The Raj Quartet, Volume 1: The Jewel in the Crown: The Jewel in the Crown Vol 1 (Phoenix Fiction) (17 page)

The rains have really set in now down here after a late start that set everyone in Mayapore hoarding foodstuffs in case of famine. I mean everyone in Mayapore who could afford it. Jack Poulson says it’s the curse of India, the way the middle-class and well-to-do Indians swoop into the stores the moment a crisis even threatens. But that’s apparently nothing to the corruption that goes on in higher circles where bulk foodstuffs are handled.

The grass at the front of the house is unbelievably green. I adore the rains. But how damp everything gets. The boy cleans
all
my shoes, every day, just to stop them from going mouldy. I’ve bought myself a huge cape and a sort of sou’wester, not that I’ve had much need of either because I mostly get a lift to and from the hospital in Mr. Merrick’s car which he sends round with a police driver (a very militant Muslim who tells me all the Hindus have concealed weapons in their houses to chop
off the heads of English and Mohammedans alike). If it’s a petrol-less day (how we all complain about
that
) Mr. Merrick sends his official truck, ostensibly on urgent duty (transferring prisoners from the jail to the courthouse). I find it a bit embarrassing and have told him several times that I can quite easily go on my bicycle on
any
day, or anyway get a tonga, but he insists that with all this Congress-inspired anti-British feeling boiling up again, and the MacGregor House being isolated on the outskirts of the cantonment, it’s really his duty to see I don’t come to any harm.

I like him better than I used to. I can’t close my eyes to the fact that he’s been kind and considerate. It’s his manner that’s against him (and something behind his manner, naturally). And of course a District Superintendent of Police
is
a bit off-putting. But now that I’ve got used to him—and got over something that I think I must tell you—I quite enjoy the times he takes me out. Except when he adopts an official tone, as on a night or so ago when he warned me against what he called my association with Mr. Kumar, which he said had set people talking, not English people only but Indians as well. I’m afraid I laughed and thoughtlessly said, Oh stop acting like a policeman all the time. Which I realized at once was the last thing one ought ever to say to him because he takes his job very seriously and is proud of having got where he is and is determined to shine at the job and not to care who dislikes him for doing it properly.

I feel I must tell you,
but please keep it to yourself,
I’ve told nobody, not even Aunt Lili. About a month ago he invited me to his bungalow for dinner. He’d gone to a lot of trouble. It was the best English-style meal I’ve had in India (except that time when you had the Swinsons and they made such a fuss beforehand about hating Indian food). Another point in his favour from my point of view was that his houseboy is obviously devoted to him, and took pleasure in arranging everything properly for his sahib’s candlelit dinner for two. The excuse for the dinner, if there had to be an excuse, was for me to hear some of his records afterwards. You remember I told you at the time about the show put on by the military at the end of April, complete with band and parade? And about meeting Brigadier Reid who said he met us in ’Pindi? And how I went to the show with a couple of the girls from the hospital and on to the club afterwards with some young army officers? Ronald Merrick looked in at the club later that evening (he had had a lot to do, controlling the crowds, etc.). Well we were all saying
complimentary things about the music and the marching—it
was
rather striking—and I must have been more full of it than the others. Anyway Ronald turned to me and said, “Oh, you like military bands? So do I.” Apparently he had piles of records. He said I must hear them sometime.

