Staying On: A Novel (Phoenix Fiction)

by Paul Scott

  “I have already told Colonel Smalley I can’t be bothered with that. You must speak to Management tomorrow. I have other things to deal with. All I want to know is about the shears. Have you dealt with the question of the shears?”

  Mrs Bhoolabhoy stood over her, like something formidable created by a new disturbance in the Himalayas where the gods and goddesses of Hindu mythology were supposed to have originated.

  “Shears?”

  “Shears. Shears. Shears!” Mrs Bhoolabhoy raised her arms and made motions. Snick-snick. “Shears!” she shouted. “Kindly I give permission for your mali to use mower, shears, watercan. But this morning when I am telling my mali to cut the verges he says there are no shears because your mali has taken them away somewhere. I will not have my property taken off the premises.”

  “I know nothing about your shears, Mrs Bhoolabhoy,” she said, though guessing where they were: with Joseph up at the church.

  “You know nothing about shears. Colonel Smalley knows nothing about shears. Colonel Smalley is even telling me he knows nothing about a mali because he says you do not have a mali only I have malis. Dear God! Am I crazy or is everybody else crazy? Who has been using my mower and shears and watercan for weeks if not your mali?”

  “I suggest we discuss this elsewhere and at some other time, Mrs Bhoolabhoy. I am in the middle of my lunch.”

  “I am not discussing it. I have not time to discuss trivial matters. I am simply saying that the shears must be brought back. I have more important things to do than argue about shears.”

  She waddled away, leaving behind her a trail of sandalwood perfume which, to Lucy, was like the pungent smell of her own smouldering outraged dignity. When Mrs Bhoolabhoy had banged her door shut Lucy poured a glass of water and then continued very slowly to eat her meal. She did not look at the two business men. An Englishman, of course, would have intervened. Midway through Mrs Bhoolabhoy’s tirade he would have risen quietly, come across and said, “Mrs Smalley? My name’s Smith. We me at HE’s garden party last year. Can I be of any assistance?” And she would have indicated just by a look how grateful she was to be reassured of the help and protection of a gentleman whose intervention would have deflated Mrs Bhoolabhoy, reminded her of her place and sent her silent away to repent, to repent.

  But that was at another season and in a distant country. She found it difficult to raise the glass of water without betraying an unsteadiness of hand which she felt the two Indian business men were watching out for, as if for further evidence that times for them had changed for the better and that their own old humiliations were being adequately paid for by new.

  One of them called the bearer, causing her to start. Prabhu came in, gave them a bill which was checked through item by item before being paid in small bills peeled off a thick wad of larger ones. When they had gone she asked for her own bill to sign and said she’d have her coffee in the lounge. She sat for a long time on one of the wicker chairs, drinking the coffee, trying to work out the best way of explaining operation mali to Tusker who had obviously found out about it by having a similar row with Mrs Bhoolabhoy. Poor Tusker. Poor silly Tusker. He hadn’t been cross about Mr Turner. He had come right away to book him a room. And what had just happened to her had happened to him, only more so, because there had been that ridiculous argument about whose mali was whose. Poor Tusker. Yes, poor silly Tusker. Maddening, aggravating Tusker. Unpredictable Tusker. She bent her head, supporting it with a hand across her eyes, elbow supported by the chair and arm, and smiled, because she couldn’t help seeing the funny side of it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  IT WAS FOUR O’CLOCK when she got back to The Lodge. Ibrahim was waiting, squatting on his hunkers below the verandah.

  “Colonel Sahib gone out with Bloxsaw,” he announced.

  The tea tray was prepared. In the kitchen there was evidence that for lunch Tusker had boiled himself an egg. The gin bottle was still at the level she had left it. There were still plenty of eggs in the fridge. There were some mixed herbs in the cupboard. There were two tins of tomato soup, bread, milk. On second sniff the butter didn’t seem too bad.

