1977 (14 page)

announce they had people staying and could they bring them along, or rang to say they’d

been ordered to Delhi. This could be tiresome because the cook at Smith’s needed several

days’ notice to arrange the catering, and once the order had been given and a per head price

agreed with Mr Bhoolabhoy it was difficult to make changes.

The other difficulty was that of trying to remember or find out who was veg and who was

non-veg, how many were fruit-juice only people and how many ranked as what Tusker called

certified alcoholics; but at least—now that the whole province was “wet” the liquor was easy

to get, could be drunk in the open, and unused bottles returned to Jalal-ud-Din’s. In Pankot

there was not even a dry day, although there was one in Ranpur. The anomalies of the Indian

drinking laws from province to province had always been too many for Lucy to grasp, but

Tusker professed to be an expert, to be able to tell anyone who cared to inquire what

obstacles had to be overcome to get a drink in any major Indian city you could name, to

know where you could get beer ad lib but needed a permit for hard liquor, where what could

be drunk in public or only in a permit room, which states were dry but had capitals as wet as

a Sunday afternoon in Wales (as he put it), where your car might be stopped in transit from a

wet to a dry area and searched, in which places a permit holder could buy his whole month’s

ration in one go and in which the liquor shops were run by men he described as suffering

from a touch of the Morarjidesais and allowed only one bottle a week.

Tusker’s obsession with the liquor laws dated from the time he’d been in trouble with the

police in Bombay. But Lucy preferred not to think about that because it was all part and

parcel of what she called the débâcle and he’d begun to knock it back at half-past ten in the

morning.

For the past ten years a bottle of Carew’s gin a week and a monthly bottle of Golconda

brandy, a dozen bottles of beer had been about all they could afford to have in the house,

and a lot of it went on people who dropped in, as Indians tended to, especially if they had an

American staying with them who had asked “Are there any old-style British around here?”

and were brought along to see for themselves.

“We should write to Cooks,” Lucy suggested to Tusker after one such visitation (Mrs Desai

and a lady from Virginia who called Lucy Honey), “and ask them to put us on the tourist

itinerary. After the Taj Mahal, after the rock temples of Khajarao, after Elephanta, after

Fatehpur Sikri, after the beach temple at Mahaba-lipuram and the Victoria Monument in

Calcutta, the Smalleys of Pankot. We could make a packet, Tusker, especially if you wore

your old topee and I could be discovered playing Mahjong. A little tableau-vivant. Ibrahim

could take the money at the door and guard their shoes.”

Tusker’s birthday buffets were more difficult to organize because he invariably said he

wasn’t going to have one this year and couldn’t afford it and people would have to whistle

for it and sod the lot of them. His habit of bad language dated from the day of his final

retirement from the army in 1949 when he shook her to the core on his return home from

the daftar for the last time, flung his cap on the floor and said, “Right that’s ••••••• that,”

using a word Lucy could only think of as spelt in asterisks. A few hours later he shook her

again by making love to her twice between lights out and reveille.

As a lover Tusker had been something of a disappointment to her. Her mother had warned

her that men were insatiable, especially in heating climates. Finding that on their short

honeymoon, on the boat out, and on arrival in India, Tusker seemed satisfied by limiting his

conjugal performances to Wednesdays and Saturdays (with an occasional matinée

performance on the honeymoon) she had thought of her thin rail of a father with new

respect since she had to assume that he was her mother’s only source of experience. After a

while even Wednesdays began to fall off. She awaited the falling off of Saturdays too but this

never came about. Tusker seemed to have been wound up in such a way that Saturday night

was the night he rang.

But then he was a methodical man. There was a drill for everything, even for this. Saturday

nights were usually club nights and they usually got back to their quarters at half-past eleven.

At midnight she climbed in under the massive white mosquito net that shrouded the large

double bed of those early married days and switched off her light, leaving Tusker’s on. Ten

minutes later he came out of the bathroom, climbed in on his side, switched the lamp off

after ten minutes spent reading something of military significance, and settled. About five

minutes later still his hand sought her waist. She breathed out heavily, as if her slumbers

were only momentarily disturbed. His hand then moved to the mound of venus. She

breathed in. He muttered something and heaved himself up and over on top. He smelt of

the Bay Rum which he favoured as a hairdressing. She tried hard to get the erotic sense of

this particular smell because often she needed every bit of help she could get. But in regard

to Bay Rum the law of diminishing returns had set in long ago. Perhaps part of the trouble

was that on their first coition she had been so ripe in anticipation that she may have misled

him about the degree of attention he need pay her. She hadn’t noticed Bay Rum on that

occasion.

Subsequently he scarcely seemed to notice her at all. He went through the motions. Of

these motions, so she had worked it out over the months and years, there was an average of

thirty. His climax was not so much a climax as a sigh, after which he collapsed as if pole-

axed, rolled away and slept.

And so in the pale dark, and the stillness, a dark lightened by the white net, and a stillness

punctuated by Tusker’s snores and the yelps of distant jackals, she had found herself

remembering Toole and recreating him. She had been doing so ever since.

Now Tusker had conked out.

And was about to be 71.

She would have all the bother of finding out whether he really meant it this time that he

wasn’t going to have a birthday buffet. She usually allowed two to three weeks before his

birthday before opening discussions. And so on Monday March 20 when she came back

from the bazaar she was ready with the opening shot. But before she could open her mouth

he said, “Who’s Mrs Guy Perron?”

