A House Called Askival (10 page)

FIFTEEN

At the gate to Askival they fell silent and stood looking at the house.

‘Have you seen it?' asked Ruth.

‘Oh yes.' Iqbal's voice was quiet. ‘But I am not coming for some time.'

There was a gurning in the grey sky and the first splatters of rain.

‘Come on,' she said and clambered over the gate, still holding her wildflowers. Iqbal followed, struggling with his plump frame and long shalwar kameez.

Ruth waited for him on the south veranda, standing before the gaping hole that was once a French window, the very spot where Manveer had kissed her. When Iqbal gestured for her to go first, she gripped her posy and stepped into the room. The ceiling was sagging and had leaked rain across the floor, soaking a pile of charred wood, some flaps of newspaper and the crusting remains of a picnic.

She laid the flowers on the mantel piece and moved slowly through the house, Iqbal following. Rubble and litter spilled across the rooms, and everywhere the peeling walls were mottled with black. Most bore graffiti: Hindi, English and the universal language of crude art. The door to one room was jammed shut, while the next opened onto a mess of shit and flies.

Back in the living room, she pushed at the damp rubbish with her foot.

‘It's horrible. This was such a lovely place.'

‘Even in your time?' Iqbal walked through the archway to the former dining room where an old sheet lay rotting in a corner.

‘Well it was beginning to crumble, but it still had… beauty.' She looked around, then followed him. ‘Certainly none of this trash. Hardly anyone came here. Just birds and mice.'

‘And you.'

‘Yeah. I felt a sort of bond cause it had been Dad's place. And it always seemed lonely. Everyone called it the Haunted House.'

Outside, the rain was swelling, plashing on the leaves, stirring the smells of earth and grass.

‘Why?'

‘There were so many stories, you know.'

‘Such as?'

She was silent for a moment. ‘The Irish girl who eloped here with her Indian lover.' Her eyes slid to Iqbal. Had James told him about Manveer? His face gave nothing. ‘Way back in East India Company days. Her family had him killed and she threw herself off the
khud
behind the house. They say on certain nights when the wind is high you can hear her screaming.'

‘Ah, romance!'

‘Ill-fated romance.'

‘They so often are,' Iqbal smiled. Ruth bent to pick up a piece of broken cornice from the floor.

‘Do you speak from experience?' she asked softly, not looking at him.

‘No, no. I had arranged marriage. Skip romance and straight to the arguments!' He slapped one hand against the other and laughed.

‘That's a shame. '

‘Yes,' he said simply. ‘We are divorced.'

‘Oh.' She squatted and laid the cornice down. She wanted to know more without giving more but it didn't seem possible. Hugging her arms around her knees she surveyed the room.

‘You know what really gets me? That this place isn't loved anymore.'

‘How do you know?'

‘Well you wouldn't let it fall apart like this, would you? If it was mine…' Her voice trailed off.

‘Sometimes we love, but cannot do what is needed.'

Ruth shook her head. The room smelt of piss.

‘Grandma said it was the most beautiful, elegant house. Before their time, of course. They couldn't afford anything fancy, but way back it had a grand piano and lace curtains and the garden was a mass of flowers. It's a crime to be abandoned like this.'

‘Are you knowing why?'

‘She though there were water problems. After they left in ‘47, other missionaries lived here for a while but it fell into disuse.'

‘Is very strange,' said Iqbal.

‘Yeah. I heard that bad things kept happening here. People got sick, had nightmares… felt this terrible grief.'

‘Did you feel it?'

She paused.

‘Not then. It was sad, and a bit spooky at night, but…' She looked over to a window and beyond where the rain was sweeping across the veranda. ‘I loved it.'

‘Your father also.'

‘Well, you'd think so, but he never came. Said it was private property and we shouldn't trespass.'

‘But you did.'

‘Oh yes,' she said, standing up. ‘I did a lot of things I shouldn't.'

Iqbal folded his hands across the swell of his stomach. ‘Then you are like us all.'

‘The main thing we have in common, isn't it? What defines our humanity?' She laughed bitterly. ‘Sin.'

‘No, no, Ruthie!' His face was struck with alarm. ‘We are being made by God—'

‘Sorry, don't believe in him.'

‘
Loved
by God!'

She took a breath to argue but saw the urgency in his eyes and let the breath out on a tired sigh. ‘Sorry.'

Iqbal's mouth hung ajar for a moment, brows up. Then his face eased and he spread his hands. ‘I understand.'

She turned suddenly to her pack on the floor. ‘Listen, I can't stand this mess; let's do something.' And she pulled out a handful of plastic bags and started shoving fistfuls of rubbish into them. Iqbal chuckled.

‘So like Doctor-ji!' He knelt beside her and took a bag. ‘He is helping one excellent clean-up programme: FRESH. Fight Rubbish Everyone and Save the Hillside! He is being so proud of you.'

‘I don't think so,' Ruth murmured and used a piece of newspaper to scoop up something black and furred with mould.

