The Rose of Tibet

by Lionel Davidson

  ‘Very well. I will allow that. I will answer for it. I will see the official myself now. …’

  ‘Do you want a drink of water?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Lie back, then. Lie still.’

  Still. Nausea. Everything rolling, nothing to hold on to. People coming in and out.

  ‘All right. But don’t make a noise. He’s sleeping now.’

  ‘I give it in your charge then, Miss.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And it is with his approval I pay two and a half per cent to Mr Michaelson.’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’

  ‘You understand it is Mr Houston as vendor who pays this commission and not I? It is usual.’

  ‘All right. I trust you.’

  ‘You may trust me absolutely, Miss.’

  ‘We’re all trusting you, Da Costa.’

  ‘Surely you have known me long enough.’

  ‘Too right, mate.’

  ‘You could have had cash, a bank pass book, anything you wanted, weeks ago. It is not my fault you must now at the last moment accept a promissory note.’

  ‘It ain’t my fault, either, sport.’

  ‘Will you both go now? Thank you very much.’

  ‘A pity he ain’t awake. Tell him good-bye from me, eh?’

  ‘Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you both very much. Good- bye.’

  Queasy, shifting silence, then, which presently he could slow down to sleep in. To sleep in and roll in. Rolling, rumbling silence, in which he was being lifted; which was not silence at all.

  ‘Four seats have been taken out. It is the best I can do.’

  ‘You’ve not heard the last of this, I assure you.’

  ‘Miss Wolferston, I have done everything I can. I am very busy.’

  ‘It’s the most callous, barbarous thing I ever heard of in my life.’

  ‘I am sorry. Just one thing more. One of the passengers is a doctor. I have had a word with him and he will help you. He will give an injection, if necessary.’

  ‘Thank you for that at least.’

  ‘I am very sorry. Good-bye.’

  Roaring. Deafening, lurching roaring, then. Roaring all the time. The bear roaring. The bear with his arm in its mouth. His arm! His arm!

  ‘There we are, there now. You’re all right old fellow. Drift off now. Go to sleep. Only landing.’

  Landing and taking off and landing again. Fresh air and not fresh air and fresh air again. But all morphia sleep now; good familiar sleep, black solvent of all worry, events riding with him but no longer bothering him.

  And so out again at last, with people streaming and engines revving, himself suspended in cool darkness on the stretcher. Large lit-up buildings and lights flashing, and one flashing very near, in his eyes.

  ‘Oh, please. Please don’t bother him. He’s very ill.’

  ‘Who is he? What name, please?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Kemsley Newspapers. Empire News and Sunday Graphic.’

  ‘His name is Houston,’ she said.

  Houston; and he was home; Saturday, 16 June 1961.

  EPILOGUE

  1

  ‘What I feel,’ confided T.L. in a memo dated February 1960’ ‘is that having committed ourselves so hugely, we shd leave no stone unt’d to (a) see that H. at least looks over our versn, (b) get a cast-iron decision on the copyrt position – further opins if nec, (c) get trustworthy indpt confmn of the facts. With regard to B-V, I never thought he wd. But take up his suggestns if you think fit.’

  This memo came to me attached to a letter from Professor Bourgès-Vallerin that I had sent through to him the previous day. I had invited the professor to edit and expand the Tibetan sections of the notebooks, reserving the right to delete to meet legal objections in London. He had declined this invitation on the grounds that his acceptable position with the communist authorities was dependent on his maintaining a strict neutrality in all his writings. He had offered, however, to supply a factual appendix – ‘in no way implying that I express any opinion on the work or its author’ – and had gone on to suggest that for the ‘expansion’ mentioned, one could not do better than apply to Dr Shankar Lal Roy, a useful source of Tibetan information and the chairman of the Calcutta branch of the India-Tibet Society. ‘For the more singular parts of M. Houston’s memoirs, I would myself have had recourse to Dr Roy. If anyone is able to confirm or deny them, it is he.’

  There was a certain edge to this advice which I pondered, together with T.L.’s memo, somewhat gloomily.

  I said, ‘Miss Marks, when are you likely to be ready with Underwood’s stuff? I’ll need time to study it before seeing Mr Oliphant.’

