1977 (9 page)

daughter.

“—used to say, An Englishman’s word is as good as his bond because he is known

throughout the world to be an honest man.”

“Honest because British, Memsahib.”

“Yes, Ibrahim. But that is all so long ago.”

Yes, Mr Bhoolabhoy had said, the sacked
mali’s
tools could be made available. He could

even suggest a boy, able, willing if not very bright.

A not very bright boy would be ideal, Ibrahim thought. Mr Bhoolabhoy explained about

Joseph. He had found him asleep in the porch of St John’s Church one Sunday morning.

The Christian community in Pankot, mostly Eurasians, but with some Indians, such as

Francis Bhoolabhoy himself, had for some years now not been large enough to warrant a

resident chaplain. Once a month the Reverend Stephen Ambedkar came up from St Lukes

in Ranpur to conduct Sunday services and the day Mr Bhoolabhoy had found Joseph asleep

in the porch had been such a Sunday.

Mr Bhoolabhoy, a lay-preacher and churchwarden of Pankot’s old English C of E church

took care to be there very early on the Reverend Stephen’s Sundays, so did Miss Susy

Williams. Miss Williams, member of a Eurasian family once well-known in Pankot—its sole

surviving member except for a much fairer-skinned and younger sister who had hooked a GI

during the second world war and had last been heard of in Cincinnati—had not only

inherited a talent for hairdressing from her mother who in the days of the
raj
had listed most

of the memsahibs of Pankot among her clients, but also acquired a talent for music and

flower-arrangement. She played the piano at St John’s (the organ had long ago seized up and

there was no money for its repair) and also decorated the altar. On the Reverend Stephen’s

Sundays she and Mr Bhoolabhoy arrived within half-an-hour of one another, Mr

Bhoolabhoy first, because he had the keys, and Miss Williams just before 8 a.m. They both

brought picnic breakfasts which they ate in the vestry.

Finding Joseph asleep in the porch and having elicited the fact that he had come up from

Ranpur in search of work, had no home, was hungry, and believed in the Lord Jesus, Mr

Bhoolabhoy gave him a chapatti and a cup of tea from his thermos. Then he got on with his

jobs. When Miss Williams turned up, laden with flowers, the boy had disappeared but Mr

Bhoolabhoy found him later on his knees pulling grass away from one of the old hummocky

overgrown graves, trying to tidy it up, to pay for his meal. Later he helped Miss Williams

with the flowers, filling the vases with water and cutting the stalks. He said he had once done

this for “the sisters” in Ranpur. Miss Williams was very pleased with him ; but while her

back was turned, doing the last vase, he disappeared again.

Mr Bhoolabhoy had then gone down to Ranpur and it was not, he told Ibrahim, until this

very morning, when he went up to St John’s to make sure that his fellow lay-preacher and

assistant warden, Mr Thomas, the Eurasian manager of the New Electric Cinema, had kept

things in order that he had met the boy again, that he found Joseph again, not asleep in the

porch but on his knees once more, working on his sixth grave with an old pair of clippers

which Mr Thomas had lent him.

By now Mr Bhoolabhoy had learnt a little more about Joseph. The only sisters he knew of

in Ranpur were those who ran the Samaritan Hospital, which was a nuthouse, and, calling

there one day with a message from Mr Ambedkar who was high church enough to maintain

an ecumenical relationship with Rome, he inquired of a boy called Joseph, fearing that he

might be an escaped inmate. The sisters knew only that he had turned up one day and for a

week or two in return for a meal and a bed made himself useful in the patch of garden and

by cutting and arranging the flowers for the Reverend Mother’s desk. Then he had suddenly

not been there. They learned nothing about his history which he himself seemed to have

forgotten or decided was irrelevant. They had given him some new clothing as well as bed

and board and a postcard of the Sacred Heart, the picture the Reverend Mother had once

found him contemplating in her study.

