The Towers Of Silence (The Raj quartet) (55 page)

And here was Isobel, arriving too late for the auction, alight and vibrant with both power and discretion, giving nothing away which was only comforting if it could be assumed that she had nothing to give and was as ignorant of what was in store as the least among those present.

She embraced Nicky in the centre of the crowded living-room, apologized for being late in a voice that carried above the resumed conversation and then without lowering her voice said, ‘Where can we have a word?’ which caused a tremor of delicious apprehension, a pause in the flow of talk. Nicky led her into the dining-room where the unsold table, chairs and sideboard already appeared to have lost their sheen.

‘Nicky, I’m late because I waited for Mildred to get back from visiting Susan, but she rang and asked me to come along on my own and to warn you that she’s bringing Susan with her.’

‘Oh.’ The two women looked at each other straight. ‘Is Susan allowed out then?’

‘It will be the first time.’

‘A noisy party? What an extraordinary choice.’

‘She wanted to come. She asked this Captain Samuels chap and apparently he said it was a first-rate idea. He hopes it’s all right if he looks in too. I think he’ll take her back, to save Mildred doing it.’

‘I must say that’s a bit cool, isn’t it? I don’t know Captain Samuels and it’s a private farewell party not a therapy session. Is she really fit enough? I should hate a scene. That’s why the trick-cyclist wallah insists on coming, isn’t it? To be on hand if Susan throws a fit or does something odd.’

‘He says she’s well enough. In fact he’s letting her out in a day or two. She’ll be coming up to the House, so I can only assume he knows what he’s doing. He thinks a party would be a good ice-breaker. Do you mind?’

‘As long as it’s only ice. Does she know about Bunny?’

‘Yes. And she knows you’re going home. That’s why she wants to come. It’s very sweet really.’

‘I hope she’s not going to be condoling,’ Nicky said. She looked feverish.

‘The thing to do is tell everybody before she gets here and prepare them to look as if they’re acting naturally. Did you sell this dining-room stuff?’

‘No.’

‘Mildred may want it. Try to persuade her. She has a lot of plans for the cottage. In any case she could store it. I’d have it myself but God knows how much longer we’ll be here or where we’ll be going. What about getting Jalal-Ud-Din’s man along? He might sell it like a shot to one of his rich Indian clients.’

‘I’ll see.’

They went back to the living-room, separated and passed the word that Mildred was bringing Susan and that Captain Samuels would be looking in, to take her back to the nursing-home to save her mother going all that way herself when the party was over. Prepared for important general news this struck the guests as an anti-climax and it took a while for it to sink in and to be recognized as important too, important to the old Pankot if not to the one currently in a state of derangement of its own, which one had to hope would turn out to be as temporary as Susan Bingham’s had proved. Curiosity and nostalgic affection began to flow out to her in advance of her arrival. Heads kept turning towards the door through which she would enter.

As she did, within ten minutes of the first warning, unannounced by any sound of tonga or car wheels that could have hushed the sound of talk and laughter; a step or so ahead of her mother, wearing a simple full-skirted dress of white with navy blue polka dots; to all appearances unchanged, a pound or two heavier perhaps but as pretty as ever, prettier if anything, and with that familiar flush on her cheeks which suggested some special happiness anticipated or re-encountered.

To look at her, as she greeted Nicky and her mother’s other friends, was to doubt the truth of the accounts of her bizarre behaviour and to guess that no explanation of it would ever be had. It was as if it hadn’t happened. No unhappy memory seemed to live behind her face. Her smile was not the smile of someone with a secret life. She was looking at the world as it was.

She said nothing, did nothing, that could be reckoned odd or interpreted as an indication that her mind was still clouded in any way by her illness and misfortunes. There were omissions, but were they significant? She did not mention the baby, but that could as easily be put down to a regard for other people’s feelings as to anything sinister or threatening. She was punctilious in thanking Isobel Rankin for the invitation to Flagstaff House and said how much she was looking forward to it. Since the baby and the ayah were already installed there with Mildred one could surely assume that by ‘looking forward’ she meant glad to think she would see the baby again as well. In any case, Captain Samuels would not let her out if he had doubts about her attitude to the child.

