He must have turned into another alley, for at the end were lights, and he saw it was the square, and he stopped, leaning against the wall before going into it. He found his wallet in his hand and he dusted himself down with it. He straightened his tie and buttoned his jacket and smoothed his hair, and found it wet with vomit.
He walked across the square as steadily as he could, and went into the hotel and up to his room.
He ran the tap and plunged his head in the bowl several times till he thought he had got rid of the vomit. Then he changed out of his suit and put on a dressing-gown and had a look in his wallet and lay down on the bed.
He heard eight o’clock strike from the Scottish mission church. Only an hour since the boy had first told him. Then nine o’clock struck, and ten. He lay there all night. The servant found him like that, still awake and in his dressing- gown, in the morning.
2
He thought that if they had taken all his money, he could explain it to himself. But they hadn’t done that; they had taken only the small notes; more in the nature of recompensing themselves for their trouble. He shied away for quite a long time from the explanation that seemed to make most sense.
There were so many new problems here that he thought he ought to proceed on the assumption that, right from the beginning, someone had made a mistake. He assumed first that it was the Tibetans.
A party of four people had been found dead after an avalanche. The party had been wrongly identified as a party of missing British people. A message to that effect had gone off to Lhasa. When the error had been discovered, it had taken time to rectify. Communications were bad. Everything had to be checked and double-checked by Lhasa before the error could be admitted. And in the meantime they would give no information.
Well. It was one explanation, as reasonable as any other. More reasonable, in a way. For here were human error and bureaucracy and procrastination. He had met them all in India, and he supposed you could find the same in Tibet. But what, in that case, had happened to the British party? Five months had passed since December. Why had they not come out of the country?
There was no answer to that, so he began assuming on another tack. He assumed that the boy Ringling had made the mistake. Ringling had observed a party of four people join his caravan, and thought he had heard them talking English. He had been half asleep when he heard them. They had gone off with their guides. Then, according to this assumption, the people he had seen must have been four other people. They were three other men and one other woman, and they had not been talking English.
Houston didn’t like this assumption. The boy would know if they had spoken English. He had no reason to lie. And Houston had given no details himself. The boy had supplied them: the three men, the woman, one of the men sick.
So the Tibetans had reported the party dead in October, and Ringling had seen them alive in December. And after he had been to see Ringling to hear this story, he had been attacked. The men had been waiting for him; they had been more intent on beating him up than on robbing him. And in fact they had robbed him of very little.
Houston thought he could see a pattern in this. He was still trying to think where it got him when a voice said softly in his ear, ‘Sahib, your tea. You have not drunk your tea, sahib. It is nine o’clock.’
Houston looked about him and saw daylight in the room, and thanked the servant and got up. The walls lurched a bit. His head was still pounding vilely and his stomach felt badly bruised. He took off his dressing-gown and examined it. There was only slight reddening; but his eye, in the mirror, was more spectacular. An angry purple contusion rose between eyelid and temple. He thought he had better wear dark glasses today.
He washed and shaved and dressed and sat down for a moment to recover from these exertions and to allow the furniture to get back in place. He thought he had better eat something. He had had nothing since lunchtime in Darjeeling the day before. He went rather carefully down the stairs and into the dining-room and had fruit juice and warm rolls and coffee, and managed to get back to his room just in time to bring them up again.
He sat in a cane chair, trembling and faint and wiped his sweating forehead. He didn’t know what he was going to do about this. He thought he had better not stay in Kalimpong today. He had to go somewhere and think.
He went downstairs and out on to the hotel steps and looked out over the brilliant, bustling square and tried to make a plan that would get him through the day.
‘Hello, sahib. Where we go today?’
He saw that here was a problem even more urgent than how he would occupy his time all day; and to get rid of the boy said the first thing that came in his head.
‘Sorry, me lad. I’m going to Darjeeling.’
‘Oh, sahib, you’ve just come back.’
‘Well, I’m going again.’
‘Well. I keep the bus for you, sahib. I see you catch it.’
Houston cursed dully, head thumping in the sharp sunlight as he followed Bozeling across the square. It would have to be Darjeeling, then. But one place as good as another today, he thought; and perhaps he could think on the bus.
It was a magnificent day, high cloudless sky, the great round hills lush and plump with spring. The bus stopped frequently at villages on the way, passengers got in and out, jostling, chattering, joking, the whole world delighted to be about its business on such a day. Houston sat leaden in his seat, counting the swinging hammer blows in his head and trying to control the nausea in his stomach.
They were alive. They had been alive in December. They had travelled without guides in December. And then guides had appeared for them, and they had left the caravan. But why leave it? They had walked all day with it in a blizzard. Why leave it when guides were available to carry the sick man? Because the guides not guides; because the guides men sent to bring them back… .
He thought he could go on indefinitely with this preposterous daydream, and suddenly realized how preposterous it was, and pulled himself together. The situation, from a certain point of view, was not without humour: himself fed up, frigged up and far from home, taking an unnecessary journey to Darjeeling to escape the attention of one single small Sherpa.
