A House Called Askival (7 page)

There was no sound but the rain.

‘Dickie!' breathed Mrs Bunce.

James felt a coldness flooding his stomach. He looked at Leota. Her hand was pressed to her mouth, eyes round as buttons. His father's face was fixed on the Colonel, gaze narrow and knifing. From the kitchen came the sound of Aziz stacking dishes.

‘I have never met a Sikh who would do such a thing,' said Stanley. ‘Never.'

‘Well I've recently met hundreds,' the Colonel replied. ‘I was called to the Temple. I saw the women.' His jaw had tightened and a vein was pulsing above it.

‘Mercy,' Leota murmured, shaking her head as if trying to wake herself from a nightmare.

With a squeal of hinges, the kitchen door swung open again and Aziz stepped in, face radiant, but immediately crushed.

‘What is wrong, Memsahib?' he cried in Hindi. ‘Is it no good?'

‘Oh… no, Aziz-ji. It is very good, but we are… not so hungry tonight.'

She looked around the table. Everyone was shaking their heads, putting hands up in front of their plates – no more.

‘Maybe a bug is going around?' she murmured, dropping a hand to her stomach. ‘
Maf kijiye
.' Forgive us.

Aziz pressed his lips together and began removing the plates, loudly scraping leftovers from one to the other. He strode back through the kitchen door, head high.

James took a sip from his glass of squash. Mrs Bunce was smoothing her napkin on her lap, the Colonel straightening cutlery. Outside
the rain fell harder. They could hear it rushing down the tin gutters, spattering on the edges of the veranda, drumming the earth. From the living room came the fumings of the
chula
and the steady drip, drip, drip into the
dekchi
.

‘If it's any consolation,' said the Colonel, as if it was incumbent upon him to save the evening. ‘It's not just the Sikhs. The Hindus and Mohammedans have been just as bad.'

‘That is no consolation,' said Stanley.

‘Quite.' The Colonel brushed his moustache and arched his brows.

Aziz appeared again, not with his former brio, but managing a brave smile. He was at a loss to explain the failure of his cooking tonight. Normally it generated waves of good cheer, laughter, animated conversation and abundant praise. He glowed in it, lapped it up, loved nothing more.

But tonight something had gone desperately wrong and he could not fathom what. Nor, indeed, could he imagine a worse occasion for such a disaster. This was the night for which he had been preparing for weeks; the night when the class of guest would be just right and the Memsahib would allow three courses and the bed sheet cloth; the night of his triumph. For what he now carried aloft from the kitchen was nothing less than the pinnacle of his culinary achievement, the result of long practice in the alchemy of egg whites and sugar, and the dish for which he held out greatest hope of earning his name in The Book.

‘Mogul Mango Meringue Pie!' he announced, as if ushering in an awesome personage. ‘By Aziz Mohammed Hashim!' He set before Leota a giant white confection with a stiff dome and teetering minarets. The stunned silence he took to be awe.

‘I am entering for next hobby show,' he beamed, offering the pie slide and knife with a flourish.

‘Splendid,' said the Colonel at last, and there was a helpful
ooh
from Mrs Bunce. James made a sound half way between a hum and a grunt and Leota took the utensils, lifting her drained face to Aziz.

‘Thank you, ji,' she said, quietly. ‘It looks…'

But Aziz never heard, for there was a whip-crack of lightning,
thunder like a battering ram and a zap from above as the lights went out. Everything happened at once. Mrs Bunce squealed, James knocked over his glass, the Colonel shouted
Good Lord!
, the glass rolled, Leota gasped
Mercy!
, the glass smashed on the floor and Stanley said
Ar
è
?

‘Aziz is saving! Aziz is saving!' the cook cried, rushing to the kitchen.

‘Watch the glass!' yelled Leota.

There was a furious rummaging and crashing from within and Leota jumped up with a candle from the table.

‘You okay, ji?' she asked through the kitchen door.

‘
Theek hai, theek hai
,' he called. ‘Helping the light!' He hurried through with a clutch of candles and matches.

‘Will somebody sweep that glass?' said Stanley.

‘Oh dear,' murmured Mrs Bunce. Another flash of lightning blanched the sky, capturing them all for a moment in awkward pose: white, frozen, eyes and mouths wide like a badly timed photograph. Then the dark again.