She said she was also looking forward to the holiday in Darjeeling and Calcutta. She said she missed Sarah’s visits but had had postcards and letters to make up for them. Out of Nicky’s hearing she told Clara Fosdick how sorry she was about Brigadier Paynton, about Nicky decision to go home and about Clara herself leaving Pankot to go to live in Ranpur. She said she hoped Mrs Fosdick would come up to spend holidays with them at Rose Cottage.

Her mother had briefed her well. She knew about the rumours of change and said it all sounded rather dreary. She asked Clarissa Peplow how Mrs Batchelor was and seemed surprised to hear that although much better she was still in hospital. Clarissa assumed that in the case of Miss Batchelor’s illness, Sarah – not Mildred – had been Susan’s informant.

She did not mention the dog, Panther. Maisie found the opportunity to ask Mildred whether Susan knew the dog had died and Mildred said she had had Samuels’s permission to tell her and had done so, without the gory details, and Susan had taken it well but not referred to it again. If there were any forbidden subjects they were the dog and the baby. Was Dicky Beauvais a third? Apparently not She said, ‘I had a letter from Dicky the other day. He sounded a bit browned off. After all that rush he’s still stuck in Comilla waiting for a posting. I must remember to tell Sarah because the letter was to us both.’

She moved gracefully, freely, perfectly at ease. She sipped her drink as if she intended to make it last and had accepted it only to be sociable. When Lucy Smalley suggested she should sit, not tire herself standing, she laughed in a friendly way and said she had sat enough in the last few weeks and needed exercise. She went from group to group, watched but not shadowed by Mildred who had shown only one sign of the strain she must have been under when at a first attempt to raise a full cocktail glass to her lips she spilt a few drops and waited (Clara Fosdick noticed) for at least a minute before raising it again.

‘How relieved Mildred must be to have Susan her old self again,’ Maisie Trehearne said.

‘I wouldn’t call it that,’ Nicky replied, blowing smoke to one side, holding her glass high to minimize the risk of her elbow being jogged. ‘Susan used to take up a position and let people swarm round her. I’ve never seen her mingle in my life. But that’s what she’s doing now. I’m half inclined to think the Jew-boy trick-cyclist is cleverer than Mildred gives him credit for.’

What Nicky had observed, perhaps because she was more alert to the shapes and patterns of her last party than any of her guests could be, was true. If a change in Susan were to be noted it would be this one: the free-ranging movement and presentation of herself within the tableau. Before her illness she would have stood herself at its centre, receiving tribute. Her new mobility suggested that she was offering it, reaffirming her commitment to a society she had lived in since childhood and had now returned to, after a brief but inexplicable withdrawal.

Interest in the unknown Captain Samuels, the Jew-boy trick-cyclist, mounted. Apart from Mildred no one at the party had ever met him and no one had been inquisitive enough to investigate him since hearing his name in connection with Susan. Mildred’s attitude had summed up all one needed to know or feel about an
RAMC
analyst. The job was not one which could normally be taken seriously. No man who fitted the picture conjured by the name could be recalled from among the welter of new or itinerant faces at the club. Samuels probably kept himself to himself. Neither Beames nor Travers – who might have expressed professional if not personal opinions – had turned up. Both had been invited, but it was obviously a busy morning at the hospital.

Someone, perhaps its new owner, put a record on the radiogram: a selection from ‘Chu Chin Chow’; but the record was so worn that only people close to the machine could make much of the tunes. Fariqua and the cook-boy Nazimuddin were bringing in plates of bridge sandwiches and canapés. Nicky called out, ‘Food everybody. There’ll be more in the dining-room in a minute so everyone just help themselves.’ Several guests went through to relieve the crush in the living-room where there was a gradual rearrangement of groups which left Susan temporarily unattached. She took a sandwich from the plate offered none too steadily by the spectral Fariqua and went to stand a little apart by a window that gave her a view of the front verandah and compound.

In an instant her mother joined her and by chance or design interposed herself between her daughter and Lucy Smalley who had seen that Susan was alone and was approaching her. So even Lucy who was close to them was unable to say how Susan’s cocktail glass fell out of her hand and splintered on the parquet floor. Later, considerably later, Lucy said she had always felt Susan dropped the glass deliberately. She couldn’t say why she thought so but her intuition told her that this was what had happened. Mildred had been talking perfectly naturally to Susan, saying, ‘Are you all right, darling? Not too tired?’ and Susan had said also quite naturally but a bit testily, ‘I’m fine.’ And the next thing was the sudden sound of the breaking glass and a little cry from Mildred; no sound, Lucy recalled, from Susan, but Mildred saying, ‘Did I jog you?’ And then the incident – if it could be called an incident – was over.

