Khushwant Singh's Book of Unforgettable Women

by Khushwant Singh

  It was a few days later that I discovered her identity. The lady who came to clean my flat also did the other two apartments. One morning I casually asked her about the occupant of the top flat. ‘That be Miss Dawson,’ she replied, ‘Jennifer Dawson, pretty as a picture she is. And very very nice too. She gave me two free tickets to her show. She’s got a very small role. But mark my words, she’ll go far. One day I’ll be proud of having worked for her.’

  Thereafter I kept a lookout for the last bus which stopped by my apartment. And soon got to recognize the pair of shapely legs that alighted and then took their owner up the steps.

  One Sunday morning I contrived to make her acquaintance. I had noted that she went to the mid-morning service, and since there was no show on Sundays, spent the afternoons at home, presumably washing her clothes. As soon as I heard her footsteps coming down, I came out of my apartment. She extended her hand and said, ‘We are neighbours but we have never met. I am Jennifer Dawson. Mrs Markham has told me you are Mr Singh. Nice to meet you.’

  I took her proffered hand and replied, ‘Mrs Markham told me you were pretty, but not how pretty you were. I am honoured living beneath a famous actress.’

  ‘Famous my foot!’ she said with a laugh. ‘I am only a miserable extra. If you want to see how extra I am, I will be happy to give you a ticket for the show. That’s the only thing I can afford; I get it free.’

  I opened the front door for her and asked, ‘Can I drop you anywhere? I have nothing much to do except take my car for an airing.’

  She looked at my chariot-sized limousine. ‘Cor blimey! Must drink up gas by the gallon! I am going to the church round the corner, I don’t mind being driven in your American Rolls-Royce.’

  I dropped her at the church. ‘I can pick you up on my way back; how long will the service last?’ I asked.

  ‘You are most kind!’ she replied. ‘I should be through in an hour. Sure you don’t mind?’

  ‘On this fine Sabbath morning I have nothing whatsoever to do save eat the English air. Allah is in His heaven and all’s right with the world.’

  I went back to my apartment to freshen up and was back outside the church. I switched on the radio. I was lucky. It was Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the only piece of Western classical music I was familiar with. It was coming across in all its mellifluous beauty.

  She was among the first to step out of the church. She shook hands with the vicar and ran towards the car. She certainly was a beauty: hazel-brown hair tumbling down on her shoulders, broad forehead, large brown eyes. lovely neck and as shapely a figure as you would see in a Miss Universe beauty contest. Beethoven’s magic worked. ‘Let’s not go home till the symphony is over,’ she pleaded.

  I drove slowly round the heath, along Spaniard’s Inn Road and the Vale of Heath. She kept humming softly to herself and tossing her head to the music, completely oblivious of my presence. We were passing Keats’ Grove when the symphony reached its climactic end. ‘That was wonderful,’ she sighed. ‘Thank you ever so much for indulging me. I have wasted all your precious morning.’

  ‘It was a pleasure,’ I replied. ‘I wish you would waste more of them. I get awfully lonely having no one to talk to except Mrs Markham and my secretary for a few minutes every day. The rest of the time, it is books. And silence.’

  She did not rise to the bait. Nor accept my invitation to have a bite with me before she went up. ‘Who will do all my laundry and ironing, write my weekly letter to Ma and cook my supper? Thanks for a wonderful time,’ she patted me on the shoulder and ran upstairs.

  Next Sunday I slipped a note under her door inviting her for a drink in the evening after she had done her Sunday chores. She did not send a reply but as it turned dark and the street lights came on, I heard her footsteps come down the stairs and a gentle tap on my door. I leapt up from my chair to welcome her. ‘It is very thoughtful of you to have invited me,’ she said. She looked around the dimly-lit room with only one table lamp above my armchair. I switched on the room light and went to help her take off her overcoat. ‘It’s freezing cold. Don’t mind if I keep it on?’ she asked.

  Mrs Markham always laid coal in the grate. I took a bottle of gin and splashed it over the heap and threw a lighted match on it. The grate exploded into a blue flame and soon we had a blazing fire going. ‘How extravagant can one be!’ she exclaimed. ‘Never heard of anyone lighting fire with gin.’