  ‘Just finishing. You can have his comments now if you like.’

  There were twenty-five pages of Underwood’s comments. He had laboured for ten weeks at his task, and had kept back no crumb of evidence. He had been to see a divorced ‘Glynis’ at Swansea; ‘Lister-Lawrence’ at Wimbledon; ‘Wister’ in Yorkshire; and a Mr Blake-Winter at Abingdon. He had also written to, among others, ‘Lesley’, married, in Seattle; a widowed ‘Mrs Michaelson’ in West Australia; the niece of a deceased Mrs Meiklejohn in Arbroath; and the Duke of Ganzing in Delhi. Correspondence with them, and with a number of institutions in Kalimpong, Zürich, Auckland and Lisbon, were in another file, which Miss Marks was in process of sorting out.

  Because I was seeing Mr Oliphant at four o’clock, his brightest time, and had to have lunch myself first with an agent, there was little opportunity to do more than skim through the material.

  There had been very little luck with ‘Sheila Wolferston’. The girl had married, it seemed a New Zealand journalist, in 1953, and had gone with him to Auckland the following year. In March 1955, the mother had sold her house in Godalming, and had flown out to join them. She had broken her journey on the way to see her husband’s war grave in the Middle East, and had been run over by a bus and fatally injured in Cairo (just one of the maddening incidents that seemed to bedevil anyone connected with Houston’s story). The girl had divorced her husband in 1958 on the grounds of drunkenness and infidelity, but had apparently stayed on in New Zealand; exactly where, and doing what, we had not been able to discover. Advertisements under box numbers in the Auckland Star, Wellington Dominion and Christ- church Press (booked, according to Underwood’s notes, to run once a week until 31 March) had not so far brought any result.

  Even more maddening was the fate of the only other living English person to have been involved in Houston’s peculiar adventure. Underwood had seen ‘Wister’ in a mental home near Hull (where his wife worked as a secretary); he had gone for a walk in the grounds with the pair of them. Wister had worn a big trilby hat and a muffler, and had enjoyed himself for much of the time by sliding about on the icy paths. He was quite harmless, had been released by the Chinese at the same time as Sheila Wolferston (January 1951) and flown home immediately. He had nothing whatever to say. His wife said he would often have very talkative days, but had never to her knowledge, or that of his doctor, even so much as mentioned Tibet.

  Sheila Wolferston had been to see him twice in his first year at the home, and another old colleague had visited him also. He hadn’t recognized either of them. His wife was getting a small pension for him from the firm, and Underwood gathered that her principal interest in seeing him was a discreet curiosity to learn if any more money would be forthcoming. Miss Wolferston had, it seemed, mentioned that steps were being taken to coax the insurance company into making an ex-gratia payment. (It didn’t, relying on the ‘war’ clause in the policy.)

  She knew that Meiklejohn and Houston’s brother had been killed ‘while escaping’, and that Houston himself had been badly injured. (Her impression was that he had been released at the same time as her husband.) Miss Wolferston had spoken very little of their dreadful experiences in Tibet, and she had not pressed her.

  Nobody seemed to have pressed Miss Wolferston. Underwood had tracked down a married c
ousin in Beckenham, some tennis friends in Richmond, some work friends, even a couple of old school friends. Few of them had heard of Houston, and none of his curious role in the monastery or of the treasure.

  All this had begun to acquire a somewhat sinister aspect. I went glumly off to lunch.

  2

  Mr Oliphant’s main preoccupation of recent weeks had been the composition of a Founder’s Statement for his bequest. He was still at it when I arrived, polishing away with all the lapidary zeal that had formerly gone into his primer. A good deal of buttering-up had been necessary lately to support his precarious spirits, and as soon as I opened the door and could see that he was actually conscious, I said vigorously, ‘Well, Mr Oliphant! You’re looking in splendid form today.’

  ‘Am I, dear boy? It must be,’ he said, writing busily, ‘because I have arrived – one can only hope – at a definitive version. Listen to this.’

  He read out his definitive version, in Latin and then English.

  ‘The translation is a bit free, but it seems to me – I don’t know – rather more succinct?’

