Dust on the Paw

by Robin Jenkins

  Paula Wint took the part of head prefect to Lady Beauly’s housemistress. There were times, though, when she astonished and displeased her superior by displaying a fierce and tenacious interest in what all the others thought very natural for so healthy and bed-worthy a woman.

  Muriel Gillie, on the other hand, never transgressed. To her husband, Bob, she could venture a timid joke, sometimes a little blue, but in the presence of others she had always found demure listening safer.

  The remaining diplomatic wife, Sarah Rodgers, custodian of the soul of the Military Attaché and chronicler of his army of model soldiers, would sit and sew and smile with such concentrated vacuity that she often, as Mrs Mossaour put it, brought all their minds out in an itch.

  As for Rose Lorimer, wife of Tom Lorimer, Canadian head of the United Nations Mission to Afghanistan, she as often as not played truant. An amateur actress, she thought her best part was that of Lady Macbeth, to whose prowess as a seamstress Shakespeare had made no reference.

  Such then was the company, Mrs Lorimer again being absent, that chaste Tuesday afternoon when Mrs Mossaour recklessly decided to resurrect a subject already more than once buried, and to broach a new one altogether; the first was the inviting of Lan Moffatt to the Circle, and the other the proposed coming to Kabul of Miss Laura Johnstone.

  ‘I was looking at Mrs Moffatt’s designs for the marble factory,’ she began, in her sharpest voice. ‘They are beautiful. She is a most talented woman.’

  Annie Parry had a painting by Lan in her bedroom. After her jolly knock-kneed son, it was her proudest possession. She, who had had experience of three embassies, never hesitated to give her opinion that natural ladies were as rare as snowballs in hell, but that Lan Moffatt was one. She gave it again.

  ‘A natural lady,’ she said, loud enough to be heard at the top of the table.

  A glance shot from Lady Beauly to Paula Wint, who, with her fine teeth revealed in an amused smile, cried: ‘And how, pray, would you define a natural lady, Mrs Parry?’

  ‘Nothing could be easier. When I just see her I feel good.’

  ‘Such a definition would surely suit a saint better?’

  ‘Well, if anybody’s going to call her a saint, I’ll not argue, though she is in a way a heathen, I suppose. For instance, here’s a marvellous thing: I’ve never heard her speak ill of anyone. Of anyone!’ That little shriek of incredulity at the end sounded spontaneous enough, but was shrewdly managed.

  ‘What designs do you mean, Mrs Mossaour?’ asked Lady Beauly.

  ‘For marble table tops, ash trays, screens.’

  ‘Chinese in motif?’ asked Mrs Gillie, who painted herself.

  ‘Afghan too. More than any other foreigner I know, she has the feel of this country.’

  ‘That’s something I don’t envy her,’ said Helen Langford.

  Mrs Rodgers woke up. ‘She’s truly Chinese, isn’t she? I mean, she was born in Indonesia.’

  They waited but she said no more and returned into the asylum of her simper.

  ‘A natural lady,’ said Annie Parry, ‘could be an Eskimo.’

  ‘If you had told me in Melbourne,’ said Jean Lawson, ‘that the day would come when I would think the most beautiful woman’s face I had ever seen was Chinese, I’d have said you were mad. But Lan’s is. Not just pretty, like hundreds of faces; really beautiful, and so rare. I agree with Annie, you feel good just being in the same room with her.’

  Lady Beauly showed agitation by snipping a thread with her teeth, instead of the little pair of gold scissors H.E. had given her – as a kind of sceptre, Mrs Mossaour had said.

  ‘Paula, have you anything to add to these eulogies?’

  Paula swung out a judgment like a hockey club. ‘She’s a quaint little thing. Not very robust really, too fragile for my taste.’

  ‘Thank you, Paula. You are beginning to make her recognizable, human like the rest of us.’

  ‘Why I introduced Mrs Moffatt’s name,’ said Mrs Mossaour, ‘was to suggest that, since she’s British, it might be a kindness if we were to invite her to join us. Most of us like her. We visit her house and she visits ours. Moreover, she sews beautifully.’

  They waited for Lady Beauly to speak. First, she blushed and was annoyed.

  ‘Utility is what we seek to achieve,’ she said, ‘not beauty, I’m afraid. As to your proposal, I’m afraid it cannot be discussed again.’

  ‘May I ask why?’

