The Rose of Tibet (21 page)

‘There’s just one thing, Mr Oliphant – it would be quite hopeless, would it, to try and get Houston to sign this himself?’

‘Oh, I’m afraid so. Quite out of the question. He’s simply not interested. He doesn’t want to think about it any more.’

‘He would have to, rather, when the book came out, wouldn’t he? I mean, there would be a good deal of comment. Reporters would descend on him. Does he realize this?’

‘I don’t know. I’m sure he wouldn’t say anything to them,’ Mr Oliphant said confidently.

‘Reporters are persistent people.’

‘They could be as persistent as they liked.’

‘And he wouldn’t mind what they wrote.’

‘Not a bit. All he’s got to say he’s said here. And he relies on me to publish a true version.’

‘In that case why shouldn’t he sign this version? You see, what’s bothering us is that there is a great deal of actionable material here. There’s the question of the money – and now these murders. It’s all a little bit illegal, isn’t it?’

Mr Oliphant began to grow slightly restive.

He said, ‘Look, Mr Davidson, it seems to me this book should be worth quite a sum of money. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life quibbling about it. … I’d like to get out of
this flat. It’s damp here, you know. She’s turned on all the electric fires. I hate to think what the bill will be. …’

I could hear Sister Angelica making warning noises in the next room. The time seemed to be now or never.

I said, ‘Mr Oliphant – did Houston ever sign a statement to the effect that you could publish the material in these notebooks?’

‘Sign a statement? Of course he didn’t. There has never been anything like that between us. Certainly not.’

‘In the course of a letter, say –’

‘We are the best of friends,’ the old man said. He had become quite pink in the face and his breath had started to whistle a bit. ‘You don’t surely expect friends to go about signing statements to each other?’

Sister Angelica came in.

I said, hurriedly, ‘Perhaps in one of his letters to you. You might have referred to it in some way, and he might have confirmed –’

‘Now then,’ Sister Angelica said. ‘Didn’t you promise me you wouldn’t let him talk too much? And just look at you, you poor silly old man. You’ll be breathless directly.’

‘I’m going now,’ I said.

‘Yes. You are. This very minute.’

‘Just a tick,’ Oliphant said. ‘You know, I believe you’re right. He did write something to me –’

‘Well, you can tell him another time. He’s going now.’

‘I’ll look it out for you.’

‘Thank you. Thanks very much. Get well.’

Sister Angelica found the other two exercise books, and came to the door with me.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘that wasn’t very clever. I told you he wasn’t to talk.’

‘I’m sorry. There were things that only he could tell me. It might mean a good bit of money for him.’

‘He won’t need it if he goes on like this. Still – it might help pay the electric bill, eh,’ she said, winking very slightly.

‘It might,’ I said. ‘Good-bye, Nurse Jellicoe.’

That seemed to clear the account with the young man from the printer’s, at least.

I saw Mr Oliphant three or four times more before Christmas. The letter from Houston, which he managed to turn up, didn’t answer all problems, but it showed we could produce a certain kind of book, a rather abbreviated kind of book, based on the notes. I was keen enough, in a modified way, to do so. T.L. was also keen, in an even more modified way. Rosenthal Brown were not keen at all. It became necessary to do a job of research.

A young man called Underwood, an editorial assistant, was put on to this, but for a number of points the only source of information proved to be Mr Oliphant himself. I undertook to handle these.

At the beginning of December, after discussing one of them with him, I found a small, bright-eyed priest waiting for me in the hall.

He said, ‘Ah, Mr Davidson. I’m Father Harris. Sister Angelica telephoned me that you were here. I particularly wanted to have a word with you.’

‘Of course. I’ve heard a lot about you.’

‘Yes. Just come in here a moment, will you?’

We went into the living-room, chill and dismal in the darkening afternoon. The priest switched on a little table lamp, evidently quite at home in Houston’s old flat.

He said, ‘Well, he isn’t getting any better, is he?’

‘No, he isn’t.’

‘And he can’t have Sister Angelica much longer. He should be in hospital, you know, but it’s quite hopeless. They don’t want old chronic cases. There simply aren’t the beds.’

‘Can’t his professional body do anything for him?’

‘I’m trying, naturally. I would very much like him to go to a nursing home. We have one, a Catholic one, at Worplesdon in Surrey. It’s a beautiful place, very well run. I visit there. I think I could get him in. Don’t you think that would be a very desirable thing, Mr Davidson?’

‘Yes. Yes, I think it would be,’ I said, suddenly seeing what was coming and thrown off balance by it.

‘It would cost eighteen guineas a week,’ the priest said.

‘Have you tried his friend Houston in the West Indies?’

‘Yes. That’s why I made up my mind to see you as soon
as I could. Nobody seems to know where this Mr Houston has got to. My letter came back from the Barbados stamped “Gone Away – Return to Sender”.’

