by Paul Scott
But when she had a sheet of writing paper squared up on the blotter and her Waterman fountain pen poised (it was one that was filled through a rubber top on the ink bottle into which the pen was inserted and pumped with a motion whose faint indelicacy was a constant source of slight embarrassment to her) she was aware of being about to project her thoughts not to one of the many people to whom she was in the habit of writing but into that deep that darkness was once said to be upon.
And suddenly she felt what she had felt once or twice before in Ranpur, the presence of a curious emanation, of a sickness, a kind of nausea that was not hers but someone else’s; and sat stock still as she might if there was something dangerous in the room whose attention it would be foolhardy to attract. On the earlier occasions she had attributed the emanation to some quality of atmosphere in the Ranpur bungalow and so it surprised her to encounter it again. She felt instinctively that if the sickness touched her she would faint. And then she might come to with Mabel Layton standing over her telling her that Aziz had found her unconscious clutching a piece of paper on which she had written, ‘Dear . . . ’ and no more.
‘And that of course would be the end,’ she said aloud in a normal conversational tone so that the emanation could observe that she was not bothered by it. ‘Mrs Layton would quite ignore my assurance that there was nothing wrong with me and that there was no need to send for a doctor. I’d be off out of here and popped into a hospital bed as quick as winking. But I’m not ill. There’s illness in the room but it isn’t my illness.’
She gripped the edges of the desk and hoped she wasn’t due to become a visionary. ‘At my age! I mean how awfully disagreeable, not to say inconvenient.’ She gripped the edges so hard that her palms hurt. Cautiously she removed her hands and was relieved to find nothing scored in the flesh that bore any resemblance to the stigmata.
‘Whatever it is or whoever you are who isn’t feeling up to par,’ she said, having lost her fear of the emanation, ‘I’m awfully sorry but there’s nothing I can do for you, so please go away. Preferably in search of the Lord.’
She waited and felt the room return to normal.
‘I’ve seen it off,’ she thought. And at once thought of the person she should write to. She recovered her fountain pen, inscribed the date, October 9th, 1939, and wrote ‘Dear Edwina,’ and then found herself stuck for words, a rare event but an effect that Edwina Crane had always had on her. Edwina was the woman Barbie succeeded at Muzzafirabad and to Barbie she remained the heroine of a quarter of a century ago when alone, with the children cowering behind her in the schoolroom, she stood valiantly in the open doorway, at the height of serious civil disturbances, facing a gang of crazed and angry Muslims who had come to burn the mission down, and told them to be off; which they were (so the story went) in a subdued and silly-looking bunch, whereupon Miss Crane, leaving the door open because it was very hot, returned to the dais and continued the lesson as if she had just said no to an undeserving case of begging; a lesson that no doubt centred upon the picture she was reputed to have put to such brilliant use as an aid to teaching the English language that Barbie had never dared attempt emulation but had introduced instead First Steps in Bible Reading and taught from this, almost literally in the shadow of the picture which hung on the wall behind the dais.
This picture, of which she had a miniature copy among the relics in her trunk, a coloured engraving showing Queen Victoria receiving tribute from representatives of her Indian empire, had originally aroused in Barbie a faint dislike which she had prayed to be purged of because she guessed it was not the picture but Miss Crane for whom the dislike was felt, and at that time she had not even met the woman. Edwina had gone from Muzzafirabad before Barbie arrived to take her place. But spiritually she was very much still there, in the picture behind Barbie and in the minds of the little boys and girls who faced her, challenging her to do half as well for them. And Mr Cleghorn had a tendency to make comparisons between Barbie’s methods and Miss Crane’s.
Miss Crane, she was told, had been presented with a large gilt-framed replica of the picture as a memorial of her Muzzafirabad appointment and heroic stand, which even the civil and military authorities had applauded. When Barbie was posted away south scarcely a year after taking the appointment up she was given a miniature of the same picture, as if it would do her good to have a permanent reminder of her lesser merits. Possibly her expression when receiving it had stayed in Mr Cleghorn’s mind and penetrated the mists of mildness in which he normally existed to the clearer brighter region where his deeper conscience lay, because he wrote to her in Madras: ‘You had a difficult, perhaps impossible task. It was one Miss Crane envisaged for herself, which is why she asked to be sent elsewhere. She hated to be a heroine. She said the children had stopped giving her their attention, their eyes being on that doorway, anticipating the reappearance of the mob, for her to quell once more with that look, that flow of words. Perhaps I should have explained this to you. Your successor will have a comparatively easy task. The children have lost the sharpness of their adulation of Miss Crane in the process of comparing Miss Crane with Miss Batchelor. And so young Miss Smithers stands a chance of being compared with no one, but of being accepted for what she is. Life will be duller, but we can all get on with the work we are supposed to be doing.’