  “I shan’t need you again this evening, Ibrahim. I’ll make the tea when Burra Sahib comes home and we’ll probably have an omelette this evening. Some soup first. Yes, that will be nice. How are we for beer?” They checked. “Good. Tonight I can cope. Tomorrow we shall need all our energy. Somehow or other we have to conjure up dinner for four. But I think that may be fun, don’t you? I shall have to be up early. Really quite early because I’m going to have my hair done and while I’m having my hair done you will have to go to the bazaar and buy things for salad, and get hold of a chicken which somehow we must roast and then have cold. Oh, and some mayonnaise from Jalal-ud-Din’s. And they have anchovies, don’t they? We could make a small hors d’oeuvre. Hardboiled eggs, sliced, anchovies. And tomatoes. Perhaps some ladies fingers cooked, but cold and in french dressing. Mustard, do we have mustard? If we don’t Jalal-ud-Din’s will. Oh, and tinned corn. Sahib likes tinned corn. Where are the little hors d’oeuvres plates, Ibrahim?”

  He opened a cupboard and showed her.

  “They’ll have to be washed. Dear me, how busy we’re going to be.”

  “Memsahib?”

  “What is it, Ibrahim? Salt, how are we for salt?”

  “Chicken very difficult.”

  “What nonsense. There are always hundreds of chickens.”

  “First to be killed though. Then plucked.”

  “Yes, of course. Can’t you get that done by the man you buy it from?”

  “Perhaps, Memsahib. But then cooked. This stove not good for cooking. From this stove only burnt offering.”

  “Does it have to be?” She absent-mindedly reached for a glass and poured another small gin. He offered her the lime bottle. She observed his parched lips. She got down another glass, poured a small measure in and give it to him. He took it.

  “Memsahib, it is forbidden.”

  The glass was very steady in his hand. Her own, tipping in lime was not.

  “God will forgive us, Ibrahim. Cheers.”

  “Salaam.”

  He had good eyes.

  “I am beholden to you, Ibrahim, for looking after us.”

  The eyes melted.

  “And you see,” she went on, bustling about the kitchen, bending, stooping, looking into this and that, opening drawers, “Burra Sahib has for the moment and for quite inexplicable reasons taken against having anything to do with the hotel kitchen and the dining-room. So we’re going to have to try to cope for a while, because I’ve rather taken against them too. We could have savoury. Cheese on toast.”

  “Anchovies on toast better, Memsahib. Anchovies for savoury, not with hors d’oeuvres. Eggs and anchovies not good mixture. Much wind is resulting.”

  “Yes, that is good advice. But what of the chicken?”

  She straightened up from a stooping position, felt giddy, reached for support.

  Ibrahim was there. He assisted her to the stool. “Memsahib not to worry about the chicken. Ibrahim will make pukka arrangements.”

  “Thank you, Ibrahim. I really am sorry to put upon you. But Burra Sahib and I have these sudden social commitments. And, silly me, I seem to have overdone things before we’ve even started. I’ll be perfectly all right in a moment.”

  She accepted the glass of water he gave her and let him assist her to the bedroom. “I’ll have a little nap, then I’ll be right as rain. Well I’ll have to be. There’s the dinner tomorrow evening that you’re going to help us with, and a day or two later a visitor, an English visitor. Tomorrow morning I’ll give you a list of things to buy. Meanwhile could you do something about the shears? Mali must have taken them to the churchyard and Mrs Bhoolabhoy is very cross with me.”

  She was aware of him helping her to sit on the edge of the bed and take off her shoes; then, as she lay down, of the sound of the curtains being drawn.

  . . .

  It was dark w
hen she woke. For a moment she thought it must be the middle of the night, but light was coming into the bedroom from the living-room and Tusker’s bed was empty. Someone had covered her with a light blanket and she was fully clothed. She reached for her bedside clock. It wasn’t quite eight o’clock. She had slept for nearly four hours. She put her shoes on and tottered into the bathroom, splashed her face, combed her disordered hair and dabbed cologne on her temples.

  “Tusker?” she called lightly as she went into the living-room.

  Ibrahim came in from the verandah. “Sahib not in.”

  “Not in? Whatever can have happened to him?”

  “No, no Memsahib, nothing happening. Sahib came back for tea, now gone out again. He has left a note.” He went to the escritoire and brought her an envelope marked Luce. “I make tea?”

  “Thank you, yes, I could do with a cup of tea.”

