DUST ON MOUNTAIN: COLLECTED STORIES (20 page)

I
was sitting on a bench in the Indian Section of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, when a tall, stooping, elderly gentleman sat down beside me. I gave him a quick glance, noting his swarthy features, heavy moustache and horn-rimmed spectacles. There was something familiar and disturbing about his face and I couldn’t resist looking at him again.

I noticed that he was smiling at me.

‘Do you recognize me?’ he asked in a soft pleasant voice.

‘Well, you do seem familiar,’ I said. ‘Haven’t we met somewhere?’

‘Perhaps. But if I seem familiar to you, that is at least something. The trouble these days is that people don’t
know
me anymore—I’m familiar, that’s all. Just a name standing for a lot of outmoded ideas.’

A little perplexed, I asked. ‘What is it you do?’

‘I wrote books once. Poems and tales … Tell me, whose books do you read?’

‘Oh, Maugham, Priestley, Thurber. And among the older lot, Bennett and Wells …’ I hesitated, groping for an important name, and I noticed a shadow, a sad shadow, pass across my companion’s face.

‘Oh, yes, and Kipling,’ I said, ‘I read a lot of Kipling.’

His face brightened up at once and the eyes behind the thick-lensed spectacles suddenly came to life.

‘I’m Kipling,’ he said.

I stared at him in astonishment. And then, realizing that he might perhaps be dangerous, I smiled feebly and said, ‘Oh, yes?’

‘You probably don’t believe me. I’m dead, of course.’

‘So I thought.’

‘And you don’t believe in ghosts?’

‘Not as a rule.’

‘But you’d have no objection to talking to one if he came along?’

‘I’d have no objection. But how do I know you’re Kipling? How do I know you’re not an impostor?’

‘Listen, then:

When my heavens were turned to blood,

When the dark had filled my day,

Furthest, but most faithful, stood

That lone star I cast away.

I had loved myself, and I

Have not lived and dare not die.

‘Once,’ he said, gripping me by the arm and looking me straight in the eye, ‘once in life I watched a star but I whistled her to go.’

‘Your star hasn’t fallen yet,’ I said, suddenly moved, suddenly quite certain that I sat beside Kipling. ‘One day, when there is a new spirit of adventure abroad, we will discover you again.’

‘Why have they heaped scorn on me for so long?’

‘You were too militant, I suppose—too much of an Empire man. You were too patriotic for your own good.’

He looked a little hurt. ‘I was never very political,’ he said. ‘I wrote over six hundred poems. And you could only call a dozen of them political. I have been abused for harping on the theme of the white man’s burden but my only aim was to show off the Empire to my audience—and I believed the Empire was a fine and noble thing. Is it wrong to believe in something? I never went deeply into political issues, that’s true. You must remember, my seven years in India were very youthful years. I was in my twenties, a little immature if you like, and my interest in India was a boy’s interest. Action appealed to me more than anything else. You must understand that.’

‘No one has described action more vividly, or India so well. I feel at one with Kim wherever he goes along the Grand Trunk Road, in the temples of Banaras, amongst the Saharanpur fruit gardens, on the snow-covered Himalayas.
Kim
has colour and movement and poetry.’

He sighed and a wistful look came into his eyes.

‘I’m prejudiced, of course,’ I continued. ‘I’ve spent most of my life in India—not
your
India, but an India that does still have much of the colour and atmosphere that you captured. You know, Mr Kipling, you can still sit in a third-class railway carriage and meet the most wonderful assortment of people. In any village you will still find the same courtesy, dignity and courage that the Lama and Kim found on their travels.’

‘And the Grand Trunk Road? Is it still a long, winding procession of humanity?’

‘Well, not exactly,’ I said a little ruefully. ‘It’s just a procession of motor vehicles now. The poor Lama would be run down by a truck if he became too dreamy on the Grand Trunk Road. Times
have
changed. There are no more Mrs Hawksbees in Simla, for instance.’

There was a faraway look in Kipling’s eyes. Perhaps he was imagining himself a boy again. Perhaps he could see the hills or the red dust of Rajputana. Perhaps he was having a private conversation with Privates Mulvaney and Ortheris, or perhaps he was out hunting with the Seonce wolf pack. The sound of London’s traffic came to us through the glass doors but we heard only the creaking of bullock-cart wheels and the distant music of a flute.

