The Day of the Scorpion

  A foxtrot. She hated foxtrots. She longed just to sit and drink her coffee, but went back on the floor. Clark said, That man’s been sick. They ought to send him home.’

  ‘He was all right at dinner.’

  ‘Not really. And the air’s hit him. I’ve suggested to the others he ought not to stay.’

  She looked in the direction of the table. The man in question was supporting his head in his hands. Two of the others were leaning towards him. The dark-haired boy had his hand on his back. It looked as if they were encouraging him to call it a day and leave while the going was good, before she and Clark returned to the table. Leonard sat watching with his arms on the table, dissociating himself from the argument. There were now more dancers, the floor was quite crowded. Her view was cut off. Clark said, ‘When this dance is finished would you do something for me?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Go to the powder-room. I’ll show you where it is. I’ll come back for you in about ten minutes. It shouldn’t take longer.’

  ‘I don’t mind him being a bit high.’

  He looked down at her.

  ‘I mind. So would you if he stayed. So would he tomorrow. He’s not just high. He’s over the edge. He’ll end up crying probably. Don’t you think so? Don’t you think he’s the crying type?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well I assure you he is.’ A pause. ‘I’d be grateful if you’d do as I suggest.’ He smiled. This time there was no trace of remoteness. She felt exposed to a sudden, inexplicable but encouraging warmth. Leaving go as the music ended, guided back through the doors between terrace and lounge, she was conscious of his body and of her own under its control and protection. Her elbow was held. ‘This way.’

  ‘Ten minutes,’ he said a few paces from a door. ‘I’ll be here. If I’m not, go back in and give me another five. Don’t stand outside, unless you don’t mind being pestered by strangers.’

  *

  She stayed in the powder-room for a quarter of an hour. Two Anglo-Indian girls came in. Her presence seemed to inhibit them. They talked in low voices but she caught the lilt which, if their skins were light enough, helped girls like these to pass themselves off as natives of Cardiff and Swansea. She wondered what she would find to say to them if they joined the party. She stayed at the mirror until they had gone and then, coming out, found him waiting.

  She said, ‘I thought I’d give it the five extra minutes.’

  ‘I’m afraid even ten was too many, so there’s a change of plan.’ He took her arm and led her into the lounge with the wicker chairs and tables and noisy men, and through into the arcade towards the street.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘I’ll explain in a minute.’

  Again he shooed boys and beggars. A taxi door was held open by one of the hotel bearers. She entered, understanding that he had sent the man to make sure of one.

  The man’s ‘Salaam, Sahib,’ marked the passing of baksheesh. Clark spoke to the driver but she did not hear what he said. He might have given Aunt Fenny’s address. He joined her. The taxi moved.

  ‘What did you mean, ten was too many?’

  ‘Just that. He wouldn’t budge. And the others were no particular help. I’m sorry.’ He offered her a cigarette. Automatically, although not wanting it, she took one. ‘It’s a dreary place anyway. But then it’s all most of them have. I’ll show you something better. Unless you want to go home. It’s only ten-thirty, though.’

  After he had lit her cigarette she gazed through the window at a dark sea, the maidan side of Chowringhee.

  ‘See those lights way across?’ he asked. ‘That’s where I first met you.’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked. ‘You’re not really telling me the truth, are you?’

  ‘I think so. Yes. That’s the BMH.’

  ‘I mean about why we’ve left the others.’

  ‘I promised your aunt I’d see you came to no harm, Miss Layton.’

  After a while she said, ‘My name’s Sarah,’ and turned to look at him in the odd, distorting lights that flickered in and out of the cab. She thought: It’s about now he’ll make a pass. But he didn’t. He simply stared back at her. She said, ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Across the so-called bridge.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  What she saw was that in the politest possible way she had been abducted, that he had never had any intention of sharing her with the others, would have found a way of ditching them even if the pale officer had been sober. It would have taken a bit longer but the end would have been the same. She supposed she should feel flattered as well as annoyed. Perhaps that was what she felt, that or too tired to care much how she spent the rest of the evening.

