by Rumer Godden
‘Kanu. If Hannah— ’
‘Hannah!’ He spat, got up on his knees, entreating Mary.
‘Menzies, Menzies Sahib. Mees. Please.’
‘Menzies Sahib has left hotel. Gone.’ Mary tried to free herself but the small black hands held her.
‘Gone car,’ sobbed Kanu, ‘no take Kanu. “Get out car. Get out!” ’ he mimicked Mr Menzies. ‘ “Out!” ’ Then sobs overtook him. ‘No take Kanu. No take.’ Terrible sobs. Kanu was suddenly a small boy woefully bereft. A gabble of Telegu followed – Mary guessed he was saying, ‘Where is he?’ and, ‘I don’t know where. Not know.’ She shook her head. ‘Ghandara? Madras? I don’t know.’
‘Kanu go too. Please. Mees.’
Mary shook her head again. ‘Kanu, I can’t help.’
They heard Hannah’s bangles, her tread: with a cry of despair, Kanu vanished down the stairs.
‘Chota Memsahib’ Mary had been promoted: ‘Little Memsahib.’ It was Samuel. ‘The telephone. Master’s father and mother. They wish speak with you.’
‘Oh, no.’ Mary visibly shrank.
‘They waiting,’ Samuel said severely.
The line was not good but Mary could hear the grief and concern in their voices – they were speaking on party lines – ‘Dear, dear Mary. Are you better? Sir John said . . .’
‘Much better now.’
‘He says you are being very brave. Poor little girl.’
Mary winced. ‘Not brave. Not little girl.’
‘Can’t hear. Never mind. Just to tell you we are bringing darling Blaise home from that horrible place.’
‘Horrible place?’ From the open telephone kiosk Mary could catch a glimpse of the garden, gūl-mohr trees and pink and white acacias, parakeets flying in them. She could hear Auntie Sanni’s doves and, distantly, the sound of the waves, feel the sea breeze, warm, scented. She tried to come back to the telephone. ‘Take Blaise?’
The voices seemed to go on in a meaningless babble. ‘I don’t understand,’ said Mary.
‘Never mind. We don’t want to distress you, dear child, Sir John will explain,’ and, ‘Mary, darling,’ came Mrs Browne’s voice, ‘the moment you are home, you must come straight to us.’
‘Home?’ asked Mary, bewildered.
‘Yes, Archie has been trying to get in touch with Rory.’
‘I don’t know exactly where Rory is,’ said Mary.
‘Your own father?’ – faint disapproval.
‘I often don’t know where he is.’
‘Can’t hear. Never mind, get Sir John. Don’t worry. We’ll take care of you.’
I can take care of myself – but this new and learning-to-be-more-gracious Mary did not say it, only, ‘Thank you . . . thank . . .’ Unexpected sobs overtook her. Sir John quietly put her out of the way.
‘They said, “Take Blaise home.” ’
‘They mean back to England.’
‘How?’ The telephone call, its jerk into reality, had amazed Mary.
‘A special coffin is made, then they fly him home by air.’
‘You mean dig him up and bury him again?’
‘Dear Mary! I hope you didn’t say that to his mother?’
‘That’s what it is, isn’t it?’
Like Mrs Browne, Lady Fisher wanted to be tender. ‘Don’t distress yourself,’ she said. ‘It will all be seen to. You needn’t know anything about it,’ but, ‘I think it’s the best thing,’ said Mary, ‘Blaise never liked it here. I think it’s what he would have wanted.’ Her face lit. ‘And it means I can come back here to Auntie Sanni. She says I can come whenever I like.’
‘Mary,’ Lady Fisher knew she had to be practical, ‘you’re leaving here with us, of course, coming to Delhi?’
‘Delhi?’
‘John,’ called Lady Fisher, ‘John.’
‘You’ll stay with us in Delhi, won’t you?’ Sir John used tact. ‘At least until we get in touch with Rory. If he’s in New York I’m sure he’ll fly over to fetch you.’
Come straight to us. You’re leaving here with us. Fly over to fetch you. ‘No,’ said Mary. ‘Thank you both and everyone, especially you,’ she said to Lady Fisher, ‘and Sir John for all you’ve done but I’m going by myself.’
‘Where?’
‘To Calcutta. That’s the worst place, isn’t it? I want the worst. To Calcutta like Olga.’
‘To do what?’
‘To try and do what Krishnan has taught me.’
