The Towers Of Silence (The Raj quartet) (42 page)

The beads ceased clacking for a moment, having been gripped by Clarissa’s plump white fingers, in one of which the gold wedding-band was countersunk. But then the fingers fluttered again and the clacking resumed.

‘It was of course an impractical suggestion but well-meant. But then it was said that quite apart from it being impractical it would be most, most, unsuitable. Unsuitable especially, it was said, with two pretty young girls in the house. And I could not, no I simply couldn’t believe my ears, so much not believe that the moment, the opportunity, to challenge it, to discredit it, had gone before I fully understood exactly what had been implied. But having understood what was said, what was implied, in the hearing of several, I must convey it to you otherwise my position would be intolerable both in private and in public. For should I ever hear this thing repeated I must challenge it. I do not propose, Barbara, to refer to it again of my own accord, inside or outside this house, but I require, for my own peace of mind, under this roof, I require – from you – some word–’

Barbie was confused. She could not take in a clear notion of the matter, which seemed to be a special failure since obviously it excited Clarissa considerably. ‘If I knew what word, Clarissa,’ she said.

‘A word,’ Clarissa repeated, jiggling the beads in agitation, ‘a word of refutation, of assurance, assurance that there are no grounds, no grounds, for such a wicked implication.’

Clarissa had flushed again with the effort of her demand, her appeal, whatever it was. Suddenly she let go of the beads and placed one hand under her heart, so that thinking she was unwell, perhaps overcome by the humidity that often accompanied the onset of the rains, Barbie took a step towards her, but stopped, because Clarissa had taken a simultaneous and involuntary step back. And, alerted by this evidence of apparent physical revulsion, Barbie began to grasp what had been said and a flush of anger began to darken her yellowed cheeks and old throat, spreading in unison with the electric surge of intelligence that awakened a desolate withered capacity for needing affection in return for giving it.

‘Yes, I see,’ she said. She thought for several moments before continuing. ‘You naturally wish to be reassured. But what can I say? If it were true I should probably deny it because at the moment I’ve nowhere else to go and if this is going to be said about me I should find it difficult to go anywhere in Pankot. It’s a difficult thing for an elderly spinster to refute. But for what it’s worth, Clarissa, so far as I know my affection for Sarah and Susan is not of an unnatural kind, unless it is unnatural to feel maternally to them, to take pleasure in their company and care what happens to them.’

‘Thank you,’ Clarissa said. And then, exhaling, clapped her hands to her cheeks and sat down on a bandy-legged stool.

‘Is that all, Clarissa?’

Clarissa’s mouth was still open. The tips of each of her little fingers held it in that exclamatory shape. Her eyes were closed.

‘Oh!’ she whispered. ‘It was wicked. It was wicked.’

‘Am I expected, Clarissa? As arranged? The day after tomorrow?’

Clarissa opened her eyes but did not look at her. Presently she nodded her head and Barbie turned and left the room, leaving her friend to recover the sense of deep Christian repose to which she was accustomed.

*

Without touching the other withered wreaths and faded cards she tidied up the green tin vases that held her own offerings, removed prickly stems from which the last petals had fallen and placed the yellow roses in a vase of their own. The hump of clay would never settle. When she had finished she noticed it was raining. She went inside the church and sat by the pillar; and as usual prayed that there would be no letter for her from the mission in answer to her hasty request, or that if there were it would be couched in negative or unoptimistic terms. But half-way through the prayer she retracted it and, remaining on her knees, opened her eyes. She thought: I do not see how I can stay, I do not see how I can face it.

And not seeing how, she understood the depth of need and desire to stay which had been forming in her mind and heart ever since the day that Mabel was buried in the wrong grave; to stay for as long as it took to right the wrong that had been done, even if that meant waiting for the return of Colonel Layton who might be moved to listen to the truth. It was Colonel Layton’s father by whose side Mabel had wished to rest.

She had begun to regret the letter to the mission, her offer of voluntary services in any capacity however menial in return for a roof. She had begun to feel that bit by bit she and Clarissa could become used to and of use to one another. She had even begun to imagine the possibility of patching things up with Mildred. All for Mabel’s sake. All to achieve for Mabel’s soul the repose that depended on the proper repose of Mabel’s body. She had believed that she should not leave Pankot while there was hope. She had felt no horror at the idea of opening the grave and taking the remains to Ranpur. The idea had filled her with a sense of the quietude that would follow.

