As if by Magic

by Angus Wilson

  “Of course. And I live in Colombo. Really, Dr. Malcolm, it is too amusing. People from the U.K. ask me, do you know the game reserves—Wilpattu, Yala—elephants, wild pigs, crocodiles, I don’t know what else, or the ruined cities? But why should I go to such places to see such things! Of course, I have been to Kandy. And when we were young our parents always took us to the hills, to Nuwara Eliya. It was still the old British season, you know, and a dress-maker to make new frocks for the parades. I was so excited as a little girl. But now we younger people prefer to go water-skiing. Everything is water-skiing now, isn’t it?”

  “I am a very keen swimmer, but I know nothing of water-skiing.”

  “So you like the old ways. The old British season. I am afraid only very rich people ride horses here now. All the race-courses are closed. Can you imagine anything so absurd? But before we had a mad Government and now this Government is afraid to go back on it. As if our losing money on a horse makes things worse for the peasants. The old people like my parents simply don’t understand it. And they’re right. Where is my mother? She will talk to you about the old British days.” But now she called, “Kirsti! Kirsti!” again and, getting no reply, seemed once more to lose her poise. “The party is at Maisie Goonasekere’s. Why didn’t the girl give you a drink? What is she doing in here? She should be in the kitchen. They are peasants, you see. They can’t learn. Do you believe in women having a hobby, Dr. Malcolm? Maisie Goonasekere is starting classes in bonzai. Bonzai is the Japanese flower decoration. Everything is bonzai with her. You will like her. What will you have? Where is the boy—to serve the drinks? This girl should be in the kitchen.” She spoke fiercely to Leela, who retired.

  “No really, she was most helpful. I’ve only been here a few moments. The servants looked after me splendidly. I wish mine were as good.”

  These words produced yet a fourth mood in his hostess. Indeed Hamo felt astonished not only at her changes of manner but at his own concern to register them. Such must be the painful and continual alertness forced upon any impostor, not the more generalized habit of wary concealment that his private life had bred in him.

  She spoke still in her blasé contralto but with some excess of assured ease that made her once again seem at his mercy. He winced as the emotive thought-word pulled him up short—“mercy”, with a stranger and a woman, how much command of himself was he losing?

  “So you have servants, Dr. Malcolm, like us. That’s not the usual old U.K. at all. When Kirsti went to visit Lady Arcott—my father was a barrister when Sir John was Governor here, you know—no servants, poor woman.”

  Hamo’s dislike for pretension inclined him to deny himself the plural—it felt disloyal to loyal Mrs. E. But then one couldn’t tell how essential social grandeur was to the imposture, so, throwing in Erroll’s faithfulness and the ever-changing daily woman, he acquiesced in the tacit lie.

  “But then, of course, you are a great V.I.P.” She looked at him with a teasing look that she clearly hoped would please. “Everyone speaks of your visit. Even the Minister is afraid. And the students! Will the great man give permission? For them you are the great Inspector, the Inspector General, the Head Man from London. But I am telling stories away from school. You will have seen all this for yourself. But here with us you will have no panics. Only straight business talking. Kirsti! Kirsti! Ah, here is the boy. I shall tell him to fetch my husband.”

  Hamo was about to urge her not to disturb Mr. Jayasekere, to say that he would return the next day, and so to make his get-away from the ludicrous and potentially harmful embarrassment for good. She was, however, so intent on scolding the impassive Muthu, that his good-byes could get no hearing. So violent was her fury with the servants that some of the frangipani flowers were shaken loose from her hair and her corsage. With a strange mixture of annoyance at Hamo being present at such a predicament and a genuine girlish modesty, she moved into a corner of the room to make all right again. In that instant, Muthu’s stern obedience changed to a smile, at once so impudent, so shy and so flirtatious that Hamo knew he could not leave. He must establish himself, even in his fictitious role, so that he could visit the house, make assignations, rescue the Fairest Youth from his bondage. To smack Mrs. Jayasekere’s face for her disgraceful treatment of such beauty would not, he knew, be helpful in achieving these ends. Yet somehow and immediately aloud he must express his feelings for the boy. Keeping Muthu lustfully though gently in image, he searched among all the horrid contemporary furniture for something he could praise, then he saw suddenly an antique colonial chaise-longue of some local wood and cane-work.

