by Angus Wilson
Yet Erroll’s restlessness prevented him from sleeping. First the man sat in a near-by deck-chair. Then he picked up Hamo’s empty glass, turned it upside down, and let the last few drops of fresh lime juice fall on to the coarse lawn. All this Hamo could sense, felt forced to verify by peering through half-closed lashes, but then he slept and was woken by Erroll’s getting up and walking towards the water’s edge. Hamo saw him craning his neck around the little island’s clump of trees towards the mainland, saw him relax as the sound of a motor launch chugged towards them, saw him sag as it passed by, churning its frothy way in and out through the nearly motionless black dots of fishing boats. Erroll, then, began to whistle tunelessly.
Wearily Hamo forced himself to be there. “Why didn’t you go over with them? Coates wanted you. He said so.”
“I dunno. Well, yes, I do. Ever since we met him in Madras, I’ve been following along with the camera team. I didn’t even go with you on that Tanjore lark that seems to have mucked things up so. I mean commercial photographics for mags and that on the side is one thing but . . .”
“You think he’s a really good producer, do you?”
“Kit Coates! The only really imaginative bloke on the tele today. And from what he says he’ll break into the movie world any day now. The things you can pick up just from what he says in a casual way. Half that team, even old Phil, his top cameraman, don’t appreciate what they’re getting, working with him.”
Hamo patted his moustache, allowed himself a moment’s squaring of his shoulders, a faint smile, as he said, but softly, “I can’t imagine any fate worse than spending more than a day in his company.” Then he said, as though giving the day’s orders, “He plans to go up to Goa and then fly from Bombay to Ceylon. He wants to photograph the whole agricultural scene there. ‘The working ecology of a naturally idle people’ is how he described his approach. He was anxious that we should accompany him because of our official contacts. As we had just come away from there, I was a little surprised at his request, I admit. But he explained that in his profession one must never lose anything from not asking. Of course, I couldn’t consider going through all that again. Nor am I sure that the contacts I made would prove exactly amenable after . . . But you left with good marks all round. I want you to go with Coates. You can help him. He can interest you. I’ll pay all expenses. No, those are orders. I shall rest here and write up my reports.”
“I dunno. Well, if you’re sure. And you’re really going to rest. It is paradise, you know. You think Kit Coates wants me along?”
“I’m sure of it. And with no need to feel obliged on either side. Because I may be doing him a further service which will also serve me. I imagine that’s the sort of language he’d use. Or if not language—I haven’t your ear for all that—at any rate the sort of sentiments. But I can’t tell you about that yet.”
“What you going to do then? What you got on your mind? Old Kit’s a crafty customer, you know.” Erroll was a Northern likely lad again. But he was not to learn whether imitation had once more eased the tension enough to inspire confidence.
“Oh my Gawd!” he said softly. A motor launch had stopped at the residency jetty. From it came, not Kit Coates and his crew, but Mrs. Kovalam, the liaison provided for them by the Government Information Office.
All yesterday, as they toured the rice communes, the Storage Cooperatives and the Government Mills, Hamo had lain back, as he now lay back on the chaise-longue cushions, cradled in the kind severity of Mrs. Kovalam’s management of an eminent visiting capitalist scientist. The severe fold of her unadorned sari, the homely plainness of her pince-nez, the maternal strictness of the tight bun into which her thinning grey hair had been wound, the stately homeliness of her tall, ample figure, the infelicity—political and æsthetic—of her gold teeth, her total lack of humour, and the official brightness with which she compensated for it—all these had left him hovering between childish alarm and childish laughter. He supposed, as he saw her advance towards him through the hibiscus-lined path, putting the scarlet and apricot flowers to shame for their parasitic luxuriance, that she was simply the Indian version of all the Left-wing political ladies in England whom, thank God, he had never met. So impressed, indeed, had he been by all he saw of what they had done with his Magic (so different from what private capital investment seemed to have made of it elsewhere), that he had let himself be taken charge of, had surrendered, as he had once before done to capable hands at the London Clinic when his appendix was removed. But now, as she approached, he feared for what his exhaustion might be accepting; he felt a sense of challenge; a premonition of a show-down. To prepare for it, he rose from his supine comfort, despite her deprecatory gesture, as he always had for women. Mixture of Nurse Cavell’s statue and of Madame Curie she might be, but he would not take it lying down, although neither would he use unfair weapons by dwelling inwardly on her gold teeth. He stood until she was seated.
