The Rose of Tibet (5 page)

And then it was December, and half a year had gone since he had seen his brother last; and everyone was telling him to pull himself together; and at length had had done this. He had gone in to see the Head and told her he would not be returning next term. And he had written to the L.C.C. Further Education authorities, telling them the same.

Then Lesley was asking finally and once and for all if he wouldn’t come to Paris because it would take him out of himself; and Glynis was asking in the same terms if he wouldn’t come to Bournemouth. And he thanked them both for their charity and forbearance and said that he wouldn’t; he meant to spend Christmas by himself.

And this was just as well; for on the afternoon before Christmas Eve, another Friday, when he was only mildly drunk, he had received a visitor. Stahl had telephoned first, at about a quarter to four; and at a quarter past his black chauffeur-driven Bentley had pulled up outside in the rain.

He had refused a drink, his restless eyes jerking spasmodically over Houston’s dishevelled figure, but had accepted a cigarette, and sat down looking round the room.

‘What I’ve got to say,’ he said flatly, ‘might not strike you as being particularly seasonal. I thought you might like to ponder it over the holiday.’

Houston said nothing. He wanted another drink, but he had caught the disapproving look in the roving eyes and thought he had better wait.

‘We’ve run into a rather curious financial problem. I don’t know if your brother ever mentioned it, but we take out an insurance policy for our unit members. Of course we now have four claims pending. For ten thousand pounds each. It’s a lot of money.’

‘It is,’ Houston said. Hugh hadn’t mentioned it.

‘The snag is, I’ve now heard there’s going to be some difficulty in collecting. The terms of the policy are that the company must pay out for death anywhere in the world from any cause except act of war. The only qualification is that a
death certificate has to be produced. This is something we don’t have.’

‘I see,’ Houston said dully, in the pause that developed. He didn’t think that he wanted now to discuss the question of indemnity for his brother’s death.

‘It seems the certificate can only be issued by a British consul or some other accredited official. And he can only issue it if he has evidence – a doctor’s certificate or a signed report. Lister-Lawrence can’t get this. Apparently no local functionary can sign anything at all in Tibet without the authority of the central government. And the central government doesn’t seem to be very interested.’

Stahl took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes wearily. ‘I don’t think there’s anything malicious in it,’ he said after a moment. ‘Lister-Lawrence takes the view that they’re merely nervous of any kind of foreign interest. He thinks they may be frightened of having to pay indemnity or of having to get into negotiations. Whatever it is, they’re not answering any inquiries, and the way it looks now no death certificate will be forthcoming.’

‘Of course,’ he went on, replacing his glasses and allowing his eyes to get busily back into orbit, ‘this doesn’t mean that the insurance company won’t eventually pay up. After a period, death will have to be presumed. But this might be a matter of years, and meanwhile there could be many difficulties for the dependants. Wister’s wife has two young children. Meiklejohn and Miss Wolferston both leave widowed mothers. There are complications about pensions, a whole lot of things. Naturally, we have a responsibility in this. We are trying to ease the burden. But I’ve been wondering the past few days if there mightn’t be another way that is worth trying.’

He was silent for a few moments, watching Houston.

‘I was wondering,’ he said, ‘if it wouldn’t be an idea for someone to go over there and see Lister-Lawrence. He’s a very busy man and he’s not been able to give this much of his time. If someone could have a talk with him, examine all the documents, perhaps get in touch with the Tibetan representative out there, it might be possible to build up a dossier that could, at the least, hasten the presumption of
death. I was wondering,’ he said slowly, ‘if you’d like to do it.’

Houston looked quickly down at his burning cigarette.

‘You’d be acting as a kind of plenipotentiary or agent for all of the dependants,’ Stahl said. ‘Naturally, they’d contribute to your expenses. I don’t know that they’d have anything very much to contribute at the moment –’

‘I don’t know that I have myself,’ Houston said. ‘I’d better say right away, Mr Stahl, I’m not very – interested in indemnity for my brother’s death.’

‘Why,’ Stahl said mildly, ‘I was thinking more of the other claimants than of you. Pardon me. I appreciate your feelings, of course. I merely thought you were in the best position – a healthy young fellow with no ties. But it was just an idea.’

Houston gazed at him and his mouth dropped open. He had not thought of this aspect of it.

‘And as to money, I don’t think you need worry there. Your brother had salary coming from June. We’d be prepared to extend that to the end of March next, and to contribute to your expenses. Think it over, anyway.’

‘I will,’ Houston said, taken aback by this new view of the situation.

