1977 (19 page)

expulsion of breath. The brows were contracted: storm signals of another migraine, another

bad morning. When she woke life would be difficult. It would be wise to extricate himself

before she did so. He had a technique for this which he used occasionally in the middle of

the night to return to his own room without waking her. Mostly she chucked him out with

no ceremony. She preferred to sleep alone and he had learned from experience that the

morning glory of Mrs Bhoolabhoy’s conjugal contentment (a rare bloom) withered rapidly if

she did not find herself alone, even if she had not personally dismissed him because

incapable of doing so (pole-axed, he liked to think, by a particularly passionate five star

performance on his part).

He could not remember ever having to leave surreptitiously with the morning light already

filtering through the curtains and illuminating the fine hairs on her upper lip ; but the

technique would have to the same, thus : nuzzle up to a nipple if you could find one and give

an amorous little groan. This usually brought in response a groan of a different kind. Next,

find a free hand of one’s own, which wasn’t as easy as it sounded, what with cramp and pins

and needles already set in, and place it on the back of a thigh or whatever part it could reach,

or, if already in contact, move it suggestively to another part. Before doing this it was best to

tense the muscles slightly to withstand the convulsion this combination of loving approach

and fond leavetaking usually provoked.

It was provoked now. Mrs Bhoolabhoy moaned loudly, heaved and turned herself over and

away, predictably taking Mr Bhoolabhoy’s head with her in a kind of wrestler’s half-nelson.

It could be painful and was this morning; but the rest of the drill was comparatively easy

because the two of them were well lubricated with perspiration. One just slipped the head

away from the grappling hold inch by inch.

Free of Mrs Bhoolabhoy, Mr Bhoolabhoy slid backward out of the bed and knelt,

automatically groping on the floor for the place where he must have left his pyjamas.

Finding none he came finally and fully awake and stood up. His head was throbbing. He

went weak at the knees so dropped to them again, quietly. Was he imagining the whole

thing? Was he dreaming? No. Looking round the half-lit bedroom the memory of the night

before came clearly back to him.

There were no pyjamas because he had never got into pyjamas. Before he went to bed with

Lila he had been in this room in his clothes, the same clothes he had worn for Sunday

Evensong: clerical grey lightweight suit, white shirt, dark blue tie, black shoes, black socks,

white aertex undervest, white aertex boxer-pants. They were there—cast away with utter

abandon, unbrushed, unhung, victims of scandalous neglect; dying of it, by the look of them,

having been all night out in the open with no one to care for them, gather them up and take

them to a place where they would have felt comfortable and wanted.

Yes, there they were: thrown by him across the settee, Lila’s day bed. He approached them,

knee by knee, and collected them item by item, careful not to jog the coffee-table on which

was set out further evidence of the previous night’s carousal—an empty gin bottle, two

glasses, one of them one-third full of stale gin and tonic ; an icebucket, a revoltingly full

ashtray, two trays of the remains of huge dishes of curried chicken, pilaf rice, papadoms,

assorted congealed chutneys; a jug one quarter full of water and air bubbles; curled slices of

lemon, three bottles of beer (one opened but scarcely used, the others empty), an empty

packet of India King cigarettes and a three-quarter empty box of marrons glacés.

Still on his knees, Mr Bhoolabhoy, clutching his clothes, an awkward task, made for the

door to his own bedroom, feeling like the actor who played Toulouse Lautrec in that film,

one of the few he had ever seen. (Mr Thomas had recommended it for the can-can.) He

dropped a shoe, and froze, but Mrs Bhoolabhoy simply snored. He had to stand to open his

door but once inside unaccountably dropped to his knees again, placed his clothes carefully

on a nearby chair, shut the communicating door, bolted it, then hobbled over to his bed and

climbed up and lay upon it in the embryo position. He closed his eyes to open his aching

mind to the light of yesterday.

It had been a good day to start with; Sunday, his day off. It had also been the Reverend

Stephen Ambedkar’s day. The Reverend Stephen was a very fussy fellow. Mr Bhoolabhoy

was a bit afraid of him. His predecessor, the Reverend Thomas Narayan, had always stayed

at Smith’s on his monthly visit to minister to the spiritual needs of Pankot’s Christian

community. The Reverend Stephen Ambedkar had done so only once, since when he had

stayed mostly with the Menektaras, who weren’t Christians but one of whose friends, the

Inspector-General of Police in Ranpur, was. Mr Bhoolabhoy wondered whether after his

first parochial visit the Reverend Stephen had said something unkind to the Inspector-

General about the accommodation his predecessor had had to put up with.

Spiritually joyful though the monthly visitations were they were also a source of

administrative tension and slight anxiety. This had never been the case in the days of old Mr

Narayan who had come up on the Saturday night train which got into Pankot on Sunday

morning, deposited his meagre bag in Room 5, joined Mr Bhoolabhoy for breakfast and then

walked with him up to the Church at about 9.30. Mr Bhoolabhoy had been up at the church

earlier, to let Susy in and by the time he returned with Mr Narayan she had done the flowers.

Over a cup of coffee from Susy’s flask and seated round the table in the vestry Mr Narayan

had told them the hymns he would like sung and the lessons he would like read. While Susy

went to mark the places in the bible on the lectern and insert the hymn numbers in the

frames, he and Mr Bhoolabhoy would go over the month’s accounts and discuss parish

affairs. At 10.25, while Mr Narayan put on his vestments, Mr Bhoolabhoy would climb up to

the chamber and toll the bell six times.

