The Wind Cannot Read

by Richard Mason

  Under the lamp on the terrace it was marvellous too, because now I had seen over the balustrade I felt as though we were on a cloud, a tiny golden cloud, a kind of cave in the darkness, with only the table, and Sabby and myself, and the chairs, and a few paving-stones that were washed by the fringes of the light—and occasionally Bahadur, when he appeared from the shadows like a djinn. Because of the whisky I had drunk there was also the sensation of floating; but Sabby had only tasted the whisky from my lips and she too was floating, and then we were so alone together that the world was not there below us any more, and I smoked a cigar which Sabby had bought me specially, and it was not until midnight that we left our private golden cloud and went back into the house.

  When we were in bed, we read for a while. First of all I read aloud, and then Sabby read, but she read over the full stops and commas and stopped in the middle of sentences and so I did not listen to the meaning but only to her voice, and sometimes I corrected her pronunciation. She came to the word ‘corollary,’ and I said it several times for her. She said ‘cororrary’ and ‘collorrary’ and then ‘cororrally’, but she could not get it right except by splitting up the syllables. We turned off the light and she went on saying ‘cororrorary,’ and then she could not say the l’s at all. Her nose was buried in my cheek.

  “Cororrary,” she said.

  I felt my face damp, and I put my finger to it. It was not perspiration, so I ran my finger down Sabby’s cheek and found it was quite wet.

  “Darling,” I said. “You are not crying because you can’t say corollary?”

  “No, I don’t mind about cororrary.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “There is a funny noise,’’ she said.

  I listened, and some way away I could hear the regular beating of an Indian drum. It was some kind of festivity because there was singing, and wild shrieks, but these drifted only faintly from the distance.

  “They are enjoying themselves,” I said.

  “Yes, I know; I am silly, darling. Do you think I shall ever say cororrary?”

  Chapter Seven

  (1)

  A telegram came from Lord Durweston. It was about a week after we had moved into the house. It said, “Expect me shortly. Looking forward to seeing you.”

  “It will be all right,” Sabby said. “He is a darling man, and he will like you.”

  “I shall have to go back to Rosie’s for a while,” I said.

  “I don’t want you to go to Rosie’s. You will perhaps try to love her again.”

  “We will see,” I said.

  One night Mr. Scaife came to dinner. It was necessary to ask him to see her new house, and we pretended that I, too, had been invited for the evening. We put everything that belonged to me into drawers, and I was very grateful for the whisky and commented upon the brand as though I had not seen it there before. Sabby and I tried not to look at one another. We asked each other polite questions, and sometimes Sabby gave ambiguous answers, trying to make me smile despite all our resolutions. I could see a delighted little twinkle in her eye, as though it was only a game and it did not matter Scaife knowing we were playing it for his benefit. Scaife sat there distantly, and the light was reflected on his spectacles. He looked at the ceiling, talking to it, though indirectly at me, and he did not seem to notice Sabby a great deal.

  “Did you give the happiness Vikrana spoke about?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Ah!”

  I thought it was all going off splendidly. After dinner we smoked for a long while, and I began to get impatient because I wanted Sabby to myself again.

  “I had better be going,” I said.

  “Must you really?” said Sabby.

  “It is getting late.”

  I looked at my watch, but Scaife did not look at his, and he made no move, so I pretended to think of a new topic of conversation and forget about going. Some time later I repeated the manoeuvre and said there was work tomorrow, and Sabby said pointedly that she, too, had to work. Scaife asked for another glass of whisky. He looked into the glass, gently swilling it round, and went on talking in a high philosophical way while Sabby and I dried up, watching him blackly. When at last he came away he was drifting as if in a world of his own, and he said good night to Sabby automatically, as one might to a servant. We went down the drive together. He went on talking, this time at the stars. The roads on the hill were empty. They were still wet from the last rain, and they reflected the yellow street lights. The freshened leaves of the trees that lined the road glistened and were still, and there was no sound except for our feet on the road and Scaife’s voice. He was talking about mystics.

  We came to the corner where the bazaar began, and here there were bright lights in shops, glaring out on to the street.

  “This is where I turn off,” I said. “Are you going to walk to Malabar Hill?”

  “Yes,” he said vaguely.

  I tried to break away but he held me, not directly, but with his conversation aimed away from me. And yet he was at the same time conscious of me, like someone who is talking to a second person and trying to detain a third.