‘James!' said Leota, lighting another candle. ‘Get the broom.'

‘Aziz is doing!' the cook cried as he pushed James back in his seat and disappeared again into the cavern of the kitchen, shielding a stuttering candle flame with his hand.

At last, when the glass was swept, everyone back in their seats and the table ablaze with a small forest of candles, Aziz gestured again towards his meringue Taj Mahal, bowed gracefully and slipped out.

The pie trembled as Leota sliced. A minaret toppled. When she tried to get a piece onto a plate, it flopped, shooting a slippery wedge of mango onto the tablecloth. The Colonel chuckled. Leota squeezed a tight smile, kept cutting, plundering, dividing onto plates.

‘He's frightfully good, your
khansamma
, isn't he?' said Mrs Bunce, taking a nibble.

‘The best,' Leota replied, fiercely. She knew Aziz would be lurking behind the kitchen door, straining to hear.

James forced himself to bite a piece of pie; it was sticky, clagging his teeth and hard to swallow. Down the table, Stanley had not touched his. In the candle-light, his heavy brows threw wild, tufted shadows up his
forehead. He studied the dark soup stain on the cloth beside his plate, rubbing it with a finger.

‘And when they leave their homes… to get to the other side… are they makin it?' he asked.

The Colonel tilted his head and finished his mouthful, jaw snapping. ‘Some are, yes, certainly. There are hundreds and thousands of them, you know. Great long columns – miles long – walking with all their clap-trap on their heads. And some are getting there, yes. Refugee camps are springing up on both sides.'

James poked at the white crests of meringue on his plate, glistening in the flickering light.

‘And the others?' asked Stanley.

Bunce shrugged. ‘End of the road.'

The storm threw rain against the window like a fist of gravel. Leota shook her head. Mrs Bunce put a hand over hers.

‘I know,' she breathed. ‘It's just awful.'

‘But what about buses, trains?' pressed Stanley. ‘Why are they all walkin?'

‘They're not. There are plenty of buses and trains. Packed to the gunnels.' The Colonel drew his napkin across his forehead, where a sheen of sweat had appeared. ‘But that's even worse.'

‘How?' asked Stanley.

‘You haven't heard, then,' said Bunce.

‘I'm asking,' Stanley growled. James shifted in his chair. Bunce stiffened.

‘On the day of so-called freedom, a train rolls into Amritsar from Pakistan. Station packed with Sikhs and Hindus waiting for relatives from the other side. There's the driver in the engine, but the windows of the carriages are empty. Open the doors and see why.' Bunce paused to scratch his eyebrow with his little finger. Everyone watched him. ‘All on the floor. Dead.'

Leota closed her eyes and lowered her face into her hand.

‘Dickie…' Mrs Bunce warned.

‘I'm sorry, dear, but they asked for the facts.'

‘Yes, but—' and she cocked her head towards James. He flushed and looked down, fiddled with his hands.

‘They were all killed?' asked Stanley, incredulous.

‘Would have been better if they were. But no, there were survivors. A woman lying in her husband's blood. A boy on a luggage rack. A baby with no ears.'

Something in Leota broke. There was a shuddering sound and a gasp. With one hand clawed over her eyes and the other gripping her mouth, she started to sob.

‘Oh Leota,' cried Mrs Bunce, and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Now Dickie, that's enough!'

‘No,' said Stanley, slowly, firmly. ‘We need to hear.'

And it seemed the Colonel needed to tell, as if some dark current within him had been unstoppered and he had neither power nor will to staunch it. He lit up a cigar and in a low, flat voice, through coils of smoke, told the tales of horror from across the country: the demonic mobs, the gutters of Lahore running with Hindu blood, the railway platforms lined with Sikhs holding their curved knives, waiting for the next Muslim train.

James hunched in his chair, skin crawling, hands clammy. Bunce's words and the sound of his mother's cries had awakened in him a primal terror, as if a curtain that had shielded him was torn and he could feel evil breathing at his back. Worse, he had always thought that curtain was a wall, a rock of certainty, a belief about the world on which he leaned. Now it was gone and what lay beyond was an abyss of unimaginable darkness.

