Staying On: A Novel (Phoenix Fiction) Read online

  “I mean he could be of service to you too, in odd ways. But mainly to me. A boy capable of cutting grass, tending the flowers, especially the lilies. I don’t want to lose my husband, Ibrahim. And if I’m not to, then the grass must be kept neat and the canna lilies watered. You were wrong about the box. You’ve admitted that. You are wrong when you think being able to be cross about the garden helps him. It doesn’t. It hinders him. He’s not capable of sustaining shocks, nor capable of surviving while in a constant state of petty annoyance.”

  The penny had now dropped. Ibrahim felt both relieved and disappointed. Uninterested for himself in a boy, the situation he’d first assumed she was outlining would have added piquancy to life; but Memsahib simply wanted a mali. Such anti-climax.

  “I know of such a boy, Memsahib. Young, strong, willing. My younger sister’s brother-in-law’s nephew, recently getting push because of rising cost of living and international inflationary spiral.” In fact he knew of several boys who might answer to that description, who technically didn’t but could be fitted to it. It was just a question of going down to the bazaar to cast his net. And the proposal could turn out to be financially attractive. One might presume to make a small profit.

  “How much would such a boy cost, Ibrahim?”

  He named a figure, and added, “Plus keep.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “There is another perhaps cheaper boy I’ve heard of, not so bright, but very strong and willing.”

  “That would be better. But there is still the problem about food. You know what a close eye Colonel Sahib keeps on the house expenditure.”

  Ibrahim blinked again. It was Memsahib who really kept the eye, but he had to admit he’d occasionally come across Tusker poring over her accounts and bills and muttering. After which they usually had a row. So he also had to admit there could be difficulties about feeding a boy whom Tusker was to be deceived into believing was employed by Smith’s. Although the time-honoured arrangement was – because there were no proper cooking facilities in The Lodge’s servants’ quarters – that Ibrahim’s food should be cooked and if required eaten in the servants’ quarters of the hotel, the Smalleys provided basic rations in the shape of monthly doles of flour, tea, salt, sugar, cooking oil, and paid a subsistence allowance to enable him to buy what meat and vegetables he needed.

  His food was usually cooked by Minnie with whom he had an understanding on various matters; an understanding respected by her colleagues. It was a cushy enough billet. He was able to save most of his monthly wage. There was always buckshee rum from the stock at the hotel. Each year, at the Îd, Tusker Sahib and Lucy-Mem presented him with something new to wear. His laundry was satisfactorily dealt with by the hotel dhobi-wallah in exchange for a packet or two of Charminar cigarettes. It was like belonging to a Union without having to pay the dues.

  . . .

  But his most treasured possession, immaculately preserved, was the last remaining set of long white tunic and trousers which his father had worn on mess nights in the days of Colonel Moxon-Greife, and into which he had long since grown, and worn once or twice on the rare occasions when Colonel and Mrs Smalley were guests at the Pankot Rifles Mess. Personal servants, although no longer de rigueur, were nevertheless a status symbol. As such you stood behind your Sahib, or your Memsahib, got nicely pissed in the kitchen, passing to and fro, and anyway had the thrill of doing things in the way your father had done them and his father before him, even though the Sahibs and Memsahibs at the long gleaming table were mostly as black as you were yourself.

  Tusker Sahib had given him a cummerbund and turban ribbon woven in the colours of the Mahwar Regiment. He had worn his regalia last at the New Year, when all the junior officers, a few of the senior officers and even some of the officers’ ladies got quite merry celebrating the recent victory over Pakistan. Tusker and Lucy-Mem were the only British people at the table, and Ibrahim was proud, really, that of all that gathering his own Sahib was the only one who got superbly drunk in the way he remembered his father describing the way Colonel Moxon-Greife always got drunk.

  “First, my son,” his father told him, “Colonel Sahib speaking with much vitality, but in a very discreet way, understand? Then towards end of the dinner he stops speaking at random, and sits at attention. Speaking only when spoken to, but always speaking to the point. Hand always on glass. Glass always being refilled. He sits at head of table. He is President of the Mess. Never do I have to help him to stand when time comes for this. He is rigid. ‘Mr Vice,’ he says, standing, meaning Mr Vice-President, who is then also standing and giving toast of The King-Emperor. All then drinking. Colonel Moxon-Greife then sitting down. After that immovable. We take him out in his chair. It is special chair with iron circular attachments, through which poles are passed, so that it becomes like dooli. Some fellows come in with poles. The poles are passed through the rings. We carry him out and across the road to his bungalow. I put him to bed. At six o’clock next morning he is on parade. A real burra Sahib. On Ladies’ Nights he drinks only little little less. So that he walks back with Memsahib across road to bungalow.”

