The Tea-Planter's Daughter Page 6

  “Oh, this is so silly!” cried Ben, trying to hug her into happiness again.

  “It’s not!” she said. “You see when it comes out I can do anything. I am a rakshasa, Ben!”

  He frowned. “What’s that?”

  “Well, a sort of demon. Kali told me that some yogis do austerities for thousands of years, and then they get powers. They can fly about, and come out of their bodies, and move things with their minds. And if they use the powers for wrong and greedy purposes then they are rakshasas.”

  Ben said teasingly, “Well, if you have these powers and are so worried, why don’t you just use them for right and unselfish purposes?”

  “I can’t! I want to and I can’t,” she cried. “That is the whole trouble!” She clung to him for a few moments, then whispered, “I was hoping you would teach me!”

  “Teach you what, darling?”

  “Everybody else knows how to do the right things. You know. I thought you would show me how.”

  “Anyway,” he teased her. “What are these awful things you have done? Go on, tell me one thing!”

  “I made my father’s arm stop working because he cut off Goose’s wings,” she said, pulling herself away from Ben.

  Ben put his hand under her chin, and turned her face so that she was forced to look at him. “Darling, you have to stop all this silliness,” he said. “It was not your fault that your father became paralysed. It is quite wrong of anyone who might have given you the idea that it was. It is not possible for a person to make another person ill by wishing it …”

  “It is for me,” said Julia.

  “You’ve got all these funny ideas from the servants. You should have gone to a proper school, mixed with other children, played games, instead of being all on your own and hearing only servants’ talk.” He laughed, and said, “Anyway, I can assure you that you are not a rakshasa. For one thing you aren’t a thousand years old. For another you aren’t a yogi. And most of all you can’t move things around …”

  “But if I could?” said Julia, feeling a small cold shiver run through her.

  “Darling,” said Ben hugging her, “you are quite all right now because I love you. You don’t have to be afraid of anything any more! You can’t do any wrong things as long as I love you.”

  “Oh,” breathed Julia and leant against him feeling terribly relieved.

  But like Edward, Ben had begun to hate her in the end. He had hated her so much he had gone to Madras, and had not come back for her birthday. He was right, of course. Julia knew that he was right. She did not deserve to be loved because of what she was, but it was very saddening all the same.

  Chapter 7

  Kali gave the rosewood dining table a last polish, arranged the glittering silver cruet set that had been Ben’s mother’s, and murmured to his reflection in the gleaming metal, “My poor Missie has got trouble.” Kali’s greatest loves were Julia and his cow.

  The cow was shortlegged and humped, and at present seven months in calf, while still giving milk from the previous calf. She was deep glossy brown turning to almost black on her muzzle, legs, and down her back, and her name was Pallpapatti, which means Milky Butterfly. Once Babuchi had taken a batch of biscuits too late from the oven so that they were scorched.

  “Pallpapatti looks like that!” Julia had cried. Both Kali and Babuchi had been offended. Babuchi had been just about to throw the biscuits into the henhouse, where they would be eaten in a jiffy. Then no one would have discovered him capable of error. But after Julia had seen them it was too late.

  “Not at all burnt!” he had announced fiercely, shaking the blackened batch on to a plate. And to prove his point the Buxtons had had to eat them for tea for three days running.

  “They are overdone,” Edward had said, and Gwen had held a finger to her lips and said, “sh”.

  Kali had been offended because Pallpapatti was as perfect as one of God’s creatures could possibly be, and he did not like to hear her compared to something that had been spoiled by burning.

  “She is like a daughter to me,” he said. “When Pallpapatti calls ‘Ma’ it is to me she calls. I held sugar-cane chunks on my lap for her to eat when she was a calf.”

  Kali had brought sugar-cane chunks for Julia too, when she was little, passing them to her surreptitiously when her parents weren’t looking. Ayah had caught Julia, as drenched in juice as the little calf, sitting sucking the strong fibres with an expression of bliss, and had shouted at Kali saying, “Just let the master find out about you giving the Baba dirty things from the bazaar, and then there will be some trouble, you will see …”

  In those days Kali was a younger man and had not learnt wisdom. He knew now that you could not heal sadness with sugar sticks, and learnt the dangers of loving the child against the parents’ wish. The father, Edward Buxton, had found him out.