  She fetched her spectacles and sat at the escritoire, switched on the lamp, turned the envelope over to open it and found something written on the back:

  “Thought I’d dine at the Club tonight so booked a table when out for my walk. Couldn’t wake you. So gone on. Table’s for 8 pm but I’ll hang on until 8.30ish in case you want to join me. Otherwise back about eleven. The enclosed is the clear statement you asked for.” It was signed T, and marked 7.30 pm. Perhaps it was Tusker, not Ibrahim, who had covered her with the blanket.

  She got her ivory paper-knife and slit the envelope. In it were two sheets of paper, fairly densely written. When she had finished reading them she began to read them again.

  “Tea, Memsahib.” Ibrahim placed the tray on the Kashmiri carved wood table. “Then I fetch tonga?”

  “Tonga?”

  “Tonga to take Memsahib to the Club?”

  “No, Ibrahim. I’m not feeling up to dining out.”

  “I make supper?”

  “No, I had such a heavy lunch. And I have an early start tomorrow. I shan’t eat again today. May I have my morning tea at seven instead of seven-thirty? Just mine. Sahib’s at his usual time. I must be off by eight-fifteen.”

  “Yes, Memsahib. Memsahib?”

  “What, Ibrahim?”

  “Shears are returned to Bhoolabhoy mali.”

  “Oh, yes. I’d forgotten. Thank you.”

  “Burra Sahib now knows about mali?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps. Why do you ask?”

  “Prabhu says there was much trouble today with Bhoolabhoy memsahib over use of tools. That she is shouting first at Burra Sahib and then at you, Memsahib, and telling Burra Sahib Joseph is not her mali but Sahib’s and Memsahib’s.”

  “Well. Perhaps she did. But she would be wrong, wouldn’t she, Ibrahim? Joseph is your mali.”

  “I give him the push?”

  “The push? Why?”

  He put his hands behind his back. “I cannot afford to pay Joseph unless Memsahib pays me to pay him, especially as rise not yet forthcoming. If Burra Sahib now knows truth and gives hukm that no more money is to be spent on garden and Memsahib not to pay a single paise for what Mrs Bhoolabhoy should be paying for, then it will be kinder to Joseph for me to give him what is owing to date and the push, and leave garden to go jungly.”

  “I think, Ibrahim, that whatever he says Sahib would not like to see the garden go jungly again. In any case I do not wish it to go jungly. I have no intention whatsoever of letting it go jungly. It is as much my garden as it is Colonel Sahib’s or Mrs Bhoolabhoy’s. And I don’t want to discuss the garden tonight. Perhaps you’d just leave out the makings of Sahib’s cocoa in case he wants it. I shan’t have any myself tonight.”

  . . .

  When Ibrahim had gone for the night she drank her tea, now lukewarm. To occupy herself she began to write out Ibrahim’s shopping list. When she had done that she put a batch of records on the old radiogram and waltzed, fox-trotted, quickstepped round the room with an invisible partner until the batch ran out. Then she made herself a cup of coffee, put a coat on and sat out on the dark verandah, warming her chilled hands round it.

  “Bloxsaw? Bloxsaw?” she called softly. No answer. Ibrahim had put him in the garage for the night. Come back, little Sheba, she murmured.

  The lights from the Shiraz made the middle of The Lodge’s garden darker because of the contrast between the part where the light reached and the part where it didn’t. Down to the left Smith’s was dimly lit. But there were, more night-illuminations in Pankot than there had been in the old days, and this made the stars look farther away. The outline of the hills was no longer so distinct against the sky, perhaps just an indication of how poorer her sight was now than then. The air was coming quite coldly from the mountains and she shivered, went in to make another cup of coffee and longed for the telephone to ring.

  While the kettle was boiling she read Tusker’s note again:

