A House Called Askival (3 page)

Leota first met Mariamma in the queue for the toilets at the
All-India Christian Conference for the Upliftment of National Women
in Patna in 1937 and the pair struck up a firm friendship. Mariamma followed Leota's recommendation of Oaklands School for her son, as it A) was run by American missionaries rather than the British, and B) had always welcomed Indians. Whenever Mariamma came to Landour she stayed with the Connors at Askival, adding Indian authors to their library and South Indian recipes to Aziz' repertoire. She suspected the books were never touched, but knew the food was consumed with enthusiasm. India, she understood, conquered the foreigner first through the senses, and only later claimed the mind.

In the August of 1942, India's battle to claim its sovereignty from the foreigner's rule reached a new pitch. Gandhi had lost patience with the British for taking India's people and resources for their war whilst dragging their feet over a commitment to freedom. In a fiery speech, he demanded immediate independence and brought the wrath of the British upon his head. Within twenty-four hours, the entire Congress leadership and many supporters were arrested. India responded with greater wrath in a wave of violence, strikes and destruction across the country. Deemed to be the most serious uprising since The Great Mutiny of 1857 (or The First War of Independence, depending on your perspective), Viceroy Linlithgow responded with harsh repression, deploying tens of thousands of troops, making as many arrests and causing a thousand deaths.

When Mariamma and other Lucknow members of the Congress were packed off to prison – with the Professor narrowly escaping – she wrote to the Connors asking them to take Verghese out of boarding in case he became upset about his parents' fate. Leota had wasted no time in rounding up a coolie and collecting the boy and his bags from the dorm. As it happened, he did not appear too fretful on their behalf; his parents had been in and out of prison before and Appachi was very good at hide 'n seek. In fact, any anxiety seemed to evaporate in the excitement
of being out of boarding with James. Bedtime at the Connors always involved readings from the likes of
The Jungle Book
and
Huckleberry Finn
and these were thrilling enough to make up for the lengthy Bible passages and prayers that preceded them. Then there were the delights of Aziz' cooking and the fascination of the western possessions at the Connor's house: James' baseball mitt, the National Geographic magazines, the Army Surplus camping gear. Best of all, though, was the freedom to roam the hillside after dark and gather beetles.

Playing with their captives on the veranda that Saturday, sheltering from the steady rain, the boys could hear Aziz humming to himself as he prepared supper in the kitchen behind them.

‘James,' Verghese whispered, a little smile forming dimples in his dark cheeks.

‘Yah, what?'

‘Why don't we stick some beetles into the fruit bowl for Aziz-ji, hah? Just for a little surprise, like?'

James laughed and shook his head.

‘You're crazy, man.'

‘No, just for fun, yeah, come on. He'll laugh too, I promise.'

‘Dad'll kill me.'

‘But your Daddy won't know. Aziz-ji would never tell. He'll just give you one play slap on your arm –
tuk
' – Verghese demonstrated – ‘and that's it. Come on, it'll be so funny, man.'

James was quiet for a moment, teasing a beetle with a long stalk of grass. He listened to Aziz warbling as he pounded and kneaded dough on the kitchen table. He had already told them his plans for supper: Hearty Hamburger Soup with Clover-leaf Rolls followed by fruit salad. James' face took on a lop-sided grin.

The fruit bowl sat on the dining table, fragrant with mangoes, guavas and small, speckled bananas. Stanley and Leota were in the office, door closed, all sounds hushed by rain. The boys slipped off their tin lids, quickly tucked half a dozen beetles amongst the humps and crevices of the fruit and tip-toed like cartoon villains into James' room. They threw themselves in a tangled heap on the bed, stifling their giggles in
the
razai
and clutching their sides in pantomime hilarity. When their merriment had died down they listened at the door. There was nothing but the muffled clatter of Aziz in the kitchen and the occasional shuffle and scrape from the Connors' office, so the boys soon tired and turned back to the room.

‘What you wanna do?' James asked.

‘I dunno,' Verghese shrugged.

‘Tops?' James pointed at a pair sitting on his window-sill. ‘Yeah, ok,' said Verghese and started cracking his knuckles.

James tossed him one. ‘They're not really sharp enough, though. You got your knife?'

‘Yeah, man.' Sitting cross-legged on the floor they got out their pocket knives and whittled at the tips to make them viciously sharp. If your point was lethal enough and your technique good, you could split an opponent's top clean in half. Knives back in pockets they started whipping their tops on the polished concrete floor. James got his to jump onto a tin trunk and then back down, while Verghese managed to spin his top on the palm of his hand for a few seconds till the pain made him drop it. A small red prick of blood rose on his hand like a stigmata and he whooped with pride. Then James turned his top on Verghese's and sent it hurtling under the bed.

‘Arè, man, no fair!' cried Verghese as he dived under the bed, with James snickering behind him. He was still underneath, shoving boxes and mouldy canvas bags aside, when they heard a scream and a crash from the dining room.

‘My God!' yelped Verghese.

‘Shoot,' breathed James, blanched face turning to the door. For the briefest moment they had no idea what had happened, but with the sudden pushing back of chairs in the office and the shouts from Stanley and Leota and the running of feet and the continuing screams, the truth sank home.

