DUST ON MOUNTAIN: COLLECTED STORIES (73 page)

He trudged over the hills all day, stopping only at small villages to take refreshment. By nightfall he was still ten miles from home. But he had fallen in with other travellers, and with them he took shelter at a small inn. They built a fire and crowded round it, and each man spoke of his home and fields and all were of the opinion that the snow and rain had come just in time to save the winter crops. Someone sang, and another told a ghost story. Feeling at home already, Bisnu fell asleep listening to their tales. In the morning they parted and went their different ways.

It was almost noon when Bisnu reached his village.

The fields were covered with snow and the mountain stream was in spate. As he climbed the terraced fields to his house, he heard the sound of barking, and his mother’s big black mastiff came bounding towards him over the snow. The dog jumped on him and licked his arms and then went bounding back to the house to tell the others.

Puja saw him from the courtyard and ran indoors shouting, ‘Bisnu has come, my brother has come!’

His mother ran out of the house, calling, ‘Bisnu, Bisnu!’

Bisnu came walking through the fields, and he did not hurry, he did not run; he wanted to savour the moment of his return, with his mother and sister smiling, waiting for him in front of the house.

There was no need to hurry now. He would be with them for a long time, and the manager of the Picture Palace would have to find someone else for the summer season … It was his home, and these were his fields! Even the snow was his. When the snow melted he would clear the fields, and nourish them, and make them rich.

He felt very big and very strong as he came striding over the land he loved.

T
he house was called Undercliff because that’s where it stood—under a cliff. The man who went away—the owner of the house—was Robert Astley. And the man who stayed behind—the old family retainer—was Prem Bahadur.

Astley had been gone many years. He was still a bachelor in his late thirties when he’d suddenly decided that he wanted adventure, romance and faraway places. And he’d given the keys of the house to Prem Bahadur—who’d served the family for thirty years—and had set off on his travels.

Someone saw him in Sri Lanka. He’d been heard of in Burma around the ruby mines at Mogok. Then he turned up in Java seeking a passage through the Sunda Straits. After that the trail petered out. Years passed. The house in the hill station remained empty.

But Prem Bahadur was still there, living in an outhouse.

Every day he opened up Undercliff, dusted the furniture in all the rooms, made sure that the bedsheets and pillowcases were clean and set out Astley’s dressing gown and slippers.

In the old days, whenever Astley had come home after a journey or a long tramp in the hills, he had liked to bathe and change into his gown and slippers, no matter what the hour. Prem Bahadur still kept them ready. He was convinced that Robert would return one day.

Astley himself had said so.

‘Keep everything ready for me, Prem, old chap. I may be back after a year, or two years, or even longer, but I’ll be back, I promise you. On the first of every month I want you to go to my lawyer, Mr Kapoor. He’ll give you your salary and any money that’s needed for the rates and repairs. I want you to keep the house tip-top!’

‘Will you bring back a wife, sahib?’

‘Lord, no! Whatever put that idea in your head?’

‘I thought, perhaps—because you wanted the house kept ready …’

‘Ready for me, Prem. I don’t want to come home and find the old place falling down.’

And so Prem had taken care of the house—although there was no news from Astley. What had happened to him? The mystery provided a talking point whenever local people met on the Mall. And in the bazaar the shopkeepers missed Astley because he had been a man who spent freely.

His relatives still believed him to be alive. Only a few months back a brother had turned up—a brother who had a farm in Canada and could not stay in India for long. He had deposited a further sum with the lawyer and told Prem to carry on as before. The salary provided Prem with his few needs. Moreover, he was convinced that Robert would return.

Another man might have neglected the house and grounds, but not Prem Bahadur. He had a genuine regard for the absent owner. Prem was much older—now almost sixty and none too strong, suffering from pleurisy and other chest troubles—but he remembered Robert as both a boy and a young man. They had been together on numerous hunting and fishing trips in the mountains. They had slept out under the stars, bathed in icy mountain streams, and eaten from the same cooking pot. Once, when crossing a small river, they had been swept downstream by a flash flood, a wall of water that came thundering down the gorges without any warning during the rainy season. Together they had struggled back to safety. Back in the hill station, Astley told everyone that Prem had saved his life while Prem was equally insistent that he owed his life to Robert.

