The Towers Of Silence (The Raj quartet) (34 page)

I leave, unhurriedly. I tell myself my entrance must have disturbed someone at private devotions, someone whom I did not see when I came in and who has taken the opportunity of my climb to the organ loft to leave unnoticed. Slowly I follow this solitary worshipper out and down the path past the gravestones, but he – or she – is still invisible. I walk back to Mr Maybrick’s.

I find him sitting on the floor, the scattered pages all around him untouched. He is listening to the news on the wireless and shushes me when I begin to protest at his idleness. Resigned, I throw things from the chair which has now become cluttered. He shushes me again. I subside. For a while I do not listen to the news but then do so and become aware that it is important. I cannot pick up the thread, though. It ends. But the announcer repeats the opening and this is followed by martial music.

It seems that British and allied forces have invaded Normandy. They have opened the second front. Mr Maybrick shouts for his bearer and then heaves me out of the chair and does a little jig. His enthusiasm is infectious. Poor Bach is in danger of being trampled underfoot. Mr Maybrick tells his boy to bring sherry. He says that when the Germans are defeated the whole weight of the Allied armies will be thrown against the Japanese and then we can all live civilized lives again.

‘And all the prisoners in Germany will be freed!’ I cry. ‘I must phone the cottage–’ I go into the hall, pick up the receiver and wait impatiently for the operator to answer. I am anxious for Susan to know, because of her father. I ask for the number and continue to wait. The operator tells me the number is engaged. Crestfallen I go back to the living-room. I work it out that Mildred has heard at the club and is already on the phone to Susan. We drink sherry. Ten minutes later I telephone again but the operator says there is still someone speaking. Mildred is probably back at the cottage and ringing all her friends. I resign my role as the bearer of good tidings. Come, I say to Mr Maybrick, let us begin on poor Bach.

iii

‘Perseverance,’ Barbie said, ‘which was incidentally one of my father’s favourite words if not one of his virtues, unless you count perseverance with the bottle and the cards, perseverance – Mr Maybrick – wins the day.’

She slapped the last page of Bach, straightened her bent back and cried out partly from the pain of easing the ache and partly from astonishment at Mr Maybrick’s firmly planted kiss. Only on the forehead. Nevertheless. She felt her face and neck grow hot.

‘Angelic Barbie,’ he said. ‘Ham-fisted with glue but angelic. What would you say to mutton curry and rice?’

‘I should say no.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Had you been more complimentary about the glue I should have added thank you. You may help me up.’

‘I will if you say yes. It was planned. Mutton curry and rice. For two.’

‘Planned by whom?’

‘By me.’

‘Mr Maybrick, you have been overdoing the sherry. At your age it is ill-advised.’

‘You’ve not done so badly yourself. You can knock it back.’

‘Two glasses are all I’ve had.’

‘Refilled occasionally without your noticing, between fugues.’

‘I see you are determined to be difficult.’ She got up unassisted. Her joints were very stiff. She looked at her watch. It was seven fifteen. She had been crawling across the floor and kneeling sorting pages for over an hour. Mr Maybrick had been more of a hindrance than a help.

He said, ‘If you stay to supper you could start the binding afterwards.’

‘If I stayed to supper I should do no such thing. The binding will have to wait. Meanwhile I should be obliged if you’d send Kaisa Ram for a tonga. I’m going to tidy myself and when I come back I’ll expect to hear that a tonga is on its way.’

‘You’ve become a hard woman, Barbie. I’d set my heart on it.’

‘Then you should have said so three days ago and not left it to chance and your powers of persuasion. And if I said yes you know very well you’d have to dash into the kitchen and tell Kaisa Ram to throw some more meat into the pot, and that he’d complain, that you’d shout at him and that you’d have a burnt supper, bad temper for the rest of the evening and indigestion all night.’

She turned to the door that led through the single bedroom to the bathroom.

‘It’ll take fifteen minutes for Kaisa Ram to get a tonga,’ he said, ‘but only five to cut off another chop.’

‘And an hour for it to cook properly. So please send him down to the stand. When I come back I’ll have another sherry. I don’t believe a word of your story of surreptitious refills.’

