The Towers of Silence

by Paul Scott

  She had begun to regret the letter to the mission, her offer of voluntary services in any capacity however menial in return for a roof. She had begun to feel that bit by bit she and Clarissa could become used to and of use to one another. She had even begun to imagine the possibility of patching things up with Mildred. All for Mabel’s sake. All to achieve for Mabel’s soul the repose that depended on the proper repose of Mabel’s body. She had believed that she should not leave Pankot while there was hope. She had felt no horror at the idea of opening the grave and taking the remains to Ranpur. The idea had filled her with a sense of the quietude that would follow.

  But she felt horror now; the horror of her own shame. In front of her hovered the pale shape of Clarissa’s face with hands pressed against the cheeks. She wanted to put immense distance between herself and her life. How can I face it? she repeated. How can I walk about in the bazaar or sit here on a Sunday in the middle of the congregation, knowing what has been said, what has been hinted? The shape of Clarissa’s face changed into that of Mildred’s and the hands were not at the cheeks but droop-waisted below the chin, holding a glass, the downward-curving lips quirked at the corners in a dismissive smile.

  ‘How can I face it?’ she asked aloud. And the face became that of yet another, chin in hand, regarding her with that compassion and patience, that exquisite desire. She trembled and leaned for support against the pillar, hiding in its shadow. She longed to be transported back to Rose Cottage. Outside the cottage she had become utterly vulnerable. When she left the cottage forever she would enter an arena of defeat from which she could see no exit. There was beauty in the quiet formality with which the trap had been set. Already she felt the onset of the last, the grand despair, the one that was awaited. Mabel, she whispered. Mabel. Mabel.

  Abruptly she was cold because she had heard the sound of the latch, as on the day of Mabel’s death. Far down the church the little side door had been opened and closed. The sound echoed faintly. She clung to the pillar, listening to the light-falling footsteps coming up the aisle to the back of the church. They were a woman’s. Her skin prickled but her eyes suddenly brimmed, in gratitude, and awe, and loving terror. She remained kneeling, pressed against the pillar and dared not look up. Her nostrils quivered, fearfully alert for the sweet odour of the ghost, the compound of flowers and formaldehyde that must attach to the newly dead. I am here, she muttered, here, here. Bound to this pillar, to this life.

  She covered her face. The stone of the pillar chilled the bare knuckles of her right hand. The footsteps had ceased, having come close. There was a faint creak, and then silence. She did not have the courage to move. But presently, astonishingly, she became peaceful, comforted. She thought, ‘I can face anything if I try.’ She withdrew from the shadow of the pillar. The air was cool on her overheated forehead. She glanced along the pew but could see nothing. She inclined her body backwards, bringing into her range of vision the pews in front, and caught her breath, shocked by the visible presence of the seated figure. Involuntarily her hand covered her mouth.

  It was not Mabel. It was not any woman she knew. The head was covered by an old-fashioned solar topee with a veil swathed round the brim. After a while the woman became restless as if she had become aware of being watched. Upright in the pew, staring at the stained-glass window above the altar, the woman touched her throat and turned slightly, looking to left and right. Reassured, she resumed her still and silent vigil, and stayed thus until there was one of those mysterious adjustments, a small shift of the empty building’s centre of gravity, as of a momentary easing of its tensions and stresses which created an illusion of echo without traceable source, so that to Barbie it seemed that the church’s guardian angel had half-opened and then closed one of his gigantic wings.

  The unknown visitor rose, stepped into the aisle and walked down it towards the altar. She was elderly and moved with the care of a person conscious of a duty to carry her years with dignity. Before turning towards the side door she placed a hand for support on a pew and with lowered head bent one knee. Going out, she opened and closed the door gently. A little later Barbie caught the sound of a motor-car starting up, not on the Church road but on the West Hill road side.

  As the sound faded, as the car took the woman away in that revealing direction, she realized who it was who had sat a few feet in front of her, but she was slow to respond. What might have been curiosity or superstitious fear of such close proximity was muted by the stronger current of an emotion which warmed her body and kept her kneeling, one hand on the pillar and the other still upon her mouth.

