Authors: dorin
you stood behind your Sahib, or your Memsahib, got nicely pissed in the kitchen, passing to
and fro, and anyway had the thrill of doing things in the way your father had done them and
his father before him, even though the Sahibs and Memsahibs at the long gleaming table
were mostly as black as you were yourself.
Tusker Sahib had given him a cummerbund and turban ribbon woven in the colours of the
Mahwar Regiment. He had worn his regalia last at the New Year, when all the junior officers,
a few of the senior officers and even some of the officers’ ladies got quite merry celebrating
the recent victory over Pakistan. Tusker and Lucy-Mem were the only British people at the
table, and Ibrahim was proud, really, that of all that gathering his own Sahib was the only
one who got superbly drunk in the way he remembered his father describing the way
Colonel Moxon-Greife always got drunk.
“First, my son,” his father told him, “Colonel Sahib speaking with much vitality, but in a
very discreet way, understand? Then towards end of the dinner he stops speaking at random,
and sits at attention. Speaking only when spoken to, but always speaking to the point. Hand
always on glass. Glass always being refilled. He sits at head of table. He is President of the
Mess. Never do I have to help him to stand when time comes for this. He is rigid. ‘Mr Vice,’
he says, standing, meaning Mr Vice-Président, who is then also standing and giving toast of
The King-Emperor. All then drinking. Colonel Moxon-Greife then sitting down. After that
immovable. We take him out in his chair. It is special chair with iron circular attachments,
through which poles are passed, so that it becomes like dooli. Some fellows come in with
poles. The poles are passed through the rings. We carry him out and across the road to his
bungalow. I put him to bed. At six o’clock next morning he is on parade. A real burra Sahib.
On Ladies’ Nights he drinks only little little less. So that he walks back with Memsahib
across road to bungalow.”
Ibrahim had never been to the Pankot Mess except on Ladies’ Night and since he’d been
employed by Tusker and Lucy-Mem, Tusker had been only once to the Mess alone, and
come back disappointingly sober. It had been different in January, when Ibrahim
accompanied them both and stood behind Lucy-Mem’s chair, in his regalia, watching Tusker
Sahib knocking it back on the other side of the table and then, becoming rigid, suddenly
raising his glass and saying in his loud clear English voice, “Ma Gandhi, God Bless her,” and
receiving what sounded to Ibrahim like murmurs of approbation and a grin from Colonel
Menektara at the head of the table but which Lucy-Mem described afterwards, on the way
home, as mutters of disapproval and smiles of embarrassment. “You don’t know India,
yet
!”
Tusker had cried. “
They
knew what I meant.
Ma
, Mother. Mother India. For Chrissakes.”
For a day or so after the mess night Tusker had been alternately subdued and quarrelsome.
For a while, subsequently, on an even keel. Then came his attack. Memsahib had had to seek
Ibrahim’s help because Tusker was taken ill in the early hours of the morning while sitting
on one of the viceregal thrones; was slumped, unconscious, half-on half-off, his pyjama
trousers round his ankles, white legs spread.
Ibrahim had been embarrassed, not only at the sight of the Burra Sahib in such an
undignified position, but before then, because although at one o’clock in the morning when
he heard Lucy-Mem calling and knocking on the door of his hut he was where every good
bearer should be who had to be up at cockcrow -on his charpoy—Minnie was under him
and at last showing signs of taking charge, which was something you had to let Minnie do if
you weren’t to get the cold shoulder and soggy chapattis for the rest of the week.
“Coming, Memsahib!” he cried when he realized who it was. The overstatement of the
week. Withdrawing, stifling Minnie’s anticipated shriek of outrage with one hand he hissed in
her ear, “Be quiet. Intruders.” Then covering Minnie with one blanket he wrapped another
round himself, groped his way in the dark to the door and unbolted it. Memsahib’s torch
blinded him.
