Coromandel Sea Change

by Rumer Godden

  ‘A little rice?’

  She shook her head. ‘I had dinner.’

  ‘More than I had.’ The rice had been left cold. Krishnan warmed it, mixed it with dried fish, and soon was scooping it up with his fingers. Again she saw how white and even his teeth were.

  ‘I think,’ he said, ‘it would be better if you did not go back to your husband tonight.’

  ‘I don’t think I could.’

  ‘The question is, what to do with you? All Patna Hall will be asleep and we don’t want to cause a stir. If I made you comfortable, here in the grove, would you be afraid?’

  ‘I’m too tired to be afraid.’

  ‘True. You’re half asleep,’ but, ‘Where will you be?’ she asked, all at once awake.

  ‘Udata and I have to ride Birdie to Ghandara. I dare not trust Birdie to her mahout and his people. They might try to paint her all over again.’ He laughed.

  ‘Krishnan, are you ever tired?’

  ‘Not when I cannot be.’ He got up. ‘Here is a clean lunghi. Sleep in that.’

  He arranged a bed for her on the deerskins, taking quilts and pillows from the throne. Mary lay down, the lunghi round her. Krishnan tucked its end in, Indian fashion. ‘Your hair will dry. Sleep.’

  But, ‘Krishnan, what about Blaise?’ she asked. ‘Is it my fault? Why is there all this trouble?’ and Krishnan answered as he had answered before, ‘Because you are you and Blaise is Blaise. The two don’t mix.’

  ‘Then what am I to do? How can we live together?’

  ‘You will get older,’ said Krishnan. ‘So will he. I don’t think he can change but you will learn how to live with him – and not mix – as many wives do, the wise ones. Indian women, I think, are particularly wise in this: they know how not to mix yet never let their husbands guess it.’

  ‘Must I?’ asked Mary.

  His hand closed over hers; she could have stayed with that warm clasp for ever.

  ‘There are destinies,’ Krishnan said. ‘Yours and mine. But don’t think of that tonight. Go to sleep.’

  He took his hand away, touched her hair and left. She heard him call to Birdie, then a rustling as they went through the trees.

  Friday

  Mary was woken by the parakeets. A pair was quarrelling in a tree overhead, their bright green flashing between the dark-leaved mango branches, their red beaks chattering as they made their raucous cries. Perhaps they’re husband and wife, thought Mary smiling – Blaise and me – then ceased to smile as she remembered the angry words on the beach. Krishnan did his best, even when he had to interfere. Mary thought Blaise would really have hit her; He slapped me before. She shut her eyes trying to keep thoughts of Blaise out of the way. This is Krishnan’s day, his vital day. She thought of him riding Birdie away last night, through the dark – with Udata, of course; Birdie would be docile. Docile, dulcet, there was a sweetness about those words; with Krishnan everything, everyone became docile – even me, thought Mary and, Yes, I must go back.

  When she sat up she found she had been showered with scarlet petals, the simile trees were dropping their cotton flowers. In one week they are going over, thought Mary and realisation came to her – Today we go away too. She could not believe it, the very thought brought such a feeling of emptiness that she hurriedly put it out of her mind. ‘Don’t think about it yet,’ she told herself. Instead, ‘Today is the election.’

  Krishnan will win, thought Mary. He couldn’t not, yet the sceptical voices intervened: ‘Of all the way-out notions.’ The man’s mad!’ ‘Masquerading as a god.’ Krishnan himself had told her, ‘It will be tricky.’ Mary picked up a cotton flower that had fallen without breaking and began to pick off the petals. ‘He will win. He won’t. He will. He won’t.’ Yet knowing, as the scarlet petals fell over her feet, they would end, ‘He will.’

  ‘But I’, she whispered, ‘have to go back to Blaise.’

  ‘Must I?’ she had asked Krishnan.

  ‘I think you must.’

  If I can, thought Mary. I . . . I have to get over myself first. I can. She picked up another flower. ‘You can. You can’t. You can.’ Mary sat looking at the sepals of the flower, bare now that the brilliantly coloured petals had gone all but one. She pulled it. ‘You can’t,’ it said.

  ‘The elephant was decorated especially and at great cost for the pomp,’ pleaded Dr Coomaraswamy.

  ‘I had told you, ordered you.’ The campaign was over. Krishnan could speak. ‘There will be no pomp.’

  A bitter scene was going on in the Ghandara headquarters between Krishnan and Dr Coomaraswamy.

