The Pavilion in the Clouds

by Alexander McCall Smith

  I don’t like Miss White all that much. She is all right, but not for the whole time. I think that she would like my mother to go away so that she could marry my father instead. He cannot ask her to marry him because he is already married, and it is against the law to marry two people at the same time. If you do, you go to jail for at least ten years, and all they give you to eat in jail is porridge. Sometimes they have bread and a bit of jam, but not very often. There is no pudding in jail.

  I am glad that nobody will ever read this because I say things in my diary that I would not say to my best friend. When I get to Scotland, I shall have a best friend. I will choose somebody who is pretty and who is good at swinging on ropes in the gym. There will be lots of girls like that, and they will all be on the look-out for a best friend. I must go now, because I have to get ready for breakfast. I have not washed yet, but nobody will know.

  It was agreed with Miss White that lessons could be suspended for a few days, so that Bella could spend more time with her mother. Virginia had been ordered to rest, confined to a day bed that had been set up on a screenedoff section of the veranda, where it was cool, and where the screen provided protection from insects. A samovar had been placed on one of the brass-tray tables, and this, heated by a small spirit stove at its base, provided tea at regular intervals for the invalid or her guests. There was a good supply of newspapers and magazines, delivered by post to Colombo by the mail boat, and then sent up, along with the most recent books posted by the bookseller in Colombo. The members of the reading circle visited individually, dropping off yet more reading matter and bringing Virginia up to date on the latest gossip from the club in Nuwara Eliya. There had been talk about cheating having taken place in the club’s bridge tournament, a devastating accusation for which there was no proof, but which, if established, would have destroyed, for all time, the reputation of the accused.

  There were differing allegations as to the nature of the cheating. “They coughed a lot,” said one of the ladies. “I tell you, it was like a Swiss sanitorium. Two hearts, cough, cough; two spades, cough, cough, cough.”

  Another said that the offenders had adjusted their wedding rings as a way of signalling their holding. “They could indicate exactly how many cards they had of a particular suit by turning the ring round,” she said. “They were fiendishly clever.”

  And another said that the way in which the secret messages were conveyed was through lip reading. “He didn’t actually say anything,” she said. “But she was an expert lipreader and could tell from the movement of the lips. I have that on good authority, you know.”

  Virginia knew the couple concerned. She doubted all of this, although she was as keen as anybody to hear the details. “I don’t think they’d manage any of that,” she said. “And I think they’re innocent. He has no memory for what cards go out – he can barely count trumps. She plays the first card that comes into her head.” She smiled as she recollected a litany of careless revokes. “But they sometimes get away with it. There’s a divinity that hedges bridge players like them.”

  This brought disappointment, and the conversation switched, reluctantly, to the news from home. “I think Chamberlain’s doing his best,” said one of the ladies. “He’s the only one who can deal with that man.”

  Another disagreed. “They’re dead set on causing trouble. Dead set.”

  “Well, at least we’re far enough away. They can’t do much out here.”

  “The whole world is topsy-turvy.”

  “They say the Pope doesn’t like Mussolini – and who can blame him?”

  Virginia listened to all this. It kept her entertained, although she disagreed with much of what was said. For calmer conversation, she turned to Bella, to whom she would read from Palgrave or A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems. They listened to music together, with Bella winding up the Gilbert gramophone, changing the metal needles, and putting the records on the turntable. Virginia liked Beniamino Gigli and had a full set of Lucia di Lammermoor. Bella suffered through that but was dutiful in operating the gramophone; she preferred The Mikado. Miss White had a gramophone too. Sometimes both were played at the same time, competing against one another like two opposing military bands assembled on the same battlefield.

  Virginia said, “I feel so useless, lying here. But I suppose I’m lucky.” She looked at her Bella. “You should always remember how lucky you are.”

  “I am,” said Bella. “I have lots of nice things in my life.”

  Virginia sighed. “I would love to be able to conjure up more company for you. Some girls for you to play with.” She sighed again. “But you know how it is. And you have your dolls, of course – they’ve been marvellous.”

  Bella reached out to touch Li Po and Po Chü-i, who were sitting beside her on the chair. “Li Po has got a very good brain,” she said. “Most of his head is brain, you know.”

  “I can well believe it.”

  There was a brief silence. “He says some strange things, though. Not always – just sometimes.”

  Virginia reached for a magazine that had been left by one of the visiting ladies. The Illustrated London News. There was a picture of the launch of a liner. “Such a waste of champagne,” she muttered.

  “Li Po was wondering how the barrier gave way. He thinks it very odd.”

  Virginia was reading the account of the launch. There was information about the number of cabins, and there was a picture of the first-class accommodation. Was it worth it – paying all that money for a few weeks of comfort? Of course, you would have more fresh water for your bath – that counted for something. They gave you so little in the cheaper cabins. She was only half listening to what her daughter was saying, but then Bella said, “Li Po says he thinks it was Miss White.”

  The top of The Illustrated London News quivered. Then it was lowered. “Miss White?”

  “Yes. He says – that’s Li Po – he says he saw her going into the Pavilion. He said he saw her doing something to the barrier.”