‘I was the guinea-pig,’ Barbie thought, with her pen still poised and the letter to Edwina still not advanced beyond the salutation. ‘I suppose I resented it, but it was a revelation to know that Edwina had taken her work so seriously that she would not stay in Muzzafirabad. I suppose up until then I’d assumed that she grabbed promotion as her right and went off consciously trailing clouds of glory for me to step on at my peril. The truth was quite otherwise. When I met her at last her modesty was an inspiration to me. She hated being reminded. She has buried herself in her work since and has sought out the most difficult and unpopular, indeed dangerous posts. God is truly with her.’
She wrote: ‘It seems ages since we were in touch,’ and continued in the rather flat and mundane style that often seemed to impose itself, like a bridle on her thoughts, when writing to Edwina, just as when meeting her every couple of years or so at major mission conferences an uncharacteristic inarticulacy dammed the free flow of her speech. At their last meeting, in 1938, she could have sworn that momentarily Edwina had not recognized her and that when she did their shared recollection of Muzzafirabad was felt by Edwina to be a greater impediment than ever to conversation.
Now, before sealing the letter, she checked her address book and the last issue of the mission’s quarterly magazine to make sure she had not overlooked a note about a new appointment. She had not; her address book was correct. She inscribed the envelope: Miss Edwina Crane, Superintendent’s Bungalow, The Bishop Barnard Protestant Schools Mission, Mayapore.
Aziz announced lunch.
She went into the living-room prepared to find more guests, casual callers-in whose real purpose was to sum up and later advise Mabel Layton whether her prospective p.g. was up to snuff. But Mabel was alone, presiding over the tray – a decanter of sherry and two glasses. No one had come to lunch. This seemed especially significant as though a point of no return had been reached.
When the meal was over she and Mabel parted, ostensibly to sleep; and for a while Barbie tried. She stretched herself full-length on the bed with her arms at her sides and her eyes shut, counting the tufts of an imaginary dandelion clock which she blew at rhythmically, puffing out her lips in the manner of someone happily dozing. She often recommended it to friends as an association of ideas more effective than counting sheep; but this afternoon the dandelion clock she had conjured was a tough proposition. Not a tuft stirred. Try (she told it) try to be more co-operative; waft, waft, waft away, as I huff and I puff. She replaced the obstinate dandelion with the image of a yellow rose. She stopped blowing and took in slow methodical lungsful of air and scent and then sat up to guard against being overcome by something inexpressible which
seemed to be connected with the whole of her life in India.
The house was soundless and the world outside the window was full of bones.
She left her room and went out to the back verandah.
‘Oh, you’re up too, Mrs Layton,’ she said in her best elocutionary voice. ‘I do admire your industry. And how worth while it is.’
She gazed at the potted shrubs on the balustrade and at the garden with its immaculately cut lawn in which oval and rectangular beds of roses were set to provide infinite pleasure to the eye, rest to the mind and balm to the soul. Beyond the lawn and the bordering shrubs where the garden ended the land fell away, and rose again several miles distant in pine-capped hills from which scented breezes always seemed to whisper. And more distant yet were the higher hills and the celestial range of mountain peaks.
