by M. M. Kaye
‘About me. You see I – I've told a lot of lies about myself. And that woman Mrs Gidney, who Belinda's mother is so thick with, has a friend in Rangoon who knows someone who – Well, it was like this…’
It was a simple and rather sordid little story, and no one came out of it very well. Mrs Gidney, writing to a dear friend in Rangoon, had happened to mention George's name and comment on his romantic ancestry, and by an unfortunate coincidence the friend was acquainted with a certain Mr Frisby in the teak trade. And that was how it had all come out…
George's grandmother, far from being a Greek countess, had been an Indian woman of humble parentage whose union with his grandfather – a colour-sergeant in a British regiment stationed in Agra – had been of a strictly temporary nature, but had resulted in the birth of a daughter who had eventually been placed in a home for the orphaned or abandoned children of mixed parentage. At the age of fifteen the child had been found employment as a nursemaid in an army family, and subsequently married a young corporal in her master's regiment, one Alfred Garforth. Their son George, who had been born in Bareilly, was the only one in the family to survive the Mutiny of 1857, his parents, his baby brother and three small sisters having all been murdered in the space of fifteen frenzied minutes.
George had been spending the day with the family of a friendly storekeeper who had escaped the massacre, and during the few years that remained before the regiment returned to England, the same kindly couple had given him a home, for as his father too had been an orphan, there were no relations to take care of the boy. It was during this period that little George learned from his playmates that a ‘half-caste’ was an object of scorn. There were several such among the barrack children, and they and he were teased and despised by those whose parents and grandparents were white, and looked down upon - with almost equal scorn by Indian children with parents and grandparents who were brown.
‘Yer grandma was a sweeper-woman!’ or ‘Yah, yah, yer a bleedin' blacky-white,’ were familiar taunts in scuffles among the barrack children, while the vocabulary of the bazaar children could be even more wounding. Yet George, by the irony of fate, was fairer than many of his white tormentors, and had he possessed a tougher character, or been less good-looking, he might have lived down the unknown grandmother. But he was not only a very pretty little boy, but a painfully timid one, a combination that endeared him to adults but made his own generation yearn to kick him – which they did with enthusiasm and on every possible occasion.
George developed a bad stammer and burning hatred of his schoolmates and the barracks and anything and everything to do with the army, and when the regiment sailed for England, taking him with them, it was only the kindness of the storekeeper and his wife, Fred and Annie Mullens, that saved him from being sent to an army orphanage, for they had arranged for him to be educated at their expense at a small boarding school near Bristol that catered exclusively for children whose parents were overseas. A large number of these children spent both holidays and term time at the school, and nearly all of them had been born abroad, which was George's misfortune, for they too spoke of ‘half-castes’ with scorn, and one of their number who had the misfortune to be black-eyed and dark-complexioned was cruelly teased on this score – George, to his shame, joining in with the best of them. For with the possible exception of the Headmaster, no one at the school knew anything about him, and he was therefore able to invent a family-tree for himself.
At first this was a comparatively modest affair. But as he grew older he enlarged it, adding mythical grandparents and great-grandparents and a variety of picturesque ancestors. And because he was always afraid that one day his eyes would become darker and his skin betray him by turning brown (as his baby curls, once blond, had done) he gave himself an Irish father – the Irish being prone to black hair – and added a Greek grandmother for good measure. Later he was to discover that a majority of waiters and small shopkeepers in Soho were immigrants from Greece, and as by then he could hardly change this mythical woman's nationality, he decided to make her a countess.
Towards the end of his school-days his benefactor, Mr Mullens, who had a friend in Brown & MacDonalds‘, arranged for his protégé to enter that firm as a clerk, imagining that by doing so he had done young George an excellent turn and started him on what might one day prove to be a profitable career in the wine business. Unfortunately, the news had been anything but welcome to George, who left to himself would never have returned to India, but he lacked both the courage and the means to refuse such an offer. When he had served his apprenticeship and was eventually ordered to Peshawar, the only bright spot on his horizon was the fact that close on four hundred miles separated Peshawar from Bareilly, and that he would not, in any case, be expected to visit Mr and Mrs Mullens; for barely a month before his departure he heard that Mr Mullens had died of enteric and his brokenhearted widow had sold the store and sailed for Rangoon, where her son-in-law was doing well in the teak trade.
