1977 (11 page)

came round at midnight.

“Sadness of world,” he replied.

March the First this year was the day Tusker went out for the first time entirely on his own.

Being the first of the month it was also accounts day for Memsahib and pay-day for Ibrahim.

When Tusker had gone, accompanied by Bloxsaw, Ibrahim waited in the kitchen for the

familiar sounds of Lucy-Mem opening her escritoire, then the drawer in which the metal

cash-box was kept. Hearing both sounds he put the kettle on to make her the mid-morning

pot of coffee. He laced it as usual with Golconda brandy to put her in a good mood for the

reckoning after which he would be summoned to answer questions, listen to her homily

about the rising cost of living and the need to watch expenditure, and finally receive his

monthly wage.

On reckoning days, she was at her most formidable. Burra Memsahib
assoluta
. From his

vantage point near the kitchen doorway he observed her meticulously controlled and studied

act at the desk with admiration, also with some impatience and a delightful apprehension of

the possibility of a row of the kind they both knew how to conduct if it developed.

Initially, no words were exchanged except, “Coffee, Memsahib,” and “Thank you, Ibrahim,

just leave it there.” He placed the tray within reach of her left hand. Her right hand never let

go of the elegant black and silver ball-point with which she rechecked the totals of bills paid

before entering them on the right-hand side of her housekeeping book. She used the left

hand to pierce the bills on a spike and, intermittently, to pour the coffee and carry the cup to

her pursed mouth. He noticed that she was able to add up a column of figures as quickly

when sipping as when not sipping.

Occasionally she made separate notes in a red memo book. She made these in shorthand, a

form of lettering he recognized for what it was and regretted he had never learned. Today

she was making fewer shorthand notes than usual. She was also having uncharacteristic

trouble adding up. Had he overdone the brandy, this time? He waited until she had got her

sums right then entered, coughed, and said, “More hot coffee, Memsahib?”

She shook her head so he took the tray back, rinsed the pot and cup, ear cocked for the

summons to pay-parade.

It came. He marched in, saluted, took the money in his left hand and the pencil in his right

to sign the wage book with his usual flourish. He saluted again.

“The lawn,” she said, retrieving wage book and pencil. “Burra Sahib—I
think -
is very

pleased about the arrangements Mr Bhoolabhoy has made for the lawn. He’s looking much

better. I am pleased too. Really very pleased.”

“Yes, Memsahib.”

“It is so curious about illness and health. Small things, little things, they make all the

difference.” She resumed her spectacles and searched on the top of the escritoire. Finding

what she was looking for, an envelope, she handed it to him and murmured, “For the

garden, Ibrahim”, and allowed her hand to stay, so that for a moment their fingers were in

contact.

“And tonight,” she went on, “I shall go to the pictures.” She handed him some more

money. “Please book my seat for the second show.”

“Yes, Memsahib. Memsahib, it is only Wednesday.”

“I know. A rare day for me to go. But I have not been, as you know, since Colonel Sahib

became ill, and tonight he too will be doing something unusual for a Wednesday. He and Mr

Bhoolabhoy are to be—convivial, I gather because Mrs Bhoolabhoy has a special bridge

party. Mr Bhoolabhoy is coming here, after dinner. Perhaps you would keep an eye. Very

very small chota pegs for Colonel Sahib.”

Ibrahim put his hands behind his back.

“Memsahib is going alone to the pictures?”

When she did so he called a tonga for her, accompanied her, sitting up front with the

driver, ostensibly to make sure no harm came to her. It was then usually understood that he

would be out front to meet her when the show was over and accompany her home. It was

also understood that in the interval Ibrahim had seen the picture himself from a seat in the

front benches which he seldom had to pay for because he had a friend at the side entrance.

It had been just so, long ago in the days of the Moxon-Greifes in Mirât, when he was a boy.

Oddly enough the Moxon-Greife’s evening for the cinema had been a Wednesday, and when

he was old enough, his father—their bearer—had begun to send him down to the box office

with money for the seats and a chit signed by the Sahib. All Ibrahim had had to do was run

into the cantonment bazaar, and to the Majestic, present chit and money and run back with

the tickets which he gave either to his father or to Naik Hussein, the Moxon-Greife’s driver

who had become a movie fan too, out of sheer boredom at having to wait or be back in time

with the car to be at the entrance when the Moxon-Greifes came out. Hussein had learned

to fill in the time by slipping into the front rows reserved for servants and babus. And one

day, finding Ibrahim watching people go in (corrupted already by the scent of an

enchantment suspected but experienced only in still pictures outside) Hussein took him in

with him.

They did not see the end of the film because Hussein was punctilious about leaving in time

to have the car at the entrance before the show ended. Ibrahim ran the short distance home,

faced his father’s wrath but was saved from its consequences by Hussein who pointed out

that to attend a foreign-language movie (which he himself couldn’t follow at all) was as good

as doing homework in the English the boy was already learning and showing an aptitude for

in the class reserved for the sons of attached non-combatants at the regimental school. The

Moxon-Greifes had arranged Ibrahim’s attendance, so when Hussein described film-going as

homework his father didn’t have a leg to stand on and in fact took an early opportunity to

mention it to Mrs Moxon-Greife when she inquired how Ibrahim was getting on.

Thereafter Ibrahim was allowed to sit next to Hussein at the front of the car on picture-

going nights. Sahib and Memsahib must have been amused by his devotion to what they

called the silver screen. They discussed the picture with him on the way home, speaking both

in Urdu and English. “The end was disappointing, don’t you think?” Mrs Moxon-Greife very

often said. Ibrahim did not like to say that he and Hussein never saw the end of a film.

