1977 (17 page)

“Don’t be ridiculous, Tusker. You’re making all this up. Dulcie Thompson died years ago.”

“Luce, love, people like Dulcie Thompson never die.”

“Which means you remember her.”

“Oh, I remember Dulcie Thompson. Biggest knockers in ‘Pindi.”

He had deprived her of her scene.

“I shall go for a walk,” she said.

“You’ve been for a walk.”

“Then I shall go for another. Is there anything you want from the bazaar?”

“Nothing you can buy,” Tusker said.

It was better not to inquire further into this.

BEFORE GOING out she rummaged in the bottom drawer of the chest in the bedroom

among the old snapshots and photographs.

They should, of course, be assembled properly in an album, Mr Turner
, she thought, opening the first

of her imaginary conversations with this as yet unknown young man who might turn out to

be a sympathetic listener,
but my husband caught me at it one day and said sticking snaps of one’s past

life into albums is onanistic. I didn’t know what that meant but looked it up, so you’ll understand my

reluctance to continue the good work. Ah, here’s the one Sarah mentioned. The Layton’s farewell party at

Commandant House
.

She took the photograph over to the escritoire where she had left her spectacles.

“Memsahib?”

Ibrahim startled her.

“What is it now?”

“It is Monday, Memsahib.”

“I know that. After all, yesterday was Sunday.”

“I book a seat at the movie?”

“No. I don’t know. I’m busy at the moment.”

“Bhoolabhoy Sahib not coming this evening?”

’I have no idea.”

“Memsahib ordering trays for lunch or going to the dining-room?”

“I don’t know that either. Kindly stop interrogating me, Ibrahim. I don’t know what I shall

be doing at lunch time or come to that for the rest of the day. I’m going out and I may stay

out but if I elect to come back it doesn’t necessarily follow that I must be driven out again to

see a picture I may not want to see simply because Colonel Sahib and Mr Bhoolabhoy

propose to spend the evening knocking it back and gossiping like a couple of old women.”

The mower started up again.

“And will you be so good as to tell your
mali
to stop that infernal noise? Mrs Bhoolabhoy is

not the only one entitled to have nerves. I never said he should work every day. It seems to

me he’s finding jobs for himself at my expense.”

“Memsahib is no longer satisfied with Joseph?”

“At the moment I’m not satisfied with anything or anybody. Tell him to
stop
. If things go

on like this I shall have to start keeping a time-sheet, or rather you will have to start keeping

one, showing the hours he’s worked and the work done, so that I can decide what is

necessary and what is sheer exploitation.”

“Exploitation, Memsahib?”

“Exploitation! Of me!” Her voice had risen. Instinctively they both glanced at the window.

“Of
me
,” she continued,
sotto voce
. “But I’m not a fool. I’m not to be exploited. I’m not to be

led by the nose. Tell him to stop.
Now
.”

Ibrahim went.

She put her glasses on and considered the picture. She smiled. “Well, that’s gallant of you,

Mr Turner, to recognize me. I scarcely recognize myself. But it’s a quarter of a century ago.

If you recognize me you must know who this is. Yes, of course, Sarah. That’s Tusker. He’s

lost a lot of weight since. And a lot of hair. A lot of everything, including today what I’d call

most of what is left of his credibility. This, I think, must be Sarah’s husband, Mr Perron, or

should I say Professor Perron?”

The sound of mowing stopped.

Peering closer at Mr Perron certain resonances came through, weakly at first, then strongly.

“Yes, I do remember him, Mr Turner. He followed me home and for a night or two haunted

our bedroom at Rose Cottage, I mean Tusker’s and mine, standing there in a corner in the

dark, waiting for a snore from Tusker and a sign from me. He was the right height and the

right breadth, perhaps a bit too tall, but his hair was fair and his eyes blue-grey. But he

smiled too often. Look at him grinning here. He did not have the smouldering quality that is

necessary in Toole and when he opened his mouth he talked himself right out of the part

except physically, because Toole is rough of speech and hardly articulate. I remember Mr

Perron being a disappointment to me, Mr Turner, because the back of his neck was the first

thing I noticed, it was like the back of Toole’s neck, and I said to Sarah’s Aunt Fenny—that’s

her, the rather stout woman, seated, with her arm round little Teddie—I said, Who is that

young man? And she said oh, that’s Mr Perron (she must have said), who was with us in the

carriage when the Hindus stopped the train and dragged Muslims out, he’s come up to see

how we all are before flying home, come and meet him. Susan isn’t in the picture, Mr

Turner, because she was in the nursing home again, getting over the shock of her second

husband’s death and the shock of what happened on the train. And I confess that when I

met your Mr Perron I thought: Are you going to be Susan’s
third
husband? She did rather

run through them. I oughtn’t to tell tales out of school but it’s a long time ago now and I’m

glad Sarah has found happiness, but in those days it was well-known in Pankot that Susan

was always pinching her elder sister’s young men, but then she was a pretty vivacious little

thing, though perhaps the vivacity was an early sign of hysteria. Sarah in those days was to

put it plainly a bit dull from young men’s point of view, although a veritable brick so far as

pulling her weight in the family was concerned. The mother drank, you know, I don’t mean

embarrassingly, but she did have this tendency to start before anyone else and still be at it

when they’d finished. But of course for a woman she was in the prime of life and had been

without her husband for years. I expect you knew he’d been a prisoner of war in Germany.

So one took that into consideration. There was never any unpleasantness and she was tireless

in the work she had to do for the soldiers’ families. Her father was a Muir. GOC, Ranpur,

early in the 20s. In a way the Laytons and the Muirs
were
Pankot. I’ll show you the graves of

some of the forebears. Well, well, so it was Sarah Mr Perron had his eye on. I’m glad of that.

