1977 (18 page)

great woman for games in the open air. Her first name was Emily. Emily Large. My father’s

names were Mathew Mark Luke Little. People’s names, like their lives, should not be targets

for mockery, but I forgive you for smiling because you have connected Little and Large and

Little to Smalley. I grant you it is funny. But it is not funny here under the arch of the

lychgate with a view to the pathway through the green pastures of our dead who passed

under this gate. Have you ever noticed, Mr Turner, that the grain in wood—as witness this

seat—looks much the same wherever you find it? That a pebble is always a pebble, a blade

of grass not to be mistaken for anything else, and that granted different intensities and

degrees, depending where in the world you are, light falls here, there, indifferently, even with

a kind of monotony, causing you no surprise other than the mild one of realizing that nature

is not as inventive as you had supposed. The sound of the sea washing the beach at Juhu,

north of Bombay, is the sound of the sea at Worthing or wherever. If you close your eyes,

Mr Turner, there is no telling where you are.”

She closed her eyes and bent her head. Some distance away the tonga wallah hawked and

spat. Crows protested her occupation of the gateway. A wind sprang up, chilled by its

journey from a source in the distant mountains, and then was gone, leaving a profound

silence, interrupted (she realized) by the rhythmic sound of the coppersmith bird beating out

its endless saucepans in the smithy of the great pine-clad hills in which Pankot rested two

thousand feet or more above sea level.

Snick-snick

How strange, Mr Turner. What is that sound? It’s not the coppersmith. It reminds me of

Saturdays in the summer at home, the sound that father made, cutting the hedge to the

accompaniment of that other sound, click-cluck, which was the sound the twins made

playing cricket on the vicarage lawn with their sleeves rolled up and smelling odd when you

got close to them with the tray of lemonade mother made me squeeze and strain and take

out to them. The only difference between them was that David had more freckles than

Mark, otherwise they were identical twins and strangers got terribly confused. I’m afraid they

often took advantage of that. They weren’t generous-natured boys. Sometimes they were

very unkind to me but I didn’t dare complain—not after the time they poured green paint

over my head and swore it was an accident which mother was inclined to believe, but not

father who liked my pretty light brown hair and was so cross that for once he gave them

each a terrible thrashing, or thought that was what he was giving them but I heard them

sniggering afterwards, which they never did if Mother used the strap on them. They

punished me though, by sending me to Coventry for almost the rest of the summer holiday

and if they referred to me at all it was as Tell-Tale or Baldy, because most of my hair had to

be cut off, which mother did herself in a way that made me feel I deserved it and that it gave

her pleasure to see me looking more like a boy than a girl. So most of those weeks I spent

indoors, or hiding in the orchard, what we called the orchard, but it was only a few diseased

old apple trees at the back of the vicarage garden, but I used to sit there listening to father

clipping the hedges on a Saturday afternoon which was when he practised his sermon. Snick-

Snick. Then click-cluck, the sound of the boys playing cricket and mother’s voice egging

them on. She kept wicket. She had very large hands. But then she would wouldn’t she, with a

name like that?

Snick-Snick

She left the lychgate and set out on the path through the churchyard but suddenly stood

arrested—not by the sound which, coming again, was clearly that made by a pair of shears,

but by the appearance of the graves. A lot of grass had been trimmed and many of the

headstones cleaned. Whoever was responsible for this was obviously even now at work, but

invisible, presumably on the other side of the church, in the part of the yard where Mabel

Layton was buried. Mabel herself had been a great gardener. Her crazy old companion, Miss

Batchelor, had always said Mabel would never rest while she remained buried in the wrong

place, in Pankot instead of down in Ranpur. But Mabel had remained buried. Or had she?

Well let us not be silly, Lucy told herself, and set off again, taking the path that ran along

the south side. Just as she reached the south door it opened and a figure emerged causing

her nearly to jump out of her skin. She uttered a cry.

Then: “Oh, what a fright you gave me, Mr Bhoolabhoy.”

Mr Bhoolaboy was himself in no condition for such a shock, particularly the shock of

seeing Mrs Smalley, of whom he had just been thinking. Her sudden manifestation made

him go weak at the knees for the second time that morning. Had he conjured her? But no.

There she was, smiling at him now in her dignified ladylike way.

There was a special corner in Mr Bhoolabhoy’s heart reserved for Lucy. His regard for her

was of longstanding. It saddened him that she was no longer a regular member of the

congregation. The sight of her upright and neatly dressed figure, her modest demeanour, the

manner in which she attended and followed every phase of the service (as to the manner

born, as it indeed she had been) had always reassured him about the fitness and decency and

meaning of what they were all gathered together to do. When she and Tusker had first come

to Pankot, in retirement, she had sometimes brought Tusker along and they had sat in the

front pew. After Tusker stopped coming she, year by year, had sat farther and farther back,

as if fading away. It had hurt him a bit, early on, but dimly he had begun to understand her

reasons without being able quite to name them, and in any case self-effacement fitted so well

the image he had of her as a real English lady of the old school, a lady who seldom raised her

voice because she seldom had need. She had the gift of quietly commanding obedience from

those who owed it to her. This did not of course include Tusker, whose manner with his

wife sometimes puzzled Mr Bhoolabhoy but also interested him as an example of old

English custom.

