He said, “So you are learning Japanese. What do you think of Hanako?”
I pretended I did not understand. “Miss Wei,” he said.
“Oh, of course! She’s a good teacher,” I said. “Her Japanese is rather formal if we’re learning to speak to the soldiery, but . . .”
“What do the others think of her?”
“They enjoy her classes.”
He got up and lit a cigarette and started to pace about the room.
“Do you know her well?” I asked. I didn’t want to talk about her, not with Mr. Scaife; but at the same time I was curious and did not try to change the subject.
“Certainly. I know her very well. Of course I know her.”
“I understand the climate here didn’t suit her at first . . .” He was not interested in her health.
“She is a beautiful girl,” he said, and he shot a glance down to me in the stalls, and it made me think: so this is it, he brought me here because he has suspected something between Sabby and myself; in a moment he is going to say, ‘This must stop!’
“Don’t you think so?” he said, with that blunt questioning manner that insisted upon an answer.
“Yes, I do. I think she’s lovely.”
“I’m looking after her here, you know.”
“There are worse jobs than that.”
“Her guardian, Lord Durweston, used to live in India. A great friend of mine. He asked me to keep an eye on her.”
“Oh yes,” I said.
“She’s a strange girl.”
“She’s Japanese.”
“Yes, yes,” he said. “There is something rather fascinating about Japanese women. I have known several.”
He was still standing. He reached down to the table for his glass, and when he straightened himself up again, I saw that he was not quite steady. I saw also that he had forgotten me again; he was not trying to find out what I thought about Sabby—he was telling me what he thought himself.
“Yes,” he said. “Hanako is very charming. One could not wish for a better companion.”
I got up.
“I must really go,” I said. “It’s after midnight.”
“No, old chap. Stay and talk a bit. I like to talk with someone who knows Hanako.”
“I must get back,’ I said.
“Plenty of time. Have another whisky. I know, we could ring her up. I’d like to talk to her. Tell her one of her pupils is here. Let’s ring her up.”
“It’s too late.”
“She won’t mind. It’s my job to keep an eye on her.”
“I shouldn’t ring her if I were you,” I said.
“That’s all right. You could talk to her, too. In Japanese.”
“No,” I said. “I must go.”
“I think I’ll ring her up.”
“Why not wait till the morning? You can call her at breakfast.’’
“Better to ring her now.”
“Well,” I said, trying to make him forget this idea, “thank you very much for this evening. It was most instructive.”
“One for the road. Come on, old boy, where’s your glass?”
“I’m really going.”
“What about Hanako?”
“Not tonight,” I said. “She’ll be teaching me tomorrow.”
I went to the door. He poured some more whisky into his glass and came after me, and I thought he had given up the idea of ringing.
“Well,” he said. “It’s not late. Drop in again. Any time. Just call in.”
“Thank you—it was very good of you.”
He patted me on the shoulder. He looked more human than he had ever done when he was sober.
“Good-bye, old boy,” he said. “Don’t forget, just drop in.”
I left him standing in the porch. I had to walk half a mile down the road before I found a ghari stand. The driver was asleep in the back seat under the hood, and I woke him up and asked him to take me quickly to the Mayfair. He looked at me without interest, and said “Five rupees,” because he did not want to take me anywhere. I said, “All right, five rupees,” and he climbed out with plaintive grunts and got into the driving-seat. Before he started he made a long raking noise in his throat and spat on to the ground. Then he flicked his whip, and the horse clopped away quickly as though it was glad to have something to do.
It was a little after one o’clock when we got to the hotel. I gave the driver five rupees exactly, and he knew he was lucky to get it, but he looked at it grudgingly and said nothing. I went through the hall of the hotel quickly, looking away from the desk where the night porter was sitting, and hoping he would not see me. I ran up the stairs and knocked lightly on Sabby’s door. There was no reply, so I went in. The table-lamp was lit on the bedside table, but the white mosquito-net was draped round the bed and I was unable to see her. I went softly to the side of the bed, and pulled up the net and put my head underneath. Sabby was sitting up quite wide awake. She was made up very prettily, and the light from the table-lamp shone through the net, illuminating her soft brown eyes. Now they were big and round and non-committal. They did not tell me whether she was angry with me for coming late or whether she was happy because I had come at last.
“Darling Sabby,” I said. “Is it very wicked of me?”
“I thought you had forgotten Sabby,” she said.
“You didn’t think that.”
“Yes I did, honestry.”
I kicked off my shoes and climbed on to the bed under the net and kissed her. It was like a little tent inside. Usually mosquito-nets are only a nuisance, and in the hottest weather they are stifling. But now it was not too hot, and it made the bed a more intimate place, shutting out the hotel furniture that was Victorian and gloomy.
“How was yogi?” she said.
“It was very entertaining.”
“Are you going to become yogi?”
