1977 (2 page)

“There is no need for you to be bothered with trivial matters of detail, dear Lila. What am I

here for?”

“Sometimes this is a question I ask myself.”

Mr Bhoolabhoy tiptoed out then tiptoed in again.

“Lila, it will have to be typed.”

“Naturally.”

“The machine will make a noise.”

“One has one’s crosses.”

Mr Bhoolabhoy nodded.

He went back to his own room and then out through the door that gave, as all the

bedroom doors gave, on to the dim green windowless dining-room where ragged palms,

potted in brass spittoons, stood sentinel among tables shrouded by stained napery. Daylight

entered only from the threadbare lounge which had windows on to the verandah. Between

dining- and sitting-room Mr Bhoolabhoy had his office, a glassed-in cubby-hole that gave a

view of both rooms. This was Mr Bhoolabhoy’s sanctuary. A naked electric bulb provided

illumination. The office doorway was narrow enough to make it difficult for Mrs

Bhoolabhoy to enter, and inside he kept the office cluttered so that if she entered she could

not advance far and, leaving, had to back out. He closed the door, closed the section of

window that normally remained open for guests to communicate with him (demands,

complaints, settlements), sat in his swivel chair, inserted in the elderly Remington a sheet of

hotel notepaper plus carbon and flimsy and began,
April 24, 1972, My Dear Colonel Smalley
.

Then stopped.

From Room 7, the closest to the office, was coming the sound of music. He ran softly out,

tapped at the door, opened, and surprised Mr Pandey in the lotus position, eyes closed,

transmitting or absorbing
prana
to the accompaniment of a morning raga by Ravi Shankar or

someone on All-India Radio.

Mr Bhoolabhoy had little ear for any music except Christian hymns. He switched the raga

off. Mr Pandey opened his eyes. Bhoolabhoy, by signs, alerted him to Mrs Bhoolabhoy’s

Monday morning condition. Mr Pandey sighed, nodded his head from side to side, shut his

eyes again and resumed meditation, but this time with an expression of concentration instead

of beatitude.

Mr Pandey was chief clerk to the lawyers in Ranpur who dealt with Mrs Bhoolabhoy’s

intricate business affairs. He came up once or twice a month with papers and documents,

stayed a day or so and was boarded free so Mr Bhoolabhoy had no compunction about

turning off his transistor. His presence this weekend was especially ominous. Among the

papers he expected to take back to Ranpur today was a copy of the Letter. Mr Bhoolabhoy

returned to his office, tore the paper out of the machine and set things up again but this time

with the two carbons he had forgotten the first time ; and began again, “My Dear Colonel

Smalley,” and paused, seeking inspiration, reluctantly resumed without it and eventually

finished. He ended, “Yours very Sincerely.”

It was now nearly 8 a.m.

In the days before the Shiraz was built this had been the witching hour at Smith’s because it

was at 8 o’clock that the night train from Ranpur was scheduled to get in after its long haul

up the single track into the Pankot Hills from the plains and, consequently, at that hour that

staff and management had been ready for the arrival of guests who had booked and been

hopeful of others who hadn’t booked and all of whom began to turn up at about 8.30 in

taxis, tongas, avid for breakfast during the serving of which the luggage of departing guests

would be piled on the verandah so that it and they could go down to the station to catch the

midday departure back to Ranpur. This had been the pattern since the days of the
raj
. After

the
raj
went there had been bad times, good times, near-disastrous times, times of

retrenchment, times of ebullient hope, as Pankot waxed, waned, waxed again in popularity.

But for Smith’s now it all seemed to be coming to an end.

The night train from Ranpur still reached Pankot at 8 a.m. From 8.30 or so onward, then,

from the front verandah of his hotel, Mr Bhoolabhoy could assess the Shiraz’s morning

intake of guests who had come up by rail by counting the number of passengers in the taxis

that drove slowly past the entrance to Smith’s compound before making the right-angled

turn into the Shiraz’s forecourt. There were seldom many. Most of the Shiraz’s guests

arrived later in the day by private car or by the Indian Airways ‘bus that picked them up in

mid-afternoon at the airfield down in Nansera.