‘Oh.’

‘He has no other relations, you know.’

‘Hasn’t he?’

‘None.’

‘Very unfortunate.’

‘Yes,’ the priest said, and see-sawed on his heels and coughed a little. ‘I wondered if you were prepared to help, Mr Davidson. I wondered if you felt able to make an offer for this book of his.’

‘I’m afraid there are complications.’

I told him some of them.

‘H’m. But if all went well the book could make quite a lot of money?’

‘If all went well. No publisher dare touch it at the moment. It’s far too dangerous.’

Father Harris stopped see-sawing. He put his hand on my shoulder. He said very earnestly, ‘Don’t you think, Mr Davidson, that there’s a case here for a sporting offer? After all, it’s a very special one.’

‘All publishing is made up of special cases, Father. A lot of authors are hard up.’

‘They’re not all at death’s door.’

‘No. No.’

‘It would lighten my heart a great deal if I felt I could rely on you to do your best.’

I said uneasily, ‘Well, you can certainly do that. Of course. Naturally. But you’ve got to –’

‘And may God bless you for it,’ said the priest, shaking me very warmly by the hand.   

Mr Oliphant moved into Worplesdon the week before Christmas. I went to see him a few days later. I had been to a series of pre-Christmas cocktail parties the night before, and was not at my best. Nor, evidently was Mr Oliphant. They had given him a nice little room and done it up with a lot of gay paper decorations; Mr Oliphant lay in bed in it sunk in profound depression.

‘This silly old man thinks he’s going to die,’ Father Harris said, coming in after a few minutes. He had been having a few glasses of sherry on his round of the patients and was beaming a bit. ‘He’s gone and made a will.’

Mr Oliphant roused himself from his torpor and began fumbling about at his bedside cabinet.

‘I’ll get it,’ Father Harris said. ‘Here we are. He wants us both to witness it.’

It was a somewhat austere will. Mr Oliphant had left all his worldly estate and such chancy assets as might still accrue to it to the foundation of an Exhibition in Latin, to commence five years after his death, at his old university, Oxford. I gathered that this disposition did not meet entirely with Father Harris’s approval. He signed it, however, and so did I, and the old man watched us with a certain gloomy satisfaction.

There were four Christmas cards on the cabinet, and I edged round presently and managed to have a look at them while Mr Oliphant’s attention was diverted by the priest: it was after all a pitiful enough collection after a lifetime’s voyage through the world. I wondered if their paucity might not in some measure have contributed to his gloom.

There was one from Father Harris, and one from Miss Marks, and one from me. The last was inscribed, ‘Tight lines in 1960 and hoping for a good salmon,’ and signed ‘your old friend Wallie.’

There wasn’t one from his old friend Houston.

T
HE
governor of Hodzo was unwell. He was morose. For two whole days after receiving his brother-in-law’s letter he remained in his room, listless and sick at heart. His priest read him seven volumes of the Kangyur. His youngest wife played to him on a set of consecrated cymbals. Nothing availed. He remained steeped in melancholy. On the third
day, however, despite a continuation of the bowel movements that neither the Kangyur nor the cymbals had been able to arrest, he felt a slight accession of confidence, and after a light breakfast and prayers, he called for his palanquin and set off for Yamdring.

The journey to Yamdring was one of twenty-four hours, and though he knew he would end it in pain and exhaustion, he did not send his servants ahead to prepare for his comfort, for he did not wish in any way to upset the routine of the monastery or arouse suspicion. He planned to examine personally the dossier of every single soul there. He thought he might manage thirty in an hour and two hundred in a day. There were some eleven hundred souls in the monastery.

Because it was essential that none should be regarded as above suspicion he meant to keep the reason for this enterprise strictly to himself, and the last thing that he wanted was to walk into a meeting of the monastery council. This, however, was what he walked into.

The council had been summoned on curious business, and the abbot welcomed him to it, and to the chair most gratefully; for he was sorely puzzled.

The unconscious
trulku
Houtson, he said, had had a dream. He had requested an interview with the abbot that very morning. He had told the abbot his dream.

‘There were indications in it,’ the abbot said, ‘that the
trulku
may be no longer unconscious.’

‘What was the dream?’

The dream was that the
trulku
had found himself walking in the monastery. As he walked he had spied a Westerner, a man like himself. He had drawn closer to the man and observed that he was watching a shower of rain falling in the monastery. The rain turned into greenstones and from them emerged suddenly the figure of the Mother. As he watched, a demon appeared behind the Mother with a net and a sack. The demon had made to catch the Mother and the greenstones, but the
trulku
had run towards him, waving his arms and shouting a powerful mantra, and the demon had fled. The Mother had nodded to the
trulku
in gratitude, and he had awakened from the dream.

