Dignity

by Alys Conran

  He looks up at the impression his fist left that time when he hit the wall, and he nods once.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  My heart is homesick to-day for the one sweet hour across the sea of time.

  ‘Stray Birds’,

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Benedict is barely ever here, as he is called to command new Indian recruits on the north-western border. He is upbeat about it. The hierarchical nature of military life has always appealed to him, I think. He is in his element when in absolute and mortal control. And it is a great relief to me, to be free of the danger of another bad pregnancy, at least for the next few months. On his desk are his plans for the railway strategy in case of another war in Europe. Many Indian trains would be commandeered to carry Indian produce to the ports as remedy for any lack in Europe. His plans will be meticulous and well thought out, just like his domestic cruelties.

  I have focused on my needlework and on improving the level of service and authenticity in my house. By authenticity the books mean Britishness, and so I drive the servants hard. Forbid breaks. Make them pick weeds from the lawn daily. Have them make flour from rice as we have no wheat flour these days.

  Still. Since Aashi has left, and Benedict is so often absent, I have been able to mother my child a little, though I find myself wooden and the thought of real affection hits a discord in me. I tuck her in at night. I wake her in the morning. I sit with her on my knee. But I can’t seem to mime other gestures of motherliness which I found so natural before. There is something wrong, something in that layer between skin and feeling, between body and self.

  We throw a little tea party for the other small children in the community. We make it a fancy dress party; they are all rather thrilled. We have them come dressed up as their servants. Magda wears a small white sari, and has a red spot on her forehead, and her hair in a plait. She carries a broom, which is far too big for her. I put one of my bracelets around her ankle, and she looks very much the part.

  I expect the servants to be quite delighted by the spectacle, but they are more than usually stiff. Perhaps we have caused offence? At any rate, Magda and her little friends are all smiles and cake. I am slowly growing to be in favour with my child.

  It is to be short-lived. I knew something was afoot when I saw Mrs Greenson talking to Benedict in the library. He was nodding. Yes, yes, he was saying, it is inevitable. She has always known it. It is pure silliness that it has not happened before. Stupidity. Mrs Greenson was pressing some point, but her voice did not carry as Benedict’s does.

  ‘Evelyn will not have it,’ he said. ‘She will simply not put up with it, and will be as silly as possible.’

  It was confirmed when Magda came running from her morning classes with Mrs Greenson. She ran straight into the dining room, and in front of Benedict, threw herself into my arms.

  ‘Magda!’ he shouted. And she drew away quickly, for she has learned from an early age that she cannot show me too much affection – it is disapproved of.

  ‘I’m to be sent away!’ she said, crying. ‘Oh, Mummy! Mrs Greenson of all people! I am to be sent on a ship with only her, and sent away from you all to England.’

  I sat, holding her, staring at Benedict.

  ‘You didn’t think to air it with me before telling her?’

  He pretended to be reading.

  ‘There was no need.’

  ‘No need? She’s my daughter as well as yours.’

  ‘I thought you’d only turn her against the idea.’

  ‘Mrs Greenson seems to have done a good enough job of that already,’ I said, and, taking the child in my arms, I walked out. I walked out in such a stubborn way, and I knew that it would bring me trouble. There would be locked doors for it, and perhaps worse.

  But Benedict came to my room after us, and he sat down a distance from us on the bed; he sat down calmly, and began, for once, to reason.

  ‘I think it’ll be better for her, Evelyn,’ he said. ‘She’s becoming naughty and tricksy, and has made an unsuitable friendship with that boy. Children don’t turn out well in India.’

  Children don’t turn out well when they have no love, no affection. Children don’t turn out well when their mothers are unhappy.

  Magda said nothing. She was rigid with fear.

  ‘Might I go with her?’ I asked him.

  He sighed, and there was a silence, a quiet filled with hope. Magda’s, and mine, our hope swirled together.

  ‘Good lord, no,’ he said, and walked out.

  I sit there, a long while. Magda sits too.

  Anwar, who has been standing in the corner the entire time, eventually interrupts the quiet.

  ‘May I please sit with you?’ he asks.