He was talking to himself, repeating a passage from one of his stories. ‘And the last puff of the day-wind brought from the unseen villages, the scent of damp wood-smoke, hot cakes, dripping undergrowth, and rotting pine-cones. That is the true smell of the Himalayas and if once it creeps into the blood of a man, that man will at the last, forgetting all else, return to the hills to die.’

A mist seemed to have risen between us—or had it come in from the streets?—and when it cleared, Kipling had gone away.

I asked the gatekeeper if he had seen a tall man with a slight stoop, wearing spectacles.

‘Nope,’ said the gatekeeper. ‘Nobody been by for the last ten minutes.’

‘Did someone like that come into the gallery a little while ago?’

‘No one that I recall. What did you say the bloke’s name was?’

‘Kipling,’ I said.

‘Don’t know him.’

‘Didn’t you ever read
The Jungle Books
?’

‘Sounds familiar. Tarzan stuff, wasn’t it?’

I left the museum and wandered about the streets for a long time but I couldn’t find Kipling anywhere. Was it the boom of London’s traffic that I heard or the boom of the Sutlej river racing through the valleys?

T
his is not a love story but it is a story about love. You will know what I mean.

When I was living and working in London I knew a Vietnamese girl called Phuong. She studied at the Polytechnic. During the summer vacations she joined a group of students—some of them English, most of them French, German, Indian and African—picking raspberries for a few pounds a week and drinking in some real English country air. Late one summer, on her return from a farm, she introduced me to Ulla, a sixteen-year-old Danish girl who had come over to England for a similar holiday.

‘Please look after Ulla for a few days,’ said Phuong. ‘She doesn’t know anyone in London.’

‘But I want to look after you,’ I protested. I had been infatuated with Phuong for some time, but though she was rather fond of me, she did not reciprocate my advances and it was possible that she had conceived of Ulla as a device to get rid of me for a little while.

‘This is Ulla,’ said Phuong, thrusting a blonde child into my arms. ‘Bye and don’t get up to any mischief!’

Phuong disappeared, and I was left alone with Ulla at the entrance to the Charing Cross underground station. She grinned at me and I smiled back rather nervously. She had blue eyes and smooth, tanned skin. She was small for a Scandinavian girl, reaching only to my shoulders, and her figure was slim and boyish. She was carrying a small travel bag. It gave me an excuse to do something.

‘We’d better leave your bag somewhere,’ I said taking it from her.

And after depositing it in the left-luggage office, we were back on the pavement, grinning at each other.

‘Well, Ulla,’ I said, ‘how many days do you have in London?’

‘Only two. Then I go back to Copenhagen.’

‘Good. Well, what would you like to do?’

‘Eat. I’m hungry.’

I wasn’t hungry but there’s nothing like a meal to help two strangers grow acquainted. We went to a small and not very expensive Indian restaurant off Fitzroy Square and burnt our tongues on an orange-coloured Hyderabad chicken curry. We had to cool off with a Tamil koykotay before we could talk.

‘What do you do in Copenhagen?’ I asked.

‘I go to school. I’m joining the university next year.’

‘And your parents?’

‘They have a bookshop.’

‘Then you must have done a lot of reading.’

‘Oh, no, I don’t read much. I can’t sit in one place for long. I like swimming and tennis and going to the theatre.’

‘But you have to sit in a theatre.’

‘Yes, but that’s different.’

‘It’s not sitting that you mind but sitting and reading.’

‘Yes, you are right. But most Danish girls like reading—they read more books than English girls.’

‘You are probably right,’ I said.

As I was out of a job just then and had time on my hands, we were able to feed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square and while away the afternoon in a coffee bar before going on to a theatre. Ulla was wearing tight jeans and an abbreviated duffle coat and as she had brought little else with her, she wore this outfit to the theatre. It created quite a stir in the foyer but Ulla was completely unconscious of the stares she received. She enjoyed the play, laughed loudly in all the wrong places, and clapped her hands when no one else did.

The lunch and the theatre had lightened my wallet and dinner consisted of baked beans on toast in a small snack bar. After picking up Ulla’s bag, I offered to take her back to Phuong’s place.

