Chapter Nine
I
Breakfast was served by Ajit and Sahira at nine o’clock, by which time no further visiting cards had been returned. Therefore the wife’s edgy mood continued. She was very polite to Ajit and Sahira, not so polite to me. The business of the calling cards was certainly not to be joked about. All the Calcutta party-going was supposed to have been a preparation for her month in the hills, so she was like a footballer who had trained for a cup final, only to discover that he had been left out of the team. After breakfast, Lydia went upstairs for a bath. The rain still fell, and all the coal was gone. In the living room grate a log burned, giving a sweet smell. Bernadette and I took the armchairs either side of the fire.
‘How many cards have been dropped, and how many returned?’ I said.
‘Mama dropped about ten. She then sent me out on a bike to drop another five. We’ve had two returned, if you include the invitation to the Pooles. The other was from the Askwiths, but that’s only because I told Claudine to tell her mama and papa to get a wiggle on.’
‘And does your mama know that?’
‘Yes. She figured it out.’
It was a bad lookout, but there was nothing further to be said on the matter of the cards. ‘What are you going to do today?’ I asked Bernadette.
‘Read. Drift about.’
‘Got any balls to go to?’
‘Not ’specially. There’s a fancy dress at the Amusement Club.’
‘But you haven’t got a costume.’
‘Anyone who’s got a kimono, a Chinese hat, some kohl and a pair of silk slippers can go as Aladdin.’
‘And have you got all those things?’
‘Probably.’
‘Aladdin’s a man,’ I observed.
‘Mmm . . . sort of. There’s a tea dansat at some church hall or other. We might crash that.’
‘Who’s “we”?’
‘Me and Ann and Claudine, obviously. The big blow is next Monday – at the Gymkhana Club. You’re coming to that.’
‘Am I?’
‘Mama said.’
‘Since when have you been calling your mother “Mama”?’
‘Since about three weeks.’
Silence for a space.
‘Dad.’
‘What?’
‘Would you like me to teach you the shimmy? Well, not the shimmy, but the foxtrot. All you ever do with Mama is waltz.’
‘I don’t see myself shimmying. I’ve got six inches of metal plate in my leg.’
‘There’s no reason why you couldn’t be a good dancer.’
‘I’m too old.’
Silence for another space.
‘Will you be seeing the R.K. here?’ I demanded.
‘How should I know?’
‘I want you to steer clear of him.’
‘I know you do.’
She appeared quite calm, which made me the opposite.
II
That morning I went for a walk alone, carrying an umbrella with a broken spoke. There was a mass of rolling cloud down in the valley, like a silent, foaming sea. On the Mall, a fellow in the dark recesses of a blacksmith’s forge called out, ‘You will be wanting to see about your umbrella for the monsoon!’ Behind him, another man was hammering away at one of the curved Ghurka swords. But presumably they ran to fixing umbrellas as well. It was hardly the monsoon yet. A light rain fell, but not so as to disrupt the holiday mood of the Europeans who sauntered about the narrow lanes. It was all ‘Compliments to the air!’ and ‘It’s set fair for this afternoon, I believe!’ and ‘Oh, but you must come to ours!’
I walked for a good while about Darjeeling. The fixtures of the municipality were like their British equivalents, but there was something playful about them, as if they were in a children’s story. The town hall tried too hard to look serious; the post boxes were bright red and gold, and the roof of the goods shed, next to the station was, I noticed for the first time, sky blue.
I was standing near the taxi rank of the station when I spied the long, blue car, the Continental. The chauffeur was in the process of taking down the roof canopy, the light rain having now stopped altogether. The chauffeur regained his place at the wheel; the dark-suited, businesslike man sat in the front alongside him. On the back seat sat the R.K., and there was a new man alongside him: Fisher. Here was the connection proven beyond doubt. The car was now moving slowly through the wandering crowds, and when Fisher saw me he spoke to the R.K., who tapped on the shoulder of the businesslike man, who spoke to the driver, who stopped the motor. They were twenty yards off. Every man in the car was looking at me. After a further word between Fisher and the R.K., these two climbed down from either side of the car; they convened at the radiator where, after a further conflab, they began walking towards me.
