The Towers Of Silence (The Raj quartet) (31 page)

It was humiliating to think it might be realized what she had been looking for. But the spoons were not displayed and that was humiliation enough and one from which she could not retreat. The line of escape from the toppling towers of her words was blocked. ‘There’s such a crush,’ she said, ‘and I’ve forgotten how to cope with crowds. Also I can’t hear myself think, not that I suppose you imagine I ever can.’ She grinned at Clarissa who was looking worried. With such a look Clarissa would observe the good Samaritan at his work.

‘Do you know,’ Barbie went on, ‘I have never been in a Mess before. I mean Mess with a capital M. Isn’t that odd, or don’t you think so? I suppose the room in there is the anteroom, is that the correct nomenclature? Where the officers forgather before going in to dine and toast the King-Emperor and throw their glasses into the hearth, or does that only happen in kinematograph pictures?’

Oh, and I could throw my glass into a hearth, she said (but saying something else to Clarissa and so finding her way back into that blessed privacy where words actually spoken didn’t matter) – dash it into a thousand sharp fragments, so that the sound would attract attention and He would say, What troubles you? What is your name? When did we last talk? Because it is to be talked to that I want above anything. I want to create around myself a condition of silence so that it may be broken, but not by me. But I am surrounded by a condition of Babel. To this, all my life, I have contributed enough for a dozen people. And He stops His ears and leaves us to get on with it.

She moved, prompted by Clarissa’s charitable hand and Christian heart to re-enter the maelstrom and was granted a curious vision, fortuitous and short-lived. By chance, and people’s movements, a clear channel was opened and she saw at the end of it the felt hat and the chiffon scarf and Mabel seated on the leather armchair, enthroned thus, and young men arrested in postures of deference and inquiry, one – an Indian – leaning forward while Mabel’s hand was raised to her deaf ear and then folded again with the other on her quiet lap, and young men’s smiles which were not as fully understanding as hers but ready to acclaim some imminent discovery; of what, only they could tell. Barbie could no longer see them because the vision was shut off again by barriers of fleshy faces, arms, bosoms, chins and epaulettes; the bark and chirrup of the human voice manufacturing the words which created the illusion of intelligent existence.

Behind this mass of people Mabel also presumably continued to exist but she would have liked proof of it and contemplated forcing a passage, gathering her friend in possessive and protective arms.

‘Are you all right?’ Sarah asked, reappearing. ‘Can we get you another drink? Have you met Captain Beauvais? Dicky, this is Miss Batchelor, Aunty Mabel’s companion.’

‘I suppose companion is the right word. How do you do? I see you’re Pankot Rifles too.’ Captain Beauvais looked very young to be a captain. He had a shiny pink skin and a little fair moustache and the enthusiastic expression of mediocrity which Barbie had learned to recognize from years of looking in a mirror. ‘Have you met Mabel yet? You
are
the one Mildred mentioned who hoped to speak to her because of someone called Bob Buckland?’

‘Yes, that’s right, and I have,’ Captain Beauvais said. ‘Was it sherry?’ He detained the bare-foot bearer. ‘His feet,’ Barbie said, ‘in this crush!’ And received a fresh glass which she sipped from immediately. ‘Do you know Muzzafirabad?’ she asked. ‘I was there centuries ago but of course there’s no reason why you should because you’re not a Muzzy.’

‘Well actually I do. Are you connected?’

‘Not with the Muzzys. I was Mission not Army. Are you on Dick Rankin’s staff or with the regiment?’

‘I was with the regiment but Area collared me to take Teddie Bingham’s place.’

‘But you know Muzzafirabad. I expect it’s changed. Teddie knew it but we seemed to be talking about two different places. I was Bishop Barnard, but only the infant school. A mere shack. Well, very small. The children came mainly for the chappattis. There was so much hunger. And disease of course, the two go hand in hand. And still do. One is appalled, appalled and thinks – well, can nothing ever be done, is it truly a hopeless task? The love of God can’t fill an empty belly and when it’s full one seldom thinks to thank Him.’

‘We accept some pretty skinny fellows nowadays, but they soon fill out.’ His eyes snatched at avenues of escape. ‘Talking about food, I think there’s some beginning to come in. May I get you something?’

