So Much Life Left Over

by Louis de Bernières

  I said, ‘Look at all these butterflies!’ because the butterflies were so many that it was a green snow, like the white snow when the pods of the cotton trees break open and the wind is blowing.

  He said, ‘Yes, these butterflies are very beautiful.’

  Then I did something I would never have expected of myself, because I am modest and quite frightened, but when he stood up out of good manners, which I had not expected, I said, even without thinking about it, ‘Neengal azhakaaka irrukireerkal.’ Sometimes my heart makes my mouth speak, and my mouth speaks before my brain tells me to be more careful.

  He looked astonished and asked me to repeat what I had said. I cast my eyes to the ground and repeated it very quietly. He stood up and he did something I have never seen before, and it was so touching. He took my right hand with his right hand, and kissed the back of it very softly, and then he stroked my cheek just as softly, and he looked at me tenderly and said, ‘It isn’t me who is beautiful.’

  We stood facing each other, and I said, ‘Naalai ennai sandhikka virumpukireerkalaa?’ which is ‘Would you like to meet me tomorrow?’ and he said, ‘Ennaku thirumanam aakvittadhu,’ which is ‘I am married’, and I just shrugged and said, ‘Nonetheless’, but I don’t think he knew the word in English. I believe he understood me, because he kissed my hand again, and turned suddenly and walked away back towards his bungalow.

  And the next day I thought to bring him the gift of a mango, and he was there at the same time.

  9

  A Letter from Fairhead

  Paleo Periboli

  Manor Way

  Blackheath

  Kent

  27 October 1927

  My dear Rosie and Daniel,

  I am writing to congratulate you on the wonderful news that you are expecting again. Sophie and I do most heartily wish and pray that this time you will find yourselves with a healthy child, and that this will help to recompense you for the terrible bad luck last time. If not, of course, then you still have the immense good fortune of having such a sweet little daughter, though she must be getting less little by the day, and I wonder if I will even recognise her when I next see her.

  Sophie and I have been hoping for a long time now that we might have similar good fortune, but nothing seems to happen. It is impossible for me to think that a woman as lively and healthy as Sophie could be barren, and one of these days I suppose I must summon up the courage to find out if I am ‘firing blanks’ so to speak. I am not certain how one would go about it, and I hesitate to ask my doctor, out of sheer embarrassment. I don’t suppose you know, do you? It is causing us no little distress.

  Apart from that sorrow, our lives continue much as before, and we find great happiness in each other, and in living in this pleasant place. Every weekend in the summer we hear the clonk of bat and ball and the cries of ‘Howzat?’ and the polite clapping when someone comes in after making a duck, because of living opposite the cricket ground. We often pop over and watch it ourselves, and when there is no cricket, we walk the dog there.

  The dog is a dreadful little stray that Sophie found when it was trying to get into our dustbin. It has the most pernicious mange, which we are treating of course, and it has an ear that sticks up and another that flops. We are splattering it with a sulphur preparation, and the veterinary surgeon has recommended raw red meat, and something called ‘violet rays’.

  It is a medium-sized animal that seems to be a mixture of every kind of breed there’s ever been, and it has beady black eyes. We believe that if it were not for the mange it would probably have curly black and tan fur. At present we don’t allow it in the house because of its stench, its disease and its bad habits, but we keep it in the conservatory, where we have a stone floor, as you will probably remember, and where it has a rug and a heap of old jumpers to sleep upon. We are bribing it to behave with biscuits, and this is working quite well so far. Sophie has named it ‘Crusty’ for obvious reasons, and we hope that eventually it might become a handsome and domesticated creature that we can call ‘Rusty’.