“No, don’t be worried, Mr. Langmuir. I have not come to disturb your well-deserved convalescence from the shocks of Asia. I promised you some days of rest, and I keep my promises. I thought you would just like to know,” and she waved some newspapers at him, “that you have put it among the pigeons.”
When Hamo closed his eyes at the weary remembrance of the interview, she added, “You must not allow that overestimated English modesty to underestimate the importance of what you have said here to the reporters in India.”
But, if Erroll was soon to relinquish his watch-dog post, he was clearly the more determined to bark now.
“Look, Mrs. Kovalam, what Mr. Langmuir said was just an off-the-cuff statement for the local chaps. It wasn’t for the world at large.”
“Mr. Watton, I am afraid you do not understand the social pressures at present working in India. Mr. Langmuir, one of the greatest architects of the famous Green Revolution, comes to India and makes criticism of the effects of landlordism, and even of the great god of capital investment programmes, and the use made of Western aid. This is not the so-called disinterested role that the capitalist world expects of its scientists. They are not to question the exploitation of their discoveries, that is not one of the freedoms permitted in the so-called free economies. Do you suppose this will not be attacked and vilified? Today it is reported, in garbled fashion of course, in Madras. Tomorrow it will be in the Bombay Times, and in the Times of India, in the Hindi press, and, more important, in the vernacular newspapers.”
“Well, I can tell you this, Mrs. Kovalam, the Chief’s very overtired and if any bloody nosey-parker reporters start fussing him here, they’ll get such a bash on the nose that they’ll never come to the surface of that beautiful blue water again.”
Mrs. Kovalam smiled soothingly. “Do not worry, Mr. Watton, such schoolboy fisticuffs will not be necessary. Mr. Langmuir is the distinguished visitor of the State of Kerala. His peace and quiet will be respected. Indeed we can hope that he will feel relaxed enough to see more of the co-operative systems and the communal agriculture that we are working here. His favourable opinions, expressed to me yesterday, could have great weight in the Third World, where naïve conceptions of the value of scientific objectivity inculcated in the education of imperialist days still have great weight.”
“Oh Gawd! This is going to be a . . . Look, Mr. Langmuir’s resting . . .”
“It’s true, Mrs. Kovalam, I cannot be drawn into any local controversies. I need some rest and then I should like to avail myself of your hospitality here to write my reports to the Institute. There are many technical recommendations that I have in mind which are far more relevant than the rather random social observations . . .”
“Our scientists are waiting for them eagerly, Mr. Langmuir. They will receive full publicity in our technical journals. But I think meanwhile,” and she twinkled as never before, severely and kindly behind her pince-nez, “the dialectic has caught up with you. These attacks which you have called forth will, I am sure, force you to synthesize your subjective feelings of comp
assion and pity with your objective technical findings. If they give you time, these angry capitalist gentlemen. In their fury, by the way, their typography has deteriorated below even its usual poor level —‘Go home, Homo, we don’t need your homilies or your homespun theories.’ Well, how do you answer that. You see I appeal to the sense of humour with which so many British protect themselves.”
Erroll’s cheeks turned red even through his acquired suntan. Hamo looked to see if the lady intended any insult. But it was clear that she had read what was printed; and, no doubt, she was right in supposing that the distortion of his name was due only to typographical ineptitude.
With gymnastic clumsiness, he raised his long body from recline and stood looking out to sea. “I propose to answer it by having a refreshing swim.”
