Arctic Summer (3 page)

“Aligarh, I believe.”

“Yes. It seems that his grandfather was the founder of the college, so he is from a very good background.”

“No doubt. But how did he come to be the Morisons' ward?”

“I am not exactly sure of that. You will have to ask him yourself. Mrs. Morison did explain it, but the story was unclear. They refer to him as their son.”

“But the Morisons have a son.”

“Well, it seems they have two.” And Lily, who had been in a perfectly good humour till then, became unaccountably fretful and began calling peevishly for the maid, so that Morgan thought it best to retire to the piano room to practise his Beethoven.

The Indian man stayed with him, however, in the form of a mystery. A small mystery, to be sure, but with sufficient colour to stand out against the surrounding drabness. Since coming down from Cambridge five years before, he had felt himself gradually losing his way. The bright and interesting world remained, but for the most part he had to go out and visit it. Rarely did it come to visit him; much less with an appointment, and a desire to brush up on its Latin.

On the day arranged, Morgan hovered anxiously around the front door half an hour before the time. Nevertheless, his pupil was late. Syed Ross Masood was tall and broad and strikingly handsome, appearing far older than his seventeen years. His smiling face, with its luxuriant moustache and sad brown eyes, looked down on Morgan from what felt, on that first morning, like a remote height.

They had shaken hands in greeting, but Masood wouldn't release his grip. He announced solemnly, with a tone of accusation, “You are a writer. You have published a book.”

Morgan acknowledged that the second statement was true. He had published a novel the year before, which had generally been well received, and he had two others upstairs in different stages of undress. Nevertheless, the idea of being a writer felt like an ill-fitting suit on him, which he kept trying to shrug into, or out of.

“That is a fine, a very fine thing. It is one of the noble arts, perhaps the most noble of all. Except for poetry. Have you read the poetry of Ghalib? You must do so immediately, or I will never speak to you again. Ah, that I could have lived in Moghul times! You have travelled to India? No? But that is a great crime on your part. You must come to visit me there one day.”

The low, fast, sonorous voice, never really expecting an answer to its questions, continued without a pause while they went inside and settled themselves in the drawing room, and even while Agnes was serving tea, and only then fell suddenly silent. Now the two men took stock of one another more carefully. Masood was elegantly and expensively dressed, and gave off a hint of perfume. He looked, and sounded, and smelled like a prince. Morgan, on the other hand, had a crumpled, second-hand appearance, which made him seem like a tradesman of some kind.

“You need help with your Latin,” he said to Masood.

“No, no. My Latin is beyond help. It is a lost cause.” He was carrying a couple of textbooks under his arm, which he flung down in mock-despair. “Tell me rather about life at an English university.”

“I know Cambridge, not Oxford.”

“My father was a student at Christ's College, Cambridge. Did you know that? He was sent there by my grandfather, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. My grandfather wished his Anglo-Oriental College to be like Cambridge, only for Mohammedan students. My grandfather was a great lover of the English, especially English education, oh yes! My father too, though he was not always well treated by his English friends. I, for my part, have yet to make up my mind.”

“What did your father read at Cambridge?”

“Law, law. He was a barrister, you see, and then he became a High Court judge. But he resigned that position in unhappy circumstances.”

Morgan asked carefully, “How is it that you came to live with the Morisons?”

“Ah. That is an interesting story. A very interesting story. But I think I do not know you well enough to tell it.”

“Of course. I didn't mean to pry.”

Masood reflected thoughtfully for a moment, then leaned forward in his chair, his dark eyes becoming darker. “Some years ago, when I was ten, my father lost his mind. He was very drunk, you see. Alcohol was the downfall of my father. It is the reason he resigned from the law as well.”

“I am sorry to hear that.”

