The Towers of Silence

by Paul Scott

  But Mabel slowly closed her eyes as if shutting that avenue of escape and said very quietly, ‘I can sleep now thank you, Barbie,’ and Barbie got up, smoothed the top of the sheet and was careful to make no disturbing contact with her friend’s hands. She whispered, ‘I’ll deal with the light,’ and when Mabel nodded reached for the ebony switch and turned it. She felt her way in the dark back into the hall and her own familiar room and circumstances.

  A meditation. St John’s Church. 4.30 p.m. June 7th 1944

  i

  You said: Stay and talk to me because I can’t sleep. So I stayed and talked. I told you about the stairs and a Christmas stocking and after a very short while you said: I can sleep now.

  The next time I saw you was in the morning. You were on the verandah drinking a cup of tea and you apologized for having had breakfast without me. I never thought to ask Aziz what you had eaten. Perhaps he would not have told me because you’d already instructed him not to in case I said: That’s no sort of breakfast. And began to fuss and bother. As it was I sat down and drank tea too and said nothing because I had noticed nothing.

  This was yesterday. I must search for clues to moments when you may have been on the point of making an appeal like that of the night before. Stay. Talk to me. Those few moments on the verandah drinking tea were not one of them. When Aziz called me to breakfast you said nothing. You resumed reading a seed catalogue. But you were still there when I came back. I thought that you were absorbed, planning next year’s garden.

  I said: I’ll do the accounts this morning. If you do the cheques after lunch I’ll take them down to the bazaar and settle them on my way to Mr Maybrick’s.

  I had to repeat it. But that wasn’t unusual. In case you had forgotten I reminded you that I’d promised Mr Maybrick three days before to go to his bungalow for tea and mend his volume of Bach. You said: Oh I thought that was tomorrow. So I said, No, it was fixed for today, the sixth of June.

  Is that the date? you said. And looked towards this year’s garden.

  I went inside and sat at your bureau and began the accounts for May. After a while I heard you stirring and saw you through the window putting on your straw hat and going out into the sunshine with the pannier. At eleven Mildred came with Susan and shortly afterwards Mrs Fosdick and Mrs Paynton arrived. Aziz was worried. He said to me: Memsahib said nothing about lunch for so many. I assured him that only Susan was staying for lunch, that presently Mildred and the others would go down to the club and be there all day playing bridge, and that Mildred would return at about six o’clock to take Susan home.

  He said: Memsahib, when will you be back?

  I thought of the volume of Bach and of the difficulty I always had persuading Mr Maybrick to let me get on. Perhaps seven o’clock, I said. Or seven-thirty. But certainly by eight, in time for dinner.

  When the others had gone I went out to where Susan lay. Her smock was taut over her swollen stomach. I said: Did you like the christening gown? She said yes, it was beautiful. So I told her the story of the blind woman who made the lace, of how she called the butterflies her prisoners. After a while Susan said: I like things that have stories to them, somehow it makes them seem more real: and then closed her eyes to show that she wanted me to go away. I returned to the bureau and finished the accounts. I made out the cheques so that all you had to do was sign them. We had another visitor then, Captain Beauvais, who brought Susan a book. Aziz gave him a drink and Susan and he talked in low voices. He had gone before you came in from the garden at lunch-time.

  At lunch you said: When will Sarah be back? And Susan laughed and said: Oh, Aunty, she’s only just gone, she was only due to reach Calcutta this morning.

  You said: So she’ll be gone for a few more days.

  After lunch I helped Susan to settle on the verandah again. I tried to get her to walk for a bit in the shady part of the garden but she said she was tired. I found you at the bureau signing the last cheque. You said as you always did: Thank you for coping with all this. I took the cheques and the bills and went to my room. I lay down for a bit. At three o’clock I asked Aziz to send the mali’s boy for a tonga. Then I tidied myself for Mr Maybrick and looked for you to tell you I was off. You were in the garden, but not in the shade. I said, ‘Aren’t you awfully hot?’ You said, ‘No, I like the sunshine.’ And then, ‘Will you be long?’ I said, ‘I should be back soon after seven.’ This seemed to puzzle you. You’d forgotten again about Mr Maybrick. I had to remind you. You said, ‘Oh yes, so you are. Have a nice time.’

