by Francis King
In any case, Andrée was already engaged to a young man, a Eurasian like herself, who had sung in the choir, been noticed by the padre, and was now a subordinate in the police. He never resented Hugh; rather he was proud of the honour done to him. Hugh had made Andrée what is called a demi-vierge.
Then Lucy. But there had been that scene in the garden, and he was no longer asked to tennis, bridge, dinner by Lady Korrance. He had been dropped. True, Mumsie still talked to him in the Club or when they met in other people’s houses, but Lucy ignored him, only staring, as if in reproach, when he entered a room in which she was already seated.
This change irritated him; he was already in love with her—in spite of evenings on the veranda with Andrée, drives with Andrée, meals with Andrée. Thwarted, he took refuge in a ferocious antagonism. When passing her at the Club he looked the other way; he declined to partner her at tennis with an aversion which was obvious to everyone; and he took to staring at her critically, impertinently, on all other occasions when chance threw them together. Among his colleagues he spoke of her with a mixture of contempt and malice; and because they respected him, regarding him as their leader, they soon ceased to laugh with her and began, instead, to laugh at her. Lucy became the clown, instead of the wit, of the station.
But, suddenly, there was a change—an invitation to a picnic. At first Hugh thought it must be a practical joke: but in the evening Lady Korrance came up to him in the Club. "You got the invitation?" She sounded breathless, a shade too concerned.
"Thank you."
"You can come?"
"I shall be delighted."
Then, all at once, he was aware that Lucy was listening from an embrasure by the window.
Cameras, field-glasses, cold chicken in aspic—it was the usual paraphernalia; with Mrs. Meakins stopping the car at intervals to scurry behind a clump of bushes, the servants forgetting the soda-water, the guests forgetting to be polite. The truth was that it was too sultry. "I love picnics”, exclaimed Lady Korrance. But she might equally well have said, "I love going to the dentist". No one expected her to be truthful. Then she scowled at the bearer because there were already blowflies on the meat.
Sir Basil took photographs, Mrs. Meakins disappeared again ("Look out for snakes", was Lady Korrance’s whispered advice), two subalterns threw a cricket ball at each other. They were all sprawling in the courtyard of a fifteenth-century palace. But they might, for all they cared, have been on Hampstead Heath. When Hugh examined some carving they looked puzzled, even shocked; and Lady Korrance, as though to excuse her guest, exclaimed: "What funny beasts! They have two heads!" and offered him another helping of trifle.
Then, having gorged—on cold chicken, hard-boiled eggs (the salt forgotten), game-pie, trifle, chocolate mousse, liqueur chocolates—the older of them yawned, went to sleep, or chatted in small groups, while the youngsters discussed the feasibility of playing rounders, squabbled over the rules, teased Mrs. Meakins’s dropsical terrier, and finally decided on a walk. In twos and threes they wandered off into the jungle, led by a young man who thought he knew a short-cut to the river.
Hugh was about to saunter after them, alone, when a hand touched his wrist. It was Lucy, smiling, without a trace of embarrassment. "May I come with you?” The words were the first she had spoken to him for four months, apart from conventional greetings.
"If you like."
Again she smiled, magnificent in green silk; then bending her head slightly forward, as if in compliance to his wishes, the plumes on her hat nodding, her eyelashes making delicate shadows on rouged cheeks, she swung ahead. They did not speak. Hers was a high-stepping progression, bird-like, her skirt held high in a white-gloved hand.
"But aren’t we going the wrong way?” Hugh said at last. "I’m sure the others—"
"Oh, no. I saw them. It’s quite all right." Again that smile, again the forward inclination of the head.
He shrugged his shoulders and they moved on through punkahs of fern. The path had been beaten hard by the feet of coolies, the air was shrill with birds. Then suddenly she turned.
"Oh, dear! I do believe we’ve lost the way. I could have sworn ... but this is a dead-end." They had reached a clearing, a few tree-trunks, some creeper, two lemonade bottles, and a copy of the Pioneer—relics of some other picnic at some other time. "Now what are we to do?"
"We’d better go back."
She wrinkled up her nose. "I feel rather tired. Let’s sit down for a bit." Raising her skirt she climbed on to a tree-trunk. "Come here. Sit down."
