‘Yes, sir,’ Kannan said, positioning his ship as directed. Satisfied, the little boy went back to the sinking of the Bismarck. His knowledge of World War II was encyclopaedic and Kannan had little doubt that the armature, guns, speed and tonnage of every ship, plane and support craft in the battle that was being enacted was absolutely correct.
‘A little more to your right, Mr Dorai. Torpedoes away.’
‘Aye, aye, sir,’ Kannan said, making his torpedo noise. This was drowned by an even louder noise, as the Bismarck began to founder. A succession of tearing and wrenching sounds issued from Andrew’s mouth and the 45,000-ton ship started breaking up. In moments it was over.
‘Let’s do it all over again. Maybe this time, the Bismarck can be the Graf Spee. I want to try and see if I can make the sound of her shells being fired.’ Kannan was impatient to go for a walk, but he didn’t really want to disappoint the little boy. He’d try and speed up the battle, that way he’d still be able to stretch his legs before they started for the club. If the rains held off, that was.
As Andrew began gathering up the ships, preparatory to beginning the next battle, Kannan wandered to the edge of the garden. Looking out across the mist-filled valley he could see that the monsoon had truly set in.
Kannan had never experienced anything like the rainy season in the hills. Up in the high tea country it drizzled most of the year anyway, but during the monsoon the rain spat continuously down from a sky the colour of chilled steel. Unlike the warm downpour of Doraipuram, the rain in the hills was cold. And it never let up. Day after day, he would struggle into clothes that never seemed dry and walk into a world where the sky hung low, grey and troubled. Great banks of cloud and mist (it was hard to tell where the one began and the other ended) were hurled across the cowering hills by driving wind and rain.
But, unlike most of the other planters, Kannan actually liked the monsoon. He wouldn’t have minded his clothes drying faster and an umbrella that was designed to cope with Pulimed thunderstorms, but he enjoyed the cold and the wet, the constant sound of water echoing through the misty hills and valleys and the aqueous daylight. He didn’t mind that he almost never saw the sun. And he was mesmerized by the mist. He loved the feel of it on his face, and its infinite malleability and movement. He could spend hours watching it, stirring restlessly or streaming noiselessly across the tea, standing still in the hollows or filtering smokily through the trees – a great ivory vastness that altered the material world he gazed upon, so it seemed he was in a dream. And then, abruptly, movement of water within air, a swift, ever expanding flurry, and the mist would lift from the quiet world, leaving it fresh-minted and refreshed, every colour burnished, every surface new. After the tired, dusty, heat-bruised plain, this was magic and he let it enter him freely.
He had arrived in Pulimed a little over six months ago and had been assigned as a creeper to Michael Fraser, the Superintendent of Glenclare Estate, the largest of the three estates owned by the Pulimed Tea Company. Glenclare had over a thousand acres of tea, constituted into two divisions. The Morningfall division’s Assistant had gone off to fight in the Burma campaign, and if Kannan did well during his year as a creeper he would be promoted to that position.
He felt someone tugging at his sleeve. Andrew was impatient to begin the next battle. He had just got the little ships, skilfully fashioned out of bamboo, wooden clothes pegs and matches, ready for action and was demanding that Kannan join him at play. The storm drain was enveloped by the sounds of war once more.
After the Graf Spee was blown up, Andrew suggested they go and hunt for leeches in the old quarry behind the house, where the rainwater pooled during the monsoon. Kannan hated leeches but was saved from refusing the boy by the appearance of Andrew’s father.
Michael Fraser was lanky, with a lugubrious cast to his face, and a wonderful smile that transformed his entire countenance. Kannan had taken to him instantly, as he had to Michael’s wife, Belinda. And the liking was mutual. A lot of Kannan’s colleagues had been unsure how to take the news of his appointment when the General Manager had announced it. For his part, Michael had been worried about how his wife would react to the announcement that he was bringing an Indian to spend a year in their spare bedroom. But it had all gone smoothly. Kannan was well-spoken and polite, and after his initial nervousness, had fitted nicely into the household. Michael was pleased that Belinda and Andrew had taken to his young Indian creeper. They led lonely enough lives, and it made a big difference to them to have someone else around.
