As if by Magic

by Angus Wilson

  If only such were true; but the wonderful, half-smiling, near black little marmoset’s face, after a moment’s provocative return of his stare, was bent in humble passivity to assist a tall, handsome middle-aged lady in the most splendid of blue and silver saris to sail from the car into the hugger-mugger, semi-bazaar, little general stores like an ex-queen or an ageing film star going to her apartment at the Crillon or at Claridges. The wonderful features then set in diminutive footman dignity as he stood to attention by the car door until his mistress returned.

  Hamo thought, it was now or never; that in such beauty alone lay escape out of all his problems. Without turning back towards Mr. Wickramanayake, he crossed the street.

  “Hullo,” he said.

  He knew himself to be a ludicrous, if not frighteningly grotesque, moustached stork peering down at a gulping little frog (yet there was no gulping, only a dignified somewhat worried frown); but he felt it to be a meeting, casual, hands-in-pockets, class-and-creed-forgotten, between two youths, such as long ago somewhere he had somehow missed. He knew with despair; he felt with desperation. But, however class and creed might melt, language divided. There was no answer. With delicious panic he scribbled his name, his hotel, on a page out of his pocket-diary and, wrapping it in a fifty-rupee note, folded it into the smooth-skinned, sinewy blue-veined small black fist. There was no delight, no alarm, no anger in the black eyes behind the lowered sweeping black lashes—only the forehead’s frown grew deeper. And then, at the sound of the shopkeeper calling, the money and the note were rapidly returned. Hamo could hear Erroll’s voice and the postgraduate’s, could sense the bewilderment, feel hovering in the air that word of such horror to all Asian people—scandal. Now was his chance to withdraw, now especially, as the lady once again sailed forth with the youth in tow, his arms filled with piled-high packages hiding the delicious little snub nose, obscuring the resolute steady eyes, revealing only a worried forehead and the neat short black hair above. Shopkeepers were there to open doors and to bow. Incongruous as a decade ago some Mother Superior (before “modern nuns”), the stately lady took the wheel, pressed the starter, the Fairest Youth Ever to be Seen sat sedate in the back surrounded by the parcels. As the gears of the (so beautifully polished, so wonderfully washed, no doubt by those beautiful, wonderful hands) car ground with age, there sounded another noise, tinkling, loud and ludicrous. With the cutest of Disney-wisney bell chimes there came round the corner a two-man pedal-cycled, ice-cream vendor’s sales box. For a second, as the car set off with a bump that shook the stately lady up in her seat but not out of her stateliness, and set the youth to holding a dozen or so parcels from sliding to the floor, the frown disappeared, the eyes lit up with laughter at the ice-cream musical chime, the bowed lips parted to reveal tiny perfectly white regular teeth—a miracle happened, in fact, for Hamo, and something happened in turn to his face that he could not remember feeling before—he supposed it must be a “broad smile”. He pointed to the ice-cream cart, and, through the car’s back window, he could see the marmoset’s head shake from shoulder to shoulder in a very deliberate Asian affirmative—but, of course, as usual, all too late.

  At least he was determined not to act sourly because fate was so sour. The two ice-cream sellers, their little tune arrested, were surrounded by a group of boys of all ages—the blazered and pocket-moneyed as usual, busy fulfilling their needs, the saronged, or even the ragged, seeming to get as much pleasure from the satisfaction of their betters’ appetites as if they had indulged their own. Disregarding Erroll’s call to him, trusting to some obscure sense of luck, making, indeed, as he was embarrassedly conscious, his first social challenge and experiment, he went over and bought ices and snofrute and lollipops for all the poor and forgotten. There was no doubt, he must conclude, of the result of the experiment: the lowly found more pleasure in self-indulgence than in the satisfactions of their betters. But none were more satisfied than the vendors, their skinny arms and greedy looks poured blessings on Hamo. It was only when, setting off once again with their maddening little tinkabell tune, they turned to bow their gratitude, that Hamo saw at once how in all probability, perhaps, and given the nature of random action, these grinning (mocking? encouraging?) dispensers of joys to boys were that mischievous Danish uncle and the up-to-any-old-trick other uncle at their little games again. It surely must be so, for their nods and becks, if not their smiles, were so triumphantly European despite all their dhoti drag.

