patient, his ears straining for a sound. His heart was beating rapidly. He thought , he could hear voices beyond the door, but the sound faded and he could not be sure he had heard anything at all. And yet he ‘ imagined that, beneath the silence, there was something else.
There was nothing behind the door but a narrow, wood-panelled passageway, a dark tunnel lit by a single bulb. At the end of the passageway was a second door, identical to the first. He advanced cautiously, feeling cramped by the dark walls on either side A floorboard cracked and he stood still for what seemed an age.
A sound of scraping came from behind the door, a steady,
rhythmic sound, muffled and indefinable. Scrape-scrape. Then a brief pause. Scrape-scrape. Another pause. Scrape-scrape. A pause.
And so it went on.
Christopher hesitated, listening, trying to work out what the sound could be.
Scrape-scrape. Pause. Scrape-scrape.
Set into the door at eye height was a small shutter with a knob, about six inches long by three high. It reminded Christopher of the shutters on prison doors. He thought perhaps the room must be the girls’ sick bay, a place where fevers could be isolated or heartaches given room to heal. The monk Tsewong would have been kept here.
Scrape-scrape. The noise came more loudly now.
Christopher put his hand to the knob and drew back the shutter.
Through a small glass pane, part of the room came into view. The walls and floor were powdered with light and dust. Through a ‘ I skylight of marbled glass, sunlight filtered, effortless and slow, into the tiny room. Christopher stepped closer to the glass and put his eye to the aperture.
Immediately opposite, his back turned to Christopher, John
Carpenter sat hunched over a low fire. In one hand, he held a long poker which he was dragging mechanically across the top of the grate. It was this that was making the scraping noise. The fire seemed old, a thing of cinders mostly, its few coals grey and smouldering. Here and there, flashes of red struggled for life in the ashes, but the weight of all that greyness about them was too great, and they fell deeper and deeper into oblivion. Carpenter moved the poker in and out of the ashes listlessly, raising from time to time a solitary spark that rose briefly above the cinders and was gone.
But it was not Carpenter that drew Christopher’s eyes. Carpenter was peripheral, a side-show to what was happening in the centre of the room. Two people stood there, a man and a girl, a living tableau caught in the angry sunlight. The man was an Indian, but he wore a Savile Row suit and leaned on a silverheaded cane. He was a man of perhaps fifty, small and round and soft. He looked as though someone had taken him off and polished him like an old spoon in an antique shop, all gleaming and mellow and filled with curious reflections. His eyes were on the girl, watching her with a wild intensity that held him captive.
The girl was naked. A white shift lay on the floor where she had discarded it. Long black hair fell across her shoulders and gently touched the edges of small, shadowed breasts. She was perhaps fifteen or sixteen. Her eyes were shut, as though she were trying to dream the room away, but Carpenter’s little nightmare was all about her, sweet and tight and inescapable.
The man reached out a hand to touch her lightly, running soft fingers along her skin, sweeping them against the soft hairs of her forearms. Then he made her turn. Round and round he made her turn, like a dancer, like a tiny mechanical dancer spinning on top of a music-box, to the sound of an old melody. He made her raise her arms above her head and lower them again, watched her breasts rise and fall, admired the smooth line of her throat as she held her head back. There was no sound but the scraping of the poker in the grate. Finally, that too stopped and there was silence.
The naked girl turned to music she alone could hear, lost in gardens of amazing symmetry, from which there was no escape.
She was the dancer at the edge of the dance, alone and silently turning in a dream.
Christopher opened the door. No-one noticed him enter. Carpenter was lost in contemplation of the embers in the fireplace, the Nawab’s attention was all on the girl, and the girl was in a trance.
He stood for a long time watching them, waiting for their ritual to end. It was the Nawab who noticed him first, out of the corner of his eye. The little man turned, a look of incredible fury on his face.
“I say! What do you mean bursting in here like this? Who the hell do you think you are? By Jove, I’ll have you flogged if you don’t leave at once!”
The Nawab had been to Eton and Oxford, where he had studied how to be an Oriental gentleman. Eton had taught him English manners and Oxford how to row. He had taught himself how to treat anyone who was not a Nawab or a Viceroy.
“I would like to speak to the Reverend Carpenter,” said Christopher.
“The matter doesn’t concern you, so you can just get out.
Before I throw you out.”
“Do you know who you are speaking to? I can have you horsewhipped for this insolence!”
“You aren’t in a position to argue,” Christopher snapped. He pointed the revolver at the Nawab.
“And I don’t have time. I’ll shoot you if I have to. It’s entirely up to you.”
The man spluttered and lifted his cane as if to strike Christopher, but he was not fool enough to do it. Still expostulating to himself, he made for the door. As he was leaving, he turned.
“My chaps downstairs will put you in your place. You’ll be sorry you were ever born when they’re through with you. By God, I’ll see you’re sorry!”
Christopher slammed the door in his face. He glanced at Carpenter, who had remained seated in front of the fire, then picked the girl’s shift from the floor. She was standing absolutely still, her eyes watching him, wondering what was going to happen next.
“Put this on,” he said, holding it out to her.
She took it from him, but remained holding it, as though uncertain what to do.
“Put it on,” he repeated.
She remained unmoving, so he took the shift and pulled it over her head, helping her slip her arms through the sleeves.
“You have to leave,” he said.
“Get away from here. You mustn’t stay here, do you understand?”
She looked at him, uncomprehending. He had to make her understand.
“You’ll only come to harm here,” he insisted.
“You must go away.”
As though he had not spoken, she began to turn, just as she had turned before, raising and lowering her arms. Christopher snatched at her and slapped her face, trying to bring her to her senses. She looked at him as though nothing had happened.
“Don’t you understand?” he shouted.
“This is no place for you.
You must leave!”
“Leave?” she said. Her voice quavered.
“Where can I go?” she asked.
“This is my home. There is nowhere else to go. Nowhere.”
“It doesn’t matter where you go,” he said.
“Just as long as you get away from this place.”
She looked at him with blank eyes.
“It matters,” she said almost inaudibly.
“Leave her, Wylam. She understands it all better than you ever will.” Carpenter had got up from his seat in front of the fire. He came across to the girl and put an arm round her shoulders. They walked together to the door, the missionary and his charge, while he talked to her in a low voice, inaudible to Christopher.
Carpenter opened the door, said something further to the girl, and let her out. He watched her walk away down the narrow passage, then closed the door and turned to face Christopher.
“Tell me, Mr. Wylam,” he said.
“Do you believe in God?”