She looked at Mabel Layton again but Mrs Layton was still working at a pot of cuttings. Barbie was upset by this unexpected and total disregard. Dejected, she sat on one of the three wicker chairs that were set round the verandah table, kept an eye open and a smile ready for the moment when Mrs Layton abandoned her work and came to join her. She examined her conscience but found no special cause for blame in her behaviour that morning. On the other hand it wasn’t Mrs Layton’s fault if she found her an unsuitable companion. In her oddly withdrawn way Mrs Layton had been meticulous about arrangements for her guest’s comfort. But clearly in Mrs Layton’s view theirs were not complementary temperaments. She had probably never had a paying-guest in her life and was bound to find it difficult to open her lovely home to a stranger. It must be companionship, not money, Mrs Layton needed and she probably already regretted putting the advertisement in the paper. She may since have heard of someone more likely to fit in – an old army friend for instance – but felt in honour bound to stand by her suggestion that Barbie should spend her holiday in Pankot. Perhaps – and Barbie felt a sympathetic twinge of understanding – Mrs Layton was steeling herself to say that there could be no permanent arrangement. Barbie was not sure whether to be glad or sorry. When she and Mrs Layton were alone they seemed to get on together well enough and she was already in love with the bungalow and garden, its views of the outside world, and ready to love it more, aware that in coming here she had been afforded a glimpse of something life had denied her but which she was not unfitted for, having prayed for it once in a different form: tranquillity of mind and nature. That, perhaps, she would never achieve but there was a sense of tranquillity here, of serenity, which someone like herself might enter and be touched by, lightly if not deeply.
And watching Mabel Layton busy with the plant pots she had the feeling that Mabel had not entered it yet herself, not fully, but was trying to and finding it difficult to do so alone. ‘We could have helped each other,’ Barbie thought, ‘but I’m a disappointment to her. I’m simply not her kind of person. She must know I’m here on the verandah but is pretending not to and hardening her heart to tell me the room will not be vacant after all.’
She stared hard at Mrs Layton’s back, attempting telepathic persuasion to make her turn round and come out with it so that they would both know where they stood and the uncertainty could be ended. She saw Mabel hesitate. The busy probing fingers were suddenly still. For a few seconds it seemed that the fingers and arms stiffened to support weight. Then one hand was removed from the plant pot and placed on her chest near the base of the throat, and for a while she seemed to look at the garden as if struck by an idea about it.
Barbie got to her feet, moved forward a bit, and thought that Mabel wasn’t looking at the garden at all. Her eyes were open but on her face was an expression of the most profound resignation Barbie had ever seen.
‘Mrs Layton? Are you all right?’
Barbie spoke distinctly and calmly but her object of letting Mrs Layton know that assistance was at hand if needed was not achieved. The other woman stayed in that position of remarkable stillness and slowly it was borne in on Barbie that whatever else was the matter with Mabel Layton that caused her to stand as if waiting for some kind of pain to go away, she was deaf. She hadn’t heard Barbie come out and hadn’t heard her speak.
‘Mrs Layton?’
The other woman glanced round.
‘Are you all right?’ Barbie repeated, going nearer, involuntarily putting out her hand as if to take Mabel’s arm.
‘Oh –’ Mabel said; then removed her hand from her breast and touched Barbie’s arm: a reversal of roles. ‘Couldn’t you sleep? I don’t blame you. It’s such a lovely afternoon.’
She hadn’t heard or understood the question. But she hadn’t been startled. The touch was scarcely more than a sketch of one and she was now busy again with the earth in the pot of cuttings, tamping it down.
‘Actually,’ she said, talking to Barbie via the plant pot, ‘I seldom have forty winks after lunch so don’t feel you have to if you find it difficult. I don’t suppose you’re used to it either.’
She moved on to the next pot and did something expert with a pruning knife. ‘I ought to have done these this morning,’ she said, ‘but we were interrupted again. I suppose it’s wrong of me to worry but there aren’t usually quite so many visitors. I expect you’ve realized they mostly come to satisfy their curiosity. We get the Ranpur papers up here and everyone saw my advertisement. What worries me a bit is that after a while when they’ve got used to the idea there’ll be days when nobody comes at all and then you’d think it rather dull I dare say. You’re used to lots of people around you, I imagine, and I expect you enjoy it. I’m not and don’t particularly. I’d say I’ve become something of a recluse but of course that’s not possible in India, for us. Even when we’re alone we’re on show, aren’t we, representing something? That’s why I can’t stop people turning up. They come to make sure I’m still here and that we’re all representing it together. But I go out as little as possible, in company I mean. I wonder if you’ll be happy here?’
‘Yes, I see. I quite understand,’ Barbie murmured.
‘What?’
