Let Me Alone (30 page)

A servant came in with a tray.

‘I’m afraid you will find my arrangements rather primitive,’ said Jonsen. ‘The crockery has nearly all been broken. I have lived here alone for so long.’

He set one of the cane chairs for Anna. It looked dusty and the seat was broken, there were sharp ends of cane sticking up. She was afraid of spoiling her dress. But she sat down and poured herself a cup of tea from the hideous enamel teapot. Her cup was chipped and ugly. The men sat facing her with their whiskies and sodas. They would not drink tea. A tin of biscuits was on the table. Anna took one, but it tasted musty and rather unpleasant. There was nothing else to eat. Matthew seemed quite at home.

‘It’s good to be back,’ he said.

She looked at him with grey, astonished, doubtful eyes. She did not know what to think.

‘Don’t you like it?’ he asked, smiling.

‘It seems very extraordinary,’ she said. She really could not think of any other comment.

Jonsen continued to look her up and down with surreptitious amazement. He had small, twinkling eyes in a puffy, reddish face, and was a man of about fifty – but with a simple, almost childish expression. The good-humoured simplicity seemed a little deceptive, though. There was a suspicion of malice somewhere about him.

‘I expect you will find it strange at first,’ he said to Anna. ‘When you get used to the life you will like it.’

But she felt sure he was thinking she would
not
like it, and was taking a malicious pleasure in the prospect of her discomfiture.

Matthew began to ask questions about the work. The two men drew their chairs to the table and embarked on a technical conversation, making notes on the backs of crumpled papers. Anna was left alone with the dregs of her tea. She sat motionless, thoughtless, feeling dazed. The room grew darker.

Presently a servant brought in a lamp. It was an old-fashioned oil-lamp with an ugly, white, mushroom-shaped shade. He placed it on the table beside Matthew’s arm. The boring drone of conversation went on. Crowds of insects began to circle round the lamp, the table was soon strewn with an irregular circle of singed corpses. No one took any notice of Anna.

At last Matthew pushed back his chair.

‘We’ve been neglecting you,’ he said, smirking at her with his curious imitation gallantry that took no heed of her at all, really.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said stiffly.

‘There is so much to discuss,’ said Jonsen, apologetic. ‘And so little time before I leave.’

She could feel the prick of malice underneath his apology. He resented her youth, her assurance, her attractiveness. He was glad that she should be neglected. He wanted her to be taken down a peg. Anna eyed him distastefully.

‘Shall we go along to the club?’ said Jonsen. ‘It’s getting rather late.’ He gathered the papers into an untidy pile, and stood up. Matthew, too, seemed ready to make a move.

‘I had better go upstairs and tidy myself,’ said Anna.

‘You’re quite all right as you are,’ said Matthew. ‘Quite smart enough for Naunggyi.’

Which she felt was even more than the truth. She shivered a little. She went towards the doorway.

‘I should like to go upstairs, all the same,’ she said, coldly asserting herself against the two males.

So up they all clattered, up the bare wooden stairs to the floor above.

The upper floor of the house was simply divided into three large rooms – the middle one, into which the stairs directly led, and one opening out of it on each side. Here also was an absence of doors. Instead, there were in the middle of each doorway two small wooden panels, like flaps, arranged with some sort of a spring, to spring back into place after one had pushed through. Above and below the flaps was a foot or two of vacancy. Anna looked at this arrangement in amazement.

‘Why are there no doors?’ she asked, rather dismayed.

‘Too hot,’ said Jonsen laconically. His small eyes twinkled in the lamplight. Matthew looked on, smiling blankly.

Anna took the lamp and went away from them, into the room which would be hers. It was a biggish room with a wooden floor and whitewashed walls and long windows opening on to a little veranda. There was a tall cupboard in one corner and a brown wooden bed under a mosquito-net in the middle of the room – a single bed she was glad to see. The white mosquito-net was turned up to form a sort of canopy over the wooden poles, giving the bed an incongruous old-world look. The bathroom was a separate closet-place at the end.

It was not such a bad room – barn-like and bare, to be sure: but it had possibilities. With curtains and so on, it could be made habitable. But no privacy, not the least in the world. Anna looked askance at the spring-flaps of doors.

She unlocked her dressing-bag and took out soap, powder, and a hair-brush. Then she went into the bathroom. Here was a tin tub on the floor, a huge earthenware jar full of water, and a shelf with a basin and a tin dipper.

She looked round. There was nothing to do but dip some water out of the jar. It looked muddy in the basin and had a stale smell. It was cold, dead cold, but she washed her hands and face and dried herself with handkerchiefs. There was no towel.

When she got downstairs the men were waiting for her. Matthew looked impatient. He was all eagerness to get to the club. Anna wondered what sort of place it could be to arouse such impatience.

They were now all ready to start. They boarded the Ford car once more, Anna seated next to Jonsen this time as a compliment, Matthew in the back. It was quite dark, with a sky flashing full of stars. The air was fresh, if not exactly chilly.

And so, with two uncertain tentacles of light, the car went jolting and rattling along the pale road which wound in and out of the darkness of the great trees. In a strange darkness like the end of the world they clattered, noisily, and without background, Jonsen crouched forward over the wheel and peering out at the dim road ahead.