  As if he had followed her reasoning and wished to reassure her he said, ‘I’ll take you home if you’d prefer that,’ but put his hand on hers in what she judged a pretence of consideration meant quite otherwise, meant in fact to have the effect it did, which was to leave her, when the touch was withdrawn, deprived of the source of a faint and therefore unsatisfactory physical response. ‘The trouble is,’ he said, ‘if your aunt finds you there when she gets back she’ll know the evening went wrong. That fellow doesn’t deserve it but the less said about it all the better. Don’t you agree? You and I are both leaving Cal tomorrow but they’ve got another week under your uncle’s eye. I wouldn’t want any of them to go back to their units with an adverse report, would you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t mean we should pretend the party never broke up or that you and I never went off somewhere else, but your aunt and uncle needn’t be told why. If one of the others lets it out, that’s their funeral. Now,’ he ended, and touched her hand again, ‘let’s forget it and enjoy ourselves. This is the real Calcutta. I’m told this time last year these streets were littered with the corpses of people who came in to try and escape the famine. You have to hope the taxi doesn’t conk out, they’d probably cut our throats and chuck us into the Hooghly.’

  The taxi had increased speed. The road was ill-lit, a squalid urban area. Shrouded figures lay huddled under lean-to shelters and under arcades. Above, there were tenements. After a while the taxi took a road to the left, over a humped-back bridge. The darkness was now stabbed by the beams of the headlamps.

  ‘All clear,’ Clark said, ‘we’ve passed the danger zone.’

  The road became kuttcha. There were trees, then open spaces; clutches of houses came and went. ‘All round here, in the old days, you’d find a lot of rich Indian merchants. But it’s gone down. Don’t let it depress you, though. We’re not going slumming.’

  They drove for another ten minutes, reached a crossroads marked by stalls and huts. Crossing another humped-back bridge the driver had to brake sharply to avoid a stray water-buffalo.

  ‘That’s India,’ Clark commented. ‘The internal combustion engine in confrontation with a creature evolved from the primeval slime.’ Ahead there was a low stucco wall. They turned into it and through a gateway. She had an impression of a tall, rather narrow house, with many lighted windows. They drew up at an open doorway. When the engine died she heard the music of sitar, tablas and tamboura. He opened the door on his side, which was next the entrance, and helped her out.

  ‘Walk right up and wait,’ he said, ‘I have to be persuasive.’

  She climbed the few steps, smelling incense, but did not cross the threshold into the narrow hall in which she had a glimpse of curtained doorways guarded by a sleepy Buddha and agile Indian Gods cast in bronze. She watched Clark bargaining with the driver, persuading him either to stay or return at a specified hour, and felt calm, which was odd, because standing made her realize that almost imperceptibly she was trembling, as if in the grip of a faint rigor. He came up the steps smiling vividly. ‘Fixed,’ he said, and harboured her in his right arm, leading her in. An Indian servant had come through one of the curtained doorways. Clark said, ‘I’ve left a taxi-wallah out there, Bi
lly. Try and see he doesn’t get bored or go away, but don’t give him anything stronger than beer.’

  The man signified agreement. Clark led her through one set of curtains into a square room equipped like a bar. The music was coming from the room beyond.

  ‘It’s a free house,’ he said, going behind a semicircular counter. ‘So what’ll you have, brandy? You never got to drink that other one, but this is better, Three Star. I’ll make it long.’ He popped a soda bottle, poured and came back out with two well-filled glasses. ‘Cheers.’ She answered by raising her glass. ‘The house belongs to an Indian woman called Mira. While the music’s on we just creep in and sit like mice.’ Again he took her elbow, guided her through another curtained doorway into a room that surprised her by its length. Ceiling fans whirled sluggishly, wafting unfamiliar perfumes. A standard lamp at the far end illuminated a carpeted daïs on which the instrumentalists sat cross-legged. The rest of the room was unlit, but she clearly made out among the clutter of divans and couches men and women who sat with their faces towards the source of light. Clark took her on tiptoe to an unoccupied sofa against the wall just inside the doorway. A few feet in front of it a solitary Indian woman sat on cushions. She glanced round, seemed to smile, but returned her attention quickly to the music.

