The House of Blue Mangoes

by Davidar, David

  ‘What a shame about poor young Camellia!’ Mrs Wilkins said, gently setting her cup and saucer down.

  ‘What about Camellia?’ snapped Mrs Stevenson. Noting the other’s peevishness, Mrs Wilkins lapsed into silence, for Mrs Stevenson’s rages were legendary and Camellia Winston’s travails could wait.

  The butler materialized on silent feet and cleared the cups and saucers with scarcely a whisper. Mrs Wilkins admired his skill with a detached air. Even Mrs Stevenson’s servants were the envy of the district.

  ‘What were you saying about Camellia?’ Mrs Stevenson said abruptly.

  ‘Oh, nothing. The poor dear was quite cut up about something that happened the other day.’

  Mrs Stevenson continued to regard her friend steadily over the top of her spectacles. It was one of the mannerisms that she had diligently cultivated. It came in very useful at the club, or the more prestigious parties, when she had to cow some upstart or bore into silence. She mourned the passing of the lorgnette, perfect for the imperious stare and the silent put-down. But she managed. She had no intention of trying to put the amiable Gloria Wilkins down; it was just, well, perhaps she was just practising for Friday week.

  Mrs Stevenson softened the steely look in her eye and favoured Gloria with a smile. ‘So, about Camellia?’ she said.

  Mrs Wilkins didn’t need any further prompting. ‘Of course, dear,’ she said, ‘as I was saying, there she was, stepping out of Spencer’s, her arms piled high with shopping, you know how scarce things have become so you always stock up, and her driver had gone ahead to bring the car, when she bumped into an Indian man quite accidentally. He was most rude and said, “If memsahibs don’t look where they are going, they will soon find themselves gone.” Poor Camellia was so shocked at this impertinence, she didn’t know what to say. She told her husband, of course, but then she couldn’t describe the man, you never really notice Indians, do you now. All she could recall was that he wore one of those little white native hats . . .’

  ‘Yes, I know, a Gandhi hat. Absurd little hat, absurd little man.’

  ‘Oh, really, dear.’ Mrs Wilkins could see her story slipping away from her, but the steely look was back in Mrs Stevenson’s eye and she didn’t feel quite up to finishing it.

  ‘I’ll be running along then. Hope your party goes well.’

  It was the worst thing she could have said. Barely repressing the irritation that flared up within her at the mention of the party she intended hosting for the Dorais ten days hence, Mrs Stevenson saw her friend to her car, and returned to the bungalow. What a stupid woman Gloria Wilkins is, she thought irritably. God knows how I’ve put up with her all these years!

  78

  Although Mrs Stevenson greatly valued her position as wife of the General Manager of Pulimed Tea Company, her unofficial position as queen of local society mattered even more. Neither had dropped into her lap, she thought grimly, as she watched Gloria Wilkins’s car disappear down the driveway, and she would defend her eminence with every power at her command.

  Mrs Stevenson had come over on a P&O boat in 1925, a strapping, plain thirty-three-year-old from Brighton, fearful of being left on the shelf. She had this in common with most of the other British women who constituted the Fishing Fleet, as the shipfuls of women who travelled to India to make a good marriage were called. She had spent three months with a distant aunt in Madras, and was about to sail home to a life of spinsterdom when Major Stevenson asked her to dance at one of the endless tea dances in the city. It was hot and stuffy and the headache she had woken up with that morning threatened to overwhelm her. The Major was not exactly young, and had a gimpy leg, and after the first dance, Matilda was ready to go home. But he danced with her a second and then a third time, and with a mounting sense of relief she realized she would not be one of the Returned Empties, as the Fishing Fleet rejects were dubbed. When he proposed two days later, she accepted. She knew nothing about tea-planting, only that it ranked high enough in Raj society to provide Major Stevenson with greater cachet as a prospective husband. Tea-planters ranked somewhere below the ICS but were deemed superior to the box-wallahs, whom the upper classes looked down upon, ostensibly because they were in trade but probably also because they were rich.

