When Darkness Falls and Other Stories

by Ruskin Bond

  RUSKIN BOND

  When Darkness Falls and Other Stories

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  About the Author

  Introduction

  When Darkness Falls

  The Garden of Memories

  The Ghost in the Garden

  Return of the White Pigeon

  Young Man in a Tonga

  The Writer’s Bar

  Topaz

  Susanna’s Seven Husbands

  The Amorous Servant

  Monkey Trouble

  Colonel Wilkie’s Good Hunting

  The Family Ghost

  Living Without Money

  Copyright Page

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  WHEN DARKNESS FALLS AND OTHER STORIES

  Born in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, in 1934, Ruskin Bond grew up in Jamnagar (Gujarat), Dehra Dun and Shimla. His first novel, Room on the Roof, written when he was seventeen, received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written over three hundred short stories, essays and novellas (including Vagrants in the Valley and A Flight of Pigeons) and more than thirty books for children. He has also published two volumes of autobiography, Scenes from a Writer’s Life, which describes his formative years growing up in Anglo-India, and The Lamp Is Lit, a collection of essays and episodes from his journal. In 1992 he received the Sahitya Akademi award for English writing in India. He was awarded the Padma Shree in 1999.

  Ruskin Bond lives with his adopted family in Mussoorie.

  Introduction

  Although most of the stories in this collection were written in recent months, several are set in the period of my boyhood and youth—the semi-autobiographical stories of life in my grandmother’s home in Dehra Dun, and the later freelancing years of ‘Living Without Money’.

  We are creatures of circumstance. If our genes have shaped our biological make-up, our environment has shaped the development of our natures. Nostalgia is an attempt to preserve that which was good in the past. But my tales are not simply about nostalgia. They are about how the process of growing up has made us what we are today. Would I have been a different sort of person if I had grown up in Scotland or Zanzibar instead of Dehra Dun or the Simla hills? Perhaps not, but the people I’d have met along the way would have been very different, and it’s other people who often influence our development and the directions our lives take.

  ‘When Darkness Falls’ is fiction, but as a boy I did know of a man who never left his room and whose meals were left outside his door. The reason was different. The man was a leper, and in those days lepers were outcasts of society, as they still are in parts of the country. Markham is a different sort of outcast, but he too is a creature of circumstance.

  Would Susanna have set out to destroy her husbands if some childhood experience had not turned her against men in general? Or was it simply in her nature to want to dominate the opposite sex? Some people climb mountains for pleasure; others climb in order to conquer peaks. A friend of my youth, who was sexually impotent, went on to conquer peak after peak. Each one, he confided, was like conquering a woman.

  A word about the genesis of ‘When Darkness Falls’. It has echoes of the Phantom of the Opera, a film which I greatly enjoyed as a boy. Claude Rains as the crazed genius underplayed the role superbly, while Nelson Eddy’s rich baritone lent authenticity to the operatic scenes. But Markham is not a crazed genius. He is normal as you or me, perhaps more so. His disfigurement is accidental. How would we have reacted in similar circumstances? Hidden from the world like Markham, or confronted it with half a face?

  Not an easy choice, my friend.

  Last week, a young lady who interviewed me for one of those ephemeral websites, asked me if I had any regrets in life.

  I thought long and hard about it but couldn’t really put my finger on any specific or major regret, except that I would have liked to have been kinder and more considerate to some people, and tougher and more unyielding to others. A regret that is common to most of us, I think. But that apart, and my failure to make it to Torquay United’s football ‘B’ team, I don’t think I have anything to complain about.

  Would I have been more successful if I had stayed on in England as a young man? A question that’s often put to me.

  Honestly, I don’t think so. My inspiration, or subject matter if you like, has always come from my Indian background and experience—my relationship to people, the landscape, the atmosphere. The West never affected me in the same way. I spent almost four years in the UK, but very little of that time or experience made any impression on me, either as a person or as a writer.

  If I had stayed on in England, what would there have been to write about? I had gone there steeped in English literature, my mind full of Victorian and Georgian novelists and poets, but the reality of post-War London was very different from the world of Pickwick and the Drones Club. My reality was India, and I needed more of India and less of England for my literary aspirations to be satisfied. And so it was back to India, and a small flat with a balcony overlooking a busy road in a small town, and the stories and essays poured forth even if they weren’t being paid for; but this was what I’d always wanted, it was freedom, and I wasn’t going to give it up for a job in Australia or a career in advertising. There was no uprooting me from the soil in which I was so well rooted. And besides, my readers were here.

  My interlocutor’s next question came out of the blue. Did I ever regret not having married?

  This was something I had never really given much thought, and now I was being forced to consider it and voice an opinion. And I had to admit that I had no regrets about staying single. Marriage is a fine institution, I’m sure, and most of my friends are married people, making a valuable contribution to the continuity of the human race; but I am basically a selfish character, and I would hate to give up the independence I have enjoyed for the greater part of my life. In this respect I am a bit like P.G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster, terrified of being mothered or fussed over by some large imposing female, such as the athletic Honoria Glossop. I find the world full of Honoria Glossops. I don’t have a Jeeves to protect me, but I have Prem and his family, and they look after me like no one has ever been looked after before. I am all for the joint family, especially as I am the main beneficiary of this one.