  When we finally parted I went off along the road through the bazaar, and spent a quarter of an hour looking into the cafés and the shops that were still open. All kinds of foodstuffs were being sold along the edges of the pavements, queer, twisted, cracker-like orange things and a dozen different kinds of sweets piled high on tin trays. There were many people in the streets, but nobody took any notice of me, nobody begged. I wore different clothes to them all and I could not speak their language, and I felt as though I was invisible, wandering amongst them. I walked up a side-street towards a dense crowd that was spread right across the width of the road, and over the heads I caught glimpses of dancing figures. There was some singing, and the monotonous, insistent rhythm of the drum—the same sound that we had heard every night for an hour as we lay in bed. I turned away, back through the bazaar, and up the hill towards the house again, going back to the other little world that was Sabby’s and mine.

  Standing by the gate there was a figure. I knew at once that it was Scaife. I knew first by some kind of instinct, and then because it was a tall figure and the attitude familiar. He was standing motionless, waiting.

  I had advanced up the road through the lamplight and it was useless to go back. He was facing me and he would have seen me, and so I came on slowly, my feet padding the silent asphalt. He did not move. The light was full on me, and then I was in the shadows and then in the light again. I thought methodically about what was going to happen. I was not perturbed; I might have expected this. I knew whatever happened I should not lose my temper, nor be afraid.

  There was only a dim light at the gate. His form was silhouetted with a dull yellow glow and his face was a dark oval. His hands were at his side, yellow-ringed. He was not standing aggressively but with a heavy patience, and he was not barring my way.

  I went up to the side of him and stopped, and he turned round from the waist so that I could see his face. One spectacle caught the light, and the other was still in the shadow, so that he looked as though he was wearing a monocle. The visible eye was expressionless.

  “Why are you waiting here?” I said.

  He began to smile. It was slow and derisive, and straight at me, not at the sky or the stars. He did not reply until I repeated “Why?”

  “I wanted to see if it was true.”

  “It is true.”

  “I was a fool to let this happen,” he said.

  We went on looking at each other, and I had no idea what he was thinking or what he intended.

  “I should go back to Malabar Hill if I were you,” I said.

  “Would you?”

  “You’ve got a beautiful house.”

  He said nothing. He went on standing there, half-turned towards me and the one spect
acle glinting and the mad, bitter smile on his lips, and I began to feel sorry for him because he was fifteen years older than I and his life had gone wrong.

  “Good night,” I said.

  I waited to see if he replied, but he was silent, and I started up towards the house, and when I was in the darkness of the porch I was out of his sight.

  I went in, and there was no light in the sitting-room, but there was a light under Sabby’s door. She was sitting up in bed with sleepy eyes, waiting for me. When I kissed her she was smooth and soft, and there was a sweet aura of perfume about her. She was so tender and delicate and pretty like a flower that I only dared to touch her lightly. I took her tiny, soft nose in my teeth and shook it gently, and then she wrinkled it and I tried to do the same, but I could not wrinkle my nose without distorting the rest of my face.

  When I was also in bed and the lights were out, I could still hear the banging of the drum going on and on monotonously, and the singing that was like the cries of savage jungle tribes.

  (2)

  Lord Durweston’s telegram had been delayed, so that it was only a week after it arrived that he himself landed in Bombay. He had already installed himself in the Taj when he rang up Sabby. She went off to have lunch with him. Afterwards she said:

  “He wants to meet you. He is a very sweet man, and he has asked will we please both have dinner with him tomorrow night.”

  “How much have you told him about us?”

  “Darling, I haven’t told him anything, except that you are so nice. But I am not any good at pretending now and I think I don’t mind if he knows anything.”

  “Then I hope he makes you marry me, so that you become an honest woman.”

  “Darling, is Sabby not honest woman?”

  “Not so long as you don’t marry me.”

  “Oh dear, what shall I do?”

  “It’s very easy. You’ve only got to say one word.”

  “One word perhaps would make you very unhappy.”

  “It would make me insane with joy, and it would make all this pretence unnecessary.”

  “No, darling, it would make you unhappy, and your mother and father who live in . . . Oh, I wish I could remember where you live.”

  “Tewkesbury.”

  “Yes, in Tewkesbury, they would be so angry because you had married silly Japanese girl with funny little face.”

  “They would like your funny little face,” I said.

  “They would never forgive me for being Japanese.”

  “Is that why you won’t marry me?”

  “Yes, that is one reason.”

  “And there are others?”

  “There are not really any other reasons. It is just as I told you. I am silly and obstinate, but I want you to go on liking me for a little bit more.”

  “You don’t make things any easier.”

  “It is the first time you have ever said anything like that.”

  “I didn’t mean it,” I said. “It was a kind of blackmail. I shall go on loving you just the same.”

  I saw Lord Durweston before the following night. I was not sure at first that it was him, but I thought I recognised him from Sabby’s description, and he was exactly as I had imagined—tall and greying, with a long, aristocratic face and an aristocratic assurance. He was with Scaife.