  “You idiot!” he had roared. “You stupid old fool! How dare you interfere with my punishment of my depraved daughter. What do you think you are doing when you reward her for badness? You are lucky not to be sacked for your meddling.”

  Kali would have liked to say to the father, “She is trying to know. That is what we are all here for, after all. We are only here to gain knowledge.” But he never said anything.

  “If you were a Christian,” said Ayah, “you would have known not to do such a thing. You were like the serpent in the Bible, except that it was a sugar stick and not an apple, but that is the only difference that I can see!”

  But Kali was not a Christian. He was a Hindu. And, if it had not been for the fact that he had a wife, fourteen children and twenty-four grandchildren, would have long ago walked off in search of God. The needs of nearly forty people kept him from the forests in which God resided.

  He told Julia, “Bodies are part of the soul, so there are no bad bits. For how can there be bad bits of soul? You eat your sugar stick Missie darling, and don’t be sad any more.”

  Kali watched Julia pour a second gin, taking quick peeps as he pretended to polish, and later, went into the kitchen and told Babuchi in a low voice, “The Missie is going to have a wildness, I think.”

  Babuchi moaned and grasped his temples with hands that had been kneading dough. When he took his hands away his forehead had a little dough stuck to it on either side, like a tiny set of multiple horns. Wiping his head with the tea towel Babuchi said, “We should pray to Ganapati that the Master comes home soon. Take some aggarbathi from the larder shelf...” Babuchi signalled with his head, his hands once more immersed in the tepid bread mix.

  Before the violently-coloured picture, stained with flying food and flyblows, Kali stuck two joss sticks, and took a light for them with a piece of straw from the kitchen stove. Soon the kitchen trailed with blue smoke, and the fragrance of sandal wood mingled with that of rising dough. Reverentially Kali and Babuchi stood side by side with palms folded in the gesture of greeting and prayer. The two old men lowered their heads for a few moments, and said aloud together, “There is so much work to be done already for this birthday party of the Missie, so dear Lord please spare us the Missie’s wildness, and send the Master home to us quick quick quick quick.” They spoke in unison, almost word perfect. They had had to pray this prayer or one very like it many times in the course of their dealings with Julia Missie. They knew exactly what to say.

  “There, that should do it,” said Babuchi with a nod towards the elephant-headed god. “But I think I will send the matey out for a small garland of marigolds also. One cannot be too careful as far as the Missie is concerned. And I sometimes think she might be nearly as powerful as the Lord Ganapati.”

  Later the two servants listened, and sometimes tiptoed to the closed sitting-room door to see what they could through the crack, and remembered the other time.

  “At least the Lord will spare us from that again,” said Kali in a whisper. “At least this time he will see she is somewhat dressed, in spite of all the other things she does.” And he gave a glance that was almost threatening to the
flyblown picture beside the kitchen stove.

  Outside the rain battered and the wind screamed, while inside came the noise of tearing and ripping as Madam snatched the curtains from their rails. Over the tiles the servants heard rings running.

  “Oh, Ganapati Lord to send the Master soon,” whispered Kali fervently.

  “Perhaps we now don’t want the Master soon,” said Babuchi. “What will he do to us when he sees this mess? Because the Lord is not hearing us, Kali, you must stop the Madam. It will be like the Buxton Master all over again if Clockhouse Master comes home and finds the bungalow like this.”

  Ben was capable of anger almost as bad as Edward’s on occasions. Once Ben had discovered the cook’s matey using a pair of Ben’s socks to buff Ben’s shoes. The dhobi, weekly washer of the household clothes, was notorious for receiving socks in pairs, and sending them back without their brothers. He performed this conjuring act of sock bereavement with almost one hundred per cent completeness for all the other managers in the district. Even at the banquet given to the district by the Arnaivarlai Masonic Lodge, the grandest occasion (apart from the Senior Manager’s dinner) of the whole year, you might look at any pair of ankles showing under black evening trousers, and not find a single pair clad in matching socks. Servants, holding a tray of short eats, eyes downcast, waiting for the chattering managers to help themselves to a mutton puff or a devil-on-horseback, had sometimes noticed one of a pair on one master’s foot, and the other on another master. But never had it been known, except on their first outing, for a pair of socks to be seen on a single manager.