He thought it over for the next three days. He had made the decision by the time the office workers were streaming back after the holiday, and had telephoned Stahl to tell him so.

‘Of course,’ Stahl said. ‘I knew you would. When do you want to go?’

‘As soon as possible. I’ve got nothing to keep me here.’   

Which was how, that winter, after many unsettling months, Houston came to embark upon his adventure. He had not visited any swamis. He knew nothing of Tibetan prophecies. He was a very ordinary young man who at the time, certainly, claimed no pre-knowledge of the extraordinary thing that was going to happen to him.

He said good-bye to the two young women who had served to distract him during the restless months and promised each of them that he would mend his ways with regard to the other. He offered the use of his flat to Oliphant for he knew
the older man was uncomfortable in his own. And as the beneficiary of an eventual ten thousand pounds, he made a will.

He did all these things before
24
January
1950
; and early in the morning of
25
January he walked out with his bag into Fitzmaurice Crescent and whistled for a taxi to take him to the air terminal in Kensington High Street. He thought he would be taking one back again within two months.

J
ANUARY
is the first month of the cold season in Calcutta, and though the temperature, in the low seventies, was brisk by local standards, Houston found it spring-like after the damp chill of London. He walked tirelessly about the town, and by his fourth day reckoned to have covered the major part of it. He had ample time to do this. Lister-Lawrence was away. Nobody knew when he would return.

Twice a day, morning and afternoon, Houston walked from his hotel, the Great Eastern, to Chowringhee where Lister- Lawrence had his office in the offices of the Commissioner for the United Kingdom, and stated his business to an eager succession of Bengali clerks. Although each seemed to be called Mukherjee or Ghosh, he had never somehow managed to strike the same one twice.

‘Yes, sir. How can I help you, please?’

‘You might remember I called yesterday. To see Mr Lister-Lawrence.’

‘Ah, you would have seen a colleague of mine. I am Mr Mukherjee, sir. If you will tell me your name I will make a note for Mr Lister-Lawrence. He is away at the moment.’

‘Is he going to be away much longer?’

‘Oh, no. This afternoon, perhaps, he will return. What is your business, please, sir?’

Houston was at first mildly amused by the appetite of the Bengali clerks for information about himself, but by the fifth
day, found himself becoming a little impatient of the delay. After breakfast that morning, he strode up Chowringhee determined to wrest some information from Mr Mukherjee or Mr Ghosh himself.

He said, ‘I’ve been waiting for the last four days, and I can’t wait much longer. Can’t you tell me where I can get in touch with Mr Lister-Lawrence?’

‘Ah, you must have seen one of my colleagues, sir. I am Mr Ghosh. What is your name, please?’

Houston gave it, but he declined to provide the basis for another note, pointing out that eight were already awaiting Lister-Lawrence.

‘Excuse me, sir. I must know your business –’

Houston said, pleasantly, that he wasn’t going to state it, and after a somewhat rambling argument had begun to turn away, when Mr Ghosh caught his sleeve.

‘Oh, wait, sir!’ he cried. ‘Mr. Lister-Lawrence is here. He returned last night. He is very busy but if you will only tell me your business – It is a most strict rule –’

A few minutes later he was shaking hands with Lister- Lawrence.

He was a tall, thin man in a duck suit, with heavy shadows under his eyes and nicotine stains on his fingers. He looked as if he had not had a good night’s sleep for some time, and his grasp was brief and limp.

‘I’m sorry you’ve had to keep calling. I’ve been away for a few days. It’s really very hard to know,’ he said, waving Houston to a chair and sitting down himself, ‘what we can do for you here. I’m sure we sent every scrap of information as it came in to your Mr Stahl.’

Houston told him what he thought might be done.

‘Yes. Well, you can try. I’m sorry about the death certificates. I’d stretch a point if I could, but my hands are tied. I don’t know if I’ve quite got it,’ he said, offering his cigarettes, ‘about the corroboration. There’s not very much to corroborate, is there? We’ve only got the single signal from Lhasa.’

‘I wondered if I could borrow that, and the rest of the correspondence, to copy.’

‘I expect you could do that.’

‘And see any Press reports there might have been about the avalanche.’

Lister-Lawrence pursed his lips. ‘I doubt if you’ll get much joy there. There must be dozens of avalanches every day in that part of the world. Still, you never know.’

‘Also this business of the caravan they were supposed to join – I thought it might be an idea to get a signed statement from someone who was with it.’

‘What about?’

‘About conditions on the way. It seems a possible avenue.’