So this was the occasion. I don’t like them all that much! Not well enough to want to listen to records, so whenever he raised the subject afterwards I sort of put it off. Actually I’d almost forgotten about the records when he finally asked me to dinner. I said yes before I knew what I was doing, and when he said: “Good, and afterwards you can hear some of those records I’ve been promising to play,” I thought Oh Lord! What have I let myself in for! In the event it wasn’t too bad (the music I mean). We’d been around quite a bit together and there was tons to talk about. By now the music was just a part of a pleasant evening. I’d been to his bungalow before, but only with other people for a Sunday morning beer party, but seeing it empty I realized how comfortable and pleasant it was. He doesn’t smoke, or drink much, so I suppose his money goes further than that of men in similar positions who do. The bungalow is mainly PWD furnished, of course, but he has several rather glamorous things of his own. To begin with there was this super radiogram (on which he played a couple of Sousa marches). Then he had very nice tableware, and a marvelous Persian rug that he said he’d bought in an auction in Calcutta. His taste in pictures though was what really struck me. He’s so very conventional in his behaviour you’d expect something nondescript on his walls. It’s true there were pigsticking and polo pictures in the dining room and a David Wright cutie in his bedroom (he showed me round the whole bungalow but in such a sweet way that there wasn’t anything awkward about the bedroom, as there might have been with another man) but in the living room there was nothing on the walls except these two rather good reproductions of those Henry Moore drawings of people huddled in the underground during the Blitz, which I find difficult to look at, but do admire. He seemed touchingly pleased when I said, “Oh, Henry Moore! What a surprising man you are!” One other thing that struck me—in the closet (the one used by guests just off the hall) he’d had the boy put out scented soap (Coty Chypre) and a little pink hand towel which was obviously brand new. I had the feeling it had been bought especially for the occasion. (The soap in his own bathroom was Lifebuoy, so don’t jump to the wrong conclusion!)

There was another surprise too. After he’d played a couple of these
Sousa marches he put on another record and said, “I like this kind of thing, too,” and what do you think it was? The clair de lune movement from Debussy’s
Suite Bergamasque,
played by Walter Gieseking. It was one of my brother David’s favourites. When it began I thought: Whenever did I tell Ronald that David loved this? Then knew I never had. It was extraordinary. All that awful blaring (but sometimes stirring) Sousa and then this tender moonlit music that actually I could hardly bear to listen to, but loved all the same, although it seemed such an unusual thing for a policeman to like as well.

While it was playing the boy brought in the coffee—
Turkish.
There was a choice of brandy or liqueurs (Curaçao or crème de menthe, very dull). All the bottles were unopened—fresh from the store, just for me. I expect if I ever dine there again the brandy will be at the same level we left it. While we were drinking it he asked me a lot of questions about my family, about how David was killed, and about Daddy, and then about me, and what I thought about life and all that sort of thing, but in a chatty, sympathetic way that made me open up. (He must be a wizard at interrogation! That’s not fair. But you know what I mean.) Gradually I realized he had begun to talk about himself. And I was thinking: People don’t like you much, but you’re fundamentally
kind,
and that’s why you and I have always got on surprisingly well. He said he came of “a very ordinary family” and that although his father had done well enough, he was still only a grammar school boy and his grandparents had been “pretty humble sort of people.” He had worked hard and done all right so far in the Indian Police which he thought of as an essential if not especially attractive service, and his main regret was that being in it he wasn’t allowed to join up. His other regret was that he’d never really had any “youth” or met “the right sort of girl” for him. He was often “pretty lonely.” He knew he hadn’t much to offer. He realized his background and mine were “rather different.” Our friendship meant a lot to him.

Then he dried up. I just didn’t know what to say, because I didn’t know if I’d understood or misunderstood what he was driving at. We sort of stared at each other for a while. Then he said, “I’m only asking whether after you’ve had time to think about it you’d consider the possibility of becoming engaged to me.”

Do you know, Auntie, that’s the only proposal I’ve ever had? I’m sure by the time you were my age you’d had dozens. Does every girl find the first one oddly moving? I suppose it depends on the man. But if he’s,
you know, all right, decent enough, you can’t
not
be touched can you, whatever you
feel
about him as a person? I don’t think my feelings for Ronald Merrick could ever be described as more than passingly affectionate. He’s fair-haired and youngish and has blue eyes and is really awfully good-looking but there was and still is (perhaps more so than ever) a distinct reservation (from my point of view) that must be something to do with what I feel as the lack of
real
candour between him and whoever he’s dealing with. I never feel quite
natural
when I’m with him, but can never be sure whether that is my fault or his. But when he came out with this request (you can hardly call it a proposal can you?) I wanted very much to have been able to make things
all right
for him and say “Yes.” Do men know how vulnerable they look when they slough off that tough, not-caring skin they mostly seem to wear when there are more than two people in a room? Far more vulnerable than women, when
they
let their hair down.