  Within that little complex of events, the expectation of the ghost, the shock of seeing the woman, the echo from an unknown source high in the roof (above all, within that) she wondered if there had been one other thing, no more than a faint disturbance, a rearrangement of the sources from which she received impressions. Fleetingly, it seemed to her, her presence had been noted by God. She stayed very still. The impression was not enlarged, confirmed in any way, but it was not destroyed.

  Well, I am going now, she told Mabel. She waited. There was no answer. Carrying the empty fibre suitcase in which she had transported shoes, she left the church. Outside she put her head up and went in search of a tonga.

  *

  When she got back to Rose Cottage she filled her largest suitcase with things taken at random from the stuff remaining in her room, left space in it for her nightwear and toilet things and then emptied the drawers on to a sheet spread on the floor. Without looking at what she must leave behind she knotted the sheet, making a bundle, and called Aziz, asked him to have it removed because she wanted none of the contents and did not wish to see the bundle again. He returned with the mali’s boy and the sweeper girl who between them dragged the bundle out on to the verandah and out of sight.

  Directly it had gone she felt reduced, already cut off from the source of energy and power residing in the bungalow. She glanced at what remained: the suitcase, the writing-table and the metal trunk of missionary relics which this morning Aziz had helped her pull away from the wall between dressing-table and almirah into the centre of the room. She knelt on the rush mat in front of it, as at an altar, as at her life. The once-black paint was scored and scratched with the scars of travel and rough handling; and the name, painted in white roman capitals – Barbara Batchelor – had faded into grey anonymity of a kind from which a good report might be educed by someone who did not know her; a chance discoverer in a later age.

  ‘Poor trunk,’ she said. She touched the metal. It was warm like an animal, one that relied on her, dispassionately but assuming certain things about their relationship. ‘There is no room,’ she said, ‘no room at Clarissa’s.’

  She considered alternatives. One was to ask Mr Maybrick to give it temporary shelter. But it would not survive, neglected amidst all that chaos. Nor would it survive in the alien Moslem shadows of Jalal-Ud-Din’s. She caressed the lid. Beneath it lay the proofs of her failures and successes, evidence of endeavour. Gazing down at the name it seemed to her that the trunk was all that God need ever notice or take into account; that she herself had become unreal and unimportant.

  An idea began to exert itself, persuasively; to flow up from the trunk through her arm like a current; an idea that the trunk should be left at Rose Cottage where she had been happy. But where? Where Mabel could see it, or sense it, or even touch it, groping blindly for a familiar or friendly object to give her troubled spirit momentary relief in its wanderings between the cottage and the alien grave?

  The brass padlock with its key was in the lower ring of the main hasp. She had but to lever up the two side hasps to raise the lid; but the prospect of looking through the contents dismayed her. She unlocked the padlock and transferred it to the securing ring, clicked it shut and used the key to lock the two smaller clasps. She put the key aside to place it in her handbag, but continued kneeling.

  From behind her Aziz spoke. ‘Memsahib. Sarah Mem.’

  She look
ed round as startled by the interruption as she would have been if caught in an act of private devotion. In the open doorway she saw the two faces, Aziz’s and Sarah’s. The colour came into her own. She got unsteadily to her feet as Aziz stood aside for Sarah to enter. Since the evening of the day Sarah got back from Calcutta, the day after the funeral, she had not visited the cottage, and that single visit had been brief, cut short by their nearness to Mabel’s death, their reluctance to talk about it and inability to find other subjects of conversation. The girl had rung subsequently to ask if Barbie was all right, opening the way for an invitation. She had now come of her own accord as if there were matters that could no longer be laid aside, but Barbie was afraid of being alone with the girl because of what had been said.

  ‘I must look a sight,’ she said, pushing back a stray lock of her short-cropped hair. ‘I’ve been clearing up, trying to get some sort of order into things, some sort of sense. It’s quite a task.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Sarah said. She did not say what about. ‘Is there anything I can help with?’

