The Towers Of Silence (The Raj quartet) (33 page)

She scrawled the signature, closed the exercise book that had belonged to a little girl called Swaroop. She undressed, put on her gown and opened her door to listen and judge the state of affairs. It was past midnight. She crossed to Mabel’s door, opened it silently and stood arrested. Mabel, propped against her pillows, must have watched the door opening.

‘Can’t you sleep either?’ she said; and Barbie recalled the day nearly five years before when she had gone out to the verandah and found Mabel working there, the day she had expected to be told she must go when her holiday was over. Can’t you sleep either? Mabel had said. I don’t blame you. It’s such a lovely day.

Mabel had already put her book aside and replaced her spectacles in their case, and Barbie felt pleased with her as she would have been pleased to find that a pupil had learned a difficult lesson well.

‘Oh, I haven’t tried yet,’ she said. ‘I’ve been writing letters, catching up, and time just slipped by. Can I get you anything?’

‘No, thank you, Barbie. There’s nothing I want. I’m not sleepy though. It’s rather close, isn’t it?’

‘Just a bit.’

Mabel nodded, apparently glad to have her impression confirmed.

‘It won’t be long before the rains get here,’ Mabel said. She glanced at the curtained windows as if through these an approaching rain might be discerned. ‘Did I tell you it was raining the first time I came to India? I remember being very disappointed. I’d expected brilliant sunshine and it seemed such a long way to come just to get wet and see grey sky. But then I’d not experienced the heat. So I didn’t appreciate the contrast.’

‘It’s not so marked up here.’

Barbie went further into the room and then to the bedside, checked the muslin-covered water jug even though she could see that the tumbler hadn’t been used.

‘Stay and talk to me,’ Mabel said. The request was so unexpected that for a moment Barbie wondered whether Mabel was making fun of her. But her friend’s face betrayed no irony.

‘Talk? What about?’

‘Anything. About when you were young. I always enjoy that.’

‘Do you? Do you?’

She sat on the edge of the bed. She could not remember, now, ever being young. And then did. ‘I was always a bit afraid of going upstairs to bed. So I hummed a song which I fear Mother disapproved. That is to say the first line of it. I don’t mean she disapproved only of the first line and of course I don’t mean hummed because you can’t hum words, but I sang it under my breath over and over. And in the end I couldn’t ever remember the rest of it and never have. Isn’t that strange? I’ve seen a deal of gaiety throughout my noisy life.’

‘Throughout what?’

‘Throughout my noisy life.’

‘Oh.’ Mabel smiled. ‘One of your father’s comic songs.’

‘He was passionately fond of the music hall. And often promised to take me but of course never did, he was afraid of what my mother would say if she found out and anyway he was always short of what he called the ready. There was the Christmas when he lost the presents for my stocking on the journey home. As white as a sheet when he came in at the door and very very late, but not drunk, that’s what Mother said years later when she told me, when he was dead and she had forgiven him, and told me there wasn’t any Father Christmas anyway. I never knew I once nearly didn’t get a stocking. I don’t remember a Christmas when there wasn’t something in it. Mother said that when he came home and said: I’ve lost the stocking things, poor Barbie’s stocking things: they set to and turned out drawers and cupboards looking for odds and ends for hours so as not to disappoint me and that I said it was the nicest stocking ever. But perhaps that’s only how she remembered it. But it showed they loved me. I adored Christmas mornings. I always woke while it was still dark and worked my toes up and down to feel the stocking’s weight and listen to the rustle and crackle. And then I’d sit up and sniff very cautiously to smell the magic, I mean of someone having been there who drove across frosty rooftops and had so many chimneys to attend to but never forgot mine.’

‘Yes,’ Mabel said. ‘I remember that – the idea of a strange scent in the room, but I don’t think I put the idea into words.’

‘I don’t suppose I did either. It’s how I describe it now. As children we accept magic as a normal part of life. Everything seems rooted in it, everything conspires in magic terms.’ She laughed. ‘Even the quarrels in our house had the darkness of magic in them, they were strange and incomprehensible and threatening as magic often is. I expected to find toads hopping on the staircase and misshapen things falling out of cupboards.’

