by Maggie Ford
‘I don’t know how to explain,’ she’d pleaded as they lay in the wide canopied bed in the little house he’d got for her that overlooked other steep-roofed little houses to the main street with its very English frontages. It looked like a slice of some East Sussex village except for being surrounded by mountain peaks. ‘I don’t know what it is. The young people new out from England always seem to get such a welcome. I never did, and still feel out of it all.’
‘They did welcome you,’ he had told her as he had done so many times before in every argument over this. ‘They couldn’t have done more for you or been more welcoming. But you wouldn’t have it. You’ve never mixed.’
‘Because I’ve never felt that I fitted in.’
‘Because you never give it a try. No wonder no one comes up to talk to you unless you go up to them. And you don’t do that either, do you? It’s your own fault, Annie. When are you going to start mixing and not expect me to hold your hand?’
‘And have to put up with the funny looks, the way they either pore over me as if they are doing me a favour, or turn their backs on me to talk among themselves.’
‘That’s your imagination. If you joined in they’d take more notice of you. You make yourself excluded. I’ve watched you, Annie. You just turn away and walk off. Some of them look quite surprised and bewildered when they turn back and find you gone. They are nice people, Annie.’
‘To you maybe. To me they’re just a stuck-up lot of hypocrites, making out they’re something they’re not.’
‘You can’t blame them, darling. They need to put on an act, here. It’s their way of sticking together against this country, as they see it. Doesn’t it ever occur to you that some of them would sooner be in England, would like to be with the families they left behind, just as you would?’
‘No, it doesn’t. From what I hear, they’d sooner be dead than go back to England, having to fend for themselves without any native servants toadying around them. Here they live the life of Riley, mix with the Viceroy and the Maharaja, and they feel like kings, above everyone else, even the Maharaja himself. Or feel themselves at least on a par with him, a ruler in his own right. They are the Raj! Back in England they’d be nothing.’
When their argument reached that stage, as she seethed from her own words, hating herself for the sneering tone of her own voice, he would let it drop, suddenly, turning his back on her, leaving her miserable, knowing it was she who’d started the argument, but petulantly blaming him for it.
They had always seemed to argue there when they should have been making the most of their time together. Not during the day when there was so much to do and she and Alex, her hand in his for protection, mixed with the others at the Simla Club, going to dances or the home-produced plays and musicals the groups here delighted in putting on; when the air like sparkling wine made the wooded peaks of the Himalayan foothills stand out so clear it felt one could reach out and touch them; when she and Alex would shop in the main street with its European shop fronts and its English signs or wander arm in arm up and down the steep little roads with their very western houses – little echoes of the homes the Anglo-Indians had left behind. But at night when the world fell silent and they lay in each other’s arms after making love, trying to cram the weeks of emptiness, at least for her, all into one brief night, and sometimes even before they made love, so ruining what joy Annie had of him, the argument always came round to the same topic. ‘I hate it here. I want to come back with you.’
‘You’d hate it even more down on the plain.’
‘I want to be with you.’
‘You are with me.’
‘One weekend out of three?’
‘Every other weekend.’
‘Not always. I’m so lonely without you. When you miss two weekends I begin to feel you can do without me all the time and have stopped loving me. Out of sight, out of mind, they say.’
And then he’d tell her again not to be silly, that he had never stopped loving her, and on one occasion he had reminded her what he had given up so they could be together. She had come dangerously near to tears, her arms around his naked body, wanting to push him from her but making those arms tighten in case her misery might, like some tugging rope, pull her from him. ‘I know I’ve spoiled your life,’ she recalled saying on that occasion. ‘I know I’m the cause of the rift between you and your parents.’
