The Day of the Scorpion (47 page)

And, presently, when Teddie was dead, a dream came to trouble Sarah. In the dream they were saying goodbye to him and even he knew that he would never come back. He had a look on his face that expressed the most extraordinarily complete awareness of the place he was going to. The look made him beautiful. They were all stunned by it and by the knowledge that his presence was some kind of trick, because he was already gone. ‘Of course, Sarah, it’ll be up to you really,’ he said, just before he left them. They had to fight their way through a group of Teddie’s friends and avoid the
figure of the prostrated woman in the white saree, and after that Sarah was running alone through a deserted street. When she got home her father was waiting. ‘I suppose you did your best,’ he always seemed to say although his lips never actually moved. In this dream she was intermittently being made love to by a man who never spoke to her. Who is that man? people asked her – her mother or father, or someone who happened to pass by. Oh, I don’t know, she said. There was a superior kind of mystery about the man.

The dream had begun a few days after they had the news that Teddie was killed. The news was signalled from Comilla to Calcutta and from Calcutta to Area Headquarters in Pankot where it was intercepted by an alert signals corporal who knew Corporal Layton, and liked her for not being standoffish with non-commisioned men, and thought it best to have a word with someone else before the message went by dispatch-rider to the Pankot Rifles lines where all the Laytons’ mail was sent. And so at 10.45 on an April morning Sarah was told by General Rankin that there was some bad news he thought it best to tell her privately so that she and her mother could work out how best to break it to her sister. She remembered the time, 10.45, because when General Rankin sat down he no longer obstructed her view of the clock behind his desk. He had made her sit directly she came in and did not sit himself until he had told her about Teddie and reassured himself that she was going to take it with reasonable composure. To one side of the clock there was the map with tell-tale clusters of flags around Imphal and Kohima. She thought of Teddie as permanently pinned, part of the map.

‘Is your mother at home or will she be out shopping?’ the General asked.

‘They’re both at Rose Cottage. I think there’s bridge.’

The romantic period of Susan’s pregnancy had ended. She was showing. Before long, she said, she would be showing very badly. The grace and favour bungalow stood virtually unprotected from the military gaze in the lines of the Pankot Rifles. She had complained for several weeks that it was like living in a barracks. Now she felt she was showing too much to spend the day happily at the club and had acquired a liking
for resting on the veranda at the back of Aunt Mabel’s, knitting and crocheting and gazing across the flower-filled garden to the Pankot hills, while her mother played bridge inside with Miss Batchelor and whoever else could be persuaded to forsake the club and the well-stocked bar, and gusty invasions of male company.

Hearing that Susan and her mother were at Rose Cottage the General nodded. Mrs Rankin had played there on two occasions recently and it was scarcely a week since a hint had been dropped to Sarah that her mother’s losses were unpaid up. In the midst of this new catastrophe the little debt remained as a source of vague irritation and restraint between the Laytons and the Rankins, not to be forgotten but temporarily overlooked.

‘You’d better go up there and get your mother on her own if you can,’ Rankin said. ‘I’ll tell the transport people to provide you with a car, and I’ll have a word with your section commander. Your mother may need you at home for a day or two I shouldn’t wonder.’ He paused. ‘What a terrible, terrible thing.’

He went over to a cabinet, poured a small measure of brandy into a glass.

‘Drink this. It’s Hennessy three star, not country.’

She drank it down. She hated brandy. The smell reminded her of hospitals.

‘Who looks after Susan?’ Rankin asked, as if he too had been reminded. ‘Beames or young Travers?’

‘Dr Travers.’

‘You may feel or your mother may feel he should be there when Susan is told. Meanwhile I’ll ring my wife. We’ll all do what we can.’

‘Thank you,’ she said and put the glass on his desk. ‘I’d better go now.’ She put the signal in her pocket. ‘I think I ought to go by tonga. If I turn up in a car Susan may wonder and get alarmed before we’re ready to say anything.’

‘Would you like my wife to go with you? She’ll be at the club. You could pick her up on your way.’

Ten rupees was what her mother owed. ‘It’s very kind of you,’ she said, ‘but it’s not as if Mother and Susan are alone.’

‘Wait a few minutes before you go. You’ve had a shock.’

‘No, it’s better like this. I mean better than just the telegram arriving.’

