Arctic Summer (30 page)

There was nothing to be done. Mohammed's life had been touched, but not changed, by Morgan's, and his fate had been shaped by his station. Race and class were a kind of destiny; very little could dent them. Morgan himself had been decanted back into the vessel that had made him. It was better to stay there, at least for now; and if he flowed elsewhere in the future, it would probably not be to Egypt.

India, then. Even though he couldn't go yet, it continued to call to him in various voices. One of these was Masood's. Since his visit to England, a great tenderness had been restored, and it was in this tone that he wrote to say that he had set some money aside to pay for Morgan's journey: a touching, if not practical, suggestion.

At almost the same time another message came through Malcolm Darling, who was back in England on furlough. Between rabid diatribes on the Amritsar massacre, which seemed to preoccupy Malcolm to the point of obsession, he brought a fresh invitation from His Highness, the Maharajah. Would Morgan be prepared to drop everything forthwith and come to India as his Private Secretary?

“He asked me that once before,” Morgan said. “I don't even know what it means.”

“Oh, the Indians like titles,” Malcolm told him. “It's merely an administrative position, a bit like being a guardian to the constitution, although there isn't one. An Englishman is in the post at the moment, but he has to go on sick leave for a few months. He had a small accident. Fell out of a train.”

“I can't do it, Malcolm. I long to go, but I can't.”

It was quite true: inwardly he strained in that direction, till he made himself quite East-sick. And after a few months, feeling that he was committing an infidelity, he wrote quietly to Dewas, asking whether the position of Private Secretary had been filled yet.

He didn't expect a reply. But just in case one came, he raised the matter with his mother. They were sitting together after dinner, reading companionably, when he lowered his book and said, “How would Mummy feel if Poppy left her again?”

She sighed and marked her place with a finger. “It would depend on where he wants to go.”

He told her about Dewas and the possible invitation. He was watching her expression carefully, but she seemed unperturbed.

“Can this princely state not do without your assistance?” she asked.

“I daresay it can. I have a different motive. I mean my novel—my Indian novel, of course.”

“Oh, yes,” she said vaguely.

“Perhaps you don't remember it. It has been stuck for some time, but only because all the details of India have become blurred in my mind. I need to go back, to refresh my impressions.”

“Well, go if you must, dear,” she said, opening her book again. “But do take care out there.”

It seemed too much to hope for that she would accept the blow so calmly. Though it probably wouldn't matter, because he doubted the invitation would ever come.

And then, of course, it did.

He was again on holiday in Lyme Regis with Goldie when the cable arrived. The message was wordy but vague, and he stood in the hallway reading it over several times, before going through into the drawing room, where Goldie was working. His bemusement must have been obvious, because the older man looked up and murmured, “Everything all right?”

“Yes, I think so. That is, I have been asked back to India.”

“Oh, how dreadful.” Goldie set down his pen. “Are you very pleased?”

“I don't know.” It was almost a shock that the impossible had suddenly happened, and what was distant had come into reach. “He wants me to leave immediately.”

“Not for anything would I return there. If there is celestial punishment, and if my sins were very great, the Almighty would send me. But no Maharajah has the power.”

Goldie had spent the War in a morbid pacifist funk, closeted away in Cambridge, wanting, he said, to absorb the full horror of the time. At the very start of hostilities, he had drafted his scheme for a League of Nations and had been pushing the idea along ever since. The Covenant of the League, adopted at the Peace Conference, had made him feel powerful again, and his mood had improved considerably. Though he had been very exercised again of late by the parlous state of the world—everything, from the famine in China to the lynching of negroes in America, upset him greatly—since coming away with Morgan he had undergone a transformation. He had passed his days in comparative contentment, wrapped up in his dressing gown, scribbling away on his translation of Faust. And he spoke now with a grave tone, but his sensitive mouth betrayed amusement, and the little tassel on his mandarin cap jiggled merrily.

Morgan had already started out the door. “I am going to cable my reply.”

“No pause for reflection? Is that wise?”

“What?” Morgan was confused. The question seemed meaningless for a second. “There is nothing to reflect on,” he said. “I am going. Certainly I am going.”

 

* * *

 

Now that the news was definite, Lily lost some of her good humour. In his last few days she became toneless and inconsiderate, but he knew it was out of love for him, and bore it. And on the night before his departure, she wrote a little note, with some of her gentlest words.
I feel I got up days ago, and that you have been gone a very long time. The house seems sorrowing for you—such a desolate feeling as if it knew you had really gone and were not in London for the day or away on a visit. I felt in a dream when I was out, rather as I felt when war was declared
.

It was not the house that was in mourning; it was his mother. But not even her sadness could stop him. Twelve days after sailing from Tilbury, he was in Port Said.

He had arranged to meet Mohammed onshore, but to his astonishment, just as he was struggling to disembark, a familiar face welled up beaming in the crowd. They clasped hands and stared. It had been two years since they'd seen each other, and for a long moment he didn't understand anything.

“Are you not glad to see me, Forster?”

“I am, of course. But how did you get onto the ship?”

“I had to bribe. Everything is baksheesh, as you know. Here are expensive cigarettes, my gift to you. The box is not full, because I had to give to many people in order to find you. But I think you do not like me any more.”

The ship was full of people; there was nowhere to demonstrate his liking. While they toured the second-class decks, the most that was possible was to bump flanks occasionally through their clothes. It was a cold night, with low, scudding clouds, and Mohammed was thickly wrapped up. Suddenly he stopped and with his blue knitted gloves took hold of Morgan's hands and said, “How are you, friend, how are you?”

“I am well, very well. And how are you?”

Instantly, his face fell. “I am sick. I have lost four pounds. And Gamila's father has become bankrupt. Life is not good.”