He had finally written to them in early July while she had been in Simla, at last confessing to this marriage to her. ‘Why couldn’t you have waited until I was back in Jalapur?’ she had condemned him. ‘It would have given us a little more time before your father’s reply arrived to upset you.’ For the letter had been full of wrath and acrimony, informing his son that he would see to it that Alex would be staying in India indefinitely; that he wished he could arrange for him and that person he’d taken up with utterly against his and his mother’s wills to be sent even further away; that if Alex ever wished to return he would be expected to look for a position other than in the family business, and that as far as he and his mother were concerned, he had made his own bed and must lie in it; he’d receive his salary – would not be cut off, would not starve, blood thicker than water despite how he had abused it – would receive his share of profits – no intention of his status being lowered – but if he ever came home he would find things a darn sight altered. He’d sat very silent for a long time afterwards then had slowly torn the letter in half and put it away. He only wrote his father business letters now.
All this lay well behind them now. January had come, a new year, nineteen thirty-one, new hopes, new ideas, for some perhaps. Alex had now adjusted to his father’s attitude, and Annie could see herself being here in India to the end of her days. Some went home, new people came out, but the old guard seemed to go on and on, and she grew no nearer becoming integrated into their circles except for the odd gracious invitation. Perhaps Alex was right. Perhaps it was her and not them. But she was always so homesick.
Gazing into the fire while he devoured the last few snippets of news in the paper, she thought of the Christmas Eve dance at the Club. She had let Alex persuade her, torn between reluctance and a need to get out of the house in which, with Alex at his office, she had been languishing all week.
She had quite enjoyed it at first, sharing a table with Mr and Mrs Ansley Burrington, he a magistrate, and Mr and Mrs Oliver Twining – Annie wasn’t sure what he did, but he was a quiet and distant sort of man while his fat little wife talked nineteen to the dozen, keeping the conversation going around the table nearly all the evening. Mr and Mrs Twining hadn’t danced but Mr and Mrs Burrington did occasionally between talk, and so had she and Alex.
In an evening dress Alex had bought her, the black silk crepe falling into straight columns when not in motion, the only ornament a diamanté clip on one of the narrow shoulder straps which had accentuated her tall slim figure, the spray of pink flowers at her waist not detracting from that slimness one bit, she attracted the attention of all. This time the attention did not bother her; she’d even danced two or three times with Ansley Burrington, ignoring the look his wife had given her. A couple of gin and tonics made Annie bold though not tipsy.
Ansley Burrington was rather like Alex in a way: tall, lean, though he sported a Ronald Colman moustache which gave him a debonair appearance. He tended to rile his wife by declaring himself sympathetic towards the Indian, perhaps more than he should, much to her irritation since she saw them in a totally different light to him. Her rather raw-boned figure drew itself up with indignation during one conversation about the Indian’s ongoing and recently renewed certainty of his own country’s destiny without British interference.
‘Their country, yes, but where would they be without us? Most of them live in abject poverty. You see them everywhere, cripples, beggars, young boys, always a hand stretched out for a rupee to be dropped into it. They try to touch you with their fingers, but they daren’t of course. You can’t give to all of them. Yet thei
r own wealthy pass them by without a glance. The country does nothing for them at all. It is quite untouched by them because they have always been here. It does nothing at all to help them.’
‘Quite right,’ Mrs Twining put in, for once reduced to mono-syllables by the unexpected outpouring of the other woman.
But Burrington said, ‘We don’t help them either.’
‘Of course we do. We give them work. Employ them as servants, as gardeners, cooks, builders, trade with them in the market. You don’t see poverty like that in England.’
‘There is now,’ Annie had said, still bold. ‘The Depression has put thousands out of work and on to the dole.’
‘But they get dole. These people are just left by their state to starve.’
‘I think a lot of people in England and in America are starving.’
‘My dear,’ Mrs Burrington turned on her. ‘You don’t know what you are talking about.’