“Please help me, Ibrahim. Burra Sahib is very ill.” She seldom called Tusker Burra Sahib
except at times of crisis. She tottered back down the path, in her dressing gown, while
Ibrahim struggled into shirt and trousers and then followed her.
“In there,” she said. “I’ve rung Dr Mitra. But otherwise I don’t know what to do. I mean
for the best. Whether to move him. In any case I couldn’t easily do it by myself. Would you
please take a look?”
One of the odd things about The Lodge was that although between the bathroom and the
bedroom there was a doorway there was no door: instead a pair of swing-to louvred half-
shutters such as cowboys in western films pushed through. When Ibrahim first came to the
Smalleys it was explained to him that if he entered the bedroom and saw a towel draped over
these shutters it meant that the bathroom-cum-wc was occupied. There was a towel in
position now. He hesitated to enter.
“Don’t worry, Ibrahim. Forget the towel. But the towel is touching. Almost a sign of
grace.” Her voice had changed pitch and intonation, surely. Who was she being now? “I’m
sorry, you can’t know what I’m talking about. It’s just that he must have been feeling ill
when he got out of bed. Quietly, not to disturb me. Not that I was properly asleep.” One of
the twin beds was shrouded by a mosquito net which in Pankot was never necessary but
which Memsahib liked. She pushed through the shutters. And there Sahib was. “It’s how I
found him when I woke and began to worry. I rang Dr Mitra. Did I say? But if there’s
anything we can do before he gets here we ought to, unless it’s too late. Tusker? Bring me a
blanket, Ibrahim. I should have thought of a blanket.”
He brought a blanket. He helped her drape it round Tusker’s head and neck, himself eased
the shoulders away from the wall so that as much warmth as possible could reach his back.
Above the smell of scented disinfectant there was a faint smell of excrement. Flush toilets
had been fitted at the main hotel. Below these thrones were only sanitation pans which the
sweeper removed through a hole in the outside wall. Mrs Bhoolabhoy could sit to her heart’s
content on a pukka loo. Sahib and Memsahib had to make do with these old thunder-boxes.
Colonel Memsahib personally made sure that they were immaculately kept and gave the
sweeper baksheesh for polishing the new mahogany-stained seats. But, in Ibrahim’s opinion,
when flush-toilets were installed in the hotel they should have been put in at The Lodge as
well. Flush-toilets were part of the Christian religion, like sitting in your own dirty bath
water. In the Yookay even if there was only one bath and one we in a house big enough for
twelve people (like his brother-in-law’s house in Finsbury Park) they had for the English the
status of shrines.
When first coming to The Lodge, Ibrahim had mentally labelled the twin-loos His and
Hers. And it was from His—after Tusker had suddenly groaned, opened glazed eyes and
murmured “Where am I?” and Memsahib had cried out, “Here Tusker dear, with me and
Ibrahim”—that Ibrahim had removed Tusker and carried him (light as a feather he seemed
for so hot-tempered a man) well wrapped in the blanket (which had had to be burnt next day
along with his pyjamas) and placed him gently on his bed.
For the next three hours he had been alternately running between bedroom and kitchen,
boiling water for tea, for a hot-water bottle for Burra Sahib’s feet which were deathly cold,
making coffee for Lucy-Mem and for Dr Mitra, pouring tots of brandy, or squatting on the
verandah within call smoking one of Tusker’s India King cigarettes (a present from Colonel
Menektara) because his own were back at the hut (and Minnie no doubt no longer was, so he
felt entitled to scrounge).
When Dr Mitra left at about four o’clock Ibrahim was deputed to light his way to his car.
Unthanked he made his way back. Memsahib called, “Ibrahim?”
He went into the bedroom.
“Sahib wants a word.”
Ibrahim stood by the bed. A little of Tusker’s colour had come back, but not much. His
eyes were closed.
“Here is Ibrahim, Tusker dear.”
The eyes remained closed but the left hand was slowly raised. After a moment Ibrahim
took it.
