Staying On: A Novel (Phoenix Fiction)

by Paul Scott

  (pp) Snick-snick

  – I have committed the sin of turning a blind eye and not speaking up like a Christian and a man and where does my salary come from, pocket money you could call it, but still where does it come from except Ownership? So wasn’t it my duty to start speaking long ago in a calm Christian manner and ask, What are we doing, Lila my wife, what are we up to? What is the future? So that I could fulfil my obligations as a husband and as a manager and as a Christian to see all those things in which I am concerned directed to good ends and not to bad? But oh no, for me anything for a quiet life, until the moment comes and the quiet life looks about to end –

  (pp) Snick-snick

  – not only for me but for other people trusting in me because I am Management which means I am responsible not only for welfare and happiness of those who serve but also for that of Colonel and Mrs Smalley who are aged and one of them ailing and what will happen to them if the bull-dozers come?

  (p) Snick-snick

  The sound, so soft, scarcely a sound but just audible in this place that seemed this morning no more than an echoing chamber for noises of temporal activity outside, suddenly impinged on Mr Bhoolabhoy’s outer ear. The hairs on the back of his neck stirred, thousands of tiny antennae programmed to tune in to signals of approaching disaster.

  (cr) Snick-snick

  Mr Bhoolabhoy stumbled to his feet. The demolition gang had already arrived and begun work on the churchyard. He staggered along the pew making for the south door and reaching it opened and thrust himself forward and out almost into the arms of Mrs Smalley who uttered a little cry like that of a ghost on its way to a haunting.

  . . .

  “Oh, what a fright you gave me, Mr Bhoolabhoy.”

  She had given him a fright too, to judge from the way his mouth hung open and his eyes popped. He looked at her, then round her, then back at the church door which he shut with a clang as if he had been up to something in there and was discouraging her from going in.

  Prior to his marriage Mr Bhoolabhoy had had something of a reputation as a quiet little man with an eye for the girls and although Lucy thought the reputation probably exaggerated, since it was chiefly from Tusker she came to hear of it, and unlikely in the extreme that he would have been living up to it inside the church, she couldn’t help recalling that little Susy Williams and he were often there together on church business and that people had once imagined, and Lucy had rather hoped for poor Susy’s sake, that the two would one day make a match of it.

  “You gave me a fright too,” he said, almost wringing his hands and heightening by a degree or two the temperature of her suspicion. “You see I was only just now thinking about you.”

  “Really, Mr Bhoolabhoy?”

  It always fascinated her to see an Indian blush. She sometimes thought she could detect it even in an Indian with a darker skin than Mr Bhoolabhoy’s, which was only a delicate brown. He looked at his feet, at her feet, anywhere but at her. She felt a little tingle of apprehension which wasn’t altogether unpleasant. Usually neatly dressed, the sort of man who nearly always wore a jacket and collar and tie, he had, she noticed now, either dressed in a hurry or become disarrayed since. He had no jacket on (was it inside the church?) and although his shirt sleeves were buttoned at the wrist the collar was open. She must have seen him bare throated before but had not noticed that for a man so meagrely built the throat was rather a good one. Not at all scrawny.

  “It is nice to be thought about, Mr Bhoolabhoy, unless of course the context of the thought is disagreeable. It happens that I was thinking about you too. I was thinking how nicely you are keeping the churchyard.”

  Snick-snick-snick-snick

  This time the sound was near at hand. Both turned their attention to its likely source which was now revealed. Round the bend of the path came Joseph, making slow but steady progress, sideways, and on his hunkers, rather like a Russian dancer in slow motion, but also because of the sharp claws of the shears that seemed an essential probing part of him, like a large landcrab, foraging.

  He was cutting the edges of the grass.

  “Why, mali! It’s you!” Lucy said.

  The young man glanced up and then unwinding himself came to a standing position. Holding the shears to his side in one hand he gave a grave salutation with the other. Mr Bhoolabhoy was already making for him; making at him it looked, and shouting at him in Hindi. The mali stood his ground but cast his eyes down.

  “What are you saying to him, Mr Bhoolabhoy? You’re surely not scolding him?”

  “I am asking him what he is doing and why isn’t he working in your garden. Only in his time off is he supposed to do all this.”