  Barbie shook her head. Sarah was in uniform. She had probably come straight from the daftar. She looked soldierly. But womanly. Perhaps Mildred genuinely suspected something ‘wrong’ with the girl, and ‘wrong’ with Barbie. There had been a book once, of arcane reputation, which she had never read; but she remembered the title. Well, Barbie cried in herself, to herself, to the quiet room, the ancient walls; I am lonely. Lonely. But God help me my loneliness is open to inspection. It’s here in this place beneath my breast. Between Sarah and myself, between myself and any woman, there is nothing that there should not be. I have been slandered. Spitefully. As punishment. For my presumption.

  She went into the bathroom, washed the grime from her hands and splashed her face, to cool her skin and the anger that hardened it and made it smooth. She chafed her wrists with cologne, combed her grey hair and called to Aziz.

  ‘Tea! Tea outside, or–’ returning to her bedroom, ‘sherry?’ And stopped. The decanters were locked in the sideboard and Kevin Coley still had the keys. Sarah, arms folded, turned from contemplation of the view from the front window.

  ‘I should love some tea, Barbie.’

  ‘Aziz has probably anticipated. Have you not? Aziz? Aziz!’ In the hall her voice rang beating against the gongs of brass trays on the panelled walls, rebounding from the implacable wood of the locked door of Mabel’s bedroom. From the region of the kitchen he shouted back in simple confirmation of his presence. She led the way through the sitting-room, unbolted the french window and went out on to the verandah. The sky was clear again but the areas of sunlight were eveningnarrow, the shadows long. The garden scent was heady, heightened by the dampness in the air. The chair in which Mabel had sat down to die had not been moved. Fallen rosepetals lay ungathered on the lawn.

  ‘One full day more,’ Barbie said, standing by the balustrade. ‘Early mornings and from tea until dusk – those were always my favourite times.’

  She heard the creak of a chair as Sarah sat and presently the click of a lighter. She waited for the aroma of cigarette smoke to reach her and then turned round.

  ‘I shall be out of here after breakfast the day after tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Aziz will be ready to go too. I don’t know what his travelling arrangements are. He and I will say good-bye here but if he’s required to do so he’ll wait until someone arrives to take over his storeroom keys. Mahmoud or Captain Coley. Otherwise he’ll lock up and leave the keys with mali.’

  ‘Yes, I see. I’ll tell Mother.’

  Aziz brought tea out. When he had gone Barbie said, ‘Will you pour?’ Then she sat down and took her cup. She asked how Susan was. Susan was well, Sarah said. They were taking her back to the grace and favour. The day after tomorrow. Minnie, Mahmoud’s widowed niece, who had never had children of her own and was scarcely more than a child herself, was excited but also fearful of her new responsibility. For a while Sarah would have to help her.

  If there was a feeling of constraint between them, Barbie thought, the fault was her own. The girl’s manner was if anything less indrawn than it had been in the past, and beneath the pallor, the marks of strain, there was a faint flush, a look of contentment in the flesh of the face as if she had reached a firm decision about the situation she was in.

  ‘Clarissa told me your news about poor Captain Merrick,’ Barbie said.

  ‘Yes, I didn’t mention him last time I was here. I meant to tell you that he talked a bit about Miss Crane. He didn’t know her very well, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I imagined their paths were unlikely to have crossed.’

  ‘He knew her by sight of course, and visited her in hospital after she was attacked. They weren’t able to talk much because she was so ill, and afterwards one of his assistants dealt with it. By then he was involved in the other business of Miss Manners.’

  ‘And later still? When Edwina took her life?’

  ‘Yes, he dealt with that. He was at her bungalow. That’s what he remembers. He talked quite a lot about an old picture he found there. From the way he described it I think it must have been the one you had a copy of and showed to people.’

  ‘It would have been that one, I expect. I still have the copy in my trunk.’ Barbie thought back to that day on the verandah nearly two years ago. ‘I don’t remember your being with us when I showed it.’

  ‘I heard about it.’

  Barbie nodded. She had made an exhibition of herself over the picture. She said, ‘Why did Captain Merrick talk about the picture?’

  ‘He seemed to see a connection between the picture and Teddie. Has Clarissa Peplow told you how Teddie was killed?’

