1977 (10 page)

in India for forty years and although still pukka they were often very peculiar, like most old

people. Sometimes they did not know what time of day it was.

“They are not having clock?” Joseph asked.

“They have three clocks. One in the kitchen, one in the living-room and one in the

bedroom. They each have a wristwatch. I also have a wristwatch, made in Switzerland,

shockproof, waterproof, jewelled movement, purchased in Oxford Street, London, Yookay.

When you say people aren’t knowing what time of day it is it is an English way of saying they

are a bit cracked.” Ibrahim tapped his forehead.

“Sahib and Memsahib are
pagal
?”

“Sometimes.”

“Have they been to the sisters?”

“It is a different kind of
pagal
. English kind.”

“You have been foreign, Ibrahim?”

“I am England-Returned.”

“Ah.” A pause. “Are the gardens in England beautiful? They say they are the most beautiful

gardens in the world. I should like to work in such gardens.”

“You wish to go foreign?”

“To see and work in such gardens, yes. Hyde Park. Sinjames. Kew. Ennismore.”

“Ennismore?”

“One of the sisters is writing to a lady living in these gardens. I am posting the letters. She

helped me to read the envelopes. But it was very difficult for me.”

“If you work hard in
this
garden, if you give satisfaction, who knows what will come of it,

Joseph? You might become regular employee, get good pay, save up. This is what my

brother-in-law did. He was bearer to an officer-sahib in Mirât. Bengali officer.” Ibrahim

paused to hawk and spit. “Also he married my elder sister. Then he went foreign. He was

waiter in a big restaurant in London. Getting many tips because a well-trained man, son of

man like my own father who was personal bearer to Colonel Moxon-Greife, from the time

Colonel Moxon-Greife was only Captain Moxon-Greife, right until Colonel Sahib and

Colonel Memsahib went home. But that is another story. I was telling you about my brother-

in-law, making many tips, saving, saving.”

“To buy own restaurant?”

“No, to buy shop, also to send money to my sister. In shop he is working very hard and

making good profits, so then buying house big enough for sub-letting. You understand sub-

letting?” Joseph shook his head. “Big house, many rooms, accommodation for many people.

All Indians. All living Finsbury Park.”

“Ah,” Joseph said again. “Park.”

“So when he is a prosperous man he sends for his wife my sister. So then she is going

foreign too and I go foreign with her to guard her on the long journey and to see brother-in-

law again and all his many relations who also had gone foreign.”

“Tell me about Finsbury Park, Ibrahim.”

“Fins-burry, not Fintzbri. About Finsbury Park there is nothing to tell. Apart from the

maidan it is all shops and houses and too much of traffic. I did not go foreign to look at the

maidan. I did not go foreign to become shopkeeper. I went foreign to guard my sister and

for the experience. Experience is more valuable than money. Here you will be getting a lot of

experience. Also food and shelter. If all goes well, even a little money.”

Ibrahim waited. An intelligent boy would ask: How much? At least, a smart boy would. So

far, though, Joseph had struck him as a boy who was intelligent enough about the things that

interested him, but not smart. The next few seconds would show. If Joseph asked; How

much? he would have to be watched. And, clearly, he was puzzling a question out.

“Ibrahim,” he said at last, “will all go well if I do the work well?”

“That is a good question. I am glad you have asked it. The answer is, not necessarily. I have

always done my own work to the best of my ability. But often I get the push.”

“Push?”

“The push. Get pushed out. Chucked out. Sacked. It can happen any day.”

“But you are still here,” Joseph said, after considering the situation.

“There is a thing called re-instatement.”

Joseph frowned, trying to concentrate.