  ‘Very much more. Pithy.’

  ‘And yet not without a touch of humour.’

  ‘A strong touch. Mordant, I would say.’

  ‘Mordant,’ Mr Oliphant said, pleased. ‘Yes. I’m glad it comes through. Sit down, my dear fellow. What is your special news?’

  I sat down.

  ‘I’m afraid it isn’t very good. Bourgès-Vallerin won’t take it on.’

  ‘Oh,’ Mr Oliphant said, heavily.

  ‘His reasons seem fairly convincing.’

  ‘What are they?’

  I told him the professor’s reasons.

  ‘I’ve brought you a copy of the sum of our researches to date. You’ll see there are still rather a lot of gaps in it.’

  ‘There is still nothing from Miss Wolferston?’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘This is what I find the hardest to understand,’ said Mr Oliphant. ‘She is a most punctilious, devoted sort of girl. She was in and out of the flat constantly. She used to rub my chest!’

  ‘Perhaps she hasn’t seen the adverts. Not everyone reads them. She might have changed her name, too.’

  ‘I think if you had phrased it differently. If you had suggested that Houston needed help.’

  ‘Well. We can try it,’ I said, and made a note. ‘I had a letter from Scarborough, incidentally, last week – from the agent who sold him the house.’

  ‘Scarborough?’

  ‘Scarborough, Tobago. You’ll remember Houston went there in 1958. Apparently he paid off his house staff several months ago and the place has been unoccupied ever since. It’s in a spot called Rum Bay – a fine beach and nothing much else, one of the speculators’ paradises out there. The agent has had no instructions to sell it.’

  ‘What is his view?’

  ‘He didn’t offer one.’

  It had taken me long enough to find him. I had written first to the Governor of Trinidad, who had passed my letter on to his Colonial Secretary, who had sent it to the UnderSecretary for Tobago. He had in turn put me on to a Mr Joshua Gundala, O.B.E., who apparently lived on the island and combined the function of publisher of the weekly Tobago Times with that of estate agent. It was Mr Gundala who had sold Houston the house. His letter-heading announced that he had several other choice lots to sell in Rum Bay.

  ‘He has no theory at all?’

  ‘Except that Houston must have left the island, no.’

  ‘Then mine is almost certainly right,’ said Mr Oliphant.

  Mr Oliphant’s theory was that Houston had bought a boat and gone off in it. He had done this once before without telling anybody, and had not returned for nine months. It seemed hard for him to settle. He had lived in Switzerland, Bermuda, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, and now Tobago. Or was it now Tobago? It was because of this doubt that I was still advertising in the Trinidad Guardian, which circulated widely in the Caribbean.

  Under the terms of his contract, Mr Oliphant had the right to approve our choice of writer, and he came up presently with a suggestion.

  ‘The great thing is that we must not have either vulgarity or sensationalism. If you asked this Dr Roy something that called for a lengthy statement, you might be able to judge from his method and style how he would work out.’

  ‘Yes. We might.’ It was after five by this time, and we had not yet got to The List – a catalogue of queries that I had been systematically working through with him. He seemed alert enough, however. I decided to try a couple.

  ‘I thought we might tackle this one about the monk – the chief medical monk. I’ve got here “Did Houston ever evince any theory why the man turned traitor?”’

  ‘Traitor,’ Mr Oliphant said. ‘I suppose it depends which way you look at it. He was a doctor, quite a good one by all accounts, and I think the Chinese represented progress to him. He wasn’t alone, you know, in that. The greater part of the intelligentsia wanted reforms of one sort or another, and they thought, mistakenly, that the Chinese would bring them. … Perhaps it annoyed him to know that so much money was lying about in the form of useless emeralds when the country needed real hospitals and real equipment.’

  ‘Yes. How could he have known how much money? You’ll remember the governor told Houston that nobody knew this except the monastery council.’

  ‘Ah. Well. I think the answer to that goes back to the time of the Seventeenth Body. You’ll recall she was a lady of immoderate passions, and that the abbot had an unfortunate time with her one year. He had to be carried away and was delirious for a week. The monk looked after him for that week. I expect he let something slip. … It doesn’t seem to you convincing?’ he said anxiously.

