The Towers Of Silence (The Raj quartet) (57 page)

‘You’ll recognize this,’ Sarah had written on the back. ‘I hope you’re better. I’m better too, fit as they say for human consumption again. Love, Sarah.’

Like so much that had to do with Sarah the postcard was an enigma. Normally the only place you could buy the card was at the headquarters of the mission itself. But Sarah did not say whether she had been there.

*

Walking, she found it difficult to go further than St John’s in one direction and Mr Maybrick’s bungalow in the other. For the bazaar she sent out for a tonga and did not get down from it until it returned her to the rectory bungalow.

In the bazaar she had the wallah stop outside Jalal-Ud-Din’s. The first time she did this a minute or two went by before a ragged little chokra came bare-foot in search of an errand and an anna. But nowadays she was met at the outskirts by a dozen or more who ran behind the tonga advertising their prowess, willingness and honesty.

At first her own little boy had joined the opposition but, reassured of her loyalty, now waited outside the store until she arrived. To reach her he had to fight his way through a thicket of limbs mostly sturdier than his own. She gave him a list and money and clear instructions. While she waited she distributed sweets to the others. If there was a list for more than one shop she gave him one list at a time. The other boys lost interest once they had had the sweets but her own little boy ran to and fro from shop to tonga, tonga to shop, rendering a meticulous accounting between each visit. The purchases were mainly Clarissa’s. When there were a lot of packages the chokra rode back with her to the bungalow, sitting at the driver’s side, and helped her to carry the packages up to the verandah. Out of her own money she gave him a percentage of the total expenditure. She hoped that he got commission from the shopkeepers. She did not always specify which shop he should go to and sometimes he was gone for quite a time. Invariably, then, he came back with a bargain. Clarissa was pleased.

They conversed in a mixture of Urdu, Pankot hill dialect and English.

His name, he said, was Ashok. His parents had died in Ranpur. He had come up to Pankot to look for work. He had no relatives. He did odd jobs. He slept where he happened to be when finishing the last job of the day. He was eight years old. It was his ambition to work in the elephant stables of a maharajah.

‘There are no elephants in Pankot,’ Barbie pointed out.

No, he agreed. But in Pankot a boy could earn rupees. And then he could go to Rajputana. There were hundreds of maharajahs in Rajputana. Each one of them had a thousand elephants.

At home, Barbie said, most little English boys of his age intended to be engine drivers. He said to be an engine driver would be all right. Providing there were no elephants.

‘Do you have to be a special caste to be a mahout or even to go near the elephants?’

He did not understand. He said his father had worked for the Ranpur municipality. Ashok did not say in what capacity. She decided he was a Harijan, a child of God, an untouchable. The elephants were his dream. Perhaps in Rajputana he would be allowed to clear away their droppings. But there was probably a caste for that too. She did not know. Hinduism, Mr Cleghorn had told her, is not a religion but a way of life. So, she replied, should Christianity be. He had given her an old-fashioned look.

‘What am I?’ she asked Ashok.

‘You are Sahib-log.’

‘No, I am a servant of the Lord Jesus.’

She sat on the verandah steps of the rectory bungalow and offered her hand. Ashok looked at her seriously.

‘Come,’ she said, ‘I am your father and your mother.’

He came. She clasped his thin shoulders.

‘You don’t understand,’ she said in English. He smelt musky. ‘It is all too long ago and far away. The world you and I live in is corrupt. I clasp you to my breast but you conceive of this in terms of an authority unbending. I offer my love. You accept it as a sign of fortune smiling. Your heart beats with gratitude, excitement, expectation of rupees. And mine scarcely beats at all. It is very tired and old and far from home. Ashoka, Ashoka, Shokam, Shokarum, Shokis, Shokis.’ Somewhere she had got that wrong.

He laughed. His eyes were luminous.

‘Chalo,’ she said.

She put a silver rupee into his tiny hand. He salaamed and ran. At the gate he turned. They waved to each other.

‘Tu es mon petit Hindou inconnu,’ she whispered. ‘Et tu es un papillon brun. Moi, je suis blanche. Mais nous sommes les prisonniers du bon Dieu.’

