1977 (8 page)

Mrs Bhoolabhoy about her having backed down.”

Suddenly she chortled.

Ibrahim smiled. “Memsahib?”

“Backed down! Can you imagine the sight of Mrs Bhoolabhoy backing down?”

She chortled again. Ibrahim laughed. She had one hand near her throat, the other on her

hip. Now she gave a full-throated laugh, then tapped him on the arm. “We can’t think of

everything. Let’s forget Mrs Bhoolabhoy. The thing is to get Sahib well first. And we must

be diplomatic. Very diplomatic. I shall rely on you to a very considerable extent, Ibrahim. If

it seems there’s really nothing Mr Bhoolabhoy can do about a
mali
, then I’d prefer not to

discuss things with him further. It would be better if you discussed them.”

“Memsahib means in regard to use of tools?”

“Well that, yes, but before discussing tools you would have to say that since I think Burra

Sahib will never get fully well again while the garden continues in the state it is, I am

prepared—so long as Burra Sahib remains in ignorance of the fact—prepared out of my

own resources—to see it put right. After that we should have to see. It is a question of one

step at a time.”

“Also a question of money. Memsahib spoke of the possibility of persuading Colonel Sahib

to increase my own wage.”

“To reduce the cost of the boy to me,” she said almost inaudibly but promptly.

“Memsahib I am not fully understanding this.”

“It only means that to pay the
mali
you would be getting some money from Sahib as well as

from me. But a rise is a rise is a rise. Come the day when we no longer need
mali
you would

have that extra money for yourself.
M alum
?”

“
Malum
, Memsahib.” He was sure there was a snag somewhere.

“Dear Ibrahim.” Not looking at him she pressed his left forearm. “What should I do

without you? What would either of us do? Just tell me the moment Mr Bhoolabhoy returns,

so that I can have a word with him in private.”

But he was unable to do this because on that day no one was speaking to anyone. And

although it was Memsahib’s turn to take the dog for a walk and she could have doubled this

duty with that of going down to Gulab Singh, the chemist, it was he who in the end had had

to do so. She had sat on in the living-room after breakfast writing letters at her escritoire

while Tusker—shawled—sat out on the verandah reading a book from the Club library,

making notes in the margins which the librarian had more than once asked him not to do,

and saying Ha! to break the monotony. Both were deaf to one another, to Ibrahim, and now

to the tiresome whining and padding to and fro of Bloxsaw between living-room and

verandah and garage (which was his home, there being no car there). All Bloxsaw wanted

was to be taken notice of, but they weren’t speaking to Bloxsaw either. In the end to stop

himself going mad Ibrahim fetched the lead, viciously attached it to the collar muttering

“Shaitan! Shaitan!” then dragged the reluctant beast down to the cantonment bazaar to the

Excelsior Coffee Shop in what was still called War Memorial Square, which wasn’t a proper

square at all but the place where the road from West Hill met the one from East Hill.

As usual there were several idle people clustered round the base of the memorial, among

them the Englishman whose long matted red hair reached to his shoulders. He had been in

and out of Pankot long enough now for no one to take much notice of him. He had no

shoes. His only possessions were a canvas bag, a pair of torn trousers and a blanket—all as

filthy as himself.

“Seen our English Hippie?” Tusker had asked Lucy shortly before his illness.

“I’ve seen a hippie.”

“That’s what I asked.”

“He can’t be English.”

“He is. I spoke to him.”

“
Spoke
to him?”

“Why not? Tipped him a rupee too. He gave me a lovely smile. The sort that says, Sucker!

Comes from Liverpool. He’s into what he calls mudditoyshun.”

Sometimes, out of curiosity, if the hippie was there, and came begging at the coffee shop,

Ibrahim threw him a few paise. The strange young man was adept at catching them in mid-

air but never seemed to resent scrabbling in the dust for those he muffed. Today he just sat

with his back to the memorial, either asleep or drugged to the eyeballs.