‘Oh, quite. The difficulty there would be to find the people. It’s really something for the Tibetan trade man in Kalimpong – he issues the licences and personal chitties for everyone who goes in and out. I could drop him a line, if you want,’ he said without enthusiasm. ‘Or better still you could go up there.’

‘To Kalimpong?’ Houston said.

‘Why not?’

‘Isn’t it a long way to go?’

‘You’ve come a long way already,’ Lister-Lawrence said reasonably. ‘And I think you’d find Sangrab a very decent old chap. Mind you, I should point out that they’ve all gone a bit funny up there this year. They’ve fallen out with the devils and are holding prayer meetings all over the country. They’re not too keen on answering foreigners’ questions.’

‘They’d save themselves, and us, too,’ Houston said diffidently, ‘a lot of trouble if they’d just answer one simple one. For instance, they must have some register of foreigners who die there. A burial record of some kind, say.’

‘Yes, well, they don’t actually bury people.’

‘Whatever they do. Cremate them, then. Someone’s got to keep score,’ Houston said lightly, fighting down the deep revulsion for his task that swept over him again.

‘I’m afraid they don’t cremate them, either.’

‘What do they do?’

‘Oh, well they have their own sort of customs, you know,’ Lister-Lawrence said, energetically tapping his cigarette ash. ‘I doubt if this is a very profitable field.’

‘What do they do?’ Houston said again after a few silent moments.

‘Well. Vultures, actually,’ said Lister-Lawrence, apologetically. ‘I’m frightfully sorry, old chap. We all have our own customs, though, you know. They say it’s really very hygienic and all that… . There isn’t much point in pursuing it, is there? But there’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t trot up and see old Sangrab. And you could certainly ask around in Kalimpong about the caravan. They make up all the teams there. It’s rather a jolly place, Kalimpong,’ he ended, somewhat out of breath.

Houston felt suddenly very sick. He stubbed out his cigarette. He said presently, ‘Supposing I don’t get very far in Kalimpong, is there any other Tibetan representative in that area I might see?’

‘There’s a chap up in Gangtok. But that’s in Sikkim, and you’ll need a chitty to get in there. It’s a protected State. I’ll get off a line to Hopkinson for you – he’s our man there.’

‘Would there be any point in having one more try at Tibet? At the British representative there?’

‘We haven’t got one, old boy. That’s the trouble. Old Hugh Richardson is in Lhasa, of course, but he’s acting on behalf of the Indian government, and we mustn’t embarrass him. The snag is, these Tibetans are rather a suspicious shower. They don’t get the point about insurance policies. They think we’re trying to manœuvre them into an admission of liability. However, I’ll do what I can,’ he said, jotting down a few notes on a scrap of paper. ‘Meanwhile you have quite a few avenues to explore. Drop in whenever you feel like it.’

Houston remained a further three weeks in Calcutta, awaiting his ‘chitty’ and exploring avenues. He went through the files of the English language newspapers and extracted several items relating to Tibet and avalanches in the Himalayas. These appeared to have been numerous in October, but no details were given of individual ones. The astrological correspondent of the
Hindustan Standard
warned of grave trouble impending for ‘a Buddhist land in the north’ and suggested that a major spiritual effort would be required to avert it; and from the same authority Houston learned that according
to occult formations for his birthday his sexual powers would be vigorously tested during the next year. Although aware that the solid columns of rejuvenator advertising on the same page might have had something to do with this forecast, Houston, mindful also of the fact that he had not yet written a line to Glynis or Lesley, pondered somewhat gloomily over it.

Lister-Lawrence had left instructions with his Bengali clerks to give him all the assistance he needed, and he kept the Messrs Mukherjee and Ghosh fully extended looking out all the correspondence that had passed between Lhasa, Kalimpong, Calcutta, Katmandu and London. The sheer weight of the correspondence and the dearth of information it had produced were highly dispiriting; but he plodded on, copying and compiling all the material in his hotel bedroom with the aid of a hired typewriter.

By the end of February, however, it was obvious he could do little more in Calcutta. Lister-Lawrence was away most of the time, and there seemed to be no answer from Gangtok or Lhasa. He decided to go to Kalimpong.

The journey to Kalimpong is a somewhat complicated one, but one of the Mr Mukherjees had made all arrangements for him, and Houston found the change welcome. The first stage was from Calcutta to Siliguri in the north of Bengal, and he made it in reasonable comfort on the main line railway. At Siliguri he had to change to a little local wood-burning train which ran through village and jungle as though on tram-lines, swaying and panting and stopping every now and again to raise enough steam to tackle the increasingly sharp inclines.