The governor sat for a moment gazing at his small hands, placed one above the other on the table. He said, ‘Who is guarding the
trulku
?’

‘Two artist monks, Excellency. They are reliable men.’

‘Do they speak his language?’

‘No. But he has picked up some Tibetan. Why do you ask …?’ the abbot said, and paused, seeing why the governor had asked.

‘Someone has told him of the greenstones,’ the governor said, nodding.

There was silence for a moment.

The deputy abbot said, ‘But Excellency, even if this were so, who could have told him of the ceremony or the fact that one of the Westerners had witnessed it?’

The governor nodded again and looked down at his hands, for he had seen at once that this was the nub of the problem, and he had not meant to pursue it. If he knew the answer to that, he might also know who had been telling the Chinese. …  To give himself time to think, he said, ‘And tell me, Abbot, did the
trulku
make any further request of you?’

‘Yes, Excellency, he did. He asked permission to see the Westerners.’

‘Since the reason for their restraint has now been revealed to him?’

‘This is the reason he gave.’

‘And what answer did you make him?’

‘None. This is why we have met. May I ask what are your Excellency’s views with regard to this question?’

The governor drummed his hands on the table. He didn’t think he had any views on this question. It did not seem to matter a bean, now that the cat was out of the bag, whether Houtson saw the other Europeans or not. But he thought he should temporize.

‘Tell me, Abbot, what was the
trulku’s
attitude – confident, assured?’

‘No,’ the abbot said slowly, ‘no, it was not. … A change has come over him lately. He appears dazed. He is like a sleepwalker. There are shadows under his eyes and his step is heavy.’

‘It is the burden of knowledge descending upon him,’ said
the deputy abbot confidently. ‘The symptoms are classic, I assure you, Excellency.’

The governor decided to sit back and let others discuss these classic symptoms. They discussed them a good deal. He saw that the abbot and the deputy abbot and the Mistress of Ceremonies were very impressed with them; that Little Daughter was less impressed. Recalling how strongly she had urged
trulku
status for Houtson, he regarded her with some interest; and when the discussion had run its course leaned forward again.

‘Are we not,’ he said mildly, ‘to have the benefit of the views of Little Daughter?’

He saw the flush that came instantly to her round cheeks, and the way her hands went nervously to her tricorn. She said, ‘My views, Excellency. … Why, I think – that is, I believe the Mother would think – that there is now no reason why the
trulku
should not see the other Westerners. After all, since he now knows. …’

‘Certainly,’ said the deputy abbot.

‘Of course,’ said the Mistress of Ceremonies.

‘Yes,’ said the governor, neutrally.

The abbot was looking expectantly at him. ‘Do we take it, Excellency,’ he said, ‘that this would be your view also?’

‘Why, yes,’ the governor said absently. ‘You may take it so, Abbot.’

But he was not looking at the abbot. He was looking at Little Daughter. She knew something, he thought. He wondered what it was.

Little Daughter was wondering also. She wondered as she laboured back, up the seven flights to the top monastery. She had not meant to give anything away. She hoped she had not given anything away. But she had observed before the uncanny ability of the governor to pick something up out of the air. She was greatly troubled.

It was Little Daughter’s belief that she knew the Mother as intimately as it was possible for one soul to know another. She bathed her and shaved her and painted her and anointed her; she had had her in her sole care since the age of 6. She did not merely love the Mother as she was bound in duty to
do: she adored her. She regarded her as (and called her sometimes in moments of special tenderness) her little rose. If the Mother had asked her to fly like a bird from the topmost golden roof of the monastery, she would willingly have done so. There was nothing the Mother could ask her that she would not do; and nothing that the Mother could do that would strike her as anything other than perfectly reasonable.

None the less she was troubled.

In her daily ministrations she had observed certain things that indicated that the Mother was not spending her nights alone.

Although herself a virgin and bound to a vow of lifelong chastity (as had been all her predecessors), Little Daughter found nothing shocking in this. Tradition had established that while the Mother was in the world she was entitled, at her will, to the usages of the world; so long as discretion was observed. She could remember all too well the increasing appetites of the Seventeenth. As she had aged, so she had become more insatiable. It had been a part of Little Daughter’s duties to bring men to her, blindfold and with their hands tied behind them; sometimes four or five men in a night. One to whom she had taken a fancy in her old age had indeed become a little deranged by his experiences; and towards the end there had been the minor scandal involving the abbot himself. …

It had been the change from this old ravening creature to the delicate flower-like little Eighteenth, and at a time of her life when she was most susceptible to change, that had rooted in Little Daughter her special feelings with regard to the Mother.

That the adored young woman should wish to experiment tentatively with the ways of the world did not, therefore, cause her more than a passing uneasiness; what confounded her was how she was managing to do it.