  He did not even consider telling Erroll Watton of his decision. He set off at once to follow the gay little tune to whatever gay little end it might lead him.

  In fact he had not walked more than a leafy scented street or two of this once ancient spice-merchant’s nabob quarter, had passed only one embassy and not more than two consulates, when he turned a corner to see the Ice-cone Wops doing a lively ding-dong trade with a mixed-gendered crowd from the two junior schools of the élite of the district. Mopping his sweating brow with a large silk handkerchief, seizing with relief the opportunity to relax, if only for a moment, his exhausted body, he stood back and watched the scene.

  But only for a moment, because the uncles, with awful glee, hailed his appearance by a particularly loud playing of the little tune and an excited address to the school children which led, not to the whole crowd, but to the schoolgirls alone, all knickers and niceness, descending upon him with teasing cries of “Please treat! Please treat!” To be pinned to the ground by the ladies of Lilliput was a nightmare from which he must wake up. He turned to run, then the nightmare turned to My Happiest Dream, for there standing at the open doors of a double garage, standing at the end of a passage beside a carved stone screen of a no doubt sumptuous patio, indeed at the rear of the ancient Humber, was the Fairest Youth, who bowed low, head to the ground, and then, coming to attention, very lightly winked.

  Hamo needed no second call. Leaping like a giraffe in slow-motion safari sequence, he was with him in a second; the garage door slid to, and girlish giggles, feminine fingers and avuncular vengeance were alike shut out. Hamo put up his sweating hand to stroke the bristly black hair at the nape of the neck, but the hand was as firmly removed and as firmly held in another, firm, cool, and smooth; by it he was led out through the back of the garage into a narrow, whitewashed, walled-in yard in which stood a pump and bucket. And on into what from outside looked like a lean-to privy or wood shed, but from within, by its mattresses, its small tin trunks, its drawing-pinned portraits of Indian movie stars, its crêpe-paper-edged shelf of articles wrapped in towels, showed clearly as the servants’ bedroom. Hamo bent down and kissed the Fairest Youth. His delicious lips tasted unaccountably salty and Hamo was instantly seized with an intolerable thirst. Not even the tense excitement of the emerging naked limbs as the sarong was unwound could fix his attention. He asked for a glass of water; pointed towards the pump, but to no avail. He simply was not understood. To avoid any further delays of bliss, he sought to allay his thirst by the skilful management of swallowing his own spittle.

  The coughing fit which ensued brought on such convulsions that the youth, no doubt in alarm, left smiles and frowns alike for an expression of total blank. Then, on a sudden decision, he took the sweat-pouring, scarlet-faced Hamo once more by the hand and led him by a short passage, out of which in an open recess stood the servants’ privy, into a large, and even to Hamo’s high demands, excellently equipped, spotless kitchen. His choking and the apoplectic heat it generated were soothed and cooled by the mere sight here of the ice-white cookers, the large refrigerator, the washing machine, those very aspects of a modern technological civilization, otherwise vulgar and trivial, which he liked for their hygiene, for their efficiency in a tediously necessary sphere, those which he allowed in his own otherwise quietly machineless home, those which he expected to find in the houses of his friends, those which alone reminded him of laboratories that were far more “home” than any home to him. But somehow after the yard, the shed and the passage—he had not expected such thin
gs here.

  Especially not as the setting for a tiny young girl, demure with a neat bun and starched apron, who, like something he had seen once, before he could read, in some picture in his maternal grandfather’s set of Dickens (the sole relief on Sunday childhood visits), now bowed before him. Beauty filled a glass at the tap and was about to hand it to him, when the little old-looking girl took it from his hand, got ice from the refrigerator, and, with a look of rebuke to the youth, placed it on a small lacquer tray and handed it to Hamo. Solemn, she bowed again.

  “Leela,” she said, and pointing to the Fairest Youth, “Muthu.”