As far as Kannan was concerned, if things hadn’t gone so smoothly he doubted that he would have survived on the estates. Despite his liking for his superior and the weather, he’d been unhappy during the first couple of months in Pulimed. This was partly because he realized he might never see Doraipuram again, but had more to do with the reality of Pulimed. He was amazed at how white and ‘foreign’ the tea district was. He’d had English professors at college of course, but here India had been pushed to the margins. It had seemed that he was the outsider. Fortunately for him, he’d adapted quickly and had soon begun to enjoy the place.
‘Who’s winning?’ Michael asked, as he walked up to them.
‘We are, of course,’ Andrew said acerbically. Grown-ups could be so stupid.
‘Yes, we’ve got the Bismarck and now the Graf Spee in great trouble,’ Kannan remarked.
‘I wish you could work the same magic on the Japanese, Andrew. They’re giving us a pasting,’ Michael said.
‘Do they have any big ships?’
‘Yes, several. I’ll give you details soon.’
‘And planes?’
‘Yes, those too. But at the rate the Nips are going, I won’t have to give you the information, you’ll soon be able to see them fly overhead.’
‘Really?’ Andrew said, his precious ships abandoned for the moment at this new and exciting prospect.
‘Well, not yet. They’re nowhere near us. Things are not that bad yet.’
They weren’t, but they were bad enough. On the wall of his study, Michael had pinned a large-scale map of the Burma front on which he traced in red crayons, borrowed from his son, the progress of the Japanese divisions. They were now alarmingly close to the Indian border, bogged down in the thick forests of Burma by the monsoon. ‘Time for dinner and bed, little man,’ Michael said to his son. Andrew’s ships gathered up, father and son went back into the house.
Leaving the boy in the care of the ayah, the Frasers and Kannan set off for the club. It had started raining again, a miserable drizzle that pattered on the roof of the Humber and thickened the mist that pressed in on every side. Michael drove very carefully, but the road was a familiar one, and there was no other vehicle about, so they made good progress. At the club, Michael and Kannan headed for the bar. Belinda made her way to the ladies’ lounge, irreverently christened the Snakepit, especially when Mrs Stevenson presided over it.
Kannan disliked their weekly visits to the club. Its myriad customs and rules unnerved him. His usual practice was to shield himself from view behind Michael or Freddie Hamilton, the young Assistant at Westview, the other division of Glenclare Estate. He would stick as close as possible to Michael tonight, he resolved, as they pushed open the door and were immediately enveloped in a warm fug of cigarette smoke and whisky fumes.
The bar was comfortable, with well-padded armchairs, a bridge table in a corner, and a long straight bar of highly polished teak behind which Timmy, the ancient barman, presided. To the left of Timmy was a hatch through which the ladies were served their drinks. A log fire blazed in the fireplace. A worm-eaten leopard and a stuffed tiger graced the room, this last pressed into service as an extra chair on crowded evenings.
It was early and there were very few people in the room, to Kannan’s relief. He found it easier to deal with the other planters if he was already settled in when they started arriving. They greeted their boss, Major Stevenson, who was seated at the bridge table, waiting for the other regulars to
arrive. As Michael and Major Stevenson chatted, Kannan looked around for a place to sit. Spotting empty chairs next to Freddie Hamilton, he went across to greet him. Freddie was an amiable-looking young man, with bulging brown eyes concealed behind thick spectacles. ‘Hullo there, Cannon. Looks like you need a drink,’ he said with a smile.
‘And here’s our master,’ he added in a whisper, as he rose to greet Michael. Drinks were ordered. Once they were comfortably settled, Michael said, ‘Okay, spit it out, Freddie. I could see from across the room that there was some story you were dying to spill.’ Freddie’s storytelling skills were legendary.
‘Oh, no, sir,’ Freddie said, ‘nothing new . . .’
‘You’re going to have to change your preamble soon,’ Michael said with a laugh.
‘Gosh, am I getting predictable? That’s worrying,’ Freddie replied lightly.
