The House of Blue Mangoes (45 page)

‘Who’s winning?’ Michael asked, as he walked up to them.

‘We are, of course,’ Andrew said acerbically. Grown-ups could be so stupid.

‘Yes, we’ve got the
Bismarck
and now the
Graf Spee
in great trouble,’ Kannan remarked.

‘I wish you could work the same magic on the Japanese, Andrew. They’re giving us a pasting,’ Michael said.

‘Do they have any big ships?’

‘Yes, several. I’ll give you details soon.’

‘And planes?’

‘Yes, those too. But at the rate the Nips are going, I won’t have to give you the information, you’ll soon be able to see them fly overhead.’

‘Really?’ Andrew said, his precious ships abandoned for the moment at this new and exciting prospect.

‘Well, not yet. They’re nowhere near us. Things are not that bad yet.’

They weren’t, but they were bad enough. On the wall of his study, Michael had pinned a large-scale map of the Burma front on which he traced in red crayons, borrowed from his son, the progress of the Japanese divisions. They were now alarmingly close to the Indian border, bogged down in the thick forests of Burma by the monsoon. ‘Time for dinner and bed, little man,’ Michael said to his son. Andrew’s ships gathered up, father and son went back into the house.

Leaving the boy in the care of the ayah, the Frasers and Kannan set off for the club. It had started raining again, a miserable drizzle that pattered on the roof of the Humber and thickened the mist that pressed in on every side. Michael drove very carefully, but the road was a familiar one, and there was no other vehicle about, so they made good progress. At the club, Michael and Kannan headed for the bar. Belinda made her way to the ladies’ lounge, irreverently christened the Snakepit, especially when Mrs Stevenson presided over it.

Kannan disliked their weekly visits to the club. Its myriad customs and rules unnerved him. His usual practice was to shield himself from view behind Michael or Freddie Hamilton, the young Assistant at Westview, the other division of Glenclare Estate. He would stick as close as possible to Michael tonight, he resolved, as they pushed open the door and were immediately enveloped in a warm fug of cigarette smoke and whisky fumes.

The bar was comfortable, with well-padded armchairs, a bridge table in a corner, and a long straight bar of highly polished teak behind which Timmy, the ancient barman, presided. To the left of Timmy was a hatch through which the ladies were served their drinks. A log fire blazed in the fireplace. A worm-eaten leopard and a stuffed tiger graced the room, this last pressed into service as an extra chair on crowded evenings.

It was early and there were very few people in the room, to Kannan’s relief. He found it easier to deal with the other planters if he was already settled in when they started arriving. They greeted their boss, Major Stevenson, who was seated at the bridge table, waiting for the other regulars to arrive. As Michael and Major Stevenson chatted, Kannan looked around for a place to sit. Spotting empty chairs next to Freddie Hamilton, he went across to greet him. Freddie was an amiable-looking young man, with bulging brown eyes concealed behind thick spectacles. ‘Hullo there, Cannon. Looks like you need a drink,’ he said with a smile.

‘And here’s our master,’ he added in a whisper, as he rose to greet Michael. Drinks were ordered. Once they were comfortably settled, Michael said, ‘Okay, spit it out, Freddie. I could see from across the room that there was some story you were dying to spill.’ Freddie’s storytelling skills were legendary.

‘Oh, no, sir,’ Freddie said, ‘nothing new . . .’

‘You’re going to have to change your preamble soon,’ Michael said with a laugh.

‘Gosh, am I getting predictable? That’s worrying,’ Freddie replied lightly.

Just then Patrick Gordon, one of the other Superintendents in the company, burst upon their group, and unceremoniously took over the conversation. It was clear that Gordon was upset. A scar, high on his cheek, glowed strawberry-red, a sure sign that he was in the grip of high emotion. ‘Have you heard?’ he began, slumping into a chair. ‘The blasted coolie who assaulted Simon Raines has been let off with a slap on the wrist.’

