Friends In Small Places Page 9

  He felt a certain empathy for the dying; he liked to see them on their way. It was just his good nature, of course.

  On a visit to nearby Meerut, he met and fell in love with Mrs Browning, the wife of the local Stationmaster. Impassioned love letters were soon putting a strain on the Agra-Meerut postal service. The envelopes grew heavier—not so much because the letters were growing longer but because they contained little packets of a powdery white substance, accompanied by detailed instructions as to its correct administration.

  Mr Browning, an unassuming and trustful man—one of the world’s born losers, in fact—was not the sort to read his wife’s correspondence. Even when he was seized by frequent attacks of colic, he put them down to an impure water supply. He recovered from one bout of vomiting and diarrhoea only to be racked by another.

  He was hospitalized on a diagnosis of gastroenteritis; and, thus freed from his wife’s ministrations, soon got better. But on returning home and drinking a glass of nimbu pani brought to him by the solicitous Mrs Browning, he had a relapse from which he did not recover.

  Those were the days when deaths from cholera and related diseases were only too common in India, and death certificates were easier to obtain than dog licences.

  After a short interval of mourning (it was the hot weather and you couldn’t wear black for long), Mrs Browning moved to Agra, where she rented a house next door to William Jones.

  I forgot to mention that Mr Jones was also married. His wife was an insignificant creature, no match for a genius like William. Before the hot weather was over, the dreaded cholera had taken her too. The way was clear for the lovers to unite in holy matrimony.

  But Dame Gossip lived in Agra too, and it was not long before tongues were wagging and anonymous letters were being received by the superintendent of police. Inquiries were instituted. Like most infatuated lovers, Mrs Browning had hung on to her beloved’s letters and billet-doux, and these soon came to light. The silly woman had kept them in a box beneath her bed.

  Exhumations were ordered in both Agra and Meerut.

  Arsenic keeps well, even in the hottest of weather, and there was no dearth of it in the remains of both victims.

  Mr Jones and Mrs Browning were arrested and charged with murder.

  ‘Is Uncle Bill really a murderer?’ I asked from the drawing room sofa in my grandmother’s house in Dehra. (It’s time that I told you that William Jones was my uncle, my mother’s half brother.)

  I was eight or nine at the time. Uncle Bill had spent the previous summer with us in Dehra and had stuffed me with bazaar sweets and pastries, all of which I had consumed without suffering any ill effects.

  ‘Who told you that about Uncle Bill?’ asked Grandmother.

  ‘I heard it in school. All the boys were asking me the same question—“Is your uncle a murderer?” They say he poisoned both his wives.’

  ‘He had only one wife,’ snapped Aunt Mabel.

  ‘Did he poison her?’

  ‘No, of course not. How can you say such a thing!’

  ‘Then why is Uncle Bill in gaol?’

  ‘Who says he’s in gaol?’

  ‘The boys at school. They heard it from their parents. Uncle Bill is to go on trial in the Agra fort.’

  There was a pregnant silence in the drawing room, then Aunt Mabel burst out, ‘It was all that awful woman’s fault.’

  ‘Do you mean Mrs Browning?’ asked Grandmother.

  ‘Yes, of course. She must have put him up to it. Bill couldn’t have thought of anything so—so diabolical!’

  ‘But he sent her the powders, dear. And don’t forget—Mrs Browning has since . . .’

  Grandmother stopped in mid-sentence, and both she and Aunt Mabel glanced surreptitiously at me.

  ‘Committed suicide,’ I filled in. ‘There were still some powders with her.’

  Aunt Mabel’s eyes rolled heavenwards. ‘This boy is impossible. I don’t know what he will be like when he grows up.’

  ‘At least I won’t be like Uncle Bill,’ I said. ‘Fancy poisoning people! If I kill anyone, it will be in a fair fight. I suppose they’ll hang Uncle?’

  ‘Oh, I hope not!’