“Management is back,” the cook at Smith’s told him when he called in to pass the time of

day, to delay his arrival back at the silent Lodge. “Ah,” Ibrahim said, and presently returned

home. But it was still a day of silence. She waved him away when he ventured near her

escritoire. Tusker Sahib was still busy with the library book. Bloxsaw was now too exhausted

to care whether he was taken notice of or not. The creature hated the walks with the same

sulky passion it whined to be taken on them. Hysterical when locked in anywhere it lost all

initiative when free. He had never known a dog so intent on getting in sack-time. It had now

collapsed on the verandah panting like a pack-dog that had been harnessed to a sledge and

driven through a blizzard. It would probably sulk for the rest of the day, like its master and

mistress.

Mr Bhoolabhoy did not come over to see his old friend who had been ill until after dinner

when perhaps he hoped Tusker would be in bed. But Tusker wasn’t. He was in the living-

room still annotating the library book. The deed-box was on his chairside table. Memsahib

sat opposite, her spectacles on the end of her nose, knitting one of the awful pullovers which

Sahib grumbled about having to wear. Since Memsahib took months to knit a pullover, and

knitted it in full view of Tusker Sahib, Ibrahim never understood why it wasn’t until he got it

for Christmas that he complained about the pattern and colours.

Ibrahim was in the kitchen preparing the trays for bed-cocoa when he heard Mr

Bhoolabhoy arrive. He held his breath, waiting for the storm which he was supposed to have

averted by tipping Memsahib off that the Manager was back. But the storm never came.

“Have a drink, old Billy-Boy,” he heard Tusker say. “When did you get back then? Had a gay

old time in jolly Ranpur did you? Ibrahim!”

He went in. They were all re-settling in chairs. He was told to bring glasses, beer, gin and

lime juice.

“And some biscuits, Ibrahim,” Memsahib said in her gentlest manner, as if they had been

having a lovely companionable day.

“Oh, I’m fine, now,” Tusker was saying to Mr Bhoolabhoy.

While he busied himself preparing the tray he paused every so often, anticipating the

moment when the subject of the garden could no longer be ignored.

“Where are those drinks, then?” Tusker shouted.

“Coming, Sahib.”

He took the tray in, poured what he was ordered and handed the glasses round. Billy-Boy

was describing the new hotel in Ranpur, and the Go-Go-Inn. Tusker was smiling, smiling.

Between his chair and Mr Bhoolabhoy’s was the chairside table with the deed box still on it.

Memsahib asked him whether he had been to the pictures and if so what had they been

showing.

Extraordinary. Ibrahim returned to the kitchen and then pottered about from kitchen to

bedroom, turning back the sheets, ensuring there were no old towels in the bathroom that

should be in the dhobi basket. He dragged the work out for as long as possible, longing for

the moment when the word
mali
was mentioned. He would have to pretend to Memsahib

that he had not known Mr Bhoolabhoy was back, if she was cross with him in the morning

and accused him of being the cause of the row that would surely begin at any moment.

He retired to the verandah. But there was no row. At ten o’clock Mr Bhoolabhoy said

goodnight, they waved him off and then told Ibrahim he could lock up. They went into the

bedroom. He locked up, cleared the glasses and then sat out on the rear verandah waiting for

Minnie to give some sign of life.

The rear verandah was blocked at one end by the wall of the bathroom and presently from

there he heard a peculiar sound. An astonishing sound. He could hardly believe it. He must

be mistaken. But within a few moments it was beyond dispute. The sound was coming

through the little air-grille high up in the wall. The sound he heard was the sound of Colonel

Sahib crying.

“Oh, Tusker, Tusker,” Memsahib’s voice came drifting through. “What are you doing?