Morgan stopped him. “I have only a few hours,” he said. “I don't want to be sad. Please, let's talk only of happy things.”

Mohammed brightened again. “Yes, I agree. Let us pretend.” They were standing at the rail, watching the coaling barges move immensely through the gloom, and he suggested now, “Let's go ashore and drink some coffee.”

It was only a five-minute ride to solid land. On the motor boat, Morgan tried to see how thin Mohammed really was, but he was wearing a heavy greatcoat—one of his own cast-offs—and his body was hidden from view. Perhaps it was better that way; it didn't help to know too much.

It was good to be standing on Egyptian soil again, next to his friend. He hadn't been able to visualise such a moment until now. They drank a Turkish coffee together and collaborated on a postcard to his mother, before walking out along the canal. A sea-mist was coming in and the water dissolved at the edges. Even the figures of people near the docks seemed substanceless, unreal. “It is like a dream,” Morgan said.

“Yes,” Mohammed said, though perhaps they were speaking of different things. For the first time a silence dropped over them, and they walked half-pressed against each other, shoulders touching, down the mole to the statue of de Lesseps. Only the feet were visible; the body disappeared upwards into night. They stood looking at it in silence for a few minutes and then went on along the deserted beach, where, a little way back from the sea, they found a hollow in the sand to sit in.

“So,” Mohammed said at last. “India.”

“India, yes. For a year, perhaps.”

“Let me come with you.”

“Next time,” Morgan said, avoiding his friend's gaze. He quickly added, “I shall stop with you on the journey home.”

“But how long will you stay? You are here now for only four hours. What is so important in your India that you must arrive there so fast?”

“On my way back I will stop with you for longer.”

His voice had become hoarse with suppressed emotion. Both of them knew why they had walked out here, into the dark, and it was no surprise when he leaned over and reached his hand through the folds of Mohammed's coat.

His friend sighed, but leaned back accommodatingly. “Foolish,” he said, shaking his head.

“All have their foolishness, and this is mine.”

T
he dullness of the evening sky hung heavily, reflecting Morgan's mood. It had been a long and tiring journey, the train nowhere near as clean or comfortable as on his previous visit. And the road from Indore was rough, running straight between small, dispirited trees, doing nothing to uplift him. His thoughts were all of indecency and failure, so that when the car passed a dead cow at the roadside, a ring of vultures hunching and bobbing around it, the image seemed like an omen.
That's how it will end
.

Ever since leaving Bombay, he had been musing on what lay ahead. He had accepted a position at the royal court, where his duties felt unclear and his abilities insufficient. He was sure he could be of no use to His Highness. Much more worrying, however, was the prospect of being a liability. His sexual imaginings had been rampant ever since stepping ashore and he felt almost capable, after his time in Egypt, of putting them into practice. But that way lay disaster; he could not—he
must
not—be weak. He told himself:
the least I can do is to cause no trouble
. But he had no faith in his own character, so that the rotting cow carcass spoke louder than his resolve.

His despondency lasted all the way to Dewas. But when they arrived at the New Palace, the Maharajah was capering joyfully outside the front door.

“Morgan! Morgan! So fine to see you. I have been waiting some time. Let us send cables immediately to announce your arrival. One to Malcolm. And one to your mother! Then we must find some Indian clothes for you, we are going to a party tonight. Where is my secretary?”

He wore no head-dress and his face—although eight years older now—had the impish delight of a child. Morgan cheered up.

He was cheerier still once he had been taken upstairs to his rooms and dressed in jodhpurs and silken waistcoat and a scarlet turban, and then driven off by carriage to the Cavalry barracks to watch a play performed by a visiting troupe of actors. He squatted on the floor for as long as his hips could bear it, before retreating to a chair at the back of the hall. The noise and colour and strangeness confirmed indisputably that he had, finally, arrived.

It was unsettling and comforting to know that he was the only white man in a radius of twenty miles.

 

* * *

 

Nothing so far had gone according to plan. He had written twice to Masood from England and wired from Aden en route, but still his friend wasn't in Bombay to meet him. He had taken himself from the quay to the Thomas Cook offices, but there was no letter. Even more problematic, Masood had promised him some money which he needed to live on, and there was no sign of that either.

And there was nothing from Dewas. He had apparently been stranded. He fell back on the hospitality of friends living nearby and it was only on his second day, while he was at the Post Office sending off yet another wire to Masood, that two frantic courtiers had come rushing up to him. They had been looking for him in the wrong place, or at the wrong time, or under the wrong name—anyhow, it had all been wrong.

After that things had gone better for a while. On the journey up to Dewas he had been looked after very well. But for the first few days after his arrival, all his worst fears again seemed true.

The place was incomprehensible. The first time he'd come here, he had been an honoured visitor, staying in the guest house, and the doings of the palace were remote and fabulous. But now he was in the thick of it and what had appeared dazzling from a distance was merely baffling from up close.

He had a long interview with the Maharajah on the first morning, where his official duties were explained to him. “You are in charge of the gardens, the tennis courts, the motor cars.” His Highness counted off his responsibilities on his fingers. “And we must not forget the guest house and the Electric House.”

“The Electric House?” Morgan's despair knew no bounds. “I can't fix anything electrical. And I understand nothing about motor engines. Your Highness, I had expected to be dealing with matters of reading and writing, those are my fields of expertise.”

“Call me Bapu Sahib, please. Don't worry, your expertise will not go to waste. I would like it very much if you would read to me every day, some enlightening piece which we can discuss. This was part of my education with Malcolm and it is necessary to continue. And all the palace post will go through your hands too.”

“But, Bapu Sahib, the tennis courts . . . ”

“All will come clear in time. Do not distress yourself. What is most important is to understand the rankings of office. Let me write them for you, then you may study afterwards and remember.”