1977 (13 page)

mother had disapproved. “I’m told the climate is very heating,” Mumsie had said, wrapped

in woollies against the persistent chill of the vicarage. Mumsie had disapproved of Tusker,

too, although she had tried to disguise it, because he was a soldier serving his King. But

anything Lucy did, anyone Lucy chose, anyone who chose Lucy, had to be disapproved of

because she was only a girl and Mumsie hadn’t wanted another child after the twins, certainly

not one of the female sex which was what she’d got.

“Yes, from the beginning I had a sad life,” she repeated. “A life like a flower that has never

really bloomed, but how many do?” She stuck a stamp on the envelope and decided to walk

down to the post-box herself rather than entrust the letter to Ibrahim who would read the

name and address and gossip like mad to everyone, including Minnie.

Tusker was on the verandah at work on his notes. She had not inquired what these were.

He had been a good boy the night before, actually in bed when she got back from the

pictures, having made his own cocoa and left hers in the pot to rewarm. The level of the gin

in the new bottle suggested restraint, unless Billy-Boy had brought his own bottle with him.

She wondered whether the subject of the garden had come up. If so it had passed off

amicably enough because Tusker had been in a good mood and was in a good mood this

morning.

“I’m going to the bazaar,” she said, “to get your pills, Tusker dear. Is there anything you

want?”

“No thanks, Luce.”

“Then I’ll be off. Bloxsaw!”

The animal groaned but obediently got to its feet and padded after her. The
mali
was

tending the potted plants that flanked the gravel path.

“Good morning,
mali
,” she said on the spur of the moment. The young man rose and

touched his forehead. The dog kept its distance, sheltering behind her. She said, in her

terrible Urdu, “To you, from me, for your work, many thanks are.”

He lowered his eyes, touched his forehead again.

“Come, Bloxsaw.
Chalo
.”

Mali
, of course, was as yet too young to be a Toole, she thought. But there is a Toole in

him. (“Bloxsaw!”). The neck isn’t right, yet, but the eyes are promising. Devotion and

challenge. Muni’s eyes had been the best eyes. Newman’s and McQueen’s eyes were different

from Muni’s and from one another’s. But interesting. One needed an identikit to make the

perfect Toole.

“Bloxsaw!” She put the dog on the lead and addressed it thus: I must apologize, Mr Allnutt,

at having really to insist that we go this way when all too obviously you are determined to go

that way, but it is absolutely imperative, just as it is imperative that instead of lifting your leg

at every tree we pass, and going off at a tangent, we go as quickly and directly as we can to

Ghulab Singh’s the chemists so that I may purchase those few commodities essential to my

husband’s health, I might say survival, do I make myself plain?

“Yes, ma’am,” Bogie/Bloxsaw muttered, and pulled again on the rope (the lead) that

dragged the boat in which she sat, shaded by her parasol, through the Afro-Indian swamp.

When Lucy had gone Tusker, instead of continuing the notes he was making about the

library book (“A Short History of Pankot” by Edgar Maybrick, BA, LRAM. Privately

Printed), interpolated the following passage:

“Well, that proves it. The
mali
isn’t an hallucination, or if he is then Luce is even more

hallucinated because she just spoke to him. Not that I’ve ever really thought he was an

hallucination except for that minute or so when Billy-Boy first brought him into the

compound and I wondered whether I’d actually died weeks ago that night on the loo and

had since been having a sort of dream-time all to myself. But it’s been interesting the way

nobody has once mentioned the fellow to me. Originally I didn’t dare in case I actually was

damn’ well seeing things. I mean even Bloxsaw ignored him until that day we came back

from our walk and then he barked at him and suddenly turned tail, so I thought well dogs
are

odd, I mean they sometimes see things we don’t. And why has Billy-Boy never mentioned

him? Obviously though it’s been some kind of plot to humour me and they’re waiting for me

to show gratitude because I grumbled so much about there being no
mali
. I’ll be buggered if

I say anything first. The young fellow’s got the garden up a treat though, unless I’m

imagining that too, but I expect the Punjabi bitch will send me a bloody bill in which case

she can whistle for it because I can always say,
What
mali? (NB, though, wait and see and say

nowt.)”

He resumed his notes on the library book.

“Old Maybrick was always a bit of a fool, but a harmless one, and I must say I admire the

way he can write a 78 page monograph on the history of Pankot and refer to the Pankot

Rifles only in one paragraph. Stuck up bloody regiment it was in our day. Thought the sun

shone from its collective arse. The pinkest young subalterns on station gave themselves airs

if they were Pankot Rifles blokes. They even condescended to the Area Commander. There

was that one who ducked out of an appointment as
aide
to a general because the general was

originally only a Gunner. Bloody fool him. Died in North Africa with the first battalion

which old Layton later managed to get put into the bag to a man, or what was left of them.

As a Mahwar Regiment chap I didn’t begin to rank with them at all, of course, not that I

minded a bugger. I was never regiment-minded anyway, especially after it was made plain I’d

blotted my copybook by marrying at home without the CO’s approval. Approval! Great

Scott, I was pushing thirty.

Never forget his face when I got back from long home leave with Lucy in tow and said,

Colonel, I have the honour to present my wife, her name’s Lucy. It used to be Lucy Little

but it’s now Lucy Smalley, which seems a logical sort of progression don’t you think, sir?

(Ha).