‘My mother tells me about it in her letters, and then there are the newspapers, and …’
But Mrs Burrington had already turned from her, speaking to Alex, suggesting a spot of tennis in the morning. ‘It would start Christmas off quite nicely, don’t you think? Give us all an appetite for a nice Christmas dinner – as good as these servants of ours can cook. They have no understanding at all of the English palate. But I suppose they do their best. Shall we say ten o’clock then, before it gets too hot?’
Annie had fallen silent. Not only had she been ignored, suddenly, as usual, but she detested tennis. Not when she and Alex played alone, then it was fun and full of laughs. He had taught her to play and she still couldn’t play at all well. People like Mrs Burrington, who had been playing it all their lives, saw her as ungainly and inept. She had looked across at Ansley Burrington and seen understanding in his eyes and she had smiled shyly back at him.
In its way it had been quite a successful evening, thanks to him, but now Alex had said yesterday that they had been invited to the New Year’s Eve dance on Wednesday. It couldn’t happen twice that she’d have Ansley Burrington to help bolster her. It had started the same old argument when she said she didn’t feel like going. Alex had asked why not.
‘Because … because I don’t fit in.’
He had verged on irritation. ‘You’re as good as anyone there. I can afford nice dresses for you. For God’s sake, Annie! You were all right last week. It’s your attitude towards everyone here that makes you stand out like a sore thumb. You never relax.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Make yourself. For my sake.’
‘Not mine. I only have to open my mouth for them to look at me as though I came out of a dustbin.’
‘That’s bloody stupid, Annie, and you know it. Look at Bainbury – a Yorkshireman with a Yorkshire accent. No one takes the slightest notice.’
‘Bainbury’s in the diplomatic corps,’ she’d snapped. ‘Most of them are something in the civil service. You’re only a merchant, and they just see me as …’
‘Thank you!’ he’d blurted and she had fallen silent, aware of having touched a tender spot in him, an awareness that he too was not as acceptable to the men’s snobbish wives as he might wish to be. ‘I get on with most of the men well enough,’ he protested before he too lapsed into silence. The rest of their evening was strained, with Annie resolved to insist on visiting her family as soon as the hot weather began in April.
Life in India revolved around the weather. The heat and the slow whirring of electric fans or flap of punkahs and the constant rounds of iced drinks in a sustained effort to keep cool dominated every thought; houses were designed against the heat, their windows unglazed to let through a constant stream of air, and all of them featured the customary shading veranda. The native shops were completely open-fronted. All clothing had to be light-weight, cotton, so men’s suits always looked unpressed. From October to March cooling breezes all the way from the Himalayas tempered the heat, but then it would grow hotter and hotter, stifling, and from July to September it just rained and rained. Oh, how she longed for the vagaries of an English summer’s day or even a creeping, silent November fog disturbed only by the trilling of a robin or a wren rather than the irritatingly plaintive bell-like calls of birds whose names she didn’t know or the harsh squawking of green parakeets.
Well, this summer she’d have none of it. She’d badger Alex blue in the face until he let her go for a visit back home. Far better than languishing in some insular hill station. After two months she’d return happy and contented, and he would soon see the benefits of it. Already she could see herself at home, taking part in the family once more.
Peggy was ironing at the table before the kitchen range, face florid from its heat, where she had a second iron waiting to be taken off its trivet and used as the other became too cool to smooth the sheets and shirts she laid on an old worn sheet, well singed to a mottled brown from endless use as an ironing cloth.
‘Reg and Pete didn’t seem too happy about us not asking them and their families here for Christmas Day,’ she remarked to Dan in his wheelchair by the fire.
‘Didn’t they? Pity!’ was his grunted reply.
‘They spoke about it again to Danny on the boat yesterday,’ she continued undaunted.
Even if he was mostly silent and morose, he was someone to talk to. It was still strange having him around her feet all day where she had once been on her own, quite often singing to herself in her rather tuneless voice with no one to hear or complain. She didn’t sing any more, but talked to him as if she addressed a wall; he made no reply apart from a grunt, maybe a sentence now and again, or sometimes nothing at all as he sat staring out of the window, smoking his everlasting pipe, or into the fire, not even reading a newspaper properly.
