The Glass Palace (23 page)

‘Dolly!' Uma made a gesture of introduction in Rajkumar's direction. ‘This is Mr Raha; I don't believe you've met . . .'

He recognised her at once, at first glance, beyond the remotest possibility of doubt. It was not that she looked the same, because she didn't: her face was much longer than he remembered, and around the corners of her eyes and mouth there was a fine, almost invisible, filigree of lines, like the tracings of a goldsmith's awl. What he remembered was something else—an element of her expression, a kind of forlornness in her eyes. It was this that had held him that night at the Glass Palace and now it held him again.

‘Mr Raha—' there was a note of concern in Uma's voice— ‘is something the matter?'

‘No.' He looked down to find that he was holding his cane suspended in midair. ‘No. Not at all. Nothing is the matter.'

To prevent himself from leaving the room, he sat down heavily in the nearest chair. It was too soon: he had not expected to see her here. There was nothing he hated more than to be taken unawares. He had expected to prepare himself for this encounter in slow, measured steps. It had been difficult enough to walk into this house. Even now, after two years of dinners and parties, he found it hard to cope with this atmosphere of constrained enactment.

‘Did you have a pleasant journey, Mr Raha?'

It was his hostess, the Collector's wife: there was a look on her face that told him that she was trying to draw him out. He nodded and tried to smile. He could feel his gaze straying towards the chaise-longue and he quickly dropped his eyes. There were others approaching, he could feel them hovering at his shoulder. What was he to say to them? He had never so much wanted to be left alone.

‘Dinner. Shall we . . .?'

On the way to the dining room Uma found herself momentarily alone with Dolly. ‘What do you think of our guest?' she said quickly, under her breath.

‘He's not what I expected: not at all like a big magnate.'

‘Because he's so quiet, you mean?'

‘He doesn't seem to be much at ease, does he?'

‘Have you noticed how he keeps looking at you? It's almost as though he's seen you somewhere before.'

Dolly's eyes widened. ‘That's such a strange thing to say, Uma. I wonder what could have made you say that?'

The Residency's dining room was too large to be properly lit. Its long mahogany table floated adrift in an island of darkness. There were several enormous candlestands on the table but because of the hand-pulled punkah overhead, the candles in the silver branches could not be lit. As a result the diners' faces were half-obscured, never quite visible, even to their neighbours.

Uma had seated Rajkumar on her right and Mr Wright, the Superintendent of Police, on her left. Dolly was at the other end of the table, sitting next to the Collector. Along the walls, at a distance of some half-dozen paces from the table, there stood a line of bearers, one behind each chair. As was the custom, the diners had each brought their own bearer, all except Dolly, who was as good as a member of the household. The Naidus' bearers were local men, Mr Wright's a Sikh. Behind Rajkumar's chair stood U Ba Kyaw, in a pink gaung-baung and a purple longyi: everyone else was drab by comparison.

Presently, the Collector laid down his napkin, and looked across the table at Rajkumar. ‘Burma, Mr Raha,' he said in his ironical way. ‘You have told us very little about it. What took you there in the first place?'

‘Accident,' Rajkumar said shortly.

‘What kind of accident carries a man to another country?'

‘I was working on a boat and found myself stranded in Mandalay. This was at the start of the British invasion. The river was closed to traffic.'

‘An eventful time.'

‘A strange time, sir.'

‘Indeed? How so?'

Dolly was watching him from across the table. Hers was the only face he could see: the others were all wrapped in shadow.

‘The British fleet took two weeks to move up the river,' Rajkumar said. ‘And through most of that time Mandalay was very quiet. I was only a boy then, but I was one of the few in the city who seemed to be aware that trouble was on its way.'

At this juncture there occurred an odd little incident, the fish having just been served, Rajkumar glanced impatiently at the knives and forks that surrounded his plate. Then, as though in exasperation at the profusion of cutlery, he held up his right hand and snapped his fingers. Even before he had completed the gesture U Ba Kyaw had appeared at his side, to hand him the appropriate utensil. This took no more than an instant, but everyone in the room took startled notice. Only Rajkumar himself seemed to be unmindful of the interruption. He resumed his narrative as though nothing had happened.

‘One morning we heard cannon-shots somewhere in the distance. When the noise stopped, everything went on again, just as usual. It was only when the foreign soldiers marched into the city that people understood what had happened: that the King had been defeated, the city conquered. Towards evening we saw troops marching out of the fort with sacks of loot. Palace workers too. A crowd gathered around the walls of the fort. I had never been past the walls. When I saw people crossing the moat, I went to join them. We went running in. At the walls of the palace we found a breached gateway. We broke through, hundreds of us. I suppose you could say it was a kind of riot. None of us knew what we were doing, everyone was following someone else. We went running into the rear of the palace: the women's section. The most valuable objects were already gone, but to us what was left seemed to be of an unimaginable sumptuousness, precious beyond imagining. People fell upon everything that was within reach,
everything in sight, breaking the furniture, digging stones from the floor. After a while I left the main hallway and turned into an anteroom. There was a woman inside. She was small and slight of figure, and even though I had never seen her before I knew at once that she was Queen Supayalat.'

‘The Queen?'

‘Yes. Her Majesty herself. I imagine she had come there to salvage whatever was left of her possessions. She was without guards, without an escort. She should have been frightened, but she was not. She shouted at us, threatened us. But what was still more remarkable was that everyone who came into the room fell instantly to the floor, to shiko to the Queen. Imagine how strange this was: there they were, looting the palace and at the same time paying homage to their Queen! I was mesmerised: I sat in a corner, watching. And when I had been there a while I realised that the Queen was not alone. She had two children with her, and some attendants, a group of young girls. Of the children the older was perhaps three. I took her to be a Princess, from the style of her clothes. Standing beside the Princess was an attendant, also a child, perhaps a year or two younger than me, perhaps more, I could not be sure, for this was a child like none I had ever seen before— beautiful beyond belief, beyond comprehension. She was like the palace itself, a thing of glass, inside which you could see everything of which your imagination was capable. All around us there was noise, the sound of knives, axes, running feet. It was evident that the girl was frightened, and yet, at the same time, she was perfectly calm. I could not take my eyes off her. I knew I was watching something I would never forget.'