The Raines incident had electrified the district just before the rainy season. A planter in Periyar, Simon Raines, had instructed his head gardener, an old man, to finish clearing a rocky, overgrown strip of land, where his wife intended to plant a bed of hollyhocks. Coming home early for lunch, he had found the old man dozing in the shade of a tree, the work on the plot barely started. In a fury, he had walked over and kicked him in the chest. The gardener had toppled on his side, blood oozing from his mouth and nostrils. When he was taken to the estate hospital, massive internal haemorrhaging had been diagnosed. He was given whatever medication was available on the spot, but had died during the night. The planter had tried to hush the matter up, but someone had reported it to the police. Hard bargaining by the white planters had managed to reduce the charge against Raines to simple assault, and it was only a matter of time before Raines, British and therefore entitled to have his case heard before a British judge in Madras, would walk free with a fine. But it wasn’t to be so. Barely a week after the outrage, when he was relaxing on his veranda with a drink, a young coolie had walked up to him and split open his skull with a pruning knife before the horrified eyes of his wife and butler. The assailant had then thrown away the knife and calmly waited for the police. The blow had been a glancing one, and the best medical attention had saved Raines, though his speech would forever be slurred. In his defence, the coolie, the gardener’s son as it turned out, had said only, ‘What would you do if your father was kicked in the chest?’ And now he had been let off with a small fine. By an Indian magistrate!

‘In the old days, he would have been whipped to death. That’s the only treatment these natives understand. If you ask me, the only good native . . .’ he stopped short, realizing Kannan was part of the group, and then continued, ‘. . . coolie is an obedient coolie, or a dead one.’ He glared at Kannan as if he found the sight of him too distasteful to bear, heaved himself out of his chair, and left.

Kannan couldn’t hide the discomfort he felt, and Michael was quick to speak. ‘Don’t mind Patrick, Cannon. His heart’s all right. He’s just a bit slow to change.’

At the bridge table, Major Stevenson and his regular bridge partner, a senior Superintendent of the Travancore Planting Company, were also discussing the Raines incident.

‘Shocking, I say. Wonder what the country’s coming to?’

‘What would you have done if someone had kicked your father in the chest, John, old boy?’

‘But damn it, are you suggesting that a coolie get away with something like that?’

‘No, I’m not,’ Major Stevenson replied. ‘All I’m saying is that the provocation existed, and in these changing times, it isn’t entirely surprising.’

The other planter said sharply, ‘Edward, do I hear right? Do you really think times have changed so much that puffed-up little natives can be insolent to Englishmen?’

‘Of course not, but it’s their country after all, John.’

‘And look at what a mess they’ve made of it. Constant skirmishing, Hindu against Muslim, as if anyone cared, all those ridiculous maharajahs, and now a bunch of thugs posing as nationalist politicians.’

‘Surely not, John. Nehru, Gandhi and many of the Congress lot have a first-rate pedigree.’

‘Earned back home. And what do we get? Ingratitude. All of them should be left to rot in prison for life. The cheek of it, refusing to co-operate with us in the war. Where would they be without us? They’d have little yellow men telling them what to do. No, these Indians just don’t know what’s good for them. We offer them Dominion status, and what do they demand? Total independence! Total independence, forsooth, they’d go back to being the ignorant little heathens they were before we came along.’

‘My word, John, I wouldn’t have suspected that you nursed such strong emotions.’

His bridge partner looked slightly embarrassed, then guffawed and said, ‘Look, let’s forget this bloody country and get on with the game.’

Throughout the bar, as liquor flowed and tongues loosened, the voices grew louder and more boisterous. The planters took their club nights seriously, particularly now that the country was threatened by war. By the time they were ready to leave, Michael was slightly tipsy. He walked carefully out of the room, an anxious Kannan in tow. Belinda waited for them by the entrance. The cool night air seemed to sharpen Michael’s focus. He scrambled behind the wheel of the Humber and they set off.

The rain had stopped but the mist lay thick and unmoving on the road, and Michael drove with great caution. They could see nothing beyond a couple of feet. An hour or so of this, and they were close to the biggest stream on their route. It had been christened Dhobi’s Leap after a washerman was drowned in it one rainy season. Local legend had it that on moonless nights you could still hear the luckless dhobi’s screams as he was washed away. Whether haunted or not, the sound of falling water, unseen in the mist and darkness, was a curiously desolate one. For all his love of the climate, Kannan shivered as the car slowly nosed forward. When Michael eased the car into the torrent and the water pushed at it, all three of them felt a moment of sheer terror. The Humber began to slide. But then the wheels gripped and they were safely over. The rest of the road back was easier, and they were home in half an hour.