Poor old Luce. She didn’t help matters when she told the Colonel’s lady that she’d been at

Pitmans and her speeds were such and such and that the solicitor’s office where she worked

was where we met. If old Luce’s dad had been a bishop it would have been okay, but he was

only a vicar, a parish priest. It didn’t matter a damn to me. If it had I wouldn’t have married

her. People used to think of me as a dull conventional sort of chap, but that was their

problem, not mine. Mind you, I never did anything to disabuse them of the idea they’d got

hold of that young Smalley was “safe”, a bit dim, but good with paper if not with people. It

suited me well enough. Always did like paper, working things out on it, arranging things with

it. The best job at battalion level was adjutant. I was acting adjutant when I went home on

long leave that time. I was supposed to be appointed when I got back, and had told Luce as

much. I never did work it out whether it was her, or the fact I’d married her without going

through that bloody silly rigmarole of having her vetted, that persuaded him I’d be better out

of the regiment altogether. Bit of both probably. He got rid of us by putting me up for a

temporary job in one of those small princely Indian states which the Political Department

was circularizing, and within the month Luce and I were off to Mudpore. I was never

regimentally employed again. Didn’t care a fig. The Mudpore thing carried extra pay so I

spun it out as long as I could. Can’t remember what I was called, something like

Administrative Adviser to the Commander of the State Forces, but I remember the job clear

enough: sorting out the balls-up the previous British attached officer had made and which

led to a stampede of the Prince’s elephants. The clot had cut down their feed because he

thought there was jiggery-pokery going on in the stables.

What a joke. What a lark. Ought to have written my memoirs. Old Luce adored Mudpore.

We had that bloody great bungalow practically in the grounds of the palace, the use of one

of the Daimlers with a liveried chauffeur, and when we first met the Maharajah he had on all

his paraphernalia and looked a regular bobby-dazzler, coat of silver thread, pearls festooned

in his turban; and Luce said, This is the
real
India, Tusker. Only she didn’t call me Tusker

because nobody did until later, when I’d got the elephants behaving properly again. Of

course the Mahwars have always been nicknamed the Tuskers because of the insignia but

I’m the only chap the nickname stuck to personally and permanently. A young punk of a

subaltern once said I must be called Tusker because it took me as long to work out a

problem as it took a pregnant cow-elephant to drop its calf, that’s to say twice as long as a

member of the human race needs. Must say I gave him full marks for that one.

He fancied Luce. You could see him working out how and when he could have it off with

her. Joke was she seemed to have no idea what was in his mind. Bit dim about things of that

sort, old Luce. This was in Ramnagar where we were after Mudpore and where she was the

only white woman for miles around. He used to come in from the
mofussil
every Friday night,

so regular that I called him Amami. He followed us to Lahore where we went next but went

off her because Lahore was crammed with what he couldn’t get his mind off. In 1935 he

blew his brains out in Quetta after being found in bed with a senior officer’s grass-widow.

He blew them out at 2 o’clock one morning. An hour later the earthquake reduced the

bungalow he blew them out in to rubble, so he could have saved himself the bother.

We were in Quetta the year after the ‘quake. Whenever we packed up to go to another

station Luce used to describe it as setting out again on our little wanderings. People called

her Little Me because she had this ridiculous habit of saying things like “There’ll just be the

four of us, including Little Me,” or, “Oh how nice, is that just for Little Me?” So there we

were, Tusker and Little Me. A boring couple, but useful. Luce never seemed to cotton on to

the fact that people found us heavy-going. Knowing shorthand she was in demand on every

woman’s committee that was going. She mistook it for popularity and was chuffed for days

if one of the senior bitches complimented her on her minutes or called her Lucy instead of

Mrs Smalley. As for me, I deliberately kept what nowadays they call a low profile. I
wanted
to

be thought dull. Dull but thoroughly reliable at the desk-work officers usually affected to

despise. I worked hard at getting a name as the man who could sort out other people’s balls-

ups. I liked moving around. My majority came through in ‘38. We could have gone home on

leave next year but put it off and then it was too late because the war started. In 1940 the

regiment asked to have me back. Not bloody likely. Knew how to short-circuit
that
sort of

thing. Moved round more than ever before, then in September 1941 we came up here to

Pankot to Area Headquarters. Took one look at it and I thought, nice scenery, good climate,

this is where I’ll dig in for the duration or know the reason why. So set about making myself

indispensable at the
daftar
, which meant making the job look more complicated that it was

even after I’d sorted out the mess the previous fellow had made and could do it standing on

my head. I was 40, still only a major. Had to wait another four years for a half-colonelcy, but

didn’t care. Accommodation was short. Luce and I were billeted at Smith’s, a sitting-room

and a bedroom, the ones Billy-Boy and that monster of a wife of his now live in. Luce always

hankered after a bungalow of our own, but Smith’s was fine by me. It helped me merge

unobtrusively with the background. My only ambition ever has been to survive as

comfortably as possible.

Old Maybrick doesn’t mention Smith’s at all. He’s got the date of the Church right but is

out by a year over the installation of the organ, according to Billy-Boy, but then Maybrick

only played the bloody thing. Maybrick was an enthusiast. Enthusiasm is the most ruinous

thing I can think of.”

Tusker’s birthday was April 10, Lucy’s September 12. They had fallen into the habit of

repaying station hospitality mainly by inviting people to what they called Birthday Buffet

suppers. Lucy’s birthday buffet was less troublesome than Tusker’s because she simply went

ahead with the arrangements, writing chits to people to whom they owed, warning Mr

Bhoolabhoy and confirming the approximate number of guests expected. The number of

guests was always approximate because sometimes people rang at the last moment to