  ‘Duty-free diplomatic privilege,’ I replied. ‘Costs me very little and is quicker than newspapers or wood chips. What would you like, Scotch, sherry, gin, vodka, champagne?’

  She slipped her overcoat off her shoulders and warmed her hands before the grate. ‘If you are flush with liquor, I would not mind some champagne,’ she replied.

  I got a bottle of Mouton Rothschild from the freezer, uncorked it with professional skill and poured the frothing, bubbling liquor into the best cut glasses I had. I raised mine and proposed the toast, ‘To the most beautiful girl in the world!’ Her face flushed with pleasure as she raised her glass and replied, ‘To the world’s nicest old man and the greatest liar.’

  She curled up in an armchair and sipped champagne; I replenished her glass several times. The fire in the grate glowed on her face and lit the curls in her hair. ‘Jennifer, you must have lots of admirers and boyfriends,’ I said.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ she asked.

  ‘Now you are fishing. Your mirror must tell you why, every time you look into it.’

  ‘You are nice!’ she replied. ‘Believe it or not, I have never had any boyfriends. Admirers, yes. A few. They pay me compliments. And that’s that.’

  I paid her more compliments. Quoted lines I knew of English poets in praise of beautiful women. She listened with a distant look in her eyes gazing into the embers of coal glowing in the grate. I put on music. She shut her eyes.

  I made sandwiches and coffee and brought them on a tray for her. I gently tapped her on the shoulder. ‘Asleep?’

  She woke with a start. ‘Not really. Daydreaming to the music. I should have been doing all that, not you,’ she said looking at the tray. ‘You are spoiling me.’

  We ate our sandwiches and drank our coffee in silence. I felt her questioning large eyes fixed on me. Could I dare make an advance? No, she was too beautiful for the likes of me and I did not want to lose her friendship by taking a false step. After a while she stood up. ‘I don’t want to go but I must drag myself away. Beauty sleep and all that—can’t afford to look dowdy on the stage.’ She gave me a peck on my nose. ‘Thank you for a wonderful, wonderful evening.’ She left and shut the door behind her.

  I had established a rapport, proved that I was a gentleman who would not take unwelcome liberties with her. The rest I would leave to time. And her. I changed my working hours to suit hers.

  Every night she came back from the theatre, I had the fire lit, a bottle of champagne in the freezer, sandwiches on a tray and a steaming pot of hot coffee. She had her nightcap with me. We spent our Sundays together. She told me that she went to church because she had nothing better to do and much preferred to drive out to the country, walk in the woods and end the Sabbath by my fireside. We did Kenwood and Kew, Burnham Beeches and the Cotswolds and Stratford-on-Avon. I got no closer to her than I had on the first evening.

  Then an old friend from my college days in Lahore arrived in London. He had very little money and gratefully accepted my invitation to stay with me. He was a small, effeminate Sardarji whose chief qualification was being a good listener. No one would suspect him of a being a ladies’ man or regard him as a rival. I told him about Jennifer, her goddess-like aloofness, and cautioned him to treat her with respect.

  The first time they met he was on his best behaviour. She gave him a ticket for her show. They came back together. I was happy they had hit it off. The following Sunday I asked a few Indian friends we had known in Lahore and their wives, for drinks. Needless to say, Jennifer was the main attraction. And a great success. She played the hostess and
talked to all the women. From the way my guests looked at me I could sense that they felt Jennifer was my woman and that I had something very good going for me while my family was away. I did not want to disabuse them.

  The party went on late into the night with vast quantities of Scotch and champagne going down their gullets. Everyone was in high spirits, particularly my house guest who took more than his share of liquor. Around midnight, the guests departed, leaving Jennifer and the Sardarji with me. They relaxed in their armchairs while I removed empty glasses and ashtrays. My Sardarji friend planted himself on the carpet beside Jennifer’s feet, looking soulfully at her with his large cocker-spaniel eyes. He rested his head against her thighs and began stroking her shapely legs.

  ‘Please tell your friend to behave himself,’ said Jennifer to me. I spoke to him in Punjabi. He was too far gone to listen to me in any language. Jennifer got up from her chair and sat down in another. After a while, the Sardarji hauled himself up, planted himself on the arm of the same chair and began stroking Jennifer’s hair. I spoke more sharply this time. It was of no use. ‘Jennifer, I think you should go to your apartment,’ I suggested.