  “Hamo,” he said, and “Thank you.” Then he added, “Is it all right for me to be here?” But it was clear that no one spoke English. Indeed this was made plain by Leela, who, evidently in charge, gave some reply in Singhalese and then went from the room. Muthu put his face into his hands and simpered bashfully. In a moment Leela had returned with a glass decanter of whisky from which she liberally spliced Hamo’s glass of water. Hamo realized that the odd pair were watching him with hushed expectancy. Looking at them in turn, he knew at once what he must do. He took a great gulp of the whisky and water, then exhaled a exaggerated breath of delight, banged himself on the chest, and said loudly,

  “Ah!” and then, “Ha!”

  The response he had intuitively expected came at once. Both solemn onlookers burst into fits of laughter, clapping their hands and rolling from side to side in their glee. It was impossible not to follow their delight, yet, even as tears of laughter and relief ran down his cheeks on to his moustache, even as he mopped them away with his large silk handkerchief, he made covert glances at his audience. No, they were not children! not even immature! Hamo Langmuir does not like chicken. Beauty, it is true, was the younger, but he must, seen now in full light, have left twenty behind him; and as for little Old-Fashioned Miss, she could have been a stunted twenty-four. His, then, was no wicked unclery. But there was of course childishness of mind as well as childishness of body. He took a considered sip of his whisky, while the shadow of a fresh moral Angst loomed in the distance.

  But its threat was instantly banished by alarm, as the sound of a motor-car grinding into the garage way stopped every vestige of fairground glee with which the Man Mountain’s antics had been greeted.

  Solemnity hurried with the decanter from the room. But Beauty stood tensely at attention by the splendid sink fixture. Hamo made signs that they should take refuge in the bedroom, but the youth might have been Sebastian pinned to the sink by arrows. In any case it was too late. From the yard came a man’s voice shouting orders in Singhalese. On the other side, from the patio, a woman called “Boy! Boy!” in impatient staccato command.

  To Hamo’s horror he saw that every inch of the Fairest Youth’s body was shuddering. His eyes were round, set, expressionless.

  Clearly they must not be found together. He made through the kitchen door into the house. He could announce himself as a strayed English tourist, a rare European salesman of encyclopædias, an admiring if over-impetuous domestic architect, a nostalgic colonial, an astronaut, an immanence—yet none seemed likely. His imagination, as seldom before, leapt into the absurd and the fantastic. He could risk hue and cry by simply rushing past the owners without explanations. He could say that he had mistaken the house for the Ministry of Agriculture or for the Residence of the Professor of Biochemistry, though neither, he knew, was remotely in this area. He could pretend to have been taken with a vomiting attack and to have sought to avail himself of their lavatory, but this, as well as being generally impolite, might involve certain religious taboos that could cause an “incident”. “Scandal”—that dread word—seemed inevitable, as he found himself in the vast lavish salon decorated in the most contemporary of styles. There seemed no way out from it save down a seemingly endless covered-way glowing with brightest bignonia creeper. From there came the woman’s voice. He saw that if he ran, he would be caught there like some intruder in a harem; if he announced his presence at all, indeed, he must implicate the servants, for either he had come in through their quarters, or they had let him in by the front entrance of the house. Something in the whole situation demanded an operatic aria in explanation, but for this the bathroomly resonant tenor with which on most mornings he performed his repertoire of hymns, songs learned at his prep school relating to England’s mariners and the vagabond life of the English highways, or even parts of the Hallelujah Chorus, was surely insufficient. The only operatic piece he could in part at least attempt was Leporello’s “Ma in Spagna” and that would only give the game away. In any case it was for the absent Erroll to sing not he.

  Seeing the whole incident as the culmination of a life, now for the first time clearly marked as ludicrous, he felt light-headed, even light-hearted, but dedicated at all cost to protect Beauty. Yet thumping heart, pulsing temples, stifled breathing were surprising companions to this new exhilaration.

  He stifled an incongruous giggle and stood at the back of the deep room in the shadow of an elaborate arrangement of tropical plants in a white painted wrought-iron “indoor garden”. Let surprise at least remain on his side.