  I am so surprised that I assent. He sits beside me. He reaches across the table and strokes Magda’s hair, and then he looks at me and smiles, gently.

  ‘It will be all right, Memsahib,’ he says. ‘She will be all right.’

  Magda has become very quiet and hides in the garden in her playhouse. I hear her sometimes, singing snippets of Bengali and English songs as she dresses and undresses her dolls. Sometimes she rehearses conversations between the dolls. They are never very nice to each other, but parody me and the other society ladies.

  ‘Do you call that a dress?’ I hear her have one of her dolls say to the other as I approach her in the garden.

  ‘No,’ says the other doll, ‘don’t be foolish. I call it a gown.’ Magda at least will know how to hold her own in polite society.

  ‘Magda,’ I say, ‘would you come in and pack with me?’

  Silence.

  ‘Magda?’

  ‘We are having high tea,’ she says, sulkily.

  I bite my lip.

  ‘And at what time will that be over?’

  Silence again.

  ‘By our real teatime.’

  ‘All right,’ I say. ‘We can pack after tea.’

  But we don’t pack. And it is several days before I even think of the passage we have booked for her. Because of what happens to Benedict.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  No Dogs, No Indians.

  Sign at the Royal Simla Club

  My papa shoots Meg the dog.

  My papa bought Meg the dog for me for not talking about Raja and Aashi any more, or asking Mummy about it, and for being valiant about what Mrs Greenson says about going Home. He brought Meg the dog home with him from the railway and he said she might come Home with me, if we could get her a certificate. I made her a certificate myself, in case. It is a certificate that says NO RABIES. I stroke her soft ears and she leans against my legs, heavy. She looks at me with her brown eyes, as a damsel looks at a prince: with love.

  Since Raja is gone, I play with Meg the dog. We play several games, over and over. The one with the ball and the one with the hoop and the one with the stick. She doesn’t learn much English. Only sit and lie and come. She doesn’t learn much Bangla either, except go away and shoo. I miss Raja, who used to tell me things about the real India and who learned everything so quickly he was like a magician. Meg can only learn the words for what she must do and what she must not, while Raja was clever in Bangla and Hindi and English and so made big stories of everything.

  One day, I am on our lawn, playing with her with the hoop, and she suddenly stops. Meg the dog looks strange. She begins to have white spit around her mouth. She begins to whine. She falls over. She stands up again. She stands and begins to follow me. And then she begins to growl. She begins to growl, and the white spit is thicker and thicker around her mouth as if it is full of soap. She topples sideways, and it is as if her legs do not work well any more. Her legs are the stiff silly legs of a puppet. She gets up. She dances like a puppet. And then she falls again.

  ‘Papa, Papa,’ I shout. ‘There is something wrong. There is something wrong with Meg the dog!’ And I call him. I call him to come and see. And when he comes he sees her, and he shouts at me to ‘Get away, Magda! Get away from her.’ He pushes
me hard, away from Meg the dog, so that I fall over, and then he takes her. He takes Meg the dog by the collar, and he drags her straight out into the yard, and ties her to the post, shouting to Anwar to get his gun. Meg the dog is crying. She is crying high. And when Anwar comes running with the gun, and gives it to Papa, Papa shoots her. My papa shoots Meg the dog. The sound is the air breaking. When the bullet hits her, something comes out of the back of her head. It is all her thoughts. It is sit and lie and shoo. It is our games over and over on the lawn. All the things that she knows come out of her head with the blood. There is a lot of quiet afterwards. Quiet except for my papa asking, ‘Did she bite you, Magda? Did she bite you?’

  ‘Why did he shoot her, why did he shoot her, Mummy?’

  We are in the sitting room. I am cold all over.

  ‘She was ill. She had rabies, Magda. There was no helping it.’

  ‘But he did not even let me say goodbye.’

  We are quiet. I am crying.

  ‘Will she come back?’

  ‘No, Magda. I’m sorry.’ Mummy is stroking my head. She is like a real mother.

  ‘And Raja? Will he?’

  ‘No, Magda,’ she says. She looks away. And then she says quietly, ‘I’m sorry about that too.’

