Heat and Dust

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  “What can I do?” was his odd reply.

  I think what he was saying was that he has no alternative but to be a good husband and father: having been thrown into that stage of life, whether he likes it or not. And on the whole I think he doesn’t. Anyway, I have decided not to tell him about my pregnancy. I don’t want to spoil anything.

  1923

  When Olivia found that she was pregnant, she didn’t tell Douglas. She put it off from day to day, and in the end it happened that she told the Nawab first.

  One morning, on arrival in the Palace, she found everyone running around carrying and packing and giving each other conflicting instructions. Even Harry was packing up in his room and seemed in rather a good mood. He said they were going to Mussourie at last, the Begum had decided the night before. One of her ladies had been indisposed and had been advised a change of air, so the Begum said they would all go. It would do Harry good too, she thought; she had been very worried about him.

  “Oh?” said Olivia. “Do you see her often?”

  Ever since the day Harry had pointed out that not being received in the purdah quarters was a discourtesy to Olivia, they had not mentioned the Begum. But Olivia was aware that Harry was received there on a footing of intimacy.

  “Every day,” he said. “We play cards, she likes it.” He changed the subject: “And the Nawab also says he is bored being here, so today everyone is packing.”

  “He’s bored?”

  “So he says. But there’s something else too.” He frowned and went on packing very meticulously.

  “What?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Olivia.” Although reluctant to talk, he did seem to want to share his feelings. “He won’t tell me exactly but I know there’s some trouble. As a matter of fact, Major Minnies is with him right now. Didn’t you see his car outside? I was wondering about that, hoping you wouldn’t collide on the stairs or something.”

  “Why not? What’s it matter? I’ve come to see you.”

  “Quite.” He went on packing.

  She interrupted him impatiently: “Do stop that now, Harry, and tell me what’s going on. I ought to know.” He turned around then from where he was kneeling on the floor and gave her a look that made her emend to “I’d like to know.”

  “So would I,” Harry said. He left his suitcase and came to sit near her. “Or would I? Sometimes I feel I’d just as soon not.”

  They were silent. Both looked out of the latticed window framing the garden below. The water channels intersecting the lawns reflected a sky that shifted and sailed with monsoon clouds.

  Harry said “I know he’s in all sorts of trouble. It’s been going on for years. Financial troubles – Khatm is bankrupt – and then all that business with Sandy and the Cabobpurs who’ve been complaining right and left and trying to bring a case about her dowry. And of course that makes him more stubborn to fight back though he can’t really afford to. Simla has been getting very acrimonious lately, and I know he’s had some rather difficult interviews with Major Minnies. I hate it when Major Minnies comes here.” He flushed and seemed reluctant to continue; but he did: “Because afterwards he’s always so upset. You’ll see now when he comes up. He usually takes it out on me – don’t think I’m complaining, I’m not, I’m glad if that makes him feel better. Because I can see how hurt he is. He’s terribly terribly sensitive, Olivia, and of course being talked to like that by Major Minnies – being threatened –”

  “How dare they!” cried Olivia.

  “You see, the truth is he’s only a very little prince and they don’t have to be all that careful with him the way they’d have to be for instance with the Cabobpur family. And he feels it terribly. He knows what he is compared with the others. You should see old Cabobpur: he’s just a gross swine, there’s nothing royal about him. Whereas of course he is –”

  “Yes.”

  They heard his voice, his unmistakable step on the stairs. Both waited. He burst in without knocking – which was unusual: at other times he showed the most courteous diffidence in entering his guest’s suite. But now of course he was greatly upset. He strode in and went straight to the window and sat there, smouldering.

  He said “I shall see the Viceroy himself. There is no point in talking with Major Minnies or anyone like that. It is like talking with – servants. I do not talk with servants.” His nostrils flared. “Next time he comes here I shall refuse to see him. And I shall tear up any letters he dares to write to me and send the pieces back to him.” He turned on Harry: “You can take them back to him. You can fling them in his face and say here is your answer. But I suppose you would not like to do it.” He turned his fierce gaze on Harry who looked down. Olivia also did not like to look at the Nawab just then.