He saw her to the door. In the outer office the aide who had taken Captain Bishop’s place opened the other door for her and accompanied her down the long arcaded veranda. He went with her all the way to the gravelled forecourt and out beyond the sentries who slapped the butts of their rifles. He hailed one of the tongas that stood lined up in the roadway. The sun was very hot, but the air was crisp; the famous Pankot air that always carried a promise of exhilaration and could be cold at night in winter so that fires were lit at four o’clock. Area Headquarters lay midway between the bazaar and the Governor’s summer residence. Between these two were the golf course and the club. It was uphill, and the plumed horse took the slope at a nodding walk, jingling its bells and sometimes breaking wind. She remembered Barbie Batchelor’s dream. She watched the road slipping by beneath her feet, her back to horse and driver and stable smell – a smell that was part of the smell of Pankot, the whole panorama of which was widening and deepening as the tonga gained height, disappearing as the road curved from the straight into the first of the bends on the hill on whose farther slope Rose Cottage lay with views to all the hills and valleys of the district her grandfather had ridden and her father had walked. Down on her left now was the golf course, come back into view, and, briefly visible, the bungalow where her father and Aunt Mabel lived after the First World War. More distantly she could see the familiar huts and old brick buildings of the Pankot Rifles depot, and the roof, among trees, of the grace and favour bungalow. Another bend in the road and the tonga, momentarily on the straight again, bowled past the flower-strewn embankment and then the open gateway of the club, giving a glimpse of white stucco columns and bright green lawns. Another turn and they were past the closed iron gates of the long driveway that corkscrewed up to the deserted summer residence. Climbing again now, slowly, past openings of private dwellings posted with familiar names: Millfoy, Rhoda, The Larches, Burleigh House, Sandy Lodge. At the top – Rose Cottage.

‘Thairo,’ she called, but the driver had already stopped. She
got down, hidden from view by the high embankment. She wondered whether she should keep the tonga waiting, but decided not, gave him two rupees to save argument and turned into the steep little drive that was flanked by rockeries. Aunt Mabel was cutting roses, basket in arm, secateurs in hand, wearing old brogues, woollen stockings and a shapeless green tweed skirt. As a concession to the sun she had on a collarless sleeveless blouse, bright orange, that exposed her brown, old woman’s mottled arms and neck. On her head there was a wide-brimmed pink cotton hat. These days you had to be careful not to come upon her too suddenly. The deafness that Sarah’s mother thought of as assumed to match a mood had become more serious than that. But while Sarah was still several yards distant, her aunt turned. After a moment she put the secateurs in her basket and set it down on the grass, came to Sarah and took hold of her left arm, cocked her head to hear whatever it was Sarah had come at this unexpected time of day to say.

‘Susan mustn’t see me yet. Can you get Mother out here somehow?’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Teddie’s been killed.’

Mabel’s expression did not alter. After a moment she let go of Sarah’s arm, then touched it again as a mark of reassurance, turned, picked up the basket and went inside. Sarah followed. The veranda at the front of Rose Cottage was narrow. It was cluttered with pots of flowering shrubs. The famous views were all at the back where the garden sloped to a wire fence, below which the land became precipitous. The cottage was one of the oldest in Pankot, built before the fashion came for building in a style more reminiscent of home. Stuccoed, whitewashed, with square columns on the verandas and high-ceilinged rooms inside, it was a piece of old Anglo-India, a bungalow with a large square entrance hall. The hall was panelled. Upon the polished wood Mabel’s brass and copper shone. The bowls of flowers gave off a deep and dusty scent, and Sarah, standing in the doorway, half-closed her eyes and imagined the drone of bees on a summer’s day at home in England, which she had thought of as Pankot in miniature. But England was far away and Pankot was
miniature itself. Rose Cottage was not big enough to contain Susan’s loss and the gestures of sorrow that presently must be made. They would be offered and the whole of Susan’s loss and other people’s sorrow would balloon and Pankot would not be able to contain it. She could not hear any voices. She turned away from the hall and stood on the veranda, amazed at the bright colours of flowers in the sunlight and the antics of a pair of butterflies whom Teddie’s death had not affected. She waited for her mother to come out. At this time of day she would be in her first drinks of the day state: languid but mettlesome, neither to be loved nor criticized, and requiring an explanation she would not ask for in so many words and which Sarah in this case could not give.