There was a silence then, ‘Mary,’ said Lady Fisher, ‘you seem to have known Krishnan Bhanj well, far more well than we thought.’
‘It was well.’ Mary smiled, a happy confident smile. ‘Dear Lady Fisher, don’t worry. I’ll find work in a hostel, a poor people’s or children’s home.’
‘Mary, you don’t have to. There’ll be plenty of money.’
‘I do have to. I need to do something difficult, dreadful. Don’t you see I have to try and . . . and make up.’
‘Expiate,’ said Sir John and touched her cheek but, ‘Isn’t that a little exaggerated?’ asked Lady Fisher.
‘No it’s not. Olga understands. She’ll help me.’
‘How can she, in her situation?’
‘That makes her the very person.’
‘At least try and tell us this: what did Krishnan teach you?’
‘To love,’ said Mary simply.
Again the Fishers looked at one another in some consternation.
‘Mary, do you know what you are saying?’
‘For the first time I do.’
‘You and Krishnan Bhanj!’
‘Not just Krishnan.’ Mary’s eyes were dreamy. ‘Everyone. Anyone.’
‘Mary!’ For a moment they were shocked, but afterwards ‘We ought to have trusted her,’ Lady Fisher said to Sir John. ‘Besides, we knew that Krishnan as a true Hindu would not in any way traduce another man’s wife. While Mary . . .’
‘It’s not what you think.’ Mary had said that at once. ‘It’s . . . it’s that . . .’ she had picked up a shell from one of the bowls of shells kept on the verandah tables. And suddenly she found words – I only had thoughts, could never say them – but now, ‘Most of us, almost all of us,’ said this newly eloquent Mary, ‘are shut in a shell and because it’s so filled with ourselves, there’s no room to let anyone or anything in, nothing outside ourselves when, if we only knew, there’s the whole of . . . well everything . . .’
‘Creation?’ suggested Sir John.
‘Yes. We don’t know it but we are part of everyone, everything.’ Mary saw Krishnan’s hand stroking Udata’s grey squirrel back, saw her stripes from Vishnu’s hand. ‘It’s all there only we’re too shut in our shell to see it or feel it. Krishnan opened my shell and let me out. It’s perfectly logical because’, she held the shell to her ear and listened, ‘it’s only in an empty shell,’ said Mary, ‘that you hear the sound of the sea.’
‘All the same,’ Lady Fisher told Sir John with certainty when Mary had gone, ‘it’s Krishnan that girl really loves.’
‘Mrs Browne, please to excuse me’, it was a flustered Mr Srinivasan, ‘but I have looked in reception and there is no one there. Not Miss Kuku. Not Miss Sanni. It is the last thing I have to do and urgent as I have to go to Ghandara for the parade. You were in the office, Mrs Browne. Can you help me?’
‘If I can,’ and ‘If you will come to reception.’ Mary followed him and, ‘What is it you have to do?’
‘Book a room, a permanent room, for Mr Krishnan Bhanj.’
‘Here? At Patna Hall?’
‘Where else?’ asked Mr Srinivasan. ‘He will have to come so often to his constituency. Not like other members, he will be continually among his people, working with them,’ and seeing her startled face, he said again, ‘Where else? Always he has been coming here, first as a little boy with father and mother.’
‘Of course,’ said Mary slowly, ‘that’s when he made friends with Thambi.’
‘He will need to be much at Konak. He must be with his co
nstituents.’
The words were like small hammers driving reality in. ‘Here, not in the grove?’
‘The grove, I think, is over.’
When Mr Srinivasan had gone and she had made a note for Auntie Sanni and entered the booking in the register, ‘Mr Krishnan Bhanj, MP’, which looked strange, almost foreign, Mary put her elbows on the cool teak wood of the reception counter, her hands over her ears to shut out the sound of the sea, her eyes closed to keep out the sunshine outside. ‘Understand,’ said Mary to Mary, ‘Krishnan will come and you will not be here. It is probable you will never see Krishnan again.’
‘Then you are not looking,’ said a voice.
Mary’s eyes seemed to fly open, her hands to fall. It was Krishnan’s uncanny way of knowing her thoughts but who was this elegant young man standing in the hall, tall, exceedingly good-looking, exceedingly dark? He wore a well-cut European suit of fine linen, a shirt of palest blue that set off his good looks, a public-school tie – Harrow? wondered Mary – pale socks and polished shoes; his hair was cut and brushed back. ‘Ready for the victory parade,’ said Krishnan.