Simple but harmless, honest and willing, was how they had summed him up; and if Mr

Bhoolabhoy ever saw him again he must be sure to tell him that the sisters remembered him

and would welcome him back should he need shelter for a week or so. “A wandering child

of God, with a passion for things that grow,” the Reverend Mother said as she and Mr

Bhoolabhoy parted.

Ibrahim thought Joseph sounded more ideal than ever.

“Memsahib will want to know, what of pay?”

Mr Bhoolabhoy shrugged. He had never offered Joseph money. Mr Thomas had given him

a few paise for running errands. Miss Williams had given him a rupee or two for painting the

cane furniture in her bungalow. Food, shelter, convivial occupation—these were what

interested Joseph and he seemed prepared to take them where he found them. He should

not cost Mrs Smalley much, Mr Bhoolabhoy declared, and he was glad enough for the boy to

have an opportunity, however temporary, and would be happy to pretend to Tusker Sahib

that the boy was a member of the hotel staff, if that was what Memsahib wanted.

“What about Madam?” Ibrahim inquired, tilting his head in the direction of the Hotel and

its Owner.

“Leave Madam to me,” Mr Bhoolabhoy replied, which struck Ibrahim as very funny. If he

mentioned the business to Mrs Bhoolabhoy, though, perhaps she would find
that
funny—the

thought of Tusker Sahib thinking she’d backed down when all the time he was paying for the

mali
himself. The idea of Mrs Bhoolabhoy being amused by anything wasn’t easy to entertain

but if anything could amuse her this might.

“I will speak to Memsahib right away then, Manager Sahib.”

“Don’t you want to see the boy first? He’s in the churchyard. I’ll take you up.”

“Memsahib first, boy second. There is no need for Manager-Sahib to trouble himself

further, except over tools. If Memsahib likes the sound of the boy I will go to the church

and speak to him.”

Memsahib did like the sound of the boy but didn’t want to see him either. She said she

relied on Ibrahim’s and Mr Bhoolabhoy’s judgment.

“The question is, how much will he want?”

“Memsahib will say the amount she can afford?”

“The least amount he would work for. What do you think that might be?”

He named a figure.

“But Ibrahim, that is almost as much as the first boy you mentioned would probably want.

You spoke of another who wasn’t so bright but was strong and willing and would be

cheaper. How much cheaper would he be than this third boy you and Mr Bhoolabhoy

recommend?”

It was unwise to confuse an old lady.

“This
is
the cheaper boy. Only I did not know when I first mentioned him that Mr

Bhoolabhoy also took an interest in him.”

“The most I can afford is five rupees less a month than you suggest he might want. If he

works very well we might reconsider.”

“And food, Memsahib.”

“Initially you must see him fed, Ibrahim, but you won’t be out of pocket. The first thing is

to get him. On trial. If he gives satisfaction then you may confirm to him the wage offered

and when your next pay day cornes round I will give you what is necessary to pay him plus

whatever seems fair as a little subsistence allowance.”

“Come,” Ibrahim said to Joseph. “Bhoolabhoy Sahib wishes to see you. There is a

prospect.” And Joseph, as though summoned by a disciple had risen from the graveside and

followed Ibrahim to Smith’s. Ibrahim was pleased with the look of him because it was a

malleable look. At Smith’s Mr Bhoolabhoy opened the old
mali’s
shed and revealed to Joseph

the treasures stored there. The boy stood at the entrance as though it were holy grotto.

When he entered, urged by Mr Bhoolabhoy and Ibrahim to do so, he went first to the

wooden shelves where old
mali
had left several pots of geranium cuttings which had died for

want of attention. Or had they? The boy fingered one and finding a green bud amid the sear

leaves muttered something to himself. Then he ran his hands over a pair of garden shears

which were rusty. Finally he knelt and examined the old lawn mower which still had ropes

attached where the grass box should have been, if it had ever had a grass box.

