by Rumer Godden
‘I was looking into the water and I thought about the river,’ said Anil dreamily. ‘Did you see the colour of the river this evening, Narayan? It was like the inside of a shell. All the colours are deeper when they lie on that mother-of-pearl, the water-lilies are milk-white and crimson instead of pink and cream, and the hyacinth clumps are purple. Didn’t you see them like that, Indro?’
‘No,’ said Narayan sourly. Anil knew very well he did not.
A speck of light sailed across the sky towards them; but it was not a shooting star, it was a firefly.
‘I sometimes think my thoughts will end like that,’ said Anil: ‘Not a star. A very common insect.’
‘You only say that to hear me contradict you.’
‘Really. Really. You are very cross tonight. What is it? Something, or somebody, has disagreed with you, I think.’ He stood up on the edge of the platform and stretched himself, leaning backwards a little so that the line of his body made a taut, clean curve; he looked as if he might fly with the strong springing lines that he made, and his loose clothes fell in long folds, gracefully, as he stood.
Without thinking Narayan followed him and stretched himself as he stood up; but cheap European clothes are not made for stretching – there was the sharp sound of a tear and the back of his coat split and at the same time his collar stud gave way and one side of his collar sprang up against his cheek.
‘That comes of wearing what does not suit you,’ said Anil, laughing at him. ‘You don’t look half as much grand as you did.’
An extraordinary wave of temper came over Narayan. Everything was horrible – Anil’s bantering, half-sneering laughter, the hot sticky night, his own heat and his wet feet, the fantastic shadow-strewn College, and the long road he must travel home to his house where Shila, if he knew her, would still be waiting up to greet him with reproachful eyes. He hated Anil. ‘You damned impertinent boy!’ he cried and inexpertly, with a clumsy gesture, he knocked Anil backwards across the chest. Anil was laughing, and he purposely let himself be knocked, still laughing, off the platform, landing lightly on his feet in the grass below it. Immediately there was a howl, and he screamed, a real shrill scream of fear with pain in it, and something ran away in the grass. Anil staggered and fell theatrically against the balustrade, hiding his face.
Narayan did not move; he could not move, he could only stand, watching Anil stagger and fall against the stone. The moment drew out in fantastic coldness and still he could not move and chill drops ran down his neck. When he did speak his voice sounded rusty. ‘Anil, Anil,’ he rasped, ‘Anil, for God’s sake what has happened? What is it? Oh, what did you do?’ His voice was shriller than Anil’s, but Anil still leant on the balustrade, his face hidden and his shoulders shaking. In agony he pulled the hands away from Anil’s face and Anil was laughing, and now he laughed aloud. Narayan flung away from him in disgust.
‘Another silly trick.’
Anil’s face went stiff and furious too. ‘Not at all. I thought I had been bitten by a snake. It was not a snake, that is all.’
‘You were bitten. Show me. Where are you hurt?’ There was concern and authority in Narayan’s voice. ‘You were not playacting me. Show me where it is.’
Anil stepped back coldly. ‘Don’t concern yourself. It was not a snake.’
‘I know it was not a snake,’ said Narayan irritably in his anxiety. ‘Other things are dangerous as well. Tell me. I must know.’
‘You won’t know if I do not choose to tell you.’
‘Anil, I am sorry. I was not myself just now.’
‘You were very much yourself. Don’t mind about it. It does not interest me.’
‘Anil, please. Did it touch you?’
‘It did or it did not. That is my affair.’
‘Please don’t take this attitude. Tell me what has happened.’
‘Nothing has happened,’ said Anil impatiently. ‘I thought I had trodden on a snake. It was not a snake. That is all.’
‘What was it, then?’
‘I don’t know. It has gone.’
‘Didn’t you see it? You must have seen it.’
Anil shrugged. ‘It was invisible. Let it remain so. In any case I am a damned impertinent boy. What does it matter what happens to me?’ And he turned on his heel, but Narayan saw the flash of tears in his eyes before he had time to turn.
‘Anil.’ He caught him by the hand, there was a moment’s childish struggle and Anil suddenly gave way.
Presently, as they were walking back together, Anil said: ‘I am overwrought, I think. I have been working so much, too late for the Examination.’