His decision was answered by shouting, even screams, from the motor launch which awaited Mrs. Kovalam’s return. From under the central awning on to the open deck appeared a short but muscular man of thirty-five or so in a singlet and canvas trousers, his teeth below his feebly sprouting moustache flashed in dog-like rage. He pushed backwards before him a youth whom he held by the neck. The boy’s near-nakedness, veiled only by a pair of ancient bathing trunks holed and bleached of all colour, seemed to make the assault more brutal. As he shoved the boy towards the deck edge, with his free hand he smacked him hard from side to side across the face.
“What the hell are you doing?” Hamo shouted and Erroll moved to intervene. But Mrs. Kovalam was stern.
“This is no affair for visitors, please.”
“Then will you stop that man at once,” for the youth, dark brown, almost black, waist 24, hips 35, long-legged, was nearly the Fairest Youth who had Ever Been Seen. And he was a youth in distress.
Mrs. Kovalam got up gymnastically from her chair. “Oh, my goodness,” she said, “Don’t worry, Mr. Langmuir. There are always some fights in these boats.”
“But he’ll kill that boy.”
“I don’t think so,” she laughed, a dry, calming laugh. “But if it’s upsetting your nervous system, I shall order him to stop.”
She called out sharply, and the man stood holding the youth as he would a chicken whose neck he had been absurdly ordered not to wring. The youth was crying.
“Why has he attacked him?”
“Oh, he was probably stealing, or something. These casual labourers on the boats are often very anti-social elements.”
“Tell him to take on someone of his own size,” Erroll said, hoping so to dismiss the incident.
But it was Hamo now who was severe and kind.
“Mrs. Kovalam, I insist on knowing what this is all about.”
She looked, for a moment, annoyed, then, seeing Hamo’s earnest expression, she decided to accommodate his whim. She spoke to the man for a few moments, sharply, dismissively, and once she elicited a long, rapid flow from the youth which she cut short.
“Yes, it’s what I thought,” she said, “this boy is lazy. He comes from up-country. Some family of peasants who failed for one reason or another to co-operate satisfactorily in the new agricultural programme. Inefficiency, stupidity, backward-looking notions, all these present great problems. The achievements you saw yesterday, Mr. Langmuir, in the paddy-fields for example, were not brought about without much patient teaching by the central authorities, and, of course, there are incorrigible elements who inevitably drift into a kind of parasitism. It is one of the problems in all our cities. Rehabilitation is not an easy thing. In my opinion the pill will do much to root out these weak strains, as you have done with our grains of rice. Education for the pill is more acceptable to our male tradition than the older methods.” Again she laughed. “Meanwhile the inevitable result is some violence. I am sorry you should have seen it.”
Hamo’s answer was to walk over to the boy and give him a wad of notes from his pocket-book. He dared not look towards Erroll, for he remembered the beggars in Colombo. The boy broke into a happy white-toothed smile. For a moment the magic was so powerful that Hamo had to control his tired muscles in order not to throw his arms around that half-naked body. At least he could relax his mouth muscles in an answering smile. But then the cruel effects of his own Magic upon the boy’s life came back to him, and he resolutely responded with a frown and moved away. He went up to Mrs. Kovalam and shook her hand.
“Well, good-bye for the moment,” he said, “I’m going to have a rest and then a swim.”
He walked away from her towards the Residence. She saw nothing for it but to board the launch. As the mooring ropes were hauled in and the engine sounded, Hamo turned to see the youth spring from the deck into the garden and run off into the flamboyant and mango trees that masked the kitchen quarters of the perfect eighteenth-century house.
