Breakfast with the Nikolides

by Rumer Godden

  And suddenly Emily could bear no more. She burst into loud terrified wails like a baby and fled up the steps. Charles was standing in the doorway and he caught her just inside the door.

  ‘Look at me,’ said Charles. Trying to hold her sobbing she looked back at him from a tear-sodden face, ugly and swollen with crying, from tired tear-red eyes. He noticed that she was tidy, her hair was still held back from her face by her narrow white night ribbon, and she wore her old checked coat buttoned over blue and white pyjamas; except for her slippers that were wet and stained with grass, and her face that was wet and stained with tears, there was nothing to show for her expedition. Charles’s face, very serious, relaxed as he looked at her. ‘Go upstairs,’ he said gently. ‘Dry your feet and wait for me. I shan’t be long.’

  He went quickly down the steps. Anil and Louise were still there, Louise still fanatically speaking, Anil with his back to the darkness. The light threw their shadows a long way on the grass, Anil’s was still but Louise’s was exaggerated, mocking her movements, making them into antics and melodrama. Charles came up behind her and put his hands on her elbows holding them against her sides as if he wanted to crush them together. Louise screamed, but the ugly poisonous words finished abruptly; she struggled; he held her rigid in his grip, while his voice came over her head, quite politely: ‘I think you had better go in, Louise. Emily is not hurt. She is quite all right,’ and to Anil he said, ‘Will you wait and talk to me for a few minutes? Don’t go.’

  Anil was a long way from going – or speaking. He was so absolutely shocked that he could not speak or move or think.

  Charles was bruising Louise; the soft flesh of her arms was pinched under the hardness of his and his fingers pressed her down and back against him. ‘Charles! Let me go! Let me go!’ but he turned her towards the house and impelled her up the steps.

  He loosened his hands and the blood flowing back into the bruises made her cry out again and she fell back against him, faint and sick. He lifted her and carried her upstairs, where Emily had already gone.

  But, for Louise, neither Emily nor Anil was there.

  She was in another night, in another house; it was another flight of stairs. The pain was the same and she remembered the flash of the enamels on the shelf, the last flash of reality as Charles swept her up past them, crushed and giddy and sick, in his arms. She remembered the night outside the window when he had torn the curtains down (‘Damme, we must have gala stars!’) and she remembered the sound of her sobs coming in breathless gasps as they were coming now. She remembered how she had escaped over the side of the bed and he had put out a hand and thrown her savagely back. It was always his strength. (‘Don’t provoke me too far, Louise. You don’t know how strong I am.’)

  Suddenly, at dinner, he had stood up and thrown his whisky in her face and pulled the cloth off the table and thrown the candles down on it. Emily was there too; she remembered how helplessly the baby Emily had woken up and cried, and how the frightened little Anglo-Indian nurse had popped her head in at the door. ‘Don’t be afraid, Nancy, I am only mad, not drunk,’ said Charles, and he bellowed, ‘Go into your room and shut the door.’ He drove the servants out of the house and locked the doors and windows. ‘I wish I could shoot out the lights,’ he said, ‘but I haven’t a gun’; he looked at the Dutch axe over the fireplace: ‘But I have an axe and by God you shan’t miss anything!’ and then he had smashed up the house.

  She remembered the nightmare of broken wood and glass, the shrieking of the nurse and Emily – and she remembered the struggle when Charles caught her by the stairs. She remembered the dreadful, mingled taste of whisky and blood in her mouth where her lips had bled, and her clothes torn off her on the floor and her struggles with the softness of her bed muffling her cries, and the naked heat of Charles pressing down on her when at last she gave in and lay still. Now, powerless against his strength, in his arms again, she knew what she knew then and had known ever since – that secret moment would never be lost between them, between Charles and Louise, whatever they did to it, whatever it did to them; the flow from his body to hers, from hers uprising to his, had a fire that could never be put out, that burns them still. That night, stretched on her back, she had lifted her hands to him in ultimate surrender when she forced them down again.