*

‘It’s uncertain how much longer I shall be able to visit you,’ she told Mabel. She had begun to think of a grave as a closed entrance to a long tunnel, dark and tortuous, which you had to crawl through on your belly if ever you were to reach that area of radiance at its end. For a while, she supposed, you might kneel huddled against the blocked entrance getting up courage to begin the journey. There were days when she thought Mabel had gone and others when the sensation of her nearness was strong. Today she seemed very near. ‘I’m sorry there are so few flowers. There aren’t many in the rectory garden. I don’t like to cut them without asking permission and don’t like asking too often.’

When next she saw Ashok she asked him to buy flowers. He came back to the tonga with both hands full of stemless marigolds and jasmine. She scattered these on the grave. Thereafter he had flowers ready for her daily: some wild picked from hedges, others (she suspected) stolen from gardens. For such flowers he usually refused payment.

‘Do you know what the flowers are for, Ashok?’

Yes, he knew, they were for puja. For worship.

‘They are for my friend.’

Ashok looked troubled.

‘I am your friend,’ he said.

‘Yes. I mean for my other friend?’

‘Where is your other friend?’

‘In Pankot.’

Where in Pankot?

‘She is everywhere.’

Ashok looked round. Was she here now? Yes, Barbie said. Her other friend was watching them. His eyes swung this way and that.

‘Is she my friend too?’

‘Oh, yes. But you won’t see her.’

‘Can you see her?’

Barbie shook her head.

He accepted this.

From an edition of the
Onlooker
she cut out a picture of an elephant bearing a howdah-load of sportsmen. It was a small picture. She fitted it into the mica envelope in which she had kept her subscription library ticket and gave it to him.

‘My friend asked me to give you this, Ashok.’

He stared at it for some time. Next to one of the sportsmen in the howdah there was a lady with a topee.

‘Is that your friend?’

Barbie examined it. The face of the woman was out of focus. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but it is like her.’

Pictures were important to a child.

*

‘When are you going to Rajputana, Ashok?’

Ashok shrugged.

‘When you have enough money?’

He did not answer.

‘Have you changed your mind?’

He nodded.

‘But there are no elephants in Pankot. Why aren’t you going to Rajputana?’

‘I will go if you go,’ he said. That night, saying her prayers, she wept.

*

For quite a long time after Clarissa gave her the envelope with the mission’s name on it and a Calcutta postmark she did not open it but sat on the edge of her bed observing how still the old eavesdroppers were.

She knew without reading it that the letter was from Mr Studholme and that the only reason he could have for writing to her was to offer her a place in one of the bungalows the mission kept in Darjeeling and Naini Tal. Someone had died and left a vacancy. She did not want to fill it. In such a place she would die herself, unwanted. She would have to go but it would take courage. She picked the letter up and considered the consequences of destroying it unopened. But she could not cheat Clarissa like that. Was it good news about accommodation –? Clarissa would ask at lunch. And then she would have to lie.

She went into the bathroom and brushed the taste of the lie out of her teeth.

She returned to the little room of which she had become almost fond because Mabel knew she was in it and she had survived to come back to it; Clarissa had become amenable and the creeper outside the window had not entered. An extra tack kept the crucifix straight when she brushed past it. Each toe-nail she had discovered, was beautifully wrought. The old people behind the curtain were enemies but were kept at bay. After she had read the letter they would part the curtains, advance on her and smother her. An act of mercy.

She cut the envelope with a sandalwood paper-knife whose upper edge was carved in the shape of a string of tiny elephants. Mr Maybrick had given it to her to welcome her back to what he called the land of the living. He hated hospitals. Which was why he had not visited her. It was quite a long letter. It was signed by Mr Studholme.

November 20th, 1944

My Dear Miss Batchelor,

First let me say that this unfortunately is not to give news of a vacancy at Mountain View in Darjeeling or at The Homestead in Naini Tal. However rest assured that I have your situation well in mind.

I write to you for two reasons and must in fact apologize for not having written weeks ago when I was told that you had been rather unwell but were recovering nicely. We oldsters are not so easily laid low. After years in the country I think we develop a special resilience. (Lavinia Claythorpe, up in Naini Tal, is eighty-eight this month.)