India had always been his home and he had seen much. A dead man on the road, shimmering with flies. Uncountable beggar children in filthy scraps. A woman burned and hairless, because her dowry was not enough. But none of it – nothing he'd ever witnessed, heard or read – was as terrible as what Bunce now described.

He longed to howl, to scream, to weep like the rains, but he did not make a sound. Stanley was there, and though the boy's eyes stung and his throat burned and his chest was tight as a drawn bow, he would not crack in front of his father. He would hold it all in, pack it down, heave
boulders on top and little suspect the damage within.

No one remembered Aziz, pressed behind the kitchen door. When they finally got up from the table and the Bunces took their leave, the Muslim
khansamma
slipped quietly into the empty dining room. Napkins lay in crumpled heaps. The candles were burnt stumps, wax dribbled across the table. At Stanley's end, the bed sheet was blotted with soup, and at James's with orange squash. Beside Bunce's place there was an ashtray and the butt of his cigar. On every plate, slices of Mogul Mango Meringue Pie sat, collapsed and barely touched. With shaking hands, Aziz carried them through to the kitchen and slid them into the bin.

TEN

At the top of the graveyard path, Ruth ground her cigarette into the soil and started down the mossy steps behind James. He turned, nearly bumping her, and lifted the cigarette butt into a cotton bag hanging across his chest. It already held an old chips packet, half a shoe and several bits of plastic. Her cheeks burned and she mumbled an apology.

The Landour Cemetery was on the northern side of the mountain, half-way between Morrison Church and Askival on the back
chakkar
. The slope here was a cathedral of trees: deodars, pines, Himalayan cypress, rhododendron, horse chestnut and oak. She used to play in the graveyard, years ago. Capture the Flag, Hide and Seek, Flashlight Beckon. They would come for cast parties and class nights out, small flocks of teenagers running over the gravestones giggling, diving behind tree trunks, squealing when someone leapt out or grabbed from the dark.

Huddled round small campfires they told the obligatory ghost stories. The headless woman who followed you on the road. Old Colonel Bunce's grave that smelled of cigars. The bastard child buried alone in the forest, crying at night. Ruth's best friend Sita was horribly good at it. Her huge eyes bulged white in the moonlight as Ruth's skin rose in reptile bumps.

There were also the illicit forays from the dorm when they crept up
the mountain like fugitives, contraband smuggled under their clothes. It was here, leaning against a stone angel, that Ruth had smoked her first cigarette, gasping at the sting in her throat, yet resolving to master the art. In truth, it had mastered her, holding her captive to its slow poison, so that she'd never been able to quit and had many times slid into a ravenous chain smoking. She hated how it lingered on her breath and stained her teeth, how it would never leave her. The first hash had also been here, bought from the Lhasa Café at Mullingar by her then-boyfriend, who had squatted beside her in a crumbling tomb rolling the joint by candlelight. The son of an Australian diplomat, he was three years older, failing at school, but excelling at the addictive arts. Ruth was fifteen and her reputation already in shreds, her parents despairing.

But when she'd come to the graveyard alone – always by day – she was a different person and it was a changed place. Light filtered between the great trees, wildflowers speckled the grass, birds sang. At those times the gravestones were no longer dark hiding places, but windows into vanished lives, speaking not of horror, but of loss. The oldest were British soldiers and East India Company folk lying quietly amongst wives and infants, hopelessly far from home. Ruth had gathered flowers and laid them on the silent stones, whispering the beautiful names.
Barnabas Llewellyn Jones, Maribelle Constance Winshaft, Eliza Rose McBain
. She never imagined one would be her mother's.

The funeral had happened without her as she'd been sailing across the Atlantic and no one knew where she was. Since school she'd always lived that way, often wandering and out of touch, always vague about her plans. There were occasional postcards and emails, but she let months go by with no news at all. Hannah berated her for it in vain and her parents had given up pleading.

But when her mother died, all her bitterness had lashed back at her. The harbour master met her on the pier at Plymouth with a furrowed face and a printed message. Ruth showed no emotion, but drank herself into a stupor that night in The Gull and Goose and woke in a strange bed with a strange man. She slipped out before morning to the seafront
and stood in the wind, weeping.

