Coromandel Sea Change

by Rumer Godden

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mrs Blaise Browne.’

  ‘Yes.’ Mary was reluctant to say it.

  ‘On honeymoon.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not much honey, I think.’ He was holding the lantern closer. ‘Too much moon?’

  ‘Yes.’ That was like a sob.

  ‘Moons wane,’ he said, ‘not like ours tonight which will grow bigger. That is propitious. If you start anything new always do it on a waxing moon. Perhaps your husband would say that is superstitious?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It is not superstitious to take notice of seasons, tides, sun and moon. So, you ran away to be with the donkey instead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If you can only say one word,’ he laughed, ‘undoubtedly “yes” is better than “no”.’

  Was he mocking her? No. His voice was tender – and, You could trust him to be tender, she thought, instinctively. She was beginning to unwind from the hard little ball she had made of herself. There was something about the gaiety that was irresistible; she found she was responding. ‘They are looking everywhere for you,’ she told him.

  He laughed. ‘Looking far and wide. They will not think of looking close.’

  ‘But why are you talking to me?’ she said. ‘I thought you had taken a vow of silence.’

  ‘A public vow. This is private. The make-up is public too; underneath it, I assure you, I am a most presentable person.’

  More than that, Mary could have said. There was something magnificent about him – a curious word to use for a young man. She found she was looking at him with an again curious minuteness; he was not tall but was so slim he looked taller. She could see, in the firelight, how the muscles moved with rippling ease, almost like a great cat’s, under the dark skin – Yes, blue-black, thought Mary. The shoulders were broad, the head well set, his face fine-boned, a straight nose with sensitive nostrils; his eyes were brown not black as with many Indians – they looked light in the darkness of his skin.

  ‘You ask me why – the vow, I mean.’ He bent down and scooped a little of the sand and let it trickle through his fingers. ‘I think you know’, he said, ‘what it is to be out of love?’

  ‘Yes.’ That was so fervent that they both laughed, happy, easy laughter.

  He threw more wood on the fire which leapt up, sending sparks high in the air. Sparks, fireflies, stars. Mary felt dizzy; the sand though, warm and dry, was firm under her as she sat, her wet skirt spread around her; he was opposite, sitting Indian fashion on his heels.

  ‘Your name is Krishnan from Krishna?’

  ‘That is so.’

  ‘Do you play the flute?’

  ‘No, only the fool,’ he laughed, then conceded, ‘well, I play a little but not as well as Krishna, who could? And your name is?’

  ‘Mary.’

  ‘Mary Browne.’ He tried it over.

  ‘Browne with an e,’ Mary mocked which she knew was disloyal.

  ‘Then, Mary Browne, how did you come here?’

  ‘Blaise, my husband, was posted to India. I followed him.’

  ‘He wasn’t your husband then?’

  ‘No, not until Bombay.’

  Blaise had insisted, ‘It must be properly arranged.’

  ‘Properly?’ She had laughed but to her surprise, Rory, who had always allowed her to do as she wanted – almost, she had to admit, there had been those schools – and who did not care a fig what his world thought about him, took the same view but, ‘I . . . I’m not ready to be married yet,’ Mary, even in her ardency, had said.

  ‘Exactly what I think,’ and Rory had urged, ‘Merry, come with me to Peru.’ Rory, too, had a new and even more senior posting. ‘Then if in two or three years’ time you still . . .’

  ‘Two or three years!’ the young Mary had cried in anguish, at eighteen that seemed aeons, and, ‘So I came,’ she said now to Krishnan.

  ‘Atcha!’ He accepted that with the ambiguous Hindustani word.

  There was a sound of crashing: something heavy was coming through the trees. Slippers, who – contributing to the peacefulness – was lying near on the sand, his legs bent under him, his ears still, pricked them and gave a whicker as, behind the shanty shelter, a big hulk appeared. ‘An elephant!’ cried Mary.

  ‘My elephant,’ said Krishnan. ‘At least she belongs to the Maharajah but as he is absent she has been lent to me for the campaign.’

  ‘I didn’t know there was a Maharajah.’

  ‘His Highness Tirupatha Deva Raja of Konak. He has other titles but not as lovely for instance as, best of all, the Seem of Swat. The Maharajah used to own the state. He had palaces, three forts, an army, foot and horse.’