What is the matter? You mustn’t be upset. But who is to speak if you do not speak and you

oughtn’t to speak. What does it matter about a little bit of grass, my silly, silly, Tusker, what

does it matter? What is grass? Forget grass. Billy-Boy will see that the grass is cut, I’m sure,

and even if he doesn’t, who cares whether it is cut or not so long as it is not cut for both of

us, and so long as we’re together?”

“Oh, Lucy,” Tusker Sahib said, and Ibrahim got up and left.

In the morning when she gave him the shopping list and a letter to post by airmail, she

said, “I think we must mount
Operation Mali
. Malum?”

“
Malum
, Colonel-Memsahib.”

THE NEW
mali’s
name was Joseph and he was a Christian.

“Orphan boy,” Mr Bhoolabhoy said. It was Mr Bhoolabhoy who had found him, a fact

which potentially gave a touch of authenticity to the deception because when Tusker Sahib

said to Mr Bhoolabhoy something like, “I see after all there’s a new
mali
” and Mr

Bhoolabhoy agreed that there was he could add that his name was Joseph an orphan-boy

from Ranpur whom he, Mr Bhoolabhoy, had found in pitiful circumstances, badly in need of

some employment. The touch of authenticity was only potential because it depended on

Tusker Sahib opening up a conversation about the new
mali
in that kind of way.

But he didn’t. He didn’t open up a conversation at all, with anyone. One of the great

disappointments of
Operation Mali
was that on the morning Joseph at last arrived and began

to cut the grass at The Lodge, Tusker said nothing. He continued to say nothing. To him,

mali
seemed invisible. Which was patently ridiculous. Day after day, while Tusker sat on the

verandah, Joseph slaved away at the grass in full view of the master of the house who was

now busily engaged in writing in an exercise book. Even when the two were within speaking

distance—Tusker on the verandah and Joseph kneeling in the bed of canna lilies just below,

nothing was said.

Memsahib said nothing either—either to
mali
or to Tusker about
mali’s
presence. When she

and Ibrahim were alone she sometimes said things like, “Your
mali
is doing well,” or, “Your

mali
seems a nice quiet boy,” and then changed the subject. This was quite understandable to

Ibrahim. In order to please Tusker she had had to deceive him and to cleanse her mind of

this deception she was having to deceive herself by thinking day after day of Joseph as a boy

with whom she had nothing to do, even though it was she who was going to foot the bill out

of funds whose nature Ibrahim did not inquire into. (The housekeeping? Her appetite, never

great, seemed less than ever. She now ate like a bird.)

It was Tusker Sahib’s own kind of self-deception that puzzled and fascinated him. It was as

though—after making all that fuss -he had decided to occupy a world in which neither the

garden nor the
mali
existed.

Otherwise the operation had so far worked out well. It had been mounted with the

precision that Lucy brought to most of her activities, including knitting which however awful

the final result she was prepared to spend hours over, unravelling row after row if she saw a

slipped stitch or decided that the tension was uneven.

On the morning after Mr Bhoolabhoy’s evening visit, she disappeared for twenty minutes

at an unusual hour and, returning, taking Ibrahim on one side, explained that she had

executed her part of the arrangement by establishing with the manager that in the

foreseeable future the Owner had no intention of replacing the
mali
and might even sack the

blind, lame youth. He confirmed that, yes, Mrs Bhoolabhoy did seem to take the view that

since last July she had been under no actual obligation to supply a
mali
, and that one could

only await developments.

“So the rest is now up to you. Last night, Ibrahim, Burra Sahib was very upset because Mr

Bhoolabhoy did not even raise the subject of the garden. It’s a pity we did not know Mr

Bhoolabhoy was back, otherwise I could have had a word with him before he came across.

But it can’t be helped. I wish it could. I find these little plots and plans foreign to my nature,

to my preference for the way of dealing with things. There was a time when we, when
we
, did

not have to go in for such things, a time when as my poor father used to say —”

“God rest father’s soul, Memsahib,” he said. He knew she was an English clergyman’s