  ‘No, Mrs Mossaour, you may not. But I shall tell you this much: the decision is not only mine, and it is irrevocable.’

  As she spoke she looked round them all, trying to look as benign as a schoolmistress without a shadow of doubt that the children trained by her would understand the necessity for a regulation that, to ignorant outsiders, might appear a trifle harsh.

  Only Paula could manage the jolly grin called for.

  Annie Parry let her fingers go on strike for fully a minute.

  Muriel Gillie, kindhearted, clung to her husband’s precept: ‘Muriel, not your business!’

  Jean Lawson recalled a description Bill had given her two days ago of an Afghan burial he had seen in a poor village. She did not know why it should have come into her mind just then, except that at the time she had felt a great sadness for the body of the young wife lowered, uncoffined, into the shallow grave on the hillside.

  ‘I would like to say,’ said Mrs Mossaour, ‘that I very much regret that decision.’

  Lady Beauly’s fair lashes fluttered. Her mouth, so resolutely lipsticked, could not quite hold its confident smile.

  ‘I understand,’ said Paula heartily, ‘that this barbecue dinner at the International Club is going to be a really tremendous affair. Everybody seems to be going. I forget how many sheep they’re going to roast as kebab.’

  ‘If there is no objection,’ said Mrs Mossaour, ‘there is another matter I would like to raise. It concerns us, as British women.’

  Annie Parry, who thought there was a place for nuisances like Mrs Mossaour, gave her a wink; such a place, for instance, was any embassy where H.E. was not a bachelor.

  ‘I was under the impression,’ said Paula, laughing, ‘that I had raised another matter too.’

  Mrs Mossaour refused to apologize or yield. She was, thought Annie Parry in admiration, working for her ticket.

  ‘I think,’ said the schoolmistress, ‘this concerns us more deeply than a barbecue dance.’

  ‘I do not think,’ murmured Lady Beauly, ‘that this is either the time or place to discuss anything that concerns us deeply.’

  ‘Mrs Gillie may know about it.’

  ‘Me?’ bleated Muriel. ‘I assure you I do not, whatever it is.’

  ‘I thought your husband might have mentioned it to you.’

  ‘If it is official business, he certainly would not. I prefer it that way.’

  ‘I prefer not to call this official business. It is not a matter of papers to be read and signed. It concerns a woman.’

  ‘What woman, Maud?’ asked Jean Lawson.

  The thimble was hopping half-heartedly on the table.

  ‘A Miss Laura Johnstone, from Manchester.’

  ‘Never heard of her,’ said Annie Parry, ‘and I thought I knew every white woman in Kabul.’

  ‘But is she white?’ asked Paula with a brilliant smile. She too was defying the thimble. ‘You can never tell nowadays from a name.’

  Mrs Mossaour’s daughter, Madeleine, would look often enough at a pretty face in a mirror, but never at a white one. Mrs Mossaour’s own grew whiter. She tried on Paula a Medusa look.

  ‘Yes, she is white,’ she said. ‘She is an Englishwoman, who has written to ask me if I can give her a post in the school.’

  ‘Is she a trained teacher?’ asked Jean.

  ‘Yes, and a university graduate.’

  ‘You could be doing with her, then.’

  ‘Yes, Jean, I could. But there is an objection, or at any rate it appears to me an objection. Her primary purpose in coming t
o Kabul is not to teach in my school.’

  They waited, and she let them wait.

  ‘Well, what is it she’s really coming for?’ asked Jean.

  ‘To get married.’

  It was Annie Parry who first saw what was wrong with that. ‘Not to an Afghan, surely to God?’ she cried.

  Mrs Mossaour nodded.

  ‘The silly fool,’ whispered Helen Langford.

  Mrs Rodgers tutted.

  ‘Someone else been reading the Arabian Nights!’ cried Paula.

  ‘For heaven’s sake,’ said Jean, with some sympathy and much impatience.

  ‘It isn’t right, I agree,’ whispered Muriel, shaking her gray head.

  But each of them too, in her own way, was thinking that Pierre Mossaour, charming man though he was, was dark skinned, more so indeed than many Afghans, some of whom were lighter in complexion than Italians or Spaniards. Hence the disconcerting duskiness of the Mossaour children.

  She knew what they were thinking and met each one’s eyes in turn. Only Annie Parry and Paula, for different reasons, did not glance away.