And with regard to the robbers: why shouldn’t they take only his small notes? They were only small robbers. They were robbers without shoes. Large notes would be an embarrassment to such robbers. And with regard to Ringling’s story – he must at some time have mentioned himself what he was looking for, and Bozeling had heard him and had told his brother, and his brother had been happy to provide the right answers.
This explanation in the clear light of day seemed so very much more convincing than any of his cockeyed assumptions of the night before that he felt himself smiling suddenly with a sense of jubilant release.
‘It is very amusing, sir, isn’t it, to see the goats playing?’
He had been addressed by a slender young Bengali; he wore a European shirt and trousers and his eyes glistened gaily behind steel-rimmed spectacles.
‘The goats?’
‘On the hills.’
The bus was groaning up an incline, along the steep green sides of which a flock of goats bucked and kicked skittishly.
Houston said hastily, ‘Oh, very. Very amusing indeed.’
‘I saw you smiling at the spectacle. It always makes me smile also. But they are very useful animals, most essential to our economy, sir.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh, yes. I am studying the goat at the moment.’
‘You’re a vet, are you?’
‘Oh, no, sir, I am not a vet,’ the young Bengali said, politely covering his amusement with a thin brown hand. ‘I am a teacher.’
‘Are you?’ Houston said, glad to be taken out of himself. ‘So am I.’
‘Oh, indeed. This is a pleasant meeting, sir. My name is Mr Pannikar,’ the Bengali said, extending his hand.
Houston said his name was Houston, and shook it.
‘And what business brings you here, Mr
Houston, if I may ask?’
Suddenly, Houston wanted to tell him; all of it. He didn’t quite do that, but he heard his own voice, with some surprise, explaining that his brother and three friends had gone to Tibet last year and had not yet returned, and that he had come to find out why.
‘Ah, yes, I see. There are many difficulties with the Tibetans these days.’
‘All these omens, you mean?’
‘Oh, the omens and prophecies. I don’t listen to such childish things myself. The key to the situation is the Chinese. They feel that Tibet belongs to them. Of course this makes the Tibetans very nervous. They feel they must bend over backwards not to offend the Chinese. I expect this is what your brother has found, Mr Houston?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘They are regarding him as a spy, are they?’
‘A spy?’ Houston said, taken aback. ‘Why should they?’
‘Oh, forgive me, sir. I do not know the facts of the case. I merely thought, if they won’t allow him to go just now… . I don’t know if you read Chinese, Mr Houston?’
Houston said he didn’t.
‘I am studying the language. I sometimes see the People’s Daily from Peking. They are very suspicious people the. Chinese, and they think every European in Tibet is a spy. They quite often print names of people. This is what makes the Tibetans so nervous.’
‘You think that’s why they won’t let him out?’
‘I have no idea at all, Mr Houston. It was only a suggestion. Have they told you anything?’
‘Nothing at all.’
‘Ah. That is understandable. And they would naturally try to discourage you from making inquiries. They certainly don’t want any international incident or bad publicity this year. But it’s possible they might be holding them for an inquiry to convince the Chinese… . What exactly was your brother doing in Tibet, Mr Houston?’
Houston told him; and presently went on to tell him what subjects he taught in school, and heard what subjects Mr Pannikar taught, and learned a good deal more about the Indian goat; and he realized the situation had turned upside down again. He realized something else also. Every bit of straw-clutching, every bit of hope that Hugh might be alive was followed instantly by a reaction of dismay, of reluctance to pursue it. And as he sat and chatted with Mr Pannikar he came suddenly upon the reason.
If Hugh was dead, there was nothing he could do about it. If Hugh was alive, there was still nothing he could do about it. He dare not produce evidence that he was alive; for then, whoever had said he was dead would be forced to prove it. There was only one effective way of doing that. He didn’t think they wanted to take that step. He thought last night’s little encounter might have been designed to dissuade him from pushing them into taking such a step.
So to keep Hugh alive he must pretend he was dead. And to pretend he was dead, he would have to go home. But how could he go home, believing Hugh to be alive? And how could he stay, knowing that he might contribute to his death?
He couldn’t go, he couldn’t stay. He wondered in that case where in God’s name he could go to escape from this limbo, and suddenly realized where he would go, and paused in mid-flow.
Mr Pannikar looked at him inquiringly. ‘You were telling me about a greetings card you had done.’
‘There was a border on it. I copied it from a tile in the British Museum, an Indian tile. It attracted more interest than anything else I did last year,’ Houston said, staring at him in shock and amazement.
‘Oh, that is very interesting,’ Mr Pannikar said, smiling a little uncertainly at the strange expression on his face. ‘It is most interesting indeed. What a pity we have arrived in Darjeeling. Speaking for myself, I have found the conversation most stimulating.’
‘Very stimulating indeed,’ Houston said.
‘I wonder if you would care to enter into a correspondence when you return to England. I have my card here.’