“I have no idea, Tusker. Why?”

“You’ve got a letter from her, that’s all.”

He handed her an airmail envelope.

WHEN SHE opened the letter she realized that Mrs Guy Perron was Sarah Layton.
Dear

Mrs Smalley
, Sarah began. Of this formal opening Lucy approved. Although she had always

called Sarah Sarah and Susan Susan, they being so many years her juniors, they had always

addressed her properly (in the way she for years had called their mother Mrs Layton and not

Mildred. She’d tried the Mildred once and been properly snubbed).

“Dear Mrs Smalley, It was so good of you to write to me about Father’s death. He would

have been so interested to hear you were still in Pankot. His death was not due to cancer and

he was alert and active almost right to the end which came rather suddenly. It was mother

who had cancer, I’m afraid.

You are quite right, Teddie is Susan’s son by her first husband Teddie Bingham. Teddie is

now a father himself, which is where ‘Boskie’ comes in, a little boy of three which is about

the age Teddie was when you last saw him in Pankot. He and his family are in Washington

just now, but I’ve written to Susan telling her of your kind letter and the interesting news

about Minnie. She’ll no doubt tell Teddie next time she writes to him. She married for the

third time a couple of years after we all came home. They live in Scotland. He’s a physician.

Since their marriage she has been in good health and I think very happy and contented.

Teddie has followed in his step-father’s footsteps by going into medicine. I’m sure he’ll recall

Minnie because he has a vivid memory and used to astonish me with the clarity of his

recollections of India, although some must have been helped out by the family photographs.

There’s one taken in the garden of Commandant House at our farewell party in 1947, which

includes you and Colonel Smalley. Perhaps you have a copy? If you have and you can still

pick me out, the tall fair-haired man in civvies on my left is my husband Guy.

Guy is an historian and has the chair in modern history at one of the new universities.

Presently he’s on a sabbatical and we’re living at Combe Lodge. Normally we live in

Falminster but rented the house there to a visiting American professor and his family last

autumn and came down here so that Guy could work on his new book and I could look

after father who found it lonely here after Mother died. Lance and Jane, as you imagined, are

our children, but both are quite grown-up now and at Universities. We may continue

permanently at Combe Lodge if Guy gets an appointment in London that seems to be on

the cards. I’m not banking on it though. Academic life is as itinerant as the one we used to

live in India, or nearly.

You probably don’t recall Guy at all because you only met on that occasion when father

was handing over at Commandant House. Minnie, in fact, probably recalls him as the young

Englishman who turned up in Mirât in August ‘47 just after Susan’s second husband,

Colonel Merrick, had died. He was in the carriage with us on that awful journey to Ranpur

when the train was stopped and people were killed. He had to go on to Delhi but came up to

Pankot later to see how we all were before flying home, which is why he was at the farewell

party. Actually he’d been in Pankot before, very briefly, in ‘45, so he’s as interested as I am in

anything you can tell us about it nowadays.

I do hope Colonel Smalley is now well on the mend. I was sorry to hear he’d been badly

under the weather. I still have the lovely sandalwood box he gave me when I stopped being a

WAC (I) and gave up the
daftar
. (Incidentally, I’ve always thought of you both as Tusker and

Lucy, so may I call you that after all these years?)

Another reason for this letter is to tell you that I’ve given your address and telephone

number to a very pleasant young man called David Turner, who was a student of Guy’s.

He’s going out to India in April to lecture at various universities and collect material for a

thesis. Ranpur is on his itinerary so we’d already suggested he should take a few days off and

go up to Pankot to get some hill air. He flies to Delhi on April 10. He doesn’t start his main

lectures until the universities reassemble in the wet weather but he’s keen to see as much as

possible and also to go down into Bangladesh (as all young people seem to be). He’s been in

India before and has friends in Calcutta. He wants to spend a month or so acclimatizing

himself again and travelling around. He’s also interested in talking to English people who

stayed on, and I know he’d love to meet you. He’s a very good amateur photographer

incidentally and especially interested in old British gravestones which sounds awfully morbid

to me, but I told him there are some family gravestones in Pankot (Muirs and Laytons) and

he’s promised to bring back pictures if they’re still identifiable. I’m sure he’ll be in touch with

you, probably towards the end of April, but knowing how casual young people are nowadays

he may just turn up. But don’t worry. He’s not the kind of person you need to go to the least

trouble over. Guy and I are awfully fond of him. I’ve told him about the new Shiraz and that

Smith’s still exists. If there’s any small thing you’d like him to bring out from home please

tell me and I’ll get it and give it to him. There’s just about time for me to hear from you

before he leaves, so please don’t hesitate, I’ll send something to Minnie via David anyway.

Meanwhile my thanks again for your very kind and most welcome letter. Please let us keep in

touch. Kindest regards to you both. Sarah.”

From her escritoire Lucy could just see through the window the top of Tusker’s head

which meant he was still settled and content in his chair. She was glad. She would not have

liked to be interrupted and interrogated about the letter. It had both an ebullient and a

disturbing effect on her. She read it through once more. Again it both raised her spirits and

lowered them. It provoked a variety of emotions and she could not for the moment sort out

one clearly from the other: delight in new contact, renewal of contact, envy of a life so free

and open, nostalgia for Pankot as it had been.