  Mrs Stevenson soon discovered that the esteem that tea-planters were held in did not immediately confer upon them the sort of lifestyle you would have expected. When she had first arrived in Pulimed it was a dismal place. The dirt roads were impassable during the monsoon, which effectively cut the estates off from the rest of the world twice a year. The planters lived in miserable little shacks that were dark and musty. The unhygienic living conditions combined with malaria and periodic epidemics of plague and typhus regularly interred the British, especially women and young children, in the graveyard behind the little Pulimed chapel. The dreary, depressing weather required an astonishing degree of fortitude on the part of manager and worker alike. It was not unknown for a planter to kill himself and his family during an especially prolonged monsoon; Mrs Stevenson herself could remember two families who had succumbed during her time here. Drink often provided the only succour and many of the early planters, both men and women, were alcoholics.

  Fortunately, the place had grown civilized quite rapidly. As the industry prospered, more acreage came under tea and the forbidding forests were rolled back. The roads improved and the bungalows grew more imposing. Their own situation was improving as well. Mrs Stevenson appeared to have brought her husband luck, for within a year of her arrival at Pulimed, one of the company’s senior Superintendents took early retirement and Edward got his job. They moved into a comfortable bungalow on Karadi Estate.

  There were other welcome developments in the tea district. The Pulimed Club opened in 1932. Lavish gardens and tennis courts were laid out, virtually one to a bungalow. The social life of the planters blossomed. There were tennis parties and picnics, costume balls and tea dances at the club. As tea-planting became more alluring, the pedigree of the planter improved. The occasional public-school boy was taken on and the rough-and-ready frontiersmen of an earlier era began to disappear.

  Mrs Stevenson saw her opportunity. The couple were childless, and she had always fretted to herself that she didn’t feel fulfilled enough. The rising gentrification of the district gave her a project she could devote herself to. Unlike the great stations of Madras and Bombay or even the bigger mofussil towns, Pulimed didn’t have high-ranking ICS officials. The British Resident made only the occasional foray into the hills. And there was no army regiment with its Blue Books and rigidly defined conventions, precedence and other minutiae of social behaviour. So the opportunity to make up a set of rules to govern Pulimed society existed. Mrs Stevenson, with a couple of other planters’ wives, soon became the social arbiters of the district. Then Mrs Hogg died, Mrs Buchan’s husband was transferred to the Nilgiris, Edward received another promotion and Mrs Stevenson came into her own. She was forty-two years old. From then on, her word was law.

  Not enough has been said about the role of the memsahib in India. Dozens of books have been written about the British men who first subjugated, then ruled, and finally lost India, but accounts of the white woman have been limited to a few autobiographies and a baker’s dozen of cookery books and Raj memorabilia. This is a shame because, at the risk of over-simplification, it would probably be correct to say that these daughters of Birmingham grocers and Cheltenham school-teachers played a not inconsiderable role in the departure of the British from India.

  It was all a matter of attitude. For the first hundred or so years of his time in India, the white man was variously a trader, schemer, warrior and buccaneer. By the time Queen Victoria, Her Most Benevolent Majesty, accepted the homage of her Indian subjects, all three hundred and seventy-two million of them, the British had quite forgotten what they had originally come to the subcontinent for – i.e., plunder and the rapid generation of wealth. Now, in the grip of the imperial impulse, they believed they were ordained to rule a
quarter of the world, and bring a civilizing influence to bear on the heathen.

  By the middle of the twentieth century, however, the idea of Empire, even to the British, was fraying around the edges. Two wars had sapped their strength, the new generation didn’t thrill to trumpets and bugles, and America was well on its way to dominating the world. The British had tried their best, but they would be gone soon from India just like every invader who had preceded them, leaving behind a few monuments – in their case, some excellent examples of Victorian architecture, the English language, the railways, a parliamentary form of democracy, a system of administration . . .

