by Rumer Godden
Dr Coomaraswamy had particularly liked ‘bright wings’ but Mr Srinivasan was making frantic accelerating gestures and Dr Coomaraswamy had gathered momentum – too much momentum. ‘You must think before you speak,’ Uma, his wife, had always urged but at speed, ‘Friends,’ he had cried, ‘you are aware that for decades, if not generations, our beloved country, through the corruption, avarice, greed, exploitation of the few in power, has been standing on the edge of the precipice of utter disaster. Let us,’ and here he had raised his fist in exaltation as his voice rang out, ‘let us take the first step forward.’
Too late he saw Mr Srinivasan collapse; too late knew what he had said but the most bitter mortification of all had been that no one had noticed. They had not been listening, Dr Coomaraswamy thought now in anguish. My words might have been hot air. Perhaps they were hot air but he had not lacked courage; he had continued but then Krishnan had walked out.
Yes, he has made me a laughing stock, Dr Coomaraswamy thought bitterly now of Krishnan: umbrellas, a lorry, a pandal as for a god. ‘I will sit in it,’ Krishnan had said. ‘You will not,’ Dr Coomaraswamy had vowed but then Sir John had laughed – he, Dr Coomaraswamy, was certain it had been a laugh. Not only that, there were other cryptic things that had been said. ‘What did they mean?’ asked the Doctor.
‘Krishnan is bats. Bats,’ Mr Srinivasan had been moaning.
‘Bats hang upside down, which seems topsy-turvy to us but it’s their way.’ Sir John had been perfectly grave.
‘So he should have been.’ Dr Coomaraswamy was momentarily incensed. ‘It is no laughing matter. I, myself, have invested two crores at least in this campaign . . .’ – ‘And did I not tell you not to?’ Uma had said, over and over again, thought Dr Coomaraswamy wearily.
‘And why care so much about Sir John?’ Uma had said that too, also over and over again. ‘You are a Doctor of Medicine, MA, MRCS, Edinburgh,’ she said this continually. ‘Also, I do not care, at all, for Lady Fisher.’
‘You mean she does not care for you.’ Dr Coomaraswamy had not said that; Uma was formidable, bigger than he. ‘Lady Fisher is an inveterate snob,’ said Uma but, I believed Sir John and I were friends, Dr Coomaraswamy thought now. He calls me Coomaraswamy, I say, Sir John . . . He winced, remembering the terrible time when he had said, ‘Sir Fisher’. ‘Solecism! Solecism!’ he could have cried aloud to the unresponsive walls of Headquarters.
He had taken off his jacket to ease the tiredness of his shoulders, had let his braces hang down. My God, my belly! thought Dr Coomaraswamy – he could not see his feet and could feel the rolls of fat around his neck and face; to add to his misery he knew sweat was glistening on the baldness of his scalp. I am thoroughly unlovely, no girl would look at me, thought Dr Coomaraswamy.
‘Girl? What girl?’ Uma seemed to pounce even on his thoughts. ‘What is this I hear about a girl?’
‘My angel, you know there is no one else but you,’ and at once, as if in reality he had said it, there came into Dr Coomaraswamy’s mind a vision of Kuku as she had been this night: the sweet scent of her hair, the enticing girl flesh between choli and sari – he could have put his hands around her waist – the shadow of the long eyelashes on her cheeks. ‘Those eyelashes did not flutter for you,’ he told himself cruelly. ‘They were for that young Blaise Browne, you old fool.’ Still he found he was listening for the soft swish of a sari – Uma wore hers kilted up to show thick ankles and sensible nurse’s white canvas shoes, which made her feet look larger than ever, whereas Dr Coomaraswamy could not help having, in his eye, the sight of little feet with slender bones, the nails painted red, delicate sandals held by a thong between the toes. Each time he saw them a quiver of delight had run through Dr Coomaraswamy. No one has ever written a poem to toes, he thought. He had a mind to try, but again, ‘Old fool, keep to what is your business,’ he told himself and his thoughts returned to the deserted Party, the lost crores of rupees – worst, the loss of face. He could have wailed aloud, ‘What to do now? What, in heaven or earth, to do?’
It was late, almost on midnight, when Dr Coomaraswamy came back to Patna Hall. The breeze was soft, benign, as he left his taxi and crossed the courtyard. The house slept; the moon had gone. Then, as he came out on the verandah, he saw a figure sitting quietly in a chair.
‘At last,’ said Sir John.
‘You . . . you have been waiting for me?’
