The Rose of Tibet (2 page)

I said, with extreme reluctance, ‘Of course, if you think I should …’

‘Certainly. It will be much easier face to face. You know,’ he said, returning the manuscript, ‘there’s not a bad lesson in publishing here. It’s fatally easy to encourage the wrong people. You’ve got to be on guard all the time. Kindness,’ he said, seeing my hesitations, ‘is no help – to the author or to the publisher. It can be a very cruel thing.’

‘You don’t think,’ I said, fumbling, ‘we should let him have another go, off his own bat. I hear he’s getting on for eighty now… .’

T.L. blew down his pipe for a bit and shook his head. He said slowly, ‘We can’t do that. We can’t do it… . You know, I wasn’t wrong to begin with. There was something there, a tiny kernel. Someone could publish it. Let him have that pleasure before he dies.’

‘All right,’ I said.

Mr Oliphant lived in Fitzmaurice Mansions, Fitzmaurice Crescent, Baron’s Court. I rang him up that afternoon and drove out the following one.

Fitzmaurice Mansions turned out to be a vast ornamented Edwardian pile in reddish-orange stone. I went up very slowly to the second floor in a little dark lift with a highly complicated arrangement of folding doors. There was no window on the landing, and the light wouldn’t work. I fumbled around looking for number
62
a.

Two half-pint bottles of milk stood outside the door, and the morning paper was still jammed in the letter-box. I rang the bell, and a minute or two later had to do so again.

There was presently a shuffling noise inside. I braced myself as the door opened. A tall, thin, bent man in a dressing-gown looked out.

‘Is it Mr Davidson?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Come in. I hope you haven’t been waiting long. I dozed off.’

I had my hand outstretched, but he didn’t seem to see it. He reached beyond me for the milk and the newspaper. There was a peculiar smell inside, the smell of old people who live in close places.

He closed the door behind me. ‘I’ve not been too well lately. I was having a little nap.’

‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you.’

‘Not a bit. Not the least little bit. Through here. I’ve been looking forward to it. I don’t know how I happened to go off like that.’

In the light it was possible to see that Mr Oliphant was exceptionally grimy. He looked ill and unkempt. His face was immensely long and thin like a greyhound’s; and at the moment much in need of a shave. He put the milk and the newspaper down, pulled his grey stuff dressing-gown more closely round him and slicked down his sparse hairs.

‘I’m sorry you have to find me like this. I meant to clear up a bit,’ he said, looking round at the terrible confusion of clothes and bedding and old meals. We seemed to be in his bedroom. ‘I thought I would just rest for a minute or two after lunch. I had no sleep last night.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said, somewhat nasally, for I was trying to breathe through my mouth in the appalling stench of the room. ‘What’s the trouble?’

‘Bronchial. I get it every year about this time. Hard to breathe, you know,’ he said, tapping his throat.

His breath did seem to be whistling a bit. There was a faint, soft suggestion of Ireland in his voice. I said, ‘If you would like to put this off to another day, Mr Oliphant – there’s quite a lot to talk about.’

‘No, no. I wouldn’t hear of it, my dear fellow. I’m only sorry for all this. Let me get you something. What can I get you? We haven’t shaken hands or anything …’ he said, holding out with embarrassment his own skeletal and by no means clean one.

I shook it. I refused refreshment. He pulled up a couple of chairs to an electric fire, and we began to talk.

There was not, after all, very much to talk about. For despite his apparent senility, Mr Oliphant had kept his marbles in very fair trim: he summed up the situation in a trice and at once with an old-fashioned and perhaps racial courtesy began to ease it for me.

‘Your Mr Links is a man of enthusiasms,’ he said. ‘I like that in a man. He sent me a splendid letter when I first completed the book. I’m sorry he’s not so keen on this version.’

‘Yes. Well. That’s one of the things –’

‘Oh, not that I blame him. I couldn’t get very enthusiastic about it myself. I’m sorry about the science students. I put that material in to try and broaden it… . But the first version wasn’t bad, you know, and he spotted it. I didn’t think anybody would. It wasn’t the normal run of Latin reader. Just as a matter of interest, Mr Davidson, why was he so interested?’

I said, in a bit of a panic, because just at that moment I’d forgotten, ‘Why, because he appreciated the basic idea – the idea of a dead language becoming, what shall I say …’

Mr Oliphant told me gently what I should say. ‘A kind of mental discipline for adults …?’