Fisher was slightly in the lead as they approached. He was better dressed than I had ever seen him, in a good suit of green tweed. He said, ‘Jim,’ and it was the first time he’d called me that, ‘I’d like you to meet a very good friend of mine: His Highness, the Rajkumar of—’
‘Huzoor,’ the R.K. said, cutting him off, and making me a smart bow. He was smaller than I had thought, and slightly older, perhaps in the late twenties. He wore a suit of still better green tweed that Fisher’s. He was holding out his hand. How should I address him? I wasn’t at all sure Fisher had been right in calling him ‘His Highness’: that was perhaps why the R.K. had cut him off.
I settled on: ‘Pleased to meet you, Rajkumar sahib.’
I did not think that Hindus (especially high-born ones) went in for handshaking; they believed the touch of a foreigner might defile them in some way, but this fellow had a good, firm handshake. Then again, he wore a diamond in his right earlobe.
‘I am delighted to meet you, Captain Stringer. I have heard a great deal about you. How are you enjoying it here? I hope you don’t mind the rain too much?’
‘Not too much.’
‘It’s what we’re all here for, I suppose . . . Major Fisher tells me I always spend too much time on the niceties, Captain Stringer, so I will come right out with it: since I’m told you don’t go in for shikar, what do you say to a round of golf?’
‘What, now?’
He didn’t seem to hear that. He was turning towards the businesslike man, who had also stepped out of the car, and was standing, un-introduced, about ten feet behind us in the road.
The R.K. said, ‘Captain Stringer, I am proposing . . . ’ He looked back at the businesslike man again. ‘What’s that thing called? A three-for-all, or something?’
The businesslike man gave the politest of shrugs while remaining ten feet away, so I answered the question: ‘Do you mean a three-ball?’
‘Ah, Captain Stringer. I can tell you are practically a scratch man.’
In fact, I just hacked my way around the railway course at York, usually alone, and gave up when I’d lost all my balls. I said, ‘I can hardly play at all, I’m afraid.’
‘But you should see me,’ the R.K. said. ‘I am always distinctly over par. They all averted their eyes when I teed off at the Tollygunge Club. Apparently my stance alone foretells doom. My secretary informs me that I swing outside the line – which is all very well, but what line?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Have you considered having lessons?’
‘I am a lost cause, I fear,’ said the R.K., ‘but I love the game even so. Did you say you will join us?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I mean . . . is there a course?’
Fisher spoke up. ‘Of course there’s a course. His Highness wouldn’t be asking otherwise, would he?’ The R.K. winced. ‘His Highness’ had definitely been wrong, but the two were in close alliance, no question of it.
‘The course is out at Tiger Hill, Captain Stringer,’ the R.K. said. ‘Only a few miles away, and only nine holes. I’m afraid the greens are in a shocking state, but then again you can see Mount Everest in favourable weather. Might we collect you in the motor?’
‘Whe
n?’
‘The prognosis is excellent for tomorrow, Saturday.’
What prognosis? It hardly mattered. I was going to play golf with him. It was simply inevitable, but I did not want him at the house, because then he might run into the girl that I was sure he had fixed on for a wife: namely my own daughter, and I did not want her to know about any of this. I said, ‘That will be rather out of your way. Let’s meet outside the railway station.’
‘The station it is then,’ said the R.K. ‘Say, two o’clock?’
He put out his hand, and we shook again.
‘Confirm by messenger?’ the businesslike man – I assumed he was the secretary – suggested from his distant post.
‘No, no,’ said the R.K. ‘All these dammed chits flying about all over the place – not necessary.’
