Night Train to Jamalpur(63)

I was drinking a peg; the wife held a glass with a green cordial of some kind in it.

She said, ‘You’d think that if someone had just been attacked by one of the most dangerous snakes in the world, and then they gave a tea party, that you would go to it.’

‘Well, you did go to it,’ I said.

Bernadette said, ‘The Askwiths didn’t.’

The tea had in fact not been on the Mall, but at the small hotel on Victoria Road where the Pooles were putting up. They had given the tea, in their modest way, in a private room of the hotel. It was by way of celebration of Dougie’s escape from sudden death, but it had unfortunately coincided with another tea, given by His Excellency, the Governor at his summer residence. The Askwiths had been at this grander event, and Lydia was affecting to be put out on the Pooles’ behalf when in fact she was put out at not being on the Governor’s guest list herself.

‘He hasn’t suffered any ill effects then? Dougie, I mean.’

‘Nor any good ones,’ said Lydia.

‘He’s still a rummy,’ said Bernadette.

‘At tea you are supposed to drink tea,’ said Lydia.

‘Did he talk about it? The snake attack, I mean.’

‘I thought you’d read the statement he gave,’ Lydia said, crossly.

But I wanted to know if there was any discrepancy between the statement he gave and what he was saying now.

‘He said he knew very little about it,’ Lydia continued. ‘He told us that if he’d been wearing his elasticated boots he’d be dead – if the teeth had gone through the elastic.’

‘The fangs,’ said Bernadette, with great relish. She, in contrast to her mother, was in a good mood about something, and I thought I knew what. The arrival of the bloody R.K. She’d expected it, or got wind of it somehow.

After an interval of silence, I began to ask about their journey up. ‘Was the weather clear? Did you get any views?’

Lydia said, ‘It’s not “views”. Only in Yorkshire do people have “views”.’

‘It’s scenery,’ said Bernadette, looking up from her magazine.

The wife’s chain of thought was perfectly clear: she would never go to the best tea parties if she was married to a man who said ‘views’, and in this she was quite right.





Chapter Nine



I

Breakfast was served by Ajit and Sahira at nine o’clock, by which time no further visiting cards had been returned. Therefore the wife’s edgy mood continued. She was very polite to Ajit and Sahira, not so polite to me. The business of the calling cards was certainly not to be joked about. All the Calcutta party-going was supposed to have been a preparation for her month in the hills, so she was like a footballer who had trained for a cup final, only to discover that he had been left out of the team. After breakfast, Lydia went upstairs for a bath. The rain still fell, and all the coal was gone. In the living room grate a log burned, giving a sweet smell. Bernadette and I took the armchairs either side of the fire.

‘How many cards have been dropped, and how many returned?’ I said.

‘Mama dropped about ten. She then sent me out on a bike to drop another five. We’ve had two returned, if you include the invitation to the Pooles. The other was from the Askwiths, but that’s only because I told Claudine to tell her mama and papa to get a wiggle on.’

‘And does your mama know that?’

‘Yes. She figured it out.’

It was a bad lookout, but there was nothing further to be said on the matter of the cards. ‘What are you going to do today?’ I asked Bernadette.

‘Read. Drift about.’

‘Got any balls to go to?’

‘Not ’specially. There’s a fancy dress at the Amusement Club.’

‘But you haven’t got a costume.’

‘Anyone who’s got a kimono, a Chinese hat, some kohl and a pair of silk slippers can go as Aladdin.’

‘And have you got all those things?’

‘Probably.’

‘Aladdin’s a man,’ I observed.

‘Mmm . . . sort of. There’s a tea dansat at some church hall or other. We might crash that.’

‘Who’s “we”?’

‘Me and Ann and Claudine, obviously. The big blow is next Monday – at the Gymkhana Club. You’re coming to that.’

‘Am I?’

‘Mama said.’

‘Since when have you been calling your mother “Mama”?’

‘Since about three weeks.’

Silence for a space.

‘Dad.’

‘What?’

‘Would you like me to teach you the shimmy? Well, not the shimmy, but the foxtrot. All you ever do with Mama is waltz.’