The bell was to summon communicants. The Reverend Thomas Narayan never failed to

celebrate communion before Matins however few people turned up, and he had no strong

opinions about the need for abstinence prior to the mass. Mr Bhoolabhoy took care to eat

nothing and merely sip his coffee. Sometimes he and Susy were the only two communicants

to approach the Lord’s table. After communion, and after the morning service that followed

and was better attended, Mr Narayan would wander among his flock in the churchyard and

sometimes accept an invitation to lunch with one of them. At other times a group of them

would go back with him and Mr Bhoolabhoy to Smith’s. In the afternoons he visited the sick

or the unhappy or Susy’s Sunday school which she held in the bungalow that had been her

mother’s but where she now lived alone. After evensong, more thinly attended than matins,

Mr Thomas Narayan might dine with her or with the other Thomas, Mr Thomas who

managed the cinema, or with Mr Bhoolabhoy. On Monday he went back to Ranpur on the

midday tram but had been known to delay his departure if a death seemed imminent. It was

not so much a case of his having a nose for death but one for saving church funds: the cost

of a sudden trip to Pankot to conduct a funeral service either in the church or in the little

chapel attached to the crematorium at the General Hospital which the British had built. In

the case of sudden death he could be telephoned in Ranpur at any time of the day or night

and had been known more than once to hitch a ride in a military truck coming up on army

business. Marriages and christenings, of which there seemed these days to be fewer than

there were funerals, were fitted in with his weekends.

They had been good days.

By contrast the days since the death of the Reverend Thomas Narayan and the advent of

the Reverend Stephen Ambedkar had been in one sense better, in another worse. Mr

Bhoolabhoy couldn’t say just what the better and worse arose from or amounted to but he

was aware of Mr Ambedkar as a man who caused him both to cherish expectations and

condition himself to sustain disappointments.

“We must do something about this ancient instrument,” Mr Ambedkar said, during his first

visitation, meaning the organ; and when Mr Bhoolabhoy pointed out that the cost of even

marginally maintaining the fabric of the church itself was already greater than funds could

bear Mr Ambedkar smiled in a worldly way and left Mr Bhoolabhoy with an impression that

the right man could always find money for the right thing if sufficiently convinced of its

necessity and if he happened to be endowed with the right kind of connexions. But Susy was

still having to hammer out the hymns on the piano and tune it herself; and the congregation

had to be content to celebrate Holy Communion when it suited the Reverend Stephen to

officiate, which wasn’t often because unlike old Tom Narayan he insisted on doing so no

later than eight o’clock in the morning, on an empty stomach, which meant that he could

usually conduct the service only at those weekends which brought him up to Pankot on

Fridays or Saturdays, weekends which seemed difficult not to connect with the weekends

when the Inspector-General of Police in Ranpur came up to play golf; arriving in his official

car with the identifying flag fluttering and Mr Ambedkar sitting next to him wearing dark

glasses and looking forward to some golf too and to a weekend not at the Menektaras but at

the old Flagstaff House where they would both be fellow guests of General Krippalani, the

senior officer in the Ranpur area.

There was just one other possibility of holding communion apart from on golfing

weekends. Mr Ambedkar was persona grata with the director of the Indian Airlines office in

Ranpur and occasionally got a free air passage to Nansera, which meant that he arrived in

Pankot on the airport bus late on a Saturday afternoon but then usually had to return to

Ranpur on Sunday evening. Sometimes Mr Bhoolabhoy had very short notice of Mr

Ambedkar’s intended arrival by this method and was hard put to it to spread the news to

intending communicants to be at St John’s by eight o’clock on Sunday morning if they

wished to avail themselves of the opportunity offered. Mr Ambedkar always expressed his

understanding of this difficulty but you could see he was a little put out if less than half-a-

dozen turned up to kneel at the rail. Before beckoning them forward he rather ostentatiously

counted them and then consecrated the requisite number of wafers, and the wine. Mr

Bhoolabhoy noticed that his accuracy in regard to the wafers did not extend to accuracy over

the amount of wine, of which there was usually a fair swig left at the bottom of the chalice

which Mr Ambedkar drained and then wiped with a sigh of resignation.

On an ordinary monthly visit, though, and yesterday had been one of them, Mr

Bhoolabhoy did not expect Mr Ambedkar to put in an appearance at the church until

approximately a quarter to eleven, when he would arrive in the Menektaras’ car. At about

10.40, then, Mr Bhoolabhoy would go down to the lychgate to wait for him. But yesterday

Mr Ambedkar had turned up at a quarter past ten and surprised Mr Bhoolabhoy, Susy and

Mr Thomas drinking coffee in the vestry, all preliminary work done, flowers arranged, hymn

and prayer books set out, collection bag taken from its cupboard.

And he had not arrived alone. With him was a young priest of such dense blackness of skin

it showed purple. Irradiating this blackness was a set of teeth so white they looked like an

advertisement for a miraculous new toothpaste not yet on the market but being sample

tested and already offering proof of the happiness and confidence to be inspired by its

regular use.

“Francis,” the Reverend Stephen Ambedkar said to Mr Bhoolabhoy, “this is Father

Sebastian.”

“Hello, Francis,” Father Sebastian said, offering his firm and confident hand. “And this

must be Susy. Hello. And Mister Thomas. Stephen has told me about you all and how you’ve

helped him keep the church up. What a fine example it is of British hill station church

architecture. 1885 or so?”

“1883,” Mr Bhoolabhoy said.

“Not far out, then. Good. By the way, who looks after the churchyard? So many of these

other old places look run down.”

For a moment Mr Ambedkar looked perplexed, but kept his own smile going and offered it