  The Empire would probably have lingered a little longer, notwithstanding the best efforts of the nationalists, if Englishwomen hadn’t begun appearing in India in large numbers. In the early years, the British had managed to achieve a fairly equitable relationship with Indians. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, this phase had begun to fade. The advent of muscular forms of Christianity coupled with imperfectly understood Darwinism equated colour and ‘paganism’ with inferiority. From that point onwards, matters deteriorated. The Englishman abroad, consciously or subconsciously, began to subscribe to the philosophy that the subject peoples (especially in the tropics) were a lesser breed; their civilizations were trashed and British culture was exalted above all others.

  But it was the advent of the flotillas of Englishwomen that confirmed the trend. Where some of the men were still prepared to seek out and understand the locals to some degree, providing both sides with the opportunity to build trust and occasionally friendship and admiration, the memsahib would not venture beyond her bungalow. Ill-prepared for the chaos and vastness of India, isolated by her lack of language, she could thrive only by rigorously excluding the enormous country at her doorstep, and this she did. Her bungalow was furnished just the way she might kit out a villa in Sevenoaks, her gardens drooped with pallid English flowers, and as she gradually drew her husband into this ersatz English world, it was only a matter of time before the handful of Britons in India began to lose the organic connection to the land. Soon they were burrs precariously clinging to the skin of India, that would be shaken off the minute there was a violent upheaval. Rare was the Englishwoman who was truly at home in India beyond the stockade, and Mrs Stevenson was no exception.

  Matilda Stevenson would have been astonished if anyone had charged her with not knowing enough about India or Indians. She considered India home, even though she constantly grumbled about not seeing enough of England, and she believed she was genuinely fond of Indians. She relied hugely on her butler Madaswamy, and couldn’t imagine life without him. But without her, as she constantly reminded him, he would be nothing, less than nothing. It was only because of her patronage and training that he had blossomed – to the point where he was solely in charge of the thirty-seven servants who ensured that the General Manager’s Bungalow was always in good working order. Madaswamy, Velu the head gardener, Mani the driver, every one of them was an integral part of Mrs Stevenson’s world. She showered kindness upon them, sending their children English toffees and small gifts at Christmas and Easter, in addition to the usual baksheesh, and she even allowed Madaswamy to do his share of skimming from the shopping and household accounts. No, Mrs Stevenson knew her Indians. But she would have been the first to admit that good Indians were Indians who knew their places. Mrs Stevenson had never met a maharani but she wouldn’t have been fazed if she had. As the wife of the General Manager of Pulimed Tea Company, and as an Englishwoman, she was superior to any Indian.

  Mrs Stevenson was deeply shaken when her husband hired Kannan Dorai. She would, of course, have never dreamed of telling him how to run his company, although she did it all the time, subtly and persuasively. But she hadn’t seen this coming. It wasn’t surprising, for she had no sense of history. She didn’t read the Indian newspapers (and scanned only the society snippets in British-owned ones), in common with most of the Englishwomen in Pulimed, nor did she listen to the talk of her husband and his colleagues, except when it had to do with things that interested her such as promotions, demotions and marital discord. No Indians appeared on her horizon, save the staff, and when the trickle of London papers stopped on account of the war, she was completely cut off from the outside world.

  As a result, she was unprepared when her husband began to usher in the sort of change she could not countenance. What could he have been thinking of when he had hired a native as a replacement for Joe Wilson? Of all people! Joe Wilson, her favourite. Joe Wilson, now fighting for country and for Empire. Joe Wilson, Old Etonian, marksman extraordinaire, a Cambridge blue in tennis, who let others win so skilfully that they never knew he controlled every point from the moment he arced back to serve. Joe Wilson’s place taken by a native! By her own hand, no less, because Mrs Stevenson regarded her husband as merely an extension of herself. It was all too much to take. And what did it portend?

  Mrs Stevenson’s power in Pulimed had never been questioned in all the time she had ruled. Dining out required tails, boiled shirt, white waistcoat, stiff collar and white tie, twenty years after it had died out everywhere else in India – and only because Mrs Stevenson had so decreed. She knew Mrs Beeton’s Cookery and Household Management, as she did Debrett’s Peerage and the various other rule books that governed society. She watched people’s accents, was keen to discover their pedigree, and never failed to detect vulgar blood lurking behind the most refined exterior. No one willingly crossed her, for there was only one possible outcome.

