Death to the Landlords

many rather fine bracelets, forgot her handbag, and sent Sushil Dastur scurrying off to fetch it. Her husband was to be heard deploring in English, presumably for the benefit of the foreigners, the economic policies of the Indian government, and the burdens under which business suffered, but he ended, as usual, with the shortcomings of labour. And even this subject came down, inevitably, from the general to the particular, for it seemed there was a letter which Sushil Dastur should have written and dispatched, and had not, and a valuable order might be jeopardised as a result.

‘If I do not supervise everything myself, nothing is ever done properly. Employees nowadays do not concentrate, they have no wish to work, only to pass the day and be paid. I was trained in the old school, hard I had to work, and by hard work I built up the business I have now.’

The Bessancourts spoke English reasonably well, a virtual necessity for other European tourists in India; and to judge by the conversation, they too had encountered the Manis previously in their travels, for the note of greeting was personal, even cordial. A familiar face in a strange land is a familiar face, and welcome, at least until you find yourself seeing altogether too much of it. Dominic could not imagine the Bessancourts and the Manis having much in common, or choosing to spend too much time together, but to have company over a meal is pleasant enough.

Madame Bessancourt was middle-aged, thick in the bust and thick in the hips, with a heavy, shrewd, sallow face and black hair, barely beginning to turn grey. She had achieved something remarkable in her solution of suitable dress for this trek. She had taken to the shalwar and kameez of the Punjabi women, in dark colours and amply cut for comfort, and astonishingly she looked completely at home in them, and almost Indian. The yellowish tint of her cheeks, her black eyes and black hair, the heavy body that belonged by rights in the unrelieved, noncommittal black of the patronne of some small hotel in Artois, nevertheless put on this alien dress with complete authority. Maybe there wasn’t really much difference between the French matron and the Indian matron, both masterful, practical and not to be taken lightly.

Her husband, on the other hand, had made no concessions. He was square and solid, with a balding head so uncompromisingly Alpine and a moustache so obviously French that any effort to conceal their origin must have failed from the start. So he wore suits exactly like those he would have worn at home, but made in lightweight cloths, and allowed himself an old Panama hat against the sun, and that was the extent of his special preparations.

‘What do you suppose they do?’ Patti wondered, watching them in fascination. ‘At home, I mean? You just haven’t a chance of guessing, have you? I suppose they could be retired, but they’re not so old, really.’

‘Heaven knows! Maybe a small factory somewhere – family business – and a son’s taken over,’ suggested Dominic, more or less seriously. Speculation is irresistible, and he had been wondering ever since he first set eyes on them. They bought that car in Bombay as soon as they landed, and God knows where they haven’t taken it by this time. They both drive – well, too. They stay in dak bungalows or railway retiring rooms, and do everything as cheaply as they can – though that may be French parsimony rather than lack of funds – but they don’t miss a thing. What they do, they do, a hundred and five per cent’

‘Perhaps,’ Lakshman suggested, ‘they won some big lottery prize, and this was a dream – and now they take possession of their dream.’

‘Yes, but even so,’ persisted Patti, still enchanted by Madame Bessancourt’s ambivalent, Indian-French solidity, self-possession and repose, ‘why India?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Larry pointedly, watching her sombrely across the table, ‘why India? Why in your case, for instance?’

‘Me? Oh, I finished school two years ago, and didn’t want to go on to a university – not yet, and anyhow,’I’m not clever, I might have had trouble getting a place – and I was stuck full of youthful idealism and all the current jazz, and I thought India was just the groovy place, the place that had the answers. You know how it was! Maybe it isn’t any more, I’ve been here two years.’ She bit into the dimpled green skin of an orange, and began to peel it, frowning down at her fingers, which were thin, blunt-nailed and not particularly well-kept; even gnawed a little, Dominic noticed, alongside the nail on both forefingers. She had a nervous trick with her eyelids, too, a rapid, fluttering blink, but perhaps that was simply out of embarrassment, because all attention was now centred upon her. ‘So I thought I’d volunteer to come out here and teach for a couple of years before I went to college, and though I’d missed the regular Voluntary Service Overseas draft – and anyhow, they might not have considered me the right type – I got this job in Bengal through one of Dad’s business friends who had connections over here. Just an ordinary school that used to be a mission school, and there was teaching in English as well as Bengali, and I had to help all the classes with their English.’

‘Did you learn any Bengali?’ Dominic asked with interest.

She looked up at him quickly. Her eyes were really an extraordinary colour, pale yet very bright, like a slightly troubled sea over sunlit sand. ‘Some. I can get by, but I couldn’t conduct a real conversation. Oh, it’s been fine in its way, I’m not complaining. Only I came here thinking this was where the low living and high thinking was, and the way to understanding, and India was going to show me what was wrong with all the rest of us. And what do you know? – here they are, almost the most quarrelsome race I’ve ever struck, almost the most corrupt, and all the high thinking is just talk, talk, talk, and the government is as mixed-up and inhibited and old and tired as any of ours, and I can’t see any end to it – or even any beginning of getting out of the mess. But maybe it’s me,’ she said disarmingly, and smiled up suddenly at Priya, and at Lakshman. ‘Don’t get me wrong! The best here are the best – the best you’re going to find anywhere on earth. But as for the system – did we really ever expect so much of it?’ She tilted her head, looking from Larry to Dominic, for plainly they were in this, too. ‘I’m on my finishing leave now, I get two months paid, and I’m still travelling hopefully. But where to, God knows! How have you managed?’

Dominic waited for Larry to speak, and he didn’t; for some reason Patti had shaken him, and his brooding face was the only thing about him that was going to be eloquent just yet. So Dominic filled the gap.

‘I was lucky. Every time I hear anyone else talk about India I realise it. I got pitched in here on a special job, without any time to have preconceived ideas, and everything about the job came unstuck, and I was left living off the country. When there’s a real crisis you find out who amounts to anything, and who doesn’t. That’s when I met the man I’m working for now – the Swami Premanathanand. You couldn’t very well be any luckier than that, whatever the hole you’re in. No, India didn’t let me down. That’s why I came back. But to work, not to meditate.’ He was aware that that might sound a trifle superior, but that was something he couldn’t help. ‘That’s the way it hit me, and I got hooked accordingly. And I’ve said I was lucky.’

‘But where are they going?’ persisted Patti fretfully. ‘I can’t see any future.’

‘I haven’t looked, I’ve been too busy with the present.’

‘But what do you actually do, then?’ she asked doubtfully.