  Except for Ben Clockhouse. He had been quite a junior manager when he had established the fact that his socks were not for parting.

  The lad that had been caught sock-buffing was sacked on the spot.

  “He is only a tribal boy, Sir,” Babuchi had said. “He does not understand the value of socks.”

  “Then this is a good moment not only for him to learn but all the rest of you,” said Ben. “My possessions are sacred to me, and as such I insist on their being properly looked after.”

  The boy’s wailing mother came imploring, and met an icy and unmelting master. The Master did not melt until the lad’s grandmother and entire range of aunties lay at Ben’s feet, and wept while they communally clutched his ankles.

  “It is you who must bring her out of the wildness,” Babuchi repeated to Kali. “It is to only you that she will listen. You must stop her before that other one starts throwing. Remember the time of the goose, Kali. It would not be good if something like that happened again.”

  “No, not at all good,” said Kali and shivered slightly.

  They would never forget the other time. They had heard Edward shouting at his wife through the closed dining-room door. “Stark naked in front of all the servants! I have always suspected it. Now I am sure. The girl is mentally deranged. She should be seen by a doctor …”

  Kali and Babuchi took turns looking with one eye through the little hole Babuchi had had drilled in the dining-room hatch. There had come some sounds of choking, as though Edward was finding it difficult to bring out the words.

  “He has gone very red in the face,” said Kali, whose turn it was at the hole.

  Then Edward’s voice, “The death of a goose is no excuse for this terrible display of indecency. Depravity! That is the word! My daughter is depraved!” He slapped his palm on the table with such violence that the cruets leapt up and down in their stand, and the cut-glass vinegar bottle cracked, sending a swill of sourness all over the white tablecloth.

  Gwen leant under the table, and silently pressed the bell with one hand, while trying to stem the vinegar flow with the other.

  Kali straightened up from his spy hole, grabbed the tea towel from where it had dropped on to the floor, and rushed in to repair the damage.

  “Damn, damn, damn!” shouted Edward.

  Then, when the table was mopped, and Kali gone out again, he went on, “Do you realise that every one of the servants saw her naked body? Thank God I was in time to put a stop to it, before it was too late.”

  “Too late for what? I thought you said she was already naked …”

  Frowning, Edward looked at Gwen and said, “But, my dear woman, I thought I explained. The servants saw her.”

  “So?” said Gwen.

  Edward sighed heavily. “She had better be sent back to England at the earliest opportunity. Do you think your mother would have her? She obviously can’t stay in India if this sort of thing is to happen.”

  “No,” said Gwen.

  “Ah, good, so I am to have a little support after all.” Edward almost smiled.

  “No, I don’t think my mother would have her.”

  Edward’s features sank back into an expression of furious despair. He leapt from the table, although they had not even been served with their dessert, and left the dining room saying, “We shall have to think of something else then. This cannot go on. Simply cannot go on. And her hair still looks like a ten-year-old bird’s nest!”

  Chapter 8

  The sitting-room bell rang through the kitchen with such suddenness, and so prolonged a sound that Babuchi dropped the dough.

  “Get rid of that yogi,” Julia said before Kali was halfway through the sitting-room door.

  Kali had expected calls for more bitters, a clean glass, even for the sweeper to be sent running to the bazaar to buy another bottle of gin. He stood staring at Julia, his mouth a little open, trying to grasp her meaning.

  “That yogi,” said Julia so loudly that she almost shouted. “The fraud at my gate. Get rid of him.”

  “But he is a holy man, Missie,” said Kali cautiously. He glanced at the gin bottle and saw that the level had sunk considerably.

  Julia followed his glance, and put her hand towards the bottle. Then she quickly pushed back her hair instead.

