Staying On: A Novel (Phoenix Fiction) Read online

  Ibrahim disagreed. He had worked for the Smalleys for several interesting tumultuous years and wasn’t ready yet to lose them. They were the last survivors of Pankot’s permanent retired British residents. This and the fact that he himself was England-Returned gave him a certain cachet among the other servants. If Tusker died now Lucy-Mem might go Home. He judged that Tusker’s anger about the state of the compound was the main thing that kept him on the boil, and so – alive. Tusker was a man who needed irritants. Often he invented them. Here was one ready-made. From a peaceful orderly scene of a mali cutting grass and watering canna lilies Tusker might have turned his face away, and to the wall.

  Sometimes, feeling himself both demeaned and exalted, Ibrahim threw a can of water on the lilies. He even picked a few marigolds for Tusker’s bedside vase. Cut the grass he would not. He was a head-bearer, not a gardener; and in any case he agreed with Tusker that Mrs Bhoolabhoy’s mali had always cut the grass, if only by steering the old machine while his tenpence-in-the-shilling assistant dragged it on ropes.

  “It’s in the lease!” Tusker shouted one day. Exasperated and ignoring Ibrahim’s advice to do nothing until Mr Bhoolabhoy was back from his mysterious trip to Ranpur, Lucy-Mem went to confront Mrs Bhoolabhoy, something Ibrahim couldn’t remember her ever doing before.

  “I never interfere with business matters,” she once said to him in her small light voice. “I have no business brain at all.” Ibrahim took this with a pinch of salt. Memsahib was a devil when it came to checking change and prices on shopping lists. And most of the concessions Tusker Sahib wrung out of Mrs Bhoolabhoy, Ibrahim knew, originated in what Lucy described as her own “addled little brain”. Without that addled little brain there would have been no new refrigerator two years ago, no repair to the garage door the same year, no new seats on the twin thunder-boxes which stood side by side on a dais in the bathroom like viceregal thrones and which the liar of a sweeper declared he had evidence of having been used at times simultaneously.

  So when Lucy-Mem went to confront Mrs Bhoolabhoy about the case of the disappearing mali he almost expected her to return with a mali in tow.

  “Old mali seems to have resigned,” she told him, “and hired himself out to the Shiraz. Beyond that I simply don’t know. I suppose we must wait and see.”

  He expected her to say, “Surely you could have told us old mali had gone?” But she didn’t, and on second thoughts he realized he hadn’t expected it. Sahib and Memsahib were extremely interesting examples to him of the almost total self-absorption that overtook old people such as them. Both lived, really, in worlds of their own. If either had bothered to ask him what had happened to old mali he might have told them. But all Sahib had done was grumble that the mali hadn’t turned up, and all Memsahib had done was listen with half-an-ear until the moment when it struck her that it was bad for Sahib to grumble so much.

  It wasn’t of course true that old mali had resigned. He had been sacked, unofficially as part of the process of what Mrs Bhoolabhoy called retrenchment, officially because she had decided that he was selling part of the produce of the kitchen garden to the bazaar from where at times of inexplicable shortage Mr Bhoolabhoy had been unwittingly buying it back. This was not proven against old mali but Mrs Bhoolabhoy was convinced of the fact and when Mrs Bhoolabhoy was convinced of a fact one had to assume that a fact was what it was. There was no appeal against her judgment. All old mali had actually ever done, though, was appropriate his fair share of what he had hoed and sweated to grow. The kitchen garden had occupied most of his time, what was left over, Mrs Bhoolabhoy complained, had for years been lazily spent cutting the grass at The Lodge. The mali’s departure for the Shiraz left the Hotel with only the assistant mali, a youth with a lame left leg and a blind right eye who just about managed to cope with the weeds in the Smith’s flower-beds of which, between stony paths, there were now but vestigial traces. It was believed that Mrs Bhoolabhoy was only awaiting an opportunity to sack this wretched fellow too. It was typical of her, Ibrahim thought, that she should have told Lucy-Mem that old mali had resigned.

  . . .

  Old mali was sacked on the day Tusker Sahib was taken ill, which was the day after his friend and drinking companion, Mr Bhoolabhoy, went down to Ranpur ostensibly to execute commissions for Mrs Bhoolabhoy: a rare enough event for the servants to wonder whether in fact he had been sacked too; or had left her at last for another woman.