“Come,” Ibrahim said again, and led Joseph and Mr Bhoolabhoy to the gap in the wall

beyond which stretched the untended grass. Seeing that Tusker was esconced in the old

wicker-chair on the verandah, asleep or not asleep, Ibrahim said, “Manager Sahib will show

Joseph what is required?” Upon which Mr Bhoolabhoy led Joseph into The Lodge’s

compound while Ibrahim stayed behind.

They did not go near the verandah but if Tusker’s eyes were open he couldn’t have missed

them. Bhoolabhoy Sahib stood in the middle of the lawn gesticulating. Joseph stood as if

rapt, then knelt and touched the grass. Bhoolabhoy pointed at the bed of canna lilies but

neither of them went near. Then they came back and Joseph went at once to the shed,

untied the ropes and slowly pulled the machine out into the sunshine. After examining it he

searched among the shelves in the hut, found a can of oil, some sandpaper, an old brush, a

rusty worn-down knife. He cleaned the knife first and then began to clean the blades of the

mower. All these actions were performed in silence.

“Okay, we’re in business,” Ibrahim said.

By midday the machine was clean, bright and slightly oiled and Joseph without a word

trundled it into the compound of The Lodge and set it down on the grass. One push proved

that the grass was too long for the way the machine was set. He had brought a spanner from

the shed and now bent to adjust the blades. He adjusted them several times before the

mower was running smoothly and quietly. Grass sprayed from the blades like a green

fountain leaving beneath a fourteen-inch wide strip of yellowing turf. Joseph knelt to inspect

this strip, smoothing his hand over it, then gathering a handful of cuttings to inspect them.

Ibrahim left him to it. It was nearly time to collect the trays for Sahib’s and Memsahib’s

lunch. He kicked off his chappals and climbed up to the verandah. The Sahib was awake but

not looking at Joseph. The delightful purring sound of the mower beginning the job of

cutting the lawn did not seem to be reaching him. Neither was it reaching Memsahib who

was inside at her escritoire writing more letters. It was still apparently reaching neither of

them when he brought the trays and Joseph was still hard at work. Ignoring the boy he went

to get his own midday meal. When he returned to collect the trays the sound of the mower

was no longer to be heard. The boy must have given up and, like the old
mali
, looked for a

place to get in some sack-time.

But the boy was, after all, still hard at work, sweeping the cuttings from the section he’d

mown and gathering them into neat piles. Looking forward to some sack-time himself,

Ibrahim nevertheless squatted down in his favourite place of observation. Mem-sahib was in

bed asleep and Sahib was dozing in his chair. Ibrahim watched the boy scoop the cuttings

into a piece of sacking and cart them off somewhere. He watched him go back and forth and

presently, through heavy eyelids, watched him begin prodding the shorn grass with a fork.

Whatever did he think he was doing? Prodding the lawn with a fork when only a small

section of it had been cut?

He waited until Joseph looked in his direction and then beckoned him over. He had to do

this twice before the boy got the message. He speared the fork into the turf and came across.

Joseph went behind the bungalow and waited for him.

“Why are you prodding the grass with the fork?”

Close-to he saw that Joseph was drenched with sweat.

“To make breathe.”

“You are telling me grass breathes?”

“All living things breathe.”

Ibrahim’s heart was touched. The boy himself had scarcely any breath.

“Come, you have done enough for a while. You’d like a cuppachar?”

THAT EVENING over a meal Minnie had cooked for them Ibrahim told Joseph all he felt

it necessary for the young
mali
to know: that the old
mali
had gone to work at the Shiraz, that

Mrs Bhoolabhoy was a difficult woman it was best to keep away from; that the English

Sahib had not been well and might not speak to him but that if he did he should say that Mr

Bhoolabhoy had asked him to put the garden straight. Meanwhile he was to take orders only

from Ibrahim. The Sahib and Memsahib had been
pukka-log
in the days of the
raj
, had been