The Towers Of Silence (The Raj quartet) (56 page)

‘I know absolutely nothing about psychological medicine,’ Isobel continued when it was clear that Captain Samuels had no comment to make. ‘I don’t suppose Guy Charlton does either.’ She referred to the chief medical officer, Beames’s military counterpart, who was new on-station himself. ‘So I imagine you pretty well run your own show. Are you a Freudian or a Jungian? Isn’t that what one is supposed to ask?’

For the first time Captain Samuels allowed himself a flicker of emotion: it seemed to be amusement.

‘People do,’ he said. ‘Personally I find Reich’s ideas on the subject of considerable interest.’

‘And what does or did Mr Reich say?’

‘Any answer I could give would be an over-simplification.’

‘That would be the only kind I would understand. So do tell us.’

Again he studied her. But Isobel Rankin had never yet been quelled by a look and wasn’t now. He glanced at Nicky, at Colonel and Mrs Trehearne; briefly at Lucy and Tusker Smalley who had joined the group; either sizing them up or politely including them in the conversation.

‘One must draw a distinction between analysis and treatment. Whatever the cause of a neurosis the psychotherapist is concerned with a patient’s ability to relax, physically. This is a simple extension of Reich’s belief that the human orgasm is a major contributory factor to physical and mental health, but the corollary need not be that all neuroses are rooted in sexual repression.’

Several seconds went by before Tusker Smalley went red in the face and said, ‘Good God!’

Isobel Rankin glanced at him as if to stop him from making an issue of an officer having dared mention such things in front of women. The smile on her face was perhaps a little set, but she directed it again at Captain Samuels.

‘What particular branch of tropical medicine interests you?’

‘The amoebic infection of the bowels known as amoebiasis.’

‘Oh, yes. What interests you so much about it? Surely it’s of relatively minor importance? It’s easily cured I gather. Is it one of Issy’s pet subjects?’

‘I wouldn’t say so. But then I’ve come to the conclusion that in general English physicians aren’t as interested in it as perhaps they might be, considering how large a tropical empire we have. And I would disagree with you, Mrs Rankin, when you suggest it is easily cured. Since coming to India it’s struck me that even diagnosis is a very hit and miss affair. I should say that quite a fair proportion of my psychiatric cases are suspect of chronic infection, but it is very difficult to arrange for a convincing check.’

‘What are the symptoms, a permanent kind of gippy-tum?’

He smiled. ‘It’s rather different from amoebic dysentery. Unfortunately it can be contracted and carried for years until it eats through the walls of the bowels and invades more vital organs. At least that is a theory a few people have. Without a convincing check it tends to go undiagnosed and the symptoms aren’t alarming. A general air of languor, as lassitude. A tendency to concentrate the mind rather obsessively in one direction.’

‘Why is a convincing check so difficult?’

‘I think I should not explain why. I shall get a reputation for indelicacy. I apologize if my earlier remarks caused any offence.’

He looked at his watch.

‘Not at all, Captain Samuels. I asked a question and you answered it. I see you are pressed for time.’

‘I have quite a full afternoon ahead.’

‘Then I expect you want to ask Mrs Bingham if she’s ready to leave. But you must come up to Flagstaff House one day and tell me about these theories of yours. I’m always interested to hear a young man talking on his subject. I’ll ask Guy Charlton to bring you along.’

Samuels made no answer. A slight inclination of his head towards her was his sole acknowledgment of her invitation. Several people in the group round them were astonished that Isobel Rankin had made it.

But having made it she ended the conversation by moving away. The group dispersed. He took the opportunity to look round the room. He did not appear to be interested in meeting anyone else. Eyes were averted if he chanced to look into them. Hints of extraordinary behaviour were already reaching people who had not heard the conversation. As soon as he saw Susan he went through the crowd towards her.

‘Hello, Sam. Is it time?’

‘If you’re ready.’

She said she was. She introduced him to Clarissa, Mrs Stewart and Wing-Commander Pearson.

‘I must say goodbye to Mrs Paynton,’ she said. ‘Will you come with me, Sam?’