The building of the Nansera airfield predated the building of the Shiraz by several years and

for a while Smiths had prospered. Half-an-hour by air from Ranpur to Nansera and then an

hour’s chug in the airport ‘bus from the Nansera valley up into the Pankot Hills had made

the old hill station an attractive proposition for people who found an all night train journey

and a six hour one back a high price to pay for a weekend in more invigorating air. The ‘bus

had used Smith’s as its pick-up and put-down point and the airline had set its office up in

Smith’s compound—a useful concession which had now been transferred to the Shiraz; and

unfairly, Mr Bhoolabhoy felt, the fact that the Shiraz now existed, all five storeys of it,

attracted more people up than ever before: people in government, in commerce, the idle

rich, the busy executives, and now even film stars and directors from the Ranpur Excelsior

Talkie Company who had recently shot part of a movie in Pankot and booked the entire top

floor of this modern monstrosity.

The presence of movie stars had caused excitement among simple people who hung round

hoping for a sight of them and followed their vans and trucks to the location where they

were shooting exteriors even though this was way over on the other side of East Hill. Often

they had had their trek for nothing because the heroine was a girl given to temperaments and

sometimes locked herself into her suite at the Shiraz for the whole day and admitted only her

personal entourage, her publicity manager and the gossip column-ists.

By the time she got over her temperament the hero was likely to be having one too. There

was no shooting for days at a time. The owner of the film company then came up from

Ranpur and threatened everyone with proceedings for breach of contract, upon which the

director, a young man who was into realism, also had a temperament and declared the

location useless. Everyone packed up and went home.

Tusker and Mr Bhoolabhoy had laughed about this only last Monday night, and he was

smiling now, recalling it, when Minnie appeared at the office window, holding her hand out.

She had come for the Letter. He indicated the paper still in the typewriter and held up four

fingers to indicate four more minutes. It was now 8.30.

Five minutes later, unable to delay longer, he took the letter into Mrs Bhoolabhoy. Five

minutes later still he was back in his office, inserting new sheets of paper to rewrite the letter

to Lila’s taste. It now began, “Dear Colonel Smalley,” instead of “my Dear Colonel Smalley.”

It was to end not “Yours very Sincerely, Lila Bhoolabhoy,” but “Yours faithfully, L.

Bhoolabhoy, Prop.” In between, its three friendly and apologetic paragraphs had to be cut to

one curt one. Mr Bhoolabhoy had to type the new version several times before he was

satisfied that she might approve it. By ten past nine the final curt version was finished.

He took it to Mrs Bhoolabhoy. After she’d read it she held out her hand. He gave her his

Parker 61, then helped to prop her up to sign.

“I will take it across now, Lila.”

“Minnie will take it. Call her.”

He did so. He put the letter in its envelope. When Minnie came in Mrs Bhoolabhoy

grabbed the letter and gave it to Minnie herself. “To Colonel Smalley. Immediate.”

Minnie said nothing but took the letter. Mr Bhoolabhoy made to follow her out but was

commanded to stay. “You may massage the back of my neck,” Mrs Bhoolabhoy said. For

five minutes he performed this vaguely erotic task. Things were just getting interesting for

him when she said, “Enough. Now go back to the office to be on hand to deal with Colonel

Smalley if and when he comes.”

As he left Lila’s room Mr Pandey was coming out of No. 7 armed with his brief-case and

his breakfast, a single glass of orange juice which he always drank over at the little hut where

Indian Airways had once kept an office. Mr Bhoolabhoy followed him as far as the

verandah, watched him cross the compound and settle himself, and kept alert for the sound

of the transistor. He heard a crackle or two, but nothing more disturbing so remained where

he was, his hand on the back of the chair Tusker usually sat in on Monday evenings.

