Motherland

by William Nicholson

  Panis Angelicus, fit panis hominum

  Dat panis coelicus figuris terminum …

  She has sung it many times in her younger years, and the words flow effortlessly. She has no nervousness before the congregation: she hardly sees them. She is surrendering herself to the music, her body an instrument beyond her own control. She hears the throbbing hum of the organ notes as if the same keys and pedals press the clear high song from her throat, and she need do nothing. As she sings she can hear herself make mistakes, but somehow even her wrong notes sound right. So, self-forgetting, she reaches out for the high note, and gets it and loses it, and comes stepping down the melody, singing with a purity and a wholeheartedness she has rediscovered from her youth.

  Pamela watches and hears with her lips parted, enraptured. It’s not only the voice that astonishes her this Easter morning, a voice she never knew her mother had. It’s the shining eyes of all the others round her, eyes fixed in admiration on her mother. From this moment the child knows that this is what she wants for herself: to be the object of such looks of love.

  There’s no applause as Kitty finishes. This is a religious service. But a kind of collective sigh goes up from the pews. Afterwards there are many old friends and neighbours pressing forward with their congratulations, and Kitty smiles and thanks them for their kind words, and Pamela clings tight to one arm wherever she goes so that everyone knows it’s her mother who is the star of Easter Day. But inside herself Kitty has gone far away, and wishes she could be alone, because something big has happened. She’s found a place where she can give all of herself. She has entered the wave.

  Then comes the reaction, a sudden exhaustion so powerful she can no longer stand, accompanied by a bad taste in her mouth. Her mother sees her stumble, and coming to her side, takes her away from the crowd.

  ‘You’re worn out, darling. Go and lie down. Pammy, you stay here with me. Just go, darling. I’ll explain.’

  Kitty throws her a grateful look and runs upstairs to her room. There she lies full length on the bed and hears the buzz of voices below and attempts to find again the extraordinary joy she felt while singing. She can do no more than catch a faint echo; and even that is slipping fast away from her.

  For a while she rests, half-sleeping. Then, wanting not to lose the precious moment for ever, she gets up and goes to her old desk. She will write it down, in a letter. There’s only one person to whom she can send such confused thoughts. She writes to Larry.

  I do so envy you your great adventure. Here life goes on the same old way, and sometimes I find myself wondering how it will be in a few years’ time, when Pamela no longer needs me. I expect I shall turn into one of those good women who do good works, and then you, who believe in goodness, can come and praise me. I shall be duly grateful, I assure you, but I can’t promise that it will be enough. I may grow restless and badtempered, and what is far worse, disappointed. I don’t think you’ll praise me for that.

  Today has turned out to be a special day. It’s Easter Day, but that’s not what’s special. As my mother says, it comes round every year. What happened is this. When I was younger I used to sing in the choir, I sang the soprano solos, and the very same choirmaster is still here. He begged me to sing in the abbey and I did, and Larry, for three or four minutes I was what Ed called me once, I was an angel in heaven. Actually I’ve no idea what it’s like to be an angel or what heaven is like but I was let go – I don’t know how else to write it – I escaped and got away and I was so happy. Is this what happens to you when you paint? You say you’re not thinking of art any more, but how can that be? If it’s the same for you with art as it is for me when I sing, at least as I sang today, then you can’t give it up. It would be to give up the only time when you’re fully alive. Do you feel that? How most of the time we’re only half alive, or even half asleep? I’ve been so tired lately, I don’t know why, it’s not as if I have to do such hard work. I think people need something more than just food and shelter, they need a mission in life, and without a mission they go slower and slower until they can hardly move at all. I think Ed feels this most strongly of all of us, and that’s why he drives himself so hard. I don’t feel as if I want to drive myself, it’s more that I want to jump, or fall, or fly away. I wish you had been here to hear me sing. You would have been so proud. I do miss you a lot. When things happen to me it’s you I want to tell. Come home soon, please.

  She folds the letter up and puts it in her suitcase to send when she gets home. Then as she straightens up again she feels a tightness in her chest, and a tingling of the skin of her breasts. All at once it comes to her.

  I’m pregnant.