  For instance, the nautch-girl, Hot Chichanya, who sang at the Go-Go-Inn in Ranpur and was said to be the daughter of a Russian mother and an Afghan father. The head bearer at Smith’s had seen a clipping of a newspaper photograph of Hot Chichanya pinned to the inside of Mr Bhoolabhoy’s almirah door and one by one all the male servants had entered the manager’s room during his absence to get an eyeful.

  Mr Bhoolabhoy’s interest in Hot Chichanya dated from the time she came up to Pankot to sing in the first cabaret produced in the Shiraz’s Mountain View Room (of which it was reported she complained that there was hardly any room, less view and no god-dammed mountain). The servants at the Shiraz said she had a voice like a frog but breasts like melons. In the clipping these showed to advantage in spite of the poor newsprint.

  The staff at the Shiraz had also reported to the staff at Smith’s that Hot Chichanya was insatiable and kept by her bedside an illustrated edition of the Kama Sutra printed in Hong Kong, to inspire her lovers if they showed signs of flagging at 3 a.m. when the sound of her raucous voice and stamping bootshod feet and the cracking of the red leather whip she used in a number called Koshakdance had more than once disturbed and brought complaints from other guests, particularly parents visiting the boys who were getting a sound English-style public school education at the Chakravarti College which was housed in the old Summer Residence.

  The complaints had no effect. Hot Chichanya was in the protection of two young men, both thin, who were nephews of a senior member of the consortium of owners. All her lovers, rumour had it, were thin. The scrawnier the better, and age no object. Mr Bhoolabhoy could not be ruled out as a candidate. He had attended the cabaret twice. Now he was in Ranpur, where Hot Chichanya performed nightly.

  “Poor Bhoolabhoy Sahib,” the Smith Hotel cook said when it dawned on them what the manager might be doing. “Has he the strength?”

  When he got back from the plains three weeks later, although silent he looked content; like a man, cook said, whose objective had been achieved. It was noted too that on the first Sunday following his return he did not go to St John’s Church, of which he was a pillar. Francis (Frank) Bhoolabhoy was a cradle Christian. What Mrs Bhoolabhoy was no one knew. She had been married so many times that her original family name seemed lost in antiquity. She showed no interest in any religion, in any kind of hereafter, only in the here and now and in how this might be arranged to her advantage.

  . . .

  On the morning of his return Mr Bhoolabhoy spent two hours in Mrs Bhoolabhoy’s room but the persistent sound of chat suggested conversation of a business not an amorous and certainly not a confessional nature. Emerging, he went about his normal routine with his usual air of muffled energy, the difference being that when he sat over his typewriter or whispered a rebuke to someone who had dropped a plate his eyes were on neither.

  “He has been having his end away,” the aged head bearer said, using one of Ibrahim’s expressions. “God be thanked, there is hope for all of us.”

  Removing the soiled socks, shirts and underwear which Mr Bhoolabhoy had brought back from his trip, the dhobi’s boy spent a moment or two on each garment, testing for new scent, conclusive evidence of a wild Khurdish night with the cabaret artist. He had learned from his father that dhobis were expected to maintain a tradition of being the first to detect the smell of adultery in any household. But only once did he discover an aroma not comprised of Mr Bhoolabhoy’s natural body odour and the familiar smell of the Hamam soap Mr Bhoolabhoy favoured. He got, just, a whiff of something uncharacteristic when checki
ng a pair of smart y-fronted underpants, but the smell was quickly traced to the fact that the pants were new, still full of dressing, obviously bought in Ranpur and not washed before use. Was the purchase of new underpants significant in itself?

  It wasn’t until the evening of this day that Mr Bhoolabhoy gave silent notice of the fact that his wife must have told him both about the mali’s dismissal and Tusker Sahib’s illness. No member of the staff had mentioned either to him. They preferred him to find things out for himself. At five o’clock he strolled into the rear compound, inspected the kitchen-garden, then as if going to visit the invalid went to the gap in the wall which gave access to and a view of the compound of The Lodge, and stood for a while, hands behind back, observing the uncut grass, like a man looking at the scene of a recent disaster which he’d heard tell of, was inquisitive about but not responsible for.