The three of them walked back to the car. On the way, the businesslike man raised an umbrella and held it over the R.K.’s head, since the rain had started again. Fisher was close enough to the R.K. to get some of the benefit of the umbrella. Somehow, I did not think that Fisher would ever be returning to work on the East Indian Railway Commission of Enquiry. After they had driven off I remained in the road, pedestrians, tongas, ponies and ox carts flowing by on either side of me, my mind in a whirl. I had been not so much flattered as practically flattened by the boyish charm of the R.K. His charm lay partly in the fact that his English, while good, was slightly ‘off’. It lay also in the enthusiastic briskness with which he conducted his business.
But why did he want to play golf with me? And why was he associating with Fisher?
III
I resumed my walk, and at getting on for midday I found myself on what I believed was called Auckland Road looking at a notice fixed to the double doors of one of the bigger chalet-like buildings. It read, ‘Bertram’s’, and there was a list of the amenities inside, including post and telegraphic office, games room, liquor bar, reading room and lending library. Well, I was an honorary member of Bertram’s. It was one of the clubs you could join in advance for the length of your stay. Lydia had arranged it for me, and looking at the notice I saw a chance to take up a line of enquiry I’d been meaning to pursue since the evening of the Debating Society dance.
Bertram’s was a matter of polished wooden floors, green notice-boards, bookshelves not confined to library and reading room, and sodden umbrellas sprouting everywhere. There was quite a crush of steaming, damp Englishmen in the bar, so I gave up on the beer and walked directly through to the reading room-cum-library, a chilly place, the fire in the great fireplace being unlit owing, as I supposed, to the coal famine.
The fact that the place ran to lending books had made me think they would have children’s books, and they had plenty, including volumes of The Captain. It was one of the principal boys’ papers, and it was ‘for Old Boys too’, as the covers always proclaimed.
Dougie Poole was in the middle forties. He would have been thirteen in about the mid-nineties. I picked out the volume for the collected Captains of 1896–7, and began looking for the ‘Naturalist’s Corner’, an item that occurred regularly, along with many a ‘Cycling Corner’ and ‘Athletic Corner’. While flipping the pages, I took the volume over to the long centre table, where two other readers sat, both looking over the sporting papers. ‘Naturalist’s Corner’ was advertised as being ‘conducted by Edward Step, F.L.S.’ The queries from the young naturalists were printed in bold, and Step’s answers were given in ordinary type below:
H. P. Pearson (Hendon) declares himself ‘an ardent collector of birds’ eggs’, and he wishes to know . . .
William Lessing (Devizes) wishes to know the average age of the common spider . . .
F. Dixon (Doncaster) desires to begin a collection of dried plants this spring . . .
I skipped further down the column on which this last appeared – it was page 33 of the March 1897 issue – and there was the name I was looking for, but not quite the query I had been lead to expect:
Douglas Poole (Walthamstow) wants information respecting the keeping of an adder.
An adder: a poisonous – or rather a venomous – snake, and not the harmless grass snake that Poole had mentioned as being the subject of the correspondence.
Edward Step, F.L.S. replied:
I am not sure it is such a very good idea to keep an adder as a pet. The snake is a small but true viper, and known to be irascible. Adders may strike without warning when handled, and human envenomation from adders results in about a dozen fatalities a year, while deaths among pet dogs run into the many hundreds. I cannot imagine where Master Poole found his adder. In the wilds of Walthamstow presumably, since they are not sold in any pet shop of the normal kind . . .
Further down the page, Mr Step did stoop to answering the question, albeit briefly, as if washing his hands of the matter:
The snake wants a sunny house, floored with gravel, and with bathing arrangements.
I heard a loud ‘How’s tricks, Jim!’ from the doorway, and Dougie Poole himself was walking, somewhat erratically, towards me. I hastily flipped over the pages of The Captain, so that he found me something on ‘The Stamps of Japan’, or so I hoped.
‘Your girl’s over at our place,’ he said, as I stood up and shook his hand.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Good.’
‘Glass of fizzle? I’ve a bottle on the go in the liquor bar. You a philatelist on the side?’ he enquired, as we made for the door of the reading room.