‘Yes, yes,' Iqbal insisted. ‘He is telling me you are always helping to others. Making the gardens for city kids, serving in soup kitchens, giving the shelter for homeless.'

‘Oh, only a bit,' she said, embarrassed. True, she had felt compelled to work for the underdogs and the neglected, but was never sure if it was motivated by true compassion or the need to redeem herself. Either way, she never learnt boundaries and got too involved and sometimes burnt. Then she would move on and feel ashamed for not sticking at things, not committing.

When all their bags were full and stacked by the French door she looked round at the cleared floor. ‘God that feels good. The rest of the place is still a dump, but it's a start.'

Iqbal tipped his head. ‘Excellent start.'

‘I wish I'd seen it when it was first built. Grandma said it was a Scottish guy, in the raj days. Called it after a mountain on the island of Rum, where he came from. You know I've climbed that mountain.'

‘Was it beautiful?'

‘No.' She pointed to the downpour outside. ‘Covered in fog and pishing rain!' They laughed.

‘Actually, one of the ghost stories might have been about him,' she said, remembering Sita telling it, on the lawn right outside this room. It was one of Mr Haskell's class parties and they were huddled round a fire, squeezing in close as the night got colder and the tales more chilling. ‘There was this British family here who had a Hindu cook. He'd been
with them for years and his wife was ayah to the children. But during the Indian mutiny he poisoned them.'

‘No!' Iqbal breathed. ‘Terrible! What happened to the cook
?
'

‘I don't know, but the ghosts of the family still haunt the place, they say.' She walked across to the window, looking south where the rain sheeted over the ridge below, veiling the bazaar.

‘At least is not lonely,' Iqbal said. ‘All of them, plus the young elopees.' He pushed open the cracked wooden door into the kitchen. ‘And a few others.'

‘A lot of tragic things happened,' Ruth said.

‘I know.'

She turned sharply, but he had disappeared.

‘What do you know?' she asked, following him into the kitchen.

‘Did you ever hear the one…' It sounded like the start of a joke, but his face was solemn as death. ‘About the American missionaries and their Muslim cook?' He turned the tap over the stone sink. There was an empty hiss.

SIXTEEN

Two nights after Aziz and Salima had moved into the refugee camp at Rampur House, James sat on the floor of his bedroom at Askival. He lifted the Westley Richards to his shoulder and squinted down the sights at the head on the wall. ‘Gotcha!' he breathed and grinned, remembering the thrill of shooting the thing last June. Out on the back hills with Stanley, they'd spent a whole day without getting anything. Then just before heading home, James spotted the black buck in a gully, drinking from a stream. As he crept closer, the creature lifted its head, eyes bright, listening. James got it right in the heart.

‘You're a man, now, son,' Stanley had said, hand heavy on his shoulder.

The buck was stuffed and mounted by the taxidermist in the bazaar and now hung in James' bedroom above the fireplace, flanked by his framed collections of beetles and butterflies. James lowered the gun and stared into the beast's glassy eyes. It stared back, nostrils flared, antlers bristling, its unblinking gaze one of imperious outrage. There had been no opportunity to show it to Colonel Bunce yet, what with the partition troubles and all, but James hoped for one soon. He was confident of a military clap on the back and a ‘Jolly good show!'

Outside, the September night clung about the house like a washerwoman's skirts. The dripping from the trees was gradually giving
way to the scratching of cicadas, while far off in the forest a barbet struck three pure notes. Askival, on its promontory at the western end of the ridge, floated like a lamp on a dark and hushed sea.

The quiet was broken by a sudden beating of footsteps on the path outside, a cry and a crash as a body flung itself against the front door.

‘Memsahib! Memsahib!' a voice screamed, fists pounding.

James dropped his gun and ran for the door, meeting Leota half way down the hall.

‘Who in heaven's—?!' she cried.

‘Let me in Memsahib!' The voice was possessed. ‘Aziz, Memsahib! Aziz!'

Leota pushed back the heavy bolts on the door – top, middle, bottom – and pulled it open. A man fell into her arms.

‘Aziz!' she cried, but he whirled around and slammed the door shut again.

‘Lock all the doors, lock all the doors!' he begged, pushing at the bolts with shaking hands.

‘Aziz, Aziz!' Leota raised her voice over his panic. ‘James will do that. Now you just come in and tell what's happened!' She tried to lead him towards the living room, but he ran to the store cupboard at the end of the hall, yanked open the door and pushed his way in, shoving aside boxes, tennis rackets and hiking boots.

‘They will find me!' he sobbed. ‘Lock the doors, lock the doors!'

‘Go James,' said Leota, with a swift wave of her hand as she went after Aziz.

James took off through the house, knowing full well that it was tightly locked. Stanley had left Mussoorie with strict instructions that Leota lock every door and window at dusk and check them again before she went to bed. His instructions to James were to be the man of the house, to look after his mother and to read three chapters of the Bible each morning. ‘No Bible, no breakfast,' was his fond maxim.

Now rushing from door to door, James strained to understand Aziz' crazed outpouring. ‘The Punjabis! The Sikhs!' he heard, then a tumble of words punctuated by sobs and an anguished wringing like
an engine under strain.