What made it so extraordinary was that he never so much as touched my hand. At the time, this
not
touching added to my wish not to hurt him. Later, thinking about it, it added to the sense I had of the coldness surrounding the occasion. We were sitting at opposite ends of the sofa. Perhaps I ought to have taken my specs out and put them on! Looking back on it I can’t really recall whether I felt that what had been said was a shock or not. It seemed to be a shock, anyway a surprise, but in retrospect the whole evening was
obviously
leading up to it, so I can’t think why I should have been surprised, or even believe that I was. There must have been lots of things said before he came out with it that I inwardly took notice of. At some stage or other I decided that physically, in spite of his looks, he repelled me, but I think that came later, and was only momentary, when I’d established for both of us the fact that although I didn’t want to hurt him I had never thought and never would think of him in the way he seemed to want me to. The feeling of faint repulsion probably came through because of the sense I had of relief, of having got out of a difficult situation and retreated
into myself
in a way that left no room for others whoever they might be. I was now more concerned about the possible effect of my “refusal.” Honestly, I’m sure that all I said was “Thank you, Ronald—but—” but that was enough. You know how people talk about faces “closing up”? I think “close down” is nearer to it, because close up suggests a sort of
constriction,
a
change,
whereas what actually happens is that the face remains exactly the same but all the lights go out. Like a house where the people
have gone away. If you knock at the door now there won’t be any answer.

We had some more Sousa and presently he drove me home and we talked quite easily about nothing. When we got to the MacGregor House I asked him whether he’d like to come in for a nightcap. He said no, but escorted me up the steps to the verandah. When we shook hands he hung on to mine for a moment and said, “Some ideas take some getting used to,” from which I gathered he hadn’t yet given up, but it was a different man who said it. The District Superintendent of Police, the Ronald Merrick I don’t care for. The same one who later—only a few days ago—annoyed me by warning me about my “association with young Kumar.”

One of the servants was waiting on the verandah. I thanked Ronald for the evening, and then said goodnight to them both. I heard the car drive away and the servant beginning to lock up as I went upstairs. I knew Aunt Lili had planned an early night for once, so I didn’t go to her room. The house was very quiet. It’s the first time I’ve ever been conscious of the fact that it’s supposed to be haunted. It didn’t feel haunted in the eerie sense. Just big and empty and somehow desolate and occupied in the wrong way. What am I trying to tell you? Not that I felt frightened. But that I suddenly wanted to be with
you.

I never told you, but there was a time—my second month in India last year—when if someone had offered me a passage home I’d have accepted like a shot. Goodness knows I loved being with you. But during that second month, perhaps not the whole month but two or three weeks of it, I had what I can only describe now as a permanent sinking heart. I hated everything, hated it because I was afraid of it. It was all so alien. I could hardly bear to leave the bungalow. I started to have awful dreams, not
about
anything, just dreams of faces. They used to come up out of nowhere, normal looking at first but then distorting and exploding, leaving a blank space for others to come up and take their place. They weren’t the faces of people I knew. They were people I invented in alarming detail—alarming because it didn’t seem possible to imagine faces so exactly. I suppose I was obsessed by the idea of being surrounded by strangers and had to have them even in my dreams. I never told you but I think that day on the verandah with the durzi you guessed what I was going through. I remember the way you looked at me when I lost my temper and snatched away that blouse he was doing his best to copy. You know, if I’d been living with the Swinsons that
would probably have been the point of no return for me. I’d have been assimilated from then on into that inbred little cultural circle of Englishwomen—men, too, but particularly women—abroad in a colony.

I suppose it’s only natural that wherever we go we should need the presence of someone known and dependable and proven. If there’s no someone there has to be
something.
In ’Pindi during those particular weeks I became ridiculously attached to my luggage, my clothes, as if they were the only things I could trust. Even you, you see, seemed to have failed me. You knew everybody, everything, and I felt cut off from you because
I
didn’t, however much you took me out and about. And you took the dirt and poverty and squalor in your stride, as if it didn’t exist, although I knew that’s not what you actually felt about it. But this is why I snatched the blouse from Hussein. I couldn’t bear to see him holding it up, examining it,
touching it with his black fingers.
I
hated
myself for feeling that, but couldn’t stop feeling it, so I shouted at him. When I went to my room I sat down and wanted to burst into tears and be rescued and taken home, home. I’ve never felt so badly the fact that I no longer have a home in England, with Mummy gone, and Daddy, and David.