The Towers Of Silence (The Raj quartet) (26 page)

At first he felt bucked. Cycling home from the daftar he saw Mirat through the honeyed eyes of an ardent young husband, but suddenly its strangeness imposed itself on him and he could not picture her there. All kinds of practical details about the wedding presented themselves for consideration and for once he found it impossible to deal with them one at a time. He arrived at his quarters incapable of coherent thought and wondered how best to get hold of Tony Bishop whose job it should be, as best man, to do his thinking for him. Hosain brought tea and he began a letter: Darling Susan–

The blank paper only emphasized the immense distance she was from him and it was a distance he did not feel he could cover. He abandoned the letter in favour of a List which began after an entry or two to look suspiciously like a staff officer’s note to the Q side. He had just written the word accommodation which was all right as an idea – in fact as such essential – but the ramifications of the word now began to be exposed; the names and faces of people requiring accommodation sprang up argumentatively claiming attention, comfort, indeed some reasonable degree of luxury. The bride; the bridesmaid (Sarah); the bride’s mother; the matron of honour, Mrs Grace (Aunt Fenny); the chap to give the bride away, Major Grace (Uncle Arthur); the best man. It would be simpler for him to go to Pankot. But that would take forty-eight of the miserable grudging allowance of seventy-two. There would hardly be a night he could call his and Susan’s own.

He yelled for Hosain, told him to tell the bhishti to get a move on with the bath water. A thunderstorm broke. For fifteen minutes the electricity was off. He fanned himself with the writing-pad. The solution came to him dressed in its own perfect grey and respectful logic. There would be no wedding until after bloody Christmas and bloody Bengal. There would probably be no bloody wedding. He went out to the closet and sat miserably hunched, resting his forehead on both fists.

As a boy in his first year of English exile, in the house of his Shropshire uncle, he had often retreated to the unfriendly privacy of the cold English lavatory to consider the extraordinary miseries of life. His eyes blurred in sympathetic remembrance. It was several seconds before he realized that the most shameful thing was happening. He was blubbing.

*

Darling Susan, he began again a few days later when this unusual and useful man Merrick had solved the problem for him. And broke the news to her. With enthusiasm. ‘As for arrangements here,’ he continued, ‘they’re simple enough. Rather exciting in fact. Can’t remember whether I mentioned that Mirat is a princely Indian state’ (he hadn’t; the fact had escaped his notice; Merrick had told him). ‘The palace and all that sort of thing are on the other side of the lake’ (he’d hardly noticed the lake either), ‘but it seems the old Nawab has a guest house there that he’s made available to the station for special visitors who can’t get decent accommodation. I’ve had a word with the sso and the guest house is available for the October dates I suggest. I’ve booked it anyway because I can always alter it if you can’t manage it. There’s tons of room for all of you, apparently, including Aunt Fenny and Uncle Arthur. The sso says it’s very comfortable, even luxurious. And apart from the commissariat which one arranges oneself it’s all free as air. It seems the old nawab likes having English people there. It’s in the grounds of the palace but quite separate and of course guarded, so don’t worry. It should be fun. There’s a nice old church in the cantonment, which is where it’ll be, and afterwards we can shoot up to the Nanoora Hills in just a few hours . . .  .’

He stopped, gazed at the rain outside, living the eternity after the word hours, or trying to. Not having been to Nanoora he found it difficult to conjure a background to Susan’s hair which he could see and smell. The background to her hair kept coming out as Pankot. Nanoora might well do so too, in fact. One place looked much like another once you were used to it. He bent over the desk again and wrote: ‘I’ll drop a line to Tony Bishop but perhaps you or your mother would too. I’m sure General Rankin will give him long enough leave to accompany you all down, even if you come a week before the wedding. I can get him a room at the club. So don’t worry on that score. Darling Susan. Enjoy Srinagar. How I wish we could have been there together. But it was not to be.’

One other thing was not to be either. Five weeks later, a week before the wedding party was due in Mirat, Susan rang from area headquarters in Pankot to divisional headquarters in Mirat, got put on to Teddie personally and told him that Tony Bishop was in hospital with jaundice and had to be written off as best man. Teddie felt disturbed, less by the news and the problem it presented than by the business-like and utterly unromantic tone of Susan’s voice which he had not heard for a long time and which quite clearly commanded him to take firm steps to ensure that there was no other hitch.