‘You have to work,’ said Narayan callously. You have to pass first, with first-class honours; and you will get the Kailash Chandra Prize for Bacteriology, and the MacEwen Purse—’
‘So you say.’
‘Anil, this is something I want most in the world.’
‘But why? For me? I am not your brother.’
‘You are more than my brother. You are myself. You are all that I want to be.’ And that was true, and though he spoke lightly, Anil’s results were desperately important to Narayan. Anil was unreliable. Narayan sighed. ‘You must not be too late. You have much to do tomorrow. Professor Dutt is giving you some private coaching, I think.’ But still they did not go to bed.
They walked lightly on, while it grew very late. Anil was half touched, half bored; Narayan was blurred with remorse and tenderness. They had both forgotten what had happened, but on Anil’s dhoti was a trail of small dark spots, bloodstains from a gash across his shin, a small deep gash where the blood had dried already. Anil did not notice it again.
They paused at the door of the Hostel and looked across the College to the outer walls. The moon was sinking in the sky, it was growing darker. In the Pools’ house was a light.
‘Charlie Chang is working late tonight. He shouldn’t be. His wife is here. Why does he need a light?’ said Anil; and laughing, sniggering a little, they said good night themselves.
It was not Charles, it was his daughter Emily. Anil’s scream had woken her and she put out her hand in the darkness to find her spaniel and he was not there.
The scream woke Emily out of a dream and the voice that had been screaming went on to laugh. It was entirely natural to Emily that screams and laughing should be mingled and entirely natural that on hearing them she should be nipped cold and still with fear. (Louise would not let them scream, nor would Madame Chastel at school in Paris. ‘We shall not scream or cry, we shall laugh instead,’ and so they did, a high snapping sort of laughing, while fear was naked in Louise’s eyes.) Now Emily woke confused. What was that scream and that laughing, high with fright? What was it?… (‘What was it, Mother?’ ‘Nothing.’ ‘What was that?’ ‘Nothing.’ That was a lie, it was almost next door, but Louise told lies. At least she never exactly told the truth.) … Will there be a crash? Will there?
Remember, Emily, remember. This is not France, this is India. Remember! India … Slowly she began to relax.
She had been born in India; she, Emily – not Binnie … If you are born in a place does a little of it get into your bones? Yes. I think it does …
(‘What do you call people who live in a country always, Charles?’)
(‘Natives, I suppose.’)
(‘No, not natives. People who come to it and want to belong to it and never go away.’)
(‘Domiciled citizens.’)
(‘Then Binnie and I should like to be domiciled citizens of India, please, Charles.’)
Why did Emily like it so much? The only way in and out of it was by the river. It had taken ten hours of winding through the plain to reach Amorra from the depot, and all that way they had seen only the fields and the villages and the empty sky; and Amorra was much the same, only a town along the riverbank; the high College buildings that seemed like skyscrapers against the huts looked pygmy against the sky, and all the fields and paddocks were only a little patch upon the plain.
The stra
nge wide land with its heavy weight of sky and water that oppressed Louise was beautiful to Emily; there was more sky here than anywhere she had seen, and the river was a mile wide from bank to bank, swirled with rapids that churned the sand up into yellow-green water, and beyond the river on each side stretched the plain … We are divided from everything else. We are in another world. Nothing can get at us here …
And Charles was here. Why had they been without him so long? There had been no one like Charles in the house at Bellevue; none of the men they saw – Félix, dear Félix the cook whom they had laughed at her for loving, or the postman or Madame’s nephew Jean André or Louise’s friends – were in the least like Charles. Charles was strong and bold and different. Even the smell of him was different; Charles smelled of man; he smelled, too, of tobacco and the grass and herbs he touched all day long, and of soap and eau de cologne, and when he came in from riding he smelled strongly of leather and horse, a good live smell though Louise wrinkled up her nose in disgust … I would rather smell of doing things than being clean, said Emily … and the smell of Charles seemed to chase the last sickly shadows from her mind.