‘Poor Barbie.’

‘No! My life was never dull.’

‘Is it very dull now?’

‘Now least of all.’

She had a sudden strong desire to lower herself gently and be taken into the older woman’s arms and to lie there in peace and amity until they both fell asleep. She would be content then not to wake but to dream forever, enfolded, safe from harm; and for an instant it seemed to her that if she sought harbour in this way it would not be closed to her; that Mabel would accept her and go with her happily into this oblivion of cessation and fulfilment.

But Mabel slowly closed her eyes as if shutting that avenue of escape and said very quietly, ‘I can sleep now thank you, Barbie,’ and Barbie got up, smoothed the top of the sheet and was careful to make no disturbing contact with her friend’s hands. She whispered, ‘I’ll deal with the light,’ and when Mabel nodded reached for the ebony switch and turned it. She felt her way in the dark back into the hall and her own familiar room and circumstances.

i

You said: Stay and talk to me because I can’t sleep. So I stayed and talked. I told you about the stairs and a Christmas stocking and after a very short while you said: I can sleep now.

The next time I saw you was in the morning. You were on the verandah drinking a cup of tea and you apologized for having had breakfast without me. I never thought to ask Aziz what you had eaten. Perhaps he would not have told me because you’d already instructed him not to in case I said: That’s no sort of breakfast. And began to fuss and bother. As it was I sat down and drank tea too and said nothing because I had noticed nothing.

This was yesterday. I must search for clues to moments when you may have been on the point of making an appeal like that of the night before. Stay. Talk to me. Those few moments on the verandah drinking tea were not one of them. When Aziz called me to breakfast you said nothing. You resumed reading a seed catalogue. But you were still there when I came back. I thought that you were absorbed, planning next year’s garden.

I said: I’ll do the accounts this morning. If you do the cheques after lunch I’ll take them down to the bazaar and settle them on my way to Mr Maybrick’s.

I had to repeat it. But that wasn’t unusual. In case you had forgotten I reminded you that I’d promised Mr Maybrick three days before to go to his bungalow for tea and mend his volume of Bach. You said: Oh I thought that was tomorrow. So I said, No, it was fixed for today, the sixth of June.

Is that the date? you said. And looked towards this year’s garden.

I went inside and sat at your bureau and began the accounts for May. After a while I heard you stirring and saw you through the window putting on your straw hat and going out into the sunshine with the pannier. At eleven Mildred came with Susan and shortly afterwards Mrs Fosdick and Mrs Paynton arrived. Aziz was worried. He said to me: Memsahib said nothing about lunch for so many. I assured him that only Susan was staying for lunch, that presently Mildred and the others would go down to the club and be there all day playing bridge, and that Mildred would return at about six o’clock to take Susan home.

He said: Memsahib, when will
you
be back?

I thought of the volume of Bach and of the difficulty I always had persuading Mr Maybrick to let me get on. Perhaps seven o’clock, I said. Or seven-thirty. But certainly by eight, in time for dinner.

When the others had gone I went out to where Susan lay. Her smock was taut over her swollen stomach. I said: Did you like the christening gown? She said yes, it was beautiful. So I told her the story of the blind woman who made the lace, of how she called the butterflies her prisoners. After a while Susan said: I like things that have stories to them, somehow it makes them seem more real: and then closed her eyes to show that she wanted me to go away. I returned to the bureau and finished the accounts. I made out the cheques so that all you had to do was sign them. We had another visitor then, Captain Beauvais, who brought Susan a book. Aziz gave him a drink and Susan and he talked in low voices. He had gone before you came in from the garden at lunch-time.

At lunch you said: When will Sarah be back? And Susan laughed and said: Oh, Aunty, she’s only just gone, she was only due to reach Calcutta this morning.

You said: So she’ll be gone for a few more days.