‘Come again?’ I said, and then I clicked: the Japanese stamps. ‘Passing interest, you know.’
The Captains had been bound in blue, whereas I had usually seen them bound in maroon, and they had not been loudly announced as collected Captains, but only by small gold lettering on the spine. Therefore Poole might not have stumbled upon the name of the publication I was reading.
‘Philately will get you nowhere,’ Dougie Poole said, and he smiled rather sadly as we took our seats in the ram-packed bar. Half the bottle was left; Poole signalled for another glass. He was no advertisement for champagne-drinking, and I insisted he give me no more than half a glass.
‘What’s the celebration Dougie?’ I asked.
‘Oh, life itself. Being alive, you know.’
‘And not being . . . envenomated.’
He pulled a mournful face worthy of Leno himself. ‘Why did we colonise a country that had those bloody things in it? All wrong, Jim, all wrong.’
‘But you know snakes,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘when I was a boy I had a vivarium.’
‘A what?’
‘Just like an aquarium, Jim, only without water. A harmless little ringed snake I had in there, I think. One and six from a shop in Seven Dials.’
At the Debating Society dance, he’d said it was a grass snake; and on the pages of The Captain that I’d looked at a moment ago it had been an adder.
‘What did you feed it on?’
‘At first, newts. But that was an accident. I mean, I kept the newts in a vivarium, and Gregory ate them.’
‘Hold on. Who was Gregory?’
‘The snake. Then I got in frogs.’
‘Where did you find the frogs?’
‘In spring there’s plenty of frogs all over the place, Jim. You go to, you know, a pond.’
‘But the rest of the year?’
‘The shop in Seven Dials. About thruppence a piece – far too much for a frog if you ask me. Fortunately, snakes don’t need much feeding; go without for days on end. They’re rather ascetic chaps; don’t even need much air. Perfectly content just being in your pocket for a day, and that’s where I kept him.’
Whether by accident or design, he was muddying the waters. I decided to make my shot. ‘But you wrote to a magazine about snakes, you said?’
‘I was forever writing away for enlightenment when I was a lad, Jim. Did you ever read the Sunday Strand? There was a fellow in there called the Old Fag or some such thing. Back page. You’d write to him for advice.’
; ‘On what subject?’
‘Life. He was an expert on life, Jim. So I dropped him a line. I’d be fifteen or so. It was after I got my start on the railway, anyhow.’
‘Which railway, Dougie?’
‘Oh, London, Brighton and South Coast. I found office work rather slow, so I sent in a card to the Old Fag saying I’d always fancied myself doing something else: acting, for preference, or writing books. Well, he came down like a ton of coal on the acting. A wandering and uncertain life, dubious company; engaged for three months, and out for six, and so on.’
‘And the writing life?’
‘He said, if you’re a born writer, you’ll write a book – won’t be able to help it.’
Dougie Poole hadn’t written a book as far as I knew.
He now rose to his feet. ‘Just going to drain off, Jim,’ he said, and he began pushing his way through the liquor bar crowd. The moment he was out of sight, I stood and followed. Did he think I’d got the drop on him? If so, he would go into the reading room instead of the Gentlemen’s, and he would check on whether I’d been looking at The Captain in order to get on the trail of his true interest in snakes. I was closing on the exit door of the bar just as Poole was pushing his way through it. In the corridor, he approached the open door of the reading room, where the bound volume of Captains that I’d been reading lay undisturbed in the long table. He looked into the room, but did not go in; he continued on his way to the Gents’. Had I been saved from discovery by the colour of the binding?
I myself then ducked into the reading room and set the volume back on the shelf, before regaining our table at the liquor bar, where Poole joined me a moment later.
‘How’s the missus getting on with the cards?’ I said.
‘What cards?’
‘Hasn’t she been dropping cards?’
‘You make her sound butter-fingered, Jim.’
‘You know what I mean. Has she been giving out calling cards?’
‘A few, yes.’
‘And how many have been dropped on you?’
Night Train to Jamalpur Page 18