  And do I regret having given up the city for the hills?

  An emphatic ‘No’. For the choice was a deliberate one. I can write almost anywhere—even a railway compartment will do—and I chose the hills for the purpose of living rather than as a congenial place for writing. The mountains make a man realize just how insignificant he is. At the same time, they allow one to remain an individual instead of being swallowed up in the crowd. I enjoy visiting cities; I enjoy travelling over the plains of India; I am fascinated by the desert; but it is always good to come home to the hills. ‘Who goes to the Hills, goes to his Mother,’ wrote Kipling in one of his more sublime moments.

  So no regrets at all? Wouldn’t I have liked to make more money, been published more widely? Certainly, but not at the expense of the lifestyle that has brought me considerable contentment and, at times, happiness. To be lionized in literary circles here and abroad must be very satisfying for a certain kind of writer, but I have always worked in isolation, far removed from the literary crowd, and I am ill-at-ease at intellectual cocktail parties. The cocktails usually run away with the intellect.

  And if I could live my life all over again, would I do things differently, try to be someone else?

  I don’t think so, because a writer has to live and write within his nature, and this is what I have done and this is what I would do again. I’d like to have
spent more time, a few more years, with my father who was snatched away while I was still a boy; and I suppose that would have altered things, and the opportunities would have been different. But it was not to be. That was chance, not choice. Chance gives, and takes away, and gives again.

  No, given the opportunity to lead my life all over again, I wouldn’t change much. Not even my purple socks.

  When Darkness Falls

  Markham had for many years lived alone in a small room adjoining the disused cellars of the old Empire Hotel in one of our hill stations. His Army pension gave him enough money to pay for his room rent and his basic needs, but he shunned the outside world—by daylight, anyway—partly because of a natural reticence and partly because he wasn’t very nice to look at.

  While Markham was serving in Burma during the War, a shell had exploded near his dugout, tearing away most of his face. Plastic surgery was then in its infancy, and although the doctors had done their best, even going to the extent of giving Markham a false nose, his features were permanently ravaged. On the few occasions that he had walked abroad by day, he had been mistaken for someone in the final stages of leprosy and been given a wide berth.

  He had been given the basement room by the hotel’s elderly estate manager, Negi, who had known Markham in the years before the War, when Negi was just a room-boy. Markham had himself been a youthful assistant manager at the time, and he had helped the eager young Negi advance from room-boy to bartender to office clerk. When Markham took up a wartime commission, Negi rose even further. Now Markham was well into his late sixties, with Negi not very far behind. After a post-War, post-Independence slump, the hill station was thriving again; but both Negi and Markham belonged to another era, another time and place. So did the old hotel, now going to seed, but clinging to its name and surviving on its reputation.

  ‘We’re dead, but we won’t lie down,’ joked Markham, but he didn’t find it very funny.

  Day after day, alone in the stark simplicity of his room, there was little he could do except read or listen to his short-wave transistor radio; but he would emerge at night to prowl about the vast hotel grounds and occasionally take a midnight stroll along the deserted Mall.

  During these forays into the outer world, he wore an old felt hat, which hid part of his face. He had tried wearing a mask, but that had been even more frightening for those who saw it, especially under a street lamp. A couple of honeymooners, walking back to the hotel late at night, had come face to face with Markham and had fled the hill station the next day. Dogs did not like the mask, either. They set up a furious barking at Markham’s approach, stopping only when he removed the mask; they did not seem to mind his face. A policeman returning home late had accosted Markham, suspecting him of being a burglar, and snatched off the mask. Markham, sans nose, jaw and one eye, had smiled a crooked smile, and the policeman had taken to his heels. Thieves and goondas he could handle; not ghostly apparitions straight out of hell.

  Apart from Negi, only a few knew of Markham’s existence. These were the lower-paid employees who had grown used to him over the years, as one gets used to a lame dog or a crippled cow. The gardener, the sweeper, the dhobi, the night chowkidar, all knew him as a sort of presence. They did not look at him. A man with one eye is said to have the evil eye, and one baleful glance from Markham’s single eye was enough to upset anyone with a superstitious nature. He had no problems with the menial staff, and he wisely kept away from the hotel lobby, bar, dining room and corridors—he did not want to frighten the customers away; that would have spelt an end to his own liberty. The owner, who was away most of the time, did not know of his existence; nor did his wife, who lived in the east wing of the hotel, where Markham had never ventured.

  The hotel covered a vast area, which included several unused buildings and decaying outhouses. There was a Beer Garden, no longer frequented, overgrown with weeds and untamed shrubbery. There were tennis courts, rarely used; a squash court, inhabited by a family of goats; a children’s playground with a broken see-saw; a ballroom which hadn’t seen a ball in fifty years; cellars which were never opened; and a billiard room, said to be haunted.