  A trapped fly buzzed against the screen. Otherwise, there was silence.

  “Li Po said that?”

  “Yes.”

  “But darling, Li Po is a dolly. He doesn’t speak.”

  “That’s what you think. Li Po speaks all the time. Po Chü-i speaks too, but not so much. He has a very funny voice – like the way people speak when they’ve been given laughing gas.”

  Virginia smiled. “I don’t think you should believe everything Li Po says. You know what dollies are like – they make things up. Some of them are terrible fibbers. Look at Pinocchio – he was the biggest fibber of them all, and he was a dolly. His nose grew longer if he told a fib – you’ve heard that story. Li Po doesn’t have much of a nose, of course, but all the same . . .”

  “But he’s right. I saw her go in there. I saw her with my own eyes.”

  Virginia placed The Illustrated London News back on the pile. She spoke gently, as one might speak to a nervous witness. “You saw her? You did?”

  Bella’s tone was matter-of-fact. “Yes. I saw her that day. It was just getting dark. Or not quite. I could still see everything. Li Po and Po Chü-i were sitting on the windowsill.” She gave her mother a challenging look. “Ask them, if you don’t believe me. And I looked out and saw Miss White walking across the lawn. She went into the Pavilion. She really did. I saw her. She went right up to the barrier. I think she did something to it.”

  For a few moments Virginia said nothing. Then, “You aren’t making this up, are you, darling?”

  Bella shook her head. “Why would I make it up?”

  “Because . . . well, sometimes people make things up because they think that what really happened is too boring. It’s like making up a fairy story.”

  She looked at her mother resentfully. “I told you I didn’t. I told you I saw her. And Li Po and Po Chü-i saw her too. They see everything.”

  Virginia looked at her watch. Henry came back from the tea office every day at one, for his lunch. He would be ba
ck in fifteen minutes.

  “I think you should go and have your lunch now,” she said. “Daddy and I need to talk. We’ll have our lunch a bit later.”

  Bella picked up the two dolls and tucked them under her arm. They did not mind the indignity – they were used to it. I am not a fibber, she thought. I did see Miss White going into the Pavilion. I didn’t see what she did there, but she probably did do something to the barrier. Why else would she have gone in there? Miss White was wicked. She was a wicked person pretending to be a governess. She had been in prison in Calcutta – for being a witch, probably – and had run away to Ceylon to get away from the police. She had her plans all along, of course, and that was to get rid of the person who could stop her from marrying her father. It was a wicked plan, and she had almost pulled it off. But she did not know that three sets of eyes were watching her every move: hers, Li Po’s and Po Chü-i’s. They had seen what she was up to.

  Henry came back from the office buoyed by news of the imminent arrival of a new piece of machinery for the factory. A replacement for an old dryer had arrived in Colombo and would be sent up the following week if the roads were clear. It would be far more efficient, he said, and could increase the factory’s output considerably. They were already processing the surplus harvest of a number of their smaller neighbours and could take on more after the new machine had been installed.

  He realised that Virginia was not paying attention.

  “Something on your mind?” he asked. “Leg bothering you?”

  “It’s not my leg,” she said. “It’s hardly hurting at all now. It’s . . .”

  She broke off. He frowned, and sat down beside her day bed.

  “Are you feeling a bit low?” he asked, and then, before she had time to reply, he continued, “I don’t blame you if you are. That’s a nasty thing that happened.” He shook his head in self-reproach. “I feel responsible for it, you know. I try to keep an eye on this place, and I shouldn’t have missed something like that.”

  She brushed aside his regrets. “It’s not your fault at all – not in the slightest. No, that’s not what’s been worrying me.”

  He waited for her to continue. “There’s something else?”

  She hesitated before continuing. “Bella was talking to me.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “She’s having her lunch by herself. I said I wanted to speak to you before we had ours.”

  He seemed to relax now. Taking a handkerchief out of his pocket, he mopped his brow. “It’s warmer than usual today.” He looked up at the slow-moving ceiling fan that had recently been installed in that part of the veranda – a modern addition to the natural air conditioning of altitude. He had not been sure that it would make much difference – “These things just stir up the air, when all’s said and done” – but now he offered to turn it on.

  She shook her head. “I’m perfectly comfortable. Not moving even makes one feel a bit too cool.”

  “I’ve been in the factory. That’s always a bit on the warm side.”

  He noticed that she was not looking at him directly but was gazing out over the lawn, out past the line of trees that marked the edge of the garden on that side. The fall of the land in that direction was less sudden than on the Pavilion side, and a winding path had been constructed that led down to the edge of the tea gardens. The pickers sometimes used that when they were working in that particular section, and they would occasionally see a short line of women skirting the lawn to take the shortcut. “I can tell them not to use that path,” he had said. But Virginia did not mind. “Don’t make their job any harder,” she said. She felt guilty – she always had. They paid these people so little. They were so well-off themselves. Fate could reverse these things.

  “So what did Bella have to say?”

  She suddenly wanted to do something with her hands. She picked up the previously discarded copy of The Illustrated London News. His eyes followed her hands.