“Yes. He took me out onto the lawns of the college one night. It was very dark and cold. He tried to show me how to use a wooden plough. He was talking a great deal of nonsense about the politics of agriculture. He wanted to teach me something, I believe, about what it means to be Indian. I was extremely afraid. My mother, too, was afraid, and she ran to call Mr. Morison, who came very quickly. He wrapped me up in his coat and took me home, and I have never left again.”

“I see,” Morgan said—though he didn't, really. There was a great deal about the story that he did not understand.

“Well, it is sad, terribly sad. The life of my father was a sad one. He has passed on now, a few years after this incident I mentioned.” Having said this, Masood brightened considerably and asked Morgan, “Where is
your
father?”

“My father died a long time ago, when I was very young. I don't remember him.”

“That is also terribly sad.”

“I do not feel it to be so.”

The two men looked at each other with renewed awareness. Morgan didn't know what to make of his visitor, who had been so utterly forthright in such an un-English way. Part of him was tempted to be shocked, but he decided instead that he liked this young man, precisely because he spoke without restraint.

And his liking only grew over the succeeding weeks, in which they met regularly. Very little Latin was learned, however. Although Morgan prepared his lessons, when they sat down to the task Masood immediately began to writhe and squirm and to speak of other things.

On the third occasion, Morgan tried to insist. “You must attend to these declensions,” he told his pupil. “It is the purpose of our being here.”

“It is so terribly boring. Why don't we go for a walk?”

“When we are done with our lesson.”

Masood looked mournfully at him. Then he sprang up and seized hold of Morgan, pushing him backward on the couch and tickling him furiously. It was shocking—for the first instant like assault and only then like play. Something in Morgan was thrown back in time to childhood, afternoon, the smell of straw in the heat. Ansell, his favourite of the garden boys, had frolicked with him like this.

That moment did it; Masood became his friend. The distance between them had closed.

 

* * *

 

India had encroached on the edge of Morgan's mind before now, not a place so much as an idea. It had become a tradition for Kingsmen to join the Indian Civil Service and many people he knew had gone out there to make their careers. It was spoken of at dinner parties, usually with extreme seriousness, as the vital cornerstone of the Empire. On the other side of the world, yet somehow part of England, it was not a place he had ever thought he might visit. Yet now, as he listened to Masood talk about his childhood, and sensed the homesickness in his voice, he began to imagine himself against the same background. Perhaps, yes, perhaps he would go there one day.

In the meantime, however, England was very much with him. The suburbs especially, with their hateful self-righteousness, and where his life seemed to consist of an endless round of tea parties and amiable, empty conversations, mostly—it felt to him—with elderly women.

One of these was his mother's great friend, Maimie Aylward. When Lily mentioned Morgan's new pupil to her, she put a hand up to her face.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “I do hope he won't steal the spoons.”

Morgan laughed politely, though he didn't feel like laughing. He had learned to feign enjoyment in conversations like these, and hated himself for the pretence. Although he was English all the way through, a great many English attitudes felt foreign to him.

For this reason, what Morgan found most interesting in his new friend was the strangeness of him, the exoticism imported into his drawing room. The most familiar topic, seen through Masood's eyes, became unpredictable, unusual. And what was ordinary to Masood seemed to Morgan remarkable.

Such as the casual mention one day that he could trace his ancestry back to the Prophet Mohammed at the thirty-seventh generation. “And to Adam at the hundred and twentieth,” he added. The world, in that moment, felt very old and beautiful.

Though Morgan, of course, knew nothing about Mohammedanism, and this was irksome to Masood.

“Let me explain,” he said patiently. “Not to drink wine. Not to eat the pig. There is one God and Mohammed is His prophet. To believe in the Last Judgement. Oh yes, and not to eat an animal that has died. Even a white man could follow these simple rules.”

“In theory, yes. But I don't believe in religion.”

“You mean you are a Christian.”

“No, no. I lost my belief when I was at Cambridge.”

“My dear Forster, all Englishmen are Christians. It is very sad. The English are a tragic race, I feel deeply sorry for them. I would like to help them, but they are too numerous, there is nothing to be done.”