‘That’s very kind but we’re slipping away before the buffet.’

She retreated, backing away from Captain Beauvais, slightly spilling her sherry. She begged someone’s pardon, put the sherry down and turned, found the crowd moving inexorably forward, pressing her back towards the table on to which salvers and tureens were being placed by the contractor’s scruffy servants who were coming in from the verandah in what looked like dozens. Excuse me, she said, but I must get to Mrs Layton senior. Excuse me. I do so beg your pardon. Retreating from the crowd, from the cold consommé, the pâté, the chicken and turkey and ham, the salmon mayonnaise and Beauvais’s skinny recruits with the army beef already thickening their stick-thin arms and legs, and from the nameless little girl; the unknown Indian. To find Mabel. Who had retreated from all these things long ago as if she knew the whole affair was doomed and hopeless.

The channel was open and she broke through into it and saw the chair, empty, abandoned. She looked round but there was no sign of the felt hat with the chiffon scarf flowing from it. Nearby on a leather sofa two young Indian women sat in their best sarees smiling into a middle-distance, waiting for their husbands to resume responsibility.

‘Have you seen Mrs Layton, Mrs Layton senior?’ she asked one of them.

‘Oh, no.’

‘The lady in the grey hat and scarf who was sitting in the chair.’

‘Oh, no. She went I think.’

She cannot have gone, Barbie said, unless she was never here and it is all a dream; and pressed into the crowd again trying to make her way back to the place she had been standing in before in case Mabel had noted it and gone there to find her and tell her it was time. Perhaps she had made for the verandah to find her and see the presents. She would not have left by herself.

She was not on the verandah.

*

Having walked its length Barbie re-entered the ante-room through the open door used by the contractor’s servants. From here she had a clear view of the still empty chair. She moved through the narrow passage between the straight line of the wall and the uneven line of backs and elbows. The noise was deafening. She looked for a familiar face but on this side of the room there seemed to be none familiar enough. The mouths in the faces had forks going into them. She marvelled that there should be such a volume of conversation. She became hungry both for food and chat and mercy and felt faint and then a bit sick, put her hand out to steady herself and saw that her hand rested on a door. At waist level there was a brass knob that looked gaunt. She grasped it, turned and thrust. The door was very heavy. Passing through the opening she pushed it to behind her and was surprised to find it lighter in the closing than the opening. It banged.

The sound echoed down the long corridor in which she now stood. When it died away there was a profound silence. The noise of the party was miraculously shut out. A door at the other end seemed a great distance away, as far, as unattainable as the landing at the top of the frightening stairs in the gloomy little house in Camberwell. She considered the grace which levitation would bestow but setting out on her journey in search of Mabel found herself denied it, as earthbound as ever. The corridor was filled with aqueous light from the murky fanlight windows whose long cords were looped on their hooks with military precision, their free ends hanging at what looked like equal measured lengths. Between the cords were mounted trophies. Ranged along the opposite wall stood heavy marble busts, rock-firm on stout tapering plinths. Through these she must walk the gauntlet, dare the waxen and sightless faces of Mabel’s forbears, the tusks and glaring eyes of their guardian beasts: the hunters and the hunted, now voiceless and immobile but met in a permanent conjoint task of terrorism of strangers and intruders.

The floor was tiled in lozenges of black and white but down its centre lay a Persian runner which smothered the sound of footsteps. She paused in the centre of one of the blue and crimson medallion designs. A few paces ahead, on her left, there was a wide arched recess with a pair of mahogany doors set in it. One of them was half open. She was still some distance from the closed door at the end of the corridor. The closed door had a look of Mabel not being in the room it led into. The half open door on the other hand suggested her recent passage through it. She strode the last few paces, pushed the door further open and entered.

