Free The Day of the Scorpion by Paul Scott

emanating from their boat; cautious nods if we happened to cross one another’s bows when out in the shikaras. But no visit, except towards the end of their stay, and that by one of them alone, one of the two daughters, when the rest of them were out enjoying themselves one afternoon. She saw me reading on the sun-deck as she went past alone in their shikara, and waved, then had the boatmen come in close and asked whether she could come on board for a few moments. I couldn’t very well refuse, although I thought it a bit offhand after the days that had gone by without a word exchanged. She came straight to the point and said it was embarrassment really that had kept them away, not knowing what on earth they’d be able to say to me that wouldn’t make it obvious they were all avoiding any mention of poor Daphne (‘the awful business of your niece’ she called it). But they were going back to their station soon and she said she didn’t like the idea of leaving without speaking to me. I thought it a rather thin excuse but not an uncourageous thing to do. She said she often heard the baby crying and would very much like to see her. So I took her down into the cabin where little Parvati has her cot. The girl – her name is Sarah Layton – looked at her for quite a long time without saying anything. Parvati was asleep and the ayah was adopting her possessive, on guard attitude, which probably added to the girl’s uneasiness. I think she’d expected the baby to have the kind of pale skin that makes the mixture of blood difficult to detect unless you’re looking for it. Eventually she said, ‘She’s so tiny,’ as if she had never seen a four-month-old baby before, then thanked me for letting her see her. I invited her to stay and have some tea under the awning on the sun-deck. She only hesitated for amoment. On our way out she caught sight of the trunks with Daphne’s name on them and hesitated again. She puzzled me. Nice young English girls in India don’t usually give an impression of bothering their heads with anything much apart from the question of which men in the immediate vicinity are taking the most notice of them. Of course, they do go broody every now and again, but Miss Layton’s broodiness struck me as odd and intricate, not at all the result of simple self-absorption.
    The name Layton had vaguely rung my bell at the time of the exchange of visiting cards and directly she mentioned Ranpur and Pankot I remembered it as a name quite well known there but couldn’t recall ever having met one of them. Henry and I were there for the five years of his appointment as Governor but one’s social life was fairly crowded. Over tea she told me that she and her sister and mother were sharing the houseboat with an aunt and an uncle. Her father, Colonel Layton, is a prisoner of war in Germany. He commanded the 1st Pankot Rifles in North Africa. He was in prison camp in Italy for a time but as we’ve advanced from the south a lot of the prisoners have been moved back, so our recent successes there haven’t brought Colonel Layton’s release and return any nearer. The revelation that her father was a prisoner of war went some way to explain her sudden visit and attempt at apology. In her father’s absence she was probably trying to do what was right and thought that coming to see me made up for the rudeness of the rest of the family. They may have believed that story themselves about not wanting to intrude on my privacy, but of course underneath this apparent delicacy of feeling is the deep disapproval I meet everywhere now and am used to. Perhaps dismay is more accurate a description, dismay that I should have stood by and let Daphne bear a child whose father might be any one of half a dozen ruffians, dismay that instead of bundling it off as unwanted to some orphanage when Daphne died bearing it, I take care of it, and have given it that name, Parvati Manners.
    I asked Miss Layton whether she was enjoying her