But she felt horror now; the horror of her own shame. In front of her hovered the pale shape of Clarissa’s face with hands pressed against the cheeks. She wanted to put immense distance between herself and her life. How can I face it? she repeated. How can I walk about in the bazaar or sit here on a Sunday in the middle of the congregation, knowing what has been said, what has been hinted? The shape of Clarissa’s face changed into that of Mildred’s and the hands were not at the cheeks but droop-waisted below the chin, holding a glass, the downward-curving lips quirked at the corners in a dismissive smile.

‘How can I face it?’ she asked aloud. And the face became that of yet another, chin in hand, regarding her with that compassion and patience, that exquisite desire. She trembled and leaned for support against the pillar, hiding in its shadow. She longed to be transported back to Rose Cottage. Outside the cottage she had become utterly vulnerable. When she left the cottage forever she would enter an arena of defeat from which she could see no exit. There was beauty in the quiet formality with which the trap had been set. Already she felt the onset of the last, the grand despair, the one that was awaited. Mabel, she whispered. Mabel. Mabel.

Abruptly she was cold because she had heard the sound of the latch, as on the day of Mabel’s death. Far down the church the little side door had been opened and closed. The sound echoed faintly. She clung to the pillar, listening to the light-falling footsteps coming up the aisle to the back of the church. They were a woman’s. Her skin prickled but her eyes suddenly brimmed, in gratitude, and awe, and loving terror. She remained kneeling, pressed against the pillar and dared not look up. Her nostrils quivered, fearfully alert for the sweet odour of the ghost, the compound of flowers and formaldehyde that must attach to the newly dead. I am here, she muttered, here, here. Bound to this pillar, to this life.

She covered her face. The stone of the pillar chilled the bare knuckles of her right hand. The footsteps had ceased, having come close. There was a faint creak, and then silence. She did not have the courage to move. But presently, astonishingly, she became peaceful, comforted. She thought, ‘I can face anything if I try.’ She withdrew from the shadow of the pillar. The air was cool on her overheated forehead. She glanced along the pew but could see nothing. She inclined her body backwards, bringing into her range of vision the pews in front, and caught her breath, shocked by the visible presence of the seated figure. Involuntarily her hand covered her mouth.

It was not Mabel. It was not any woman she knew. The head was covered by an old-fashioned solar topee with a veil swathed round the brim. After a while the woman became restless as if she had become aware of being watched. Upright in the pew, staring at the stained-glass window above the altar, the woman touched her throat and turned slightly, looking to left and right. Reassured, she resumed her still and silent vigil, and stayed thus until there was one of those mysterious adjustments, a small shift of the empty building’s centre of gravity, as of a momentary easing of its tensions and stresses which created an illusion of echo without traceable source, so that to Barbie it seemed that the church’s guardian angel had half-opened and then closed one of his gigantic wings.

The unknown visitor rose, stepped into the aisle and walked down it towards the altar. She was elderly and moved with the care of a person conscious of a duty to carry her years with dignity. Before turning towards the side door she placed a hand for support on a pew and with lowered head bent one knee. Going out, she opened and closed the door gently. A little later Barbie caught the sound of a motor-car starting up, not on the Church road but on the West Hill road side.

As the sound faded, as the car took the woman away in that revealing direction, she realized who it was who had sat a few feet in front of her, but she was slow to respond. What might have been curiosity or superstitious fear of such close proximity was muted by the stronger current of an emotion which warmed her body and kept her kneeling, one hand on the pillar and the other still upon her mouth.

Within that little complex of events, the expectation of the ghost, the shock of seeing the woman, the echo from an unknown source high in the roof (above all, within that) she wondered if there had been one other thing, no more than a faint disturbance, a rearrangement of the sources from which she received impressions. Fleetingly, it seemed to her, her presence had been noted by God. She stayed very still. The impression was not enlarged, confirmed in any way, but it was not destroyed.

