The New Collected Short Stories Read online

  ‘So where are you spending your honeymoon, dare I ask?’ said Noel Kumar.

  ‘We’re flying to Goa, to spend a few days at the Raj,’ said Jamwal.

  ‘I can’t think of a more beautiful place to spend your first few days as man and wife,’ said Noel.

  ‘A wedding gift from your uncle,’ said Nisha. ‘So generous of him.’

  ‘Just be sure you have him back in time for the board meeting on Monday week, young lady, because one of the items under discussion is a new project that I know the chairman wants Jamwal to mastermind.’

  ‘Any clues?’ asked Jamwal.

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Noel. ‘You just go away and enjoy your honeymoon. Nothing’s so important that it can’t wait until you’re back.’

  ‘And if we hang around here any longer,’ said Nisha, taking her husband by the hand, ‘we might miss our plane.’

  A large crowd gathered by the entrance to the house and threw marigold petals in their path and waved as the couple were driven away.

  When Mr and Mrs Rameshwar Singh drove on to the airport’s private runway forty minutes later, the company’s Gulfstream jet awaited them, door open, steps down.

  ‘I do wish someone from your family had attended the wedding,’ said Nisha as she fastened her seat belt. ‘I was hoping that perhaps your brother or sister might have turned up unannounced.’

  ‘If either of them had,’ said Jamwal, ‘they would have suffered the same fate as me.’ Nisha felt the first moment of sadness that day.

  Two and a half hours later the plane touched down at Goa’s Dabolim airport, where another car was waiting to whisk them off to their hotel. They had planned to have a quiet supper in the hotel dining room, but that was before they were shown around the bridal suite, where they immediately started undressing each other. The bellboy left hurriedly and placed a ‘Do not disturb’ sign on the door. In fact, they missed dinner, and breakfast, only surfacing in time for lunch the following day.

  ‘Let’s have a swim before breakfast,’ said Jamwal as he placed his feet on the thick carpet.

  ‘I think you mean lunch, my darling,’ said Nisha as she slipped out of bed and disappeared into the bathroom.

  Jamwal pulled on a pair of swimming trunks and sat on the end of the bed waiting for Nisha to return. She emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later wearing a turquoise swimsuit that made Jamwal think about skipping lunch.

  ‘Come on, Jamwal, it’s a perfect day,’ Nisha said as she drew the curtains and opened the French windows that led on to a freshly cut lawn surrounded by a luxuriant tropical garden of deep red frangipani, orange dahlias and fragrant hibiscus.

  They were walking hand in hand towards the beach when Jamwal spotted the large swimming pool at the far end of the lawn. ‘Did I ever tell you, my darling, that when I was at school I won a gold medal for diving?’

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ Nisha replied. ‘It must have been some other woman you were showing off to,’ she added with a grin.

  ‘You’ll live to regret those words,’ he said, releasing her hand and beginning to run towards the pool. When he reached the edge of the pool he took off and leapt high into the air before executing a perfect dive, entering the water so smoothly he hardly left a ripple on the surface.

  Nisha ran towards the pool laughing. ‘Not bad,’ she called out. ‘I bet the other girl was impressed.’

  She stood at the edge of the pool for a moment before falling to her knees and peering down into the shallow water. When she saw the blood slowly rising to the surface, she screamed.

  I have a passion, almost an obsession, about not being late, and it’s always severely tested whenever I visit India. And however much I cajoled, remonstrated with and simply shouted at my poor driver, I was still several minutes late that night for a dinner being held in my honour.

  I ran into the dining room of the Raj and apologized profusely to my host, who wasn’t at all put out, although the rest of the party were already seated. He introduced me to some old friends, some recent acquaintances and a couple I’d never met before.

  What followed was one of those evenings you just don’t want to end: that rare combination of good food, vintage wine and sparkling conversation which was emphasized by the fact that we were the last people to leave the dining room, long after midnight.

  One of the guests I hadn’t met before was seated opposite me. He was a handsome man, with the type of build that left you in no doubt he must have been a fine athlete in his youth. His conversation was witty and well informed, and he had an opinion on most things, from Sachin Tendulkar (who was certain to be the first cricketer to reach fifty test centuries) to Rahul Gandhi (undoubtedly a future prime minister, if that’s the road he chooses to travel down). His wife, who was sitting on my right, possessed that rare middle-aged beauty that the callow young can only look forward to, and rarely achieve.

  I decided to flirt with her outrageously in the hope of getting a rise out of her self-possessed husband, but he simply flicked me away as if I were some irritating fly that had interrupted his afternoon snooze. I gave up the losing battle and began a serious conversation with his wife instead.

  I discovered that Mrs Rameshwar Singh worked for one of India’s leading fashion houses. She told me how much she always enjoyed visiting England whenever she could get away. It was not always easy to drag her husband from his work, she explained, adding, ‘He’s still quite a handful.’

  ‘Do you have any children?’ I asked.

  ‘Sadly not,’ she replied wistfully.

  ‘And what does your husband do?’ I asked, quickly changing the subject.

  ‘Jamwal is on the board of the Raj Group. He’s headed up their hotel operation for the past fifteen years.’

  ‘I’ve stayed at six Raj hotels in the last nine days,’ I told her, ‘and I’ve rarely come across their equal.’

  ‘Oh, do tell him that,’ she whispered. ‘He’ll be so touched, especially as the two of you have spent most of the evening trying to prove how macho you are.’ Both of us put nicely in our place, I felt.

  When the evening finally came to an end, everyone stood except the man seated opposite me. Nisha moved swiftly round to the other side of the table to join her husband, and it was not until that moment that I realized Jamwal was in a wheelchair.

  I watched sympathetically as she wheeled him slowly out of the room. No one who saw the way she touched his shoulder and gave him a smile the rest of us had not been graced with, could have had any doubt of their affection for each other.

  He teased her unmercifully. ‘You never stopped flirting with the damn author all evening, you hussy,’ he said, loud enough to be sure that I could hear.

  ‘So he did get a rise out of you after all, my darling,’ she responded.

  I laughed, and whispered to my host, ‘Such an interesting couple. How did they ever get together?’

  He smiled. ‘She claims that he tied her to a lamp post and then left her.’

  ‘And what’s his version?’ I asked.

  ‘That they first met at a traffic light in Delhi . . . and she left him.’

  And thereby hangs a tale.

  THE NEW COLLECTED SHORT STORIES

  JEFFREY ARCHER, whose novels and short stories include Kane and Abel, A Prisoner of Birth and Cat O’ Nine Tales, has topped the bestseller lists around the world, with sales of over 270 million copies.

  He is the only author ever to have been a number one bestseller in fiction (fifteen times), short stories (four times) and non-fiction (The Prison Diaries).

  The author is married with two sons and lives in London and Cambridge.

  www.jeffreyarcher.com

  ALSO BY JEFFREY ARCHER

  NOVELS

  Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less

  Shall We Tell the President? • Kane and Abel

  The Prodigal Daughter • First Among Equals

  A Matter of Honour • As the Crow Flies • Honour Among Thieves

  The Fo