  When I looked back you were watching me. And lifted your hand. Which wasn’t usual. But pleased me. I waved back. I went round the side of the house so that I wouldn’t disturb Susan.

  Isn’t it very close? Stay. Talk to me. Is that the date? When will Sarah be back? Will you be long?

  These were your appeals. Which I did not hear. I did not hear Aziz’s appeal either. When will you be back? He saw the sunlight and the shadow and in his heart interpreted them correctly. But followed your mood and example. When I left in the tonga he made Susan some tea. No one knows what he did after that. The kitchen was neat and tidy. He always kept it so.

  ii

  Mr Maybrick waves his arms in the air. Pages of Bach fly from his hands, swirl, swoop, drift, fall. His face is contorted by the anguish of a man who requires order but cannot keep it. We stand erect in this tempest of paper music. Then I turn, pretending to go; having only just arrived. He waits until I am at the door and cries, ‘Come back!’ I am no longer even a little afraid of Mr Maybrick but I obey because it pleases him to act the martinet. I can see him terrorizing coolies who grin when his back is turned because he never harms them. I can see him ordering his wife about, before she began to ail, and see her, one hand shading not just her eyes from the light but her smile with which she commences to perform what he demands but in her own way and to her own satisfaction, which she knows will be to his as well.

  What a pickle you are in, I tell him, and sit on the one chair that is not cluttered with things that have no business on chairs. We are ankle deep in Bach. The situation looks hopeless, more hopeless to him than to me because the pages are numbered and it only requires patience and application – qualities he does not normally possess – to restore them to their proper order. The problem will be the rebinding. He complains about the quality of the gum I used last time, about the quality of the original binding, about having no room nowadays to store things properly, about the climate that makes things fall apart anyway, about the decline in standards of workmanship, about the fact that, as he says, nobody gives a damn any more; and finally – the rub, because it explains why he has scattered the pages in a childish rage – about a double sheet that is missing.

  ‘Have you looked in the organ loft?’ I ask. He declares that the missing sheet cannot possibly be in the organ loft. He says, ‘It’s no good sitting staring at it, what are you waiting for?’

  I tell him: Tea. I tell him I require a cup of tea first and that after that I will walk down to the church and look in the organ loft while he makes a start clearing up the mess he has made.

  On my way to St John’s I see suddenly what a vast improvement my time in Pankot has wrought in my character. Application I had, and patience, but of a questionable kind. Confronted in the old days with the ruins of the Bach I would have fallen avidly upon the scattered pages and somehow contrived to make greater confusion than before. And I would not have dared insist on Tea.

  I see that I have acquired qualities of leadership and command. For a moment my pride in this achievement is disproportionate to its degree. I feel a deep glow of satisfaction. I lengthen my stride. Although it is a very hot day I have on the heliotrope. The sun is lowering towards West Hill. I turn my face to it. I am happy. I have, I feel, always done my utmost and now enjoy my reward on this earth whose beauty is serene towards evening.

  As I turn into the churchyard the clock strikes the half hour after five. I enter and go straight to the organ loft.
The light is not good. I crouch down, searching, convinced I shall find the missing sheet. And I find it in a corner. It bears the dusty imprint of Mr Maybrick’s shoe. I smile. And then I hear a sound, the sound of the latch lifted on the little side door through which I too have just entered, the slight squeak of the hinges, the sound of the door closing. Mr Maybrick has followed me.

  I stand up and cry ‘Eureka!’ and look down to where he should be. But there is no one. The church is empty. I call again, less boldly. No answer. I have the missing sheet in one hand. With my other I seek my neck, automatically, and then the chain, the pendant cross.

  I leave, unhurriedly. I tell myself my entrance must have disturbed someone at private devotions, someone whom I did not see when I came in and who has taken the opportunity of my climb to the organ loft to leave unnoticed. Slowly I follow this solitary worshipper out and down the path past the gravestones, but he – or she – is still invisible. I walk back to Mr Maybrick’s.