  ‘Well, of course,’ cried Paula, ‘to be realistic about it, only one thing could make it tolerable.’

  ‘And what might that be?’ asked Mrs Mossaour.

  ‘If he’s rich!’

  ‘Not even that,’ said Annie. ‘Look at Gerd Najib. He’s rich enough, or at least his father is.’

  ‘There’s a difference,’ pointed out Paula.

  ‘Even the queen’s got to drive about in a shaddry,’ said Annie. ‘I hope I’ve got as few prejudices as most, but I’m convinced these Afghans haven’t yet learned how to treat a woman. Until they do, my advice to this Miss Johnstone, as it was to poor Liz Mohebzada, is to keep well away from them. Of course in Liz’s case it was too late; she was already married by then, and pregnant into the bargain. A nail, you might say, through each hand.’

  ‘The man in question is not rich,’ said Mrs Mossaour. ‘On the contrary, he’s a teacher in Isban College.’

  ‘Where he’ll be lucky to get eight pounds a month,’ said Jean Lawson.

  ‘Have you met him, Maud?’ asked Annie.

  ‘I have. Once. He called at the school. Mr Gillie was there too. So were the Moffatts.’

  ‘Now I remember,’ said Paula, still defying the thimble. ‘Alan said something about this, a few days ago. I’m afraid I didn’t listen very attentively, but I did gather that Harold Moffatt felt pretty strongly about it.’

  ‘It is my opinion,’ said Lady Beauly, at last, ‘that we have no right to be discussing this here.’ It was wrong, but she could not resist adding: ‘Certainly we have no right to interfere.’

  ‘No legal right, of course,’ said Mrs Mossaour.

  ‘And no moral right, either. This kind of thing is happening every day, all over the world. Every consulate in Middle East and African countries has similar stories to tell. The official opinion, arrived at after much experience, is that the wisest course is simply not to interfere. One’s instinct may be all for warning the wretched girl; but one has another instinct that warns one that she will more probably than not interpret your well-intentioned warning as unwarranted interference. I take it, this particular girl will have parents who will already have tried all the dissuasion there is.’

  ‘Miss Johnstone’s parents are both dead.’

  ‘Relatives, then. Or friends. Or acquaintances. Or even colleagues.’

  ‘Into none of which categories,’ said Helen Langford grimly, ‘does any of us come.’

  ‘We come into the category of her countrywomen,’ said Mrs Mossaour.

  ‘Rather a large category, Maud,’ said Paula Wint. ‘At least fifteen million, I should think.’

  ‘There is a larger category into which we also come. Nearly a billion, or thereabouts. She is a woman; so are we.’

  Muriel Gillie saw a chance here to change the subject gracefully. ‘And nearly a third of them Chinese,’ she said. ‘Bob often says they are bound to dominate the future by sheer mass of numbers. I know they have been misbehaving of late, but he says that one point in their favour as a nation is the respect they have always shown to the beauty of dress. We must agree, for instance, that Mrs Moffatt dresses beautifully.’

  ‘Today they all wear blue boiler suits,’ said Jean Lawson.

  ‘True, Jean, but Bob maintains that if a man has the right attitude to dress he can wear even a boiler suit with more dignity than some other man can wear a dinner suit complete with decorations.’

  It was, to their astonishment, Sarah Rodgers who recalled them to the subject of Miss Johnstone.

  ‘What have you done about her, Maud?’ she asked.

  ‘I have written and offered her a post.’

  ‘Isn’t that tantamount to inviting her to come here?’ asked Jean.

  ‘I have also given her a very frank picture of the situation in which any Western woman who marries an Afghan must find herself.’

  ‘I hope you didn’t forget to warn her that if she ever has a child she’ll never be able to take it out of the country.’ It was Annie who asked that, thinking of Mrs Mohebzada.

  ‘Everything pertinent was told her.’

  ‘Nothing could be more pertinent than that.’

  ‘It was underlined, Annie. Mrs Mohebzada’s example was quoted.’

  ‘What age is Miss Johnstone?’ asked Paula. ‘Or didn’t she say, being a coy spinster?’

  ‘She is thirty-three.’