‘I was getting worried. You look all in. You need a stiff drink.’
‘Whisky peg, Srinivasan still calls it,’ Dr Coomaraswamy tried to joke.
When they had their glasses, ‘Well, have you found him?’ asked Sir John.
‘Nowhere. Not anywhere.’
‘Hari, what are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know. I do not know. John’ – Sir John had said Hari – ‘John, you tell me.’
‘There’s only one thing you can do. You haven’t time to get another candidate. In any case, Krishnan Bhanj has not withdrawn, so—’ Sir John interrupted himself, ‘Are you sure it’s not nerves? Young candidates often have a case of nerves.’
‘Krishnan has no nerves. I wish he had, it might make him more amenable. Nervous? On the contrary . . .’
‘Then’, said Sir John, ‘you can only do as he says.’
‘This antic? You mean the lorry, the pandal and all? This nonsense?’
‘I mean the lorry, the pandal, this nonsense – to the letter – and now, Hari, my friend, go to bed and try and get some sleep.’
‘Hari. My friend.’ It was as if all the sore places had miraculously healed. Tears came into Dr Coomaraswamy’s eyes. ‘John— ’ he began.
‘Hallo,’ said Sir John, ‘who’s that?’
He had gone to the verandah rail. Dr Coomaraswamy joined him. Someone was running along the beach, a slim someone in a pale blue dress, hair flying. ‘That is Mr Browne’s young wife,’ said Dr Coomaraswamy, ‘and alone.’
‘Alone?’ Sir John scanned the beach. ‘So it seems.’
‘She should not be out alone this time of night.’
‘She should not,’ said Sir John, ‘but she is.’
Sunday–Monday:
Midnight Hour
‘I should have said no in Bombay.’
Sunday’s evening had grown better as it went on; Blaise, unusual for him, had joined the women: Auntie Sanni, Lady Fisher – and me, thought Mary. Kuku had gone to bed. Sir John was talking to Professor Aaron who, having brought his ladies safely home from the palace, had come on to the verandah to say goodnight. ‘Professor Webster and I have our lectures ready.’ He stretched and yawned. ‘Tomorrow we go to see the cave paintings in the hills.’
Mr Menzies had disappeared to do some telephoning. ‘Always he is telephoning,’ Kuku had said as she watched him go.
Sitting in a chair by Auntie Sanni, Blaise had drawn Mary, on her stool, to lean against his knee. He was listening, not talking, and every now and again he ran his fingers through her hair – he might have been Bumble again. Auntie Sanni’s voice was soothing too in its quiet singsong; she was telling Blaise the history of Patna Hall and of her grandfather’s estate in Bihar, his factory and indigo fields. Indigo. Indigo: Mary seemed to see acres of a strange plant brilliantly blue – but it’s Krishna who is blue, or is it Vishnu? Vishna? Krishu? The names began to merge into a maze. ‘Mary, you’re half asleep,’ said Blaise. ‘Come, I’ll take you to bed.’
‘It’s very late, almost midnight.’ Lady Fisher folded her embroidery. As Blaise pulled Mary to her feet and steadied her, she bent and kissed Lady Fisher and Auntie Sanni.
Outside in the garden it was magical, the air balmy, the sky a dome of stars. The long flowerbeds were spangled with fireflies. Fireflies and stars, which are which? wondered sleepy Mary, while there was a scent of such sweetness that it made her more sleepy still. Then, at the foot of the steps, they heard the piano. ‘She’s still playing,’ said Mary. It made her uneasy and as she listened, ‘Chopin,’ she whispered. The nocturne ended; Olga Manning
began the little A major prelude with its pleading and, ‘I should go and say goodnight to her.’ Mary moved towards the steps.
‘You should not,’ said Blaise and caught her back. ‘Don’t you see, she’s desperate for friendship.’
The music seemed an echo of that; it made Mary say, ‘Haven’t you ever felt desperate?’ but Blaise was in a peaceful mood. ‘I’m desperate to go to bed.’
A waiter on late duty came down the steps. ‘Memsahib,’ he called, and handed Mary a basket of carrots and sugar lumps. ‘Samuel say for donkey.’
‘Throw them away,’ said Blaise but, forgetting Mrs Manning and the playing, Mary had run down the bungalow path. ‘How do you call a donkey if you don’t know its name?’ She tried a whistle. There was an answering whicker and when Blaise caught up with her most of the carrots and sugar were gone. ‘I don’t believe anyone has been kind to him before,’ she told Blaise. ‘I’m going to call him Slippers.’