“Not yet,” I said. I knew I was not going to become yogi now. I thought that no spiritual attainment could be more beautiful than this, lying close to Sabby and encasing her tiny hand in mine and inhaling her faint perfume.
I saw she had a little note-book and a pencil by her.
“What are you writing?” I said.
“I am doing lessons for tomorrow.”
“Nonsense. It isn’t that book you use for lessons.”
“Well, then it is something else.”
“It’s a diary. All Japanese keep diaries.”
“Yes, it is nice to keep a diary, and then you can remember happy things.”
“Please let me see the happy things you’ve written.”
She pushed the book quickly under the pillow and leant on top. “No, it is very private and secret.”
“You’re not allowed to have private things from me.”
“It is only you it is private from.”
“You must let me see it,” I said.
“No, you are going fishing.”
“What do you mean?”
“That is the sentence that you taught to me. You are going fishing after salmon. You think you are going to find nice compliments written about you.”
“That’s it. I want to make sure that you’re really in love with me.’’
“I tell you, and that is enough for you to make sure. I love you always, darling, from bottom of heart, and that is enough because it is all I can do. And now I want you please to tell me about Mr. Scaife. Did you think he was nice man?”
“I think he’s rather odd,” I said.
“Did you talk to him about Sabby?”
“Just a little.”
“Please, what did he say?”
“He said he thought you were beautiful.”
“No, he didn’t say that. Please tell me what he said.”
“He said it was his job to kee
p an eye on you.”
“Please, did he say anything else?”
“Nothing of interest,” I said.
“Oh yes, he did, and you are not telling me. Please tell what he said, and I will perhaps show you a little of diary.”
“Honestly, there was nothing else.”
“Darling, you are being mean.”
“What else should he have said?”
“Nothing, but I am afraid he did say something.”
“Why should you be afraid?”
She did not say anything, but her eyes were a little sad and she sniffed gently, and then turned over so that I could no longer see her face.
“What is it?” I said.
“Oh, darling, are you sure he did not say anything?”
“Really he didn’t.”
“Well, then, it doesn’t matter.”
“But now it does matter. If you don’t explain, I shall think all kinds of things.”
“If I tell you, you won’t want to love me any more.”
“If it was something nasty, perhaps I shouldn’t—though I might not be able to help it. But I don’t believe it’s anything nasty.”
“Oh yes, it is. I always warned you, I am nasty.”
“I don’t believe it,” I said.
“Yes, it is true. I am nasty, and you won’t want to go on loving me.” We lay for a little while in silence. I didn’t want to hear, and at the same time I knew that without hearing I should be miserable. At last I said:
“You will have to tell me.”
“I always wanted to tell you,” she said pathetically. “And now I don’t want to, because it will spoil our lovely happiness. Please can’t it wait?”
I would have said no, it cannot wait; but at that moment there was the sound of footsteps in the corridor, and we stopped talking and listened. I knew the footsteps were coming to Sabby’s door; nevertheless, my heart leapt suddenly when we heard knocking. I thought: ‘Something terrible is going to happen, this is going to be the end. Our lovely happiness is over: it is fated. The knocking is all part of the end; it has been perfectly timed like a stage entry to elucidate the conversation. It is a landslide, and we are on it. We can’t go back, or hold up time. We can’t stop the knocking.’
“What shall I do?” Sabby said. She was scared. “Ask who it is?”
She called out in a small voice, and then again, louder. There was a reply in careful English. It was the porter.
“You are requested on the telephone.”
“But it can’t be me,” Sabby said.
“It is a call for Miss Wei. It is a gentleman called Mr. Scaife. He says it is a matter of urgency.”
Sabby was flustered. She did not know what to do, and I had never seen her look so unhappy. She shook her head and whispered:
“I’m not going.”
“You had better go,” I said. It was the landslide, and you cannot stop landslides once they have started.
“No,” she said.
“You’d better go and see what he wants.”
She hesitated. Then she climbed out under the mosquito-net and found her kimono and slippers and went quickly out of the room.
I lay and wondered whether I could bring myself to get up and go back to my hotel. This was the end. If I stayed there would have to be tedious explanations, and fuss, and I should have to play a part in the scene and be angry, or resigned and understanding; and I should have to say some sort of embarrassed good-bye. And I didn’t want a scene, I didn’t really feel at all angry. I just felt immensely crushed and injured, because a few minutes ago I had been up in the sky and insanely happy, and all of a sudden I had dropped to earth. I didn’t know exactly what had happened. I should have to work it out later—but the sense of fatality in me was overwhelming, and my heart told me unanswerably that everything was finished. It would be easiest in the long-run if I went now. But I knew I hadn’t the courage to walk out like that, and instead I took off my bush shirt and got underneath the sheet and lay waiting, pretending to be half-asleep. Leave it for tonight, I thought: pretend it doesn’t matter. Go to sleep, and see what happens tomorrow.