When Masood went up to Oxford soon afterwards, Weybridge felt immediately emptier. There was nobody left that Morgan cared for. But their communication went on in the form of frequent letters that stitched back and forth. In a continuation of the tone they had already established, Masood's letters were written in a faux-Eastern style, elaborate and overwrought, a mixture of sentiment and irony. He addressed Morgan in exalted terms: a great deal of
Thou
and
Thine
, and pledges of eternal devotion, against an imaginary background of minarets and muezzins. Very quickly, Morgan began responding in the same way.

Not long afterwards, he travelled to Oxford for a visit. Summer had almost taken hold; the few days passed in a dreamy haze of punts and walks and aimless conversation. Masood was by now in occupation of the whole town, as if it were one of his expensive capes that he could put on or drop at will. He was not so much interested in his studies, it seemed, as in playing an elaborate role, though the nature of the drama was not always clear. He liked to swagger around with a silver-topped cane, reciting Paul Verlaine in his mournfully melodious voice, or to prance about the tennis courts in his whites. He played a lot of tennis—and music on the gramophone, and practical jokes. In short, he liked to play, especially in his serious moments.

He was also the centre of a small coterie of admirers, most of them Indian, who lolled about in his rooms like the retinue of some indolent Emperor. Morgan went almost unnoticed in this company, sinking below the level of visibility, like a child or a spy. Often the talk around him was conducted in Urdu, only occasionally and laconically translated by Masood. But sometimes they all spoke in English, though the topics they discussed were almost a foreign language in themselves: customs in India, historical figures Morgan had never heard of, cities he had never seen.

To his great delight, these conversations also sometimes involved poetry, which was theatrically declaimed in Urdu or Persian, and sometimes in Arabic. The themes, as far as he could gather, were mostly about the shortness of love, or the decline of Islam. It was odd to hear lyricism in a social setting like this, but Masood explained to him that in the East poetry occupied a public place, not a private one, as it did in England.

“You so-called white people,” he was told, “are too afraid of your emotions. Everything is arranged coldly on shelves. In India we show how we feel, without being ashamed.”

“Why so-called?”

“Because your colour is far from white. More a pinko-grey, I'd say. Look.”

When he and Masood put their arms together, to compare, he saw that it was true. He had never thought of his skin in this way before. His friend's colouring was infinitely more attractive.

Such ideas edged dangerously close to politics, which also came up as a topic among Masood's friends. But in these conversations the talk turned feverish and unintelligible, though it was easy to make out that Indian independence was a common and recurrent theme. It was only when they became aware of him that they would suddenly fall silent, and shift about.

When the time came for him to leave, Masood pressed a small parcel on him. “You'd better try them on,” he said. “I have guessed at the size.”

It was a pair of golden slippers.

“Oh, but I can't accept them. They're too beautiful.”

“Certainly you will accept, or I shall never speak to you again.”

The slippers fitted perfectly, holding his feet with a gentle, satiny grip. In his English trousers, which were a little too short, he seemed outlandish and a bit ridiculous to himself. But the only emotion he felt was gratitude—almost too much of it.

A month later he was back for a second visit, at the conclusion of which Masood cast around for another gift. Looking vaguely at the assortment of Indian articles that strewed the room—embroidered quilts, jewellery, carved wooden boxes of incense—he picked out something almost at random: a hookah, which one of his friends, a man named Raschid, had been smoking the day before.

“No. This I certainly cannot take.”

“But you must.”

“No. Thank you. But it is too generous. I am happy with my slippers.”

An odd expression came over Masood's face, a wooden detachment that fitted over his kindliness like a mask. “I insist you have it. And you must not thank me again.”

The pressure of his hands, as he pushed the hookah at Morgan, was almost impolite. But he had softened a little by the time they came to the railway station. “You must not thank me if I give you something,” he said quietly. “And I will not thank you either.”

“But why not?”