  ‘And elephants?’

  ‘Yes, especially one elephant, very fierce, the Maharajah kept for trampling people. In those days that was the usual punishment and every now and then the fierce elephant was sent into towns and villages to trample a few peasants and officials to remind them the Maharajah was the Maharajah.’

  ‘That can’t be true.’

  ‘I do not always speak the truth,’ said Krishnan. ‘Who does? But this is true. Now the current Maharajah is plain Mr Konak, the treasury is forfeit, most of the palaces are colleges or hospitals, the forts and armies gone. He has only this one small elephant – she is small because her mother discarded her. She has become a pet.’

  ‘Where is her – is it a mahout? – the man who drives her?’

  ‘Drunk, I expect,’ said Krishnan. ‘She wanders at night.’

  ‘But is she safe?’

  ‘She wouldn’t trample a chicken, she’s far too wise. The villagers give her sweets.’

  ‘Will she come if you call?’

  ‘If I have sugar cane. Fortunately I have,’ and in his fluting voice he called, ‘Come, come, Birdie.’

  ‘Birdie? That’s not a name for an elephant.’

  ‘It is in remembrance,’ said Krishnan. ‘When I was a little boy I had an English governess, Miss Birdwood. We called her Birdie. She, too, was an orphan.’

  ‘Is that why you speak English so well?’

  ‘Well, I was at school in England, then went to Oxford.’

  He let these small details about himself fall into the conversation. Is he showing off? thought Mary. Yes, he is, to me. It made her feel pleasingly important. She tried to see the small dark boy he must have been with the governess, Birdie; he would have had the same brown eyes, probably mischievous, the haughty face. Miss Birdie could not have had an easy time except that, Mary was sure, he was affectionate. At Oxford he must have worn a suit, at least a jersey and trousers, which seemed incredible, and at once, as if she had spoken aloud, Krishnan said, ‘I assure you, I was perfectly proper.’

  Mary blushed but the elephant had come, standing, swaying on the other side of the fire from the donkey who stayed in quiet comradeship.

  Krishnan had said Birdie was small but to Mary she loomed large. She looked at the width of her back with its grey, wrinkled skin, the ridiculously small tail, the outsize toenails on the big feet, half buried in the sand, and lifted her eyes to the head with its curious dome – again, she was looking in detail. The ears were not as big as the elephants she had seen in Africa. ‘Indian elephants are more elegant,’ said Krishnan. ‘Perhaps because they are used for state occasions and for walking in processions.’ Birdie’s ears were shapely, mottled pink and brown on the underside. The eyes looked – tiny, Mary thought in surprise, yet elephants’ eyes are supposed to have a hundred facets. More surprising were the eyelashes – ‘I never knew elephants had eyelashes!’

  ‘Like a film star’s,’ said Krishnan. The trunk was reaching towards him, its tip lifted to show small pink divisions. A stem of sugar cane came, was accepted whole with leaves; the trunk stuffed it into the mouth with its absurd underlip, came back again while Krishnan crooned words in Telugu. How gentle he is, thought Mary.

  ‘You give her some,’ said Krishnan.

  ‘Would she take it from me?
Would she?’

  ‘Don’t be so doubting, try.’

  The trunk came towards Mary, accepted, then suddenly slapped the ground, sending a shower of sand over her. ‘Ayyo!’ cried Krishnan. ‘That’s enough. That was play,’ he explained. ‘She’s the only elephant I know who amuses herself. The palace uses her to fetch marketing and firewood. For that she has to go inland, across a river, wide and shallow. To while away the time, she puts her trunk just under the water and blows bubbles but she would much rather walk in processions – they hire her out for weddings,’ and he sang:

  ‘With rings on her fingers

  [though they would have to be earrings]

  And bells on her toes,

  She shall have music

  Wherever she goes.’

  His voice was full and sweet; it filled Mary with a happiness as light as the bubbles Birdie blew. What did it matter if they broke and disappeared? ‘It seems so strange,’ she said. ‘Nursery rhymes and bubbles. To be at Oxford you have to be clever.’

  ‘Naturally. I got a first.’

  ‘Then politics – and you know about elephants?’

  ‘At the moment I know everything,’ said Krishnan. ‘My father says when I am older I shall know that I don’t know anything but I haven’t reached as far as that yet.’