  Grandmother was silent. Uncle Bill was her stepson but she did have a soft spot for him. Aunt Mabel, his sister, thought he was wonderful. I had always considered him to be a bit soft but had to admit that he was generous. I tried to imagine him dangling at the end of a hangman’s rope, but somehow he didn’t fit the picture.

  As things turned out, he didn’t hang. During the Raj, White people in India seldom got the death sentence, although the hangman was pretty busy disposing of dacoits and political terrorists. Uncle Bill was given a life sentence and settled down to a sedentary job in the prison library at Naini, near Allahabad. His gifts as a male nurse went unappreciated; they did not trust him in the hospital.

  He was released after seven or eight years, shortly after the country became an independent Republic. He came out of gaol to find that the British were leaving, either for England or the remaining colonies. Grandmother was dead. Aunt Mabel and her husband had settled in South Africa. Uncle Bill realized that there was little future for him in India and followed his sister out to Johannesburg. I was in my last year at boarding school. After my father’s death, my mother had married an Indian, and now my future lay in India.

  I did not see Uncle Bill after his release from prison, and no one dreamt that he would ever turn up again in India.

  In fact, fifteen years were to pass before he came back, and by then I was in my early thirties, the author of a book that had become something of a best-seller. The previous fifteen years had been a struggle—the sort of struggle that every young freelance writer experiences—but at last the hard work was paying off and the royalties were beginning to come in.

  I was living in a small cottage on the outskirts of the hill station of Fosterganj; working on another book, when I received an unexpected visitor.

  He was a thin, stooped, grey-haired man in his late fifties, with a straggling moustache and discoloured teeth. He looked feeble and harmless but for his eyes which were pale cold blue. There was something slightly familiar about him.

  ‘Don’t you remember me?’ he asked. ‘Not that I really expect you to, after all these years . . .’

  ‘Wait a minute. Did you teach me at school?’

  ‘No—but you’re getting warm.’ He put his suitcase down and I glimpsed his name on the airlines label. I looked up in astonishment. ‘You’re not—you couldn’t be . . .’

  ‘Your Uncle Bill,’ he said with a grin and extended his hand. ‘None other!’ And he sauntered into the house.

  I must admit that I had mixed feelings about his arrival. While I had never felt any dislike for him, I hadn’t exactly approved of what he had done. Poisoning, I felt, was a particularly reprehensible way of getting rid of inconvenient people: not that I could think of any commendable ways of getting rid of them! Still, it had happened a long time ago, he’d been punished, and presumably he was a reformed character.

  ‘And what have you been doing all these years?’ he asked me, easing himself into the only comfortable chair in the room.

  ‘Oh just writing,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I heard about your last book. It’s quite a success, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s doing quite well. Have you read it?’

  ‘I don’t do much reading.’

  ‘And what have you been doing all these years, Uncle Bill?’

  ‘Oh, knocking about here and there. Worked for a soft-drink company for some time. And then with a drug firm. My knowledge of chemicals was useful.’

  ‘Weren’t you with Aunt Mabel in South Africa?’ ‘I saw quite a lot of her, until she died a couple of years ago. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘No. I’ve been out of touch with relatives.’ I hoped he’d take that as a hint. ‘And what about her husband?’

  ‘Died too, not long after. Not many of us left, my boy. That’s why, when I saw someth
ing about you in the papers, I thought why not go and see my only nephew again?’

  ‘You’re welcome to stay a few days,’ I said quickly. ‘Then I have to go to Bombay.’ (This was a lie, but I did not relish the prospect of looking after Uncle Bill for the rest of his days.)

  ‘Oh, I won’t be staying long,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a bit of money put by in Johannesburg. It’s just that so far as I know you’re my only living relative, and I thought it would be nice to see you again.’

  Feeling relieved, I set about trying to make Uncle Bill as comfortable as possible. I gave him my bedroom and turned the window seat into a bed for myself. I was a hopeless cook but, using all my ingenuity, I scrambled some eggs for supper. He waved aside my apologies; he’d always been a frugal eater, he said. Eight years in gaol had given him a cast-iron stomach.