Verghese scrabbled out from under the bed, fluff stuck to his hair. ‘Quick,' he hissed, under the hullaballoo. ‘We have to hide.'

James looked frantically around him.

‘The window!' cried Verghese, darting across the room and tugging at the metal latches. But the whole window was warped and rusting with the rains and nothing would give. And it was too late anyway.

There were heavy footsteps in the hall and the door was yanked open.

‘James.' Stanley's voice was loaded as a cannon.

Ignoring Verghese cowering by the window, he frog-marched his son to the dining room, pointed to the smashed bowl and the fruit on the floor and asked if James had anything to say to Aziz-ji. The
khansamma
was standing in the kitchen door wringing his hands and shaking his head, tears spilling off his cheeks.

‘Is no problem, no problem, sahib,' Aziz pleaded. ‘Is nothing hurting.' He bundled his right hand into his apron, but not before James caught sight of his thumb, bleeding and swollen. A crushed dumpy stag lay on the floor.

‘
Maf gijiye
,' James whispered to him, his face burning.
Forgive me
.

Stanley then took him to the office, closed the door and undid the buckle on his belt. James fumbled with the buttons on his shorts, eyes fixed on the jute matting at his feet, jaw already clenched so tight he knew it would ache for days, though it would be nothing compared to his legs. He lay bent across his father's desk, head turned sideways, face jerking against a musty manila file with the force of the whipping. All through it he could hear Aziz crying in the kitchen. His mother, he knew, would be out the back and walking fast – he never knew where – returning later with lips pressed together and glassy eyes. Of Verghese, he could hear nothing.

When he got back to his bedroom, shuffling slowly, he saw his friend squatting in the corner, arms lashed around his shins, eyes huge and terrified, running with tears. James lowered himself to the bed and lay on his stomach, face to the wall. He heard Verghese creep up beside him, heard his breathing and frantic whispering and felt him tugging on his sleeve. But James did not move or speak. Finally Verghese was called for supper and James lay in the quiet dark, his legs on fire.

A little later there was a soft knock on the door and a seam of light.

‘Babu?'

It was Aziz, his voice like a dove's. He slipped in and knelt beside James, a plate and cup in his scratched hands. The thumb was bandaged.

‘Sorry, sorry babu,' he murmured, putting the things down on the trunk that served as bedside table. ‘So sorry.' He repeated the words in a continual hushing mantra, his head shaking, hand patting James on the shoulder. ‘Come, come, Aziz-ji is bringing supper for you, babu,' he whispered. ‘Hamburger Soup by Betty Shirk with Cloverleaf Roll –
Hilda Clutterbuck
Roll, babu! She is baking queen. And I have put this-season extra-fresh guava jelly, by Aziz. Come, come.'

FOUR

Rounding the last bend of the
chakkar
, Ruth glimpsed Askival through the forest, alone on a promontory, attended by trees. Even from a distance she could see the weather-beaten walls, the bleached and rusting sheets of corrugated iron, the decay. She stopped at the gate and studied the house, so quiet and chill.

A bird took off from a branch beside her, sending a strange call into the air and a shower of droplets over her head. The metal gate was locked, so with a quick look over her shoulder, she climbed it and walked up the path, her jeans wetting where they passed through clumps of fern. On either side, the oaks reached out bent limbs to her, shaggy with moss and dripping.

Her last time here, was with Manveer, on the night he died. They stood on the south veranda looking down at the lights of Dehra Dun, a blaze of fallen stars on a black lake. She was cold and he pulled her into the folds of his down jacket, her back against his chest. He smelt of freshly ironed clothes and a grown-up aftershave, though he never shaved. His beard tickled as she rested her head into his neck.

‘Manveer,' she whispered.

‘Mmm?' He tightened his arms around her, lowering his face so his
cheek brushed hers, the folded edge of his turban against her ear.

‘Show me your hair.'

Now, as she looked south from the veranda steps, a rising sea of mist swallowed the bazaar and was overcoming the ridge. Shivering in its cool breath, she turned to face the house. The veranda gaped, splintered beams jutting from the plaster like broken teeth, windows staring out at the gloom, empty of glass and blind. She put a foot on the bottom step, but her skin rose in bumps and she pulled back, heading round the outside instead. The walls were bloated and breaking, stone bricks fallen onto the veranda like burst stuffing, woodwork left to rot. Passing the old kitchen she saw a rat scuttle into a hole and from a door further along the stench was like a blow.

That long-ago November night with Manveer, the house smelled of pine and they found a nest in the fireplace. Outside, an octave owl called and they counted the beats between the notes, joining in on the two hoots and laughing. Till the owl fell silent and there were footsteps on the veranda and a crashing door.

She circled the house and now stopped outside a corner room whose windows had once looked east onto the front veranda and north to the snows.

Her father's old bedroom.

Now the north wall had fallen away and the room lay bare to the wind. Ruth wrapped her arms around herself, a hard steel bracelet cutting into her ribs, and turned to the north. A shroud of grey hid the mountains and only a few firs were visible: dark, bedraggled apparitions, dripping cold.