  “I suppose you are afraid to do it. You are afraid of Major Minnies and other creatures of that nature. Answer! Don’t sit there like a dumb stone, answer! Oh both of you are the same, you and Major Minnies. I don’t know why you stay here with me. You want to be with him and other English people. You feel only for them, nothing for me at all.”

  “You know that’s not true.” Harry did his best to sound calm, reasonable.

  It only infuriated the Nawab the more. He turned to Olivia: “Now he is playing the Englishman with me. So cool and quiet and never losing his temper. He is playing Major Minnies with me. How different from these terrible orientals. Olivia, do you also hate and despise orientals? Of course you do. And you are right, I think. Because we are very stupid people with feelings that we let others trample on and hurt to their hearts’ content. English people are so lucky – they have no feelings at all. Look at him,” he said, pointing at Harry. “He has been with me so many years but what does he care for me? You see, he does not even try to answer me.” He sat by the window; his profile was outlined against gardens and sky, like the portrait of a ruler painted against the background of his own dominions. “And you,” he said to Olivia. “You also care nothing for me.”

  “No? Then why am I here?”

  “You have come to visit Harry. You want to be with him. And I’m very grateful to you that you are so nice to him because without you he would be most bored and lonely here. His health also is not good.” He got up and came over to Harry and touched his shoulder with affection.

  Harry said “I can’t bear this.”

  “I know you can’t. I’m an unbearable person. Major Minnies is right.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “But it is true.”

  He went out and Olivia followed him. As he walked down the stairs she called his name, which she had never used before. He stood still and looked up at her in surprise.

  She went running towards him, and as they met on the stairs, she was not at all sure what she was going to say. Afterwards, thinking about it, it seemed to her that she had not intended to tell him about her pregnancy. But that is what she did. She had to tell him in a low voice and he could not react much as they were in the middle of the Palace with servants and followers on every landing and who knew what ladies lurking behind curtains.

  After that it wouldn’t have been fair not to tell Douglas as well, and she did so that same night.

  Next day she was waiting for Douglas, and also for Major Minnies whom they had invited to dine; but at about eight o’clock Douglas sent a peon from the office to say they would both be late. Something had happened again though he did not say what. Olivia sat waiting on the verandah. She had been waiting all day – not for Douglas but for a message from the Palace. None came. She did not know what had happened: they were supposed to have left for Mussourie, but she could not believe that they would do so without seeing or communicating with her in some way first. She made up her mind that, if they had left, she would go too. She would tell Douglas that she could not stand the heat and must leave for the mountains immediately. Sitting there, alone and waiting in vain, she realised that it would not be possible for her to stay.

  But when Douglas and their guest at last
came, she did her best to overcome her disturbed state of mind and play the role expected of her. She sat at the dining table between white candles – her dress was white too, white lace – and chatted to them about a champagne party on the Cam she and Marcia had once attended where one of the boats had overturned. All the time she felt the two men to be as tense and disturbed as herself. When she left them to their brandy and cigars, she could hear them speaking together in worried tones; and when they came to join her on the front verandah, both were grave. She pleaded “Won’t you tell me what happened?”

  They did so reluctantly (Major Minnies said it was a pity to spoil their mood). Of course the Nawab was involved again. His gang of dacoits, instead of confining themselves to the territories around Khatm, had strayed into the province under Mr. Crawford’s jurisdiction. They had raided a village some five miles out of Satipur and had got away with cash and jewellery. No one had been killed but several villagers, who had tried to conceal their valuables, had been roughly handled. One woman had had her nose cut off. As soon as the villagers’ report reached Satipur, Mr. Crawford and Douglas had informed Major Minnies who had at once driven over to the Palace. The Nawab had refused to receive him.

  Olivia said “But they’ve gone to Mussourie.” She added carefully “Harry told me. I saw him yesterday.”