Houston did not have a card, but he wrote his name and address in Mr Pannikar’s notebook, and shook hands with him and wandered away from the bus station in a daze.
He saw a bookshop in The Mall and walked over to it, telling himself that there was no harm whatever in playing with the idea, and bought a twenty-five miles to the inch map, and turned into the Mount Everest Hotel with it. He wondered if he could keep a gin and tonic down, and ordered one and opened out the map.
Yamdring was a few inches across the Tibet frontier, not more than six inches from Darjeeling, from where he sat in the Mount Everest Hotel with his gin and tonic. A hundred and fifty miles as the crow flew; under an hour in a plane.
He felt his heart beginning to thud. He took a cautious sip at his gin and tonic. He lit a cigarette.
He wondered how many miles it really was, and how long, going deviously, it would take. Ten days, a fortnight. There and back in a month. He had been away nearly two months already.
He finished his gin and tonic without ill effects, and an hour later tackled a light lunch, and managed to retain that also. He went back to Kalimpong on the afternoon bus.
He found his way back to the house that night, and took a large monkey wrench with him, against contingencies; he had bought it in a garage in the town before dinner.
He took the youth through his story again, and could find no variation. There were also no additions, which seemed to him satisfactory; he had offered various bits of information which could have been embellished if the boy were lying or merely anxious to please.
He said at last, ‘Ringling, you know the way to Yamdring?’
‘Yes, sahib. I’ve been there many times.’
‘Could you take me there?’
‘If you get a chitty, sahib, yes. I need to mention it to Michaelson Sahib.’
‘Without a chitty. Without mentioning it to Michaelson Sahib.’
The boy grinned at him uncertainly.
‘We both need chitties, sahib. You can’t get into Tibet without one.’
‘Across the border, secretly. The two of us. No chitties.’
‘I don’t understand, sahib.’
Houston made it clearer.
The boy was sweating slightly when he had finished, and his smile was a pale shadow of itself. He went out and brought a bottle of arak and poured two glasses, and drank off his own right away.
‘It’s very dangerous, sahib,’ he said at last.
‘I’d pay you well for the risk.’
‘Dangerous for you. Have you ever climbed high?’
‘Not very high.’
‘Maybe we have to go over twenty thousand feet. I don’t know if you could manage it, sahib.’
‘It would be a good time to learn,’ Houston said, smiling faintly.
The boy shook his head. He drank another glass of arak. He said, ‘Could you get a chitty for Sikkim, sahib?’
‘I could try. Why?’
‘There are mountains there. If you stay a few days at ten thousand feet, maybe we could tell.’
‘All right,’ Houston said. ‘I’ll try.’
He kept the monkey wrench in his hand all the way back. But nobody was waiting for him this time.
3
Houston went to Calcutta a few days later. He went to his bank, Barclay’s Peninsular, and drew out three hundred and fifty pounds in fifty-rupee notes, and changed two hundred pounds’ worth of these at other banks for two- and five-rupee notes. He booked in again at the Great Eastern and had a shower and left his suitcase there; and then he went to see Lister-Lawrence.
He had telephoned him already from Kalimpong, and had explained what he wanted. The official had not sounded very encouraging; and was scarcely more so now.
‘Sorry, old chap. No joy.’
‘Why not?’
‘No reason. They just don’t want you. I did explain that Hopkinson can’t hand out the chitties himself. If Tibet doesn’t want you, then Sikkim won’t, either. They work in very closely with each other.’
‘But what trouble would I give? All I want is to
see the sirdar of this caravan in Gangtok and hear his deposition and get him to make his mark. I’ve told you all this.’
‘And I told Hopkinson. And I expect he told the visa authorities. They just don’t seem to want to know you, old boy. Of course there’s nothing to stop you writing to this man in Gangtok.’
‘I want to see him.’
‘Yes. Well,’ Lister-Lawrence said, standing up. ‘I’ve got rather a lot on just now… . If you’ll take a word of advice you’ll pack up and go home. You’ve done all anyone could expect.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Do that. And look in to see me before you go, won’t you?’
‘Before I go,’ Houston said.
Five days after leaving Kalimpong, he was back. Ringling met him as he got off the bus in the square.
‘All well, sahib?’
‘All well, Ringling.’
‘You have the chitty?’
‘I’ll tell you about it later.’
‘And the money, in small notes.’
‘Everything. I shouldn’t hang about too much here. I’ll come and see you tonight.’
He had started packing when they rang up to tell him Michaelson was below. He went down, cursing.
‘Hello, sport. Why didn’t you say you were going to Calcutta?’
‘Something cropped up in a hurry.’
‘Something cropped up here, too,’ Michaelson said gloomily. ‘Come and have a drink.’
Michaelson had had another interview with Sangrab over the matter of his black tails; but this time the consul had not set himself out to ingratiate. He had merely pointed out that he could not discuss his government’s methods of allocating licences, and had made a somewhat oblique reference to Michaelson’s own methods as being perhaps out of date.
The Rose of Tibet Page 7