  ‘My father says’, Mary was not to be outdone, ‘that you should always pretend to know less than you do about things. With me, that isn’t difficult. I don’t know anything. One of my headmistresses wrote in my report, “Mary has a marvellous capacity for sitting in a class and absorbing absolutely nothing.” But I can speak French and Italian – servants’ French and Italian.’

  ‘You talk to the servants, you won’t talk to our friends,’ Rory used to reproach her.

  ‘Your friends,’ even as a child, Mary had retorted that. ‘We move about so much, I don’t have time to make any.’

  ‘I don’t think’, she told Krishnan now, ‘I ever had a friend but the servants stayed with us. They took me to market. Markets are much more interesting than drawing rooms. I suppose there have to be drawing rooms.’

  ‘For you, yes,’ said Krishnan. ‘You see, I know your father’s name: Roderick Frobisher Sinclair Scott.’

  ‘That’s not half as grand as it sounds. It’s only because in Scotland, if you inherit land, for instance from your mother or grandmother— ’

  ‘On the maternal side?’

  ‘Yes, you add her surname to your own. You could end with four but Rory’s only a younger son.’

  ‘They are proud old names, yet you would rather be Mary Browne?’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ and Mary quickly turned the talk away from herself. ‘Sing something again,’ she said, ‘something Indian.’

  He sang in Tamil first, then in English:

  ‘A cradle of chaudan

  A cord of silk.

  Come, little moon bird

  I’ll rock the cradle,

  Rock you to sleep

  Sleep.’

  ‘That,’ said Krishnan ‘is one of the lullabies ayahs sing to children when they are in bed.’ He stood up. ‘Now, before you go to sleep, moonbird, or they send out a search party and raise a sensation, I must take you back.’

  ‘I’ll leave you here,’ he said when they came near the bungalow. ‘I don’t want to be shot.’

  Mary watched him go. Suddenly he began to dance in and out of the waves, taking long leaps over the stretched-out nets and the prows of boats. Slippers and Birdie had come out of the grove to watch, standing one behind the other at the foot of the dunes; as he turned to join them, he looked along the beach and raised his hand.

  Mary raised hers in return.

  Monday

  ‘Rory’s family couldn’t be bettered,’ Lady Fisher said in satisfaction. Sir John had told her about seeing Mary on the beach late last night. ‘Her mother was a Foljambe, a Devon Foljambe. That ought to be all right.’

  ‘Alicia, you are a constant joy to me.’ Sir John in his dressing gown was standing at the window. ‘You never change.’

  ‘I see no reason to change.’ Lady Fisher was as placid as ever. ‘I believe in good breeding – at any level – and it’s a comfort to know people’s backgrounds . . . it helps one to understand why they behave as they do.’

  It was a perfect morning. Early mornings in India are not like mornings anywhere else; they have a purity, ‘Perhaps’, Sir John often said, ‘because they begin with ritual washings and prayer.’ In every town and village the people were making their morning ablutions, going down into the rivers or village tanks or pools, standing waist high in the water, pouring it over themselves, lifting their hands in prayer. In Shantipur the villagers did not go into the sea like the fishermen – the waves were too strong – but all were at prayer, purifying themselves.

  There were smells: of dew on leaves and grass, of smoke from small fires of dung, of cooking in mustard oil; sudden whiffs of sweetness came from flowers opening in the first sun and, oddly mingling, European smells of toast for the early morning teas being made in the pantry at Patna Hall.

  The wind was only a breeze. Along the beach, the waves were almost gentle; black dots of fishing boats were out on a calm sea. They must have gone out early,’ said Sir John.

  Auntie Sanni’s doves were calling from the dovecote in the courtyard while parakeets swung and chattered in the jacaranda and acacia trees; monkeys were industriously searching one another for fleas. There was a tumble of bougainvillaea and of morning glory along the walls, their convolvulus-shaped flowers brilliantly blue. As Sir John looked, Hannah came down the upstairs verandah, bringing their morning tea with toast and plantains, small bananas, extra sweet. ‘Who could want breakfast after this?’ asked Lady Fisher.

  ‘I do,’ said Sir John, ‘at Patna Hall.’

  Hannah, in a clean white sari, her bracelets clinking, put down the tray and made namaskar. Lesser guests had their trays brought by the houseboys.