  “That’s a very attractive piece indeed,” he said, and felt relieved of his anger.

  “You like the old Burgher furniture? My mother will be so surprised to hear you say that. She wanted to throw it out as rubbish. But I told her, ‘All that’s coming back, Mother.’ Maisie Goonasekere has started a small factory to make some imitations. The same but more comfortable. And now the great Doctor Malcolm likes Burgher. Do you hear, Kirsti? We must buy some of Maisie’s Burgher pieces. Dr. Malcolm tells us this.”

  But the short, stocky young man in the tight dark suit and the striped club-tie appeared to hear nothing. He went straight to the telephone and engaged in a voluble and angry conversation that moved from Singhalese to English and back again. It appeared to relate to the back axle of his car. He spoke so loudly that he could not hear his wife’s protestations, although, every now and again, he directed a fierce “shush” at her. At last he put down the receiver and turned towards them, mopping his forehead in recovery from his exertions.

  “Kirsti, why do you not listen? This is Dr. Malcolm!”

  It seemed to Hamo that Mr. Jayasekere had indeed been aware of his presence, probably even of his supposed name, but that he had no intention, perhaps insufficient control of his anger, to change his original priorities. Certainly there was a perceptible moment before he registered his amazement, horror and delight at this doctor’s presence (was the title medical or academic?).

  “Doctor Malcolm! My God! And here was I giving those chaps at the garage a rocket, with a V.I.P. sitting in my rooms listening to all that slanging match. So who will get the rocket now? I think it may be me. And from very high places. But what are you doing here, Sir, after we’ve said we’re honoured to see you and so on and all that?”

  “Doctor Malcolm is admiring the old Burgher sofa. It is made of jacaranda. It is a pity that you will not see the jacarandas in flower, Doctor Malcolm. This is not the time of the year.”

  “Oh, bother the jacaranda, Jayantha, the question is why has this chap not got a drink? Boy! Boy! So what has the great man decided? No, I know. Ask no questions, hear no lies. What poison do you take?”

  Before Hamo could choose this ever-deferred drink, voices sounded from outside the room.

  “Why are you back again, Jayantha, what does this mean?” a man’s voice, solemn and fussy.

  “Is there an accident? I was always afraid of this automatic motor-car,” a woman’s voice, shrill and querulous like Mrs. Jayasekere’s in her panic, but older, and higher in pitch.

  The door at the side was opened for a minute or so, and Hamo saw a gentle, elderly, spectacled man in a sarong and what appeared to be his pyjama top; and, more indistinctly behind him, coming from some floor-sweeping lacey garment, the head, yes surely, the splendid Roman matron’s head of the lady who had driven Beauty in the old Humber, her black hair now let down and cascading around her noble countenance. Disorder, he felt, must be infectious here to affect that stately head. At once the door was shut again, but the effect of this interruption on the younger couple was immediate.

  Mr. Jayasekere yelled out, “It is only an adjustment required for the Renault. But I have no time now for adjustments. So we shall take your Humber. At the moment we have business.”

  His wife shouted scoldingly, “Dr. Malcolm is here. Don’t you see, Father? Dr. Malcolm is here.”

  The importance of Dr. Malcolm alarmed
Hamo; but he was exhilarated. It had never happened to him before to be anyone else; he had never contemplated it. But he had never entered a drawing-room before through the servants’ entrance. Leslie’s voice came to him, commenting—“Well, if you will make use of the back door . . .” Mr. Jayasekere was deep in apology.

  “I am so sorry about these interruptions. We wanted an architect-built house. But that is expensive. And so we must adapt this old house with parents-in-law on the top floor. But the old people are often very useful. I am afraid this time you’ve caught them on the hop. Now, what are you going to have? Whatever’s in the house is yours.”

  Hamo said, “I should like the boy,” he paused self-indulgently, “to get me a whisky.”

  “Why did we not receive an announcement of your arrival from the Ministry? Oh, my God! That’s this damned business of the servants going away. ‘Days off’ they call it. These young ones don’t know how to answer the telephone. I know what it is. That’s so like you chaps from the U.K. You have to come to talk over the publication arrangements in a fireside chat. We are not used to that, you know. We have no firesides.” He chuckled nervously, spilling his whisky on his shirt. “But I like informality. I wish our chaps would use it. No, it’s always ‘The Minister requests your attendance.’ Stuffed shirt and damned silly. So you’ll have a bite with us while we talk things over. That’s the informal U.K. way, isn’t it?”