  Ibrahim had never been to the Pankot Mess except on Ladies’ Night and since he’d been employed by Tusker and Lucy-Mem, Tusker had been only once to the Mess alone, and come back disappointingly sober. It had been different in January, when Ibrahim accompanied them both and stood behind Lucy-Mem’s chair, in his regalia, watching Tusker Sahib knocking it back on the other side of the table and then, becoming rigid, suddenly raising his glass and saying in his loud clear English voice, “Ma Gandhi, God Bless her,” and receiving what sounded to Ibrahim like murmurs of approbation and a grin from Colonel Menektara at the head of the table but which Lucy-Mem described afterwards, on the way home, as mutters of disapproval and smiles of embarrassment. “You don’t know India, yet!” Tusker had cried. “They knew what I meant. Ma, Mother. Mother India. For Chrissakes.”

  For a day or so after the mess night Tusker had been alternately subdued and quarrelsome. For a while, subsequently, on an even keel. Then came his attack. Memsahib had had to seek Ibrahim’s help because Tusker was taken ill in the early hours of the morning while sitting on one of the viceregal thrones; was slumped, unconscious, half-on half-off, his pyjama trousers round his ankles, white legs spread.

  Ibrahim had been embarrassed, not only at the sight of the Burra Sahib in such an undignified position, but before then, because although at one o’clock in the morning when he heard Lucy-Mem calling and knocking on the door of his hut he was where every good bearer should be who had to be up at cockcrow – on his charpoy – Minnie was under him and at last showing signs of taking charge, which was something you had to let Minnie do if you weren’t to get the cold shoulder and soggy chapattis for the rest of the week.

  “Coming, Memsahib!” he cried when he realized who it was. The overstatement of the week. Withdrawing, stifling Minnie’s anticipated shriek of outrage with one hand he hissed in her ear, “Be quiet. Intruders.” Then covering Minnie with one blanket he wrapped another round himself, groped his way in the dark to the door and unbolted it. Memsahib’s torch blinded him.

  “Please help me, Ibrahim. Burra Sahib is very ill.” She seldom called Tusker Burra Sahib except at times of crisis. She tottered back down the path, in her dressing gown, while Ibrahim struggled into shirt and trousers and then followed her.

  “In there,” she said. “I’ve rung Dr Mitra. But otherwise I don’t know what to do. I mean for the best. Whether to move him. In any case I couldn’t easily do it by myself. Would you please take a look?”

  One of the odd things about The Lodge was that although between the bathroom and the bedroom there was a doorway there was no door: instead a pair of swing-to louvred half-shutters such as cowboys in western films pushed through. When Ibrahim first came to the Smalleys it was explained to him that if he entered the bedroom and saw a towel draped over these shutters it meant that the bathroom-cum-wc was occupied. There was a towel in positio
n now. He hesitated to enter.

  “Don’t worry, Ibrahim. Forget the towel. But the towel is touching. Almost a sign of grace.” Her voice had changed pitch and intonation, surely. Who was she being now? “I’m sorry, you can’t know what I’m talking about. It’s just that he must have been feeling ill when he got out of bed. Quietly, not to disturb me. Not that I was properly asleep.” One of the twin beds was shrouded by a mosquito net which in Pankot was never necessary but which Memsahib liked. She pushed through the shutters. And there Sahib was. “It’s how I found him when I woke and began to worry. I rang Dr Mitra. Did I say? But if there’s anything we can do before he gets here we ought to, unless it’s too late. Tusker? Bring me a blanket, Ibrahim. I should have thought of a blanket.”