  I find him sitting on the floor, the scattered pages all around him untouched. He is listening to the news on the wireless and shushes me when I begin to protest at his idleness. Resigned, I throw things from the chair which has now become cluttered. He shushes me again. I subside. For a while I do not listen to the news but then do so and become aware that it is important. I cannot pick up the thread, though. It ends. But the announcer repeats the opening and this is followed by martial music.

  It seems that British and allied forces have invaded Normandy. They have opened the second front. Mr Maybrick shouts for his bearer and then heaves me out of the chair and does a little jig. His enthusiasm is infectious. Poor Bach is in danger of being trampled underfoot. Mr Maybrick tells his boy to bring sherry. He says that when the Germans are defeated the whole weight of the Allied armies will be thrown against the Japanese and then we can all live civilized lives again.

  ‘And all the prisoners in Germany will be freed!’ I cry. ‘I must phone the cottage–’ I go into the hall, pick up the receiver and wait impatiently for the operator to answer. I am anxious for Susan to know, because of her father. I ask for the number and continue to wait. The operator tells me the number is engaged. Crestfallen I go back to the living-room. I work it out that Mildred has heard at the club and is already on the phone to Susan. We drink sherry. Ten minutes later I telephone again but the operator says there is still someone speaking. Mildred is probably back at the cottage and ringing all her friends. I resign my role as the bearer of good tidings. Come, I say to Mr Maybrick, let us begin on poor Bach.

  iii

  ‘Perseverance,’ Barbie said, ‘which was incidentally one of my father’s favourite words if not one of his virtues, unless you count perseverance with the bottle and the cards, perseverance – Mr Maybrick – wins the day.’

  She slapped the last page of Bach, straightened her bent back and cried out partly from the pain of easing the ache and partly from astonishment at Mr Maybrick’s firmly planted kiss. Only on the forehead. Nevertheless. She felt her face and neck grow hot.

  ‘Angelic Barbie,’ he said. ‘Ham-fisted with glue but angelic. What would you say to mutton curry and rice?’

  ‘I should say no.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Had you been more complimentary about the glue I should have added thank you. You may help me up.’

  ‘I will if you say yes. It was planned. Mutton curry and rice. For two.’

  ‘Planned by whom?’

  ‘By me.’

  ‘Mr Maybrick, you have been overdoing the sherry. At your age it is ill-advised.’

  ‘You’ve not done so badly yourself. You can knock it back.’

  ‘Two glasses are all I’ve had.’

  ‘Refilled occasionally without your noticing, between fugues.’

  ‘I see you are determined to be difficult.’ She got up unassisted. Her joints were very stiff. She looked at her watch. It was seven fifteen. She had been crawling across the floor and kneeling sorting pages for over an hour. Mr Maybrick had been more of a hindrance than a help.

  He said, ‘If you stay to supper you could start the binding afterwards.’

  ‘If I stayed to supper I should do no such thing. The binding will have to wait. Meanwhile I should be obliged if you’d send Kaisa Ram for a tonga. I’m going to tidy myself and when I come back I’ll expect to hear that a tonga is on its way.’

  ‘You’ve become a hard woman, Barbie. I’d set my heart on it.’

  ‘Then you should have said so three days ago and not left it to chance and your powers of persuasion. And if I said yes you know very well you’d have to dash into the kitchen and tell Kaisa Ram to throw some more meat into the pot, and that he’d complain, that you’d shout at him and that you’d have a burnt supper, bad temper for the rest of the evening and indigestion all night.’

  She turned to the door that led through the single bedroom to the bathroom.

  ‘It’ll take fifteen minutes for Kaisa Ram to get a tonga,’ he said, ‘but only five to cut off another chop.’

  ‘And an hour for it to cook properly. So please send him down to the stand. When I come back I’ll have another sherry. I don’t believe a word of your story of surreptitious refills.’