  Ibrahim, stationed where he could see but not be seen watched Mr Bhoolabhoy. He had known from early morning that Mr Bhoolabhoy was back but had said nothing to the Smalleys because it was one of those days on which for no clear reason none of them was speaking to the others unless it couldn’t be helped. Such days occurred less frequently than the days on which it was simply the sahib and memsahib not speaking to one another except through him or one of them not speaking to him except through the other; but there was no real accounting for these days of mutual tripartite silence. They simply happened.

  So he hadn’t reported Mr Bhoolabhoy’s return but had expected and looked forward to the visit the manager would presumably pay his old friend on hearing he was still not properly on his feet after a serious illness. He kept watch too, because he did not want to miss the row there was bound to be about the garden. His disappointment when Mr Bhoolabhoy turned away from the gap in the wall and went back to the hotel was profound. “Chicken,” he thought.

  He got up. Memsahib hadn’t yet emerged from her siesta. Sahib was on the verandah, asleep over the papers he’d taken out of the scratched black deed box which for the past few days had been the cause of so much fuss and bother.

  . . .

  “It’s in the Lease!” Tusker had cried on the day he’d been transferred from bedroom to verandah and saw the full extent of nearly three weeks of neglect. “Bring me the box.”

  “In the Lease or not in the Lease, dear,” Memsahib replied, smoothing his balding head between spoonfuls of broth, “you’re not to worry. Wait until Billy-Boy gets back. When he hears mali has resigned I’m sure he will quickly hire another. What is the point of worrying about the garden if it stops you getting well enough to enjoy it when you’re better and something’s been done about it?”

  “You talk like a perfect fool. Always have done.”

  “Yes, I know, Tusker. It’s my own funny little way of making sense.”

  “Are you going to bring me the bloody box or not?”

  “Broth first. Bloody box later. But not today. If we eat up all our broth and then sleep like a good boy, who knows we might have a nice arrowroot biscuit with our afternoon tea, mightn’t we, Ibrahim?”

  “No arroot, Memsahib. Only Giyeftiff.”

  “Then a nice digestive, Tusker dear.”

  “It appals me.”

  “What does?”

  “A woman of nearly seventy talking like a kid of seven.”

  Later that day, after taking tea and a plate of digestive biscuits into the bedroom where Tusker had retired in a fit of pique after lunch, Ibrahim carried Lucy-Mem’s tea on to the verandah and found her sitting, gazing at the long grass, her ankles neatly crossed, her hands folded neatly on her lap.

  “Thank you, Ibrahim,” she said without looking at him.

  There was a run in one of her stockings. Her shoes had as good a polish on them as he could work up considering how long she had had them. She had a faraway look in her eyes as if looking back into places she’d walked in her long-ago shoes.

  . . .

  The day after being accused of talking like a child she helped Ibrahim settle Tusker on the verandah, then went indoors, came out again and gave her husband the deed box and the key and left him to it to go shopping in the cantonment bazaar.

  “You reeker!” Sahib shouted ten minutes later. Ibrahim had never fully understood the significance of this exclamation but liked the sound of it.

  “Sahib wants?” he inquired, going out to where Tusker sat, well wrapped up, in the worm-eaten cane lounging chair. February, in Pankot, although warm and sunny, brought morning chills.

  “Wants? Wants nothing. Has found. Found.” Flourishing a document. “Now we’ll see. Won’t we just see. I’ll sue the bitch from arsehole to Christmas.”

  Ibrahim nodded approvingly. It was some weeks since Tusker Sahib had threatened anyone with anything from arsehole to Christmas. The threat was never carried out. Ibrahim had been metaphorically booted from one to the other many times but never physically even over a shorter distance. The thing was, Sahib was on the mend. Passion had revived in his body. Poor frail body. Not a patch on what it once was, judging by the photographs in the living-room which showed a rather portly upright man, smartly uniformed, and earlier a younger man of medium height arm in arm with his little memsahib. In all the photographs the face looked well-fleshed, inclined to chubbiness and (Ibrahim imagined) a reddish complexion, the expression stern, certainly unsmiling. Now, although Tusker Sahib sometimes laughed loud and long, frequently burst out with that explosive derogatory Ha! and could often be discovered alone, smiling to himself and cracking his knuckles, the face was pale, the skin slack. Brown spots blotched his hands and arms. The English, once they began falling physically apart, did so with all their customary attention to detail, as if fitting themselves in advance for their own corpses to make sure they were going to be comfortable in them. A waste of time, really, since nowadays they all got cremated, a fashion that filled what was left of Ibrahim’s Islamic soul with horror, and for which he blamed the Hindus among whom the English had lived too long for their eternal good. Let alone short-term good. “What has become of the world,” Ibrahim wanted to know, “when a fat money-grubbing Punjabi woman can cause a Christian Sahib a moment’s disquiet?”