  He brought a blanket. He helped her drape it round Tusker’s head and neck, himself eased the shoulders away from the wall so that as much warmth as possible could reach his back. Above the smell of scented disinfectant there was a faint smell of excrement. Flush toilets had been fitted at the main hotel. Below these thrones were only sanitation pans which the sweeper removed through a hole in the outside wall. Mrs Bhoolabhoy could sit to her heart’s content on a pukka loo. Sahib and Memsahib had to make do with these old thunder-boxes. Colonel Memsahib personally made sure that they were immaculately kept and gave the sweeper baksheesh for polishing the new mahogany-stained seats. But, in Ibrahim’s opinion, when flush-toilets were installed in the hotel they should have been put in at The Lodge as well. Flush-toilets were part of the Christian religion, like sitting in your own dirty bath water. In the Yookay even if there was only one bath and one we in a house big enough for twelve people (like his brother-in-law’s house in Finsbury Park) they had for the English the status of shrines.

  When first coming to The Lodge, Ibrahim had mentally labelled the twin-loos His and Hers. And it was from His – after Tusker had suddenly groaned, opened glazed eyes and murmured “Where am I?” and Memsahib had cried out, “Here Tusker dear, with me and Ibrahim” – that Ibrahim had removed Tusker and carried him (light as a feather he seemed for so hot-tempered a man) well wrapped in the blanket (which had had to be burnt next day along with his pyjamas) and placed him gently on his bed.

  For the next three hours he had been alternately running between bedroom and kitchen, boiling water for tea, for a hot-water bottle for Burra Sahib’s feet which were deathly cold, making coffee for Lucy-Mem and for Dr Mitra, pouring tots of brandy, or squatting on the verandah within call smoking one of Tusker’s India King cigarettes (a present from Colonel Menektara) because his own were back at the hut (and Minnie no doubt no longer was, so he felt entitled to scrounge).

  When Dr Mitra left at about four o’clock Ibrahim was deputed to light his way to his car. Unthanked he made his way back. Memsahib called, “Ibrahim?”

  He went into the bedroom.

  “Sahib wants a word.”

  Ibrahim stood by the bed. A little of Tusker’s colour had come back, but not much. His eyes were closed.

  “Here is Ibrahim, Tusker dear.”

  The eyes remained closed but the left hand was slowly raised. After a moment Ibrahim took it.

  “I told him it was you who carried him to bed, Ibrahim,” Memsahib said when they were back in the living-room. “I’m afraid he’s still too weak to thank you. It’s his heart. Not too serious an attack, but we may have a long hard haul. I’m not sure, you see, that when Dr Mitra advises a week in the hospital tomorrow he will be – co-operative.”

  Ibrahim had his hands behind his back. Her own were suddenly pressed one to each cheek of her unmade-up sharp old little face.

  “Memsahib sleeping now. I will bring tea and arroot. Arroot very good for sleeping.”

  “Arrowroot.”

  “Han, arroot.”

  Ten minutes later he took the tray in. She was in bed, but sitting upright under the mosquito net, which was parted so that she could watch Tusker who was now asleep.

  Ibrahim murmured, “Ibrahim dossing down in living-room rest of night, keeping watch. Memsahib sleeping.”

  Curled up in a blanket in front of the fireplace which was still warm with the embers of the pine-log fire lit that evening he kept nodding off. Whenever he woke he crept into the bedroom. She had kept her bedside light on, but covered the shade with a cloth. There was just sufficient light to see that all was well, that both slept: Memsahib upright against her piled-up pillows, under that cascade of cobwebbed net playing in her dreams, perhaps, Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, still waiting for her groom.

  At 5 a.m. he kicked out the last spark of the wood fire in case at dawn there was a mysterious association of ideas and The Lodge burnt down because she had dreamed it.

  . . .

  These images and recollections passed through his mind as he stood with Lucy-Mem in the rear compound. His heart had begun to melt but he hardened it again. She was playing with the beads, telling them off, calculating by means of a handy abacus slung round her withered old neck the cost of a new mali.

  She said, “Oh what a tangled web we weave, once we practise to deceive. Even for the best of reasons and for but a limited time.”

  She was perhaps waiting for him to make some foolish and generous declaration about the problem of the boy’s meals. Actually there was no problem. More casual visitors shared the food in the servants’ quarters at the Hotel than even the astute Mrs Bhoolabhoy could guess.

  “Of course,” Memsahib said, “since this boy’s services would only be needed a few days a week the question of feeding him is not so complex. Wouldn’t he be satisfied with his wage? He has some other part-time occupation? I’m referring to the cheaper boy, the one not so bright but strong and willing.”