  ‘Well, for goodness’ sake, she’s surely old enough to know her own mind. There may have been an excuse for Mrs Mohebzada. She was too young to have any sense but this woman, thirty-three and a university graduate – I would say she’s had plenty of time to think the thing out. Besides, I really can’t see that it’s any of my business. If she were at home in Manchester and I in Lymington, I would never dream of trying to interfere. That I happen to be in Kabul and she’s coming here really makes no difference. Mind you, if she were to ask me for help and advice, I’d be glad to do what I could. Otherwise I’m afraid I’m just not interested.’

  ‘I am interested,’ whispered Mrs Gillie, ‘but I agree. There’s really nothing we can do. After all, as Annie has said, there was precious little we could do for Mrs Mohebzada; indeed, what can we do for her even now?’

  ‘Her case,’ said Lady Beauly, ‘is being discussed at the policy meeting tomorrow. I think that being so we need not discuss it here any longer.’

  ‘I was not discussing Mrs Mohebzada’s case,’ pointed out Mrs Mossaour. ‘I was discussing Miss Johnstone’s.’

  ‘Yes, and I would like it ended.’

  ‘A woman’s whole happiness—’

  ‘Mrs Mossaour, please.’

  That Mrs Mossaour contained her rage was marvellous; it extended in her as fierce, barren, and illimitable as the Sahara. Tears came to her eyes; to hide them she bent her head to sew savagely. Then she thought of one of Harold Moffatt’s poems, and felt consoled.

  In it a young man, a diplomat of some kind, though his nationality was obscure like much else about him, advanced with slow, curious dignity into an immense, empty marble hall hung with paintings that seemed to represent history, and pillared with enormous, sculptured columns. When he had found the exact centre, he had stood staring about him, like someone about to be sacrificed, and then, without raising his voice he remarked: ‘Go and b— yourselves!’

  Previously, like others, she had thought the poem obscure and vulgar; now she saw its point.

  Eight

  THE policy meeting was almost over. The last item, the case of Mrs Mohebzada, had just been dismissed by Sir Gervase with the observation that, in the struggle for the mind of an uncommitted country like Afghanistan, Britain’s role, as former would-be conqueror and present unwilling lender, was difficult enough.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ he said, picking up his pipe, ‘the girl’s made her bed – or should I say charpoy? – and she’s just got to lie on it. Dammit, at home there are any number of
women leading miserable lives, married to the wrong men.’ And not only at home, he could have added. There was Helen Langford, for instance, living less than a hundred yards away in a large house surrounded with rose beds. ‘Of course it’s open to any of us to give what help we can as individuals, always bearing in mind we do nothing to offend the susceptibilities of the authorities here, who in a matter like this are liable to be, not the legs of the snail, but its horns.’

  He had now filled his pipe and was pushing at the matchbox, trying to take out a match with one hand. With the first puff, the meeting would be over; gossip and bawdry might take its place.

  Both Alan Wint and Bob Gillie did not want it to be over just yet. Each had a matter he wanted discussed. Alan had decided his not important enough to go down on the agenda, but at the same time not trivial enough to be altogether ignored.

  Gillie got in first. ‘There’s one thing, sir.’ He spoke gruffly. Yet he was dressed with his usual suavity, and had a fresh red rose in his lapel. Sweat, profuse as dew, beaded his big brow. Outside the noon sun was bright and warm.

  ‘Yes, Bob?’ The match, lit, hovered over the pipe, happy as a firefly.

  ‘It’s about this cigarette pack.’ The words shot out, as if to match the speed with which he produced the pack from his pocket. He thumped it down on the table.

  On the table, too, but gently, was placed the pipe. The match, blown out, was carefully dropped into the ash tray.

  Howard Winfield, always a little ahead in everything, had a cigarette already lit. Now, his brows up, he stubbed it out.

  Colonel Rodgers, chin supported by hand with elbows on table, moved dramatically to his other elbow. It was his favourite sign of interest and was usually followed by a contribution of painstaking fatuity.

  John Langford, his thin dark face gloomy, wished to Christ he could have a drink. To hell with Gillie for prolonging this weekly farce. The trouble with Gillie was he had a crass mind, costive with conscientiousness – so much so that he went about calling his marriage to his mouse Muriel happy and successful. Whatever success in marriage was, it certainly wasn’t represented there. Where then in Kabul? Not by Alan and his Paula with her bar girl’s bum. Nor by Bruce and his simpering Sarah who made love, he was sure, in curlers. Nor in the Big House, despite the rumour that another little ambassadorling was on the way. Perhaps by Harold Moffatt and Lan.