  I went into the bar of the Taj, and they were sitting at one of the small tables. Scaife was talking and Lord Durweston was nodding gravely, and I thought at once that they were talking about me. As I went by I nodded at Scaife. He did not nod back, but he focused his eyes on me through his thick spectacles and followed me with his gaze. Because he also stopped talking, Lord Durweston looked round casually over his shoulder, and then I went to the far end of the room and sat down at a table out of sight. I drank by myself, trying to think why it was that one could not live one’s individual life without the interference of others—the Scaifes and the Fenwicks—and yet not caring greatly. They could not take Sabby from me now, not altogether, because I had known her and loved her long enough for her to become part of me. She was part of my life, had been absorbed into it and had influenced it, she had helped to shape the thing that was me, and whatever happened in the future, that could not be altered. I had possessed her sufficiently to know that in that possession I had gained something I should never lose.

  But I was not going to lose Sabby. It may have been in Lord Durweston’s power to turn her away from me, but whatever Scaife had said he did not try. When we met him at dinner the next night he presided with a kindly grace. I could see how much he cared for Sabby. He was not too old to love her as a woman but there was nothing in his manner that was more than paternal affection. Yet although he teased her as a child, he treated her as a woman; and although she liked to be light-hearted, and a little feather-brained, and not serious, I knew he could see through this into that ageless part of her full of wisdom and gentleness. I liked him at once, and he treated me with courtesy, elevating my sense of importance with a long-practised skill. He was a diplomat of great charm, and his intelligence was as self-­evident as his humanity.

  After coffee, we went together to the cloakroom. Here, in this sanctuary, it often happens a new intimacy blossoms between men when they have left the ladies for a moment and here he turned to me and said, as though it was the most natural thing in the world:

  “You’re in love with her, of course?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Good, you are making her happy.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “There’s no question about it. You know that, of course. I would like you to dine with me tomorrow.”

  When I told Sabby, she was very happy that we had got on well together. But she sniffed and puckered her nose and pretended to be jealous.

  “You men will go away and have fun and leave Sabby,” she said.

  “We shall be talking about you all the time.”

  “And you will not say nasty things?”

  “We’re both your admirers. It’s a special session to say nice things.”

  We said a lot of nice things. We talked about her whilst we had long drinks, sitting on the balcony overlooking the harbour where Sabby and I had had our first tryst; and then we dined at almost the same table. It was appropriate, because this was the first recognition we had had of our love, and I was glad to have it. I felt a warm gratitude towards Lord Durweston. It is sometimes fun to be two against all the world, and there is something edifying in defiance; but after a time the pleasure palls and it is good to know you have friends.

  It was not until we began to sip liqueurs that we talked about the future.

  “I’ve been waiting to say that I want to marry Hanako,” I said.

  “Yes, I thought you would tell me that.”

  “You don’t approve?”

  He had a cigar and he drew at it for some time and I waited anxiously for his reply.

  “It’s not really a question of my approval. She doesn’t want to marry you because she is afraid for your happiness. I think you should remember she may be right.”

  “I’ll risk it,” I said.

  “That is the gallant line to take.”

  “No, it’s not at all gallant, it’s what I want.”

  “If I were you,” he said, “I should wait. That is the best thing to do. Wait and see what happens. There may be all kinds of factors that you can’t see clearly at present.”

  “I was hoping that you’d be my ally.”

  “I am your ally. I want you to remember that. I’m your ally and I’m banking upon your being mine. I want to be able to rely on you.”

  “In what way?”

  “You knew that I was Hanako’s guardian? I often wondered whether I’d done right in allowing her to come to India. Only it was not really a question of allowing. She made up her mind that she wanted
to come, and she’s a self-willed little thing. I said yes, because she would not let me say anything else. It meant coming right across the world by herself and starting the job by herself, and she was more by herself than anybody else because she was a Japanese amongst people who hated the Japanese. It was I who made her use a Chinese name. She told me she didn’t think it was fair on the Chinese, and that she must not pretend to be anything but what she was; but I made that condition on her going. Now she is not by herself any longer, and because my work doesn’t allow me to stay here long, I’m grateful to you for this. In a few days I’m going to Delhi. Then I shall fly back to England. I shan’t be able to see her again. It’ll be a great relief to me to know that she is going to have you during the coming year.”

  “What about Mr. Scaife?” I said.

  “Mr. Scaife is in many ways an excellent person. He is both clever and capable, and he’s a friend of mine. But his mind has been conditioned by a lot of curious circumstances, and it has become a curious mind. I wouldn’t like to rely on him to take care of Hanako.”

  “In two months I shall have finished my special training,” I said. “I don’t know where I shall be going.”