Just then Patrick Gordon, one of the other Superintendents in the company, burst upon their group, and unceremoniously took over the conversation. It was clear that Gordon was upset. A scar, high on his cheek, glowed strawberry-red, a sure sign that he was in the grip of high emotion. ‘Have you heard?’ he began, slumping into a chair. ‘The blasted coolie who assaulted Simon Raines has been let off with a slap on the wrist.’
The Raines incident had electrified the district just before the rainy season. A planter in Periyar, Simon Raines, had instructed his head gardener, an old man, to finish clearing a rocky, overgrown strip of land, where his wife intended to plant a bed of hollyhocks. Coming home early for lunch, he had found the old man dozing in the shade of a tree, the work on the plot barely started. In a fury, he had walked over and kicked him in the chest. The gardener had toppled on his side, blood oozing from his mouth and nostrils. When he was taken to the estate hospital, massive internal haemorrhaging had been diagnosed. He was given whatever medication was available on the spot, but had died during the night. The planter had tried to hush the matter up, but someone had reported it to the police. Hard bargaining by the white planters had managed to reduce the charge against Raines to simple assault, and it was only a matter of time before Raines, British and therefore entitled to have his case heard before a British judge in Madras, would walk free with a fine. But it wasn’t to be so. Barely a week after the outrage, when he was relaxing on his veranda with a drink, a young coolie had walked up to him and split open his skull with a pruning knife before the horrified eyes of his wife and butler. The assailant had then thrown away the knife and calmly waited for the police. The blow had been a glancing one, and the best medical attention had saved Raines, though his speech would forever be slurred. In his defence, the coolie, the gardener’s son as it turned out, had said only, ‘What would you do if your father was kicked in the chest?’ And now he had been let off with a small fine. By an Indian magistrate!
‘In the old days, he would have been whipped to death. That’s the only treatment these natives understand. If you ask me, the only good native . . .’ he stopped short, realizing Kannan was part of the group, and then continued, ‘. . . coolie is an obedient coolie, or a dead one.’ He glared at Kannan as if he found the sight of him too distasteful to bear, heaved himself out of his chair, and left.
Kannan couldn’t hide the discomfort he felt, and Michael was quick to speak. ‘Don’t mind Patrick, Cannon. His heart’s all right. He’s just a bit slow to change.’
At the bridge table, Major Stevenson and his regular bridge partner, a senior Superintendent of the Travancore Planting Company, were also discussing the Raines incident.
‘Shocking, I say. Wonder what the country’s coming to?’
‘What would you have done if someone had kicked your father in the chest, John, old boy?’
‘But damn it, are you suggesting that a coolie get away with something like that?’
‘No, I’m not,’ Major Stevenson replied. ‘All I’m saying is that the provocation existed, and in these changing times, it isn’t entirely surprising.’
The other planter said sharply, ‘Edward, do I hear right? Do you really think times have changed so much that puffed-up little natives can be insolent to Englishmen?’
‘Of course not, but it’s their country after all, John.’
‘And look at what a mess they’ve made of it. Constant skirmishing, Hindu against Muslim, as if anyone cared, all those ridiculous maharajahs, and now a bunch of thugs posing as nationalist politicians.’
‘Surely not, John. Nehru, Gandhi and many of the Congress lot have a first-rate pedigree.’
‘Earned back home. And what do we get? Ingratitude. All of them should be left to rot in prison for life. The cheek of it, refusing to co-operate with us in the war. Where would they be without us? They’d have little yellow men telling them what to do. No, these Indians just don’t know what’s good for them. We offer them Dominion status, and what do they demand? Total independence! Total independence, forsooth, they’d go back to being the ignorant little heathens they were before we came along.’
‘My word, John, I wouldn’t have suspected that you nursed such strong emotions.’
His bridge partner looked slightly embarrassed, then guffawed and said, ‘Look, let’s forget this bloody country and get on with the game.’