  I have pleasure in enclosing the latest volume by Mme Valentine and myself, entitled The Silver Tunnel. This time we have worked very hard, to collect interesting and suggestive stories of those who have come back from death, or near-death, because, as you know, we are convinced that the prospect of surviving death is a great comfort to those who fear it and to those who have lost their loved ones, as so many of us did not so long ago. This is now the fifth volume by ‘Valentine Fairhead’ and it may possibly be the last, for two reasons. One is that dear Mme Valentine is steadily finding more work as a cellist. The prejudice that many orchestras have traditionally held against female players seems to be slowly but steadily fading away. This seems to have happened out of necessity, as so many fine musicians perished in the Great War. All the extra work means that Mme Valentine no longer feels the need to exploit her talents as a medium. As you know, she always was troubled by it, and frequently had worries about being a fraud. I have never thought that she was, but it seemed I could do little to reassure her. She puts her musical success down to finding a source of higher-quality cello strings, but of course this is nonsense. She is a fine musician, and sometimes when she plays I can feel my eyes welling up, and have to suppress it. She says that she knows an oboe player whose tone is so sweet and plaintive when he gives the A at the beginning of a concert that several members of his orchestra habitually weep – but that is by the by.

  The other reason is that only last week I was summoned to Lambeth Palace to be carpeted by no less a personage than the Archbishop himself. I was told merely that His Grace wished to see me, and I was invited to tea, so I put on my smartest and most starched dog collar, polished my shoes, and presented myself at the palace last Thursday at 4.30 pip emma, in the confident expectation of scones.

  There were indeed scones, and we sat and ate them with butter and strawberry jam, and sipped tea, whilst the Archbishop and his wife talked about the weather, and synods, and such things. Then the Archbishop said, ‘Edith, my dear, would you be so good as to leave us for a while? There is a private matter that I must broach with the Reverend Fairhead.’

  ‘I’ll go and see if the servants are behaving themselves,’ she said, and exit stage left Mrs Lady Archbishop.

  Now the Archbishop is about seventy-seven years old, and he has formidable eyebrows. These he waggled at me, and then he said, ‘I’ll come straight to the point. You must abandon all this necromancy.’

  ‘Necromancy?’ I repeated.

  ‘Necromancy. All this summoning of the dead and writing about it. If I had known that you were one half of Valentine Fairhead, I would have intervened long ago. The books are fascinating by the way. I must congratulate you. Four is it now? You are positively exceeding Sir Oliver Lodge, a very fine fellow. Do you know him? But it has to stop, Fairhead! Necromancy is explicitly forbidden in the Bible.’

  ‘In the Old Testament,’ I replied.

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘Well,’ I replied, ‘I am a New Testament Christian, and Our Lord says nothing whatsoever about necromancy.’

  ‘So you admit that it’s necromancy, Fairhead?’

  ‘Yes, Your Grace. It can’t really be honestly construed as anything else, can it? But the Lord didn’t forbid it.’

  ‘And what do you mean, Fairhead, by a New Testament Christian?’

  ‘I mean that the God of the Old Testament is a vile old tyrant who sanctions massacres, takes bets with the Devil, invents inexplicably arbitrary rules under sanction of death, and tells people to sacrifice their own sons.’

  ‘Takes bets with the Devil?’

  ‘The story of Job. It’s a story about a bet with the Devil, whereby they torment Job and kill off everyone he loves, just to see if he’ll lose faith. It’s despicable.’

  ‘God is despicable?’

  ‘That God is. I wou
ld go so far as to say that He actually is the Devil, pretending to be God.’

  ‘My God, Fairhead! You are an Albigensian!’

  ‘I follow the Gospel of Jesus Christ,’ I replied, ‘and I even have doubts about some of that.’

  ‘I see you are an intransigent heretic,’ he said, but in a very kindly and thoughtful manner. He finished off his cup of tea, and said, ‘If you publish any more of these necromantic tracts, I will be obliged to summon you before an ecclesiastical court. You will probably be defrocked. It will be my duty. Is that clearly understood?’

  I nodded vigorously, and wondered whether I should defy him any further, but then I thought, ‘Well, he is an old man now,’ and it occurred to me that by the time the next book comes out, he might even be dead.

  Suddenly he said, ‘Do you have any children, Fairhead?’

