Read Online The Day of the Scorpion by Paul Scott - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Paul Scott
Tags: Historical fiction, Classics
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opportunity to make a gesture others and she herself could have described later as out of character. In the end, she saw, habit became a vice, and good taste an end in itself: nothing could ever come of it.
Fifteen minutes later the khansamar knocked at the door of her room where she sat alone staring through the little window at the lake, her old-fashioned veiled topee already on her head, gloves on her hands, repeating to herself, with no outward sign that she was doing so, the little prayer she always offered up at the beginning of a journey. The khansamar told her that all was ready. She rose, thanked him for his service, and went out. She had distributed tips the night before. The staff of the houseboat, and of the house she had lived in from the November of 1942 all through the hard winter to June when she had come down to the lake, were gathered on the forward veranda and on the sunroof. Fifteen of them all told: twelve from the boat, and three from the house. She stood for a moment. They watched her in silence. Then she said, ‘Thank you,’ and allowed the khansamar to help her down the steps into the shikara which had an embroidered canopy and a spring mattress – the kind of shikara Henry once said made him feel when with her like Anthony making himself at home with Cleopatra on herbarge. At the foot of the mattress, the young ayah already sat, veiled for the journey from the valley she had never left before, nursing the child. When Lady Manners was settled Suleiman stepped aboard and sat in the narrow prow, still holding the reliquary. Behind her the three boatmen raised their pointed, elongated, heart-shaped paddles and began to negotiate a passage between the clustered boats of the vendors. She turned to wave, but the outline of the houseboat had become infuriatingly unclear. She realized, too, that she had forgotten to look at the flowers in the vase by her bedside, to make sure they were quite dead; and thinking of those flowers thought as well of Daphne’s rhetorical question, written down while the snows still held, when the summer that had somehow never been was yet to come:
‘Shall we go down to the lake, then, Aunty, and live in a house-boat and fill it with flowers, and have our fortunes told?’
*
I am leaving in two days’ time (she had written to her old friend Lili Chatterjee in Mayapore), and so ends, as they say, a chapter – the burden of which you know and have lightened, not only by your too short visit this summer but by your wise counsel, and by the opinion you were able to express, after seeing the child. When I am re-established in Pindi, at Christmas-time for instance, perhaps you would come up and pay me a visit? I do not expect to be much invited out. My own race hardly knows any longer what to make of me and the existence of the child under my roof no doubt ranks as something of a scandal, such a lively, vocal repository for memories of events my countrymen are pretending it is best to forget – or if not best to forget at least wise to consider over and adequately dealt with. I don’t make my appeal to you, or invitation, from any sense the last few months may have given me of isolation, but from that other more important sense of contact with a friend who speaks my language and with whom, over Christmas, I should so dearly love to exchange gifts of conversation, plans and recollections.
Today we are moving the houseboat down the lake fromthe isolated position you thought so pretty to its winter berth, to shorten the distance for the luggage shikaras the day after tomorrow. Since you were here I acquired neighbours. They are now gone back to Pankot where they are stationed. Their boat has been moved away and this last few days I have been alone again, which on the whole I prefer. These people who came and moored near by were punctilious about sending cards across when they arrived. I had Aziz return the compliment. Result: an almost tangible air of embarrassment and curiosity
Fifteen minutes later the khansamar knocked at the door of her room where she sat alone staring through the little window at the lake, her old-fashioned veiled topee already on her head, gloves on her hands, repeating to herself, with no outward sign that she was doing so, the little prayer she always offered up at the beginning of a journey. The khansamar told her that all was ready. She rose, thanked him for his service, and went out. She had distributed tips the night before. The staff of the houseboat, and of the house she had lived in from the November of 1942 all through the hard winter to June when she had come down to the lake, were gathered on the forward veranda and on the sunroof. Fifteen of them all told: twelve from the boat, and three from the house. She stood for a moment. They watched her in silence. Then she said, ‘Thank you,’ and allowed the khansamar to help her down the steps into the shikara which had an embroidered canopy and a spring mattress – the kind of shikara Henry once said made him feel when with her like Anthony making himself at home with Cleopatra on herbarge. At the foot of the mattress, the young ayah already sat, veiled for the journey from the valley she had never left before, nursing the child. When Lady Manners was settled Suleiman stepped aboard and sat in the narrow prow, still holding the reliquary. Behind her the three boatmen raised their pointed, elongated, heart-shaped paddles and began to negotiate a passage between the clustered boats of the vendors. She turned to wave, but the outline of the houseboat had become infuriatingly unclear. She realized, too, that she had forgotten to look at the flowers in the vase by her bedside, to make sure they were quite dead; and thinking of those flowers thought as well of Daphne’s rhetorical question, written down while the snows still held, when the summer that had somehow never been was yet to come:
‘Shall we go down to the lake, then, Aunty, and live in a house-boat and fill it with flowers, and have our fortunes told?’
*
I am leaving in two days’ time (she had written to her old friend Lili Chatterjee in Mayapore), and so ends, as they say, a chapter – the burden of which you know and have lightened, not only by your too short visit this summer but by your wise counsel, and by the opinion you were able to express, after seeing the child. When I am re-established in Pindi, at Christmas-time for instance, perhaps you would come up and pay me a visit? I do not expect to be much invited out. My own race hardly knows any longer what to make of me and the existence of the child under my roof no doubt ranks as something of a scandal, such a lively, vocal repository for memories of events my countrymen are pretending it is best to forget – or if not best to forget at least wise to consider over and adequately dealt with. I don’t make my appeal to you, or invitation, from any sense the last few months may have given me of isolation, but from that other more important sense of contact with a friend who speaks my language and with whom, over Christmas, I should so dearly love to exchange gifts of conversation, plans and recollections.
Today we are moving the houseboat down the lake fromthe isolated position you thought so pretty to its winter berth, to shorten the distance for the luggage shikaras the day after tomorrow. Since you were here I acquired neighbours. They are now gone back to Pankot where they are stationed. Their boat has been moved away and this last few days I have been alone again, which on the whole I prefer. These people who came and moored near by were punctilious about sending cards across when they arrived. I had Aziz return the compliment. Result: an almost tangible air of embarrassment and curiosity
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