This year the monsoon had begun early and ended late. It dragged on through most of September and Prem Bahadur’s cough grew worse and his breathing more difficult.

He lay on his charpoy on the veranda, staring out at the garden, which was beginning to get out of hand, a tangle of dahlias, snake lilies and convolvulus. The sun finally came out. The wind shifted from the south-west to the north-west and swept the clouds away.

Prem Bahadur had shifted his charpoy into the garden and was lying in the sun, puffing at his small hookah, when he saw Robert Astley at the gate.

He tried to get up but his legs would not oblige him. The hookah slipped from his hand.

Astley came walking down the garden path and stopped in front of the old retainer, smiling down at him. He did not look a day older than when Prem Bahadur had last seen him.

‘So you have come at last,’ said Prem.

‘I told you I’d return.’

‘It has been many years. But you have not changed.’

‘Nor have you, old chap.’

‘I have grown old and sick and feeble.’

‘You’ll be fine now. That’s why I’ve come.’

‘I’ll open the house,’ said Prem and this time he found himself getting up quite easily.

‘It isn’t necessary,’ said Astley.

‘But all is ready for you!’

‘I know. I have heard of how well you have looked after everything. Come then, let’s take a last look around. We cannot stay, you know.’

Prem was a little mystified but he opened the front door and took Robert through the drawing room and up the stairs to the bedroom. Robert saw the dressing gown and the slippers and he placed his hand gently on the old man’s shoulder.

When they returned downstairs and emerged into the sunlight Prem was surprised to see himself—or rather his skinny body—stretched out on the charpoy. The hookah was on the ground, where it had fallen.

Prem looked at Astley in bewilderment.

‘But who is that—lying there?’

‘It was you. Only the husk now, the empty shell. This is the real you, standing here beside me.’

‘You came for me?’

‘I couldn’t come until you were ready. As for me, I left my shell a long time ago. But you were determined to hang on, keeping this house together. Are you ready now?’

‘And the house?’

‘Others will live in it. But come, it’s time to go fishing …’

Astley took Prem by the arm, and they walked through the dappled sunlight under the deodars and finally left that place forever.

D
huki, the gardener, was clearing up the weeds that grew in profusion around the old disused well. He was an old man, skinny and bent and spindly legged but he had always been like that. His strength lay in his wrists and in his long, tendril-like fingers. He looked as frail as a petunia but he had the tenacity of a vine.

‘Are you going to cover the well?’ I asked. I was eight, and a great favourite of Dhuki’s. He had been the gardener long before my birth, had worked for my father until my father died and now worked for my mother and stepfather.

‘I must cover it, I suppose,’ said Dhuki. ‘That’s what the Major Sahib wants. He’ll be back any day and if he finds the well still uncovered he’ll get into one of his raging fits and I’ll be looking for another job!’

The ‘Major Sahib’ was my stepfather, Major Summerskill. A tall, hearty, back-slapping man, who liked polo and pig-sticking. He was quite unlike my father. My father had always given me books to read. The major said I would become a dreamer if I read too much and took the books away. I hated him and did not think much of my mother for marrying him.

‘The boy’s too soft,’ I heard him tell my mother. ‘I must see that he gets riding lessons.’

But before the riding lessons could be arranged the major’s regiment was ordered to Peshawar. Trouble was expected from some of the frontier tribes. He was away for about two months. Before leaving, he had left strict instructions for Dhuki to cover up the old well.

‘Too damned dangerous having an open well in the middle of the garden,’ my stepfather had said. ‘Make sure that it’s completely covered by the time I get back.’

Dhuki was loath to cover up the old well. It had been there for over fifty years, long before the house had been built. In its walls lived a colony of pigeons. Their soft cooing filled the garden with a lovely sound. And during the hot, dry summer months, when taps ran dry, the well was always a dependable source of water. The bhisti still used it, filling his goatskin bag with the cool clear water and sprinkling the paths around the house to keep the dust down.