‘They looked in on New Year’s Eve,’ he said now.
‘Yes, for a short while, for a drop of whisky to see in the New Year and be sociable. Then they went home to bed. You hardly spoke to any of them. You didn’t want to hear anything they had to say about the boat or the business. You didn’t seem a bit interested. Not like the New Years we used to have, all evening and into next morning, all of us having such a good time and them all going home hardly able to stand, full of drink That seems to be all over.’ Her elbow bent to her ironing. ‘All in the past’
‘Waste of money. Ain’t got money to throw about no more.’
That was true. Danny was doing his best. On his own with his uncles he brought in as much as Dan once had. But she couldn’t take as much off him as she had Dan, knowing Danny was saving like mad to get married. And times were against them too. The Depression hit them all, was hitting them harder and harder with no sign of relenting.
Josie had lost her job at the Cliffs Hotel. With fewer people able to afford to stay there, there was no need for an assistant receptionist. Cleaners, chambermaids, doormen, porters, many of them had also lost their jobs, were now on the dole. But for young people like Josie, there was no dole.
She had gone up to London today to see what she could find, imagining there might be more hope in the city. Peggy hated the thought of her wandering around up there on her own but she had said that her boyfriend, Arthur Monk, would be with her, helping her to search. It seemed that his work in the docks had fallen off badly and there was little work for him. And he had a mother to keep, just as Danny now had.
Connie was still in work, thank goodness, her firm keeping her on as best they could, though it was all so uncertain. Pam’s husband had been laid off before Christmas. That made the third job he’d lost, casual labour which could be dispensed with at a moment’s notice. She had been to see Pam this week, unbeknown to their father. Pam had said they were just managing on George’s tiny bit of dole money. She had left Pam with a couple of shillings – all she dared afford – to help tide her over a few days, and a couple of dresses for Beth which she’d secretly knitted out of bits of wool from a couple of her old jumpers, piecing any severed strands together so that the dresses were multicoloured. B
ut in this cold weather they were much needed. It seemed George’s parents were trying to help as best they could. Maybe they weren’t all bad, but try telling Dad that. And all the while Danny was working his socks off trying to help make ends met.
There was still a living to be made from cockling. Cockles didn’t know there was a depression, so they bred as well as ever. But it was winter, and harder to get out to them with the weather always worsening around January and February. And last summer the holiday trade had gone down noticeably, another aspect of the times. Most who had once found the half-a-crown day return train fare for a Sunday out at Southend now had other uses for the money, which might keep their family for a week on cheap food. The rent probably got paid by hocking something in a pawn shop, the only businesses doing well these days. And there was Danny’s Lily going on about grand weddings and honeymoons. Her dad was threatened with being given the push with the firm he worked for slowly going down, so you’d think she’d know better.
Peggy took the iron that had been heating up in front of the range, put the cool one in its place and spat on the smoothing surface of the new one to test its temperature in case it scorched the shirt she was doing. It sizzled fiercely. She put it on the trivet on the table to cool a fraction before applying it to the material.
She thought suddenly of Pam again and spoke vaguely to the wall before stopping to consider. ‘Pam’s George is out of work.’
Dan had taken his pipe from his mouth. His voice was a growl. ‘We don’t know no one of that name, so how would you know?’
Peggy’s back went up immediately. This was getting bloody stupid. His own daughter. She stopped ironing and turned on him. ‘I’ve been to see her, that’s how.’
The walls of the kitchen with some of the finished ironing airing around them resounded to his bellow. ‘You been what? Been to see’er?’
Hers was a show of defiance and assertiveness. ‘Yes, Dan, more than once. I see her once a week, when I go shopping, ever since before you came out of hospital. She’s got a baby now – my grandchild, our grandchild. And if you don’t want ever to see her, I do.’