Obeying her he placed himself on the same perch. He wondered what would happen.
Then she was pressing herself against him, hands exploratory, mouth glued to his, body trembling.
"Dearest," she murmured. And her hat fell to the ground.
"Where have you been?” Mrs. Meakins simpered when they returned too late for tea and a game of Consequences.
"We got lost," Hugh explained. "We thought we were following the others, but we came to a dead-end—a rather pleasant clearing."
"Good heavens! Fancy Lucy losing her way! That must be the clearing where we had our picnic last year." This from Sir Basil, who was only tactful with his superiors. "What’s this, Lucy? Lost your way? You have got a memory." Then he began to chuckle indulgently.
But Lucy blushed.
"I couldn’t be more delighted," said Lady Korrance when their engagement was announced; and later: "Do call me Mother. After all—well—we’ve never had a son. And now we look upon you ..." So she became Mumsie.
"Of course, I saw it months ago," Mrs. Meakins confided to a group of friends. "Months and months ago—even before they did." Then she sighed, thinking of the Rev. Pat Meakins—‘padre’—who had been so slow that summer at Eastbourne, and was now buried in Gorakhpur under a marble inscription, ‘Remember that the best of friends must part.’
"Congratulations, old boy," were Sir Basil’s words, after a brief interview, during which the baronetcy, Hugh’s grandmother’s probable fortune, and the likelihood of promotion were all discussed. "I haven’t a thing against the match." Nor had he. Of course, there had been talk of a Eurasian girl; the boy moved in a ‘fast’ set; old Phillips had seen a party of them in the bazaar, and one guessed their errand.
But now all this could be dismissed as ‘wild oats’. ‘Wild oats’ meant anything that Sir Basil did not wish to find disagreeable.
So it was all settled. His colleagues gave a party and they all got drunk; the Collector gave a party and they all stayed sober. Mumsie said she didn’t believe in long engagements. Lucy chose an emerald ring.
But Andrée had still to be told.
The Da Costas’ house had been built in a swamp on a bend of the river. For this reason the walls always sweated, the verandas buzzed with mosquitoes, and they had been able to buy it for almost nothing. Also, it was too near the bazaar; and it was said to be haunted. But none of these things worried the Da Costas. It was big; and that was sufficient.
In the bathroom there was a mausoleum: hence the stories of ghosts. But as none of them used the bathroom, preferring to wash, if they must wash, in the courtyard, on the verandas or in their bedrooms, the ghosts left them alone. And so did the English community.
That afternoon, when Hugh drove up in a tonga, a little apprehensive, but fortifying himself with thoughts of Lucy, a chuprassi sprawled on the steps, asleep, his mouth open, his tunic undone, his turban over one eye. When he saw Hugh he grunted, shifted, and went to sleep again. The steps were blotchy where he had expectorated.
Hugh went in, smiling as he thought of Mumsie’s orderlies, saluting, standing to attention, opening doors needlessly—four Sikhs who were old and pompous and scrupulously clean. But he was not sure that he did not prefer this, entering unannounced and letting in two dogs which might perhaps be pariahs or might be Mrs. Da Costa’s pets, then colliding with some naked children whose tummies were quaintly dis
tended, and finally walking through a room where Mr. Da Costa reclined on a sofa, the springs broken, and discussed his affairs with a group of relatives. As Hugh passed he raised two fingers in greeting and smiled through discoloured teeth, while the relatives, men and women, lying in chairs or on the floor, nodded, fanned themselves to show how hot it was, and grinned. The air was wreathed in a sour exhalation of unwashed clothes, foot-rot, tainted meat.
Next door was Mrs. Da Costa, immense among cushions, doing nothing. She, too, smiled as she drew her kimono over gourd-like bubs. In a cage in one corner of the room was a canary, half-covered with a tattered yellow shawl: as Hugh passed it winked a rheumy eye. There were lizards on the ceiling, and on the walls the wings of squashed insects. The slats of the blinds gouged horizontal shadows on bangled arms, perspiring face, plump calves. A punkah swayed and then quivered to a standstill as the coolie took pan. But when Mrs. Da Costa screeched in Hindustani it jerked upwards once more, shifting the dull air in eddies.