  ‘Oh, yes. Yes, it does,’ I said, scribbling. I suppose I must up to that time have read through the notebooks a couple of dozen times, but never, apparently with the talmudic skill that Mr Oliphant had brought to bear. A supplementary had occurred to me while he was speaking.

  ‘You’ll remember Houston got half a million pounds for his two bags, and was told they were worth double. That would seem to give the eight bags a total value of four million pounds.’

  ‘So why did the Tibetans value them at three, you mean? I’m sure I don’t know. Perhaps Houston was given wrong information. Perhaps the cost of living had gone up. I’ve never understood how they could have got them valued, anyway. Perhaps it was done simply by weight and they merely adjusted the value from time to time. No. Sorry. …’

  The agent had been fairly lavish with his wine and brandy at lunch and my head began to ache on the way back. Through Croydon there was the most enormous traffic jam, and hemmed in by Mac Fisheries vans and British Road Services lorries I had a sudden moment of panic. She-devils? Incarnations? Monastery treasure? What in God’s name had I let the firm in for? There was no Houston, no Sheila Wolferston. The nurse Michaelson had married knew nothing, the bank in Zürich would say nothing. Portugal seemed to be full of men called Da Costa, none of whom seemed anxious to reply to our adverts. They were booked to run for weeks and weeks. … It suddenly occurred to me with what ease, with what creative ease, Mr Oliphant had answered the question about the monk.

  With sudden awful conviction I knew that from beginning to end the story was a phoney; that we were never going to hear anything more of Houston. …

  I had left a book at the office on which an opinion had been promised for the following day, so I had to go back to get it. Everyone had gone but I let myself in and went up. There was a letter on my desk with a note from Miss Marks. The postmark was Trinidad, and because the inquiries clerk had thought it another bill from the Guardian it had been sent in error to the accounts department. It wasn’t a bill. The single sheet inside bore no name and no address. It said simply:

  Dear Sir,

  If you’re interested in the whereabouts of Mr Houston try asking Joshua Gundala, O.B.E., how his lunkies are doing lately. The Tobago Times won’t tell you.

&nb
sp; 3

  February and March are busy months in publishing offices and mercifully, in the press of work, there was little time to reflect on Houston and his problems. Beyond writing to Dr Shankar Lal Roy, and to Joshua Gundala, O.B.E. (quoting my correspondent and his baffling lunkies – about which neither the O.E.D., Dictionary of Slang, nor Colonial Office Press Section was very informative) I did nothing further about them. Paradoxically, things then began to happen.

  The first was a reply from Dr Shankar Lal Roy, saying that he had himself started a dossier on the Yamdring treasure, on the basis of refugee reports obtained in 1951, and that he would be happy to help.

  The second was from Joshua Gundala, O.B.E. He wrote:

  I thank you for your letter of 27th February, the contents of which I note. It is great nonsense, and I think I know who has told you this. However, to cast light on the situation and get definite information for you about Mr Houston I will go myself personally to Rum Bay and will keep you fully informed.

  The third, one of a batch of memos from T.L., who was in New York, was less good. I had not been keeping him in touch with our quest for trustworthy indpt confmn of the facts, and my heart sank as I read it.

  TIBET BOOK. Harpers v. keen, will advance – dollars, sight unseen, also much foreign and paperback interest. No reason why we shd not agent this & collect the commission to offset costs. Pl. get O’s agreement & advise by rtn.

  The fourth was not good at all.

  I said with mild panic, ‘Miss Marks, get on to Worplesdon and say I’d like to come down this afternoon,’ and watched while she did so. I was thus able to see her face change and to appreciate why.

  I said, ‘When was it?’

  ‘Half past eight this morning. He never woke up.’

  Father Harris took the service, and afterwards over a cup of tea I explained the position to him. He took it very calmly.

  ‘My boy, you worry too much. I’ve noticed it before. Why not leave everything in God’s hands?’

  ‘I wish I could, Father. The snag is it’s in ours at the moment. I’m in the unenviable position of being publisher, agent and trustee of a piece of literary property about which I entertain the gravest doubts.’