  The great glass door from the covered way was slid open impatiently, and a young Singhalese housewife flew into the room, corncraking loud cries of anger at Leela invisible behind her. Her thick black hair was piled high and ornamented with frangipanis and one glowing ruby, her ears and throat glittered with jewellery. Her sari was of a glorious emerald silk touched with gold leaf. There was no puff of air, yet the fringed ends of the long gold-threaded scarf draped over her inviting sweetmeat shoulders rippled slightly as she came in. Everything was light and trembling and airy; but everything was also greedy, cross and pecking. He had seen her, he thought, already as some tropical bird—a roller, a bee-eater, a hoopoe, an oriole—grubbing up, with toss of beak and head, insects from the great lawns that lay between the ancient ruined temples of Anuradhapura or Polonnaruwa, as she now plucked crossly at a cushion here, a curtain fold there, snapped on an electric fan, kicked with her brilliant studded slipper a waste-paper basket that got in her way, never ceasing her craking at the little brown bird that followed her. If women must obtrude these bird images then let them at least keep to demure dunnocks or linnets like Leela; of all detestable things an exotic woman stood highest with Hamo for the attention she drew to woman’s form. And above all now, for, looking at this extravagant creature, he was forced to admit, with almost as much a gasp of surprise as of annoyance, that he had seldom seen such a delicate, beautifully modelled face, so delicate a pale skin—a beauty neither wholly denied by the ample feminine rounding of her small breasts and hips, nor wholly spoiled by the petulant, pouting mouth, the flattery-fed nagging voice. Her naked belly was flat, firm and smooth as a youth’s, as the Fairest Youth’s. Hamo turned his eyes away from it.

  “Boy,” she called, “Boy,” on a cracked contralto note that bid fair to dispel for ever the enchantment, always diminishing in Asia, that once hung around that magic word for him. Her eyes, like most birds’, flaunting or faded, were hard round buttons. Even when suddenly she saw the tall unexpected foreigner in the shadow of her salon, she showed no alarm, not even embarrassment, only an annoyance that she might have felt at a film of dust, a light that did not work, or a miscarried telephone call—any failure in the service she expected but clearly did not always receive.

  “Yes?” she asked sharply. I’m glad I’m not selling encyclopædias, Hamo thought.

  Before he could answer, Leela, a demure apple dumpling to her mistress’s triumph of the confectioner’s art, stepped forwards and made her little bow.

  “This Mrs. Jayasekere,” she announced, as though Hamo had been inquiring for the mistress of the house with ruthless importunity. He could have kissed the dumpling on its suety lips, for it must have the most ready address and cunning—but the face was all solemn dutifulness as she turned to the mistress. “This English gentleman you tell.” She stumbled over the foreign wor
ds. “Dotty Man come.”

  “Oh! Dr. Malcolm! I am so surprised. We did not at all expect you until next month. How is it that the Ministry has made such a mistake? Where are you staying? Do you wish to stay here? Kirsti! Kirsti! Dr. Malcolm has come. Please sit down. What can it mean? We are going to a party. But our car has broken down. Even a new car. You will come. All will be happy to see you.”

  All her self-possession seemed to desert her. Her voice now ran up and down on a wild scale of hen-like, housewifely concern that ill accorded with the magnificence of her tropical plumage and her petulant, blasé air. Her smile was so desperate, so near to panic that Hamo began to seek only a way of extricating her from his predicament; but then she addressed Leela in Singhalese and her voice lost its anxious crescendos and took on again the short driving note that, even through the unintelligible words, sounded to Hamo like a blunted cudgel.

  “And, Dr. Malcolm, you have come on an evening when our old servant is out. Only these young servants are here. And she gives you no drink, no seat, no fans. Please sit down. Do you like the leather sofa? When Kirsti was in England, he bought it. It was very smart. That was five years ago. But nothing can be imported. So we don’t know. Our country people are so ignorant. It is impossible to train them, Dr. Malcolm. Kirsti was so surprised at Professor Lamplugh’s. There were no servants. On Sundays even the Professor took part, washing the plates. It was in Macclesfield. Number 47 Harbour Street. But there is no harbour. Kirsti will tell you. I am not very fond of jokes. Do you know Macclesfield?”

  “No. I live in London.”

  The metropolitan sound did something to assuage her anxiety, for she spoke in lower tones nearer to her Singhalese speech, and through the sing-song of her English accent there was perceptible the sort of charm once fashionable with his smart great-aunt, Dorothy, Sir James’s long-since-dead psychic wife.