  ‘You have undone the elephant,’ the Doctor almost screamed. ‘After such work! Such cost!’

  ‘Against express orders.’ When Krishnan was cool, it meant he was angry.

  ‘I am the director of this campaign,’ Dr Coomaraswamy blustered.

  ‘He is the director,’ Mr Srinivasan echoed.

  ‘And I am the campaign.’

  ‘True. True,’ said Mr Srinivasan, ‘but— ’

  ‘There is no but. Everything is to be carried out exactly as I said.’

  ‘Krishnan, think. I beg you to think. This is the day. The crucial day.’

  ‘Then this is all the more crucial.’

  ‘Surely it is time for a little display? True, you have brought the people out marvellously . . .’

  ‘Most marvellously,’ piped faithful Srinivasan.

  ‘They will be disappointed.’

  ‘Far more disappointed if I renege.’

  ‘Renege?’

  ‘Destroy my image, which is what you would have me do. Stupidity!’ cried Krishnan.

  ‘I do not like stupidity.’ Dr Coomaraswamy drew himself up.

  ‘Then don’t be it. Can’t you see?’ asked Krishnan.

  ‘I see that Padmina Retty will come with a great splash, aeroplane, bands, decorations – maybe decorated elephants – horses, parade.’

  ‘Yes, and you will ask her, demand of her, to tell you, in public, then and there, what it cost. You will say to the crowd, “Ask your Mother Padmina what it cost” – “Mother” will be mockery. “Ask her what it cost and who will pay.” ’ Krishnan stood up, his eyes flashing. ‘ “Who pays? Not your mother. Not any Retty. Oh, no! Then who? You,” ’ stormed Krishnan. ‘ “You, the people. Ask her how many of the pice you have been allowed to earn with your toil, your poor tools, have gone into her pocket. Or the pockets of her aides who talk to you so sweetly. Oh, yes! They hold out a hand to you, sweetly, sweetly, while the other hand is robbing you.” ’

  ‘Then ask, “What is the cost of Krishnan Bhanj? Nothing. He asks nothing. Not one pice do you have to pay. He himself takes nothing. His followers take nothing. He gives and so people give gladly to him. Brothers and sisters, give him your votes.” That is what you will say,’ said Krishnan.

  ‘But . . . I have already ordered two bands.’

  ‘Then you can pay them yourself or tell them to go away.’

  ‘I have hired horses. Already they are caparisoned.’

  ‘Then uncaparison them.’

  ‘Boy and girl scouts.’

  ‘Boy and girl scouts I don’t mind.’

  ‘He doesn’t mind boy and girl scouts.’ Mr Srinivasan was thankful.

  ‘Yes, that is a good idea – but – scouts? Are there any in Konak?’

  ‘In truth, no,’ and Dr Coomaraswamy had to admit, ‘I have had to buy uniforms.’

  ‘The children can keep the uniforms. They will be delighted but wear them they will not, will not,’ repeated Krishnan severely, ‘for the procession. If anything is not in truth, then no. This political campaign, unlike all other political campaigns, must be in truth. Absolute truth. Nothing else will I have.’

  ‘Then it will be disaster.’

  ‘Then it will be success.’

  Mary sang as she went along the shore. Singing! I oughtn’t to be singing. I have to make peace, at least a sort of peace, with Blaise. I’ll try – though it seems unlikely, thought Ma
ry. Yet still she sang:

  ‘Early one morning,

  Just as the sun was rising,

  I heard a pretty maiden in the valley below:

  Oh, never leave me,

  Oh, don’t deceive me.

  How could you use a poor maiden so?’

  She laughed as she picked up a piece of seaweed with her toes and cast it back into the sea.

  There were no boats on the shore; the fishermen must have gone out early; it was, as well, too early for people to come down to the beach. The dawn was rosy – she thought of Usas the Dawn Goddess, daughter of the sky, sister of night. There was a pink light over the sea, pale tender pink, giving no inkling of the heat that was to come. Yes, it will be hot, thought Mary, hard for the people who have to walk in the processions.

  She would have liked to have gone up to the Hall to see if she could find Hannah and ask her for some earlier-than-normal early tea but first she had to make herself respectable. I need a bath. The stains of colour would be difficult to wash off. I wonder if it’s too early to ring the house for hot water. I could telephone quietly so as not to wake Blaise. I must look an apparition. I need to wash my hair too.