  As his name implied, Markham’s forebears were English, with a bit of Allahabad thrown in. It was said that he was related to Kipling on his mother’s side; but he never made this claim himself. He had fair hair and one grey-blue eye. The other, of course, was missing.

  His artificial nose could be removed whenever he wished, and as he found it a little uncomfortable he usually took it off when he was alone in his room. It rested on his bedside table, staring at the ceiling. Over the years it had acquired a character of its own and those (like Negi) who had seen it looked upon it with a certain amount of awe. Markham avoided looking at himself in the mirror, but sometimes he had to shave one side of his face, which included a few surviving teeth. There was a gaping hole in his left cheek. And after all these years, it still looked raw.

  When it was past midnight, Markham emerged from his lair and prowled the grounds of the old hotel. They belonged to him, really, as no one else patrolled them at that hour—not even the night chowkidar, who was usually to be found asleep on a tattered sofa outside the lounge.

  Wearing his old hat and cape, Markham did his rounds.

  He was a ghostly figure, no doubt, and the few who had glimpsed him in those late hours had taken him for a supernatural visitor. In this way the hotel had acquired a reputation for being haunted. Some guests liked the idea of having a resident ghost; others stayed away.

  On this particular night Markham was more restless than usual, more discontented with himself in particular and with the world in general; he wanted a little change—and who wouldn’t in similar circumstances?

  He had promised Negi that he would avoid the interior of the hotel as far as possible; but it was midsummer, the days were warm and languid, the nights cool and balmy, and he felt like being in the proximity of other humans even if he could not socialize with them.

  And so, late at night, he slipped out of the passage to his cellar room and ascended the steps that led to the old banquet hall, now just a huge dining room. A single light was burning at the end of the hall. Beneath it stood an old piano.

  Markham lifted the lid and ran his fingers over the keys. He could still pick out a tune, although it was many years since he had played for anyone or even for himself. Now at least he could indulge himself a little. An old song came back to him and he played it softly, hesitantly, recalling a few words:

  But it’s a long, long time, from May to December, And the days grow short when we reach September …

  He couldn’t remember all the words, so he just hummed a little as he played. Suddenly, something came down with a crash at the other end of the room. Markham looked up, startled. The hotel cat had knocked over a soup tureen that had been left on one of the tables. Seeing Markham’s tall, shifting shadow on the wall, its hair stood on end. And with a long, low wail it fled the banquet room.

  Markham left too, and made his way up the carpeted staircase to the first floor corridor.

  Not all the rooms were occupied. They seldom were, these days. He tried one or two doors, but they were locked. He walked to the end of the passage and tried the last door. It was open.

  Assuming the room was unoccupied, he entered it quietly. The lights were off, but there was sufficient moonlight coming through the large bay window with its view of the mountains. Markham looked towards the large double bed and saw that it was occupied. A young couple lay there, fast asleep, wrapped in each other’s arms. A touching sight! Markham smiled bitterly. It was over forty years since anyone had lain in his arms.

  There were footsteps in the passage. Someone stood outside the closed door. Had Markham been seen prowling about the corridors? He moved swiftly to the window, unlatched it, and stepped quickly out on to the landing abutting the roof. Quietly he closed the window and moved away.

  Outside, on the roof, he felt an overwhelming sense of freedom. No one would
find him there. He wondered why he hadn’t thought of the roof before. Being on it gave him a feeling of ownership. The hotel, and all who lived in it, belonged to him.

  The lights from a few skylights, and the moon above, helped him to move unhindered over the sloping, corrugated old tin roof. He looked out at the mountains, striding away into the heavens. He felt at one with them.

  The owner, Mr Khanna, was away on one of his extended trips abroad. Known to his friends as the Playboy of the Western World, he spent a great deal of his time and money in foreign capitals: London, Paris, New York, Amsterdam. Mr Khanna’s wife had health problems (mostly in her mind) and seldom travelled, except to visit godmen and faith-healers. At this point in time she was suffering from insomnia, and was pacing about her room in her dressing-gown, a loose-fitting garment that did little to conceal her overblown figure; for inspite of her many ailments, her appetite for everything on the menu card was undiminished. Right now she was looking for her sleeping tablets. Where on earth had she put them? They were not on her bedside table; not on the dressing table; not on the bathroom shelf. Perhaps they were in her handbag. She rummaged in a drawer, found and opened the bag, and extracted a strip of Valium. Pouring herself a glass of water from the bedside carafe, she tossed her head back, revealing several layers of chin. Before she could swallow the tablet, she saw a face at the skylight. Not really a face. Not a human face, that is. An empty eye-socket, a wicked grin, and a nose that wasn’t a nose, pressed flat against the glass.

  Mrs Khanna sank to the floor and passed out. She had no need of the sleeping tablet that night.

  For the next couple of days Mrs Khanna was quite hysterical and spoke wildly of a wolf-man or Rakshas who was pursuing her. But no one—not even Negi—attributed the apparition to Markham, who had always avoided the guests’ rooms.