“Put it this way, Joseph-
bhai
,” Ibrahim murmured because he had caught a glimpse of

Minnie’s shadow and knew she was listening in to this man-talk. “If it is a day when the

Sahib does not know what time of day it is, he may say, Ibrahim, bugger-off, let me see no

more of you. You are sacked, fired, given push. So I shrug, I say, ‘If God so wills.’ Then I

wait for Memsahib to return. I say, Memsahib, I am leaving. It is Sahib’s
hukm
. So she goes

to him and says, ‘Tusker, how can we manage without Ibrahim?” To her also he says bugger-

off.”

“What is this buggeroff?”

“It is a very old English phrase meaning
jeldi jao
. Likewise piss-off. These are sacred

phrases, Joseph, never to be used by you or me when speaking to
Sahib-log
but I will teach

you some of them.”

Joseph nodded his head.

“So I bugger-off. But that night there is no cocoa to warm their bones and lull them

rockabye to sleep. And in the morning there is no
chota hazri
to wake them up, no porridge

to set them up for a cold winter day. I am not making it, Memsahib is not making it because

although she has not buggered-off in one sense she has in another. Presently Sahib may be

making it, being stubborn, but when he makes it it is no bloody good because of that
shaitan

of a stove, so soon he comes looking for me. In my quarters he finds all my things gone. So

he comes looking for me here at Minnie’s. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asks. ‘Waiting for

Pay,’ I say. ‘Why should I pay you when you are not doing your bloody work?’ he asks. So

then I know I am reinstated. If sacked by Memsahib then it is not so easy. Being a woman

she can brew tea and cook porridge better. Two or three days may go by before Sahib again

comes looking. ‘Memsahib has burnt her hand,’ he says. Some such excuse.”

The boy nodded again. Ibrahim lit a Charminar. It was satisfactorily established that Joseph

neither smoked nor drank alcohol. His appetite had been lustier than expected, though. And

Minnie had been very flattered by the way her food had been scoffed. (A point to watch.

Joseph was a good-looking boy.)

“Ibrahim,” he said, “What happens if you are pushed by both Sahib and Memsahib?”

“Given push, not pushed. Get idiom right.”

“What happens if you are given push by Sahib and Memsahib at one and the same time?”

Ibrahim looked at him thoughtfully. He said, “Suddenly you are a philosopher as well as a

gardener? You are entering realm of metaphysics? Joseph Einstein is it? Versed in the theory

of time and relativity? Haven’t I just made it plain that Sahib and Memsahib are always at

loggerheads and that sometimes they do not even know what time of day it is, even in

Pankot?”

“But Ibrahim, this is what puzzles me. Supposing they neither of them know what time of

day it is on the same day and forget to be at loggerheads and push you together? Who then

makes the porridge?”

“Not you, Joseph,” Ibrahim said quickly, scenting a danger. “If I am given the sack you are

also sacked. I am not asking you to make porridge, only to cut the grass and tend the canna

lilies. You are not a Smalley-Sahib boy, you are Ibrahim’s boy. You are my boy.”

Joseph looked at the floor, on which they were squatting round the remains of their meal.

Presently Minnie, who was eating her own supper behind the curtain that separated one

small room from another, shouted :

“So now in your old age you are wanting a boy.”

“What nonsense are you talking?” he shouted back.

“You call it nonsense?” she cried. “When clear for all the world to hear you tell him he is

your boy?”

“All the world? Suddenly you are all the world? One world, one big ear working, one mind

not working?” Pause. “Take no notice, Joseph. She is annoyed with me because I am sitting

here talking to you instead of telling her the meal must have been cooked in Paradise. But I

am talking to you as a father, Joseph. Malum?”

Joseph glanced up. The eyes were still sombre, the look guarded.

“Not a Father. Not a Brother. Not orphan-school type teacher wallah,” he added hastily,

inspired to intuit something from the boy’s manner. “Pukka father. Father of son. Also

Employer. By arrangement with Bhoolabhoy Sahib.”