‘Precisely,’ I said, and elaborated gratefully on this type of discipline.

‘Yes,’ Mr Oliphant said. ‘I ask because naturally after a lifetime of dealing with Latin works of one sort or another I
do not recall ever seeing your imprint on one of them. It was entirely because of Doris Marks – how is that dear girl, by the way?’

‘Fine. Fine. She sends her warm regards. That leads us to a point, Mr Oliphant. It’s a fact that we don’t publish Latin works. It isn’t really our preserve at all. What Mr Links now feels – what we all feel,’ I said, with acute embarrassment, and went on to tell him.

The old man sat and breathed heavily.

‘We would like to give you every kind of assistance with it – secretarial, technical, anything you might need. There have been a lot of changes in the educational field in the past few years – changes that you wouldn’t perhaps know about – but I haven’t the slightest doubt –’

‘Yes. Yes. It’s uncommonly good of you. I’m very grateful. I really am,’ he said, smiling at me. ‘I’ll think about it very seriously. But I doubt if I can get any work done this winter. I’m going to have a rest this winter. I’ll look at it again in the spring. All the same,’ he said, laughing, ‘I have a feeling I might be too old a dog to learn new tricks. If I had any of my own teeth, I would say I was getting too long –’

He stopped. His expression changed. He began to cough. It was the most extraordinary cough I had ever heard in my life, and for a moment I couldn’t believe it was coming from him. It sounded like a klaxon, and from the way he bounced up and down in the chair, as if he were setting it on and off.

I got up in alarm and patted him on the back. He began waving his hands towards the bed presently, and I looked around and saw bottles on his bedside table, and brought them all to him with a spoon. He pointed one out with a shaking hand, and I uncorked it and poured him out a spoonful – and one for the carpet in my excitement – and got it in his mouth. He managed to control himself for a moment, and presently began pointing silently under the bed.

With some horror, I got down on my knees and poked about there. There was a plastic bowl covered with a cloth. I got it out and gave him it – I have to admit with the cloth still on – and he uncovered it and spat.

‘I’m very sorry about this,’ he said feebly after a few
minutes. ‘I shouldn’t have laughed. No, leave it out. Leave it here. I might need it again.’

‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

‘Nothing. Someone is coming to see me later with some things I need. Please don’t worry. Sit down. It goes off quite soon.’

I sat down, very gingerly.

‘I think on reflection, you know,’ he said presently, as if he’d been thinking about it all the time, ‘that I won’t take advantage of your very kind offer. I’ll let sleeping dogs lie. At my time of life, after all …’ he said, beginning a dangerous smile.

‘I’m sure you’ll decide differently when you’ve thought about it,’ I said, watching him nervously. ‘Perhaps you’ll let me come and talk to you about it again in a few weeks.’

‘Of course, my dear fellow. It’s very good of you. But I don’t think you’ll get me to change my mind. You see, you won’t want to publish the book yourselves – for reasons I quite understand – and that would rather take the gilt off it for me. I’m going to tell you a secret,’ he said, his smile becoming a little sheepish. ‘I started that book out of vanity.’

‘Vanity, Mr Oliphant?’

‘Vanity. I met Doris – Miss Marks – at a school get-together and for some reason I told her I was writing it. I wasn’t, actually. It had occurred to me just at that moment. I suppose I wanted to impress her. Living alone, one’s tongue tends to run away in company… . I meant to tell her, when it was published, how she had inspired it… . Well, it isn’t a very serious loss.’

‘There’s no reason why it should be a loss at all.’

He wasn’t really attending to me. He was still looking at me and smiling, but his smile had become somehow – sly. His tongue moved round his lips.

‘I expect you would very much sooner publish works in a living tongue,’ he said.

‘Well, that’s our business, Mr Oliphant.’

‘I expect you would very much sooner publish a story like Houston’s,’ he said in the same tone.

I didn’t know what he was talking about. He didn’t seem to be talking to me at all.

He got up and began rummaging in the bed. Two shiny red exercise books were buried in the eiderdown, and two more were under the pillow.

‘I’ve just been re-reading it,’ he said. ‘I had the idea some years ago of writing it myself, but I was busy with my Latin reader. I doubt if I ever will now. Would you like to read it?’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s Houston’s account of what happened to him in Tibet.’