  Sarah sat. Clark leant close to her and whispered, ‘It’s Pyari on the sitar.’ She nodded, but only vaguely registered the name as one she might have heard mentioned as that of a famous man. She was never sure how much she liked Indian music or whether she agreed with the general opinion of the people she knew that it was a noise that showed more than anything else the hopelessness of attempting to understand the people who made it. She had an instinctive feeling, though, that even if it was not really what she understood as music it was being performed with great virtuosity. The sitar looked more capable of playing Pyari than he, an ordinary human being with only so many fingers, of playing it. His struggles were immense but must be paying off, judging by the extraordinary ripples of sound. The tablas were smacked with matching agility by a round little man with a bald copper-coloured head. In the background a statuesque woman produced a resonant whining accompaniment on the upright tamboura.

  Sarah sipped her brandy and soda. An evening of Indian culture was the last thing she had expected a man like Clark to offer her, but she was hopeful that, unresponsive to it as she was, the music would go on for some time because when it stopped she would find herself out of place, not knowing what to say to the woman who reclined so elegantly on cushions. She guessed that Indians like these laughed at English people like her. Again Clark leaned towards her and whispered, ‘The woman on the couch down on the left in the spangled saree’s a Maharanee, but she’s suing for divorce. The elderly Englishman next to her had a distinguished career in the ICS. He’s currently acting as her private legal adviser and escort while she’s in Calcutta, but I don’t imagine it goes further than that. That young white boy in mufti whose head he’s fondling looks like an AB from a ship of His Majesty’s Navy.’

  Sarah glanced from the Maharanee to the man and stared, at first fascinated and then repelled by the hand that clutched, let go, and clutched again at the dark hair of a young man who sat at his feet uncomplaining. Clark whispered, ‘It’s one way for boys like that to see a few of the bright lights when they come ashore, and go back on board with a gold cigarette case like the officers have.’

  The Maharanee turned, spoke to the retired civil servant, smiled and put her hand briefly on his free one, ignoring the boy and the older man’s attentions to him. Sarah looked back at the musicians, and drank more brandy, felt hollow, embarrassed that in a roomful of Indians two Englishmen should so behave themselves. But the embarrassment was incoherent, less real than the curiosity which made not looking at them a conscious effort, a disciplinary exercise in tact that was also intended to display, for Clark’s benefit, false proof of her inurement to all quirks of human taste and to evidence of their open satisfaction. She thought Clark had her under scrutiny. She resisted the impulse to find out, but a movement from him convinced her she had been right and that he was deliberately putting her through a test; but whether it was intended to confirm the presence of a physical aptitude or the absence of a moral quality, she did not know.

  She decided to face it directly, and looked at him. He was, as she expected, now watching the musicians. His right arm rested on the back of the sofa. The hand – relaxed but too vigorously formed to look limp – hung a few inches away from her shoulder. His face, in profile, just touched by light, as it might be far back in the auditorium of a theatre with the play in progress, reflected the same quality of assertiveness and self-possession. She turned her head again, towards Pyari.

  The music sounded as if it had reached a climax and would end abruptly; which it did. The applause was remarkably loud for such a thinly-scattered audience. She set her glass down and joined in, for politeness. The musicians abandoned their instruments and made namaste. Light entered the room at several points as servants rung curtains back and came in with trays.

  The Indian woman on the cushions turned round.

  ‘Jimmy, the movement control telephoned. The plane leaves for Colombo half an hour earlier than they originally told you.’

  Thanks, Mira. By the way, I’ve brought someone along to hear Pyari. Her name’s Sarah.’

  Sarah murmured hello. The Indian woman nodded, addressed Clark again almost immediately.

  ‘Pyari’s in good form, isn’t he? They’ve asked him at Government House. Did you hear?’

  ‘No? Will he go?’