On the veranda there was Andrée, reclining at full length in the torrid sun, she alone cool and undisfigured by sweat. She was reading a novel, the fingers of one hand resting lightly against her cheek, her breasts rising and falling as she breathed. Under her arms were blue shadows where she had shaved herself. The garden in front shimmered like a bead curtain.
"Hullo!"
She turned round slowly, smiling at him, and the novel lay in her lap. "Hullo."
He drew up a chair, sat down, crossed his legs. "Christ, it’s hot."
"Do you think so? I like it."
For a while they said nothing more, both gazing out at the garden—if garden it could be called—where two dogs walked in circles round each other, sniffing. Then Andrée burst into peals of laughter. "It’s too absurd, those animals! Even they find it too hot."
Silence.
Then: "Andrée."
"Yes."
"I came to tell you I’m going to get married. To Miss Korrance."
She said nothing. Only her eyelids flickered, as though at the dazzle. It was impossible to tell what she felt or thought. But at last: "Yes. I’m glad," she said. "And next winter I, too, shall be married. Vivian is to get his promotion then." She scratched lazily at her scalp.
He had always known that she would take it like this. Impossible to imagine her making a scene. Why had he been so nervous—the cut under his ear, where the razor slipped, that absurdly large tip to the tonga driver? Why had he so mistrusted her? Filled with a vast tenderness he stooped downwards, ostensibly to tie his shoe. Then, in that position, he rested his cheek against her thigh. How smooth it was, how soft through the white dress! His hand stroked her knee, calf, ankle.
"Dearest." She ran grubby fingers through his hair. "Dearest... You will come and see me sometimes—just sometimes?"
"Of course."
Again the unresisting flesh, the ache that seemed to begin in his loins and forced its way upwards to his throat. "Of course."
The promise was kept.
Lucy and Hugh went to Kashmir for their honeymoon. It was Lucy’s choice because she wanted winter sports. But on the day after their arrival she dared Hugh to race her to their house on skis, slipped, and fractured her pelvic girdle. This kept her in her bed—and Hugh out of it.
On recovery, she followed Hugh to the station in the plains where he had since been sent. "Such bad luck," said Mrs. Meakins, referring to the accident. It seemed as if all the facetious references to the honeymoon that guests had made during the wedding breakfast had somehow been wasted.
Of the months that followed, in the sweltering heat of the small station, Hugh later remembered very little. In his mind there was only an eternal afternoon, walls sweating, bodies swearing, moist fingers resting on his side. Always there was promise of storms—the boom of thunder, sudden lightning, intimations of celestial pique. But no rain fell. Lucy lay beside him, and again and again, as one scratches an intolerable itch, arms met, lips closed on each other. Impossible to break away from that high bed and the weight of the ceiling. They were bound in a common doom—both anguished, resentful, humid.
This was the memory he bore with him, indefinite for the most part, without incident, a sense of heat and dazzle, the smell of damp flesh, incessant giving and incessant demand. Only a few details remained apart from this. Going on a parade, his lip bleeding where she had bitten him. (That morning he was particularly savage to defaulters.) Or coming from polo, grimed, swearing. "I’ll have a bath." he said. But: "No," she pleaded. "Stay as you are. Stay as you are." And dirty as he was, his nails black, his shirt sticking to him, she drew him downwards.
This seemed to him almost perverse. And the way in which she delighted to run fingers over his muscles, making him harden them. And hair, not of his head, in her mouth...
But of that time there was little else. Only the words of Lady Korrance when she came for a visit. "I can see that you are both madly in love."
The next winter he got leave and together they sailed for England. But first he went to see Andrée to say good-bye, making an excuse that he wished to meet colleagues he had left behind at the old station, with Mumsie and Papa and Mrs. Meakins. By an odd coincidence he arrived at the station on the night before Andrée was to be married: they had never written to each other, probably because she was almost illiterate.