Then he came closer. ‘Mary, I am sorry. Deeply, deeply sorry. I wish I hadn’t taunted Blaise,’ said Krishnan.
‘So do I. We both did.’
‘We are birds of one feather.’
‘We always have been,’ said Mary and, unsteadily, ‘Except . . . Krishnan, I can’t forgive Blaise for Slippers. The rest I can manage but that . . .’
‘It is still raw,’ said Krishnan. ‘Still sore.’
‘But for us, it’s over.’ ‘Over’ seemed a desolate word.
‘Not at all,’ said Krishnan. ‘When something is over, something else begins. Therefore’ – Krishnan still kept some tags of old-fashioned English – ‘we shall see one another again.’
‘I don’t think so. I shall be, I hope, working in a slum in Calcutta. You will be in Delhi in Parliament. Don’t they call it the Round House?’
‘The Monkey House,’ said Krishnan. ‘I am still not there yet. Also, I may not stay there just as you may not stay in your slum. Perhaps one day, when we are old, Auntie Sanni might ask us to run Patna Hall for her. That would be fun.’
‘Yes,’ said Mary fervently.
‘And, Mary, I should very much like you to meet my father and mother. And now,’ said Krishnan, ‘let’s go and have a drink.’
Mary came round the reception desk counter. ‘I have never known you drink anything but coconut water and that out of a coconut shell.’
‘Monkeys can change their ways,’ said Krishnan.
‘Krishnan. Sir John. Krishnan. Sir John.’ The frantic voice reached the drawing room where they were all gathered; a sudden squall of rain had driven them from the verandah where Kuku, dressed and groomed, only her face still marked with tearstains, her eyelids red, had been serving coffee after luncheon – a special luncheon that Samuel had been allowed to plan as if to show that Patna Hall was still Patna Hall, ‘no matter what,’ as Auntie Sanni said. The luncheon had included mulligatawny soup.
It was also a farewell to which the drawing room lent a certain stateliness. Everyone was ready to go; the luggage was in the cars. When Kuku finished serving, she began taking round the visitors’ book for signing when Dr Coomaraswamy, his bald head and coat shoulders wet with rain, came in panting, Mr Srinivasan at his heels. ‘Sir John! Sir John!’
‘Doctor! What is it?’
‘It is that –’ Dr Coomaraswamy almost choked, ‘it is that in two hours we should be holding the victory parade, ju-bi-lant-ly. We were— ’ Dr Coomaraswamy really did choke.
‘We were dry and home,’ Mr Srinivasan helped him. ‘Krishnan has won by a hundred and sixty-nine thousand votes, far over Padmina Retty. A record! A hundred and sixty-nine thousand.’
‘I myself was so jubilant. Now look at this. Look at this!’ Dr Coomaraswamy had a typewritten sheet in his hand. ‘Scandal!’ cried Dr Coomaraswamy in an extreme of horror. ‘We cannot have scandal now.’
‘But we have,’ cried Mr Srinivasan.
‘No Member of Parliament can afford scandal. Oh, why didn’t you tell me, Krishnan? You could have confided. We could have prevented. Sir John, you have influence in London, more influence here but even you, I think, cannot avert this.’
‘But it must be stopped.’ Mr Srinivasan was wringing his hands.
‘Stopped! It must be blown sky high but who is to blow it? How can we block this?’
‘You can’t.’
Mr Menzies, as cool as Dr Coomaraswamy was hot, sauntered into the room. ‘Coomaraswamy is right,’ he said, ‘not even you, Sir John, can stop it. The injunction is over. This is public news now. News.’
‘What news?’ Krishnan stood up.
‘Ah! The successful candidate, God Krishnan!’ Mr Menzies made a mock bow.
‘Tell us what news.’ Krishnan was unperturbed.
‘I suggest you read it,’ said Mr Menzies. ‘Read it aloud. As the Doctor seems upset, for which he has every reason as you shall hear – perhaps you, Sir John?’
Sir John took the sheets with disdain. ‘ “The gods amuse themselves,” ’ he read aloud. ‘Indeed they do! Who was the dressed-up girl who travelled Konak with Krishnan Bhanj on his lorry? Was she Radha the goddess, conveniently come to life, or was she, in fact, the young bride of Mr Blaise Browne who has so mysteriously drowned? What was Mrs Browne doing alone with Krishnan in the grove at Shantipur where he had made his ashram? An ashram for two?