  “If my father was here he would probably have had the fellow thrashed,” said Julia.

  “Probably,” said Kali.

  “He is not to stay sitting here.”

  “He is on the public road, Missie. Anyone can sit there …”

  “That yogi can’t!” She stood up. “He must be gone by the time the guests come.”

  Kali opened his mouth to speak, but before any words came out Julia hurled a cushion at his head, knocking his pleated pugri to a rakish angle.

  “Yes, Madam,” he said, pinching his lips.

  Kali dashed into the kitchen, and told Babuchi in a single panting breath, “We must send away the yogi!”

  In spite of the huge amount of cooking still to be done, Babuchi accompanied Kali to the front gate, the pair leaning together under a single battered black umbrella. The water soaked Kali’s white cotton trousers, and drenched Babuchi’s bare calves. Kali told the cook, “I cannot help wondering if this yogi can be my father. It is so many years since I saw my father that I cannot remember in the least what he looks like.”

  “Of course he is not. You are of an age where your father is surely dead, however holy,” said Babuchi firmly.

  “They say this yogi is many thousands of years old,” said Kali, as the pair of them pushed through the violence of the storm.

  “You cannot believe all they say,” Babuchi replied.

  Someone had erected a roof of saplings and straw over the holy man’s head and he was eating boiled rice and a little lentil curry from a tin plate when the two men arrived.

  The yogi continued eating calmly, without looking up, while Kali and Babuchi waited respectfully, cold rain whipping their backs. Babuchi had wrapped his head up in a woollen scarf, but in spite of the umbrella this became drenched through by the time the yogi laid down his plate. The yogi leant forwards, held out his tin plate to catch water that came gushing from the roof of his little shelter. He filled the plate twice, each time swilling it gently around to wash away the remnants of food, and bringing the third fill inside he rinsed his fingers and touched them to his lips. Then he tipped the water on to the g
ushing road.

  At last he was ready. He gazed at the two men with milky eyes, and, after a little while nodded gently, encouraging them to speak.

  “The Madam wishes you to go from here,” said Babuchi. “She does not wish you to sit there.”

  “She has guests,” explained Kali. “Also she is … She is not exactly the same as other madams … There are other places. Good places.” Kali’s voice held pleading in it.

  The yogi closed his eyes with the gentleness of cotton down drifting.

  “You go from here please, holy Sir!” cried Babuchi, his voice shrill with desperation. “When our Madam grows wild you do not know the things that may happen.” And to Kali Babuchi whispered, “We will have to send the sweepers to throw him out. They will have to take him by the arms and march him away along the road. They are tribals and will not mind, not having respect for the holy Hindu person.”

  The yogi, as though he heard this, opened his eyes and stared at Babuchi. Something like laughter seemed to glow in his eyes.

  On her twenty-fifth birthday Julia drank gin and watched the lemons thumping off the tree in the storm, and remembered she had not asked Babuchi to make lemon flip instead of chocolate soufflé for her party.

  One or two of the huge lemons had gone right down the valley, thumping with a squelch on to the mud far far below.

  “What was that? What could that have been?” asked Dick Sallinger, surreptitiously returning from a Cochin weekend. A ripe lemon had burst right through the tender top of his sun roof. Arnaivarlai managers were not allowed to leave the district without permission from the Senior Manager. The very fact of the existence of this unreasonable rule made Dick constantly strive to break it. He left the district without permission on every conceivable occasion.

  “Where were you?” Nana would ask, her voice shrill with suspicion. And, since Nana was another constriction, another curtailing of Dick’s freedom, he felt compelled to deceive her as well. The trouble was that he had been a very free man before becoming an Arnaivarlai manager. He had owned his own estate. And, like the first general manager, Edward Buxton’s father, had failed to make a go of it. Like planter Buxton, he had had to sell his estate and himself to the Arnaivarlai Tea Company. Planter Buxton seemed to have made a better job of swallowing his pride than Dick. Or at least it had not gone down in the history of the company that the first general manager often used to sneak down to Cochin for the night.