  Jennifer only changed her chair. The Sardarji followed her and resumed his ministrations. I lost my temper. ‘For God’s sake, stop pestering Jennifer! You are drunk. You had better go to bed.’

  He took no notice of me. It became like a game of hide-and-seek between the two, with me playing the role of a referee.

  Neither took my advice to retire to their respective beds. Then in the game of chase, the Sardarji slipped and fell. His turban came off and he was sick all over my carpet. I was very angry, Jennifer apologized and left. I went off to my bedroom and left my house guest wallowing in his vomit.

  The next morning I told my Sardarji friend to find lodgings elsewhere. He left without protest or apology. I wrote a note to Jennifer, apologizing for his behaviour and hoping that she would not drop me because of what had happened. I thought it best not to leave my door open to welcome her when she returned from the theatre, and instead let her, if she wanted, knock at my door. I found a note from her telling me not to worry. But she did not knock at my door. Night after night I saw her legs as she alighted from the bus, heard the click of the lock opening the front door and her footsteps going up the stairs. I felt let down and punished for no fault of mine. And lonely. I could not concentrate on my work. My peace of mind was gone. I felt that if I met my Sardarji friend again, I would punch him in the nose for what he had done by ruining a beautiful friendship.

  Came next Sunday. Bright and sunny with peals of church bells from distant spires, the loudest being from ‘Jennifer’s “round the corner”’. I could not contain myself any more. I decided to go up to her bed-sitting room apartment—she had never invited me—and take her out for a drive into the country as we had done in the past. I was sure she would relent and make up.

  I went up the dark stairway to the top floor. Beside the doorbell was a strip of paper with the name ‘Jennifer Dawson’ on it. I rang the bell. I heard Jennifer’s voice shouting, ‘See who it is! May be a telegram or something.’ The door opened. Facing me stood my Sardarji friend in his pyjamas.

  Lady Mohan Lal

  Sir Mohan Lal looked at himself in the mirror of a first class waiting room at the railway station. The mirror was obviously made in India. The red oxide on its back had come off at several places and long lines of translucent glass cut across its surface. Sir Mohan smiled at the mirror with an air of pity and patronage.

  ‘You are so very much like everything else in this country; inefficient, dirty, indifferent,’ he murmured.

  The mirror smiled back at Sir Mohan.

  ‘You are a bit of all right, old chap,’ it said. ‘Distinguished, efficient—even handsome. That neatly-trimmed moustache, the suit from Saville Row with the carnation in the buttonhole, the aroma of eau de Cologne, talcum powder and scented soap all about you! Yes, old fellow, you are a bit of all right.’

  Sir Mohan threw out his chest, smoothed his Balliol tie for the umpteenth time and waved a goodbye to the mirror.

  He glanced at his watch. There was still time for a quick one.

  ‘Koi Hai!’

  A bearer in white livery appeared through a wire gauze door.

  ‘Ek Chota,’ ordered Sir Mohan, and sank into a large cane chair to drink and ruminate.

  Outside the waiting room, Sir Mohan Lal’s luggage lay piled along the wall. On a small grey steel trunk Lachmi, Lady Mohan Lal, sat chewing a betel leaf and fanning herself with a newspaper. She was short and fat and in her mid-forties. She wore a dirty white sari with a red border. On one side of her nose glistened a diamond nose pin, and she had several gold bangles on her arms. She had been talking to the bearer until Sir Mohan had summoned him inside. As soon as he had gone, she hailed a passing railway coolie.

  ‘Where does the zenana stop?’

  ‘Right at the end of the platform.’

  The coolie flattened his turban to make a cushion, hoisted the steel trunk on his head, and moved down the platform. Lady Lal picked up her brass tiffin carrier and ambled along behind him. On the way she stopped by a hawker’s stall to replenish her silver betel leaf case, and then joined the coolie. She sat down on her steel trunk (which the coolie had put down) and started talking to him.

  ‘Are the trains very crowded on these lines?’

  ‘These days all trains are crowded, but you’ll find room in the zenana.’