‘ “Is it surprising that there was a midnight quarrel on the sands? A quarrel that ended in Mr Browne’s being knocked down after which a certain lady did not come back to her hotel all night, the night on which Mr Browne took an unaccountable swim in a sea he knew to be dangerous, so dangerous he might not come back. One has to ask, ‘Did he want to come back?’
‘ “Krishnan Bhanj has won his election in a landslide of triumph. Could it not turn into an avalanche to bury him?
‘ “Krishnan Bhanj took the vow of silence we have heard so much about; it would seem he took no vow of anything else. How ironic if his – shall we call it appetite? – and his temper, will silence him for ever.” ’
The appalled stillness was broken by a shriek of joy. ‘Menzies Sahib! Menzies Sahib!’ A scurry of small feet and into the drawing room hurtled Kanu in his red shirt, his face bright with happiness as he flung himself on Mr Menzies. ‘Sahib back. Come back for Kanu. Sahib! Sahib!’
‘Well,’ said Krishnan, ‘your little spy.’
Kanu clung to Mr Menzies, the curly head rubbing against him, his face upturned in rapture. ‘Sahib. Kanu’s Sahib.’
‘Chūp! Get out!’ Mr Menzies wrenched the thin arms away. There was a slap, a piteous cry. ‘Haven’t I told you? Go!’
He was holding Kanu by the back of his shirt, shaking him, when Auntie Sanni spoke. ‘Let that boy go. How dare you hurt a child in my drawing room?’ She said a few words in Telegu to Kanu as he stood whimpering and cowering, then clapped her hands.
Samuel appeared as if by magic – ‘Or not magic,’ Krishnan murmured to Mary, ‘he has been listening.’
‘Samuel take Kanu away,’ Auntie Sanni said in English. ‘Keep him. Don’t let him out of your sight and send for his father and mother. We shall be needing them.’
When Samuel had taken Kanu, ‘That boy’, said Mr Menzies in bravado, ‘has been pestering me all this week.’
‘So you pestered him with silk shirts, a watch, car rides, sweets,’ said Krishnan. ‘Or should we say paid him?’
‘Krishnan, please,’ Dr Coomaraswamy interrupted in misery, ‘the boy is not important— ’
‘He is very important,’ said Auntie Sanni.
‘But, Miss Sanni, time is running fast. Can we not return to our business?’
‘Certainly,’ said Mr Menzies.
Sir John came back to the paper. ‘I take it,’ he said with disdain, ‘this will go out tonight?’
‘To every Indian newspaper. It is my own, shall we s
ay, scoop? It will be on the evening news, radio and television. It may make the evening papers. London will follow suit, press and all the media, unless . . .’ said Mr Menzies.
‘Unless?’
‘It is always possible to buy things,’ said Mr Menzies to the air.
‘He is asking’ – Dr Coomaraswamy could hardly bring himself to say it – ‘asking eighty lakhs of rupees.’
‘Five hundred thousand pounds,’ moaned Mr Srinivasan.
‘Almost a crore.’
‘You are lucky it isn’t a crore,’ said Mr Menzies.
‘Eighty lakhs is not possible. I have not got it. The Party has not got it. All that I have is already staked in this election.’
‘Pity,’ said Mr Menzies. ‘Would the Brownes not help since they would be, shall we say, distressed?’ Mr Menzies was smooth. ‘They, I think, have plenty stashed away – or your father, Mrs Browne? The redoubtable Rory, Roderick Frobisher Sinclair Scott,’ he mocked.
‘Blackmail is, may I remind you,’ Sir John had even more disdain, ‘a criminal offence.’
‘So it is. The trouble with blackmail’, Mr Menzies seated himself on the arm of one of Auntie Sanni’s sofas and lit a cigarette, ‘is that to prove it all the allegations have to come out, be made public and you wouldn’t want that, would you?’ He turned to Krishnan. ‘Or you, Mr Bhanj. Your parents are very wealthy. What is this worth to them and you?’
‘Nothing,’ said Krishnan. ‘To them or to me. Publish your filth.’ He looked at his watch. ‘In precisely one hour I shall be facing my people. I shall face them and – Sir John, would you give me that paper – I shall read to them, but in their own language, yes, over the loudspeakers, what Sir John has just read to us here. Every word,’ said Krishnan. ‘Then I shall ask them what I am to do with my victory – forfeit it or use it to serve them? The Root and Flower Party is founded on the people, for the people. It is for them to decide but not one anna will you get from any Bhanj.’
‘And Delhi?’ asked Mr Menzies. ‘What will they think in Delhi?’