Staying On: A Novel (Phoenix Fiction)

by Paul Scott

  Now that she was alone she would have to have the catch put back on the shutters. Tusker had had it taken off for the same reason that he had insisted on two loos. In India, he had said, you could never tell when you’d get taken short. And who could tell if you both might not get taken short at the same moment? If they could only have one bathroom, they could at least have two loos in it and no catch on the door. Actually it had only happened once, the time they’d both eaten something that disagreed with them. She’d always sworn she’d never undergo the indignity of sitting on her loo while Tusker was sitting on his. But, this once, she’d been driven to it, and half way through the performance Tusker had begun to laugh and after a while she had begun to laugh too, so there they had been, enthroned, laughing like drains.

  She began to laugh now, silently. She put her hand out to hold his so that they could laugh together.

  “Memsahib?”

  A woman’s voice. Minnie. She must have been standing well away from the louvred shutters. There was nothing to be seen of her head or her feet.

  “It’s all right Minnie. Quite all right, thank you. Go back to sleep and get some rest. I shall be back in bed very soon.”

  She coughed, to underline her self possession. After a while she drank more of the brandy. Swallowing it, she realized something: that she could not put Mr Turner off, because he was bringing a present for Minnie from Sarah and Susan and, in a sense, from the young man who had been baby Teddie. One could not think only of oneself. It didn’t matter about the blue rinse, because now she would let her hair go. But it mattered about the present for Minnie. It would be a big thing in Minnie’s life to find herself remembered as the little ayah. In the morning she would send a chit to Mr Bhoolabhoy, by Minnie, asking him to book Mr Turner’s room and to ring Mr Turner personally in Ranpur to confirm it and say nothing about what had happened. By Wednesday, when Mr Turner arrived, everything would be over and she might be suffering from delayed shock. Mr Turner’s presence could be a godsend to her.

  She had another swig of the brandy.

  It would be difficult of course. She would have to keep very firm control when taking him round Pankot, pointing out this, pointing out that. All the places which had for her associations inseparable from memories of Tusker. She might not quite manage to accompany him to the churchyard. It would be difficult for him too, of course, the moment he discovered that Tusker to whom he had spoken only yesterday, was now, on Wednesday, gone.

  “I didn’t put you off coming, Mr Turner,” she would say, “because quite honestly, it is good for one to talk, in all the circumstances, especially to strangers. Come, let me show you round The Lodge. Let’s go into the garden first. There’s not much to see either of the garden or the bungalow. He loved the garden. Well, you can see, can’t you Mr Turner, how nice it looks. We have a good mali, of course. From here, just here, before they built the Shiraz, one could see almost to the top of Club road. We’ll go that way this afternoon. Perhaps Coocoo Menektara will give us tea at Rose Cottage, then we might have a drink at the Club. We’ll go by tonga because then you get the best view of the valley.

  “Tusker and I went everywhere by tonga in the old days. But I’m afraid he was really rather naughty because he used to pay the wallah off when we arrived, in the hope that we’d get a lift home in someone’s staff car, either that or somehow the wallah misunderstood and didn’t come back at the right time. I remember one party when we seemed to be absolutely stranded. Perhaps that was symbolic, Mr Turner. I mean everyone else gone and just Tusker and me, peering out into the dark waiting for transport that never turned up.”

  . . .

  She drank more brandy. Straightened her body, leant back against the support of the raised lid, head against the wall, glanced at the empty throne beside her, then shut her eyes.

  But when we went to parties, Tusker, just before we went in, you always took my arm. You helped me down from tongas and into tongas. Waiting on other people’s verandahs for tongas, then, too, you took my arm, and in that way we waited. Arm in arm. Arm in arm. Throne by throne. What, now, Tusker? Urn by urn?

  It’s all right, Tusker. I really am not going to cry. I can’t afford to cry. I have a performance to get through tomorrow. And another performance to get through on Wednesday. And on Thursday.

  All I’m asking, Tusker, is did you mean it when you said I’d been a good woman to you? And if so, why did you leave me? Why did you leave me here? I am frightened to be alone, Tusker, although I know it is wrong and weak to be frightened –

  – but now, until the end, I shall be alone, whatever I am doing, here as I feared, amid the alien corn, waking, sleeping, alone for ever and ever and I cannot bear it but mustn’t cry and must must get over it but don’t for the moment see how, so with my eyes shut, Tusker, I hold out my hand, and beg you, Tusker, beg, beg you to take it and take me with you. How can you not, Tusker? Oh, Tusker, Tusker, Tusker, how can you make me stay here by myself while you yourself go home?