Read Online The Raj Quartet, Volume 1: The Jewel in the Crown: The Jewel in the Crown Vol 1 (Phoenix Fiction) by Paul Scott - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Paul Scott
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herself to bed and sweated the chill out. By the weekend she felt perfectly fit again. And so on the morning of the 8th of August—on the day on which Congress were to vote on Mr. Gandhi’s resolution—Miss Crane set off in her Ford the seventy-odd miles to Dibrapur.
The school in Dibrapur, the third of Miss Crane’s responsibilities in Mayapore District, was situated in comparative isolation, on the road midway between the village of Kotali and the town of Dibrapur itself. Dibrapur lay on the southern border of the Mayapore District. There was no church, no European population. The Dibrapur mines, so-called, were now administered from Aligarh in the adjoining district of the province.
Most of the children who attended the school came from Kotali. They had only three miles to walk. If they went to the school run by the District Board in a neighbouring village the distance was four miles. The mission schoolhouse had been built in its isolated position years ago so that it could serve the surrounding villages as well as Dibrapur. Since the expansion of the Government’s own educational program and the setting up of primary schools by District Boards the mission school had not lost many pupils for the simple reason that it had never attracted many. The Kotali children came because it was nearer and a few children still came from Dibrapur because at the mission school the English language was taught. The Dibrapur children were usually the sons—very occasionally the daughters—of shopkeepers, men who fancied their male offspring’s chances as government contractors or petty civil servants and who knew that the gift of conversing fluently in English was therefore invaluable. And so, from Dibrapur, up to half a dozen boys and two or three girls would tramp the three miles every day to the school of the mission, carrying with them, like the children from Kotali, their food-tins andtheir canvas bags. In the school of the mission there were no chappattis; only instruction, good intentions and medicine for upset stomachs.
Having stood now for nearly thirty years the Dibrapur schoolhouse was in constant need of some kind of repair, and, in the summer of 1942, certainly a coat of whitewash that it would have to wait for until the end of the rains. What it most urgently needed was attention to the roof and during this summer Miss Crane’s thoughts in connection with the school had been almost exclusively concerned with the estimates periodically obtained by Mr. Chaudhuri, the teacher, and the allocation, which in crude terms meant the money available. So far Mr. Chaudhuri had failed to obtain an estimate from any local builder that came within sight of balancing what had to be spent with what there was to spend. He did not seem to have much of a head for business or talent for bargaining. “We need,” Miss Crane had been thinking, “another five hundred rupees. We need, in fact, more; not only a repair to the roof, but a new roof, in fact practically a new school.” Sometimes she could not help wondering whether they also needed a new teacher-in-charge, but always put the thought out of her head as uncharitable, as one sparked off by personal prejudice. The fact that for one reason or another she and Mr. Chaudhuri had never hit it off should not, she realized, blind her to his remarkable qualities as a teacher.
Mr. Chaudhuri had held the Dibrapur appointment for not quite a year. His predecessor, old Miss de Silva, a Eurasian woman from Goa, had been dead for just a bit longer. With Mary de Silva’s death Miss Crane had lost the last person in the world who called her Edwina. On her first visit to Dibrapur as superintendent, seven years ago, the older woman—fat, white-haired, ponderous, and with a voice as dark and forthcoming as her extraordinary popping black eyes—had said, “You got the job I wanted. My name’s Mary de Silva. My mother was as black as your hat.”
“Mine’s Edwina Crane,” Miss Crane said,
The school in Dibrapur, the third of Miss Crane’s responsibilities in Mayapore District, was situated in comparative isolation, on the road midway between the village of Kotali and the town of Dibrapur itself. Dibrapur lay on the southern border of the Mayapore District. There was no church, no European population. The Dibrapur mines, so-called, were now administered from Aligarh in the adjoining district of the province.
Most of the children who attended the school came from Kotali. They had only three miles to walk. If they went to the school run by the District Board in a neighbouring village the distance was four miles. The mission schoolhouse had been built in its isolated position years ago so that it could serve the surrounding villages as well as Dibrapur. Since the expansion of the Government’s own educational program and the setting up of primary schools by District Boards the mission school had not lost many pupils for the simple reason that it had never attracted many. The Kotali children came because it was nearer and a few children still came from Dibrapur because at the mission school the English language was taught. The Dibrapur children were usually the sons—very occasionally the daughters—of shopkeepers, men who fancied their male offspring’s chances as government contractors or petty civil servants and who knew that the gift of conversing fluently in English was therefore invaluable. And so, from Dibrapur, up to half a dozen boys and two or three girls would tramp the three miles every day to the school of the mission, carrying with them, like the children from Kotali, their food-tins andtheir canvas bags. In the school of the mission there were no chappattis; only instruction, good intentions and medicine for upset stomachs.
Having stood now for nearly thirty years the Dibrapur schoolhouse was in constant need of some kind of repair, and, in the summer of 1942, certainly a coat of whitewash that it would have to wait for until the end of the rains. What it most urgently needed was attention to the roof and during this summer Miss Crane’s thoughts in connection with the school had been almost exclusively concerned with the estimates periodically obtained by Mr. Chaudhuri, the teacher, and the allocation, which in crude terms meant the money available. So far Mr. Chaudhuri had failed to obtain an estimate from any local builder that came within sight of balancing what had to be spent with what there was to spend. He did not seem to have much of a head for business or talent for bargaining. “We need,” Miss Crane had been thinking, “another five hundred rupees. We need, in fact, more; not only a repair to the roof, but a new roof, in fact practically a new school.” Sometimes she could not help wondering whether they also needed a new teacher-in-charge, but always put the thought out of her head as uncharitable, as one sparked off by personal prejudice. The fact that for one reason or another she and Mr. Chaudhuri had never hit it off should not, she realized, blind her to his remarkable qualities as a teacher.
Mr. Chaudhuri had held the Dibrapur appointment for not quite a year. His predecessor, old Miss de Silva, a Eurasian woman from Goa, had been dead for just a bit longer. With Mary de Silva’s death Miss Crane had lost the last person in the world who called her Edwina. On her first visit to Dibrapur as superintendent, seven years ago, the older woman—fat, white-haired, ponderous, and with a voice as dark and forthcoming as her extraordinary popping black eyes—had said, “You got the job I wanted. My name’s Mary de Silva. My mother was as black as your hat.”
“Mine’s Edwina Crane,” Miss Crane said,
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