Well, I am going now, she told Mabel. She waited. There was no answer. Carrying the empty fibre suitcase in which she had transported shoes, she left the church. Outside she put her head up and went in search of a tonga.

*

When she got back to Rose Cottage she filled her largest suitcase with things taken at random from the stuff remaining in her room, left space in it for her nightwear and toilet things and then emptied the drawers on to a sheet spread on the floor. Without looking at what she must leave behind she knotted the sheet, making a bundle, and called Aziz, asked him to have it removed because she wanted none of the contents and did not wish to see the bundle again. He returned with the mali’s boy and the sweeper girl who between them dragged the bundle out on to the verandah and out of sight.

Directly it had gone she felt reduced, already cut off from the source of energy and power residing in the bungalow. She glanced at what remained: the suitcase, the writing-table and the metal trunk of missionary relics which this morning Aziz had helped her pull away from the wall between dressing-table and almirah into the centre of the room. She knelt on the rush mat in front of it, as at an altar, as at her life. The once-black paint was scored and scratched with the scars of travel and rough handling; and the name, painted in white roman capitals – Barbara Batchelor – had faded into grey anonymity of a kind from which a good report might be educed by someone who did not know her; a chance discoverer in a later age.

‘Poor trunk,’ she said. She touched the metal. It was warm like an animal, one that relied on her, dispassionately but assuming certain things about their relationship. ‘There is no room,’ she said, ‘no room at Clarissa’s.’

She considered alternatives. One was to ask Mr Maybrick to give it temporary shelter. But it would not survive, neglected amidst all that chaos. Nor would it survive in the alien Moslem shadows of Jalal-Ud-Din’s. She caressed the lid. Beneath it lay the proofs of her failures and successes, evidence of endeavour. Gazing down at the name it seemed to her that the trunk was all that God need ever notice or take into account; that she herself had become unreal and unimportant.

An idea began to exert itself, persuasively; to flow up from the trunk through her arm like a current; an idea that the trunk should be left at Rose Cottage where she had been happy. But where? Where Mabel could see it, or sense it, or even touch it, groping blindly for a familiar or friendly object to give her troubled spirit momentary relief in its wanderings between the cottage and the alien grave?

The brass padlock with its key was in the lower ring of the main hasp. She had but to lever up the two side hasps to raise the lid; but the prospect of looking through the contents dismayed her. She unlocked the padlock and transferred it to the securing ring, clicked it shut and used the key to lock the two smaller clasps. She put the key aside to place it in her handbag, but continued kneeling.

From behind her Aziz spoke. ‘Memsahib. Sarah Mem.’

She looked round as startled by the interruption as she would have been if caught in an act of private devotion. In the open doorway she saw the two faces, Aziz’s and Sarah’s. The colour came into her own. She got unsteadily to her feet as Aziz stood aside for Sarah to enter. Since the evening of the day Sarah got back from Calcutta, the day after the funeral, she had not visited the cottage, and that single visit had been brief, cut short by their nearness to Mabel’s death, their reluctance to talk about it and inability to find other subjects of conversation. The girl had rung subsequently to ask if Barbie was all right, opening the way for an invitation. She had now come of her own accord as if there were matters that could no longer be laid aside, but Barbie was afraid of being alone with the girl because of what had been said.

‘I must look a sight,’ she said, pushing back a stray lock of her short-cropped hair. ‘I’ve been clearing up, trying to get some sort of order into things, some sort of sense. It’s quite a task.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Sarah said. She did not say what about. ‘Is there anything I can help with?’

Barbie shook her head. Sarah was in uniform. She had probably come straight from the daftar. She looked soldierly. But womanly. Perhaps Mildred genuinely suspected something ‘wrong’ with the girl, and ‘wrong’ with Barbie. There had been a book once, of arcane reputation, which she had never read; but she remembered the title. Well, Barbie cried in herself, to herself, to the quiet room, the ancient walls;
I
am lonely. Lonely. But God help me my loneliness is open to inspection. It’s here in this place beneath my breast. Between Sarah and myself, between myself and any woman, there is nothing that there should not be. I have been slandered. Spitefully. As punishment. For my presumption.