Teddie’s desk was endways on to a window that looked out on to the main verandah of the Ops block. Susan was saying, ‘So Teddie, you’ll have to detail someone at your end to hold your hand in Tony’s place,’ and just then Ronald Merrick walked past.

Teddie smiled. ‘Don’t worry, old thing. Easy as wink. I’ll probably get the fellow I share quarters with. He’s a helpful and willing sort of chap.’

I’ve got a terrific favour to ask old man he had said but really it had been the other way round the favour being done to Merrick who as a boy could not have dreamed ever of supporting an officer of the Muzzafirabad Guides as best man at a wedding: a dignity not to be taken on lightly and certainly not to be repaid like this with a cut cheek and a piece of sticking plaster, an impediment to the tender conviviality of skins.

Shaving, the sensation of having been taken advantage of, of having had a casual friendship presumed upon, settled like a claw between his shoulder blades (which were otherwise unscarred, unmarked by the talons of physical desire. Her fingers had conveyed a reluctance which he supposed was a degree better than distaste.) Teddie dabbed his cheeks and chin with a towel, cut a fresh piece of sticking plaster and applied it to the wound.

Merrick’s wound. Teddie had borne it with an equanimity that disguised incredulity. This morning however the face in the mirror was that of an acquaintance well enough known, taken enough interest in, to make an explanation of what had hapened at the wedding obligatory and, in advance of getting it, unconvincing, in fact unbelievable, part of an especially sly confidence trick. The face in the mirror was that of a man Teddie felt he couldn’t trust. The eyes were too narrow, shifty under sandy lashes. The cheeks were drawn, as by some vice lately attempted and come to nothing. The bones shadowed them with a mixture of shame and unaltered intention.

*

Yesterday they had arrived in Nanoora. Tomorrow they must return. Their one complete and uninterruptible day had begun. The hours were almost too many for him to hold because the whole weight of them seemed to be on his back. It was as if he had invented the day for his own convenience. He went back into the bedroom where Susan lay, crumpled, asleep or wishing she were. He couldn’t be sure. She appeared discarded, not by other people but by herself. The curtains were still drawn across the too large window which was bordered by breaking and entering bands of vagrant sunshine. The room was otherwise still part of the private revelations of his wedding night and would be until the bearer brought morning tea and pulled the curtains back: an event that was not due for another forty minutes.

Showered and shaved he was conscious of thirst and hunger. But there was this other more insistent appetite; so intense it seemed that it would never be satisfied. He could never get enough. The mere sight of her sharpened and hardened him. His genitals ached but were totally in command again, engorged. His mind was frozen. He stripped and clambered in, without making a sound; it felt to him nevertheless as though he had whimpered. His arms trembled, anticipating exertions. She was night-scented, a warm aromatic combination of breasts and thighs and rucked transparent nightgown which gave his spoiler’s hands no rest but racked them with endless exhausting domineering tensions.

She cried out softly, apparently rudely awoken. With an abrupt gasping acquiescence she opened her legs but not her eyes; offered what assistance she could think of; but the duality of their enterprise did not connect them. Only his flesh did that and there was an improvement in her in that direction, the only one that mattered for the moment, having been earned, worked for with a kind of tight-lipped patience. The contest over, detumescent, he lay licking her wounds with kisses.

Later he drew her bathwater, poured in generous handfuls of sweet, silly pink salts. For half-an-hour he sat by the bedroom window, considering the unknown prospect of Nanoora which was surprised in its own daylight. He drank tea and listened to the irregular but confirming sounds of the sponge dipped and squeezed. He tried to believe that the bathroom was not her refuge but a place of preparation for the business of giving and sharing and taking up her part of the day which somehow had to carry a whole future in its mouth – like a mother-beast with her cubs, to a place of safety.

What had he done? Hurt her physically? Shocked her with his carnal approach? Had he been while exercising consideration and patience inconsiderate in showing vigour, making no attempt to hide this extreme of happiness? His own shock had been the shock of joy that was legitimate, endorsed, blessed, with nothing murky or restricting perched on its shoulder. He had discovered a private area of freedom inside the stockade. She had not entered it with him. He must be at fault. He had failed to arouse her. He had a miserable impression that she did not like him. His body ached for her affection.