  ‘Meg is dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But Raja is still alive?’ I am afraid, asking her.

  ‘Yes, Magda, he is,’ she says, and she puts an arm around me.

  ‘So he can come back again?’

  ‘No, Magda. You must stop thinking of him, child. He’s gone now too.’ Mummy is almost crying. ‘He’s gone.’ Mummy is almost crying although I did not think she really knew about Raja. She is crying.

  I do not believe her. I do not believe that Raja is gone, and gone forever.

  Mummy says I can go to Meg the dog as long as I don’t look under the handkerchief to see her head, and the blood where Papa shot her. I go and I stand above her, and I see her fur and her body all soft and the same as usual. She is lying so flat and her eyes when I peek under the handkerchief are oh so perfectly shut. And when I whisper to her quietly, so that no one will hear, ‘Meg, Meg, oh Meg where is your little ball?’ or ‘Meg, Meg, fetch!’ there’s nothing. I hope that no one has heard me. Madam, says Raja in my head. Madam, you are stupid. And he is right, for Meg does not bark. She does not whine under the handkerchief.

  I am not thinking about going Home. I am not thinking about it because I don’t know what it can possibly mean.

  We are doing the times tables again. Writing them all out in the schoolroom where the flies buzz. It is as if Meg the dog isn’t dead, and as if there is nothing wrong. Daddy said to Mummy that she was not to make a fuss over me, that it is just a dog and I am being a baby.

  Mrs Greenson has left me to write them out all on my own. She is watching over me. When I finish, and she reads my times tables in the copybook, she does not say well done, or good girl. Mrs Greenson does not ever think that I am at all good, not like Aashi and Anwar who think I am excellent. Mrs Greenson is always grumpy because her body is all shrivelled and hard like a lychee that has come off the tree. Mrs Greenson doesn’t have a tree to hang from and belong to, so her brows knot together.

  ‘Magda. You’re to pack your things,’ says Mrs Greenson now, closing my copybook after her inspection.

  This is the way Mrs Greenson speaks. She says things with no warning. Mother says these things come out of the blue.

  I feel cross. I will pretend not to understand her. ‘What things?’ I say, and look stupid.

  ‘Your clothes, your books, and a few of your toys.’

  ‘Why?’

  She is watching me, in a strange way. She is not pleased. ‘Don’t be obtuse, Magda. We’re to go Home,’ she says, ‘you know this.’

  Obtuse is naughty.

  Home is to come out of the blue. Home is not real.

  So, I am obtuse again:

  ‘To the hills?’ I say. I like to go to the hills. It is cool and fresh like lemonade in the hills.

  ‘No, to England. For goodness’ sake, child!’ she says.

  ‘Why?’ I am starting to shake. England is a long way and it is not a place that I have been in real life and without Meg the dog I shall be even lonelier.

  Mrs Greenson says the next thing to herself, muttering: ‘Because you’ve been out here long enough.’

  Out here is India. People are always talking about it, saying, ‘We have been out here for three years,’ or ‘We like it out here,’ or ‘You can’t behave like that out here’.

  ‘But what about Raja?’ What about Raja? I can’t look for him if I am in England. He will be completely lost.

  It is all horrid and I hate her.

  Mrs Greenson hates me too, and has turned her back with a huff through her nose. She is cleaning the numbers and the figures on the blackboard with a cloth, and ignoring me.

  ‘You must stop talking about that little boy, Magda. It’s tiresome, as I’ve told you before.’

  ‘Will Mummy and Daddy and Anwar come too?’

  Mrs Greenson has turned, and is holding the cloth, and looking down at her hands which are terribly firm and terribly thin. ‘Your parents will visit you often.’ What does she mean visit? And what about Anwar? I stare at her. ‘You are to go to a proper school, and they will come Home in the summer sometimes to visit.’ Her hands are fidgeting with the cloth, like two big insects eating something together.

  I stand up. She is wrong. She is obtuse. We are not out here. We are in.

  Home is something terrible, and I am afraid of it.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  A very little key will open a very heavy door.