It was always a pleasure to see her in the dining-room at Smith’s. Her presence made the

place look less seedy. The same, at a different level of sameness, could also be said of his

friend Tusker. It was pleasant to watch them dining on a night when there were no other

guests, saying virtually nothing to one another in that reserved British way. Tusker of course

was free with his criticism of the food, the service, the state of the table-cloth, but his

complaints were the kind a man made who also saw the funny side of there being need to

complain and of the fact that it was he who was complaining.

Mr Bhoolabhoy had often heard it said that one of the troubles with the British in the days

of the
raj
was that they had taken themselves far too seriously. He was not quite old enough

to have formed a firm personal judgment in the matter but he had formed an interim one to

the effect that if it was true about the British in those days it was equally true of the Indians

now; which would mean that it was being responsible for running things that shortened the

temper and destroyed the sense of humour.

Whenever Tusker and Lucy dined at Smith’s and other tables were occupied by Indian

guests it was from the Smalley table that a glow of mildness and pleasure emanated. On such

occasions they spoke more often to one another, exchanged cross-table chat with other

diners if they knew them but devoted their attention to their plates if an altercation took

place between another table and the waiter or Mr Bhoolabhoy, or on one or two dreadful

occasions Mrs Bhoolabhoy who was convinced that the customer was not only always

wrong but had to be proven wrong. It was the sense of responsibility that caused these

altercations.

Why was it then that his responsibility as manager hadn’t shortened his own temper? One

answer was all too clear. He didn’t run things. It was Lila who ran them. He sat

metaphorically in the crook of her great arm like a ventriloquist’s dummy, merely mouthing

her complaints and orders. The other answer perhaps was that although he had a
sense
of

responsibility he had never had a very strong inclination to take it.

He had been content to be dominated, first of all by Mr Pillai, now by Lila. He knew he

would continue to be dominated. This morning he had been regretting this. Coming face to

face with Mrs Smalley who was in her way as strong-willed a woman as Lila, but not

domineering, he wished that he had been blessed with greater strength of character.

“Please forgive me, Mrs Smalley. As you see, I was also startled. You may not believe me

but I had just been thinking about you.”

His morning had begun in a peculiar way. He woke to find himself in bed with Lila, stark

naked, his mouth and nose half-smothered in her immense breasts, his shoulders clamped in

the iron embrace of her arms and his legs pinioned between hers. She seemed to be blowing

playfully on the top of his head.

What puzzled him was to find himself in bed with her at all. He could not actually recall

being summoned. He wondered whether while he slept she had crept into his room and

carried him over her shoulder to her own bed, stripped him of his pyjamas and then lowered

him on top of her. Since he had daily waking evidence that he probably spent most of his

sleeping hours in a state of readiness, he supposed it would have been quite possible for her

thus to have availed herself of the opportunity to enjoy what otherwise went to waste

without his having to wake up and consciously co-operate. After all, she had the strength.

It was amazing how strong even smaller-built women than Lila could be, and how

determined. Their sudden inexplicable whims and preferences in what seemed to him

sometimes irrelevant matters (for example y-fronted underpants instead of the looser cooler

boxer-style trunks) were equally astonishing. It was all part of their charm, of course, not

knowing what they’d say or do next, not knowing where you stood with them. Or lay. On

the one night he had succeeded in catching Hot Chichanya’s eye in Ranpur and been

admitted to her room she had laughed at his underpants. She had also insisted first on their

standing, and then on their lying, and then on adopting a position she had to show him in an

illustrated book before he believed it possible. “Thin men are so supple,” she said, turning

him out into the night to go home to his own hotel. “Come back tomorrow but with proper

underpants and we’ll do the Koshak Dance.”

But into the delights and mysteries of the Koshak Dance he had not been initiated. Next

evening she greeted him in full Koshak Dance uniform which apart from the whip which he

eyed unhappily would have been interesting to divest her of but it seemed for the moment

that she intended to remain fully clothed while Mr Bhoolabhoy “and these two other nice

boys” danced round her in a circle. The two other boys wore nothing but red leather boots

and red y-fronted briefs. There were several pairs of boots he could try on, she said. “You

have the pants?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “But they are the wrong colour. I will go and change them.”

He beat a retreat. Ever since when he had been viewing the prospect of a return

engagement for Hot Chichanya at the Shiraz with dismay and delicious apprehension. Even

while performing with her what she called double-lotus an area of his imagination had been

occupied by the picture of being locked, so, with Mrs Bhoolabhoy, and had continued to be

occupied, so that now and again he smiled, then giggled and had to call himself very sternly

to order to avoid having to absent himself from Lila’s company and succumb to a fit of

hysteria. Lila in the double-lotus position would be even more of a sight to see than Lila

stuck all over with Dr Battacharya’s acupuncture needles.

Except, he himself would not survive to see the sight long. On the count of weight and

gravity alone she would break every bone in his back and legs before the connexion had

been achieved. Either that or she would be unable to control the arc of the rocking

movement and break him at the pelvis or fall on top and smother him.

Brought fully awake by these images he realized he was being smothered now. He unstuck

his perspiring face from her bosom and squinted upward.

She was fast asleep. The playful blowing on the top of his head was no such thing.

Oblivious, she was puffing at dreamtime dandelion clocks. Her slack lips quivered with each