There was a time when some of us became a bit worried about her. She sometimes gave this

odd impression of not taking things seriously, I mean India, us in India, and I think that’s

what put the young men off. There was even a moment when one wondered whether she

was unsound in that respect. Sometimes she seemed to be laughing at us, and it suddenly

occurs to me that this may have been why she got on well with Tusker when she worked for

him at Area headquarters because if you listen to Tusker now you begin to suspect that he

was laughing too because really he hasn’t a good word to say nowadays about anything

connected with the past and this sometimes makes me feel, Mr Turner, that my whole life

has been a lie, mere play-acting, and I am not at all sure, Mr Turner, if when you turn up and

turn out to be self-reliant and young and buoyant and English and light-hearted and

enthusiastic about your researches but look as if you will go home laughing at us like a drain

that I shall be able to stand you, even though I yearn for you because simply by being here in

this house you will be the catalyst I need to bring me back into my own white skin which day

by day, week by week, month by month, year after year, I have felt to be increasingly

incapable of containing me, let alone of acting as defensive armour. You don’t understand

what I’m saying so let us pay our little visit to the cemetery where you can take your

photographs and after that we could go up to Rose Cottage, or 12 Upper Club Road, as it’s

really called, and ask Mrs Menektara for permission to take snaps of the old place as it is

now, not changed much outside, but inside, oh dear dear me, a world of difference. She

burns incense, you know, and the place is crammed with priceless carvings and statuettes

that make it look as if they’ve raided a Hindu temple. It’s lit like a museum and it’s not easy

to find a comfortable place to sit except on the verandah and in the dining-room, but

sometimes when I lunch there I find some of the guests eating with their fingers which I

know is traditional but I’m sure some of them do it because it’s now thought smart by the

younger people, but oh it does put me off, and seems such a waste of all that lovely cutlery

which has come from Liberty’s and is so incongruous when you know the chairs and tables

have come from Heal’s and all the pictures on the walls are terribly modern, and lit, even in

daytime.”

A shadow fell.

“What is it now, Ibrahim?”

“
Mali
has stopped.”

“Actually I’m not deaf. If you have nothing else to do this morning except
hover
you can go

and fetch me a tonga to the side entrance.”

“Memsahib is going to the club?”

“Memsahib may indeed be going to the club.”

“And having lunch there?”

“Possibly. Just go, Ibrahim. Just bring the tonga. What is wrong with you this morning?”

He put his hands behind his back.

“Yesterday all was sunshine. Today all is gloomy. Memsahib much preoccupied, sorting out

drawers. Sahib is now in a bad temper. Sahib and Memsahib not pulling on well together.

This morning the house is not well settled on its feet. Cook reporting same applying at

Bhoolabhoys. Ibrahim not knowing whether coming or going.
Mali
very dejected because

grass grows and he is told to stop mowing, and make self scarce.”

“What you say may be so. I don’t know what you expect me to do about it.”

“It is a very funny picture,” he said after a moment. “Repeat showing,
How To Murder Your

Wife
, starring Jack Lemmon. Memsahib much enjoyed last time round. Very popular film.

Indian officers especially are liking it. Manager-sahib at cinema expecting full bookings. I

bring tonga then go down to cinema and book memsahib’s ticket?”

“Perhaps you’d better book two, Ibrahim. One for Burra Sahib and the other for Mr

Bhoolabhoy.
How To Murder Your Wife
sounds more their sort of thing. Are you drunk?”

“Memsahib must know that for Ibrahim alcohol is forbidden.”

“The tonga, Ibrahim.”

It was a shamefully long time since either she or Tusker had been to church although her

reasons were different from his. Tusker was not a believer. She had never grown out of the

habit of belief acquired in childhood and at the major Christian festivals she had managed to

overcome the disquiet she had begun to feel worshipping in a place where her pale face

seemed to put her at a disadvantage.

She felt conspicuous. She felt like someone who had never sought but had nevertheless

achieved notoriety. She did not, she was sure, mind at all being preached to or blessed by a

dark-skinned brother-in-Christ, nor kneeling in the presence of other such brethren, but at

the level at which awareness of ambiguities and ambivalences existed she was conscious of

them. It was like—as Phoebe Blackshaw had said after going to church with her once—

being a black sheep in reverse exposure. Since the Blackshaws went home her own

attendances had fallen off, and she had not gone to communion for years. As the tonga

turned into Church road, going past the old rectory, now not a rectory but the home of Mr

Thomas, the cinema manager, who had six children, she tried to work out precisely how long

it had been since she last entered the little churchyard which in the days of the
raj
had each

Sunday morning been such a social focal point, with all the tongas gathered outside waiting

to take people home afterwards to their luncheon parties or to the club for cocktails and

curry.

“Wait here,” she told the tonga-wallah. When she went in through the old lychgate she

paused under the arch. The recollections the gate aroused were not of her father’s gaunt

suburban church but of the church in the village of Piers Cooney where long before she was

born her father had had his first curacy, where later she and the twins, Mark and David,

staying at Piers Cooney Hall for a fortnight three glorious summers in a row, had been

driven to attend Sunday matins.

“I must tell you about that, Mr Turner,” she said, sitting on the bench which she was sure

she had never done before and was surprised to find herself doing now. She could not recall

making the decision to sit but here she was doing so. “Forgive me, Mr Turner, this morning

I am a little disorganized, a little disoriented. My mother’s name was Large. She was a poor

relation of the people at the Hall. They employed her to look after their sickly son. She was a