  I said, ‘No, Your Grace. It is something of a sorrow to my wife and me.’

  He said, ‘Yes, my wife and I have suffered similarly. When I die my baronetcy will lapse. It seems such a shame. I have never been very fit, Fairhead.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear that, Your Grace.’

  ‘Yes,’ he continued. ‘I was in a shooting accident when I was young. Very nearly lost a leg. As a result I have had a hernia for most of my life. It has been a torment. It always drops when I am in the middle of preaching. The worst possible time.’

  As you can imagine, I was somewhat taken aback by this information, and then he said, ‘I am thinking of retiring.’

  I was appalled, and said, ‘But, Your Grace, archbishops don’t retire!’ and he replied, ‘One has. The question is, to whom do I send my letter of resignation?’

  ‘The King, presumably.’

  ‘His Majesty is the Supreme Governor, but he doesn’t do any governing, or take any decisions. Certainly I would have to write to him, but I am not clear that that would actually do the job.’

  I said, ‘Your Grace, I think you might have to set up a special body, so that it can be the recipient of your letter.’

  ‘Damned good idea, Fairhead. I’ll do some thinking about that. A body of about three ought to do the job, eh?’

  I said, ‘I would be very sorry to see you leave office,’ and he replied, ‘And I would be very sorry to see you giving up writing about necromancy. I wish you all the best with it. But it has to stop. Do you understand?’

  ‘No,’ I replied.

  He waggled those agreeable eyebrows and said, ‘Write under another pseudonym, damn it, so that I don’t know it’s you.’

  With that, I was shown out of the palace, and I walked over to Westminster to visit the dead poets in the Abbey.

  Now let me see what further news I can come up with from dear old Blighty – Ah yes! Mr Wragge, known to all as Oily, very nearly resigned as gardener and handyman for the third time last week, because your mother/mother-in-law is becoming increasingly capricious about what she wants, and very critical of him. The altercation this time concerned the correct size of a spade. She insisted that he use a larger one, because then the work is done more quickly, and he countered with the adage that one ‘should never use a big one when a little one will do’, because a smaller one is less tiring, and therefore more work gets done. It was a most recondite subject, and it was temporarily resolved when our heroine seized his small spade and hurled it over the wall into the garden of the Pendennises, whereupon he resigned and went home, whither Mr McCosh proceeded some two hours later in order to placate him and re-employ him.

  Our dear Mr McCosh is very much his usual self, except that he is somewhat breathless these days, and only manages nine holes at a time. He continues to invent intriguing gadgets for golfers. He has an idea for a mechanical hat which has a brim that automatically revolves to shield the eyes from the sun when taking difficult shots into direct sunlight. The problem is that no such mechanical light detector has been invented by man, although sunflowers know how to do it without any forethought at all. He has therefore written to Professor Smithells at Victoria University to offer to fund research into the mechanism whereby flowers achieve heliotropism, and to investigate its industrial applications.

  He is also contemplating the installation of miniature radio transmitters in golf balls, so that one cannot lose them. He says, however, that no one knows how to build valves small enough, so they would not smash when the ball is struck. He is contemplating the manufacture of luminous ones, so that one might go and find one’s missing ball after dark.

  Christabel and Gaskell spend much of their time in Hexham, where they have made a studio out of the ballroom. When they are not there, they are travelling, or associating with the bohemians of Bloomsbury, who are a funny lot. It seems they are somewhat overemotional and sexually omnivorous. Sophie informed me of the latter point, and I have gone into it no further, as I enjoy my prelapsarian naïveté and would not like to have to give it up on account of achieving knowledge of any forbidden or inadvisable fruit.

  Sophie is very well, and has become involved in a project which involves giving riding lessons to orphans. She is regarding it as an oblique way to learn to ride herself. I expect she’ll tell you all about it when she writes.