Their meeting was intended to be ‘platonic’. Together they sat on the veranda, while in the house Mrs. Da Costa, Mr. Da Costa, and a host of screeching relatives made arrangements for the next day. Neither of them spoke, because they had never had much to say to each other; and now it seemed too late to begin. Bats scissored down the sky with a dry creaking of wings; for once the garden ceased to look brown and cracked like the ground of a badly preserved oil-painting, and wore a downy bloom; a fresh breeze blew from the river, bringing not unpleasant smells. But Hugh was bored. Somehow he felt it would be dishonourable to caress Andrée now, on the eve of her wedding. But what else was there to do? What else did she expect?
Soda-water sneezed into his tumbler as she pressed the siphon. Then, handing him his drink, she said with a wry smile: "Tomorrow I shall be Mrs. Green. It seems strange." Was it the moonlight that dilated her pupils and made her eyes seem luminous? Why did her lips tremble?
"Let’s drink to that," he said. "To Mrs. Green." Raising his glass he sipped at the bitter concoction she had shaken out of a row of bottles. Again he repeated the words: "To Mrs. Green."
"Don’t!" Suddenly, and for no reason, she threw herself on his shoulder, tears streaming from her eyes. Her breasts shook convulsively as they lay against him. "I can’t bear it! I’m so frightened!"
"Frightened? But, my dear, why? Don’t you want to—? Don’t you love him?"
"Oh, yes, yes! Of course, I love him! I’m really very happy. It’s silly of me to cry like this. It’s just that I feel—afraid."
"But why—why?" he repeated, tender yet amused. It baffled him that after all she had experienced at his hands she should still have room for fear. Was she afraid of Green’s clumsiness? Or did she expect something more, some special miracle? Almost without thinking he began to caress her.
So it ended in this—what he had been determined to avoid.
On the voyage home Hugh suddenly made a discovery—with Lucy’s help. It was not a very original discovery, but for these two it was certainly a momentous one: for from that moment began the letter quarrels, the raising of voices in public rooms, the scenes in the halls of hotels. The discovery was this: it is often those people who are most concerned to appear ‘unconventional’ who are truly convention’s slaves. At the station Lucy had appeared such a free spirit, even ‘wild’: Mrs. Meakins, Mumsie, all of them would have agreed that she was independent and went her own way. And yet, and yet ... Why, for example, when Hugh suggested that they should spend their leave in Greece, did she reject the idea, not because she did not like it (he would have understood that) but becau
se "Everyone goes to England when they have leave". Why did she say, "You have failed me", on that evening when he somehow forgot that the Captain had invited them to play bridge and instead gossiped with some third-class passengers in their cabin? Why did she burst into tears when he said that he did not wish to accompany her to Simon Artz, but preferred to take a car into the desert? Why, why? Could it be that Lucy who had always pretended to despise social functions—Lucy who had given herself to him on that picnic, resolutely, defiantly—could it be that she, too, was like the rest of them? It certainly looked like it.
So they didn’t go to Greece. So they bought turkish delight in the company of one governor-general and consumed it in the company of another. So they became ‘good sorts’ and ‘dears’ and ‘nice people’. So they spent their leave at Bournemouth.
"Restful", said one of the passengers who advised this place to them. But Lucy did not find it so. Now that they lived in a small and dank and economical pension, artfully concealed from the sea by three bigger and more expensive hotels (but ‘only three minutes from the front’, said the tinted brochure), now that there were no servants, no dogs, no horses to beat or tame, she became suddenly fretful, ill-at-ease, petulant. She changed. Perhaps, after all, she wished that they had ignored what people said and gone to Greece.
"But I feel so shut-in here. I know no one."
"Oh, come, darling..."
"No—no one! No one that is worth knowing. I hate it."
"There’s nothing to prevent our going away."
"Where on earth could we go?"
"Anywhere."
"But it would only be the same."
Suddenly she began to ask questions about his grandmother, his father, the baronetcy. Once she said: " Of course, as I am the only child..." and then stopped, blushing.
She made him take her each evening to the grandest hotel in the town. How it bored him! For hours she prepared for this, lacing her figure, tinting her face, piling her hair into monumental turrets. And then, after it was all done, they sat together, glum, unspeaking, sipping sherry in the lounge while her sulky eyes roamed among the other guests. Then home—to bed.