Mr Mullens, charitable to the last, had left George fifty pounds and a gold watch, and George spent the money on clothes and told his landlady that the watch had been his grandfather's. His Irish grandfather – the O'Garforth of Castle Garforth…
‘I didn't think they would ever find out,’ confessed George miserably. ‘But Mrs Gidney has a friend whose husband is in the teak trade and knows old man Mullens's son-in-law, and it seems that the friend met Mrs Mullens one day and they began talking about the Mutiny and all that, and Mrs Mullens told her about me and how her husband paid for my schooling and got me this job, and how well I was doing, and – Well, just about everything. She even had a photograph of me. I'd forgotten that. I sent it to them my last term at school. I used to write to them, you know. And then this friend wrote to Mrs Gidney…’
Mrs Gidney had apparently conceived it her duty to ‘warn’ her dear friend Mrs Harlowe, and Mrs Harlowe, greatly upset by George's duplicity, had somewhat naturally told her daughter. But where the two older ladies had merely been shocked, Belinda had been outraged, not so much because she had been lied to, but because she considered that she had been made to look foolish. After all it was she and her mother who had, in effect, sponsored George and helped to launch him on Peshawar society, because although his looks alone would have attracted a certain amount of attention, they would never have obtained for him the social recognition that Mrs Harlowe's partiality and her daughter's friendship for him had bestowed on him from the start. Besides, Belinda had more than half believed that romantic tale of a liaison between his mythical great-grandmother and Lord Byron (though to give George his due, this was one rumour for which he was not responsible), but though she had found nothing shocking in an illegitimate grandmama born of such exalted parents – in fact, quite the reverse – the bastard daughter of a colour-sergeant and a low-caste Hindu woman was a very different affair, and sordid in the extreme. Why, George's mother was nothing more than a half-caste – an illegitimate Eurasian who had married a corporal in a line regiment – and George himself had more than a ‘touch of the tar-brush’, for he was one quarter Indian; and low-caste Indian at that. This – this was the man that she, Belinda, had helped to foist onto Peshawar society and had danced and dined with and bestowed her smiles on. Now all the other girls were going to laugh at her, and she would never live it down. Never.
‘She was so angry,’ whispered George. ‘She said such terrible things – that all half-castes told lies and she never wanted to see me again, and… and if I ever spoke to her again she'd c-cut me d-dead. I didn't know anyone could be so cruel. She didn't even look p-pretty any more… she looked ugly. And her voice… Her mother k-kept saying “You don't mean that, dear. You can't mean that.” But she did. And now she's started t-telling people. I know she has, because they look at me as though I was s-some sort of insect and… What am I going to do, Ash? I'd k-kill myself if I could, but I haven't got the g-guts to do it. Not even when I'm drunk. But I can't stay here any longer. I can't! D-do you think that if I
made a c-clean breast of it to my boss he'd send me s-somewhere else? If I begged him to?’
Ash did not answer. He was feeling dazed and sick, and in spite of everything, disbelieving. He would not and could not believe it of Belinda. Of George, yes. The story explained a great deal about George: his appalling sensitiveness and lack of confidence; that abrupt transformation from tongue-tied timidity to brashness and truculence when Belinda set out to charm him and Mrs Harlowe treated him with consideration and kindness, and he began to believe in himself at last; and most of all, his complete moral and physical collapse now that his make-believe world had been exposed as a sham. But Belinda could never have behaved in the manner he described. George was inventing again and allowing his guilty conscience to put into her mouth sentiments that he had already applied to himself. Because these were the sort of things he was afraid she might say, he was punishing himself by pretending she had actually said them – and quite possibly, too, that she was engaged to Mr Podmore-Smyth, which was something else that he, Ash, was not prepared to believe until he heard it from her own mouth. Then if her parents were really putting pressure on her to force her into marrying some dirty old man in his dotage, he would expose them for what they were.
