‘I have no idea why you are complaining,’ Alistair said, as he got out on to the stone steps and held out his hand to Mrs Bastable, who glanced from one to the other with a puzzled frown. ‘You have made the transition from ship to shore without turning green in the slightest.’
They were enveloped in the usual crowd of porters jostling for business, trinket sellers, garland merchants and beggars. Alistair dropped into rapid, colloquial Hindi as he cleared a way through for the ladies to climb the steps; by the time they had reached the top they had two of the more respectable men at their heels.
… double that when we get back here with all our packages intact, Dita translated when she could hear more clearly. Coins changed hands, the men grinned and set off.
‘I told them I wanted the best general market,’ Alistair said as they followed, skirting a white-clad procession bearing a swathed body towards the burning ghats.
‘Oh, I can never get used to that,’ Mrs Bastable moaned, turning her head away. ‘I so long for the peace of a green English churchyard.’
‘But not yet, I hope,’ Alistair murmured. Dita caught his eye and stifled a choke of laughter. Now that she had recovered from his trickery she discovered that today she was quite in charity with the man, which was dangerous. She reflected on just how dangerous as she picked her way round potholes and past a sacred cow that had come to a dead halt beside a vegetable stall and was placidly eating its way through the wretched owner’s produce.
‘And cows that stay in a field would be nice,’ she remarked.
The market they were guided to was down the usual narrow entrance that opened out into a maze of constricted alleys, lined on each side with tiny stalls and booths, many of them with the owner sitting cross-legged on the back of the counter.
‘Do you know what you want?’
‘Not fish!’ Mrs Bastable turned with a shudder from the alley to their left, its cobbles running with bloody water, the flies swarming around the silvery heaps.
‘Down here.’ Averil set off confidently down another lane and they soon found themselves amidst stalls selling spices, baskets of every kind, toys, small carvings and embroidery. ‘Perfect!’
Soon their porters were hung around with packages. Mrs Bastable fell behind to haggle over a soapstone carving and Alistair stayed with her to help.
‘We’ll be in the next alley on the right,’ Averil called back. ‘I can see peacock-feather fans. They are charming and useful,’ she said as they stood examining them. ‘We could buy a dozen between us; they will do very well for gifts.’
‘Yes, I—what’s that?’ Both swung round at the sound of screams and running feet and a deep-throated snarling. The alleyway cleared as though a giant broom had swept through it. Men leapt on to counters, dragging women with them as a small boy ran down, screeching in fear, followed by a dog, snarling and snapping, its mouth dripping foam.
‘Up!’ Dita grabbed Averil and thrust her towards the fan seller, who took her wrists and dragged her on to the narrow counter amidst a heap of feathers. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the boy and the dog hurtled towards her and she realised there was no room on any of the stalls now and the alley was a dead end. Dita snatched the child as he reached her and clambered up a pile of baskets as though it were a stepladder until they were perched on the top of the teetering heap, the dog leaping and snarling at the foot.
‘Hilo dulo naha,’ she murmured to the boy as he clutched her, his dirty, skinny little body wrapped around hers. But he needed no warning to keep still and, as their fragile sanctuary began to tilt with an ominous cracking sound, he seemed to stop breathing.
The dog leapt at them, clawing at the baskets. It was mad, there was no mistaking it. Dita tried to put out of her mind the memory of their jemahdar who had
been bitten. His death had been agonising and inevitable. She had to stay calm. If the baskets collapsed—when they collapsed—she would throw the boy to Averil and pray she was strong enough to hold him. And she would try and get behind the baskets.
Something flew through the air and hit the dog and it turned, yelping. Alistair, a long, bloody knife in his hand, came down the alley at the run and kicked out as the dog leapt for him, catching it under the chin. As it spun away he lunged with the knife, but his foot slipped on rotting vegetables in the gutter and he went down on to the snapping, snarling animal.
Dita screamed as she slid down the baskets and thrust the little boy into Averil’s reaching arms. As she hit the ground, groping for the stone he had thrown, Alistair got to his feet. The dog, throat cut, lay twitching in the gutter.
‘Did it bite you?’ Frantic, she seized his hands, used her skirts to wipe the blood away. ‘Are you scratched? Have you any cuts on your hands?’
Alistair dropped the knife and caught at her wrists. ‘I’m all right. Dita, stop it.’
‘You fell hard, you might not have felt a bite.’ She tried to see if there were any tears in his coat or the light trousers he wore. ‘Alistair, don’t you know what happens if you’ve been bitten, even a graze—’
‘Yes, I know. I am all right,’ he repeated. ‘Dita you are getting covered in blood. What the devil were you thinking of, scrambling up there with that child?’
‘There was nowhere else to go,’ she protested as the alley began to fill up. One man, a fish seller by the state of his clothes, picked up the bloody knife and walked away with it. A woman, weeping loudly, ran and snatched the child from Averil. The noise was deafening.
‘It wouldn’t bear the weight of both of you.’ Alistair released her and she began to shake. ‘It was going to collapse at any moment.’
‘I know that. I couldn’t leave him!’ ‘Most people would have.’ Someone brought a bowl of water and Alistair plunged his hands into it. Dita held her breath until they emerged, the skin unbroken. His coat was stained, but she could see no evidence of teeth marks on it, or tears in his trousers.
Alistair gestured for more water. When it was poured he took her hands in his and washed them and she thought back over the crowded, terrified, minutes. ‘You came to rescue the child,’ she said. ‘You must have gone for the knife the moment you heard him scream, or you wouldn’t have got here with it when you did.’
‘Well, that’s two of us who are sentimental,’ he said, his voice harsh, but his eyes as he looked at her held admiration and the shadow of fear, not for himself, but for her. ‘Don’t do that to me again, Dita. My nerves won’t stand it. The mast was bad enough, this—’
They stood, their hands clasped in the reddening water and the noise of the crowd faded. Dita wondered if she was going to faint. Alistair was staring at her as though he had never seen her before.