  This simple immense fact drops into her mind like a key into a lock. Suddenly everything makes sense. The constant fatigue, the mild nausea, the metallic taste in her mouth.

  I’m going to have another baby.

  Of course there’ll be doctors to visit, tests to endure, but she knows it beyond any possibility of a doubt. Her body is telling her. And as for all her questions about the future, they are already melting away. There is no future. She is to have another baby. With a baby there is only today, and today, and today.

  28

  The camp followers, as Pug Ismay calls them, arrive in the viceregal aeroplane in early May, just as the temperature in Delhi is rising to unbearable levels. A crowd of exhausted children come tumbling down the steps: three Brockman girls, a Nicholls boy, two little Campbell-Johnsons shepherded by Alan’s wife Fay. Ismay’s grown-up daughters Susan and Sarah follow, with Rupert Blundell’s sister Geraldine.

  That evening Larry is invited to join the Campbell-Johnsons and Rupert and his sister for a drink at the Imperial hotel in honour of the new arrivals.

  They sit in the gardens, in low basket chairs, drinking gin and lemonade. After sundown the air is cool and pleasant. The perfectly kept lawns are lit by soft lamps. The tinkling of tonga bells sounds from the street beyond the walls. Turbaned servants stand discreetly by the open doors to the hotel, waiting to fulfil the guests’ needs.

  ‘Rupert, this is heavenly,’ says Geraldine. ‘And to think you’ve been making such a fuss.’

  ‘I got cold feet about her coming out,’ Rupert says to the others.

  ‘This isn’t the real India, I’m afraid,’ says Alan.

  ‘I suppose you mean it isn’t the India of the poor,’ says Geraldine. ‘But at home I don’t live in the England of the poor either. Perhaps I’m simply not real.’

  She speaks with a smile in her voice, and they laugh as if she has made a joke, but Larry senses from the first that, like Rupert, she’s someone who knows her own mind. To look at she’s delicate, even fragile, with her pale perfect skin and her slender figure. The way she moves her head or her small hands is economical and precise, performing just enough of an action to achieve her object. She seems to be quite unaware how pretty she is, and entirely lacks the little tricks of flirtation that others take for granted. Modest, then, but also proud.

  The men smoke, but both the ladies decline. Geraldine barely touches her drink. Alan catches sight of Colin Reid of the London Daily Telegraph, and beckons him over to join them.

  ‘Colin’s a real expert,’ he says. ‘He’s studied Muslim culture in the Middle East. He’s even read the Koran in Arabic. Am I right, Colin?’

  ‘More than once,’ says Colin. ‘Don’t quote me on this, but I know my Koran rather better than Muhammad Ali Jinnah.’

  ‘Which one’s Jinnah?’ says Geraldine.

  ‘He’s the leader of the Muslim League,’ says Larry.

  ‘So tell us,’ says Alan to the Telegraph man. ‘Is this Muslim–Hindu division really about religion, or is it something else?’

  ‘That’s rather a broad question,’ says Colin Reid.

  ‘Religion is always something else, surely,’ says Rupert. ‘I mean, religion is not just about what you do on the holy days. It’s how you see your life.’

  ‘I should explain,’ says Alan. ‘We’re surround
ed by believers. Rupert and Larry both went to the same Catholic school. I expect Geraldine is one of them too.’

  ‘Certainly,’ says Geraldine with a pretty smile. ‘Like all the best people.’

  ‘But Rupert’s perfectly right,’ says Colin Reid. ‘Religion is more about identity and community than creed. And I’m afraid the different communities here are moving further apart every day.’

  He and Alan and Rupert then get into a discussion about the nationalist leaders and whether they can ever find common ground. Geraldine, who is sitting near Larry, turns to him and asks him in a low voice, ‘Did Rupert always know best at school?’

  ‘I’m sure he did,’ says Larry, smiling. ‘But I didn’t really know him. He pretty much kept himself to himself. He was in my house, but in the year above me.’

  ‘I expect you’ve lost your faith too.’

  ‘No, not yet. Is that what I’m supposed to do?’

  ‘I rather got the impression that Downside has that effect,’ says Geraldine. ‘You either come out a monk or an atheist.’