After lunch I helped Susan to settle on the verandah again. I tried to get her to walk for a bit in the shady part of the garden but she said she was tired. I found you at the bureau signing the last cheque. You said as you always did: Thank you for coping with all this. I took the cheques and the bills and went to my room. I lay down for a bit. At three o’clock I asked Aziz to send the mali’s boy for a tonga. Then I tidied myself for Mr Maybrick and looked for you to tell you I was off. You were in the garden, but not in the shade. I said, ‘Aren’t you awfully hot?’ You said, ‘No, I like the sunshine.’ And then, ‘Will you be long?’ I said, ‘I should be back soon after seven.’ This seemed to puzzle you. You’d forgotten again about Mr Maybrick. I had to remind you. You said, ‘Oh yes, so you are. Have a nice time.’

When I looked back you were watching me. And lifted your hand. Which wasn’t usual. But pleased me. I waved back. I went round the side of the house so that I wouldn’t disturb Susan.

Isn’t it very close? Stay. Talk to me. Is that the date? When will Sarah be back? Will you be long?

These were your appeals. Which I did not hear. I did not hear Aziz’s appeal either. When will
you
be back? He saw the sunlight and the shadow and in his heart interpreted them correctly. But followed your mood and example. When I left in the tonga he made Susan some tea. No one knows what he did after that. The kitchen was neat and tidy. He always kept it so.

ii

Mr Maybrick waves his arms in the air. Pages of Bach fly from his hands, swirl, swoop, drift, fall. His face is contorted by the anguish of a man who requires order but cannot keep it. We stand erect in this tempest of paper music. Then I turn, pretending to go; having only just arrived. He waits until I am at the door and cries, ‘Come back!’ I am no longer even a little afraid of Mr Maybrick but I obey because it pleases him to act the martinet. I can see him terrorizing coolies who grin when his back is turned because he never harms them. I can see him ordering his wife about, before she began to ail, and see her, one hand shading not just her eyes from the light but her smile with which she commences to perform what he demands but in her own way and to her own satisfaction, which she knows will be to his as well.

What a pickle you are in, I tell him, and sit on the one chair that is not cluttered with things that have no business on chairs. We are ankle deep in Bach. The situation looks hopeless, more hopeless to him than to me because the pages are numbered and it only requires patience and application – qualities he does not normally possess – to restore them to their proper order. The problem will be the rebinding. He complains about the quality of the gum I used last time, about the quality of the original binding, about having no room nowadays to store things properly, about the climate that makes things fall apart anyway, about the decline in standards of workmanship, about the fact that, as he says, nobody gives a damn any more; and finally – the rub, because it explains why he has scattered the pages in a childish rage – about a double sheet that is missing.

‘Have you looked in the organ loft?’ I ask. He declares that the missing sheet cannot possibly be in the organ loft. He says, ‘It’s no good sitting staring at it, what are you waiting for?’

I tell him: Tea. I tell him I require a cup of tea first and that after that I will walk down to the church and look in the organ loft while he makes a start clearing up the mess he has made.

On my way to St John’s I see suddenly what a vast improvement my time in Pankot has wrought in my character. Application I had, and patience, but of a questionable kind. Confronted in the old days with the ruins of the Bach I would have fallen avidly upon the scattered pages and somehow contrived to make greater confusion than before. And I would not have dared insist on Tea.

I see that I have acquired qualities of leadership and command. For a moment my pride in this achievement is disproportionate to its degree. I feel a deep glow of satisfaction. I lengthen my stride. Although it is a very hot day I have on the heliotrope. The sun is lowering towards West Hill. I turn my face to it. I am happy. I have, I feel, always done my utmost and now enjoy my reward on this earth whose beauty is serene towards evening.

As I turn into the churchyard the clock strikes the half hour after five. I enter and go straight to the organ loft. The light is not good. I crouch down, searching, convinced I shall find the missing sheet. And I find it in a corner. It bears the dusty imprint of Mr Maybrick’s shoe. I smile. And then I hear a sound, the sound of the latch lifted on the little side door through which I too have just entered, the slight squeak of the hinges, the sound of the door closing. Mr Maybrick has followed me.

I stand up and cry ‘Eureka!’ and look down to where he should be. But there is no one. The church is empty. I call again, less boldly. No answer. I have the missing sheet in one hand. With my other I seek my neck, automatically, and then the chain, the pendant cross.