  But Kannan Dorai disturbed her more than she cared to admit. He was properly respectful and seemed acceptable enough for an Indian. But was he a precursor of things to come? Some nights Mrs Stevenson would lie awake, visions of a suburban villa in a dreary English town (such as Grantham), dancing in her head. She would shake the thought aside, but the unease remained. And now Kannan had shaken her composure again, by marrying a mixed blood. Someone who was completely beyond the pale. As the General Manager’s wife, she was expected to be civil to the newcomer, and suitably dignified in the way she treated her. But it filled her with unease. She had always prided herself on being completely in control but these new developments had thrown her off-balance. However, this was only temporary, she vowed grimly; she knew exactly how to deal with them.

  79

  One morning, Kannan was in a self-congratulatory mood as he drove to the field. I’ve done things that I scarcely presumed I could, he reflected. I’ve imagined and reinvented my life in ways that I’d never have believed possible. I defied my father, went out into the world and made something of myself in a place that a couple of years ago I wouldn’t have considered breaking into, no matter how highly I regarded myself. I’ve even managed to check my temper. I’m no longer callow and impetuous.

  His thoughts turned to Helen, and here again there was cause for wonderment. He doubted that any Dorai he knew could have contemplated romance with a woman, let alone treated her as an equal. There had been moments when he’d doubted his own ability to do so, but he’d adapted, curbing his instinctual response to be dismissive and superior in order to cherish and adore his wife.

  Feeling very pleased with himself he reached the field, where his supervisor presented him with an unusual gift. One of the pluckers had disturbed a hare and it had taken off, leaving behind a pair of leverets. These were given to Kannan. They looked pretty ugly, but he thought they would make the perfect present for Helen. For about a month or so now he had tried to take her some small surprise when he returned from work – a bunch of wild daisies, a lock of maidenhair fern, an interesting pebble that shone like gold. In the first flush of love the offering had always worked, but lately, he had begun to feel the need to get her something out of the ordinary.

  Helen was overjoyed with the gift. She fussed over the ugly little babies and made a tiny bed for them out of cotton waste and straw that she placed on her bedside table. She soaked cotton wrapped around a matchstick in cow’s milk and tried to feed
them, but they refused every blandishment, and died two days later. Helen was inconsolable and wept loudly when they buried the tiny bodies under the camellia bush in the front garden.

  She bounced back soon enough, and that Saturday took Kannan round the dance floor quite expertly. It was the first time he had danced at the club, and after his initial trepidation he began to enjoy himself. A waltz and a foxtrot, and his repertoire was exhausted, but he was so pleased with his performance that after the second dance, when Freddie asked her for the next one, he released her with only the merest twinge of jealousy. As he walked back to his seat, he chanced to meet Mrs Stevenson’s eye. Her gaze was cold, but he smiled happily at her, and then moved on, out of her field of vision.

  A new job, a new marriage, a fresh lick of paint on a peeling surface – in none of these does it take very long for fault lines to show. The first cracks in their idyll appeared on the day Kannan took Helen to the factory.

  In April, life on the estates speeded up, as the finest harvest to be had all year, the first flush, was gathered in. Factories operated round the clock; managers, pluckers and labourers worked themselves to the bone, for this was the time of year that maximum profits were to be made. One Sunday, Kannan skipped church to do factory duty. The Glenclare factory had been shut for two days due to a breakdown of machinery, and to make up for lost time, Michael had decided the factory would work through the weekend.

  Kannan woke up early as usual and watched a chink of grey light through the drawn curtains. By his side Helen slept on. He looked at her appreciatively. How defenceless she seems when she’s asleep, he thought. Then he slipped out of bed, careful not to wake her. As he dressed, he wondered what he could do to make up for the previous night when he had begged off going to the club. He’d sensed her disappointment, although she hadn’t protested. Now he’d be away for much of the morning, when they could have gone on a picnic, as they sometimes did on Sundays when the weather was good. As he finished shaving, an idea struck him. It seemed so excellent that he didn’t know why it had never occurred to him before.