  ‘Thank you, Hannah.’ As Lady Fisher poured, she began again where she had left off. ‘Anne, Mary’s mother, Anne Foljambe remember, would never have countenanced this marriage. Mary should have stayed at that excellent convent in Brussels. She had seemed settled. Do you remember we took her out while we were there?’

  ‘Rory always let her do what she liked.’

  ‘Yes, but to marry so young.’

  ‘Probably couldn’t stop her,’ said Sir John. ‘Pity the young man’s not up to her.’

  ‘Most people would say the other way round. He’s an only son, there’s plenty of money but . . . How does he stand with you, John?’

  ‘Steady, therefore dependable. Completely honest, of course. Excellently briefed – up to a point – but I detect’, Sir John winced, ‘a certain arrogance, or is it pretentiousness?’

  That’s from Mother,’ Lady Fisher said at once.

  ‘Yes. Old Archie Browne’s a good chap though, invaluable in secondary places where, I can guess, Master Blaise will follow him.’

  ‘Poor Mrs Browne.’

  ‘But, Alicia, that girl! She’s quicksilver. I was watching her last night when you were telling the Krishna story, response in every line.’

  ‘Probably too much response.’ Lady Fisher sighed. ‘Well, she married him, she’ll have to conform, though it seems a pity to clip her wings.’

  ‘I don’t think she’ll let them be clipped,’ said Sir John.

  Dr Coomaraswamy, in his shirtsleeves, without a tie, his fringe of hair ruffled, was on the telephone. ‘Since six a.m. have I been on the telephone,’ he told Samuel, who was supervising the tables for breakfast, while Mr Srinivasan frantically looked up numbers. ‘Hallo. Hallo.’ Another stream of Telegu then the Doctor hung up. ‘No contractor has a lorry free. Not one.’

  ‘And what, anyway, are we doing with a lorry?’ Mr Srinivasan seemed to beseech heaven.

  ‘Only what we have to do,’ said Dr Coomaraswamy – ‘Gloomaraswamy’, as Krishnan often called him.

  ‘Wha
t we have to do? And what will that be?’

  Gloomaraswamy lost his temper. ‘I only know if this fool antic has to be done at all, it must be done properly.’

  ‘Pandal, garlands and all?’

  ‘Pandal, garlands, posters, loudspeakers, bloody well all.’

  ‘We cannot do it without a lorry,’ said Mr Srinivasan in despair.

  ‘I have a lorry.’ Fresh as the morning, his white clothes immaculate, his ringleted hair oiled, came Sharma, once more a messenger for good. ‘A beautiful lorry.’

  ‘Who got it?’

  ‘I,’ said Sharma. ‘Am I not District Agent?’

  ‘Whose is it?’

  ‘Surijlal Chand’s.’

  ‘Surijlal’s? But he’s Opposition.’

  ‘No longer,’ said Sharma with his angelic smile. ‘No longer.’

  ‘But . . . how?’

  ‘I took him to see Krishnan. Surijlal is a highly religious man. He was up at dawn saying his prayers. Do you know where he is now?’

  ‘How could I know?’ said Dr Coomaraswamy crossly. ‘I am not Surijlal’s keeper.’

  ‘He is taking darshan,’ said Sharma. ‘Darshan of Krishnan . . . sitting, not saying a word, filled with joy and we have his lorry.’

  ‘But . . . what is it costing?’

  ‘Nothing. He has given it.’

  ‘Surijlal has given it? And he a bania. I do not believe . . .’

  ‘There it is,’ said Sharma, leading them through the hall, and there, by the portico, stood a full-size lorry, almost new and already decorated with tassels, beads and paper flowers.

  ‘But this is excellent.’ Mr Srinivasan was hopping up and down in excitement.

  ‘Call everyone!’ a recovered Dr Coomaraswamy shouted. ‘Srinivasan, go up to Paradise and gather everybody at once. Tell them to hurry.’

  Auntie Sanni heard the lorry drive up, then, later, Coomaraswamy’s voice shrilly exhorting as the young men came hurrying down the outside staircase with a hubbub of excited voices as orders were shouted from under the portico. The other side of the house was in peace and, as Auntie Sanni on her swing couch was sipping her tea, Hannah, in full clinking, massaged her legs.