“I told him it was you who carried him to bed, Ibrahim,” Memsahib said when they were
back in the living-room. “I’m afraid he’s still too weak to thank you. It’s his heart. Not too
serious an attack, but we may have a long hard haul. I’m not sure, you see, that when Dr
Mitra advises a week in the hospital tomorrow he will be—co-operative.”
Ibrahim had his hands behind his back. Her own were suddenly pressed one to each cheek
of her unmade-up sharp old little face.
“Memsahib sleeping now. I will bring tea and arroot. Arroot very good for sleeping.”
“Arrowroot.”
“
Han
, arroot.”
Ten minutes later he took the tray in. She was in bed, but sitting upright under the
mosquito net, which was parted so that she could watch Tusker who was now asleep.
Ibrahim murmured, “Ibrahim dossing down in living-room rest of night, keeping watch.
Memsahib sleeping.”
Curled up in a blanket in front of the fireplace which was still warm with the embers of the
pine-log fire lit that evening he kept nodding off. Whenever he woke he crept into the
bedroom. She had kept her bedside light on, but covered the shade with a cloth. There was
just sufficient light to see that all was well, that both slept : Memsahib upright against her
piled-up pillows, under that cascade of cobwebbed net playing in her dreams, perhaps, Miss
Havisham in Great Expectations, still waiting for her groom.
At 5 a.m. he kicked out the last spark of the wood fire in case at dawn there was a
mysterious association of ideas and The Lodge burnt down because she had dreamed it.
These images and recollections passed through his mind as he stood with Lucy-Mem in the
rear compound. His heart had begun to melt but he hardened it again. She was playing with
the beads, telling them off, calculating by means of a handy abacus slung round her withered
old neck the cost of a new
mali
.
She said, “Oh what a tangled web we weave, once we practise to deceive. Even for the best
of reasons and for but a limited time.”
She was perhaps waiting for him to make some foolish and generous declaration about the
problem of the boy’s meals. Actually there was no problem. More casual visitors shared the
food in the servants’ quarters at the Hotel than even the astute Mrs Bhoolabhoy could guess.
“Of course,” Memsahib said, “since this boy’s services would only be needed a few days a
week the question of feeding him is not so complex. Wouldn’t he be satisfied with his wage?
He has some other part-time occupation? I’m referring to the cheaper boy, the one not so
bright but strong and willing.”
“The cheaper boy is cheaper, Memsahib, because at the moment all but destitute unlike the
other boy who although given push has wits about him and can pick up this and that and the
other. Cheaper boy I think is more deserving case. He is the kind of boy we call always at the
back of the queue. Very quiet boy. But loyal, honest and sturdy.” He would have to find a
boy who roughly fitted the description.
Memsahib fixed her gaze at a middle distance. She said, “Sturdy boys take a lot of feeding.”
He was about to say that by sturdy he meant a wiry non-meat eater but stopped himself in
time. He hoped she would not ask his name or whether he was a Mohammedan or a Hindu.
He said, “If such a cheaper boy is given the wage Memsahib has in mind and one good meal
a day he would work every day in the garden until it is tidy and easier to keep up.”
“Yes,” she said, then folded her arms and began to stroll again. “But it would have to be
made clear to him that it is only temporary employment. And in any case, Ibrahim, no steps
must be taken until Mr Bhoolabhoy is back and I have had the opportunity of establishing
what the situation is. If it then seems that the only thing for it is to hire a
mali
ourselves,
without Burra Sahib knowing, Mr Bhoolabhoy will have to be a party to the little deception
because of the question of tools. In fact —”
She came to a standstill.
“In fact, even Mrs Bhoolabhoy may have to know about it. What a wretched thought. But
if for weeks there has been no
mali
and suddenly there is a
mali
, Colonel Sahib will not only
be pleased, which is the object of the exercise, but may even be cock-a-hoop and when he is
better, well enough to go to the hotel for a meal, he might be tempted to say something to