  ‘She said he was trying to bring in some Indian soldiers who’d deserted. I’m afraid I didn’t listen very hard.’

  ‘Man-bap,’ Sarah said, after a pause, but abruptly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Man-bap.’

  Man-bap. She had not heard that expression for a long time. It meant Mother-Father, the relationship of the raj to India, of a man like Colonel Layton to the men in his regiment, of a district officer to the people of his district, of Barbie herself to the children she had taught. Man-bap. I am your father and your mother. Yes, the picture had been an illustration of this aspect of the imperial attachment; the combination of hardness and sentimentality from which Mabel had turned her face. If Teddie had died in an attempt to gather strayed sheep into a fold she saw why Captain Merrick might remember the picture. But Sarah’s reasons for referring to it were otherwise obscure to her. And she did not wish to probe. She did not want to talk about Edwina, or about Teddie and the ex-police officer who had lost an arm and whom Sarah had never liked.

  But – ‘It’s interesting about Ronald Merrick,’ Sarah began. ‘He’d like to be able to sneer at man-bap but he can’t quite manage it because actually he’d prefer to believe in it, like Teddie did. If he did. Do you think he did, Barbie?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did Miss Crane?’

  ‘Why do you ask that?’

  ‘Because Ronald Merrick thought so. He talked about her sitting at the roadside holding the dead Indian’s hand. He thought that was man-bap. Was it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Despair.’

  For a moment Sarah looked stricken by the bleak word as if it was the last one she had expected; but then she smiled briefly in recognition.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That makes sense.’

  Again they became silent but it was the silence of matched temperaments.

  ‘What happened between you and Mother, Barbie?’

  ‘If you don’t know I expect it means she’d prefer that you shouldn’t.’

  ‘She said you had an idea that Aunt Mabel wanted to be buried in Ranpur.’

  ‘Then you know all there is to know.’

  ‘That’s all it was about?’

  ‘That’s all.’

  ‘What about Aziz?’

&nb
sp; ‘That wasn’t a bone of contention. Although your mother can’t have liked my saying she didn’t understand.’

  ‘No, she wouldn’t like that.’

  ‘I didn’t really understand myself, in the sense of being able to explain it. But I didn’t feel the need and your mother did. That was the difference. I’m sorry for any annoyance I caused her. She had a great deal to attend to. I had only this – one thing.’

  Sarah nodded. She put out her cigarette. Barbie thought she would get up, make an excuse to be off home; but she settled back in the wicker chair.

  ‘How were your aunt and uncle?’ Barbie asked her.

  ‘Very well, thank you.’

  ‘You can’t have seen much of Calcutta.’

  ‘No, not much. A bit. I was taken dancing at the Grand, and then to a place where they had Indian musicians.’

  ‘By Aunt Fenny and Uncle Arthur?’

  Sarah smiled. ‘No, by one of the officers who attended the course Uncle Arthur’s running. He and Aunt Fenny live a much gayer life than they used to in Delhi. They have one of these large air-conditioned flats and it’s usually full of young people, mostly these young men who do the course.’

  ‘What kind of course?’

  ‘About how India is run in peace-time. It’s supposed to attract recruits for the civil service and the police among men who’ve liked India enough to want to stay on after the war.’

  Barbie tried to consider this. But she was giving Sarah incomplete attention. The image of the trunk was superimposing itself on the image of the verandah, the tea-table, and Sarah on the other side of it smiling as if waiting for her to smile back.

  ‘Is the course a success?’ she asked.

  ‘I suppose one or two of them might be tempted. Having them back to the flat is part of the attracting process. You know. The ease and comfort of lots of servants but in modern surroundings, the kind they have to admit are pretty decent. But I should think they’re more likely to try for one of the business firms where the future’s more secure and they can get transferred home to the London office when it begins to pall or if they want to get married and have a proper family life. Otherwise I get the impression they think the course is rather quaint.’ Sarah paused. ‘They were the kind of young men I was just beginning to get to know before Su and I came back out in ‘thirty-nine. My sort of people. The sort of people we really are. There’s such a tremendous gulf, I mean now. More so from their point of view than from ours.’