Immense. Shadowed. A long room, the length of the corridor but higher. The main windows were shuttered. Again light entered only through the fanlight windows. In the centre of the room a vast mahogany table reflected two great epergnes that floated on the dark unrippled surface like silver boats on a glassy midnight lake. On opposite banks chairs, awaiting occupants, were placed arm to arm in close formation. The walls were panelled in dark-stained wood to the height of the tall shuttered french doors. Above this level they were whitewashed. Fixed to them as thickly as butterflies to a naturalist’s display board were flags, some worn as thin as mummys’ rags; standards and heraldically disposed weapons of war: swords, sabres, lances, muskets. Between the windows were sideboards and dumb-waiters heavy with plate. At both ends of the room were monumental fireplaces and above them gilt-framed battle landscapes. Against the wall on the corridor side of the room there were three glass-fronted display cabinets. The light slanting down through the fanlights was reflected back by the silver contained in them. In front of the furthest cabinet stood Mabel.

Barbie opened her mouth to speak but did not. Mabel stood in front of the cabinet like someone in the presence of a reliquary. She had become untouchable, unapproachable, protected by the intense and chilling dignity of the room in which (Barbie felt) some kind of absolute certainty had been reached long ago and was now enshrined so perfectly and implacably that it demanded nothing that was not a whole and unquestioning acceptance of the truth on which it was based.

Still unaware of Barbie’s presence Mabel turned and went to the nearer fireplace, stood and gazed up at the dark picture in which Barbie could make out a white horse with a dim uniformed figure declamatorily astride against a backdrop of clouds and cannon puffs. Like the representation of the crucifixion above an altar the picture held the room in silent celebration of the mystery of its governing genius.

I have lost her, Barbie thought. Mabel had not wanted to come but having done so she had been unable to resist the impulse to enter the inner sanctuary of the world from which she had cut herself off and, having entered, the associations had proved too powerful. Yes, I have lost her, Barbie repeated, but come to that I have never really found her.

Mabel turned round and Barbie wondered if she had spoken her thoughts aloud. Nervously she touched her cheek with her gloved hand. For a moment neither of them said anything but faced each other across the length of the inhospitable table until Barbie had the distressing impression that Mabel’s first words would be accusing and dismissive.

‘Is it time for us to go, Barbie?’

She nodded. If she spoke she guessed she would not be able to stop and it seemed imperative for their future that she should hold her tongue in this place.

‘I’m sorry if I’ve worried you, wondering where I’d got to,’ Mabel said. For a few seconds more she surveyed the table, the walls, the cabinets of silver, then she walked towards Barbie and when she reached her grasped her wrist as she had grasped the bearded old servant’s.

‘We can go out the back way through the cloakroom at the end of the corridor. If you’re ready.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Barbie said. ‘I’m quite ready.’ She turned her hand round so that her palm was pressed encouragingly in her friend’s. But Mabel stood immovable. Suddenly she said:

‘I thought there might be some changes, but there aren’t. It’s all exactly as it was when I first saw it more than forty years ago. I can’t even be angry. But someone ought to be.’

*

Barbie unhooked the dangerous spectacles and placed them near the table-lamp. She settled the pillows, adjusted the tops of the sheet and blankets so that her friend’s hands were covered. And then sat for the customary ten minutes before turning the light off. In the morning at breakfast Mabel would not say: It’s very strange, I went to sleep over my book but woke in the morning without book or spectacles, is it Aziz or you who tucks me up? Barbie knew she would say nothing because she had said nothing on all the previous occasions.

Tonight there was no muttering, not even a movement of lips. Barbie stood up, switched off the light and waited until she was sure that Mabel still slept. Back in her own room she approached the penitential area of the rush mat but found herself reluctant to attempt communication through that medium. I shall have an imaginary silence, she said; and sat at the writing-table, opened Emerson – her own copy, bought to replace the borrowed one – and proceeded to read aloud to the class from his essay on self-reliance.

‘Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation today, next year die, and their experience with them.’

And some are buried here (she thought, as her voice droned on through the essay and then off into inaudibility as her imaginary silence took hold) – some are buried here in the churchyard of St John’s and some in the churchyard of St Luke’s in Ranpur, as Mabel’s second husband was, the one who was not a soldier and died of disease not wounds. By his side it is her eventual wish to rest because she says I shall never go to Ranpur again until I’m buried. But who were Bob Buckland, Ghulam Mohammed and Gillian Waller?