He put a hand on her shoulder. The gesture, although brief, struck those who saw it as unnecessarily possessive. Susan belonged in the room. Samuels did not. But he was taking her away. She was allowing it; at least, the girl in the polka-dot dress was allowing it and it now occurred to the watchers that in a subtly disagreeable way the girl was not the Susan they knew at all but a creation of Captain Samuels, or a joint creation of the two of them, a person who had emerged from a secret process of pressure, duress, insinuation, God knew what. And God knew what they talked about, or whom they talked about, when they were alone during sessions of analysis or whatever it was called. As Samuels followed her his glance fell here and there upon faces as if he were looking for evidence of mental and emotional disorders of the kind he had presumed to uncover in
her
but blamed
them
for. He bore himself like a man taking someone out of an area of contagion.

‘Mrs Paynton,’ Susan was saying, ‘thank you for letting me come to your party. I’ll only say au revoir if that’s all right.’

Holding glass and cigarette in one hand Nicky used the other to give her the half-embrace which had become part of her farewell party armour.

‘Au revoir it is then, Susan. Probably true too. It could be ages before they pop me on to a plane.’

She nodded at Captain Samuels.

Mildred was waiting at the open doorway.

‘Are you off now then, darling? Would you like me to come round this evening?’

‘No, there’s really no need. You must be bored stiff coming down every day, there’s no reason to do it twice.’

That much was heard. Mildred went out with Susan and Captain Samuels. For a minute they stood talking on the verandah, then Samuels and Susan went down into the compound and climbed into the tonga that had been waiting. Mildred came back into the house, not through the doorway they had left by but through the main entrance. It was some time before she reappeared in the living-room and by then the party was beginning to break up.

When Isobel’s car arrived to take her and Mildred back to Flagstaff House she said to Nicky, ‘You and Clara come back with us. There’s nothing as depressing as an afternoon surrounded by the remains. We could have a rubber or two and wind down.’

‘Fair enough. I’ll get rid of the late-stayers.’

She did so by announcing that she was shutting up shop. Within ten minutes the house and compound were clear. Lucy and Tusker Smalley were the last to leave. Their tonga, they said, was missing.

‘What bad luck you do have,’ Nicky said. ‘Shall I send Nazimuddin for one?’

‘We can pick one up on the road, I expect,’ Tusker said. Lucy had her eye on the Rankin car but Tusker waved to Nicky and started off down the steps and presently Lucy followed.

‘Pankot
must
be changing,’ Nicky said, coming back in. ‘Poor Lucy and Tusker failed to cadge a lift. I’m sorry really. It spoils the shape of my last Pankot party.’

*

A limousine such as could be hired in Ranpur to drive leave and summer parties up into the hills and down again was coming along Flagstaff road which turned and twisted and was not easy for two large cars to negotiate if they met head on. But for them to do so was rare. Only Flagstaff House traffic used the road. In any case the general’s car always took precedence over local traffic. Assuming this the naik-driver taking Isobel and her guests home was prepared to glide on and up and give the minimum of room to the limousine which he expected to pull over and come almost to a halt.

On the limousine’s roof there was a luggage rack, piled high and covered by a rainproof sheet. Perhaps this extra weight gave the limousine’s civilian driver the strange idea that his vehicle was the more important of the two, even though the furled flag on the bonnet of the general’s car proclaimed that this was not the case. If he saw this symbol of the car’s status he ignored it. He came on. At the last moment the naik-driver called a warning to his passengers and slammed on the brakes. The limousine sailed past. The general’s car quivered under the pressure.

‘My God!’ Isobel said. ‘The raving bloody lunatic. Who was it, Clara? Did you see?’

Clara had the offside window seat in the back.

‘There were blinds down at the window, so I couldn’t.’

‘Blinds
?’

The naik-driver had got out with squared shoulders and bunched fists. He thought the other driver would stop to apologize or argue. He looked forward to telling him off and earning a good mark in the Burra Memsahib’s book who it was known liked men to be sharp on the draw. But the limousine sped on. It was already rounding the corner. He did not even have time to get its registration number.

‘What do you mean, blinds, Clara? What was it? A damned hearse? What was it doing on Flagstaff road if it was?’

‘Not a hearse. Just a car with blinds down.’

‘Was there a crest?’

‘I didn’t see one.’

‘The only people who drive with blinds down are Mahara-jahs.’