  But now she clung to him as he put her down at the head of the stairs. ‘Can you stand up?’

  ‘Don’t go. Don’t go.’ She moaned.

  He steadied her sharply. ‘I must go. That wretched boy is waiting.’

  ‘Let him wait.’

  ‘You have done enough damage already. I must stop it if I can.’

  ‘Charles. Please come back. I want you. I want you, Charles—’

  Charles had gone downstairs.

  For a long time she stood where he had left her. The colour came back into her face. She looked at her arms where the bruise marks were already turning dark, and she clenched her hands and gave an angry pitiful sob. Then a sound struck her, an exhausted dreary sound, and it had been going on all the time. It was Emily crying unheeded, as she had cried when she was a baby in the broken house.

  Emily …

  Anil was obediently waiting. In fact he had not moved. He had dimly seen how Charles had taken Louise away, but her voice seemed to go on still – though long before Charles had come he had lost the sense of the words. He was numb, and when Charles touched him he only looked up dully.

  ‘Will you come into my office? We can’t talk here.’

  ‘Thank you,’ but as he walked up the steps and heard his own shoes on the stone, it grew real and he started back and cried, ‘No. I prefer not.’

  ‘We can’t talk outside – in the dark,’ said Charles reasonably. ‘You must come in.’ Anil hesitated and walked in after Charles, who was turning over and over in his mind what he possibly could say.

  ‘Sit down.’

  ‘No’ – but a nervous whimper shook Anil like a hiccough and he had to sit down, on the edge of a chair, his head bent. He was shivering.

  ‘You are exhausted,’ said Charles, and he looked at him puzzled. Could Louise have done all that? And then he saw that Anil’s shoes were caked in mud; there were splashes of mud on his legs, and on his dhoti that was not white any longer but bedraggled and limp as if it had been soaked and dried and worn a long time. ‘Where have you been? What have you been doing?’ Another shivering hiccough. ‘If I give you a drink,’ said Charles, ‘will you take it?’

  Anil only shook his head. He wiped his hand and his thumb across his forehead and the sweat dropped off on his shirt; his shirt was soaked to his body on his shoulders and chest. He shivered in silence, looking at his shoes – and then he choked, suddenly and painfully.

  ‘You are ill,’ said Charles.

  Anil shook his head again. ‘I have had,’ he said, ‘a small swelling in the throat, and I am very tired.’ As he spoke he lifted his head and Charles recognized him. He could not remember his name, but he remembered him from his lectures, at the debates, at the meetings, and his heart sank. This was a difficult boy to deal with, a turbulent popular student, a ringleader, one of the College bloods, and then he looked at Anil again and was struck by the look of peculiar excitement on his face; it was more than immediate excitement or misery, it was unearthly, and Charles was nonplussed. Now he had Anil here, more than ever he did not know what he could say.

  Anil said it first. ‘I have done nothing. Nothing,’ he repeated. ‘Why does she accuse me? I have done nothing.’

  Charles tried to cover his confusion and growing dismay by asking business-like questions. Anil was in no state to resist them.

  ‘Why were you out so late?’

  ‘I – had been walking.’

  ‘So late?’

  ‘Yes – I had been out a long time—’

  ‘You know the College rules, you were breaking them—’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you done this before?’

  ‘Yes.’

  �
�You bribed the porter, I suppose. Anyone else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Didn’t the Superintendent know?’

  ‘Sometimes – I have given him present—’

  ‘I see. Where did you find my daughter?’

  ‘She was there by the tank. She was afraid. I comforted her and brought her in because I thought you would not like that she was out alone, but I did nothing to her – nothing, nothing, Mr Pool,’ and he shouted. ‘Why does she accuse me then?’ The sound of his own voice, loud in this room, terrified him, and he sank into frightened silence, shivering again and wetting his lips which were suddenly dry.