  Now, let me see…ah, yes. Young Edward is thriving at the golf club, and shows every sign of soon becoming a professional, despite his damaged legs, and we hear from Canada that Millicent and Dusty Miller have had their second child. Sophie sent them a woollen shawl for it, and a christening mug.

  I have saved the greatest news for last. Sophie and I are increasingly convinced that Ottilie has fallen in love! Yes, indeed!

  Ottilie puts on her best clothes and does her face carefully and beautifully. A hansom arrives at The Grampians almost every evening to take her away, and she comes home a little tipsy and radiant, rather improvidently late, full of happy chatter about plays she has seen and new dances she has learned. She can swing dance quite gloriously these days, and the gramophone scratches away almost continually in the drawing room, where she likes to practise in the afternoons.

  We all have our fingers crossed. Apparently he is a civil servant from Madras, over here for several months’ furlough.

  Enough drivel! We send you all our love, and Sophie appends a postscript.

  Yours ever,

  Fairhead

  PS Dear darlings, or drooling dearlings here is the newds how we goodnight ladies are all still prostrated with anguish and grief over the demise of poor Rudolph Valentino two months and the black armbands may have been removed from our arms but how they still encircle the afflicterated soul and Harry Houdini has shuffled off this mortal someone burst his appendix apparently and how sad to die on account of something for which one has no need there’s a war in China and religious riots in India and we are all still enchantillated by Winnie-the-Pooh I expect you can get a copy in Colombo but if not I will post you a copy and someone’s just flown to Australia and back in only fifty-eight days and Mother has learned a new tune on the violin and is as batty as ever and Daddy missed a hole in one by half an inch and Wragge has fetched the spade back from next door and Ottilie is in love and Crusty is a very pitiful dog and Germany’s joined the League of Nations chiz chiz Caractacus was sick on the carpet because of licking the butter and it’s time to go must rush I have punctuation classes to attend toodleoo your very own bear of little brain Sophie.

  10

  Samadara (2)

  It is always obvious to everyone when something begins to happen between a coolie girl and a dorai. Every tree and clod of this red earth has eyes, and our tongues are never still for a second. There is no point in attempting secrecy.

  So I went to my father, and I said, ‘Father, I must tell you something, and you must tell me what I must do.’ This was before there had been any touching between me and dorai Pitt.

  My father talked to my mother and to my cousins and uncles, and most of them saw an opportunit
y, but the better Christians amongst them said, ‘No, it would be a sin, and it would be adultery and fornication,’ and others said, ‘But it is clear from the Bible that the patriarchs had many wives,’ and others said, ‘The Bible does not have answers for everything. Whoever wrote it did not know of our customs.’ Others said, ‘If she goes to confession she can commit the sin without endangering her soul, because all she has to do is confess it before she dies,’ and others said, ‘The sin would be worth it. Think of all the benefits to the family.’

  There was no one who said, ‘But she might end up with a broken heart.’

  My mother said, ‘I am very confused,’ and my father said, ‘What shall we do?’ and my mother said, ‘You should go to Nuwara Eliya and consult an astrologer,’ and my father said, ‘Astrologers have to be paid,’ so he asked the family to contribute some coins, and in the end we had enough for the astrologer.

  There were times when the drying machine lay idle, and so my father waited for these days, and he asked dorai Pitt if he could go to Nuwara Eliya. Dorai Pitt said, ‘I will need you back by the end of the week, and please will you take this letter to the Reverend Williams?’

  So my father went to Nuwara Eliya on a hackery loaded with mangosteens and jackfruit and he carried the letter to the Reverend Williams, and then he went to see the astrologer.

  He said that the astrologer looked at charts and scratched his head, and asked questions about dates which my father was not always able to remember, and he spelled out our names to work out the numerology, and finally he announced that both good things and bad things would happen, but there would be more good things. He said that to make sure of this I should wait for a month before allowing dorai Pitt to embrace me, and he named a particular time and day when I should permit it in order to maximise the good, and he gave warnings of omens that I should watch out for, because if I saw any of these, I should not go ahead.