He stood up and jerked the chik aside, and shouted for the servant to call him a tonga.
‘You aren't going?’ gasped George, in a panic. ‘Don't go yet. Please don't go! If you leave me I'll – I'll only get drunk again, and it's worse when I'm drunk. Besides, b-brandy only makes me feel braver. I might g-go out and d-do something stupid. Like going to the Club this morning and m-making a fool of myself.’
‘Then don't get drunk,’ snapped Ash, exasperated. ‘And for God's sake, George, stop feeling so damn' sorry for yourself. You don't have to go to pieces just because you've been found out telling a pack of silly taradiddles about your grandmother. Who the hell cares what your grandmother was or wasn't? You are still you, aren't you? It's sheer poppycock to pretend that people only liked you because they thought your grandmother was a Greek or an Italian or whatever it was. And if you imagine for one minute that Belinda or anyone else is going to spread around any stories about her, you must be mad. You know what it is, George? – you've exaggerated the whole thing out of all proportion, and been so busy being sorry for yourself that you haven't even stopped for a minute to think about it sensibly.’
‘You didn't hear what Belinda s-said to me,’ gulped George. ‘If you'd heard her -’
‘I daresay she was damned angry with you for telling her a lot of fatuous lies, and only wanted to punish you for that. Try and use your head for half a second and stop behaving like a hysterical rabbit. If Belinda is what I believe her to be she'll keep quiet about it for your sake, and if she's what you like to think she is, she'll keep it even quieter for her own – and that goes for her mother and Mrs Gidney too, for I don't suppose either of them will care to advertise the fact that they've been a pair of gullible old tabbies.’
‘I never thought of that,’ admitted George, cheering up slightly. ‘Yes, I suppose…’ His shoulders slumped again. ‘But then no one spoke to me at the Club this morning except Mrs Viccary. The rest just looked at me and whispered and sniggered and -’
‘Oh, stow it, George,’ interrupted Ash angrily. ‘You turn up at the Club on a Saturday morning as drunk as an owl and are surprised because people notice it. For the love of God, stop dramatizing yourself and try to keep a sense of proportion.’
He reached for his hat as a clatter of hooves and the jangle of a bell announced the arrival of a tonga, and George said wistfully: ‘I'd hoped you'd stay on a b-bit and – and advise me. It's been awful just sitting here alone and thinking; and if I could just talk about it –’
‘You've talked about it for over an hour,’ observed Ash tartly. ‘And if you really want my advice, you'll forget all about this and shut up about your great-aunts or grandmothers or whoever they were, and just go on behaving as though nothing had happened, instead of making a public exhibition of yourself and inviting comment. No one else is ever going to hear about it if only you'll keep your head and shut your mouth.’
‘You – you really think so?’ stammered George. ‘Perhaps you're right. Perhaps it won't ever get out. I d-don't think I could bear it if it did. If it does… Ash, honestly now, w-what would you do, if you were me?’
‘Shoot myself,’ said Ash unkindly. ‘Goodbye George.’
He leapt down the verandah steps and was driven back to the Club where he collected his horse and rode over to the Harlowes' bungalow; and for once luck seemed to be with him, for Belinda's parents were still out, while she herself had returned and was resting. The bearer, roused from his afternoon nap, was loath to disturb her, but when Ash threatened to walk in on her himself he hurried away and tapped on her door, telling her that a Sahib had called to see her and would not go away until he had done so. But when Belinda entered the drawing-room some five minutes later it was instantly and painfully clear that she had expected to see someone entirely different. She ran gaily into the room and then stopped dead, the smile wiped from her pretty face and her eyes widening in apprehension and anger.
‘Ashton! What are you doing here?’
Something in her voice and expression daunted Ash and he said uncertainly, stammering a little, as George too had stammered: ‘I – had to see you, darling. Your m-mother wrote to me. She said you were… you were engaged to be married. It isn't true is it?’
