently, she fell in love with a sailor who got her a job in the galley of the liner he was working on. But then he abandoned her here in Galle with no funds.’

  ‘So, you just stepped in and took her on. How like you to be so kind.’

  Louisa could see from Irene’s disapproving look that she did not think it kind at all. ‘She’s all alone with no family. I felt I had to, and anyway, our previous kitchen boy had moved on.’

  Irene inclined her head. ‘I see. Well, with your permission, naturally, I think it might be opportune if I stay on a little longer than originally planned. Somebody needs to ensure you eat properly.’

  Louisa groaned inwardly.