‘Why there?’ she said. ‘Phuong must have gone to bed.’

‘Yes, but aren’t you staying with her?’

‘Oh, no. She did not ask me.’

‘Then where are you staying? Where have you kept the rest of your things?’

‘Nowhere. This is all I brought with me,’ she said, indicating the travel bag.

‘Well, you can’t sleep on a park bench,’ I said. ‘Shall I get you a room in a hotel?’

‘I don’t think so. I have only the money to return to Copenhagen.’ She looked crestfallen for a few moments. Then she brightened and slipped her arm through mine. ‘I know, I’ll stay with you. Do you mind?’

‘No, but my landlady—’ I began, then stopped. It would have been a lie. My landlady, a generous, broad-minded soul, would not have minded in the least.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I don’t mind.’

When we reached my room in Swiss Cottage Ulla threw off her coat and opened the window wide. It was a warm summer’s night and the scent of honeysuckle came through the open window. She kicked her shoes off and walked about the room barefoot. Her toenails were painted a bright pink. She slipped out of her blouse and jeans and stood before the mirror in her lace pants. A lot of sunbathing had made her quite brown but her small breasts were white.

She slipped into bed and said, ‘Aren’t you coming?’

I crept in beside her and lay very still while she chattered on about the play and the friends she had made in the country. I switched off the bed lamp and she fell silent. Then she said, ‘Well, I’m sleepy. Goodnight!’ And turning over, she immediately fell asleep.

I lay awake beside her, conscious of the growing warmth of her body. She was breathing easily and quietly. Her long, golden hair touched my cheek. I kissed her gently on the lobe of the ear but she was fast asleep. So I counted eight hundred and sixty-two Scandinavian sheep and managed to fall asleep.

Ulla woke fresh and frolicsome. The sun streamed in through the window and she stood naked in its warmth, performing calisthenics. I busied myself with the breakfast. Ulla ate three eggs and a lot of bacon and drank two cups of coffee. I couldn’t help admiring her appetite.

‘And what shall we do today?’ she asked, her blue eyes shining. They were the bright blue eyes of a Siamese kitten.

‘I’m supposed to visit the employment exchange,’ I said.

‘But that is bad. Can’t you go tomorrow—after I have left?’

‘If you like.’

‘I like.’

And she gave me a swift, unsettling kiss on the lips.

We climbed Primrose Hill and watched boys flying kites. We lay in the sun and chewed blades of grass and then we visited the zoo where Ulla fed the monkeys. She consumed innumerable ices. We lunched at a small Greek restaurant and I forgot to phone Phuong and in the evening we walked all the way home through scruffy Camden Town, drank beer, ate a fine, greasy dinner of fish and chips and went to bed early—Ulla had to catch the boat train the next morning.

‘It has been a good day,’ she said.

‘I’d like to do it again tomorrow.’

‘But I must go tomorrow.’

‘But you must go.’

She turned her head on the pillow and looked wanderingly into my eyes, as though she were searching for something. I don’t know if she found what she was looking for but she smiled and kissed me softly on the lips.

‘Thanks for everything,’ she said.

She was fresh and clean, like the earth after spring rain. I took her fingers and kissed them, one by one. I kissed her breasts, her throat, her forehead. And, making her close her eyes, I kissed her eyelids.

We lay in each other’s arms for a long time, savouring the warmth and texture of each other’s bodies. Though we were both very young and inexperienced, we found ourselves imbued with a tender patience, as though there lay before us not just this one passing night but all the nights of a lifetime, all eternity.

There was a great joy in our loving and afterwards we fell asleep in each other’s arms like two children who have been playing in the open all day.

The sun woke me the next morning. I opened my eyes to see Ulla’s slim, bare leg dangling over the side of the bed. I smiled at her painted toes. Her hair pressed against my face and the sunshine fell on it making each hair a strand of burnished gold.

The station and the train were crowded and we held hands and grinned at each other, too shy to kiss.

‘Give my love to Phuong,’ she said.

‘I will.’

We made no promises—of writing, or of meeting again. Somehow our relationship seemed complete and whole, as though it had been destined to blossom for those two days. A courting and a marriage and a living together had been compressed, perfectly, into one summer night …