‘Call him gumboots, if you like,’ Blaise said yawning, ‘as long as he stays in the garden and doesn’t come on the verandah.’
While Blaise undressed in the bathroom, Mary went out to look at the sea. The thundering of the waves seemed to have a lulling sound now; the breeze, gentle tonight, blew through the room. ‘That’s why,’ Auntie Sanni had told Blaise when, among other things, he had asked for a mosquito net, ‘at Patna Hall we do not need them. We do not have mosquitoes which is a boon.’ The big double bed, without a net, had its sheet and light quilt turned back – Patna Hall had thin Indian cotton quilts, ‘Not proper blankets or eiderdowns,’ Kuku had lamented. Mary’s short nightdress had been laid out; she looked at it and felt a sudden distaste.
‘Where did you meet that outrageously handsome husband of yours?’ Mrs Manning – Olga – had asked.
‘In Norway. Rory, my father, has a lodge there, like a chalet above one of the fiords. He likes fishing, when he can.’
‘Your father’s a diplomat?’
‘Yes. Bumble – Blaise was his Second Secretary in Kuala Lumpur. When they came on leave, Rory asked Blaise to Norway to fish. I joined them. I had just left school, my last, thank God.’
‘So . . . Blaise is in the service too?’
‘Yes,’ and now, It has not really dawned on me, thought Mary looking at the nightdress, how important to Blaise his work is yet he jeopardised it, or thought he did, for me. Well, he had been out of England for a year, perhaps he was starved. She knew now that, when in any foreign posting, Blaise would never have considered any of the native girls. And I? thought Mary. I had not been really close to a young man before – she could see that schoolgirl Mary – and I suppose I was feeling emancipated, grown up . . .
There was a little hut where we put overflow guests . . . she had not, of course, told Olga Manning this – never, never anybody, thought Mary. Blaise and I used to go there, mostly at night. Nobody knew. It was fun, thought Mary, with longing. We made love – and it was love. There was only a single bed; once Bumble fell on the floor. He just laughed. It was good. It never seemed wrong, but . . . Mary’s nails dug into the flesh of her palms. In these double beds, I can’t.
‘Merry, are you coming?’
‘Don’t call me Merry.’
‘Does it matter what I call you?’ Blaise had come amiably out of the bathroom; he was wearing only a lunghi – many young Western men new to India had taken to sleeping in them – it wrapped his loins and stalwart legs. His torso still shone from the ladling of water from the mug; as he bent his knees to look in the looking glass, his hair glistened too. He was young, fresh, powerful, but Mary asked, ‘Blaise, in Norway, what made you tell Rory about us and the hut?’
‘It was the only honourable thing to do.’
‘Wouldn’t it have been more honourable to ask me first?’
He ignored that and went on, ‘Besides I had to, you weren’t like other girls.’
‘I was exactly like other girls.’
‘Not for me.’ For a moment Mary thought it was Bumble speaking, her Bumble, but then, ‘Rory was my chief,’ Blaise explained. ‘In my very first posting which was vital. If I hadn’t told him and he had found out, he might have wrecked my career before it really started.’
‘I see.’ Mary said it slowly and, ‘You haven’t told me that before.’ She swallowed trying to keep down her dismay. Then she blazed, ‘Rory wouldn’t have done that. Even if he had minded – and I think he did mind – he would never have done that. He’s not that sort of man. Don’t you know anything about people?’ and Save me, save me, beat in her every nerve.
An answer came, a clip-clopping and Slippers appeared on the verandah. He gave a whicker when he saw Mary, came confidently through the doorway and began nosing round the chest of drawers, clopped to the bed, nuzzling the pillows. ‘He’s looking for more carrots and sugar!’ Mary’s laugh was cut short.
‘Get out! Out, you little beast,’ yelled the already angry Blaise. ‘In our bedroom!’ and, as the little donkey looked at him in surprise, a shoe came hurtling across the room. Slippers shied in fright, slipping and slithering on the stone floor; hampered by his hoofs, he could not get his balance and half fell across the bed. Blaise took up the other shoe.
‘Blaise, don’t! Don’t!’
‘I’m only trying to get him out.’
‘You needn’t hurt him,’ but, ‘Get off the bed,’ Blaise shouted at the donkey. ‘Get off!’