  “You asked for a clear statement of yr posn if widowed. Far as I can see y’d get from IMWOF about £900 pa plus a RW supplt of maybe £600. Say £1500 in all, adjustable from time to time to cost of living index. The Smalley Estate income dries up on my death but y’ve always known that, Luce, and for the past ten years quite apart from the fall in value of the capital investment it’s also yielded less interest because some bloody fool at Coyne Coyne persuaded the trustees to reinvest some of it in so-called Blue Chip equities (young Coyne, I reckon). Been getting less than £200 a year out of it since about 1964. Always tried to keep some of that money back in London but gradually had to have it all transferred as it came in to the Bank in Bombay. Present bank balance here approx £500, maybe £200 in London. Life Insurance only £2000 but the policy’s with profits and been going long enough maybe to double that value at maturity. What it all comes to Luce is you’ve enough to take you home if that’s what you want though in yr posn I’d prefer to stay here, considering the sort of income you’ll have. At home you can’t starve really, what with supplementary benefits, and things like Distressed Gentlefolk (Ha!). Also they’ve got the Nat Health and Old People’s Homes. Perhaps for a white person being poor in England’s better than being poor in India, though by average Indian standards we’re rich if not by the standards of the Indians we mix with. I’m sorry, Luce, if I seem to have made a mess of things. You’ll be wondering where some of the money we’ve occasionally managed to get our hands on went and I don’t really know. It was never much anyway. About £3000 compensation when my army career petered out with Independence and I was too old to transfer to British service. We spent a lot of that on that trip home for Smith Brown & McKintosh (because they only paid my expenses) but I’m not making that an excuse. I know I was a fool, Luce. The profit I made on the car we brought back from the UK and sold to old Grabbitwallah as I used to call him, in the days when that sort of gimmick was still legal was really no profit because it was paid for in black money, in one hundred rupee notes which I couldn’t very well bank, and nothing goes quicker than hundred rupee notes. Some of them quick on the Bombay racetrack, as you know. In those days nearly everybody was bringing cars out from home free of UK tax because they were being exported and then selling them to Indians who couldn’t get cars any other way except by waiting years. But I was playing out of my league because I thought of money like that as fairy gold whereas to people with a real instinct for turning a fast buck it was plain solid cash. Some of my separation pay from Smith Brown & McKintosh went on paying up arrears on my contributions to IMWOF, I’d got a bit behind, but I never mucked about with that, Luce, because I knew it would be your mainstay. Most of the rest went on that round-India trip before settling here. I know for years you’ve thought I was a damn’ fool to have stayed on, but I was forty-six when Independence came, which is bloody early in life for a man to retire but too old to start afresh somewhere you don’t know. I didn’t fancy my chances back home, at that age, and I knew the pension would go further in India than in England. I still think we were right to stay on, though I don’t think of it any longer as staying on, but just as hanging on, which people of
our age and upbringing and limited talents, people who have never been really poor but never had any real money, never inherited real money, never made real money, have to do, wherever they happen to be, when they can’t work any more. I’m happier hanging on in India, not for India as India but because I can’t just merely think of it as a place where I drew my pay for the first 25 years of my working life, which is a hell of a long time anyway, though by rights it should have been longer. But there you are. Suddenly the powers that be say, Right, Smalley, we’re not wanted here any more, we’ve all got to bugger off, too bad you’re not ten years younger or ten years older. I thought about this a lot at the time and it seemed to me I’d invested in India, not money which I’ve never had, not talent (Ha!) which I’ve only had a limited amount of, nothing India needed or needs or has been one jot the better for, but was all I had to invest in anything. Me. Where I went wrong was in thinking of it that way and expecting a return on the investment in the end, and anticipating the profits. When they didn’t turn up I know I acted like an idiot, Luce, for years and years. The longest male menopause on record. One long Holi. Can’t talk about these things face to face, you know. Difficult to write them. Brought up that way. No need ever to answer. Don’t want you to. Prefer not. You’ve been a good woman to me, Luce. Sorry I’ve not made it clear I think so. I’m not going to read all this rigmarole through when I’ve finished – if I did I’d tear it up. So I’ll just stick it in the envelope and forget it. Don’t want to discuss it. If you do I’ll only say something that will hurt you. No doubt will anyway. It’s my nature. Love, Tusker.”

  . . .

  She went into the kitchen. The kettle was boiled almost dry. She managed to make about a half-cup of coffee. She took it out to the verandah, still wrapped in her coat. Intermittently, from the Shiraz, she felt and heard the thrum and drum of the band in the Mountain View Room. The stars sparkled. When the band stopped she could hear the calls of the jackal packs in the hills. She drank up her coffee and went indoors, put the wire screen in position, closed the door and left it on the latch in case Tusker had forgotten his key. She rinsed the coffee cup, checked that his cocoa-tray was ready, then went into the bedroom, undressed and went to bed. She put Tusker’s letter under her pillow and turned off her light.