  Her bare feet made no sound on the verandah; the shutters were open; a half door swung in the sea breeze. Mary stepped inside and stood puzzled.

  There was no one in the room; the bed was oddly rumpled, its pillows cast aside. There was, too, an odd smell; strong disinfectant but with it, or under it, a stink, thought Mary, wrinkling up her nose . . . something that reminded her of the smell that hung about stables.

  Coming further in, she saw Blaise’s clothes lying in a crumpled heap at the foot of the bed. Perhaps he had wanted a swim to cool himself off after the quarrel . . . but his bathing trunks, put to dry, still hung on the verandah rail.

  Did he change to go up to the Hall? But why change? He didn’t get wet. Was he so angry that he had determined to leave Patna Hall at once and gone up to order a taxi? She looked through his clothes; they were all there. He wouldn’t have gone up to the Hall naked. Besides, wouldn’t he have packed? She couldn’t imagine Blaise leaving his possessions behind. Then where is he? wondered Mary.

  She looked at the partition. Shall I ask Olga? But there was no sound from her rooms. She looked so tired and unhappy last night she should sleep, and Mary quietly went out. ‘Blaise, Blaise,’ she called along the beach. ‘Blaise.’ The sound came back to her from emptiness.

  It was then that she heard a whickering, not a pleased sound but a whickering of distress: Slippers came out of the bushes and with him the stench she had smelled in the bedroom but stronger. He was limping, worse than limping, lurching as he tried to move; one foot was dragging and Mary saw the fetlock was swollen, the pitiable hoof was on its side. Slippers was shaking in violent spasms. His sides were smeared with dung and there were marks on his neck – Blaise with the heel of his shoe again! Mary, too, was shaking but with fury. He had hit Slippers on the eyes as well: one was swollen and bleeding; there was blood on his nose. ‘Horrible,’ cried Mary aloud. ‘Horrible! Blaise must have found you in the bedroom again,’ she cried to Slippers. ‘Oh, why did you go in?’ and then she knew. ‘You were looking for your sugar because I forgot to give it to you. It’s I who am horrible.’ She buried her face in Slippers’s furry neck. ‘He drove you off the verandah too quickly and you have broken your poor foot. Stay there,’ Mary ordered him. ‘Don’t try to move. Stay.’

  She tore up the path; the house was silent, shuttered. How odd! People come for the sea breezes and sleep with their shutters closed, but at the gatehouse she found Thambi, squatting on his haunches, beginning to blow up a small fire for the lazy Shyama.

  ‘Thambi! Thambi!’

  Thambi rose to his feet at this frantic apparition.

  ‘Thambi – Slippers – donkey – hurt, very hurt. Get vet. Vet-er-in-a-rian animal doctor. Animal hurt. Doctor. Quick.’

  Thambi, always intelligent, understood. ‘Animal hurt,’ but doctor seemed to him strange. Donkeys, to Thambi, were neither here nor there, a means of transport, bearers of burdens. He, Samuel and Hannah had often deplored Auntie Sanni’s keeping of Slippers. The donkey did not matter but Mary’s distress did. ‘I come,’ said Thambi. ‘First I call Miss Sanni.’

  ‘The vet. The vet,’ Mary was still saying it hysterically as she stood by Slippers.

  ‘There is no use for the vet,’ and Auntie Sanni said words in Telegu to Thambi who ran to the house.

  Auntie Sanni’s nightclothes looked no different from her dresses; she had come down the path billowing and calm. Gently she spoke to Slippers, touching the bloody marks on his head and eye, only her mouth had tightened, the sea-green of her eyes grown dark. Gently she had felt down his leg to the broken fetlock and had shaken her head. ‘The bone is fragmented. See, bits are through the skin. He has made it worse by dragging it. Besides the hoof is too heavy for it to mend. Poor donkey,’ she said. ‘Why wouldn’t you let us . . . ?’ Then to Mary, ‘Colonel McIndoe will come.’

  ‘Colonel McIndoe!’

  ‘He is firm and quick,’ said Auntie Sanni. ‘Mary, go inside.’

  White to the lips, Mary said, ‘I’m not a child, Auntie Sanni, I’ll stay.’

  The shot rang out to the hills and echoed back. ‘Better go to Mr Browne,’ Auntie Sanni told Mary. ‘This will startle him.’

  Mary stood up from where she had knelt by Slippers, stretched prone now on the sand. Her tears had fallen on his fur.