Joseph’s eyes cleared. He thought for a while and then said, “In a week or two, Ibrahim,

grass cuttings making good compost if kept well-watered. In hot weather coming, very good

to make burra canna-lilies. Strew compost among lilies, so keep moisture in earth. Canna

lilies then growing much tall and beautiful. Will that be doing well?”

Again Ibrahim waited for the subject of How Much to come up. But it didn’t. He said, “It

will be doing well, Joseph-
bhai
. The Sahib is very fond of the canna lilies.”

It took Joseph six days to cut the grass section by section, carry the cuttings away to his

compost heap in the rear compound and spear each mown section with the garden fork.

Sometimes, warned by Minnie that Mrs Bhoolabhoy was in a bad way that morning, Ibrahim

made sure that the boy did something quiet. But to be told not to mow did not seem to

worry him. He was a methodical worker. There was always something he could find to do.

On the seventh day instead of resting he thoroughly cleaned the machine, sharpened and

lowered the blades and then traced out parallel swathes on what was again looking like a

lawn. He watered it and then began on the edges with the shears.

Midway through this seventh day Tusker decided he was well enough to take a walk.

Towards the end of February the sun in Pankot is quite hot, but the air is still brisk. Tusker

wound one of Lucy’s knitted scarves round his neck, took stick in one hand and Lucy-Mem

in the other and descended the verandah steps. Summoned, Bloxsaw slowly followed them

along the path to the side entrance. They did not look at Joseph and Joseph did not look at

them. When they came back an hour later the only member of the trio to take notice of

Joseph was the fool of a dog who went barking and snapping at him as if he were an

intruder never seen before.

“Heel, sir!” Tusker shouted. “Heel, sir!” and banged the stick on the gravel path while

Memsahib entered The Lodge dissociating herself from this display of male masterfulness.

Meanwhile Bloxsaw yapped and snapped and skittered round poor Joseph’s ankles. Joseph

kept still. Suddenly the dog whined, tucked its tail between its legs and ran indoors yelping.

Ibrahim observed this scene from a distance. Later he put the question. “What did you say

to the dog, Joseph?”

“Only I said, Bless You.”

“Ah. That too is a sacred phrase. But I know a better one. You can use it when speaking to

the dog. One day I will teach it to you.”

It was March the First.

”The winds of March that make my heart a dancer,

The telephone that rings, but who’s to answer?”

In this month of March Lucy-Mem always played “These Foolish Things” on her

gramophone, an ancient HMV radiogram which would only play 78s, which was neither here

nor there because Lucy only had 78s, a veteran collection of records bought during the war

from some of which the mere ghost of a sound came out, but it was a ghost Ibrahim loved

to hear her conjure, which was something she now tended to do only when alone.

Occasionally people like the Menektaras asked her to play an old Inkspot or an old Judy

Garland, and then she would oblige. But Tusker always laughed, and the Menektaras found

the records amusing too, which Ibrahim knew Lucy didn’t. The record she loved best, and

Ibrahim knew she loved it best because she never played it for anyone but herself (although

it was also played for him, listening on the verandah or in the kitchen) was Dinah Shore

singing “Chloë”. Apart from the movies he shared with Memsahib her passion for the sort

of music connected with those movies, and with the Moxon-Greife household where there

had been a gramophone similar to Lucy-Mem’s and a pile of records similar to hers which

they used to play when they had young people in who liked to dance after dinner and he had

hidden himself near the verandah and watched and listened. When Memsahib played

“Chloë” she always stood very still, with her eyes closed. Sometimes she played it several

times over and from his listening place he would pause in his work and nod his head in time

to

the

old

tune.

Oh,

bumpa-bumpa-bumpa-bumpady-day-do.

Bumpabumba

bumpabumpadidaydoo. Oh through the black of night, I gotta be where you are. If it’s

wrong or right, I gotta go where you are. I’ll roam through the dismal swamplands (bump),

Searching for you. If you are lost there let me
be
there too.

“What is worrying you, Ibrahim?” Minnie had asked him once after such a session and she