It was still warm and sunny, but there was a certain feeling in the air of mountains and of a keener and more bracing atmosphere. In the jungle, monkeys had dropped from the trees on to the roof of the train and had swung head down before the open windows, snatching the bits of chocolate and biscuit that Houston offered. By the time he reached his final train-halt, the village of Gielle-Khola, the monkeys had gone. It was noticeably cooler; he could feel the sharp air in his lungs; and the people on the platform seemed to be of a different shape. They were wearing capes and padded jackets,
and the facial features to which he had become accustomed in the past few weeks had subtly altered. He was approaching the Himalayas.

The arrangement was for a car to pick him up at Gielle- Khola and take him to Kalimpong; but when after a couple of hours no car appeared, he realized he must have over-extended Mr Mukherjee, and took a bus instead. He had spent one and a half days getting to Gielle-Khola, and it was afternoon when he embarked upon the last leg of the journey.

He got to Kalimpong at dusk on
27
February; the bus set him down in a busy market place as the lamps on the stalls were being lit. Several boys rushed to take possession of his luggage, and he distributed it among three of them. The smallest of the boys had secured only his raincoat, but he could speak a little English, and he trotted importantly beside Houston, chattering, as they pushed their way through the crowded market to the hotel.

Houston had noticed here and there small groups of men in fur caps, warmly clad except for their arms which were left bare, and he inquired who they were.

‘Tibet men,’ the boy said, gesturing upwards to the darkening sky; and Houston who had been gazing up at the curiously massive cloud formations, gazed again. The clouds were mountains.

Tibet men and mountains. He thought he was near his journey’s end.

As Lister-Lawrence had said, Kalimpong was a rather jolly place. Houston liked it. He had dined well at the hotel and had slept soundly between clean sheets, and he was up and out early in the morning. The air had the kind of snap and brilliancy that he associated with the Vosges mountains in France, and the surrounding landscape, although on a more massive scale, had the same nature: great green hills that crept towards the sky, and a feeling of high places beyond. The peaks that had closed in with nightfall were far away.

He went to the offices of the Tibetan representative, and found a substantial building with a courtyard that was
thronged with people. A few mules and horses stood blinking in the bright sun, and groups of men squatted on the ground, chattering and smoking. The small porter of the preceding evening had been waiting for him as he left the hotel and had attached himself again. He ran into the building before Houston and came out again, grinning.

‘No room in there, sahib,’ he said. ‘Many men there today.’

Houston inspected the interior himself and found that this was the case.

‘Is it always like this?’

‘No, sahib. Caravan comes today. All caravan men here.’

‘Will they be here all day?’

‘Two, three days, maybe. They get chitty,’ the boy said, pounding an imaginary rubber stamp with his small brown hands.

Houston was somewhat at a loss. He could see nobody who was obviously an official. He wondered whom to consult.

The boy had the answer for him. ‘You come to see Michaelson Sahib, sahib,’ he said. ‘I take you.’

They returned through the market square and down a maze of busy streets to a part of the town that seemed to be occupied by warehouses. Lines of mules were being unloaded and their burdens swung up on ropes to first-floor lofts. Directing operations outside the largest warehouse was Michaelson Sahib, who proved to be an enormously fat, elderly man in a bushwacker’s hat; he was checking off invoices and smoking a small black cheroot.

Houston introduced himself.

‘Glad to know you, sport. You’ve caught me at a busy moment.’

‘So I see. I’ve been trying to get in to see the Tibetan consul. There seems a bit of a crowd there.’

‘A caravan’s just arrived. I’d give it away for today, sport, if I were you.’

‘I hear it’s going to be like this for two or three days.’

‘You don’t have to bother about that. Look, I’ll drop by for a quick one with you this evening. I’m just too tied up now.’

‘All right,’ Houston said, a bit put-out, and wandered away with the boy.

His feeling of offence did not persist; for the more he saw of the town the more he liked it. There was a smell of wood- smoke and spices in the clean air, and a sensation of heights. He found himself smiling, with the heady feeling he had felt before in mountains.

There were a number of small teashops in the town; ramshackle sheds with trestle tables containing tea urns and trays of sweetmeats; and he had several cups of sweet, frothy tea as he loitered about the streets with the boy. Caravan teamsters strolled everywhere; but although many different races seemed to be represented, he noticed no Tibetans. He asked the boy why.

‘They sleep, maybe, sahib. Tibet men no like it down here. They like Tibet.’ He raised his eyes again to the sky as he spoke, and Houston was amused and yet vaguely disturbed at this suggestion, even in the northernmost point of India, of a still more remote land, almost a mythical land, towering in the sky.