‘Who was she?' Uma broke in. ‘This girl—who was she? Did you ever find out?'

‘To tell you the truth . . .' Rajkumar was about to go on, when Dolly cut him short.

‘It would seem,' she said curtly, addressing the Collector, ‘it would seem that this was all a great sport for Mr Raha.'

‘No.' Rajkumar's voice grew louder. ‘Not at all.'

Dolly kept her gaze away from him. ‘Mr Raha,' she said, ‘appears to have enjoyed himself thoroughly.'

‘No. That was not what I meant.'

Glancing at Rajkumar, Uma saw a look of inexpressible dismay cross his face. Suddenly she was sorry for him: Dolly was being needlessly cruel, unfair; anyone could see that the man had not intended any disrespect.

‘Mr Raha . . .' Uma put out her hand to tap him on his wrist, to bring him back to the present and remind him that he was in company. But her elbow brushed accidentally against the table as she was reaching out. A fork slipped off her plate and fell tumbling to the floor. The sound was very small, thinly metallic, but within the confines of that space, it achieved the amplitude of an explosion. Two bearers leapt simultaneously from their places at the wall: one snatched the fallen utensil from the floor while the other proffered a napkin-wrapped replacement.

‘Ah, Madame . . .'

The Collector's voice was expansive and loud, filled with mirthful irony. At the sound of it she shrank into her chair, in mortification. She had come to dread this note of derision, this inflexion that so often accompanied his comments on her small acts of clumsiness. She knew the incident would be mentioned many times that evening; there would be innumerable jokes, references, arch asides: these would constitute her punishment.

‘Ah, Madame,' the Collector continued, ‘may I urge you once again to refrain from juggling with the Government's silver?'

She shivered, her eyes fixed on her plate. How was it possible to endure this? She looked at the new fork, lying on her plate, and as though of its own accord her hand began to move. Her wrist snapped up, sending the fork cartwheeling into the air.

Just before the utensil had completed its arc, Rajkumar shot out a hand and snatched it out of the air. ‘There,' he said, slapping it down on the tablecloth. ‘No harm done.'

Across the table the Collector was watching in astonishment. ‘Uma!' he cried, the note of irony gone from his voice. ‘Uma! What is the matter with you today?'

There followed an instant of silence in which they heard the sound of a carriage, rumbling up to the Residency's gate. ‘
Kaun hai
?' came the sentry's shouted challenge. The reply was muffled and indistinct but Dolly started at once to her feet. ‘It's Mohanbhai. Something must have happened at Outram House.'

A bearer came in, bowing, and presented the Collector with an envelope. ‘Urgent, sir.'

Slitting the envelope the Collector took out a sheet of embossed notepaper. He read the letter through and looked up, smiling gravely. ‘I'm afraid I must leave these revels. A summons. Her Highness wants me at Outram House. At once.'

‘Then I should go too.' Dolly pushed back her chair.

‘By no means.' The Collector gave her hand a pat. ‘Stay and enjoy yourself. It's me she wants. Not you.'

Dolly and Uma exchanged glances: they both knew at once that the Queen had summoned the Collector in order to announce the Princess's pregnancy. Dolly could not decide whether it would be better to go back to Outram House or to stay away.

‘Stay, Dolly,' Uma urged.

‘All right,' Dolly nodded. ‘I'll stay.'

The complicity of the two women was not lost on the Collector. He looked from Uma to Dolly and back again. ‘What exactly is going on at Outram House?' he said. ‘Does either of you have any idea?'

‘No.' Uma was quick to answer, her voice a note higher than usual. ‘Whatever it is, I'm sure it won't require Dolly's presence.'

‘All right then.' The Collector moved quickly around the table, saying his goodbyes. ‘I'll be back when Her Highness sees fit. Do keep yourselves amused . . .'

The suddenness of the Collector's departure set the others astir. The Naidus and the Wrights rose whispering to their feet. ‘It's very late . . .' ‘Ought to be on our way . . .' There was a flurry of leave-taking and handshakes. Following her guests to the door, Uma stopped to whisper to Dolly: ‘I'll be back after I see them off. Wait for me . . .'

Dolly went dazedly into the drawing room and opened one of the French windows. Stepping out into the garden, she stopped to listen to the voices of the departing guests. They were saying their goodbyes. ‘Thank you . . .' ‘So nice . . .' One of the voices was Uma's, but it seemed very far away. She couldn't think clearly right now: everything seemed a little blurred. It struck her that she should shut the French window to keep the insects out of the house. But she let it pass: there was too much to think about.

Right now, at this very moment, at Outram House, the Princesses were probably sitting by their windows looking down the road, waiting for the sound of the Collector's carriage. Downstairs, the reception room was probably open already, the lamps lit, just two, to save on oil. The Queen would soon be on her way down, in her patched crimson htamein; in a moment she would seat herself with her back to the door. And there she would wait until the Collector was shown in.

This was how the accustomed world of Outram House would end: they'd known this, all along, she and the Princesses. This was exactly how it would happen: one day, suddenly, the Queen would decide the time had come. The Collector would be sent for immediately, not a minute to waste. The next day everyone would know: the Governor, the Viceroy, all of Burma. Mohanbhai would be sent away; perhaps the Princesses too. Only she, Dolly, would remain, to bear the blame.