  It was in his mind to say something of the sort to Tusker but just then Dr Mitra appeared to see how his patient was doing and Ibrahim was ordered off to get coffee for him, which he grinned at while boiling; boiling twice to make it doubly disgusting the way the doctor deserved to get it. Ibrahim detested Dr Mitra who spoke to him as so many high-toned Indian nobodys spoke to their own and other people’s servants: as if they were no better than coolies touting for headloads at a railway station.

  To Ibrahim the difference between being treated by men like Dr Mitra as if he were merely a machine and an anonymous one at that, and being sworn at by a Sahib like Tusker showed the distinction between a real sahib and the counterfeit. The same kind of distinction between a real memsahib and a self-appointed one was apparent when you compared Lucy-Mem with Mrs Bhoolabhoy.

  Ibrahim regretted the passing of the days of the raj which he remembered as days when the servants were treated as members of the family, entitled to their good humours and bad humours, their sulks, their outbursts of temper, their right to show who was really boss, and their right to their discreetly appropriated perks, the feathers they had to provide for the nest when the nest they presently inhabited was abandoned by homeward-bound employers. Ibrahim had been brought up in such a nest. He still possessed the chits his father had been given by Colonel Moxon-Greife and a photograph of Colonel and Mrs Moxon-Greife with garlands round their necks, Going Home, in 1947. He had also inherited and preserved the two letters which Colonel Moxon-Greife had written to his father from England. Finally he had inherited the silence that greeted his father’s two letters to Colonel Moxon-Greife inquiring about the possibilities of work in England for young Ibrahim, now going on twenty.

  “Coffee, Sahib,” he announced, clattering the tray in front of Dr Mitra and got nothing in reply except a warmin
g word from Tusker who said, “What kept you, you old bugger? Pour the bloody stuff out then.” Which Ibrahim gladly did after first bending close to Dr Mitra and using an expression learned from an old friend whose father had looked after a family in French Pondicherry murmured, “Tuay maird, Sahib?” Dr Mitra nodded, not understanding, then said, “Bus, bus,” as Ibrahim slopped in the under-boiled goat’s milk which he hoped was full of the germs of tuberculosis and amoebic dysentery.

  Back in the kitchen he clattered pans. Mitra was the kind of man who would end up in Finsbury Park, London, N, removing people’s gall bladders when they only had appendicitis. Mitra was Sahib’s choice but Ibrahim trusted no Indian doctor to treat a white man. At a pinch a Muslim doctor would do, but a Hindu doctor never. The nearest European doctor though was down in Nansera, and he was an Austrian and a Catholic and the Catholics were worse than the Hindus because they believed in human suffering and uncontrolled birth-rates. The Hindus at least had offered a free transistor to every Indian having a vasectomy. But carrying a transistor had at once become unfashionable among the younger men. That lawyer’s babu, Pandey, whose transistor was enormous, must have lost his marbles.

  . . .

  Lucy-Mem returned before Dr Mitra had gone. Ibrahim feared they would ask him to stay to lunch. They enjoyed company. But Mitra went and Lucy-Mem walked down to the side entrance with him. When she got back she came into the kitchen and said, “Ibrahim, it’s bad for the Sahib to have the box.”

  “No, Memsahib, good.”

  “Doctor Mitra says not good. For blood pressure very bad.”

  “That is because Doctor Sahib does not understand Colonel Sahib’s psychology. Colonel Sahib is not a Virgo like Memsahib.”

  “What?”

  “Not a Virgo. He is born under the Ram sign of Aries. He must always be butting-in, taking charge, solving non-problems, vindicating self and own beliefs.”