  ‘Then I might as well get over the bother of eating.’

  Lady Lal opened the brass carrier and took out a bundle of cramped chapattis and some mango pickle. While she ate, the coolie sat opposite her on his haunches, drawing lines in the gravel with his finger.

  ‘Are you travelling alone, sister?’

  ‘No, I am with my master. He is in the waiting room. He travels first class. He is a vizier and a barrister, and meets so many officers and Englishmen on the trains—and I am only a native woman. I can’t understand English and don’t know their ways, so I keep to my zenana inter-class.’

  Lachmi chatted away merrily. She was fond of a little gossip and had no one to talk to at home. Her husband never had any time to spare for her. She lived in the upper storey of the house, and he, on the ground floor. He did not like her poor illiterate relatives hanging about his bungalow, so they never came. He came up to her once in a while at night and stayed for a few minutes. He just ordered her about in anglicized Hindustani, and she obeyed passively. These nocturnal visits had, however, borne no fruit.

  The signal came down and the clanging of the bell announced the approaching train. Lady Lal hurriedly finished off her meal. She got up, still licking the stone of the pickled mango. She emitted a long, loud belch as she went to the public tap to rinse her mouth and wash her hands. After washing she dried her mouth and hands with the loose end of her sari, and walked back to her steel trunk, belching and thanking the gods for the favour of a filling meal.

  The train steamed in. Lachmi found herself facing an almost empty inter-class zenana compartment next to the guard’s van at the tail end of the train. The rest of the train was packed. She heaved her squat, bulky frame through the door and found a seat by the window. She produced a two-anna bit from a knot in her sari and dismissed the coolie. She then opened her betel case and made herself two betel leaves charged with a red and white paste, minced betel nuts and cardamoms. These she thrust into her mouth till her cheeks bulged on both sides. Then she rested her chin on her hands and sat gazing idly at the jostling crowd on the platform.

  The arrival of the train did not disturb Sir Mohan Lal’s sangfroid. He continued to sip his Scotch and ordered the bearer to tell him when he had moved the luggage to a first class compartment. Excitement, bustle, and hurry were exhibitions of bad breeding, and Sir Mohan was eminently well bred. He wanted everything ‘ticketyboo’ and orderly. In his five years abroad, Sir Mohan had acquired the manners and attitudes of the upper classes. He rarely spoke Hindustani
. When he did, it was like an Englishman’s—only the very necessary words, and properly anglicized. But he fancied his English, finished and refined at no less a place than the University of Oxford. He was fond of conversation, and like a cultured Englishman, he could talk on almost any subject—books, politics, people. How frequently had he heard English people say that he spoke like an Englishman!

  Sir Mohan wondered whether he would be travelling alone. It was a Cantonment and some English officers might be on the train. His heart warmed at the prospect of an impressive conversation. He never showed any sign of eagerness to talk to the English as most Indians did. Nor was he loud, aggressive and opinionated like them. He went about his business with an expressionless matter-of-factness. He would retire to his corner by the window and get out a copy of The Times. He would fold it in a way in which the name of the paper was visible to others while he did the crossword puzzle. The Times always attracted attention. Someone would like to borrow it when he put it aside with a gesture signifying ‘I’ve finished with it.’ Perhaps someone would recognize his Balliol tie which he always wore while travelling. That would open a vista leading to a fairyland of Oxford colleges, masters, dons, tutors, boat races and rugger matches. If both The Times and the tie failed, Sir Mohan would ‘Koi Hai!’ his bearer to get the Scotch out. Whisky never failed with Englishmen. Then followed Sir Mohan’s handsome gold cigarette case filled with English cigarettes. English cigarettes in India? How on earth did he get them? Sure he didn’t mind? And Sir Mohan’s understanding smile—of course he didn’t. But could he use the Englishman as a medium to commune with his dear old England? Those five years of grey bags and gowns, of sports blazers and mixed doubles, of dinners at the Inns of Court and nights with Piccadilly prostitutes. Five years of a crowded glorious life. Worth far more than the forty-five in India with his dirty, vulgar countrymen, with sordid details of the road to success, of nocturnal visits to the upper storey and all-too-brief sexual acts with obese old Lachmi smelling of sweat and raw onions.