Throughout the bar, as liquor flowed and tongues loosened, the voices grew louder and more boisterous. The planters took their club nights seriously, particularly now that the country was threatened by war. By the time they were ready to leave, Michael was slightly tipsy. He walked carefully out of the room, an anxious Kannan in tow. Belinda waited for them by the entrance. The cool night air seemed to sharpen Michael’s focus. He scrambled behind the wheel of the Humber and they set off.
The rain had stopped but the mist lay thick and unmoving on the road, and Michael drove with great caution. They could see nothing beyond a couple of feet. An hour or so of this, and they were close to the biggest stream on their route. It had been christened Dhobi’s Leap after a washerman was drowned in it one rainy season. Local legend had it that on moonless nights you could still hear the luckless dhobi’s screams as he was washed away. Whether haunted or not, the sound of falling water, unseen in the mist and darkness, was a curiously desolate one. For all his love of the climate, Kannan shivered as the car slowly nosed forward. When Michael eased the car into the torrent and the water pushed at it, all three of them felt a moment of sheer terror. The Humber began to slide. But then the wheels gripped and they were safely over. The rest of the road back was easier, and they were home in half an hour.
Although he was very tired, Kannan could not sleep. A thump on the roof made him start. When he had first come to Pulimed, he had almost run out of his bedroom in panic when the noises had started up on the roof. Moans and thuds, a prolonged rumble as though something was being dragged along, a stealthy shuffle ending abruptly in a crash . . . there had been a regular orchestra going on above his head. He had mentioned the noises casually to Belinda the next morning and she had laughed it off. ‘Oh, rats. I mean, there are rats on the roof. And civet cats, probably an owl, a snake or two.’
‘Snakes!’ he had said.
‘Nothing to worry about,’ she’d said reassuringly. ‘In the old days, the ceilings used to be made of cloth and there was a possibility something would fall on you during the night, but now there’s no danger of that. You just have to get used to the noise.’
Over time he had come to ignore the commotion on the roof, but tonight it took on a new malevolence. Freddie had spent a lot of the evening telling spooky stories, and now these began to take effect. What if there were ghosts up there, along with the rats and the snakes and the owls? Damn you, Freddie, he thought. What possessed you to tell us horror stories on a cold misty night!
Rain started drumming on the tin roof of the bungalow, a rhythmic, immensely soothing sound. Sleep came finally. Just before it did, Helen appeared before him, as he had first seen her. Slim, tripping down the road in a long flowery skirt.
73
T
hey were married six months later, in what passed for spring in Madras. Kannan was relieved to find he wasn’t sweating in the heavy wool suit he wore. It had been specially made for the occasion by Pulimed’s sole tailor, a genius at copying though his finish wasn’t perfect and the insides of his suits sometimes made their wearers want to scratch themselves. Kannan’s suit was an exact replica of one Freddie had bought in London four years ago. It had been quite in vogue then.
The wedding took place in the old church by the railway station. The golden light of late evening washed over Helen as she came up the aisle and the nervousness Kannan had been beset by all evening vanished, to be replaced by exhilaration. Beautiful women have such an advantage over cloddish men like me, he thought happily; they can rule the world by crooking their little fingers. It was evident God had created them to roam free and delight the world. Helen had agreed to be his, however, and he was so beside himself with excitement that he almost couldn’t bear it.
Murthy, his best man, had been coached to take care of every eventuality by Helen’s relatives and the priest. ‘Be sure he doesn’t bolt or pass out from sheer nervousness,’ Helen’s father had remarked cryptically. ‘These things have been known to happen to men getting married.’ The advice stuck in Murthy’s mind, which was why he was quick to act when his friend swayed towards him, pincering Kannan’s elbow with strong fingers. The bridegroom’s world came back into focus and the wedding passed off without any further hitch.
Later there was dancing and music and tables groaning with food in the bride’s house – great platters of mutton cutlets, a huge bowl of fried pork, mounds of rice, beef curry and railway chicken. There was scarcely a vegetable in sight. Murthy had to content himself with a little rice and potato gravy. But otherwise everyone had the time of their lives. No one knew how to enjoy themselves better than the Anglo-Indians, and they were determined to do their beautiful Helen proud. Everywhere you looked, there was laughter and music and gaiety.
The House of Blue Mangoes Page 35