In a minute or two Sabby returned. She came and got into bed, and when she was in she said:
“He was awfully drunk.”
“Oh yes.”
She nestled up to me, and kissed me tentatively.
“Darling,” she said, plaintively, “don’t you love Sabby any more?”
“Why not?” I said drowsily.
“But I think perhaps I’m a little drunk, too.”
“Please kiss once,” she said.
I turned over and did so. It was not a good kiss, because kissing is very hard to pretend to do, like looking happy.
“Thank you,” she said, and she did not look at all happy.
“Good night,” I said.
“Good night.”
It was a long time before I went to sleep. I had really drunk a lot of whisky, and all the different scenes of the evening were whirling in my brain. Even when I was asleep they were whirling. I cannot remember my dream, but somewhere in it there were Lala Vikrana’s eyes, and Mr. Munshi’s smile and his dhoti, and Mr. Scaife sitting cross-legged on the carpet—and there was also Sabby.
Chapter Four
(1)
I did not look forward to Sabby’s class next day. Even then it was a worse ordeal than I had expected. It was the only one of her classes in which I had ever longed for the end.
She came in, looking miserable. When someone made a joke she tried to laugh, and it was no more like her gay, tinkling laugh than a sob would have been. She did not look at me at all, and when she asked me a question she kept her eyes on the book that she held in her hand. She spoke in a very quiet, solemn way, and I gave sepulchral replies, and we were both meticulously polite.
Afterwards as I left the school I came across Sabby on the steps. She did not say she was waiting for me, but for a ghari. A ghari came up, and she said:
“Here it is.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Would you like me to drop you anywhere?”
“It doesn’t matter. I have to pick something up at the Cricket Club, and it’s only a few yards.”
“Oh yes,” she said softly. She was looking away down the road, and I couldn’t see her face.
“Peter’s organised a party. I promised to go tonight.”
“Oh yes.”
There was a silence and somebody brushed past down the steps, but she did not look round at him. She waited a moment, and then said, “You must enjoy yourself.” And still without looking round at me she went quickly down to the waiting carriage and got in and was driven away.
I did not go to the Cricket Club, because I had nothing there to collect. I had invented the excuse from some perversity, wanting all the time to go with Sabby and dreading the evening without her. I did not quite understand what all my own feelings were about; the events of the night before were confused, and I did not try to go over them, or to make clear to myself what they meant. But they had left their impression, like a stone that crashes through a window and rolls out of sight, leaving a visible trail of shattered glass; and I did not run after the stone to examine it because I could not bear to do so.
I had not invented the story of the party Peter had organised. He had been planning it for a long time, and it was to include Lamb and his girl, Mervyn and Mario, and Mario’s beautiful girlfriend. And, of course, there was to be Rosie. It was really in honour of Rosie, who had proved herself a social asset and a queen of landladies; and for her sake and the sake of making the party bizarre, Peter was willing to forgo the Taj. We were to dine at an Indian restaurant, and it was going to be awfully bizarre. It was to help make it bizarre that Lamb’s girl had been invited; for Lamb’s girl was one of the fair creatures whom Rosie had whipped fr
om under the noses of the Japanese in Rangoon.
Mario’s friend was the lovely girl whom he had met at the racecourse, very blonde and Nordic, and slender as a palm. You could imagine her in jodhpurs mounting a horse before the ivy-covered frontage of an English country house; or at a Hunt Ball, still a little wind-swept but perfumed and dressed exquisitely, behaving independently yet without losing her femininity. And now, with the superbly handsome Mario by her side, it was like a picture out of The Tatler. Nobody could help remarking how perfectly charming they looked as a pair.
Her name was Dorcas. Rosie’s protégée was called Sandra, because Sandra is a Spanish name, and that was what she almost looked and what she sometimes found was the best thing to pretend to be. She was a Eurasian, at the height of her Eurasian beauty, which is as much as to say that she was young, perhaps eighteen or nineteen. Her hair and eyes were dark and her lips a deep red in vivid and provocative contrast, and her nostrils were wide and inquiring like a colt’s.
Half the fun of the party was to see how she and Dorcas would react to one another, and to avoid misunderstanding Dorcas had been told of Sandra’s past. She didn’t mind; on the contrary, in common with Peter she liked the bizarre. And Mario had reported her to have said, “But for the grace of God . . .” She knew it was only by chance that she had been born of English parents, with a silver spoon in her mouth.
The two of them were the high spirits. Between them there was a kind of good-humoured mutual respect.
“I’ve got a new frock,” Sandra said. “Is it nice, do you think?”
“But it is quite the nicest thing I’ve seen in India. I wish I knew where to get such gorgeous clothes.”
“I’ll show you where I got it, if you like.”
“Oh please, won’t you?”
And then later Sandra said:
“I wonder what it’s like to be you? I can’t quite imagine it. What do your people do?”
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