  “They were to have gone but the usual thing happened: the Begum changed her mind,” Major Minnies said. “I don’t know what it was this time – I think someone heard an owl which is of course very inauspicious before a journey – so they all had to unpack again.”

  Olivia laughed – ostensibly at the superstition. She was gay with relief; they were still there, they had not left.

  Major Minnies said “I wasn’t altogether surprised when he wouldn’t see me: because unfortunately we had had rather a lively scene just yesterday. He got . . . quite excited.”

  “Dashed impudence,” Douglas said with heat. “I hope Simla isn’t going to dilly-dally any further with him.”

  “No, it rather looks as if they won’t. The wheels of Simla grind slowly but they grind exceedingly small. I’m afraid it was putting my case to him in these terms that got him so worked up.”

  “Did that surprise you?” Olivia asked.

  She felt Major Minnies look at her across the dark verandah. His cigar glowed as he pulled at it. He answered her calmly: “No.”

  It was Douglas who was not calm: “It’s time he was taught a lesson.”

  “You talk as if he’s a schoolboy!” cried Olivia.

  Major Minnies, fair and judicious, seemed to be intervening between them. “In some ways,” he said, “he is a fine man. He has some fine qualities – and if only these were combined with a little self-restraint, self-discipline . . .” Again Olivia felt his eyes on her in the dark; he said “But somehow I admire him. And I think you do too.”

  She said “Yes.”

  He nodded. “You’re right. No,” he said, as Douglas began to protest, “we must be fair. He is a strong, forceful character, and perhaps given other circumstances – I’ve thought about him a great deal,” he said and now seemed to be addressing only Olivia. “As you know, I’ve had dealings with him over several years and we have, I can’t deny, had a lot of trouble with him.”

  “And of what sort!” said Douglas, unable to hold back. “He is a menace to himself, to us, and to the wretched inhabitants of his wretched little state. The worst type of ruler – the worst type of Indian – you can have.”

  “Perhaps you’re right; no doubt you’re right” said Major Minnies. He was silent and thoughtful for a long time; at last he said, slowly, as one making a confession: “Sometimes I feel that I’m not quite the right kind of person to be in India. Mary and I have spoken about it. Not that I would, at any stage of my career, have contemplated changing my job, this place – never, not for anything!” he said with an access of passion that surprised Olivia. “But I do realise that in many ways I step over too far.”

  “Into what?” asked Olivia.

  “The other dimension.” He smiled, perhaps not wanting to sound too serious. “I think I’ve allowed myself to get too fascinated. Take the Nawab: I can’t deny that he does fascinate me – as I’m sure,” he told Olivia, “he does you.”

  “Oh gosh darling,” Douglas laughed,” does he?”

  “Well,” said Olivia, laughing back, “he is a fascinating man . . . And terrifically handsome.”

  “Really?” Douglas asked, as if he had never seen him in that light.

  “Oh absolutely,” said the Major. “He is – a prince. No other word for him. The trouble is that his state is unfortunately not quite princely enough to satisfy either his ambition or indeed his need for money.”

  Douglas was amused: “So he has to take to armed robbery to make up for it?”

  “I also think he’s tremendously bored,” the Major said. “He’s a man who needs action – a large arena . . . I can always tell when he’s feeling particularly frustrated because then he starts talking about his ancestor, Amanullah Khan.”

  “That brigand,” said Douglas.

  “Was he?” Olivia asked the Major.

  “An adventurer – at a time of adventurers. That’s what our Friend wants: adventure. He is not really the type to sit in a palace all day, or he would like not to be. But that’s all there is for him, and moreover all he’s ever known.”

  “All he can do,” Douglas said.

  “I used to know his father,” the Major told Olivia. “What a character. A great penchant for the nautch girls – till he went to Europe and discovered chorus girls. He brought several back with him, and one of them stayed for years. She was in that room where he is now, what’s his name.”