‘Or their wives. Mostly their wives.’

‘Well, if we’ve had a call from a spare maharajah and his harem he’s got off on the wrong foot. Unless of course it was old Dippy Singh.
He’s
as mad as a hatter. All right, Shafl. It wasn’t your fault. Let’s get on.’

At the end of the road the tarmac broadened, providing a turn-round outside an imposing iron gateway. There was a sentry. The guard-commander was also present as if he had recently been disturbed.

‘Shafi, stop at the gate and ask guard-commander about that car.’

He did so. The sentry was already presenting arms. He clattered. The guard commander ran forward, came to attention and saluted.

Shafi spoke to him. Presently he said, ‘He says the car stopped and a lady got out.’

‘Yes, I heard.’ She called over Shafi’s shoulder in Urdu. ‘What lady?’

‘An English lady, memsahib. An old lady. She wore a topee. She came to sign the book, memsahib.’

‘Thank you.’

She got out, went to the other sentry-box where the book was kept, on a shelf, chained. She was there for a few seconds and then came back and got in.

‘Carry on, Shafi.’

As the car moved into the grounds she said, ‘The first time wasn’t a practical joke then. She’s signed out. “Ethel Manners, pour prendre congé.”’

There was a silence. Then Nicky Paynton laughed.

‘That,’ she said between gusts, ‘
that
has made the day for me. Pour prendre congé!’

She was still laughing when the car stopped under the great portico in front of which, in the centre of an immaculate lawn, in a circular bed of white chippings, stood the tall white flagpost, moored to the ground by ropes, like the mast of a ship. From this eminence great stretches of the Pankot valley were visible. Early afternoon sunlight shone upon it. Before going inside Nicky Paynton stood for a moment, still shaken by spasms of laughter, and gazed. Then, turning her back on it, she opened her handbag, got out her handkerchief, dabbed at her lower lids and joined her friends for what might be their last game of bridge together.

It was. Nine days later, aching in every bone and deaf in both ears, she stepped out of a Dakota on to the tarmac of an RAF aerodrome and into the amazing unreality of the Wiltshire countryside.

IV

When October came Barbie stopped taking the spoons to the church with her. The old lady must have gone. She packed the spoons up, wrote a letter and asked Clarissa if one of the servants could take them to Commandant’s House. Clarissa agreed. She had become solicitous. The next day Barbie had by hand a letter of acknowledgment from Colonel Trehearne. He asked her if she would do him the honour of dining with him on Ladies’ Night in November.

For a day or two she did not reply because she knew she would not accept but while her letter of apology and thanks remained unwritten she was able to enjoy the pleasure the invitation had given her. Ankle-length black velvet, she thought; a brooch, no other jewellery. A special cropping of the hair and a set to add lustre to the soft natural waves on the crown of her head and forehead. Black slippers and a glittering black evening bag. Perhaps a velvet rose – crimson or purple – instead of a brooch. No. The brooch would be more distinguished. A gossamer-thin black silk chiffon stole to warm but not hide completely the marble of her arms and shoulders. For the journey there a cloak of the same black velvet as the dress but with a warm scarlet lining. Perhaps a gilt or silver chain for the clasp at the throat. Elbow-length gloves. White, these. Or black? White, if she wore the brooch. Black for the coloured velvet flower. And a fine lawn handkerchief sprinkled with cologne.

When her letter pleading unfitness had been sent she studied the reflection of her wasted bony body and the lank straight hair that needed cutting. In such a dress all you would see would be the wild untended head, the gaunt collar bone and corded wrinkled neck, the scarecrow arms, the tombstone teeth that were too big for her mouth. And hear what had once been a voice; a hoarse grating sound alternating between a crackling whisper and an uneven cry.

She put Colonel Trehearne’s letter in the drawer of the portable writing-table where there already lay the letter from the bank and the letters and picture postcard from Sarah in Calcutta and Darjeeling. The letter from the mission which had arrived on the morning of the christening and the undelivered letter to Captain Coley she had destroyed. The picture postcard from Sarah showed the headquarters of the Bishop Barnard in Calcutta and was postmarked September 6 which was the day Mildred had left Pankot with Susan, the baby and the ayah, and the day before Captain Travers had let Barbie come back to the rectory bungalow.