She left him but caught the flicker of the smile he was doing his best to disguise. The bedroom, crammed with the monumental furniture of his spacious tea-planting days, was even more untidy than the living-room and overpowered by the majestic bed that filled the central space. As always, this bed was shrouded by the regal canopy of a faded white mosquito net. In Pankot there was no need of one and if there had been Mr Maybrick’s would have been inadequate because it was full of holes and rents which Kaisa Ram neglected to mend. But Mr Maybrick said he couldn’t sleep in a bed that had no net. She sympathized with this peculiarity, remembering that whenever she had moved from a mosquito-ridden area to a cool and airy one she had always found the absence of a net initially alarming, a source of apprehension, of fears of falling out at least, at worst of attack by night-intruders.

The bathroom was cheerless. A single unshaded bulb illuminated its dingy whitewashed walls and concrete floor. In one corner there was a cubicle and in this an ornate commode of which Mr Maybrick was very proud. The commode, fortunately, was always spotless but the bathroom itself was grimy. There tended to be cockroaches.

Normally, when visiting Mr Maybrick, she hurried through the business of tidying herself. But tonight she found herself slowed down, struck by the significance of her surroundings, the reality of this ordinariness, this shabbiness, this evidence of detritus behind the screens of imperial power and magnificence. The feeling she had was not of glory departing or departed but of its original and continuing irrelevance to the business of being in India, which was her and Mr Maybrick’s business just as much as it was the business of the members of the mess in whose inner sanctum she had stood last year, intimidated by the ghostly occupants of those serried ranks of chairs.

She paused between soaping and rinsing her hands, riveted by an image of the captains and the kings queuing to wash their own hands in Mr Maybrick’s bowl after relieving themselves in Mr Maybrick’s mahogany commode with its rose-patterned porcelain receptacle, and finding no fault, nothing unusual, feeling no hurt to their dignity; and going back through the unholy clutter of Mr Maybrick’s bedroom without a glance at the half-opened drawers festooned with socks and vests and shirts that wanted mending, because the one thing to which the human spirit could always accommodate itself was chaos and misfortune. Everything more orderly or favoured was a bonus and needed living up to.

She closed her eyes and was back in the Camberwell scullery and then in the dark hallway, taking the first rise of the stairs, with all the captains and kings behind her waiting to do the same. Why, she said, the mystery at the top of the stairs is where we’re all headed, willy-nilly, which is what my father but not my mother understood. She opened her eyes. The lather had begun to encrust her hands with a creamy rime. She rinsed and dried them on the week-old roller towel. She dabbed her wrists with cologne from her handbag phial and resprinkled the fine lawn handkerchief. Chaos, misfortune. Punctuated by harmless escapes into personal vanities. She clicked her handbag shut. The click was as satisfactory as a decision.

‘Mr Maybrick!’ she called, re-entering the living-room.

He came in from the hall.

He said, ‘Oh, there you are, Barbie. Arthur Peplow is here. He has something to tell you.’

iv

‘I said, I will take heed to my ways: that I offend not in my tongue. I will keep my mouth as it were with a bridle; while the ungodly is in my sight. I held my tongue, and spake nothing, I kept silence, yea, even from good words; but it was pain and grief to me. My heart was hot within me, and while I was thus musing the fire kindled and at the last I spake with my tongue; Lord, let me know mine end, and the number of my days; that I may be certified how long I have to live.’

v

Where the rime had been was Arthur Peplow’s hand. In the pause between the word ‘stroke’ and the words ‘it was very sudden’, she heard down the road the chime of the half-hour after seven.

Mr Peplow said, ‘I think we must believe that she felt no pain, but went very peacefully. Susan was tremendously brave. The poor girl was quite alone. When she realized what had happened she rang Colonel Beames at once, and then her mother. She couldn’t find Aziz anywhere. Have you any idea where he could have gone?’

‘Aziz?’

‘Never mind. In a moment or two Clarissa and I want you to come down to the rectory. Captain Coley’s going to spend the night at Rose Cottage to look after things there for Mildred. Clarissa’s having a bed made up for you.’

‘I have a bed,’ she said. And removed her hand from Arthur Peplow’s to take the glass of sherry from Mr Maybrick’s hand which was shaking. She held it, but did not know how to deal with it. Some of the deep brown liquid spilt on to the heliotrope skirt. ‘I don’t want it,’ she said. ‘After all.’ Arthur took the glass. There was nowhere for him to put it down.

‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘we all think it best if you stay the night with us. You can come straight away. If you don’t mind borrowing some things Clarissa can lend you what you need. Beames or Travers will look in later with something to help you sleep. I asked Beames myself, I thought it would be wise. You’ll need a good night’s rest.’

‘It’s very kind of you, Arthur. But I must go home at once. If someone will fetch a tonga.’

She watched Arthur Peplow get up. Some of the books and magazines which he had pushed aside to make room on the sofa for the two of them slid back into place. She observed the glance he exchanged with Mr Maybrick before parking the glass of sherry on top of the grand piano. Glad of the momentary relief such a prosaic detail provided in the mountingly oppressive nightmare, she recalled that the piano was badly out of tune because it had not been played since Clarice Maybrick’s fingers were last upon its yellowed, mottled, keys. Another thing she remembered Mr Maybrick telling her was how Clarice always took her rings off before playing and placed them on the ebony ledge at the bass end of the keyboard.

Arthur Peplow went out into the hall. She heard the ping that accompanied the lifting of the receiver. You could not get a tonga by ringing the exchange. Suddenly the door between hall and living-room closed, which meant that Arthur didn’t want her to hear what he was saying or know to whom he was saying it. She stayed where she was, readopting an old habit of mind; that of believing in the good sense and good will of established authority; although the waves of rebellion had already risen and were – she guessed – only temporarily subdued. Mr Maybrick came to the sofa and sat beside her, pushing the books and magazines to give himself room. He sat with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped in the space between and looked down at the worn bit of carpet.

‘When I left this afternoon,’ Barbie said, watching the door that led to the hall where Arthur’s voice had begun to drone, to vibrate, to punctuate longer periods of silence, ‘she watched me and waited for me to look round, and then lifted her hand to wave.’

Mr Maybrick nodded but said nothing.

‘You do understand, Mr Maybrick, that I can’t possibly sleep at Arthur’s and Clarissa’s or anywhere but at the cottage. There will be no need for Captain Coley to be there. In fact I find the idea quite unacceptable. Aziz and I will manage everything. I quite see that Mildred can’t stay. She’ll have to take poor Susan home and look after her. But Captain Coley’s presence is not necessary. I am prepared to wait here for a bit but eventually, no – quite soon, I must go back.’

‘I’ll come with you if you like.’

‘Thank you. That would be kind. So long as it’s understood that I stay there.’

She grew rigid with impatience. There was much to be done. And quickly. In India these things were always done quickly. They had to be. And the problems of making special arrangements were likely to be many. She herself must be prepared for the journey to Ranpur. Packing was something that would occupy her.

‘And I must pack,’ she said. ‘I must be ready to leave tomorrow. The man at St Luke’s in Ranpur used to be the Reverend Ian Wright and still may be. Arthur will know.’

Again Mr Maybrick nodded. She did not know whether he was listening but his mute agreement was encouraging. The door opened and Arthur came back in smoothing his head with one hand. He asked Mr Maybrick whether Kaisa Ram could produce some tea or coffee. Mr Maybrick got up and went out saying he would see. Directly they were alone Arthur said, ‘That was Kevin Coley at the other end. I told him you want to go up to the cottage and he’s had a word with Mildred. She’s still there with Susan and I think she’d be grateful if you’d let her get Susan away first, because the girl’s in pretty much of a state. In fact she’s suffering badly from reaction. Colonel Beames left about an hour ago and Susan was fairly all right then but he said he’d have a word with Travers because it’s Travers who’s been attending to her during her pregnancy. Well, they’ve been waiting for Travers to turn up and Coley’s trying to get him on the phone now. Mrs Fosdick and Mrs Paynton are there helping Mildred cope. There’s nothing you can actually do, Barbie, and frankly I think the best thing is for you to wait here a while and then if you feel you must just go up and collect some things for the night. I’ll take you.’

‘Mr Maybrick has promised to do that.’

‘Well, that’s fine. Coley said he’d ring me as soon as Mildred’s got Susan away. Please don’t misunderstand. Mildred knows how upset you must be and that you can only be more upset the moment you set foot in Rose Cottage. Just now she has her work cut out keeping poor Susan on an even keel. The danger is premature labour brought on by shock. And you
do
appreciate how much of a shock it was, don’t you?’