The Day of the Scorpion (53 page)

I am to undergo some more surgery, not here but in Calcutta, so they tell me, and after that can look forward to a period of convalescence and then some sick leave by which time it will have been settled about the future. I should be grateful, of course, to have news, some assurance about your sister’s state of mind and health, if you could spare a moment to drop me a line (care of this place – it would be forwarded – I go within a day or two possibly). That business lies a bit heavily. All sorts of things go through my mind. I wish I could speak of them more directly to you. Meanwhile my kind regards to you both, and to your mother. I hope you have had recent good news of your father. Sincerely yours, (for) Ronald Merrick (S.P., QAIMNS).

‘You could go and see him,’ Susan said. ‘You could stay with Aunt Fenny and go and see him when they take him to Calcutta.’

‘Aunt Fenny could do that.’

‘No, not Aunt Fenny. You. He didn’t like Aunt Fenny. He didn’t like me either. But he liked you. And it’s you he’s written to. He wants to talk to you.’

After this Susan relapsed into silence. She sat most of that day on the veranda, staring at the red brick wall, while Panther lay beside her, guarding her from those invisible demons which dumb animals perceive as ever-present in human sorrow and abstraction. And long before it began to be said in Pankot that Susan Layton had become dangerously withdrawn (so that among those who remembered, the name and history of Poppy Browning’s daughter began to be spoke
of) the servants who lived behind that wall observed this fact for themselves and recalled the fateful augury of the monstrous birth high up in the remote hills. In secret places about the bungalow garden they disposed offerings of milk to quench the thirst, and flowers to appease with sweet perfumes the uncertain temper, of both good and evil spirits.

At the entrance to Flagstaff House there was a narrow open-fronted wooden hut, almost the duplicate of the sentry box that stood inside the gateway, but sheltering a book, not a man. The book was chained to the shelf on which it rested. A pencil, also chained, lay in the groove formed in the middle by the open leaves. Every evening a servant came down the drive, unchained the book, took it back to the house and left it on a table in the entrance hall. In the morning the book was returned to the hut. As well as the book there was a small wooden box with a slot cut in its lid, wide enough to take a visiting card. The box, too, was taken every evening into the house and returned next day. The book and the box were the means by which a visitor to or someone newly stationed in Pankot made an official call on the Area Commander. In the old days the call had been obligatory but nowadays a signature in the book or a card in the box was an indication of the presence in (or departure from) Pankot of someone to whom the old forms were still important or who knew them to be considered important to Flagstaff House and felt that to displease its incumbents was not a dignified thing to do.

It was in the book that Lady Manners announced her presence, one day towards the end of May – Lady Manners, or her ghost, or someone playing a joke, for no address was given beyond the bleak indication of permanent residence, Rawalpindi; no one in Pankot had seen her or knew where she could be staying, and the sentries who had been on duty between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. could not recall, with the degree of certainty Isobel Rankin hoped for when having them questioned by the steward, anyone reaching the gate on foot, by car, by tonga who had not entered but had gone to the book, signed and departed and who answered a description suited to the name,
the rank, the whole condition which Mrs Rankin had in her mind as definitive of that unhappy woman.

Well, the servants would know, anyone’s servants would know. But they did not, or pretended they did not, and so great an incidence of pretence was unlikely enough to confirm their denials. Where, then? Clearly not on the Pankot side of Pankot, the side, the real side, reached by taking that right-hand fork from the bazaar that led – gradually – to those majestic heights on which stood the summer residence which Lady Manners had once had the freedom of, all those years ago, longer than anyone now on station including old Mabel Layton, who had not bought Rose Cottage until a year in the thirties when the Manners regime was over, could remember; and which now – this season – once again stood empty. So, then, the other side, where English people never went. Certainly, yes, that would be like her, to come to Pankot and seclude herself among those who belonged to the other side. In Pankot these days there were several Indian officers, and some of them had wives (fragile, shy creatures whom Isobel Rankin took pains with) and they might know. But did not. It was a mystery. And why (if she were truly there and it was no joke, no spirit-mark – that signature) had she signed at all? And had she come alone, or with an entourage? Where was the child? Was the signature a form of apology, a first hesitant step back into the good opinion of her race? Or the opposite of that?