  “Those dolls of hers . . .”

  A smile played about his lips. There had been some residual tension, and now it seemed dispelled. This was a matter about dolls; this was nothing important.

  “The Chinese poets?” he said. “Li what’s-his-name and Cho something-or-other . . .”

  “Li Po and Po Chü-i. Yes.”

  He had been carrying a light tropical jacket with him. He rarely wore it, but he took it with him to the office each morning as one might take a briefcase, as part of a uniform. One never knew what visitors might turn up unannounced – buyers from Colombo, or insurance people, or officials of one sort or another. The jacket might be donned for their benefit. Now he reached in its pocket and took out a flat pack of cigarettes. He did not smoke very much, but occasionally he lit up, as he did now. She disliked smoking; her father had a smoker’s cough, and that had always worried her. Smoking didn’t help.

  “You don’t mind, do you?” he asked, as he lit the cigarette.

  She shook her head. She understood why so many smokers found smoking settled them: it gave them something to do with their hands. We needed to do something with our hands – hence handbags and worry beads and rings that could be twisted around fingers to give forbidden signals at bridge . . .

  “Bella thinks the dolls can speak. She seems convinced of it.”

  He laughed, and the smoke came out of his mouth in a brief translucent cloud. “Children have their notions, don’t they? They’re imaginative little creatures. Fairies and so on – they believe in them, don’t they? They actually think there are fairies.” He paused. “Mind you, there were those otherwise reasonable people who believed those ridiculous photographs. Remember? Conan Doyle himself was taken in. They believed those photographs of fairies. And they were adults.”

  He drew again on his cigarette, frowning as he did so. “And that’s before one even thinks of the Hindus and all those gods of theirs.” He gestured down the hill, in the direction of what they called the distant lines, the rows of houses, not much more than hovels, where the least skilled Tamil workers lived, the pariahs – houses bursting at the seams with uncles and aunts and countless children, all dependent on a single wage. “They believe in them, I suppose. Ganesh and so on. An elephant with hands – I ask you! And Lord Hanuman – a monkey god . . . Talking dolls don’t seem so strange if you sign up to any of that.”

  She lowered her eyes, embarrassed at the sacrilege, although there was nobody else to witness it. Did they themselves not believe in things that were every bit as fanciful? A virgin birth? Shepherds and stars? Angels – serried ranks of them? She did not like the thought of mocking the spirituality of people who were at the bottom of the insidious and incorrigible caste system, who were considered polluters, who did not know how to read – because nobody had bothered to teach them. And yet she was loyal to her husband, for all his male assumptions: he did not ordain any of the social architecture that placed them here and so many unfortunate others there. None of that was his doing.

  Now she struggled to bring the conversation back to the lines she had intended. “She said that the dolls saw something.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Well, I imagine that if they can talk, then they presumably should be able to see things.”

  He was amused – she could see that – but suddenly his demeanour changed. It was anxiety. He was worried. She saw it clearly – written on him – written on the way he held the cigarette, in the angle of his head, in the way he suddenly touched the lobe of his right ear. He did that when he was worried; she had observed it many times.

  A cold hand touched at her. She felt it. He was worried because there was something for the dolls to see. But it was too late to stop, and she continued, “Bella said that Li Po and Po Chü-i saw Miss White going into the Pavilion.”

  For a few moments he said nothing. But then, before he replied, she saw his anxiety evaporate.

  “Well,” he said, his voice quite even, “that’s hardly surprising. She’s free to use the garden, and we’ve never asked her to keep a
way from the Pavilion.” He broke off. “Except, I suppose, when you have your reading-circle ladies here. I’ve noticed that you don’t include her.”

  There was a note of reproach in his voice. She looked away. “I have to have something of my own.”

  He was placatory. “Of course you do. I didn’t mean that as a criticism. It was just an observation.”

  She hesitated, but then, “The point is this: she said that the dolls had seen her going in there shortly before I did.”

  “When?”

  “On the day. On the day this happened.” She gestured towards her bandage.

  He waited.

  “She said that she was at the barrier – the fence, whatever you call it. The bit that gave way.”

  He seemed puzzled. “Lavender?”

  That was the governess’s name: Lavender. But he never called her that, and neither did Virginia. Nobody was called Lavender any more. She was Miss White.

  He seemed to realise his mistake. “Miss White was at the barrier . . . in the Pavilion? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Not me. The dolls said it . . . Oh, for goodness’ sake, the dolls said nothing. Bella did.”

  “Of course. But why would Bella say that?”

  “She said that she saw it herself. She said something about seeing it with her own eyes.”

  He looked for an ashtray but, seeing none, stubbed out his cigarette on the sole of his shoe before depositing it in the saucer of a teacup.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that, Henry. I really do.”

  He grinned like a schoolboy caught in flagrante. “Sorry, but what can a chap do? If I threw it in the flower bed, I’d get it in the neck – spoiling the cannas, or whatever.”

  Rather to her surprise, his levity reassured her. A man who had something to hide would not talk like this, but would be . . . she had to search for the word before it came to her: would be furtive.