  ‘No, I’m still a muddled but willing believer.’

  ‘Me too. I expect it’s very dull of me, but I like there being rules. Fish on Friday. Mass on Sunday. Prayers at bedtime.’

  ‘It’s because it’s what we’re used to,’ says Larry.

  ‘No,’ says Geraldine. ‘It’s what Rupert said. It’s about how you see your life. Once you decide there’s a right way to live your life, then that’s what you want to do.’ She stops, putting one hand to her pretty mouth, as if suddenly afraid she’s said the wrong thing. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m being serious. How bad-mannered of me.’

  At the same time her eyes are laughing.

  ‘I led you on,’ says Larry. ‘We’re equally guilty.’

  ‘It’s because those rude men are talking Indian politics. Fay,’ she says, turning to Alan Campbell-Johnson’s wife, who is all too visibly falling asleep, ‘Where have you hidden the children?’

  ‘The children?’ says Fay, blinking back to wakefulness. ‘I’m taking them up to Simla, to get away from the heat.’

  ‘They’re such darlings,’ Geraldine says to Larry. ‘They were so good in that beastly plane. Fay, you need to be in bed. And so do I, to tell the truth.’

  Larry is charmed by the graceful way Geraldine handles herself. He realises how much he misses feminine company; and in particular this way of speaking lightly while touching on serious matters. There’s something else, too. He has the sense that Geraldine likes him.

  As the party breaks up she says to him, ‘I’m so glad you’re out here. Rupert simply refuses to go to Mass any more. He’s supposed to be a philosopher, but as far as I can tell he believes in nothing at all.’

  *

  That Sunday Larry accompanies Geraldine to the Sacred Heart on Connaught Place, a curious Italian-style church built only a few years before the war. Inside, with its rounded arches and long nave, its smell of burning candles and wood polish, it could be any Catholic church in the world. Geraldine kneels beside him, her face partly obscured by a black lace mantilla, and murmurs the responses in that absent but familiar way that is common to all Catholics. The words they speak are after all in Latin, and essentially meaningless incantations. And yet to Larry this itself is comforting. The mass in Delhi is identical to the mass at home. The raised hands of the robed celebrant, the tang of incense in the air, the tinkle of the consecration bell: he could be in the Carmelite church in Kensington, or Downside Abbey, or St Martin in Bellencombre, and it would all be the same.

  After Mass they find their driver waiting in the hot sun, and drive back along the broad new roads of the imperial capital. New Delhi has the look of a city built for giants who have not yet got around to moving in.

  ‘Or perhaps,’ Larry says, elaborating his thought, ‘they built it and then abandoned it, like Fatehpur Sikri.’

  Geraldine hasn’t heard of Fatehpur Sikri.

  ‘It was the first Mughal city, built by Akbar the Great. But it turned out there wasn’t enough water there, so they abandoned it after only fourteen years. It took fifteen years to build. It’s been left to the sun and the wind for almost four hundred years now.’

  ‘Is it still there?’

  ‘Oh, yes, it’s still there. There’s no one living there, but people visit.’

  ‘I’d like to go there.’

  ‘I think it’s quite a drive.’

  Geraldine looks out of the open car windows at the bleak grandeur of the new city.

  ‘I expect this took fifteen years to build,’ she says.

  ‘More or less,’ says Larry. ‘And here we are, getting ready to abandon it.’

  ‘At least it won’t be deserted when we leave.’

  ‘Not at all. It’ll come to life.’

  They drive in silence for a few moments. Then Geraldine says, ‘Why did you come out here, Larry?’

  ‘Oh, you know how it is,’ says Larry. ‘Life has these turning points, doesn’t it? I suppose it was just chance, bumping into Rupert when I did.’

  ‘You think it was chance?’

  ‘Why, don’t you believe in chance?’

  ‘I don’t know that I do,’ she says. ‘After all— ’ She breaks off, not out of nervousness, but with a kind of old-fashioned courtesy, to say, ‘Do you mind if I talk about God?’

  ‘Not at all,’ he says. ‘It is Sunday.’