  “But Dr. Malcolm is coming with us to Maisie Goonasekere’s. Everyone is there.”

  “Everyone! Do you think Dr. Malcolm wants to talk business with Everyone about? Do you want to meet Everyone, Dr. Malcolm? No, of course not. You telephone to Maisie, Jayantha, and make the usual apologies and so forth and all that women’s rot. The social soft soap, eh, Dr. Malcolm? No. Better still, you arrange some food for us, and then shoot off to Maisie’s. And take the old folks with you. What do they want resting for now? You’re only as old as you feel. Isn’t that so, Dr. Malcolm? But fix a bite for us first. What do you like? The boy can serve us. Do you feel hungry?”

  At the sound of such service, Hamo did feel peckish.

  He said, “No. Really. Well, if you insist. Something rather light.”

  Mrs. Jayasekere shimmered before him like a humming-bird in search of nectar. “I’m so sorry that we do not have any pineapple chunks, Dr. Malcolm. When Kirsti went to the U.K., my mother thought it would be all cabinet pudding, but at Professor Lamplugh’s everything was pineapple chunks. I have no pineapple chunks. Sometimes people from the U.K. like to try Singhalese dishes. Would you like to try a Singhalese dish?”

  Looking at the demurely waiting Muthu, who even in servitude was excitingly like a small trapped wild animal, Hamo said, “That would be delicious.”

  “Then I know what we shall do. We shall give you egg hoppers, not rice hoppers, but egg hoppers. And brinjal. Do you like brinjal? Not too hot, of course, the curry. Not a white curry. And then for dessert, what about some buffalo curd with djagaree? Do you know what is djagaree?”

  “Oh, my God! Don’t worry the poor chap’s stomach with all that stuff. Besides the cook is out. Now you see what happens by listening to your Maisie—‘Everyone is giving the servants a day off.’ ”

  Mr. Jayasekere’s imitation took him from his throaty Welsh rumbling to a note higher than his wife had struck in her worst confusion. But she was clearly not to be put down where etiquette and hospitality were in question.

  “Leela can cook it.”

  “Oh, no, no, no.” Her husband groaned facetiously, he reminded Hamo of a long-forgotten ragging of a weak form-master at his prep school.

  “I know,” his wife clapped her hands. “Mother will cook it for him. Mother! Mother!”

  Into the room came the stately matron, dressed now in the most significant crimson sari, her shining ebony hair piled higher even than her daughter’s beneath drapes of black tulle spotted with gold leaf. Her voice when she spoke was light as a young girl’s, but her words demanded full attention, for they enlarged his pretended self in a peculiarly unexpected religious direction.

  “If we had been Roman Catholics, you know, Doctor Malcolm, my son-in-law would not have needed to ask you such favours. But we are not. We are Buddhists. So we can go only to Bihar. But why should we go to Bihar! We are not Indians. All there is Hindu. At Kandy we have the Sacred Tooth. Have you been to Kandy? It is very much liked. And Kataragama, too, we have. A very holy place. But there you must take sleeping bags.”

  “Oh, never mind all that, Mother.” Mrs. Jayasekere forestalled what was obviously going to be an angry reaction from her husband. Her own irritation with her mother flowed over into Singhalese that had a note, to Hamo, much the same as that she had used in addressing Muthu and Leela. However, it worked.

  “Mother will make you a fine egg hopper. That is settled.”

  “Please, really, something quite light.”

  “I don’t know what is light,” the older lady was definite. “Is a hopper light? Perhaps then only the sweet for Dr. Malcolm.”

  “Mother, sweet is a bad word,” her son-in-law corrected her, “I remember in Lyons tea rooms, the waitresses are always saying ‘Two sweets coming up.’ ” Once more his voice rose to awful heights. “But Lyons is for clerks and typists and accountancy students. Dessert is now what they say, isn’t it, Dr. Malcolm?”

  Before Hamo could answer, the plump elderly father, dressed now in dark trousers and an olive-green buttoned cardigan, and also wearing a club-tie, but differently striped from his son-in-law’s, ambled towards him.