Slippers righted himself and stood trembling. ‘Don’t. Don’t!’ wailed Mary again but, holding the shoe by the toe, Blaise advanced on Slippers and beat him with the heel on his rump and sides. Blaise had not meant it but the shoe flew out of his hand and caught the soft nose. ‘He’s bleeding!’ screamed Mary.
Blood had begun to ooze from one nostril; the ears went back as with terrified brays, stumbling over his distorted hoofs, Slippers fled to the verandah. Slipping and sliding again, they heard him crash down the steps. ‘He may have broken his legs!’ and Mary shouted at Blaise, ‘I’ll never like you again! Never!’ as she ran down the steps. ‘I’m going,’ she shouted ‘and I’m not coming back!’
Slippers had not broken his legs. He was stumbling along the beach. She ran after him.
‘Mary, don’t be silly. Come back. Come back at once.’ Blaise’s words floated back to him on the breeze.
Mary ran along the beach past fishing boats drawn up, nets stretched to dry, until she caught up with Slippers. For a while he would not come to her but at last the bruised and bloodied nose touched her hand. Taking off her shoes, holding him by the rope around his neck, she led him into the sea, hoping the water would ease his legs – they must be bruised. With her free hand, she patted him, talking to him; the trembling eased to a quivering. Then she led him back to dry land.
There, her arms round his neck, Mary began to cry, cry as she had never done before. I should have said no in Bombay, gone with Rory to Peru . . . Peru, London, the North Pole, anywhere. She sobbed against Slippers’s rough neck as the donkey stood quietly, holding her weight. I should have been warned, thought Mary. Hadn’t Blaise said that very first time when he got up from the ridiculous bed, ‘I shall never forgive myself, never. I must see your father at once.’ She had only pulled him down, ‘Don’t you dare,’ and kissed him. And there was magic, she insisted now, a sort of magic, in the long Norwegian summer days, hardly any night. Then how had it come to this? She did not know. I suppose in Ootacamund I kept my eyes shut tight. Now they were painfully open and, ‘Oh, Rory, Rory, I wish you were here.’
Far out to sea there was a steamer, its lights making a chain of pinprick reflections across the water; the steamer looked as small and lonely in that vastness as Mary felt. She turned to go back but behind the beach was a line of what seemed to be small trees, soft and feathery with, behind them again, taller trees; though Mary did not know it, this was the casuarina and mango grove. As she looked, she saw a glow that flickered. A fire, thought Mary.
Her shoes in her hand, her bare feet making no noise on the
sand, she walked up slowly through the fuzzy trees, their feathery branches brushing her face. Vaguely she could see, among them, bushes of what seemed to be scarlet flowers, hibiscus; holding the bell of one of them, she stood at the edge of a clearing among the taller trees.
There was a roof of palm matting stretched between two slender trunks of trees; below it, animal skins, deer and goat, lay on the sand before a seat or a couch – or was it a throne? To the side was a big earthenware pitcher for water, a brass lota, a few brass platters and long-handled spoons – Mary had come out without her spectacles yet every detail seemed printed on her eyes. A washing line was stretched, too, between two trees – a line hung with loincloths and, incongruously, a sweater. Behind the washing was a pile of brushwood and green brown stems – could they be sugar cane? wondered Mary.
The fire was in front, a fire of wood; tending it was a young man, blue-black – Mary felt as if she recognised him. He was wearing a loincloth with another cloth across his shoulders. His hair looked oddly white; then, as the fire flared up, Mary saw his hair was full of ashes. On his face, two arched eyebrows were drawn in white with, between them, a white U-shape that Lady Fisher had said was the sign of the god Vishnu; the lips were scarlet.
He stood up. At that moment, Slippers, who had followed Mary, gave her such a sudden shove with his nose that she dropped her shoes.
At the sound, quick as a cat, the young man had leapt to the couch and was sitting in the lotus position – legs crossed, each foot up to rest on the opposite knee, looking exactly, thought Mary, like one of the gods in the pictures she had seen in the bazaar.
‘Come,’ a voice called, a mellifluous voice that had an echo of a flute. ‘Come.’
Her arm around the donkey’s neck, Mary came. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ the young man said and got off the throne.
Mary had stepped into the circle of light; there was a small lantern set on the sand. He picked it up, holding it to see her. Mary knew her face was tear-stained, her eyes red from crying, her hair in tangles, her skirt soaked with salt water from washing Slippers and that she smelled of donkey. ‘Never mind. Please sit down,’ he said, as if he had read her thoughts, and then, not a question but a statement, ‘You are from Auntie Sanni’s.’