  “You mean he works here too?”

  “Only in his spare time. It is a labour of love. You did not know?”

  “I may have done.” She had shut her mind to mali as mali. “But you really mustn’t scold him. He’s doing nothing wrong. I told Ibrahim this morning to stop him cutting the grass. I had such a headache and Colonel Smalley wasn’t feeling up to much either. Is he a Christian?”

  “You did not know?”

  Again she said, “I may have done. I’d forgotten. Tell me, mali, you speak English? If you are a Christian I suppose you speak some English. Well I mean, there are prayers.”

  Joseph nodded his head from side to side then said, “Speaking some English, Memsahib. Not yet reading. Reading very little.”

  “But you speak very well! And what do you read, mali?”

  After a moment he indicated the nearest gravestone.

  “Gravestones? You read gravestones? How charming. Why do you read gravestones?”

  Joseph looked at Mr Bhoolabhoy. Mr Bhoolabhoy spoke again in Hindi, presumably repeating the question. When Mr Bhoolabhoy had stopped gabbling the boy looked at his feet again and then everywhere except at either of them and began to gabble too and use his arms, indicating this, that. Then he stopped as abruptly as he’d begun and looked at his feet again.

  “He is a simple boy, Mrs Smalley. He tries to read the names on the stones because when he tidies a grave he says a prayer for the soul of the departed and it troubles him when he cannot understand what the stone says because then he thinks God will not hear properly and get the souls mixed up.”

  “Oh,” Lucy said. She was touched. Mali was such a strong manly looking boy. It always moved her when such boys proved to be sensitive too; to have spiritual as well as physical attributes. “Well, now, mali,” she said, speaking very slowly and distinctly, and approaching him, sketching a gesture that almost was but wasn’t quite a touching of his arm, “show me a gravestone you cannot read. Malum?”

  How straight his gaze was! How devoted and grateful his look. How gallant the gesture he made, tucking the shears behind him so that they did not constitute a threat or source of danger to her. How lithely he moved, going with no nonsense and yet chivalrous awareness of her presence, towards one of the graves. How touching the way he stopped and stood to one side of it, giving her precedence but yet indicating his wish to know whose grave it was.

  “Well, now, mali. No, I must call you Joseph.” She peered at the stone. “It says, Here Lies. Here Lies, malum?” He nodded. “Here lies Rosemary. Beloved daughter of John and Gwendoline Fairfax-Owen. Well you really don’t need to bother with the Fairfax-Owen. Five December, Eighteen ninety-one to Twelve April Eighteen Ninety-six. That makes her five years old. Oh dear. Malum? Chokri. Little Miss Sahib. Then it says, Suffer Little Children to come Unto Me. Who said that, Joseph?”

  “Lord Jesus.”

  “That’s right. Show me where it says Suffer little children. Can you?”

  As Joseph bent down she caught the pungent smell of his body. He pointed at the inscription, ran his finger along each of the words.

  “There you are, Joseph. You can read very well. It’s just the funny names that worry you. But all you need to know about this grave is that it is Rosemary’s, aged five. Malum?”

  “Ros merry. Age five.”r />
  “Good. But I’m sure little Rosemary went straight to heaven. Not, of course, that prayers for her will not be heard. But now, show me a gravestone that you can read.”

  They followed mali to the south-west corner.

  “This, Memsahib,” he said, stopping. It was old Mabel Layton’s grave. Like the others in this section the stone had been cleaned and the grass over the hummock newly shorn. There were marigolds in a tin vase which looked as if it had been painted recently. Joseph knelt and pointed at the name Mabel.

  “Mah-Bel,” he said.

  “Very nearly. Mabel.”

  “May bll,” Joseph repeated, then rearranged the flowers.

  Click.

  She glanced round. An Indian with a camera held in front of his face was taking photographs. Click, click.

  “Oh, Ashok,” Mr Bhoolabhoy was saying. “You are here then.”

  “Just a moment,” the man said. “Memsahib, please stand just behind and to one side of the head stone?” She did so. Click, click. He said something in Hindi to mali who placed a hand on the vase and stared at the flowers. Click, click; click, click. “Good,” the photographer said, “It is a good composition. Okay, Bhoolabhoy Sahib. What next?”

  . . .