Now, except when she woke in the night, the life in Paris was like a shadow or a dream; the house with the balconies and paved garden had been the centre of the world, now it was like a dream – all of it; Madame Chastel, the despot whom they thought would go on and on for ever, was gone, left without them; the voices of Félix and the cross old Albertine were speaking where she could not hear them; other people were walking up the road, picking their steps between the pavé, walking in and out of the pattern that the chestnut trees threw down on the stones … For ten years I lived in that house and walked up and down that road, said Emily, ten times I have seen the leaves change, opening in the spring, spreading a still canopy in summer, drifting in the autumn, rustling along the gutters in the frost of winter – ten times, and all the while Amorra and Charles were here alone.
(‘Why didn’t you bring us out here before, Mother? Why did you keep us at home?’)
(‘I shouldn’t have brought you now if it were not for the war. India isn’t good for little girls.’)
Phaugh! Rubbish!
(‘Charles, why didn’t Mother let us come here before?’)
(‘Because she wanted to keep you at home,’ said Charles.)
That was the natural explanation. It did not seem in the least odd to Emily. It had not occurred to her that a father had any rights over his children or could make decisions for them. In Emily’s experience Louise was omnipotent. Then, she had listened with close attention to a conversation she overheard between Charles and Louise …
‘I suppose you will want someone to teach the children,’ Charles began it. ‘Perhaps one of the professors at the College could do it in his spare time. I’ll speak to Ghose.’
‘Is it worth it?’ answered Louise. ‘They won’t be staying here for long.’
‘Won’t they?’ asked Charles, and Louise looked at him quickly.
‘They can’t stay here, Charles.’
‘Why not?’
‘How can they? It’s not – fit for them.’
‘I’m afraid it must be,’ said Charles crisply. Louise did not answer; she was facing Emily, and Emily saw her hysterical look come into her face; it made her cheeks very white, her eyes very black. ‘You came. I didn’t ask you to. You came,’ said Charles. ‘Why did you come?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Louise in a whisper, ‘I don’t know,’ and she cried. ‘Can’t you understand? It was like being hunted. There was not time to think—’
(Oh, there was, Mother, Emily contradicted silently, we were in that nice hotel for days.)
‘There seemed nowhere on earth that was safe or quiet—’
(Lisbon was perfectly quiet.)
‘I had no one to turn to, no one to help me—’
(Oh, Mother!)
‘Now – now I know that I was mad.’
‘I don’t think you were mad at all,’ said Charles pleasantly, and all Emily’s nerves approved of his light, almost conversational voice, after Louise’s overwrought cry. ‘I think it was very sensible. My house was half yours even if you didn’t care to use it. It’s comfortable and it’s as safe as any place can be – though naturally you don’t like living quite alone, as you have to here. I understand that. I didn’t like it either – to begin with—’
‘Charles—’
‘And we don’t need reminding, do we,’ asked Charles with a peculiar edge to the words, ‘that Emily – and Binnie – are my children?’ Louise’s answer was silent on her lips. ‘I’ll ask Ghose to recommend a tutor for them,’ said Charles, suddenly, tersely, bringing the subject to an end. ‘They have been so well stuffed that it won’t hurt them to forget a little.’
Louise still did not answer, and a fear was born in Emily’s mind; and now, in the night, it recurred to her …
Louise had brought them to Amorra, Louise could take them away. They could not prevent her, children could not be real citizens of any country; they could not choose where they would live. Louise had many weapons and she would use them. Could Charles defend himself against them all? Could Charles? Emily herself constituted one. Emily was delicate and she had an unlucky stomach; often, herself, she had been undone by it. If she should get ill … The heat had already made her most unbecomingly pale. She was a pretext Louise had often used before; often she and Binnie had been forced away from a party, an occupation, a holiday or a dream. (‘Why?’ ‘Because I say so.’ ‘Explain!’ And Louise could always explain.) … That was it, thought Emily, she had all the reasons, the arguments, all the words and all the power. The only thing Emily had learnt was to make herself expressionless, to give nothing away, above all never to show she liked or loved. Now she set her teeth in her despair … But one day, Mother, it will be my turn to win. Charles will help me, and I shall win. I shall win over this. I shall stay here – always – with Charles …
She had grown a violent hero-love for Charles, but Charles, it seemed, was curiously abstracted and had no time to return it. She, the undemonstrative Emily, would push her face against his hot shoulder, tighter and tighter: ‘Let me stay with you, always – always.’ He said: ‘Yes, but not now, that’s a good girl’ – but sometimes he stroked her hair and turned up her chin and looked into her face, and he had given her a puppy for herself. He had given her Don …
She put out her hand in the darkness to feel him. Her finger touched the edge of his drinking-bowl, not the top but the side, and her hand found his bed, but it was empty. Shaken out of herself she was able to sit up and switch on the light. The bed was empty and the bowl was turned over, with the water running away across the verandah, and the side of the bed, a wooden frame plaited with webbing, was bitten into splinters all along it and the lead bitten in half. ‘Oh, Don!’ cried Emily. ‘Don!’
