THE TOWER ROOM
Page 6
Fanciful perhaps, but nevertheless she now had India, Thomas Tankerville's India, in her heart for ever. There was no question of going there herself, a tough old woman maybe, but still an old woman with a dodgy heart, though she reserved, within the deepest recesses of her mind, the thought that perhaps, just perhaps, when she felt herself failing, she might book herself on a flight for the subcontinent and leave it up to fate.
Meantime Stephen should go there for her and experience what Thomas had seen and heard and felt and it would do for him what it had done for Thomas and for herself
Steamrolling over all opposition and tanking over Stephen's own trepidation as one who had never been further than a package trip to Majorca, she had bullied and chivvied and pestered until he found himself a job with a charity based in the north, working with children rescued from the city slums.
He wrote regularly, guarded letters at first, obviously disguising his horror at the first sight of India's squalor, then increasingly chatty, encyclopaedic, enthusiastic bulletins, full of his work, of the children, of the countryside, of the distant mountains.
Emily's reward came two days before Christmas when the post brought a fat letter from India. She was on her way up to her room when Mrs Anderson called to her from the hail and passed the letter and cards over the banister.
In her room she eagerly tore open the envelope and a clutch of photographs spilled out over the bedspread. Delighted but unbelieving she picked up first one, then another, then a third, until she had seen them all. It was her view, Thomas's view; the view from the hill station that was Thomas's greatest love. She knew that because it was the place she dreamed of most. There was even a shot of Stephen leaning over the railing of a verandah in a very old bungalow, grinning at the camera. It was her verandah, where she and Thomas spent so much time savouring the sunrise and sunsets.
‘We did it Thomas, we did it!’ she exulted and felt the room bathe her in warm golden light.
There was a scribbled note with the photographs.
‘Have decided to get qualified as fast as possible and come out here to teach.’
‘Thank you, Aunt Emily, thank you for giving me India.’
The End
A version of this story first appeared in ‘My Weekly’ magazine.
Copyright © Nicola Slade
The right of Nicola Slade to be identified as the Author of
this Short Story has been asserted by her in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