  “You mean they might be published, Mr Bhoolabhoy?” she exclaimed. He had accompanied her to the gate to make sure her tonga was still waiting. The photographer having click clicked his way round the churchyard was now setting up more formidable equipment in the church itself.

  The tonga was there, the driver obviously impatient, but Mr Bhoolabhoy seemed determined to detain her. He was acting very oddly, hovering, darting, almost dancing round her as if she were a bonfire, to be fanned at one moment and dowsed the next so variable were his responses to the responses it struck her he was trying to get from her. It was almost like being flirted with.

  “Published yes. Some will be published.” He spoke as if it was necessary to raise his voice above something like the sound of the wind or the sound of the sea. “One or two anyway. But I will give you prints of all. Tomorrow. Not later than tomorrow. A complete set. Then you will tell me just how many copies you would like. As many as you wish. Ashok is an excellent photographer. All his pictures come out very well. Every detail shows.”

  She touched her lined cheek and smiled, uncertainly.

  “Won’t they be very expensive?”

  “No charge! No charge!” he shouted, and put his hands behind his back, like Ibrahim, yet unlike Ibrahim, more like a man who put them there to forestall an intention to put them on her.

  Well, well.

  “That is very generous of you, Mr Bhoolabhoy. I shan’t presume on your generosity to more than a modest extent, though. A print or two, particularly of the one of mali and me at the graveside, to send to – to send home. Oh you’d be surprised how welcome they’ll be and how nostalgic people are. Old Pankot friends. People before your time, of course. They like one to keep up. Pictures of the church and the churchyard will be looked and looked at and sighed and sighed over, I assure you.”

  They were standing now under the arch of the lychgate. She looked at her watch. It was half past midday. The tonga wallah again hawked and spat. She thought of going home. She was no longer cross with Tusker. But it would be no bad thing to remind him that she was not to be taken for granted. And indeed she wasn’t to be. Here, after all, was Tusker’s friend almost making a pass at her. Had she been younger it would not have amused her. But it did. Lunch alone at the club struck her as a satisfactory way of bringing an unusual morning to a suitable climax.

  “Well, I must be off,” she said.

  “Wait!” (Whatever next?) “Wait, Mrs Smalley! I will send Joseph back with you. Some of these tonga drivers are very reckless. Joseph can sit with him and restrain him from excitement.”

  “I really can’t think what could excite the tonga wallah, Mr Bhoolabhoy. Actually he’s a slow old coach. He’s driven me often enough before. There’ll be no need of Joseph. And in fact I’m not going home. I’m going to the Club, which will be far too long a way for Joseph to walk back.”

  He looked crestfallen, then suddenly alarmed. “It is Monday!” he cried.

  “Yes, it is Monday.”

  “Monday is not a good day for the club. In fact it is a very bad day.”

  “A bad day?”

  “A very bad day. The worst day of the week.”

  “But whatever can be wrong with it? Surely Mrs Bhoolabhoy spends most of Monday at the club?”

  “But this is the point, Mrs Smalley! It is a bad day for you to be there precisely because Lila will be there. She will disobey my advice not to go today. If you see her do not approach her. Keep away. She has fever. Fever of some kind. She does not know what she is saying or doing. She should stay all day in bed.”

  “Well perhaps that’s what she’s decided to do. It would certainly be unwise of me to expose myself to infection, so I’ll take your advice and try to keep away. But the fact that today she has fever doesn’t surely explain why all Mondays are bad days?”

  “But the bridge! The bridge! That is a fever in itself. All day they play. Rubber after rubber after rubber and losing money and getting cross with one another and ordering the servants hither and thither. One moment coffee, next moment sandwiches, more coffee, tea, drinks. People in the dining-room complain because the servants are running to and fro between the kitchen and the card room hour after hour. People who are not playing bridge get no service. They are calling it Black Monday and no longer bothering to go.”

  “Well, I have never heard that. How interesting. All the same I’m determined to go to the Club. I shall risk the poor service. A sandwich would do me very well, too. My appetite is not large.”

  “If you must you must,” he said (despairingly?). “But please do not approach Mrs Bhoolabhoy. Please also tell Colonel Sahib that tonight he and I should not be convivial. I too perhaps have fever.” He took a few startled paces back. “Forgive me, forgive me. Thoughtlessly I may have infected you already. What have I been thinking of? God grant it is not cholera. Get near no one. Speak to no one.”