  Hunted Down,

  Charles Dickens

  And this girl, Susheela. Her voice plays over and over. I don’t want a baby, she says. Not on my own. And that comment of hers: You’d have liked my mum, Magda.

  I’d know it anywhere: a child, in search of its mother. Perhaps she can grow love in her womb, where I grew only a house of shut rooms.

  My house has a feeling of waiting, and, for once, I’m not quite sure who for. The windows look out hopefully towards Bay’s Mouth. From the window of my bedroom I can see that the leaves from the trees on my drive have lain themselves down, prostrating themselves on the driveway in preparation for the tread of someone. Inside, my house is full of whispers, and I am a whisper too, my feet frequently invisible at the end of my legs, my throat stuffed full of something fuzzed. There’s little difference now, between night and day, for both are full of spectres and hauntings. In the house in the early hours, there is the slow thunk of an old jacket being beaten out, a beating at my own back, and a lingering smell of incense hanging in my bedroom. I wake with the itch of an impossible mosquito bite on my upper thigh. It will swell to a welt, for they always do on me. Yesterday, when I looked in the glass of the vanity, my skin seemed to be brown leather, so perhaps I am rotting away? Certainly the house is in a poor state. I can no longer make out its seams at all, the line between skirting and floor, the trace of where the architraves are. Even where these forms are distinct, they make no sense and are all jumbled. The geometry of two walls and a floor is utterly impossible. When I try to work it out, the shape and form of my house, the rooms seem to curl at the edges like old parchment.

  Although I have a lifetime’s experience of summoning, calling to order, I don’t really believe Susheela will bring him until she does. He stands beside her, entirely visible and whole, a tall young man (though older than she is, by a few years I’d say). He is poorly dressed, in awful, tattered jeans and a sweatshirt, but wears a look that means more to me than a good suit: he looks at me openly, his look not overlaid with prejudice, as many people’s first appraisal is. My house softens for him, and for her, as they stand in my sitting room, together. Beside them stands Mother. Mother walks to him, and stops just a breath away from his shoulder. She looks him up and down, sniffs, and then, quite unexpectedly strokes his cheek before s
he leaves the room. I am so taken aback by the unfamiliar kindness of this sudden gesture that Susheela has to call to me several times before I rouse myself enough from it to answer. They are unaware of Mother’s prescence, or of the house’s complete lack of integrity. They are always unaware.

  ‘Ah,’ I say. ‘There you are.’ I give them my best smile. For some reason Susheela laughs.

  I make a great effort, and have them come entirely and beautifully into focus as they sit across from me. I am once again in my laboratory coat with twenty-twenty vision. I am making my assessment of what is here before me.

  Yes, in this I can still excel. I have the ability to tell, within a few moments, a lot about a person from their stance, demeanour, gestures, expression. Not to mention other, more superficial clues like shoes, trousers, shirts. And all that before they open their idiotic mouths to speak.

  He is not an idiot. He is also not afraid of me. And he, like me, is in communion with his own bad ghosts.

  ‘You’ve been away to war?’ I say to him, with no introduction.

  At that, he does look wary. Nods.

  ‘Bad, was it? Bloody?’

  He doesn’t answer initially. One second, two. He nods again.

  ‘You lost your hearing, I’m told?’ My house has entirely dropped away, and we are in a blank white space. Me and him, and my questions.

  Again, he nods.

  ‘See things, do you? Hear things?’

  He doesn’t move.

  ‘Won’t stay in the past?’ I ask. ‘I know what that’s like.’

  ‘What d’you know about it?’ he erupts.

  Ah yes. Of course my house has laid me all out, for him to read. He will be judging me too. Susheela is looking at him in shock. This blurting out of thoughts isn’t a common thing for him then? Good. I find him good.

  ‘I saw my father killed,’ I say. It rises, like bile, to my throat. The nameless thing. The incommensurable memory, unstoried.

  Susheela gasps. Then they’re both quiet.

  ‘Shot,’ I say into the house.

  I have his attention now. I reach out a hand to him. And because he is good, he takes it, my old woman’s hand.