Part Three

THE SILVER IN THE MESS

I

Barbie had never known the wilder secrets of life nor held the key to its deepest sensual pleasures. The mystical element in a wedding was therefore real to her. She observed with pleasure the grace and stillness which became Susan’s chief attribute the moment her engagement was announced. The girl was different. Her realization of her love had driven everything else from her mind and left her body in repose. Where once she had worked so hard at being the centre of attraction she was now, as of right, at a centre and stood there smiling out at the world; even that part of it which Barbie inhabited.

Barbie watched Sarah closely and was satisfied that there was no broken heart. She had not believed Teddie and Sarah well suited in the few short weeks they were going everywhere together. She thought of these girls as her own girls, born of her womb, dramatically separated from her but now living near her in ignorance of her maternal claims. It was a harmless act of self-deception and hurt nobody, except perhaps herself.

*

It was a great disappointment to her when the Laytons returned early from the family holiday in Kashmir and announced that the wedding was not to be in Pankot in December but as soon as it could be fixed, in Mirat where Teddie had been posted. She had intended to be at the church even if Mildred had not found it in her heart to invite her to the reception. She had persuaded herself that she would in fact receive an invitation and had ordered through Gulab Singh’s a set of twelve Apostle teaspoons for the wedding gift. She planned to have a new costume made in some festive colour. She inspected bolts of cloth at the durzi’s. A heliotrope caught her eye. She believed in planning early but said nothing to anyone. Her fear was that in spite of the instructions she had given him the durzi would turn up at Rose Cottage and scatter all these colourful materials on the verandah and so give away her hopes and expectations.

Which is what he did, on the evening of the day the Laytons got back from Kashmir and, uninvited, assembled at Rose Cottage with Clara Fosdick and Nicky Paynton to discuss the problems of the sudden change of plan; so that at first it appeared to them all that the durzi had heard the news and was prompt off the mark, anticipating an urgent order for a trousseau as yet only half-heartedly bespoken.

‘Full marks for information and method,’ Mildred told him. ‘Show us what you’ve got.’

He set the white-sheeted bundle down, but at Barbie’s feet, and opened it, perplexed by so large and interested an audience, and revealed bolts of woollen cloth in colours and patterns that would have killed every woman there except one: who stood exposed. The durzi twitched the heliotrope material between thumb and finger and said, ‘Pure.’ He said it to Barbie.

‘It’s a material I’ve been looking at,’ she told them. But the truth was all too clear. She never wore ‘colours’. The material was for a special winter occasion. ‘I can’t make up my mind and he’s trying to do it for me, the wretch. What do you think?’ She took refuge in the dog. ‘Panther now. What do
you
think?’ She got a desultory wag. In this climate pets faded even quicker than women.

‘The question is, could I carry it? That’s what my mother used to say to her clientele. I doubt you can carry it, or, It wouldn’t do for everyone but you could carry it. I always imagined a difficult material as an immense
load.
’

Which it was. She would have liked to lighten the load and at the same time obliterate the embarrassing scene; and saw how this might be done – by swooping on the bolts of cloth and throwing them like huge unwieldy paperchains until the verandah was heaped in heliotrope, electric blue, bilious emerald and garish pink. She grinned in frustrated exultation.

‘I suppose it
is
somewhat festive. Christmas Day perhaps or would that be carrying it too far?’ She laughed at her unintentional pun, turned, looked down at the durzi. ‘No, take it all away. Some other time perhaps but this is not the place.’

‘Aziz,’ Mildred said, ‘tell him to call at the grace and favour tomorrow at eleven.’

Aziz did so. Satisfied, the durzi did up his bundle, salaamed and was away; an old bent man ever ready to exercise his skill at both sides of his trade – selling and stitching. His cloth was better and cheaper than the stuff at Jalal-Ud-Din’s. At night in his open-fronted shop he sat cross-legged on his platform under a naphtha lamp and an oleograph depicting the Lord Krishna fluting maidens by moonlight. He wore half-spectacles on his nose and looked up at you from above them and smiled, pressing his palms together, as if in a predominantly Muslim bazaar it required alertness and good manners as well as predestination to be Hindu. Barbie pictured him spread-eagled under the bundle, strangled on the way home by
thugs
as a sacrifice to the Goddess Kali; his bloated tongue the colour of the rejected cloth, and listened in now to Mildred talking to Clara Fosdick and Nicky Paynton.