Belinda did not answer the question. She said instead: ‘You shouldn't have come here. You know quite well you should not. Please go, Ashton. Papa will only be angry if he comes back and finds you here. Abdul should never have let you in. Now do go.’
‘Is it true?’ repeated Ash, ignoring the appeal.
Belinda stamped her foot: ‘I asked you to go, Ashton. You've no right to come forcing your way in here and cross-questioning me when you know I'm alone and –’ She shrank away as Ash came towards her, but he walked past her without touching her, and closing the door, locked it and put the key into his pocket and went back to stand between her and the french windows, blocking her retreat.
Belinda opened her mouth to call the bearer and then closed it again, daunted by the prospect of embroiling one of the servants in such an embarrassing situation. An interview with Ashton, however distasteful, seemed the lesser of two evils – and as she would probably have to endure one sooner or later, she might as well get it over now. So she smiled at him and said coaxingly: ‘Please don't let's have a scene, Ashton. I know you must feel badly about it. That's why I asked Mama to write – because I couldn't bear to be the one to hurt you. But you must have realized by now that when we first met we were both much too young to know our own minds, and that we'd grow out of it, just like Papa said.’
‘Are you going to marry that man Podmore?’ asked Ash stonily.
‘If you mean Mr Podmore-Smyth, yes, I am. And you needn't use that tone of voice either, because –’
‘But my darling, you can't let yourself be bullied into this. Do you think I don't know that this is all your father's doing? You were in love with me – you were going to marry me – and now he's forcing you into this. Why don't you stand up for yourself? Oh Belinda, darling, can't you see?’
‘Yes, I can,’ said Belinda crossly. ‘I can see that you don't know anything about it, for if you must know, Papa was very much against it. And Mama too. But I'm not seventeen any longer: I shall be nineteen this year and quite old enough to know my own mind, so there was really nothing they could do about it, and in the end they had to agree, because Ambrose –’
‘Are you trying to pretend that you're in love with him?’ interrupted Ash harshly.
‘Of course I'm in love with him. You don't suppose that I'd marry him if I wasn't?’
‘You can't be. It isn't true. That fat, prosing, pompous old man who's the same age as your father…’
The blood rushed up into Belinda's face and quite suddenly Ash remembered what George h
ad said about her losing her prettiness and looking ugly. She had lost it now and her voice was strident and furious:
‘He's not as old as my father! He's not. How dare you talk to me like that? You're jealous of him because he's a man of the world – because he's mature and interesting and successful. Someone I can rely on and look up to, and not a silly, callow boy who – She checked and bit her lip, and controlling herself with an effort said in a more reasonable voice: ‘I'm sorry, Ashton. But it makes me so angry when people say things like that. After all, you were just as angry when Papa thought you were too young. You said age had nothing to do with it, remember? and it's true. Ambrose understands me, and he's kind and generous and clever and everyone says that he's bound to be a Governor. He might even be Viceroy one day.’
‘And I gather he's rich as well.’
Belinda missed the sarcasm and accepting the comment at its face value said happily: ‘Yes, he is. He's given me such lovely presents. Look.’
She held out her left hand in unaffected pleasure and Ash saw with a pang that it was adorned with a band of enormous diamonds, any one of which was at least twice the size of the pearls in that pretty but unpretentious ring that he had bought for her in Delhi over a year and a half ago. It seemed much longer than that; five years at least. Too long for Belinda, who was going to marry a man old enough to be her father. A fat, rich, successful widower who could give her diamonds and make her Lady Podmore-Smyth – and present her with two ready-made step-children the same age as herself.
There appeared to be nothing left to say. The sight of those diamonds on Belinda's finger proved that all the arguments and pleas that he had meant to use would be a waste of time, and all he could do now was to wish her happiness and go. It was strange to think that he had planned to spend his whole life with her and that now he was probably seeing her for the last time. Outwardly she was as pink and white and pretty as ever, yet it was obvious that he had really never known what went on inside that golden head, but had fallen in love with someone who had existed largely in his imagination.