‘I said I quite understand.’
Mabel had stopped potting and was staring at Barbie who under the weight of that resigned expression began to feel that she understood nothing. Her smile of assumed cheerfulness made her mouth as awkward to bear as something God had added to her in a fit of creative absent-mindedness.
‘Oh, no,’ Mabel said, ‘I don’t think you do. I meant that if you decide to stay I want you to feel that Rose Cottage is your home as well as mine and that you could have as many friends here as you care to make and go out as often as you wish, without bothering about me or whether I joined in or not. I know it’s selfish of me to ask someone as gregarious as I believe you are to live here. On the other hand it would be disastrous to share the place with someone as selfish as myself and –’ she paused, made a gesture drawing attention to the garden, the bungalow, the whole complex at whose heart this notion of serenity lay, ‘I think it could do with sharing, but only by someone who appreciates it. I got the feeling from your letter that you were the kind of person who would. I still think so, but I’d hate you to think it had to be appreciated in my way and no one else’s. I’d hate you to feel cut off.’
She glanced at the garden. ‘It often strikes me as something the gods once loved but forgot should die young and that there’s only me left to love it. I’m not here forever and I’m not sure I love it enough.’
Barbie said, speaking loudly to make sure she was heard and understood, ‘I’d love to stay, Mrs Layton. Actually I shall be glad to slow down and live a quieter life. It’s what I hoped for. To have some time to myself.’
Mabel looked at her. She felt the look penetrate, right down to the core of her secret sorrow, and then withdraw, back into its own.
‘I’m so glad,’ Mabel said, returning her attention to the plant. ‘Please ring the bell and ask Aziz to give us an early tea if you’d like it. I think I should. It won’t be long before we find it chilly enough to have tea indoors and that alway
s depresses me a bit. And you’d better remind him about your trunk. He’s getting a bit forgetful, poor dear. And do send for anything else you’ve left behind in Ranpur.’
‘My writing-table,’ Barbie cried; but Mabel merely nodded. She probably hadn’t heard. Barbie turned, pressed the bell on the board of switches, some of which lit the verandah and some the floodlights in the garden (these presently were to be robbed of their bulbs to conserve electricity as part of Pankot’s war effort). Mabel continued to deal with the pots of cuttings and when Aziz came she left it to Barbie to tell him they would both like tea brought out now instead of at four o’clock. He gave her a sideways nod, accepting that it had become her place to give some of the orders.
‘Oh, Lord,’ she prayed that night, her knees punished through the thin cotton of her nightgown by the thick woven coarse rush mat at her bedside, ‘thank You for Your many blessings and for bringing me to Rose Cottage. Help me to serve and, if it is Your will, bring light to the darkness that lies on the soul of Mabel Layton.’
She prayed for longer than usual, hoping for a revival of that lost sense of contact. But it did not revive. She could feel the prayers falling flat, little rejects from a devotional machine she had once worked to perfection. The prayers hardened in the upper air, once so warm, now so frosty, and tinkled down. But she pressed on, head bowed, in the hailstorm.
III
In a woman with a less well-authenticated Anglo-Indian background than Mabel Layton’s what was accepted as eccentricity would probably have been seen as hostility to what Anglo-India stood for, but Mabel’s background was impeccable, she criticized no one and seldom expressed any opinion let alone a hostile one. Her absorption in garden and bungalow, her habit of taking solitary walks, her refusal even of invitations it was generally considered obligatory to accept, her complete detachment from Pankot’s public life, were attributed to the personal idiosyncrasy of someone who had lost two husbands in the cause of service to the empire, one by rifle fire on the Khyber, the other by amoebic infection; and having thus distinguished herself retired from the field of duty to leave room for others. Her withdrawal was accepted with feelings that lay somewhere between respect and regret; which meant that they were fixed at a point of faint dispproval, therefore seldom expressed, but when they were, an idea would somehow be conveyed of Mrs Layton’s isolation having a meaningful connection with an earlier golden age which everyone knew had gone but over whose memory she stood guardian, stony-faced and uncompromising; a bleak point of reference, as it were a marker-buoy above a sunken ship full of treasure that could never be salvaged; a reminder and a warning to shipping still afloat in waters that got more treacherous every year.