Dhuki pleaded with my mother to let him leave the well uncovered.

‘What will happen to the pigeons?’ he asked.

‘Oh, surely they can find another well,’ said my mother. ‘Do close it up soon, Dhuki. I don’t want the sahib to come back and find that you haven’t done anything about it.’

My mother seemed just a little bit afraid of the major. How can we be afraid of those we love? It was a question that puzzled me then and puzzles me still.

The major’s absence made life pleasant again. I returned to my books, spent long hours in my favourite banyan tree, ate buckets of mangoes and dawdled in the garden talking to Dhuki.

Neither he nor I were looking forward to the major’s return. Dhuki had stayed on after my mother’s second marriage only out of loyalty to her and affection for me. He had really been my father’s man. But my mother had always appeared deceptively frail and helpless and most men, Major Summerskill included, felt protective towards her. She liked people who did things for her.

‘Your father liked this well,’ said Dhuki. ‘He would often sit here in the evenings with a book in which he made drawings of birds and flowers and insects.’

I remembered those drawings and I remembered how they had all been thrown away by the major when he had moved into the house. Dhuki knew about it too. I didn’t keep much from him.

‘It’s a sad business closing this well,’ said Dhuki again. ‘Only a fool or a drunkard is likely to fall into it.’

But he had made his preparations. Planks of sal wood, bricks and cement were neatly piled up around the well.

‘Tomorrow,’ said Dhuki. ‘Tomorrow I will do it. Not today. Let the birds remain for one more day. In the morning, baba, you can help me drive the birds from the well.’

On the day my stepfather was expected back, my mother hired a tonga and went to the bazaar to do some shopping. Only a few people had cars in those days. Even colonels went about in tongas. Now, a clerk finds it beneath his dignity to sit in one.

As the major was not expected before evening, I decided I would make full use of my last free morning. I took all my favourite books and stored them away in an outhouse where I could come for them from time to time. Then, my pockets bursting with mangoes, I climbed up the banyan tree. It was the darkest and coolest place on a hot day in June.

From behind the screen of leaves that concealed me, I could see Dhuki moving about near the well. He appeared to be most unwilling to get on with the job of covering it up.

‘Baba!’ he called several times. But I did not feel like stirring from the banyan tree. Dhuki grasped a long plank of wood and placed it across one end of the well. He started hammering. From my vantage point in the banyan tree, he looked very bent and old.

A jingle of tonga bells and the squeak of unoiled wheels told me that a tonga was coming in at the gate. It was too early for my mother to be back. I peered through the thick, waxy leaves of the tree and nearly fell off my branch in surprise. It was my stepfather, the major! He had arrived earlier than expected.

I did not come down from the tree. I had no intention of confronting my stepfather until my mother returned.

The major had climbed down from the tonga and was watching his luggage being carried on to the veranda. He was red in the face and the ends of his handlebar moustache were stiff with Brilliantine. Dhuki approached with a half-hearted salaam.

‘Ah, so there you are, you old scoundrel!’ exclaimed the major, trying to sound friendly and jocular. ‘More jungle than garden, from what I can see. You’re getting too old for this sort of work, Dhuki. Time to retire! And where’s the memsahib?’

‘Gone to the bazaar,’ said Dhuki.

‘And the boy?’

Dhuki shrugged. ‘I have not seen the boy today, sahib.’

‘Damn!’ said the major. ‘A fine homecoming, this. Well, wake up the cook boy and tell him to get some sodas.’

‘Cook boy’s gone away,’ said Dhuki.

‘Well, I’ll be double damned,’ said the major.

The tonga went away and the major started pacing up and down the garden path. Then he saw Dhuki’s unfinished work at the well. He grew purple in the face, strode across to the well, and started ranting at the old gardener.

Dhuki began making excuses. He said something about a shortage of bricks, the sickness of a niece, unsatisfactory cement, unfavourable weather, unfavourable gods. When none of this seemed to satisfy the major, Dhuki began mumbling about something bubbling up from the bottom of the well and pointed down into its depths. The major stepped on to the low parapet and looked down. Dhuki kept pointing. The major leant over a little.