1977 (7 page)

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-Président, 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

position 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