My informant about your illness and recovery was a Miss Sarah Layton whom I had not had the pleasure of meeting before but who called one day while staying in Calcutta with relations. Well that is the first reason for writing, to say I hope you are now perfectly fit again. I heard how indefatigable you had been looking after the poor lady whose death left you in some uncertainty about a permanent home. The second reason I write is really to test the ground for asking a particular favour. I am encouraged to do so by your earlier offer of voluntary services.

You will appreciate that since the beginning of the war the flow of recruits to our mission has been severely curtailed. Young men and women at home have had to answer other calls. Increasingly we have been hard put to it to fill teaching posts effectively and there is one area in which for a variety of reasons this difficulty has become temporarily rather pressing.

I am sure you will remember Edwina Crane? She was superintendent of our schools in Mayapore district, amongst which is the little school on the outskirts of Dibrapur. Since the death both of the Indian teacher there and of Miss Crane the Dibrapur post is one we have found it not at all easy to fill.

Fortunately, six months ago, we were able to place a Miss Johnson, a Eurasian Christian, who has been very successful and whom we hope will continue as teacher in charge of Dibrapur for some time to come. However, Miss Johnson recently announced her engagement to be married and has asked for a month’s leave from December 12th in order to solemnize the union and go down to Madras province with her husband. To this request, naturally, we have acceded. What has proved more difficult to arrange is for a teacher to take her place while she is away. The Dibrapur school is an infants’ and junior school, most of its pupils come from nearby villages, not from the town. Unlike the senior schools in the towns it is normally closed for a few days only at Christmas. There is a bungalow nearby where the teacher in charge lives. Mayapore, I’m afraid, is 75 miles distant. One is rather cut off. The town of Dibrapur is not salubrious. But the troubles that affected that area are long since over.

The question is, would you consider filling in for Miss Johnson? We should be most grateful. A telegram saying one way or the other would settle the matter. If your answer is in the affirmative I will at once instruct Miss Jolley in Ranpur to arrange your transportation from Pankot to Mayapore on, I suggest, December 5th, which would enable you to reach Mayapore on the 6th or 7th and have a couple of days with Miss Johnson in Dibrapur before she departs. The superintendent in Mayapore is Mrs Lanscombe whom I do not think you know. She would undertake all the arrangements for your reception and transportation at the Mayapore end. If you are agreeable I will ask Miss Jolley to telephone you at the rectory bungalow as soon as she has effected all the necessary bookings so that she can give you the details. Meanwhile my sincere good wishes: Cyril B. Studholme, MA.

*

She read the letter twice before folding and returning it to its envelope. On the second reading she knew what Sarah had done. She had visited Mr Studholme to disabuse him of any idea he’d got hold of that the old warhorse was past it. She had done this subtly, so that he had not realized it and had even forgotten to write a letter of good wishes on her recovery from her illness. With this gesture of Sarah’s, practical, unobtrusive, Barbie felt that their relationship had been sealed in a way that touched her more deeply than any open declaration of esteem could have done.

She put the envelope in her handbag. Again, as at the time of Colonel Trehearne’s unexpected invitation, she wanted to be enclosed in the world of her private happiness so that she could experience it fully, exist for a while at its tranquil centre which was not a fixed point in space but a moving one gliding across a flat landscape in the long straight line which, in her imagination, was the road to Dibrapur. She shut her eyes and in the dim room turned her face to the enormous white sky and the scorching oven-breath of the sun that baked the earth and the body to a holy exhaustion.

India, she thought. India. India.

India, she whispered.

She said aloud, ‘India. India. India.’

The children laughed. Say it again, Barbie Mem, they chorused. India, she cried. The first syllable was inaudible and the second seemed to spring shrieking from her throat, hover, then fall like a bird struck dead in flight. She lowered her voice and spoke in the breathy tone adopted for talking to Arthur, Clarissa, Edgar Maybrick and little Ashok. I must conserve my real voice, she said. Conserve it for use in the schoolroom at Dibrapur.