And it was strange, Pankot thought, or if not strange certainly not uninteresting, that two of the marginal actors in the comedy or tragedy of the Bibighar Gardens affair (and it depended on what mood you were in, which label seemed the more apt) should impinge simultaneously on the consciousness of sensible people who thought it would have been nicer to forget that it had ever happened: Lady Manners who had stood by and let her niece give birth and then taken the revoltingly conceived child to her bosom, and Captain Merrick who was said to have done his duty and had no thanks and now lay wounded as a result of some attempt – the actual details were not clear – to help poor Susan Bingham’s husband, the day he was killed in action.

That story of the stone, which Mrs Layton had brought
back from Mirat (referring to it casually, as if a stone were thrown at every wedding); the odd little circumstance of Teddie Bingham’s scratch best man turning out to be who he was; and the revelation that Merrick had been sent to a backwater after the failure of the police to establish guilt in the Manners case, and then been allowed to enter the army: these burgeoned under the warmth of approbation felt for a man who had stayed with a dying brother officer, until the stone itself became a symbol of martyrdom they all understood because they felt they shared it; and so, entering their consciousness, Merrick entered Pankot and was, for as long as interest in him lasted, part of the old hill station, at the still centre of its awareness of what was meant by the secret pass-phrase: one of us. One of us. And it did not matter that he was known, thought to be, not quite that by right. He had become it by example.

‘Of course he was in love with her,’ Barbie said – and it was through Barbie’s more intimate knowledge and compulsive interpretation of things that were known casually to the Laytons that there filtered those elements of incidental intelligence which, even if their accuracy could not be proven, gave the facts the dark, ponderable glow of living issues. Yes, he had been in love with the Manners girl, but she had preferred that Indian, and she more than anyone else must have been to blame for the fact that he and his fellow-conspirators were never tried, never brought properly to book. She hadn’t been able to stop them going to prison, but she had destroyed the case which had been built up so efficiently and swiftly by Mr Merrick. And obviously he had suffered for that, been made to pay for it, as men were made to pay. He had been sent to Sundernagar, just as though he was in disgrace. She had ruined his career. Well, she was dead, and one must not speak ill of the dead, and perhaps before she died she had regretted her infatuation. ‘And I do not,’ Barbie said, ‘well, as a Christian how could I, feel as strongly as some about the child. We are all God’s children. But that child has not been brought to God.’ Old missionary zeal shone on her ruined parchment face, and there was a picture to be had by anyone present when she spoke like this, of Barbie storming down the hill to seek old Lady Manners out and fill her with
so much dread of the Lord that she would go penitent with the child in her arms to Mr Peplow; although what he would do if she did had to remain in the shadow of a half conjecture, the child having no known father, a heathen name, Parvati (which Barbie remembered because that was the name of Siva’s consort), and being dark-skinned into the bargain (so it was said), in witness of the original sin of its conception.

‘No, I wouldn’t,’ Sarah said, parrying by direct denial Barbie’s question whether she would recognize Lady Manners if she saw her. She wondered if her mother had let something be known after all, about her impulsive action in Srinagar.

‘But last year you were so close, your mother said.’

‘A hundred yards.’

‘You must have had a glimpse?’

‘Yes, a glimpse.’

It was evening. They moved in the garden among Aunt Mabel’s roses, waiting her return from one of the solitary walks she took, stoutly shod; a deaf old woman climbing steep hills, in silence.

Suddenly Barbie said, ‘Who is Gillian Waller?’

‘I don’t know. Why?’

‘I thought she might be a relation. Mabel mentions her.’

‘Without saying who she is?’

‘I mean in her sleep.’ Barbie looked embarrassed. ‘I go in you know. To make sure. She’s become forgetful. Of the light. Her book. She falls asleep with her spectacles on. One is so afraid of danger. Breakage. A splinter in the eye. And on cold nights in winter of insufficient warmth, sitting up asleep not properly covered.’

‘You tuck her up.’

