‘Goodbye Chicago!’ said Lily. ‘What have I become?’ An errant thought came to her. ‘I suppose these guys don’t sell people? But if they do – why! – I’d make a good price!’
She was escorted back to the durbar room where she found assembled a much larger group of women and several small children all preparing to eat a midday meal which had been laid out on a cloth in the centre of the room. Halima beckoned her to join her at the head of the table and all sank down on cushions to eat. For the first time Lily noticed as Halima lowered herself with a slight awkwardness on to her cushion that under her flowing tunic the chief’s wife was heavily pregnant.
‘Good Lord!’ Lily thought. ‘How could I have missed that! Under all that drapery she’s enormous!’ Lily tried to remember the few details Iskander had given her about the set-up at the fort. This Halima who really couldn’t be much older than herself – quite possibly younger – was, improbable though it might seem, married to the fearsome old Malik whose first wife, Zeman’s mother, the Afghan princess, had died last year. Had she got that right? There was no way she could find out. Lily had a hundred questions she wanted to ask Halima Begum but, apart from the barrier of Halima’s uncertain hold on the English language, the customary meal-time silence had descended. As she worked her way through a sequence of dishes Lily began to think the lack of conversation was in fact quite relaxing and certainly had the edge on exchanging mindless chit-chat with Nick Carstairs and Edward Dalrymple-Webster.
She eyed Halima Begum covertly from time to time, wondering how it had come about that such a young person had not been married off to a young man of the tribe – Zeman, Iskander or any one of the handsome faces that had risen up from behind rocks to shout a greeting to them as they drew near the fort. Surely her preference must have been for such a one? Lily had tried to engage Zeman in a conversation about arranged marriages but, smooth and courteous, he had neatly avoided being drawn by her questions so she could only speculate as to their customs. But Halima, smiling and confident, giving out brisk orders to the servants, playing happily with the children, didn’t seem to call for any romantic Western sympathy. ‘Now suppose President Harding did me the honour of making me the First Lady,’ Lily considered, ‘how would I feel?’ She decided her fantasy was getting somewhat out of hand.
From the other women’s manner towards the Malik’s wife, Lily judged that Halima was, regardless of age, top of the pile, reflecting her husband’s status in the tribe. Even a middle-aged, dark-haired woman with the same hatchet features as the Malik and whom Lily assumed to be his sister appeared to defer to her. But all, judging by the smiles and laughter which abounded, liked her. As Halima stopped in mid-sentence to lay a protective hand on her stomach, women scurried to fetch water and extra cushions, hands were extended in support and, judging by the giggles, racy remarks were made. Lily knew nothing about pregnancy but, having once got Halima’s bulge in focus, she decided two things: firstly that the birth must be imminent and secondly that it was a physical impossibility. She compared the ante-natal treatment Halima was enjoying – the jokes and the cosseting – with what she speculated would have been the hand-out in Chicago: a stiff doctor in morning coat, striped trousers and a butterfly collar dispensing calomel. Lily had shaken hands with a gynaecologist once and the memory of his bony fingers still made her shudder.
A swift calculation told her that, following his first wife’s death, the Malik must have made Halima the hap-piest of women with indecent speed. ‘In American culture, anyway. Keep a hold on that, Lily Coblenz,’ she told herself. Perhaps the Malik had always had an eye on this girl and had deliberately neglected to arrange a marriage for her, putting her in cold storage so to speak until his elderly princess dropped off the twig. A seriously cold thought pushed the more frivolous ones from her mind. Zeman! The Malik’s last remaining son was now dead. Oh, Lord! There was more riding on this than they knew.
Once the meal was cleared away and hands – and faces in the case of the children – had been washed, excited chattering broke out again. Lily knew most of it had to do with her but she sensed also from the women’s gestures and the way they hurried at the slightest sound from the courtyard below to stand by the window looking down that there were more earth-shaking events to be witnessed and discussed than the arrival among them of an ‘American princess’. Something was about to happen. Was, indeed, happening.