Sometimes he begged to be allowed to stay but Hussein wouldn’t leave him a moment

unaccompanied. He had caught up years later, sitting in front of his brother-in-law’s

television set in Finsbury Park, watching the old movies. Thus he had seen at last how Greta

Garbo died at the end of
Camille
, how Bette Davis died at the end of
Dark Victory
and sat

desolate on a chair in the Tower at the end of
Elizabeth and Essex
. In a London cinema he

had watched Vivien Leigh running through the mist at the end of
Gone With the Wind
.

Lucy-Mem was more accommodating about time than the Moxon-Greifes had been and

less nimble on her feet anyway. She was given too to gossiping in the foyer, so that now

Ibrahim had ample time to see the fade-out, go with the crowd, earmark the waiting tonga

and approach the front, ready to escort her. On the tonga-ride home, he in front, she

behind, they talked about the movie. He liked doing that because it gave him an insight into

the things that moved her and the things that made her laugh or of which she disapproved

or got bored by. He was longing to accompany her again. Like her, he had not been to the

movies since Tusker Sahib was taken ill.

So, hands behind back, he put the question. “Memsahib is going alone to the pictures?”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, Ibrahim. You want to go too.”

He nodded his head from one side to the other: a gesture which in this case meant, As

Memsahib wishes.

She smiled, took off her spectacles. “Why not? Indeed why not? After all, we have both

earned an evening off. And we can surely trust Burra Sahib to guard his health, and Mr

Bhoolabhoy to see that he guards it. So yes, Ibrahim, let us tonight both go to the pictures.

Do you know what is on?”

“Repeat showing, Butch Cassidy, Sundance Kid. Paul Newman, Robert Redford.”

“Yes, of course. We saw it last year, but such good actors. Second House, then Ibrahim.

My usual seat if possible.”

He saluted again. In the kitchen he inspected the contents of the envelope marked “For the

Garden”. At the agreed number of rupees a month for the ten or so days of February Joseph

had worked it was one rupee short. He had expected Memsahib to cut it even finer. That she

both had and hadn’t confirmed his opinion of her as a lady of style.

Just as he was about to leave the bungalow to work out how much percentage it would be

reasonable to claim for himself before handing the balance to Joseph he heard the

gramophone start up. He peeped in. Memsahib was backing gracefully away from the

machine, gently turning and twisting her body, her arms round an invisible partner, balanced

a little precariously on the soles of her long-ago shoes.

“Oh how my heart has wings.”

WHILE IBRAHIM was out booking the seat and Tusker was still out with Bloxsaw, the

dak
came. Among the few bills and catalogues was an airmail letter from the Blackshaws in

England: a proper letter in a proper envelope, not one of those wretched new-size air-letters

it was difficult to open without tearing part of the message. The reason for the envelope was

that something had been enclosed: a newspaper snipping from
The Times
.

LAYTON. On February 19 at his home, Combe Lodge Combe Magnus, Surrey, after a

short illness, John Frederick William, Lt-Col. (IA Retd) Pankot Rifles, beloved husband of

the late Mildred Layton (née Muir), dear father of Sarah and Susan, grandfather of Teddie,

Lance and Jane, greatgrandfather of Boskie. Funeral private. No Flowers please, but

donations if wished to the Cancer Research Fund.

Phoebe Blackshaw had written: “I’m afraid we’ve reached the stage of life when we look at

the Obits first. Directly I saw the word Pankot it occurred to me that you and Tusker must

have known Colonel Layton and his family or at least known of them. Not being real Pankot

people ourselves the name only rings vague bells, perhaps as people you sometimes referred

to. Anyway there it is. How is dear old ‘Bloxsaw’? And how are your dear old selves?”

Having delivered that last glancing blow, Phoebe rambled on full of herself as always. If

Phoebe’s letters were not now virtually the only ones Lucy could expect to have from home

she would have considered them tiresome in the extreme.

When Tusker came back from his walk he seemed in a good mood. He asked cheerfully,

“Anything nice in the
dak
?”

“Only a letter from Phoebe.”

“Usual guff I suppose. What’s the drill for lunch, old thing?”

It was ages since he had called her that.

“Has your walk made you hungry, Tusker dear?”

He said it had but that he didn’t want broth, nor a tray from the restaurant. He didn’t want

to go to the restaurant either. The very sight of Mrs Bhoolabhoy waddling from bedroom to

kitchen and back again with one of her bloody headaches turned him off. He hadn’t seen

Mrs Bhoolabhoy since his attack. He didn’t care if he never saw her again, the old bitch.

He ruffled Bloxsaw’s dumb head, and hesitated. Was he at last going to mention the

garden?

“We could go to the Shiraz for lunch,” he said.

Her heart fluttered.

“Oh, Tusker. It’s so expensive.”

“Bugger the expense.”

“What about tonight?”

“Can’t tonight. Billy-Boy’s coming over for a noggin, remember?”

“That’s what I mean, Tusker. The Shiraz for lunch would be lovely if we can really afford it

for once, but it will worry me if you overdo things. Shouldn’t we go to the Shiraz another

day, when you don’t have to cope with Billy-Boy in the evening?”

“What’s the point when it’s now I’m hungry? Thirsty, too. Ibrahim!”

“Ibrahim’s out, Tusker. What do you want? I’ll get it.”

“A gin if there’s any left. Where’s the idle old sod gone?”

“Well I thought that as you’re spending the evening with Billy-Boy I’d go to the second

house at the pictures, so he’s gone to get my ticket. Is that all right?”

“What could be wrong? You usually do go.”

Not for a long time, she was about to say, but didn’t because the nice mood he was in

might not last through the small argument such a conversation could easily lead to. So she

gave him a very weak gin, changed her twin set and shoes and at twelve-thirty they went

across to the Shiraz and up in the lift to the Mountain View Room where he complained