  ‘My wife should not have accused you,’ said Charles; ‘I can see that, and she will apologize. She found the little girl missing from her bed and she was naturally upset. I am sure she did not know what she was saying—’

  ‘No—’ Anil agreed; and he looked up and cried, ‘But she insulted me—’

  ‘She did not know what she was saying. I have told you, she will apologize—’

  ‘She was most cruel and wicked to me, when I had befriended her child.’

  ‘Meanwhile, it appears that you have been breaking College rules for some time,’ said Charles thoughtfully, and he picked up a pencil. ‘Tomorrow is Examination Day and you, I am told, have a great chance. It would be a pity to spoil it – wouldn’t it? Listen to me. We do not want to make a fuss. If you will promise me that you will go straight to bed and say nothing of this to anyone, I shall see Sir Monmatha Ghose in the morning and tell him the whole of the story, and I undertake that he will overlook your breaking the rules this time. You shall see him too, if you wish, and you will get your apology.’

  Anil’s fingers, working nervously, had found his poem in his pocket, the poem that was a star caught on a dirty piece of paper; he thought of the night with Narayan when he had seen the firefly … It was not a shooting star but an insect … And a desolation filled him and he nearly threw the poem down in Charles’s wastepaper basket, but something even in the feel of the paper it was written on contradicted him, its words seemed to run from his fingers into his soul … But there can never be another like it. My freedom is ended. I can stay out no more … And it burst from him in despair, ‘You must report it? Oh Sir!’

  Charles was puzzled again and he was tempted. There was something here that mattered deeply to the boy. More than his chances in the Examination, more than the fear of being found out. Charles was tempted but he sighed and said, ‘I am afraid I must.’

  ‘And they will not take action against me? Or against them?’

  ‘Not this time, but probably they will be warned.’

  Anil said nothing.

  ‘Otherwise I must send a servant for the Superintendent now. That will be very unpleasant for you.’ Anil still said nothing but his tongue came out and wet his lips and his eyes were on Charles, pleading and oddly bright. Charles felt an increasing distaste for the whole of it but he forced himself to insist. ‘Do you promise?’

  ‘Yes—’… It is all over now. What does it matter?

  ‘You understand. Not a word to anyone.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Charles asked, ‘What is your name?’

  Anil was startled. ‘But I know you. Why don’t you know me?’ his look said, and Charles answered the look. ‘There are hundreds of students,’ he said, ‘you will have to tell me your full name.’

  ‘Hundreds,’ said Anil. The word seemed to sink into him in the silence.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘My name is Anil Krishna Banerjee.’

  ‘Das’s friend?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You will get your apology in the morning,’ said Charles, but Anil hardly heard him. ‘Remember you have given your promise,’ said Charles – but he had the feeling already that he was speaking to an Anil that changed as quickly as the ripples on the river. It was impossible to catch or fix him. Anil had given him a promise; was that Anil here any more?

  He hesitated. Almost, he decided to ring up the Principal. After a moment he let the boy go.

  Emily waited for Louise. She knew Louise would come before Charles and the waiting was very long. She stood at the foot of the bed and though she was shaking with tiredness she did not attempt to sit down. She could not even approach Louise as far as that and she stood taking in as little of the room as possible. Her mind would not think about Louise, it refused to; it froze itself into terror; now and again it dodged this way and that, then crouched again and was frozenly still.

  What had she done this time? What could she have done? It was more than going out of bed. (‘You are not to go near Binnie.’) …

  I know your voice, Louise, your coaxing voice, your charming voice, your angry voice, your cutting voice and your frightened voice, but I don’t know this one. There is a tone in it I have never heard before and it makes me shake and shrink and freeze, but I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what I have done, except what I have done, and this is something worse than that. What have I done? What have I done?…

  She looked up at the high vaulted roof where the stucco of the pale walls glimmered up into darkness; outside the windows the sky seemed to swing a little with its panoply of stars, but that may have been because she was swaying on her feet. The sky was luminous with starlight, lit and blue, why had the earth been so dark then? The walls and the windows seemed to fall away, opening Emily to that marauding darkness, darkness where she had escaped from what dreadful thing? Or done what dreadful thing?… But what, but what, Louise?