“Always,” he thought, “I have the mucky end of the stick. But then I am only part of the

fixtures and fittings.” These, undoubtedly, had all depreciated in value. The stucco on the

walls of the hotel was peeling, the compound had been let go. Mrs Bhoolabhoy’s priorities

had never been those of her predecessor, old Mr Pillai, Mr Bhoolabhoy’s first employer. Her

business affairs remained a mystery to him. Mr Pandey knew far more about them than he

did. He glared across the compound at the little babu and wondered not for the first time to

what extent Mr Pandey enjoyed more than Mrs Bhoolabhoy’s confidence.

“Management!”

“Yes, Minnie, what is it?”

Management, it seemed, had to go across at once to The Lodge to complain about the

noise.

“What noise?”

“Smalley dog.”

“I hear no dog.” He bent his head. He heard it then.

According to her mistress, Minnie said, the dog had been locked in the garage again, either

because Colonel and Mrs Smalley had disagreed once again about whose dog it was and

which of them should take it for walkies or because Colonel Smalley was being spiteful as

the result of the Letter.

“You personally gave him the Letter?”

Minnie said she had given it to their servant, Ibrahim.

“But Colonel Smalley was in?”

Yes. Minnie had seen him having breakfast on the front verandah of The Lodge.

“And Mrs Smalley?”

According to Ibrahim, the memsahib was at the hairdresser. Also according to Ibrahim

there would be a row when memsahib got back because Tusker Sahib had just sacked him.

He, Ibrahim, was once more no longer in the Smalleys’ employment. He had promised,

though, to hand the Letter to Tusker Sahib before leaving, which meant right away because

he had been told to get out at once and never come back. It was the fourth time in a year

that he had been sacked by one or other of them; but this time Tusker Sahib had actually

given him his month’s pay. Ibrahim was therefore packing his things so that he could station

himself, bundle and all, outside the Shiraz, where Mrs Smalley would find him when she

came out with her new blue hair and ask why he wasn’t at work. Colonel Memsahib (Minnie

said) had gone to get new blue hair because she and Colonel Sahib were expecting a visitor

any day.

“An Englishman,” Minnie said, holding her elbows.

Mr Bhoolabhoy stood up. “Then I must prepare a room.” The Smalleys had no spare

bedroom at The Lodge. On the rare occasions they’d had a guest the guest stayed in the

hotel.

“Dog first,” Minnie said. “Room later.”

“Damn the dog,” Mr Bhoolabhoy said but just then the distant howling took on a new and

louder and despairing note. A shriek came from Mrs Bhoolabhoy’s room. Minnie hurried

away. Mr Bhoolabhoy hesitated, then ran down the steps and made for The Lodge. Tusker’s

wrath was more easily endured than Mrs Bhoolabhoy’s. And there was just the possibility

that Ibrahim had not delivered the Letter into Tusker’s hands but left it in some perfectly

rational but inconspicuous place where it would take time for Tusker to find it.

But whether Ibrahim had handed it to Tusker personally or not before departing, sacked, it

had certainly been found and opened. Mr Bhoolabhoy recognized it, without its envelope.

Tusker lay in the middle of the bed of crimson canna lilies, the letter clutched in his right

hand.

TUSKER SMALLEY’S DEATH can be fixed as having occurred at approximately 9.30

a.m. rather than say twenty minutes later when the dog stopped whining and began to howl,

causing Mrs Bhoolabhoy to shriek, because the dog, Bloxsaw (the Indian pronunciation of

its real name, Blackshaw) was generally recognized as too stupid to be aware of the moment

its master’s soul departed; and Dr Mitra, Tusker’s physician, pronounced the coronary as

having been so massive as to have caused death at the moment of his fall.

About twenty minutes before his fall, that is at about 9.10 a.m., Tusker had dragged