‘She doesn’t know, but you see I owe her. I’m grateful. And I’m a light sleeper myself. The slightest sound wakes me. Of course in the old days in remote parts one felt vigilance laid on one almost by God as a duty and it’s become a habit. I sleep best between two and four. I don’t need much and I like to be sure. About
her
. I anticipated a
lonely
retirement, you know, most of us do, in the missions. Well, she knew that. She’d seen some of us, growing old and keeping cheerful and doing it on our own. So. Well, that’s it. And recently she’s become
very restless. And then this talking. Well, muttering. Gillian Waller. As if whoever that is, is on her mind. I’m afraid to ask. I hate to seem to pry. She’s such a self-contained person. When I first came to Rose Cottage she terrified me. I’ve always been a great talker. Talk, talk. God is listening, Mr Cleghorn used to say when I caught him out
not
. He was Muzzafirabad, head of the mission there when I took over from Edwina Crane and worried so because they adored her, and I was older than she. It made me talk the more. Talk, Talk. It laps against her. I thought: she’ll never stand it. And that made me talk harder. Waves and waves of my talking. Well, she’s an edifice and I came to realize it didn’t trouble her. She still likes to see me talk even if she can’t catch all the words. Rock of ages. The sea pounds and pounds. There are people like that. She’s one. Is Susan more cheerful?’

‘Not cheerful, but holding on.’

‘To what?’ Barbie took Sarah’s arm. ‘To what?’ And then, before Sarah could answer, asked, ‘Who was Poppy Browning?’

‘Poppy Browning? I don’t know. Has Aunt Mabel talked about a Poppy Browning too?’

‘No. It was gossip I overheard. Would you say that Susan is dangerously withdrawn?’

Sarah stopped, examined a red rose, bent her head to take its scent and again felt the touch of that casual premonition on the back of her neck, so that it seemed to her that she was arrested, suspended, between an uncertain future and a fading history that had something to do with bending her head like this to a bunch of sweet-smelling flowers: not those which Susan threw and she, Sarah, caught, but those there were evidence in an old photograph of her holding on the day of Aunt Fenny’s wedding, while Aunty Mabel, half-shadowed by a wide-brimmed hat, stood: an edifice, rock of ages.

‘We endure,’ she told Barbie. ‘We’re built for it. In a strange way we’re built for it.’ But was Susan? She faced Barbie. ‘Is that what you overheard? People saying she’s withdrawn?’

‘Dangerously withdrawn. They stopped when they saw me. Mrs Fosdick, Mrs Paynton, Lucy Smalley. It was Lucy Smalley who was saying – “Yes, the last time I saw her I
couldn’t help but be reminded of Poppy Browning’s daughter.” Then they changed the subject.’

‘Just talk then, Barbie, not serious concern. Otherwise they’d have roped you in. You’re practically part of the family. You’d be the ideal person for someone really worried about Susan to have a word with.’

‘Oh I wish,’ Barbie said, holding Sarah’s arm tight, then letting it go, abruptly, ‘– but I can’t. Go with you. My old headquarters are in Calcutta, you know.’

Barbie’s ministrations to Aunt Mabel were unobtrusive. She made herself scarce while Sarah followed Mabel along the rear veranda, holding the cradle-basket for the new crop of dead heads. The light had nearly gone. From inside Barbie touched the switch that turned on the globes on the veranda.

‘When are you going then?’ Mabel asked.

‘Tomorrow.’

Mabel nodded, finished attending to the azalea.

‘Where will you stay?’

‘I rang Aunt Fenny. She’ll put me up for a couple of nights.’

‘I thought they lived in Delhi.’

‘They moved to Calcutta in January.’

They went on to the next flower. Sarah said:

‘I wanted to ask you something. Something special.’ It was hard to speak up and still soften the blunt edges of a request. ‘I wanted to ask you about an old christening gown.’

The capable old hands continued without pause, caressing, turning, searching, nipping; preserving the strength of the plant, coaxing it to vigour and ripe old age with the removal of those decayed relics of its former flowering. I am asking, Sarah thought, to take something like that from her, as well. And wondered if the same thought had occurred, shot home, a sharp wound swiftly healed by acceptance of its necessity – because without speaking Mabel suddenly turned and went inside, leaving Sarah alone there with the basket. There was silence inside the house but presently Barbie came to the french window and beckoned.

‘She’s in her room and wants you to go in.’