  “Allow me, Sir. Mr. Dissawardene. The young lady’s father. I believe, Sir, that I have read that dessert is an Americanism. But I cannot find whether Americanism is the common speech of the U.S.A. or implies only the words borrowed from the American speech by the British. What do you say, Sir?”

  “Well,” said Hamo, “actually I say ‘pudding’.”

  Remembering suddenly the laughter that had greeted his “gun room” on that last evening at Zoe’s, he looked around in vain for a smile. Everything was, as Mrs. Jayasekere might say, blank consternation. But he reckoned without the matron’s girlish toughness. With infinite shyness and downcasting of eyes, she said firmly: “Buffalo’s curd is not pudding, Dr. Malcolm.”

  “Well, whatever it is, get us a bowl, Mother. We’ll keep the Great Man company. And plenty of djagaree on your famous sweet.” He mimicked her voice on this last contemptible word.

  “That sounds delightful.”

  “Quite marvellous, doesn’t it?” His hostess was back in her most social role. “Imagine! An impromptu supper with Dr. Malcolm! Maisie Goonasekere likes everything impromptu. But she is on the telephone for days beforehand telling us all about it.”

  Hamo found himself smiling across to her in complicit fun about this ubiquitous Mrs. Goonasekere’s hypocrisies—she might have been Zoe in less serious mood.

  The splendid matron’s words were downright.

  “Maisie Goonasekere has a very disagreeable voice. I do not understand why she uses the telephone so often.” Then turning to Hamo, she said gnomically, “You have broken the joke then, Doctor Malcolm. Jayantha will be able to get to Harrods without visiting Lourdes. We always make a joke, you know, ‘the Roman Catholics must go to Lourdes before they can go to Harrods’. But now we shall not need that joke.”

  She offered him her laughter as an unintelligible tribute, as she hustled Muthu ahead of her into the kitchen.

  There was such an embarrassed silence that Hamo felt he would be driven by the sheer tension of it into saying at last, “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.” And who knew to what unmasking of imposture even so negative an assertion of his state of mind might lead?

  He was saved by the old gentleman’s long years of legal tact. Indeed it was clear that both his daughter and his son-in-law were looking to Mr. Dissawardene to release them from whatever net they felt had been thrown over them by the matron’s inexplicable words.

  “Doctor Malcolm.�
�� The retired barrister stood before Hamo in suppliance, nevertheless he did not speak until he had taken out a piece of chamois from his spectacle case and slowly cleaned each lens of his tortoise-shell rimmed glasses—Hamo supposed it was a vestigial gesture from his legal days, a means no doubt of unsettling an important, recalcitrant witness by delay.

  “Doctor Malcolm, how is it possible for a Roman Catholic to be a Freemason? In my encyclopædia I find that the Freemasons accept only the Great Architect. What, in your opinion, is the Great Architect, please?”

  “I have no religious convictions, I’m afraid, and I know nothing about Freemasonry, though I don’t think Roman Catholics are allowed to be Freemasons.”

  “Arthur da Souza is a Roman Catholic, and a Freemason.”

  Hamo bowed to fact. The silence took over again. Then bravely and doggedly Mr. Dissawardene resumed the hearing—this time he coughed and fully cleared his throat before speaking. Hamo still had the impression that these gestures were as much aggressive as defensive. An impostor’s role is not a happy one.

  “In my encyclopædia there is a cross-reference from Freemasonry to Rosicrucianism. In the old British days here, there were many important people in Ceylon from the U.K. who were Freemasons—Sir John Arcott, Mr. Avery, Major Reith, Mr. Justice Carpenter. But I never heard that these gentlemen were Rosicrucians. Why is there this cross-reference?”

  “I really don’t know. I expect because they’re both secret societies.”

  “These noble old chaps were very open-hearted, sincere men, not at all secretive.”

  Hamo felt rebuked. He must also have looked it, for Mr. Dissawardene said, “I think, Doctor Malcolm, you are saying to yourself, what is the old fellow driving at?”

  He murmured, “No, no.”

  “Father, Doctor Malcolm’s finding all this listening thirsty work, poor chap.”

  “Kirsti, I am talking seriously with this gentleman on things that trouble me. Not money and government licences. Let Jayantha give him another whisky and don’t disturb us.”