  He was wringing his hands again.

  “Mr Bhoolabhoy, as Doctor Mitra can probably confirm, the last case of cholera in Pankot was years and years and years ago when there was a mild and very swiftly dealt with minor epidemic down in Ranpur. If your poor wife has a fever it is almost certainly no more than the result of having eaten something that disagrees with her.”

  She turned, walked slowly enough to the waiting tonga to convey that she welcomed Mr Bhoolabhoy’s company as far as there. Just before she climbed in she said, “I shall probably ring Colonel Smalley from the club. Shall I tell him you think it unwise to meet this evening or shall you send him a chit to that effect? Or do you think the fever will have abated by then?”

  “Please tell him. Perhaps I also shall send a note.”

  He now stood with shoulders adroop. She smiled down at him and then holding the strut of the canopy with her left hand she extended the other in a gesture of farewell.

  Chapter Ten

  WHEN THE TONGA moved off Mr Bhoolabhoy remained where he was; just as in her fantasies of Toole, Toole had often stood to watch her go, poor inarticulate passionate man, his unquenchable desire endlessly torturing and endangering him. It was not safe for him to be seen near her. The consequences of being seen would be terrible. But he did not care. And whatever they did to him he would be back again eventually, risking all for just a glimpse of her.

  “When I get to the club,” she told herself, “I shall have lunch right away. Or perhaps a gin fizz first at that little table tucked away at the far end of the terrace where one need not be bothered by people. But if I see Mrs Menektara I shall ask whether she has a snapshot of Rose Cottage as it is now. Afterwards I shall write to Sarah and say we’ll be delighted to meet Mr Turner. I shall say that in a day or two I’ll send by separate post some photographs I have, snaps taken quite recently, one of whi
ch shows Mabel’s grave with myself and mali tending it. Is it dishonest not to explain how this happened to come about? No. Anyway it must be a short note. It must be posted today so that it’s sure to reach her before Mr Turner leaves for India. I’ll leave the matter of the blue rinse for a postscript.”

  The tonga horse began to plod slowly up East Hill. She changed her mind about the order in which things should be done. She would ring Ibrahim first and tell him she would not be home for lunch and that she would go to the pictures that evening after all. Then she would definitely have a drink. Two perhaps. After lunch she would write to Sarah and post the letter in the club box. At tea time she might walk up to Rose Cottage on the off-chance of finding Mrs Menektara in if she hadn’t shown up at the club.

  “Rose Cottage is such a beautiful bungalow, Mr Turner. The oldest in Pankot. I was very happy there. We moved in when the Laytons moved out. Tusker had been asked to stay on for a year or two and we decided that would be the right thing because he wasn’t near retiring age and the Indians were keen to retain the services of senior English officers to help them during the period of transition, particularly in the army. You’ll find it’s in the army where the clearest evidence of our influence for good is found, but then of course many of the senior Indians in 1947 were Sandhurst trained. Some of them became generals overnight.

  “It’s ironic and perhaps sad don’t you think, Mr Turner, that in the wars between India and Pakistan, the one just over, for instance, the opposing generals are often old class-mates, some of them even once subalterns together in the same regiment. I’ve heard that described as a good thing because if one general knows another well he knows how his mind works but I think that cuts two ways and might almost be a guarantee of stalemate, although it didn’t work out that way last December. It seems to have been an absolute walkover. The army people here in Pankot are quite understandably still pretty chuffed about it.”

  The tonga lurched as the plodding horse slipped.

  “It’s wise to hang on to a strut, Mr Turner. After all these years I still do it automatically. I hope you don’t mind coming to the club in one of these contraptions. We no longer have a little car. Actually although it can take an age uphill particularly with two of us aboard a tonga is a good way of getting around in Pankot what with all the slopes and curves and twists and the fact that the roads were not really built for motor-traffic, although heaven knows there’s enough of it around these days with all the military transport and the cars that go with people’s jobs. In the very old days, before Tusker’s and mine even, only very senior officers were allowed motor cars and even when we first came people still mostly got around in this way. More people rode then too.