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.
‘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.