There was a stain down Mildred’s skirt. Susan stooped and picked up the unbroken base of the glass and started to gather the fragments. She handed them to the cookboy who came to help her and then stood up. ‘My fault,’ Mildred said, while Susan apologized to Nicky for the mess.

Susan declined the offer of another drink and went to talk to Mrs Stewart, Clarissa Peplow and Wing-Commander Pearson, leaving her mother with Nicky who said, ‘D’you want to sponge that skirt?’

‘It won’t stain.’

‘Then come into the dining-room and see if you want this furniture.’

On their way past Susan Mildred spoke to her.

‘I’m going into the next room for a moment. You’d better keep an eye open for Captain Samuels. I don’t think he knows anybody.’

‘Is this him now?’ Clarissa asked. They turned to look.

Susan said, ‘Oh, yes. That’s Sam.’

Nicky Paynton threaded her way back towards a door that stood open to the side of the verandah. ‘Come in,’ she shouted when still a few feet away. ‘I’m Nicky Paynton, the one who’s throwing this shin-dig.’ She pushed her hand out at him and kept it there until he relieved her, as it were, of its weight. The noise in the room had begun to subside directly it became clear why Nicky was making her way towards this part of the room. Here was the stranger: the Jew-boy trick-cyclist. The noise diminished to such a degree that the sounds of merriment in the dining-room seemed to belong to a different party, almost a different world; one safe from such an intrusion. Astonishment more than curiosity caused the hush accentuated by the continuing drone of a male voice which, finding itself solo, ceased for a few seconds and then resumed, nudging the general conversation slowly back to life.

Captain Samuels was slender, fair-haired. He looked down on Nicky from above average height. He did not smile. When she let go of his hand he did not let it fall but lowered it carefully. He did not attempt any of the opening gambits which a guest might have used in the special circumstances which had brought him to the party. He did not appear to have spoken at all. He gave the impression of being a man who had dispensed with casual physical responses as time-wasting.

The image of the Jew-boy trick-cyclist was completely shattered. He was remote, patrician; in the opinion of most of the women present disturbingly, coldly handsome. It was a shock to see, on closer inspection, how young he must be. His youthfulness made the attention he instantly commanded seem, to those who were giving it, as disagreeable to them as a personal affront would be: the more so because he did not appear to be conscious of any obligation to conduct himself with that air of apology for
being
young which was usually considered part of a young man’s charm when in the company of his elders.

Theoretically, Nicky might have been said to lead him into the room. In practice she went ahead to prepare a way for him to use. At the end of it stood Isobel Rankin. He took his time reaching her.

‘May I introduce Captain Samuels?’ Nicky said. ‘Captain Samuels, Mrs Rankin, the wife of our area commander.’

They murmured how-do-you-do to one another.

‘Are you related to friends of ours at home, Myra and Issy Samuels?’ Isobel asked him, after he had declined the drink which Nazimuddin offered on a tray.

He observed her very closely.

‘Sir Isaac Samuels?’

‘Yes.’

‘No. He is no relation.’

‘But I gather you know him.’

‘Professionally. I’ve met Lady Myra at Chester Square.’

‘If you’ve met Issy professionally does that mean you’re interested in tropical medicine too? If so you’re in the right place. How long have you been in India?’

‘Since the middle of May.’

‘And in Pankot?’

‘Since the end of May.’

‘Really? As long as that!’

Listeners, hitherto fascinated by the social connection through mutual friends of the general’s lady and the young army-doctor, now recognized a rebuke. Captain Samuels had neither sent in his card nor signed Isobel Rankin’s book outside Flagstaff House: an essential step for an officer to take if he wanted to be considered officially on-station. In the old days for an officer to have been on-station since May and not to have signed the book by the end of August would have been unthinkable. Nowadays, with so many people coming and going and holding only temporary appointments the ritual was not so strictly observed, but for a man appointed to the staff of the hospital not to have observed it was still a serious omission, the result either of sheer ignorance or, which was worse and presumably the case here, indifference.