  She left him but caught the flicker of the smile he was doing his best to disguise. The bedroom, crammed with the monumental furniture of his spacious tea-planting days, was even more untidy than the living-room and overpowered by the majestic bed that filled the central space. As always, this bed was shrouded by the regal canopy of a faded white mosquito net. In Pankot there was no need of one and if there had been Mr Maybrick’s would have been inadequate because it was full of holes and rents which Kaisa Ram neglected to mend. But Mr Maybrick said he couldn’t sleep in a bed that had no net. She sympathized with this peculiarity, remembering that whenever she had moved from a mosquito-ridden area to a cool and airy one she had always found the absence of a net initially alarming, a source of apprehension, of fears of falling out at least, at worst of attack by night-intruders.

  The bathroom was cheerless. A single unshaded bulb illuminated its dingy whitewashed walls and concrete floor. In one corner there was a cubicle and in this an ornate commode of which Mr Maybrick was very proud. The commode, fortunately, was always spotless but the bathroom itself was grimy. There tended to be cockroaches.

  Normally, when visiting Mr Maybrick, she hurried through the business of tidying herself. But tonight she found herself slowed down, struck by the significance of her surroundings, the reality of this ordinariness, this shabbiness, this evidence of detritus behind the screens of imperial power and magnificence. The feeling she had was not of glory departing or departed but of its original and continuing irrelevance to the business of being in India, which was her and Mr Maybrick’s business just as much as it was the business of the members of the mess in whose inner sanctum she had stood last year, intimidated by the ghostly occupants of those serried ranks of chairs.

  She paused between soaping and rinsing her hands, riveted by an image of the captains and the kings queuing to wash their own hands in Mr Maybrick’s bowl after relieving themselves in Mr Maybrick’s mahogany commode with its rose-patterned porcelain receptacle, and finding no fault, nothing unusual, feeling no hurt to their dignity; and going back through the unholy clutter of Mr Maybrick’s bedroom without a glance at the half-opened drawers festooned with socks and vests and shirts that wanted mending, because the one thing to which the human spirit could always accommodate itself was chaos and misfortune. Everything more orderly or favoured was a bonus and needed living up to.

  She closed her eyes and was back in the Camberwell scullery and then in the dark hallway, taking the first rise of the stairs, with all the captains and kings behind her waiting to do the same. Why, she said, the mystery at the top of the stairs is where we’re all headed, willy-nilly, which is what my father but not my mother understood. She opened her eyes. The lather had begun to encrust her hands with a creamy rime. She rinsed and drie
d them on the week-old roller towel. She dabbed her wrists with cologne from her handbag phial and resprinkled the fine lawn handkerchief. Chaos, misfortune. Punctuated by harmless escapes into personal vanities. She clicked her handbag shut. The click was as satisfactory as a decision.

  ‘Mr Maybrick!’ she called, re-entering the living-room.

  He came in from the hall.

  He said, ‘Oh, there you are, Barbie. Arthur Peplow is here. He has something to tell you.’

  iv

  ‘I said, I will take heed to my ways: that I offend not in my tongue. I will keep my mouth as it were with a bridle; while the ungodly is in my sight. I held my tongue, and spake nothing, I kept silence, yea, even from good words; but it was pain and grief to me. My heart was hot within me, and while I was thus musing the fire kindled and at the last I spake with my tongue; Lord, let me know mine end, and the number of my days; that I may be certified how long I have to live.’

  v

  Where the rime had been was Arthur Peplow’s hand. In the pause between the word ‘stroke’ and the words ‘it was very sudden’, she heard down the road the chime of the half-hour after seven.

  Mr Peplow said, ‘I think we must believe that she felt no pain, but went very peacefully. Susan was tremendously brave. The poor girl was quite alone. When she realized what had happened she rang Colonel Beames at once, and then her mother. She couldn’t find Aziz anywhere. Have you any idea where he could have gone?’

  ‘Aziz?’

  ‘Never mind. In a moment or two Clarissa and I want you to come down to the rectory. Captain Coley’s going to spend the night at Rose Cottage to look after things there for Mildred. Clarissa’s having a bed made up for you.’

  ‘I have a bed,’ she said. And removed her hand from Arthur Peplow’s to take the glass of sherry from Mr Maybrick’s hand which was shaking. She held it, but did not know how to deal with it. Some of the deep brown liquid spilt on to the heliotrope skirt. ‘I don’t want it,’ she said. ‘After all.’ Arthur took the glass. There was nowhere for him to put it down.