  Now I am beginning to be afraid. What happened to me out there in the dark? What did I see? A man? A ghost? A dreadful bogy? What? When? Where? When? Where? That was my shriek going up to the stars, bursting my chest, hurting me, hurting the whole of me, but there was no sound; the scream was too high for anyone to hear, tearing through me, cutting its way out of me. Now I am afraid. I am afraid. I am afraid …

  A puff of wind moved a shutter; the slats of it creaked and in the wind she smelled the garden outside, the earth cooling, the smell of dew and nightstrong plants; it blew reasonably and coolly on her hot forehead and it seemed to blow into her head. (‘You went out and sat by the tank to see Don,’ said the wind, ‘nothing else, nothing more. You talked to the student who was kind and brought you home but you told him nothing that was not your own to tell. That is all you have done. Nothing more. Nothing else.’) The moment passed. She was calm … I am glad, said Emily, I am glad Louise did not catch me then … and, as always when she had those moments by herself and kept them to herself, she felt strong.

  Presently Louise came in; she took no notice of Emily but sat down on the bed as if her knees had given way, and hid her eyes with her hand. Emily was not as frightened; Louise looked angry and miserable but she did not look strange any more. ‘Come here,’ she said, with her eyes still blinded.

  Emily advanced an inch.

  ‘Closer.’ That was reassuringly like Louise, imperious and impatient.

  ‘I’m sorry I went out, Mother—’ At the sound of Emily’s voice Louise took her hand away from her eyes and that expression came back into her face. ‘What have I done, Mother?’ cried Emily in panic. ‘What have I done?’

  Louise did not answer. Emily and something else seemed to be fighting for importance in her mind. ‘Where did you go tonight?’

  ‘I went to the tank. I heard what the servants – the people – are saying about – about Don. I wanted to show it was not true.’

  ‘Of course it’s not true. You know that,’ cried Louise. ‘You are using that as an excuse. You are so sly and deceitful that nothing is beyond you. I don’t believe you. Do you hear? I don’t believe you,’ and Emily had the feeling again that Louise’s anger was not only for her, and Louise seemed to sense that too. She stopped and, as if she meant to make herself pay attention to Emily, she took her hand, and Emily knew she forced herself to do it and that she did not want to touch her and again Emily cried despairingly, ‘Mother, wh
at have I done?’

  ‘Emily, you wouldn’t be afraid to tell me the truth, would you?’

  Her mind ducked and froze.

  ‘You wouldn’t, would you?’

  Emily shook her head.

  ‘Would you?’ A good human exasperation overcame the falseness in Louise’s voice. It gave Emily a breath as if she had come up into the air.

  ‘I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Emily, I want you to tell me: what did that man talk to you about there in the garden?’

  ‘Man?’ Emily wrinkled her nose trying to think. Anil had passed out of her mind. Then she remembered. ‘Mother, you were rude to him.’

  ‘You are getting to be a big girl now, a girl not a child.’ As she said it Emily seemed to sink into smallness; to Louise who had wanted to keep her a child she now seemed aggressively childlike. ‘Get bigger. Get bigger,’ said Louise’s hand and Emily sank faster and faster into little-girl stupidity. ‘You are old enough to know that you must never speak to strangers – strange men,’ said Louise with that same breathlessness. ‘And if they speak to you you must go away from them at once. At once,’ repeated Louise sharply. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

  A flicker of curiosity ran through Emily. She wanted to ask why, but she only said, ‘Yes, Mother.’

  ‘Do you understand what I mean?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Emily hopelessly and she cried out miserably, ‘Why can’t I go near Binnie?’

  ‘Of course you can go near Binnie.’

  ‘You said I couldn’t. Why not? What have I done?’

  ‘Emily, be quiet. You’re not trying – to be sensible. Now listen. You went out tonight—’

  ‘I told you I did. Punish me. Punish me if you like.’

  ‘I don’t want to punish you. I’m trying to make you understand.’