  ‘No more pain,’ said Auntie Sanni. ‘No more blows. Poor little donkey.’

  ‘Just because I forgot his sugar.’ Then, ‘Blaise!’ Recollection came flooding back. ‘Auntie Sanni, Blaise isn’t there. He isn’t – anywhere.’

  Quietly, methodically, Auntie Sanni went through the room, questioning Mary as quietly. ‘If he had come up to the Hall, I should have known – our nightwatchman would have called me and,’ Auntie Sanni sniffed, ‘Mary, someone else has been in this room.’

  ‘Who?’

  Auntie Sanni did not answer that. Instead, ‘You are sure he has taken nothing?’

  ‘Nothing,’ and, out on the beach again, Mary said, ‘He must have gone swimming but what – ’ she felt as if she asked the sky, the sea itself, ‘what’s the harm in that? Blaise is a strong, strong swimmer.’

  ‘Miss Baba, look,’ and Mary saw what she had not noticed before, the long mesh screen with its barbed top and hinges was still stretched between its iron posts across the Patna Hall beach. ‘Is not open,’ said Thambi – he had not unlocked it. ‘Ten foot high,’ said Thambi. ‘No sahib, even athlete, get over that.’

  ‘Then . . . ?’ Mary looked with rising horror along the beach. ‘No. Oh, no!’

  ‘I think yes,’ said Thambi. Scanning the wash of the waves, he saw something, darted along the sand, lifted a small object, white, limp and brought it to them. It was an hotel towel.

  ‘Ayyo!’

  ‘Ayyo! Ay-ayyo!’ Thambi cried in horror. ‘Ay-yo-ma!’

  Up in their room, the Fishers heard the shot. Sir John put on his dressing gown and went out on the upper verandah to look. ‘As far as I can see,’ he called back to Lady Fisher, ‘something has happened to the donkey. Colonel McIndoe is there.’

  ‘The Colonel? Then it’s serious.’

  ‘Yes. The poor beast is down.’

  ‘Mary will be upset. Poor child.’

  Then came running footsteps, a voice, ‘Sir John! Sir John!’

  It was a Mary they had not seen before, her dress limp, stained with odd colours as was she, colour-stains from Birdie’s paint and blood – that had been from Slippers’s eye. Her feet were bare, her hair stiff with dried salt, her face tear-stained, the eyes wide with panic.

  ‘The poor donkey’s been put down,’ Sir John began but, ‘Worse – than Slippers.’ Mary was out of breath. ‘Worse.’

  ‘What is worse?’

  ‘Blaise,’ stammered Mary. ‘Blaise. He went for a swim.’

  ‘Is that all?’ their
looks seemed to say when a sound like another shot but a muffled shot came from over their heads. The next moment, across the verandah, they saw a shower of coloured stars descending over the sea. ‘A rocket,’ said Sir John.

  Next moment came another, then another. ‘It’s Patna Hall’s own alarm signal,’ said Sir John. ‘Thambi is letting rockets off from the roof to alert the fishing boats, maybe the coastguards.’

  ‘Great God in heaven!’ said Lady Fisher.

  Out on the verandah, carrying the Fishers’ morning tea tray, Hannah heard the rockets. As if in echo of Lady Fisher, putting the tray carefully down on a table, Hannah knelt, made the sign of the cross and she, too, whispered, ‘God in heaven. Merciful God. Mother of God. Blessed Virgin.’

  Kuku was woken by the shot.

  From the window she saw the gathering on the beach and drew a sharp breath. Like Sir John, ‘Colonel McIndoe is there,’ she whispered. ‘My God!’

  She dressed as fast as she could but her fingers were trembling so much that she could hardly knot her sari; when she tried to brush out her hair, she dropped the brush. Managing to slip through the house without being seen by any of the servants she ran, not down the path but by a side track through the bushes to the bungalow, coming round its far end. No one was near as she knocked on Olga Manning’s door.

  ‘Olga. Olga. Please may I come in? It’s Kuku.’

  There was no answer.

  ‘Olga, I must come in.’ The door was not locked. Kuku pushed it open.

  Drugged by tiredness and the whisky Mary and Auntie Sanni had given her, Olga had slept through the shot, the voices, the rockets. Now Kuku shook her awake. ‘Olga, please. Try and wake. It is urgent. Olga.’

  Slowly, struggling through waves of weariness and heaviness, Olga sat up. ‘It’s morning.’ She blinked at the light.