  He did not get in my way but left me to my writing and my lonely walks. He seemed content to sit in the spring sunshine and smoke his pipe.

  It was during our third evening together that he said, ‘Oh, I almost forgot. There’s a bottle of sherry in my suitcase. I brought it specially for you.’

  ‘That was very thoughtful of you, Uncle Bill. How did you know I was fond of sherry?’

  ‘Just my intuition. You do like it, don’t you?’ ‘There’s nothing like a good sherry.’

  He went to his bedroom and came back with an unopened bottle of South African sherry.

  ‘Now you just relax near the fire,’ he said agreeably. ‘I’ll open the bottle and fetch glasses.’

  He went to the kitchen while I remained near the electric fire, flipping through some journals. It seemed to me that Uncle Bill was taking rather a long time. Intuition must be a family trait, because it came to me quite suddenly—the thought that Uncle Bill might be intending to poison me.

  After all, I thought, here he is after nearly fifteen years, apparently for purely sentimental reasons. But I had just published a best-seller. And I was his nearest relative. If I were to die, Uncle Bill could lay claim to my estate and probably live comfortably on my royalties for the next five or six years!

  What had really happened to Aunt Mabel and her husband, I wondered. And where did Uncle Bill get the money for an air ticket to India?

  Before I could ask myself any more questions, he reappeared with the glasses on a tray. He set the tray on a small table that stood between us. The glasses had been filled. The sherry sparkled.

  I stared at the glass nearest me, trying to make out if the liquid in it was cloudier than that in the other glass. But there appeared to be no difference.

  I decided I would not take any chances. It was a round tray, made of smooth Kashmiri walnut wood. I turned it round with my index finger, so that the glasses changed places.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ asked Uncle Bill.

  ‘It’s a custom in these parts. You turn the tray with the sun, a complete revolution. It brings good luck.’

  Uncle Bill looked thoughtful for a few moments, then said, ‘Well, let’s have some more luck,’ and turned the tray around again.

  ‘Now you’ve spoilt it,’ I said. ‘You’re not supposed to keep revolving it! That’s bad luck. I’ll have to turn it about again to cancel out the bad luck.’

  The tray swung round once more, and Uncle Bill had the glass that was meant for me.

  ‘Cheers!’ I said, and drank from my glass.

  It was good sherry. Uncle Bill hesitated. Then he shrugged, said ‘Cheers’, and drained his glass quickly.

  But he did not offer to fill the glasses again.

  Early next morning he was taken violently ill. I heard him retching in his room, and I got up and went to see if there was anything I could do. He was groaning, his head hanging over the side of the bed. I brought him a basin and a jug of water.

  ‘Would you like me to fetch a doctor?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘No, I’ll be all right. It must be something I ate.’

  ‘It’s probably the water. It’s not too good at this time of the year. Many people come down with gastric trouble during their first few days in Fosterganj.’

  ‘Ah, that must be it,’ he said, and doubled up as a fresh spasm of pain and nausea swept over him.

  He was better by the evening—whatever had gone into the glass must have been by way of the preliminary dose, and a day later he was well enough to pack his suitcase and announce his departure. The climate of Fosterganj did not agree with him, he told me.

  Just before he left, I said, ‘Tell me, Uncle, why did you drink it?’

  ‘Drink what? The water?’

  ‘No, the glass of sherry into which you’d slipped one of your famous powders.’

  He gaped at me, then gave a nervous whinnying laugh. ‘You will have your little joke, won’t you?’

  ‘No, I mean it,’ I said. ‘Why did you drink the stuff? It was meant for me, of course.’

  He looked down at his shoes, then gave a little shrug and turned away.

  ‘In the circumstances,’ he said, ‘it seemed the only decent thing to do.’

  I’ll say this for Uncle Bill: he was always the perfect gentleman.