Little Daughter slept outside the Mother’s room. She knew that no one had come in that way. There was only one other way: she had taught it to the Mother herself (as some day, the Mother would teach it to a new Little Daughter: so the secret was preserved, in a straight line). Only two other people in the monastery knew this secret, the abbot and the deputy
abbot: they, too, passed it from one to the other. Only one other person had
ever
known the secret. This was Hu-Tzung, and the Thirteenth had told him it while under his spell.

Little Daughter had spent many tormenting hours with the problem. She knew she could discount both the abbot and the deputy abbot. This seemed to leave only the unconscious
trulku
. … But if the unconscious
trulku
had divined the secret then he was no longer unconscious, and moreover no longer a
trulku
but a
yidag
; for such a secret was not proper for a
trulku
; and if by some freak of fate he had been given it then he would most certainly not have used it.

But if he were a
yidag
, the Mother was bound to reveal him. And if she had not revealed him, then he could not be a
yidag
. … Little Daughter’s poor brain reeled.

‘Little Daughter?’

‘I am coming, Mother.’

Little Daughter panted into the room and lowered herself, holding her heart, on to a stool.

‘Oh, Little Daughter, tell me quickly – what has been decided?’

Little Daughter got her breath back. ‘That the
trulku
be allowed to see the Westerners,’ she said.

‘And what questions were raised?’

Little Daughter told her, observing at the same time the child’s fatigue, the droop of her mouth, the anxiety in her eyes. Her heart went out to her.

‘Was that all?’

‘Yes, that was all,’ Little Daughter said; and then, greatly daring, ‘Dear Little Mother, if there is something worrying you – some special problem. …’

‘No,’ the Mother said. ‘No, no. What do you mean? I don’t understand you, Little Daughter.’

‘You are so tired lately.’

‘I am sleeping badly.’

‘Then take a little rest now.’

‘No. Yes. All right,’ said the Mother pettishly. ‘If you wish it.’

‘It will restore you,’ said Little Daughter, quickly helping her off with her robe and turning back the covers.

The Mother got into bed and lay there, her face so like a
pale china rose against the pillow that Little Daughter could not refrain from kissing her.

‘Try and sleep now.’

‘It is too light to sleep.’

‘I will close the shutter. Try.’

‘Very well.’

She went to the shutter.

‘Little Daughter!’

Heart bounding, Little Daughter turned and came quickly back to the bed.

‘What is it, little Mother?’

‘Nothing. … Nothing.’

‘If there is something you wish to tell me – anything at all. …’

‘It was nothing. … I am thirsty.’

‘Very well,’ said Little Daughter quietly, and went out and poured a mug of lime juice in her own apartment. She made it freshly every day. The chief medical monk had advised that it was good for the little rose’s complexion.

Houston’s first meeting with his brother in the monastery of Yamdring took place on 30 June 1950, seven weeks exactly after he had first arrived in the village. It took place in the third monastery, and was between them alone, for this was what he had requested.

(Although he wrote fully of later meetings, when others were present, Houston wrote curiously little of this one: it appears to have been an emotional occasion.)

He found that the party had been able to keep together – all with the exception of Wister who had to be taken away, raving, to the hospital every few days.

Wister was the ‘mad’ man of the priestess’s story, and the ‘sick’ one of Ringling’s. It was he who had wandered into the emerald ceremony during the second festival, still concussed from his earthquake experiences (which was why his cell had been left inadvertently unlocked). In the general confusion he had been able to get back to his own corridor, had managed to unlock and let himself into Hugh’s cell, and had even been
able to give a rambling account of what he had seen before the guards, hastily summoned by the deputy abbot, had found him. He had been very badly beaten-up, then, and had never recovered from it.

They had escaped in December, after bribing their guards; they had got out at night down a rope-ladder direct from the third monastery, and had managed to put several miles and two days between themselves and Yamdring before the blizzard had caught them on the Portha-la. The caravan had been a godsend, and they had followed its tracks hurriedly, carrying Wister. But the attempt had been a forlorn one. The guards had caught up on their first night with the caravan, and that had been the end of it.

Since then the guards had been changed at weekly intervals, to preclude the possibility of further bribing. But they had been well-treated, with a comfortably furnished cell each, and a common room to themselves during the day, and ample opportunity for exercise in the courtyard of their monastery. They had two pairs of binoculars between them, and were occasionally allowed up to a vantage point from which they could observe the life in the village; and this, since December, had been the nearest they had got to escaping from the monotony of their surroundings.

They had been kept locked up during the ceremonies of the Spring Festival, and had thus not observed the fracas in which Houston had been involved. But they had received hints during the upsets to routine brought about by the canonization ceremonies, and gradually, over the weeks, had learned what was happening. The abbot had himself told Hugh what to expect the previous day; but he still found it perfectly unbelievable.

Houston found it unbelievable himself.

He didn’t know what to say to his brother. They sat and grinned at each other a good deal.