Immediately Don appeared like a sprite from under her bed. ‘What have you done? Where have you been?’ asked Emily sternly, but he showed none of the guilt that customarily filled him at the least tinge of scolding in her voice. He wiped his paws down the side of her net, fawning and leaping and trying to lick her hand with overwhelming love. ‘Don’t be sloppy,’ said Emily sternly again, and at last she coaxed him on to his bed and, leaning on the edge of hers rather than getting out on the floor, though the bed’s edge cut across her chest, she managed to tie him up with the end of his bitten lead. She turned out the light and lay down and her hand stroked his warm, sleek-feeling body. Now her hand felt sparser hair and a patch of hot bare skin; he had turned on his back and she was stroking his stomach. ‘You’re very hot, my love,’ she crooned.
If she put her two hands round Don from behind she could feel his heart beating like a little engine; but in some way when he was still and asleep it seemed to be beating all over his body, everywhere except in the rough pads of his feet and in his ears; that was natural, the pads were like shoes and a spaniel’s ears were largely ornamental, like long hair. Yo
u could not feel much of Emily, could you, in the ends of her hair?
She kept her hand on Don’s stomach and the pulse of it seemed to be beating up her arm, very quickly as if it were part of her. But he is quicker than I am. He goes quicker than I do, thought Emily drowsily, but he seems to be going very quickly now … She was not concerned; with her hand on him all her troubles had gone.
They had never had a dog before … Of course, Mother had the Pekingese, but they are no more dogs, said Emily, than goldfish are fish; though they are charming, of course. Besides, they are Mother’s, and she adores them and they are far removed from us.
On Don’s collar she had tied a label—
DON
POOL
Government Farm
Amorra
Bengal
India
Asia
The World
The Universe
—because that seemed to be a satisfactory explanation of her feeling for him. Suddenly, she had entered into richness; she had Don, and, nearly, she had Charles. She was drowsy, she was not afraid any more … This is India, this is not France. Nothing can happen here. Don is under my hand. He is beating, beating under my hand. Don … Don …
Don settled more deeply on his back and sighed. Emily’s hand, limp and heavy with sleep, slipped off him to the rug. He started up and began to bite the bed, straining and worrying at his lead.
III
The morning came early to Amorra. First the river began to pale and to look solid against its farther bank where the mist hung down. Soon, beyond the town, the fields seemed to draw themselves out away from the banks on either side; and this drawing away, this look of stretching, was because the horizon now showed. The sky grew pale too, separated from the earth, divided pale from dark. Soon the fields began to show their shapes – in chequers of pale and dark, in a glimmer of water from the rice-fields, in running criss-crossed paths of white. Now it was possible to pick out the road banked high in case of flood; it looked pale, bleached and colourless; but presently, as the trees changed from dark to green, it changed from a pale thread to a line of pinkish dry brick-dust, with the humped shapes of bridges and the white pepperpot turrets of a country temple beside the road; the railway fines behind it ran on, on and away. Now there were no more stars in the sky, and the sky was growing green and faintly luminous above the plain. Green was the first colour to come, faint green in the sky after the stars, a dark blackish green on the trees and pure bright green, limpid, on the rice-fields. Then appeared the clay colours of the earth, the dry fields and the mud walls and village huts and after them, clear as the rice, the mauve spikes of water hyacinth in the pools. There was a little of that colour in the sky, as in one village and then in another a fire was lit and smoke went up dark into the sky. The sky was soon colourless again with daylight, and white mist chill with dew began to creep across the fields and round the town.