  “The cheaper boy is cheaper, Memsahib, because at the moment all but destitute unlike the other boy who although given push has wits about him and can pick up this and that and the other. Cheaper boy I think is more deserving case. He is the kind of boy we call always at the back of the queue. Very quiet boy. But loyal, honest and sturdy.” He would have to find a boy who roughly fitted the description.

  Memsahib fixed her gaze at a middle distance. She said, “Sturdy boys take a lot of feeding.”

  He was about to say that by sturdy he meant a wiry non-meat eater but stopped himself in time. He hoped she would not ask his name or whether he was a Mohammedan or a Hindu. He said, “If such a cheaper boy is given the wage Memsahib has in mind and one good meal a day he would work every day in the garden until it is tidy and easier to keep up.”

  “Yes,” she said, then folded her arms and began to stroll again. “But it would have to be made clear to him that it is only temporary employment. And in any case, Ibrahim, no steps must be taken until Mr Bhoolabhoy is back and I have had the opportunity of establishing what the situation is. If it then seems that the only thing for it is to hire a mali ourselves, without Burra Sahib knowing, Mr Bhoolabhoy will have to be a party to the little deception because of the question of tools. In fact—”

  She came to a standstill.

  “In fact, even Mrs Bhoolabhoy may have to know about it. What a wretched thought. But if for weeks there has been no mali and suddenly there is a mali, Colonel Sahib will not only be pleased, which is the object of the exercise, but may even be cock-a-hoop and when he is better, well enough to go to the hotel for a meal, he might be tempted to say something to Mrs Bhoolabhoy about her having backed down.”

  Suddenly she chortled.

  Ibrahim smiled. “Memsahib?”

  “Backed down! Can you imagine the sight of Mrs Bhoolabhoy backing down?”

  She chortled again. Ibrahim laughed. She had one hand near her throat, the other on her hip. Now she gave a full-throated laugh, then tapped him on the arm. “We can’t think of everything. Let’s forget Mrs Bhoolabhoy. The thing is to get Sahib well first. And we must be diplomatic. Very diplomatic. I shall rely on you to a very considerable extent, Ibrahim. If it seems there’s really nothing Mr Bhoolabhoy can do about a mali, the
n I’d prefer not to discuss things with him further. It would be better if you discussed them.”

  “Memsahib means in regard to use of tools?”

  “Well that, yes, but before discussing tools you would have to say that since I think Burra Sahib will never get fully well again while the garden continues in the state it is, I am prepared – so long as Burra Sahib remains in ignorance of the fact – prepared out of my own resources – to see it put right. After that we should have to see. It is a question of one step at a time.”

  “Also a question of money. Memsahib spoke of the possibility of persuading Colonel Sahib to increase my own wage.”

  “To reduce the cost of the boy to me,” she said almost inaudibly but promptly.

  “Memsahib I am not fully understanding this.”

  “It only means that to pay the mali you would be getting some money from Sahib as well as from me. But a rise is a rise is a rise. Come the day when we no longer need mali you would have that extra money for yourself. Malum?”

  “Malum, Memsahib.” He was sure there was a snag somewhere.

  “Dear Ibrahim.” Not looking at him she pressed his left forearm. “What should I do without you? What would either of us do? Just tell me the moment Mr Bhoolabhoy returns, so that I can have a word with him in private.”

  But he was unable to do this because on that day no one was speaking to anyone. And although it was Memsahib’s turn to take the dog for a walk and she could have doubled this duty with that of going down to Gulab Singh, the chemist, it was he who in the end had had to do so. She had sat on in the living-room after breakfast writing letters at her escritoire while Tusker – shawled – sat out on the verandah reading a book from the Club library, making notes in the margins which the librarian had more than once asked him not to do, and saying Ha! to break the monotony. Both were deaf to one another, to Ibrahim, and now to the tiresome whining and padding to and fro of Bloxsaw between living-room and verandah and garage (which was his home, there being no car there). All Bloxsaw wanted was to be taken notice of, but they weren’t speaking to Bloxsaw either. In the end to stop himself going mad Ibrahim fetched the lead, viciously attached it to the collar muttering “Shaitan! Shaitan!” then dragged the reluctant beast down to the cantonment bazaar to the Excelsior Coffee Shop in what was still called War Memorial Square, which wasn’t a proper square at all but the place where the road from West Hill met the one from East Hill.