Still unable to go inside, she slipped away down a goat trail through the trees.

FIVE

The trail was the same one James had often used to escape the house when he spotted unwelcome visitors coming up the main path. These included his teachers who pressed him into playing Rummy or Scrabble, visiting preachers who quizzed him about his missionary goals, and Colonel Bunce, who hauled him up for inspection.

On this night in early 1945, James hadn't quite made it down the path before the Colonel spotted him.

‘Where are you off to, my lad?' he barked, swinging his stick. ‘Come and announce me to your good mother, there's a boy. She has invited the old goat to tea.'

James was forced to usher him inside, hang up the Macintosh that indeed smelled like a goat and call for his mother. Worse, he had to wait in the living room, squirming under the Colonel's gaze, when Leota retreated to check on supper. Stanley was not yet home from work, and Mrs Bunce on a visit to Delhi, so the agony of polite conversation fell to him, thirteen and thick-tongued as he was.

The Colonel declined a seat and stood with legs akimbo, using his stick to prod the sagging ceiling of white-washed burlap.

‘Gone a bit soft, don't you think?'

James hung his head.

‘Used to be a splendid place, this.' Bunce tucked the stick under his arm and looked around him. ‘You know that? When the dear old Rawleys were here. Persian carpets, lace curtains from Belgium and a grand piano just there.' He swung the stick round and fired an invisible shot into the adjoining room where Stanley's desk now stood, stacked with musty files. ‘Not to mention some bloody good furniture from home!' And he hit the leg of a sagging armchair. James flinched. He wished his mother would return from her conference with Aziz in the kitchen.

‘One of the oldest houses on the hill,' Bunce said, rubbing his fingers on the wall and sneering at the whitewash that came off on his skin. James tried to excuse himself but the Colonel was just warming up. Leaning an elbow on the mantelpiece, he directed James to a chair with a flick of his stick and went on. ‘Built in 1825 by the great Captain McBain – one of the chaps who fought in the Gurkha wars. Do they teach you that history here?'

‘A bit,' James lied.

‘Too American, that school,' the Colonel muttered, fishing in his jacket for a cigar. ‘And too many missionaries.'

James winced.

‘Did you know,' Bunce continued, lighting up, ‘that early last century, this whole Garhwal area was snaffled by the Nepalis?' He waved his cigar expansively. ‘Well, we wrestled it back. Fierce little beggars, though, those Gorkhalis, and it took thousands of our lot and a posse of cannons to squash them. Did it in the end, though.' He sucked on the cigar, his eyes narrowing, then breathed out a long, curling tendril of smoke. ‘And then signed them up,' he said, with a twisted smile. ‘Better to have that lot fighting for you than against, eh?'

James nodded, the smell making him queasy.

‘Be a sport and get me an ashtray, will you?' James couldn't think where one might be, so passed him a used mug. The Colonel raised his brows at the sight of the coffee dregs, sniffed and tapped his cigar. ‘Anyway, all the top British officers from the conflict got land up here as rewards and built hunting lodges. The place was wild with game back then, you know! So more and more chaps came and then of course the
box-wallas and merchants and before you can say hobson-jobson, you've got a hill station. Very jolly place it was, too. Of course, that was all over on the Mussoorie side.' He stabbed his cigar towards the western ridges. ‘This end was very different. Cardiff fellow, Dr Barnabas Jones, set up an army sanatorium here and saddled the place with a Welsh name.' Bunce screwed up his face and dragged out the word. ‘
Llanddowor
. Good god! No-one could say it without spitting, so it soon became Landour and remains to this day. Then the whole ridge was declared a military cantonment and got rather straight-laced. Mussoorie, on the other hand, was having a gay old time. Hotels and clubs popping up like mushrooms and endless dinner parties and balls. Rather a lot of hi-jinks, too, I gather.' James watched the smirk tugging at the corner of his yellowing moustache. ‘You see, Simla was where the Viceroy moved his government for the summer, so one had to behave up there, but in Mussoorie one could let one's hair down. And let it down one certainly did.' He chuckled, gazing out the window. ‘It was all rather naughty.'

Then, as if suddenly remembering James was in the room, he blinked at him, tapped his cigar briskly on the mug and set it on the mantel. With a sharp turn, he applied his stick to a tiger skin on the floor and poked some bare patches on the beast's head.

‘Your old man?' he asked.

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Any
shikar
yourself?'

‘Just birds.' James felt his cheeks warming. He hoped the Colonel wouldn't poke his silver-black kalij pheasant stuffed in mid-strut on the mantelpiece.

‘Birds are for babies, my boy!' the man barked, poking the pheasant. ‘You should have seen old Captain Rawley's trophies. The place was bristling with them. Bears, leopards, tigers, ghoral, kakar. Heads and skins everywhere!'

James slid his hand into his armpit.

‘Something to aim for, eh?'

The boy nodded, gave a watery smile and dug his nails into his skin.
There had been a deer. A delicate thing with velvet fur and huge eyes. But James had only wounded her leg before she ripped off into the forest. Crying, broken.