  Prem*

  ‘And the last puff of the day-wind brought from the unseen villages, the scent of damp wood-smoke, hot cakes, dripping undergrowth, and rotting pine-cones. That is the true smell of the Himalayas, and if once it creeps into the blood of a man, that man will at the last, forgetting all else, return to the hills to die.’

  — Rudyard Kipling

  On the first clear September day, towards the end of the rains, I visited the pine knoll, my place of peace and power . . .

  This is where I will write my stories. I can see everything from here—my cottage across the valley; behind and above me, the town and the bazaar, straddling the ridge; to the left, the high mountains and the twisting road to the source of the great river; below me, the little stream and the path to the village; ahead, the Hill of Fairies, the fields beyond; the wide valley below, and then another range of hills and then the distant plains. I can even see Prem Singh in the garden, putting the mattresses out in the sun.

  From here he is just a speck on the far hill, but I know it is Prem by the way he stands. A man may have a hundred disguises, but in the end it is his posture that gives him away. Like my grandfather, who was a master of disguise and successfully roamed the bazaars as fruit vendor or basket- maker; but we could always recognize him because of his pronounced slouch.

  Prem Singh doesn’t slouch, but he has this habit of looking up at the sky (regardless of whether it’s cloudy or clear), and at the moment he’s looking at the sky.

  Eight years with Prem. He was just a sixteen-year-old boy when I first saw him, and now he has a wife and child.

  I had been in the cottage for just over a year . . . He stood on the landing outside the kitchen door. A tall boy, dark, with good teeth and brown, deep-set eyes; dressed smartly in white drill—his only change of clothes. Looking for a job. I liked the look of him. But—

  ‘I already have someone working for me,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, sir. He is my uncle.’

  In the hills, everyone is a brother or uncle.

  ‘You don’t want me to dismiss your uncle?’

  ‘No, sir. But he says you can find a job for me.’

  ‘I’ll try. I’ll make inquiries. Have you just come from your village?’

  ‘Yes. Yesterday I walked ten miles to Pauri. There I got a bus.’

  ‘Sit down. Your uncle will make some tea.’

  He sat down on the steps, removed his white keds, wriggled his toes. His feet were both long and broad; large feet, but not ugly. He was unusually clean for a hill boy. And taller than most.

  ‘Do you smoke?’ I asked.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘It is true,’ said his uncle, ‘he does not smoke. All my nephews smoke, but this one, he is a little peculiar, he does not smoke—neither beedi nor hookah.’

  ‘Do you drink?’

  ‘It m
akes me vomit.’

  ‘Do you take bhang?’

  ‘No, sahib.’

  ‘You have no vices. It’s unnatural.’

  ‘He is unnatural, sahib,’ said his uncle.

  ‘Does he chase girls?’

  ‘They chase him, sahib.’

  ‘So he left the village and came looking for a job.’ I looked at him. He grinned, then looked away, began rubbing his feet.

  ‘Your name is?’

  ‘Prem Singh.’

  ‘All right, Prem, I will try to do something for you.’

  I did not see him for a couple of weeks. I forgot about finding him a job. But when I met him again, on the road to the bazaar, he told me that he had got a temporary job in the Survey, looking after the surveyor’s tents.

  ‘Next week we will be going to Rajasthan,’ he said.

  ‘It will be very hot. Have you been in the desert before?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘It is not like the hills. And it is far from home.’

  ‘I know. But I have no choice in the matter. I have to collect some money in order to get married.’

  In his region there was a bride price, usually of two thousand rupees.

  ‘Do you have to get married so soon?’

  ‘I have only one brother and he is still very young. My mother is not well. She needs a daughter-in-law to help her in the fields and with the cows and in the house. We are a small family, so the work is greater.’

  Every family has its few terraced fields, narrow and stony, usually perched on a hillside above a stream or river . . . There is no money to be earned in the villages, and money is needed for clothes, soap, medicines, and recovering the family jewellery from the moneylenders. So the young men leave their villages to find work, and to find work they must go to the plains. The lucky ones get into the army. Others enter domestic service or take jobs in garages, hotels, wayside teashops, schools . . .