  ‘Well,’ she says, ‘if you believe God has a plan for you, then nothing happens by chance. Even the bad things have their purpose, however hard it is to see what that might be at the time.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Larry, wondering how far he agrees with this. ‘But that doesn’t mean we never have to make any decisions for ourselves, does it?’

  ‘I think our duty is to do the right thing, as far as we know it. And beyond that, to submit to the will of God. If that means we are to suffer, then so be it.’

  She speaks in a low voice that makes it all too plain she speaks from recent personal experience.

  ‘I’m sorry if you’ve suffered,’ says Larry.

  She looks round, meeting his eyes with a searching gaze. Her look says to him, Don’t play with me.

  ‘I’ve been unhappy,’ she says. ‘I can’t claim any more than that.’

  The car pulls up by the north entrance to Viceroy’s House, and they go inside. Larry hears Geraldine pausing to thank their driver. Breakfast is still being served in the staff mess.

  ‘Here they are!’ cries Rupert Blundell, halfway through eating a soft-boiled egg. ‘Are you suitably shriven?’

  ‘You will go to hell,’ says Geraldine calmly. ‘Pour me some coffee.’

  Freddie Burnaby-Atkins, one of the ADCs, points a butter knife at Geraldine.

  ‘Why only Rupert?’ he complains. ‘I’ve not been to church either.’

  ‘You’re one of the innocents, Freddie,’ says Geraldine. ‘You’ll go to limbo. But Rupert knows better, so he goes to hell.’

  There are several single young men on the staff, and Geraldine’s arrival among them has created something of a flutter. As Rupert predicted, she is soon put to work assisting the hard-pressed team. She has no training in shorthand or typing, but she has a natural talent for organisation. Within a few days she has taken charge of the circulation of notes. Mountbatten has instituted a system where each hour of meetings is followed by fifteen minutes of dictation, in which he makes a résumé of the discussion. The resulting notes are then typed, stencilled, and distributed. Geraldine draws up a chart with the names of all key members of staff, and the date and issue number of each note, and ticks them off as they are sent out.

  The workload grows heavier as the temperature of the capital rises. The thermometer in the entrance hall is now reading 110° in the shade. Mountbatten has been closeted in Simla with Nehru, and in London with Attlee and Churchill. Jinnah has made his demand for a ‘corridor’ between the two parts of what will become Pakistan. Baldev Singh has issued ominous warnings about the Sikhs, who wi
ll be the biggest losers in partition. The Indian states representatives have met and failed to agree. Lord and Lady Mountbatten are rumoured to be barely on speaking terms. No one has the least idea what Gandhi thinks.

  In this atmosphere of confusion and mistrust, the viceroy calls a meeting of the five leaders: Nehru and Patel for the Congress party, Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan for the Muslim League, and Baldev Singh for the Sikhs. Nehru asks that Acharya Kripalani be included, as Congress President. Jinnah counters with a demand that Rab Nishtar be included for the League. So the five becomes seven.

  Larry is on duty controlling the press photographers. When it emerges that no photographs are to be permitted, he finds himself with a rebellion on his hands. Max Desfor leads a walkout by the foreign press men, saying as he goes, ‘You’ll get a signed protest on this one, Larry. You tell your people, this is no way to get yourselves a good press.’

  Larry does his best.

  ‘The viceroy wants as little distraction as possible. We’ll get you in there later, I promise you.’

  The purpose of the meeting is to win all the leaders’ consent to a carefully drafted plan for the transfer of power. Because different aspects of the plan are unacceptable to each one of the leaders, this is no easy task. Mountbatten’s object is to make them realise that poor though the plan is, every alternative is worse. If the British are to quit India, somebody must take over the running of the country. If Jinnah will not work with Congress, there must be partition. If there is to be partition, there must be boundaries, and many people will find themselves on the wrong side of whatever lines are drawn.

  Mountbatten explains carefully that he understands he cannot expect to win agreement. Instead he asks for acceptance, which means that the leaders believe the plan to be a fair and sincere attempt to solve the problems, for the good of all. He asks for their goodwill in the attempt to make the plan work. Nehru, for Congress, says he is willing on balance to accept the plan. Jinnah says he must consult further with his working committee.