She heard her mother’s footsteps.

Mrs Layton was frowning, puzzled by and impatient of an interruption. The frown meant that Aunt Mabel had not said why Sarah had come. That Mabel had said nothing was too characteristic to be called unfair. Quickly Sarah began to formulate words. There’s awfully bad news, Mother. But that wouldn’t do at all. Bad news could be about her father. Shot while trying to escape. Killed by a disease made worse by malnutrition; or dead of lost hope or broken heart.

She said, ‘Teddie’s been killed,’ and reached in her pocket, gave the crumpled signal form to her mother who took it, read it, went inside and sat on a hard hall chair and read it again. Mabel came out of the living-room followed by Barbie Batchelor, Mrs Fosdick and Mrs Paynton. They gathered round Mrs Layton. Becoming aware of them, Mrs Layton looked up from the telegram and said, ‘Teddie’s been killed.’

Sarah went past them into the living-room. Cigarette smoke still hung in the area of the abandoned bridge-table. Here again there were bowls and vases of flowers and deep overstuffed chairs, and a sofa dressed in flowered cretonne. At the far end the french windows were open on to the veranda. She could see the upholstered cane lounging chair and Susan’s bare feet crossed at the ankles in an attitude that suggested deep repose of all the body. Her sister’s drowsiness and fleshy calm made the veranda momentarily unapproachable. But she had assured herself no movement inside the
house had penetrated that quiet, upset that delicate contemplation of a world without trouble.

She went back into the hall. They were talking in low voices. Her mother still sat. She had the fingers of one hand pressed lightly against her forehead. Miss Batchelor was leaning over her, supporting her back with an arm, but the support was unnecessary. Her mother’s back was stiff. She caught Sarah’s eye. And Sarah knew. It was she, Sarah, who must find a way of breaking the news to Susan, and the way she found would probably be clumsy, in which case Susan might forgive her but never forget.

She said to Aunt Mabel, ‘I’m going out to try and tell Susan now. I think someone should ring Dr Travers in case she takes it badly.’

To make Aunt Mabel hear she spoke clearly. The others turned. She had sounded hard but reliable. Such a combination was understood. If no member of the Layton family had been up to it one of them would have taken charge in just that way. Without waiting for Aunt Mabel’s reply she went back into the living-room, edged past the chairs round the bridge-table and stepped out on to the paved veranda. Susan was asleep. A faint perspiration was visible on her upper lip. Her swollen belly tautened the cotton smock and the skirt of the smock was rucked up above her bare knees. The rest of her looked too fragile for the burden of disfiguration, but in her sleep she was smiling. There was a faint upward lift to each corner of the moist closed lips.

Sarah could not wake her up and destroy such happiness. She sat on a near-by chair, watching her sister for the slightest sign that she was waking, and a ridiculous notion came to her that Susan should go on for ever dreaming and smiling and she go on sitting: in this silly uniform (she thought) with sleeves rolled up like a soldier’s, but showing the white chevrons, and wearing sensible regulation shoes. One of her lisle stockings had a snag near the ankle. She wet a finger and applied it. It would do no good. It never did. The scent from the garden and from the ranges of hills where pine trees grew, oozing aromatic gums, came in waves with the faint breeze that here – even on the stillest day – could be felt on the cheek. Her father said that at eye level from the
veranda of Rose Cottage the closest ground was five miles distant as the crow flew. He had worked it out with map and compass, sitting where she was sitting. That was the time he taught her to orientate a map with the lie of the land and take bearings to determine a six-point reference on the grid. He never taught Susan such things. But I am a grown woman, she told herself, not a leggy girl learning the tricks he would have taught the son he never had. In a letter at Christmas Colonel Layton said of Teddie, whose photograph they had sent, ‘That son-in-law of mine looks all right. Not quite like seeing him in the flesh, but that will come, DV. Meanwhile I heartily approve and send my love to them both, and to you, Millie, and of course to Sarah.’ Of course. Of course. She glanced back at Susan and saw under the book that lay open on the floor, pages down, a block of writing paper and the edge of an envelope that would contain the last letter Teddie wrote, the last she had received at least, to which she had not quite summoned the energy to reply, and so had put it by, to doze, and write later, beginning after lunch, and ending after tea, giving it then to Mabel’s old servant Aziz to take down to the post.