  ‘What do you think? He said he might send one of his third-year pupils because the people there wouldn’t know the difference. But none of his pupils wanted to go either, even as a joke, unless he let them hide a bomb in the sitar. He said, “Why should we ruin a good instrument?” So that was that.’

  Clark laughed, ignoring the fact that the joke was partly on Sarah. A bearer approached, offering pan. Sarah shook her head.

  ‘You should,’ he recommended, taking one and beginning to chew. ‘It cleanses the blood. Haven’t you ever eaten pan?’

  ‘I did as a child.’

  ‘Have another drink instead then.’

  She surrendered her glass. She had emptied it, nervously. The Indian woman got gracefully to her feet and went farther down the room to talk to a man and woman who sat with their arms round each other.

  ‘Mira’s a stunner, isn’t she?’ Clark said.

  ‘Yes. Beautiful.’

  ‘She keeps a husband in drink and pays all his gambling debts and hotel bills, and his mistress’s clothes and jewellery accounts.’

  ‘Does she? Why?’

  ‘Why not? She’s so rich she can’t count it. Anyway, she likes his mistress. They used to be lovers themselves, but she’s mad about the Maharanee now, and as that’s quite mutual everything in the garden’s lovely. You can always tell. When Mira’s crossed she shuts herself up in her rooms for days on end. But one way and other this party’s been going on since the day before yesterday. So I gather. I only got in this morning. She’s probably paying Pyari a thousand chips for the music, so why should he perform at Government House for nothing? Not that he would anyway. He’s very anti-government because they’ve never done anything to encourage the arts. Most of his students confuse art with politics, so he makes political gestures every so often as part of his duties as a good guru, but he couldn’t care less about politics himself. In fact’ – he looked round the room – ‘no one here could. Politics are for the poor and the bourgeois middle class. Most of these people have fortunes stashed away in banks in Lisbon and Zürich. The existence of well-to-do little neutral countries is a pointer to what global war is really all about, or haven’t you noticed?’

  The bearer returned with drinks.

  ‘I expect you wonder how I got to know this place,’ Clark continued. ‘Mira has friends in Cairo. They wrote her when they knew I was coming to India. So whenever I come in t
o Calcutta this is my unofficial address, which explains why your Uncle Arthur had that odd idea I was always out on the tiles. I expect somebody reported to him my bed was never slept in. I mean the one in the quaint monkish little quarters they gave me when I got myself sent on that course he runs. But as I was such a bright boy he obviously turned a blind eye.’

  ‘Yes, I see.’ She sipped the new, much stronger, brandy and soda, looked at him and asked, ‘Has Mira got friends in Ceylon too?’

  ‘We both have.’

  ‘Then you’ll be nice and comfortable.’

  ‘It’s one of my aims in life. Isn’t it one of yours?’

  She stared at her glass and, after a moment’s hesitation, allowed the absurd truth to enter like a chill draught through all the ill-fitting doors of her inherited prejudices and superstitions. ‘I suppose I’ve never given it much thought.’

  ‘I guessed you hadn’t.’ He hesitated. ‘But you’re refreshingly honest. I thought I wasn’t mistaken. That honour-of-the-regiment exterior is paper-thin, isn’t it?’

  Yes, she thought, pitifully thin; but its thinness was less pitiful than the fact that it was there and could be seen and was the only exterior, the only skin she had. She felt her hand taken, and this time held on to.

  ‘I wonder why?’ he asked. ‘Didn’t the second injection take?’

  ‘The second injection of what?’

  ‘India and the honour-of-the-regiment. It’s usually fatal, surely? I mean isn’t the first one bad enough? Growing up with all the other po-faced kids in a sort of ghastly non-stop performance of Where the Rainbow Ends? Then having to trot back for a time to a little island that’s gone down because it’s become full of vulgar money-grubbers and people without standards and all sorts of jacks-in-office trying to paint out the pink parts of the map?’

  She smiled, but said, ‘I suppose that’s how it looks. It’s only half the truth.’