When Ruth was very small her mother bathed the girls in a tin tub in the bathroom at Kanpur. She would lift them out, wrap them in towels, and rub them down singing silly songs as she went.
Head, shoulders, knees and toes… Two little eyes for Jesus… This little piggy went to the bazaar…
No little piggies in India ate roast beef. They got curry or chapattis or laddus. Ellen would powder her girls with talc, button them into soft nightdresses and brush their hair. Ruth always wailed through this bit, as her curls were tangled, but her mother would distract her with pretty ribbons and clips. Then they took turns to sit in her lap for stories, Ellen reading from
Little House on the Prairie
and
Children's Bible Favourites
. Ruth burrowed her head under her mother's chin and breathed the smells of Ellen's day: the dried sweat, the fading perfume, the bread, and that soft whiff that was only on her mother's skin and had the power to heal. Then they sang a quiet song, like
Jesus Keep Me in the Cross
, and said a very quiet prayer.
Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep
. Sometimes Ruth was already asleep by then, rocked by the lull of her mother's voice, cheek against her heart.
If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take
.

James stopped at the foot of a black grave. All around, the giant deodars stood watch, their trunks laced with ferns, breath cool and sighing. Ruth moved slowly to his side, hands thrust deep in her jacket pockets. The stone was polished marble, engraved in gold.

A scattering of dry pine needles lay across the marble. There were no flowers. Neither said anything for a long time. Grey fingers of mist were curling round the trees and taking hold of their ankles.

‘Iqbal helped me choose that,' James said, pointing a scrawny hand
at the inscription.

‘He was here then?'

‘Arrived a few weeks after the funeral.'

‘Oh.' She wanted to ask why, where from, what for, but there was an ache growing inside her chest as the other questions she had never asked welled up. She dug her fingers into her palms and took a breath.

‘Was it quick?'

‘I think so.' His hand moved to his chest. Ruth could see every liver spot and hair on the translucent skin and how his veins pushed up, blue-grey and forking, like the tributaries of swollen rivers.

‘Where were you?'

James didn't answer for a moment. His fingers opened and closed on the pilling wool of his sweater.

‘Working at the hospital.' A bird called. The mist hung about them, listening. ‘Got home quite late. She was on the floor.'

Ruth felt her nose stinging.

‘Must have been in the middle of baking. Oven on, a pie burning, dropped dishes lying around.'

There was a sigh in the deodars above them, a trembling of ferns.

Ruth pictured her mother, collapsed and twisted with flour in her hair. Then James finding her. She felt a snapping inside and the rising of tears. Turning quickly away, she caught sight of wild orchids growing on the
khud
side and through blurred eyes tugged at them, pulling out lumps of moss and earth with their roots. Face hidden, she dusted off the soil and laid the flowers on the gravestone.

‘There's no need,' he said.

‘She's not here, you know.'

‘But I am!' she spat.

‘Oh
Piyari!
' James startled.

‘Oh – come now…'

But she was gone.

He took a few steps after her, then stopped and watched her crashing up through the forest. Crying, broken.

He knew if he pursued, she would run further away.

Had it always been like this?

He saw her sitting on her bed, about four years old. Spanked and banished from the table for refusing to eat. He'd gone in to make peace. There she was, elfin face white as stone, bloodless lips pressed together, arms buckled across her chest. He knelt and put his hands on her knees. She flinched.

‘
Piyari
…' he began softly.
Beloved
. She glared at his hands.

‘Look at me,' he said, hating the edge in his voice.

Her gaze slid up. Grey-green eyes, flashing and hard. Like scales.

The mist was thick around him now and murmuring rain. He shivered, pushed his hands into his armpits and looked back at Ellen's headstone. When she died it was like all the burdens of his life had poured down upon him. A stoning of the spirit. He had stood alone at her grave and wished to be dead.

In truth he was not alone. The funeral was attended by hundreds, but for all their hymn-singing, kind words and cups of tea, they were as good as the gravestones to him. On the phone, Hannah had cried, but couldn't come because she was about to give birth. And Ruth. Well, Ruth was, as always, unreachable. He had endured it with a bitten lip for so many years, but when it came to her mother's death, he had bellowed. Not at Ruth, though he wished to. Nor at Hannah, for she already knew. Nor, indeed, at anyone who had anything to do with it.

At someone else, entirely.