*
The water’s warmth was, all the same, cooling beside the intense heat of the sun which blazed down upon his head. He willed himself to think only of the calming contact of the little ripples that splashed against his nose and arms and thighs, ripples that reached him as the last outer circles of the great swells thrown up by the chugging motor boats. Yet he could not wholly banish his anxieties, his cares. They formed themselves now into the fussing thought that he should have worn some sort of cap to protect the nape of his neck from the intense burning of the sun’s rays. The very immensity of the water stretching away from him, for, at his breast-stroke level, he could see nothing of any of the coasts before him, might have been the mid-ocean, and he the flotsam cast out from a wreck. The aloneness threatened to bring him not composure but panic, not to banish the decision before him but to double the force of its absurd isolated necessity. He turned to look back, and, in the crook of the vast trunk of a flamboyant tree, set off by soft green leaf plumage and vivid scarlet flowers, crouched the Very Fair Youth, a delicious black cat purring to be fondled. He changed to a vigorous crawl, resolutely setting outwards into the bay. He sought some object in all the vast space before him, just some objective, however idly floating, that would give some definition to his healing swim. Some way over to his left he thought he glimpsed in the gentle swell’s rise and fall a small floating mass, green, brown—a seaweed? He had noticed none before in these waters. He would have an aim. He would investigate. Now the warmth of the water played caressingly, easingly against, his skin, the heat of the sun was delicious only and his fears seemed absurd. Taking his time, he moved towards his goal, which yet appeared to move away from him.
He heard a shout but he refused to look back; the shouting continued, and, turning his head, he saw the youth’s face contorted—could it be in righteous anger on behalf of all youths, all the hopeless? The very sentimentality, the weakness of his thought made him aware of how tired his body was, how unwilling his muscles. But he must drive on. An agonizing pain shot through his right leg muscle, so that for a while he could do no more than tread water; but he was nearing his object. Then suddenly he felt his legs entangled and pulled down by some slippery creature, some entwining slimy ribbons, and his leg was rock-hard with cramp. He was under the heavy pulverizing water, but he fought up to the air again. Behind him from the bank came the clamour of voices and a loud crash of the water. He turned himself with a desperate effort, but he sensed that it had taken all his strength. He sank and rose again to see a dark face, all the muscles distorted with effort, the eyes staring, the mouth set in some laughterless grin. Arms encircled him, hands sought to hold him up, but he knew the gesture for the deception it was. He had to free himself, he had to have freedom, freedom from youth, freedom to live again. He kneed hard against the taut body pressed against his own. Sensing by the softness that he had found the testicles, he sought to wrench the snakelike arms from him, he forced the small head down below the water. He was terrified, terrified of all help.
He recalled later only a forced, breathless hiccoughing and vomiting.
When he woke in the great four-poster bed in the air-conditioned panelled room, he sensed Erroll’s presence, but he turned over on his p
illow and slept again.
The next morning he was intolerably weak but recovered. Erroll then told him.
“For God’s sake,” he said, “everyone feels for you. Drowning men are bound to panic. The poor little bugger didn’t understand life-saving anyway. I’ve made that starchy bitch stir her stumps to inquire about the family. If we can help the poor bastards, I knew you’d want me to.”
And then as if by pre-arrangement to distract him, to prevent his despair, Kit Coates, in immaculate high-lapelled cream linen suit and scarlet silk cravat, was at his bedside and chatted generally.
“I wish you’d seen the synagogue,” he said. “Only two hundred of the White Jews are left and very few of them are under forty. It’s the sort of thing that appeals now. Not that there’s any chance of conservation there. They’re bound to die out in the next few years. They accept the fact. But still the tele audiences lap up loomed groups. Their morbidity’s insatiable. I won’t tire you my further,” Coates said, as Hamo closed his eyes. “The doctors think you’ll be able to leave here in a day or two. So we’re postponing our departure for Goa. Watton and I have put our heads together and you’re to come with us. Nothing comes of unnecessary suffering, you know.” Then he added, “Drowning, not waving.” He said it as a quotation.
“I flung me round him. I drew him under. I clung, I drown’d him, my own white wonder. Father and Mother, weeping and wild . . . calling the child (Roden Berkeley Wriothesley Noel, 1834‒1894).”
Only, of course, the wonder wasn’t white; on the contrary, almost black. And there was no calling, no Father and Mother could be traced. The boatman asked for recompense for the boy’s lost services, but Hamo refused it. However he left one hundred pounds with a reluctant Mrs. Kovalam—for the parents, if they could be found.