Although he was very tired, Kannan could not sleep. A thump on the roof made him start. When he had first come to Pulimed, he had almost run out of his bedroom in panic when the noises had started up on the roof. Moans and thuds, a prolonged rumble as though something was being dragged along, a stealthy shuffle ending abruptly in a crash . . . there had been a regular orchestra going on above his head. He had mentioned the noises casually to Belinda the next morning and she had laughed it off. ‘Oh, rats. I mean, there are rats on the roof. And civet cats, probably an owl, a snake or two.’

‘Snakes!’ he had said.

‘Nothing to worry about,’ she’d said reassuringly. ‘In the old days, the ceilings used to be made of cloth and there was a possibility something would fall on you during the night, but now there’s no danger of that. You just have to get used to the noise.’

Over time he had come to ignore the commotion on the roof, but tonight it took on a new malevolence. Freddie had spent a lot of the evening telling spooky stories, and now these began to take effect. What if there were ghosts up there, along with the rats and the snakes and the owls? Damn you, Freddie, he thought. What possessed you to tell us horror stories on a cold misty night!

Rain started drumming on the tin roof of the bungalow, a rhythmic, immensely soothing sound. Sleep came finally. Just before it did, Helen appeared before him, as he had first seen her. Slim, tripping down the road in a long flowery skirt.

73

They were married six months later, in what passed for spring in Madras. Kannan was relieved to find he wasn’t sweating in the heavy wool suit he wore. It had been specially made for the occasion by Pulimed’s sole tailor, a genius at copying though his finish wasn’t perfect and the insides of his suits sometimes made their wearers want to scratch themselves. Kannan’s suit was an exact replica of one Freddie had bought in London four years ago. It had been quite in vogue then.

The wedding took place in the old church by the railway station. The golden light of late evening washed over Helen as she came up the aisle and the nervousness Kannan had been beset by all evening vanished, to be replaced by exhilaration. Beautiful women have such an advantage over cloddish men like me, he thought happily; they can rule the world by crooking their little fingers. It was evident God had created them to roam free and delight the world. Helen had agreed to be his, however, and he was so beside himself with excitement that he almost couldn’t bear it.

Murthy, his best man, had been coached to take care of every eventuality by Helen’s relatives and the priest. ‘Be sure he doesn’t bolt or pass out from sheer nervousness,’ Helen’s father had remarked cryptically. ‘These things have been known to happen to men getting married.’ The advice stuck in Murthy’s mind, which was why he was quick to act when his friend swayed towards him, pincering Kannan’s elbow with strong fingers. The bridegroom’s world came back into focus and the wedding passed off without any further hitch.

Later there was dancing and music and tables groaning with food in the bride’s house – great platters of mutton cutlets, a huge bowl of fried pork, mounds of rice, beef curry and railway chicken. There was scarcely a vegetable in sight. Murthy had to content himself with a little rice and potato gravy. But otherwise everyone had the time of their lives. No one knew how to enjoy themselves better than the Anglo-Indians, and they were determined to do their beautiful Helen proud. Everywhere you looked, there was laughter and music and gaiety.

The only still point in the room was where Lily, resplendent in a maroon Conjeevaram sari, and three of her Madras relatives stood. It had taken a lot of pressure and patience on her part to get Daniel’s permission for her to attend the wedding, but he’d given in eventually, as she’d always known he would. In time the breach would heal, she was sure of that, if her husband’s health held up, and her son’s impetuosity was tamed. But these were things to worry about later; for now, she would need to be glad for her son and his bride. She’d intended to be present only at the actual wedding in church, but Kannan had insisted she come to the reception and she had allowed herself to be persuaded. She had come all this way for her son’s marriage, and if she felt uncomfortable among people she didn’t know, it was a small price to pay for his happiness.

But she was completely unprepared for the frenzied partying that had greeted her when she walked into the Turner house. The party was nowhere near its peak but it was still like nothing she had ever seen. She huddled together with her relatives, not making too much eye contact and evading all but the most necessary connections with the other guests. As the evening lengthened, her discomfort lessened, especially when she began to see how elated her son was. She watched him dance with his pretty bride, and reflected wonderingly about love and its effects. In our community it isn’t given too much importance, she thought, it is accepted that the union of two families demands stronger bonds than those conferred by a fleeting euphoric link between two young people who lack any real experience of life. But she hoped that the great love her son obviously bore his wife would see him through the years ahead until she was able to bring him back into the family fold.