  “Harry?”

  “As a matter of fact, the old Nawab died in there. He had a stroke while he was with her . . . He was a great connoisseur of Urdu poetry. Every year there was a symposium at Khatm to which all the best poets came from all over India. The old Nawab wasn’t a bad poet himself – he was always making up couplets – wait, let me see if I remember . . .”

  After a moment he began to recite in mellifluous Urdu: it sounded very beautiful. Olivia looked up at the sky, furrowed with wavelets of monsoon clouds, and the moon slowly sailing there. She followed her own thoughts.

  “Are these dew drops on the rose or are they tears? Moon, your silver light turns all to pearls,” the Major translated. He apologised: “Doesn’t sound like much in English, I’m afraid.”

  “No it never does,” Douglas agreed. In the dark he took Olivia’s hand and held it in his own. The Major went on reciting in Urdu. His voice was loud and sonorous, and under cover of it Douglas whispered to his wife “Are you all right?” She smiled at him and he pressed her hand. “Happy?” he asked, and when she smiled again, he lifted her hand to his lips. The Major didn’t see, he was looking up at the sky and reciting in Urdu; his voice was full of emotion – a sort of mixture of reverence and nostalgia. And afterwards he sighed: “It gets you,” he said. “It really does.”

  “Doesn’t it,” Olivia agreed politely. But she did not feel moved, either by the poetry or by his emotion. They did not, she felt, add up to much. She remembered what he had said – about going over too far – and it made her scornful. What did he know about that? If he thought that the nostalgic feelings engendered by a little poetry recited on a moonlit night was going too far! She laughed out loud at his presumption, and Douglas thought it was with happiness which made him very happy too.

  “Did you know that the old Nawab died in this room?” Olivia asked Harry.

  Harry said “What else do you know?”

  “Oh there was some chorus girl . . .”

  He burst out laughing, then told her the rest of the story. After the old Nawab’s death, the Begum had not permitted the girl to leave the Palace without first surrendering all the valuables the Nawab had given her. The girl – a tough little character from Yorkshire, Harry said – had tried to hold on to some of them,
but there she had reckoned without the Begum. One day – actually, Harry said, it was the middle of the night – the girl had turned up in Satipur with nothing but the clothes she stood up in (which happened to be a satin nightie and a Japanese kimono). She had been in a terrible state and claimed that the Begum had tried to poison her. The Collector and his wife, not entirely sceptical of her story, had done their best to calm her, promising to send her to Bombay and arrange for her to leave on the next boat home. But when they offered to send to the Palace for her clothes and other possessions, she became hysterical and begged them not to. She told them some tale she had heard about poisoned wedding garments that had been sent to an unwanted bride in the family: no sooner had the unfortunate victim put on the cloth-of-gold bodice than it clung to her, penetrating her with its deadly ointments. The girl swore that she knew this to be actual fact because the old Nawab himself had told her; also that all attempts to save the bride had been in vain and she had died writhing in agony. The old woman responsible for preparing the fatal garment was still alive and living in the Palace at Khatm. She lived a very pampered life in the purdah quarters where she was kept to pass on her art to others. “Oh you don’t know what goes on in there,” the girl said with a shudder. No one could talk her out of her fears, and although the Begum had of her own accord sent her suitcases after her, the girl refused to touch them but had left for Bombay wearing an odd assortment of clothes lent to her by the English ladies of Satipur.

  Olivia smiled when she heard this story: “She must have been crazy. Those poor old things in the purdah quarters.” She asked, casually, “Do they know about me?”

  “Know what about you?” Harry answered.

  Olivia hardly ever thought about the purdah ladies. Sometimes it seemed to her that the curtains up in the galleries were moving, but she did not look up. The Nawab never spoke to her about his mother. Olivia realised that the Begum belonged to a different part of his life, perhaps to a more inner chamber of his heart: and this made Olivia proud and stubborn so that she did not want to speak to him about his mother, or to acknowledge her existence.