He was handing me the exercise books, so I took them, Mr Theodore Links’s words ringing ominously in my ears. ‘
Kind
ness is no help to the author or to the publisher. It can be a very cruel
thing
.’

I said, ‘You know, I’m not sure if this is our kind of thing at all, Mr Oliphant. We do very little travel.’

‘I wouldn’t call it a traveller’s tale,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what I’d call it. It’s certainly very odd.’

I was racking my brains as I leafed through, trying to think who the mysterious Houston was. Phrases came up at me – in what looked suspiciously like Mr Oliphant’s own neat handwriting – from the ruled lines.

‘…
doss house like an enormous catacomb, a great cliff of a place
with little stone rooms flickering in the light of butter lamps
… .’

…
simply took off all his clothes and jewels and gave them
away
… .’

…
kept out of the way all day and biked on to Kanchenjunga
…’

…
to Darjeeling left luggage office, where so far as I know
…’

…
so badly beaten-up I knew I was crippled, but I had to
…’

I said, ‘Mr Oliphant – if you could just refresh me – who actually was Houston?’

‘He is a very dear friend of mine. We used to teach at the same school.’

‘He went to Tibet on – am I right? – a bicycle?’

‘Yes. Well. Mainly,’ Mr Oliphant said.

‘I wonder why nothing has been published about it.’

Mr Oliphant offered several possible reasons for this omission. He watched the effect of them on me, still smiling rather slyly.

‘I thought you’d like it,’ he said.

‘It certainly sounds a remarkable story.’

‘More stimulating than those of ancient Rome, say.’

‘Well. Different.’

‘Yes,’ he said, enjoying himself. ‘Yes, I thought you’d take that view.’

‘Who wrote it?’

‘I did,’ said Mr Oliphant. ‘He dictated it to me. He hadn’t learned to use his left hand then, of course.’

‘I see.’

‘But there wouldn’t be any difficulty about publication. He gave me it. If you’re interested.’

I said cautiously, ‘We might be. Whereabouts is Mr Houston now?’

‘He is in Barbados.’

‘You’re in touch with him, are you?’

‘Oh, yes. This is his flat. He still pays the rent. I went out to see him a few years ago – three years ago. He was in Jamaica then. I had just had another go of this bronchitis, and he invited me out, at his expense… . Of course, he is a very wealthy man now.’

‘Is he?’

‘Oh, yes. He left Tibet with about half a million pounds. I expect he could have had very much more if he’d been able to carry it. He knows where the rest is.’

‘I see,’ I said again.

I didn’t, of course. But presently, as Mr Oliphant explained further, a few items did seem to fall into place. It is easier now to remember than to describe the dry gusto of his manner – perhaps if the reader will imagine a beardless version of Bernard Shaw sitting in a grey stuff dressing-gown over an electric fire in a darkening October afternoon he will come somewhere near it – as he recalled these items. But even in reflection his gusto is odd. Mr Oliphant had led, I suppose, up to that time a blameless enough life, chaste, continent, fairly legal; one, at all events, far removed from rapine and murder, abortion and sacred prostitution. Perhaps he had encountered worse in his classical readings; perhaps he was merely amused that I should find this story alive and those in his favourite literature dead. Or perhaps there was quite another reason. I have thought about it often since.

It must have been a little after four when I had arrived, and
it was getting on for six when I left. Mr Oliphant had another attack of coughing in between.

I said anxiously, ‘You’re quite sure someone is coming to see you? I could very easily –’

‘Not at all. I assure you… .’ he said weakly.

‘Well. I’ll leave you, then.’

‘Yes. Yes. Just take the first two exercise books, won’t you? I want to read the others. And come again.’

‘Certainly. I’d like to.’

He didn’t really want to talk any more, but just before I left I felt constrained to ask one more question.

I said, ‘Mr Oliphant, I suppose he didn’t, Houston, ever believe any of this business himself, did he – the supernatural business?’

He had closed his eyes but he opened them again, very pale blue and somehow – how does one describe it? – again sly.

‘Oh, no. No, he didn’t believe it. At least, I don’t think he did. He’s a very ordinary sort of chap, you know. Very ordinary… . Odd, though, how it came about, wasn’t it?’