Leota's voice was low and firm. ‘Which Sikhs? Where?'

More garbled words in a high-pitched crescendo. ‘They tried to kill me!' he squealed. James felt his guts go cold and a sudden prickling in his eyes. He was checking the bolts in the last room when he heard his mother call out.

‘James! Get some warm water and clean rags!'

‘Ok!'

‘And some Dettol!'

He ran to the kitchen and grabbed at things, scalding his fingers as he poured hot water from the Thermos flask, then struggling through to the hall, rags and Dettol under his arm, water slopping over the sides of the basin. Aziz was sitting half inside the store cupboard with his legs outstretched to Leota, feet covered in blood.

‘Take that through to your room, then help me with him,' Leota said.

When they got Aziz onto the bed, he huddled into a corner of it, whimpering, his feet tucked under him. James saw a smear of blood across his
razai
.

‘Now, you just put your feet in here, ji, and I'll clean you up,' said Leota, on her knees beside the bed, swilling a capful of Dettol into the water. It smelled of washed floors in hospitals.

Aziz shook his head. ‘No, Memsahib. I will do.'

‘Oh nonsense, now,' she replied, in her firmest tones. ‘I was a farm girl before I became a Memsahib, remember? I've cleaned up a lot worse than this.' But both she and James knew his distress was not about her hands in all that blood and dirt but the taboo of her touching his feet.

‘Shall I do it?' offered James, trying to hide the shaking of his voice and hands.

‘No, you get some sweet tea and cake. Come now, Aziz-ji, your feet in here.' Leota's voice now could not be disobeyed. James watched as Aziz, face messed with dirt and tears, miserably lowered his feet into the cloudy white swirl. He winced at the sting of Dettol, fresh tears squeezing from his eyes.

‘You just hush now, ji, everything's all right,' Leota murmured as she
gently washed his feet. ‘Hush now, hush now.'

When James returned with the tea and one of Aziz' own home-baked chocolate chip muffins, the man had stopped crying, though he still trembled. Leota was pressing his feet dry with a towel, clucking and shaking her head.

‘What happened?' mumbled James to his mother.

‘The Sikhs! The Sikhs,
babu
!' Aziz replied, pointing at the window, where the curtains were drawn. ‘They tried to kill me!
Hai-a!
Just like that, they tried to hack me to bits!'

Leota spoke quietly. ‘It seems Aziz stumbled upon a group of Punjabi refugees and got a fright.'

‘A hunting party!' Aziz cut in. ‘Just above Mullingar they jumped out with knives!
Aaaaiiii babu
, they tried to kill me – but I ran faster and I got away! My chappals fell off and my feet got cut.'

‘Did they follow you?' asked James, kneeling beside him.

‘Yes, yes! Some way they followed, but I ran so fast,
babu
, I ran so fast, I could not hear anymore. I don't know where they are.'

‘Well I'm sure they won't find you here, Aziz,' Leota said, resting his feet on the towel. ‘We're much too far away from the bazaar and too high up. And anyway, it's pitch black out there. Don't you worry, you're perfectly safe.'

Aziz' face crumpled again and he dropped his face into his hands, great sobs welling up through his body.

‘Now, now,' Leota said, reaching up to pat his arm with her chunky hand. James awkwardly stroked Aziz' other arm.

‘Why did you leave Rampur House, anyhow?' Leota asked.

‘My glasses, Memsahib,' Aziz cried, gesturing to his wet face. ‘I broke them and I must be leaving spares here.'

‘
Arè
, Aziz!' Leota scolded. ‘Such foolishness for a pair of glasses!'

‘But Memsahib, I am lost without them.'

‘And you nearly lost your life
for
them,' she retorted, standing up with the bowl of bloodied water. ‘Now, I'll clean up this stuff and then we'll look for your spares. I could have sworn we packed those, but we'll look anyhow.'

‘I am doing, Memsahib!' he cried, pointing to the basin and trying to stand up, but buckling under the pain of his feet.

‘No, no,' she said, briskly. ‘You just sit there and have some tea and cake. James, you get him some TP so he can blow his nose. And wrap him up good, he's still shaking.'

‘Yes, Mom,' he replied and passed the roll of toilet paper from his bedside table to Aziz. The sniffling man mopped his eyes and nose as James draped a musty blanket around his shoulders. Then he took Aziz' wet wad of toilet paper, tossed it into the bin and pressed the mug of tea into his hands.

‘Come, eat something, ji,' he murmured, remembering the many times Aziz had said those same words to him when James had fussed over his food as a child. The cook had sung silly songs and made the
brinjal
dance on the end of a fork, or the
alu
do battle with the
gobi
until James had creased with laughter and found himself eating just to please the man. But this was not the time for dancing muffins, far less ones that fought, so James merely perched the plate on Aziz' lap and whispered again, ‘Eat, eat.'

But in the pause that followed, they heard a sound that made eating impossible.

The sound of running feet on the path outside. Many feet. And shouting. James jumped to the window and peered out between the curtains.