Anna sat still beside him. There was an odd, bitter smell of burning in the air, pungent but not disagreeable, almost like incense burning. They cut through long wraiths of smoke which trailed motionless over the ground. Anna discerned only trees and some biggish, scattered houses.

‘Where is the village?’ she asked.

‘Over there.’ Jonsen made a vague gesture in the night. ‘This is our quarter, on this side of the river.’

‘Do the English people live quite apart then?’ she asked, surprised.

‘Oh, yes. Quite separate. One hardly ever goes near the bazaar.’

She cogitated in silence. It was all extraordinary and incomprehensible to her. She did not understand how she had come to be there. It was like a delirium. There were creepers hanging overhead, and huge tree-boles with pale roots writhing into the road. Mysterious little flames flickered sometimes. It was dark, the landscape was quite invisible. The sky sparkled above.

‘How strange it seems,’ she said to Jonsen. ‘I wish I could see the country.’

‘You will see enough of it before you’ve finished,’ he replied, as if joking, but with a nasty intonation.

She wondered at his churlishness.

The car swerved suddenly, throwing her off her balance. They had taken a sharp turn to the right, over some open ground.

A building appeared with lights.

‘There is the club,’ said Jonsen.

The road was better here, and wider. It ended suddenly in front of a quite pretentious-looking entrance. There was a veranda and people moving about.

‘Here we are, then,’ said Jonsen, turning off the engine.

He climbed out. Anna struggled with the stiff, tinny little door of the car. Finally she got it open, and descended. They all went up the steps of the club, with a scraping of feet on the bare boards. And then suddenly they were inside. Someone came up and spoke to Jonsen.

‘Mr. and Mrs. Kavan.’ Anna found herself being introduced to some men dressed in flannels or khaki. There were no women in the room. Everyone stared. There was a great deal of tobacco smoke.

She said ‘How do you do’ vaguely in the direction of the staring faces. After the darkness outside the bright flare of petrol lamps was dazzling. There was a little storm of talk. Anna was aware of several things: that Jonsen was unpopular; that there was a tendency to look with disfavour upon his successor; that Matthew was extremely anxious to ingratiate himself; that she herself was an object of intense, almost inflamed attention. All these things she noted half-consciously as she stood beside Matthew, smiling mechanically.

Jonsen was looking round uneasily. The position of host sat awkwardly upon him. Anna sensed that in some way she was the chief cause of his uneasiness. He did not seem to know what to do with her. She felt herself out of place, but did not know what to do.

‘How do you do! You are Mrs. Kavan?’ came a cheerful feminine voice. Everyone turned to look at a pretty,
smiling, slightly-faded young woman who stood in the dark rectangle of the door way.

‘Mrs. Barry,’ introduced Jonsen, with relief. He had got Anna off his hands.

‘Come and be introduced to the rest of us,’ said Mrs. Barry.

Anna went with her along the veranda. They came to a sort of room, like a widening of the veranda, with three walls and a roof, but one side completely open to the night. You could hardly call it a room. In the centre was a table with papers spread out, there were some smaller tables round the walls and a number of wicker chairs. Four women in light dresses were playing cards under the lamp, three others were sitting on the other side of the room. It was like a scene in a play.

‘Here is Mrs. Kavan,’ said young Mrs. Barry, leading Anna to the card table. She introduced Anna to each in turn. The players stared, but were very affable. Anna was led across the room and introduced to the other three. A little stiffness here, she detected. Then back she was shepherded to the original group. The game of cards was abandoned. The women sat round and smiled and talked, watching her furtively with extreme curiosity, and something of the astonishment she had divined in Jonsen. She felt she was making a sensation.

There seemed to be an atmosphere of suspense in the room. As if they were deliberately waiting for some given signal before forming any opinion of Anna. Sure enough, someone said:

‘Mrs. Grove is very late to-night.’

And almost immediately there appeared a tallish, middle-aged, imposing-looking woman of the thin, black-haired, aquiline type, with an affected voice and a white,
bony, tight-drawn death’s-head of a face which yet contrived to be fairly handsome. Mrs. Grove was the wife of the district commissioner, and the leading lady of Naunggyi.

‘How do you like the thought of living here?’ asked Mrs. Grove, with a cool, sardonic look, rather insolent.

‘I can’t believe yet that I
am
going to live here,’ said Anna.

Mrs. Grove smiled to herself, and twisted the end of her Batik scarf. She dressed very much better than the other women. And she continued to smile at Anna in her haughty
de-haut-en-bas
manner and to ask her questions, with the rest of the room as admiring and respectful audience. Anna got rather tired of it. But she answered as well as she could, and tried to look pleasant.

She felt hopelessly lost. What was she doing amongst these established, respectable British matrons? She couldn’t imagine what to say to them.

And presently a silence fell. The three women across the room-they were missionaries and formed a little clique of their own, quite apart from the others – stared, and whispered together. Mrs. Grove stared, twisting her scarf. Everyone stared. Anna felt as though she were some strange animal. And she knew that the weight of feminine opinion had swung over against her. She had made a bad impression in some way. She didn’t know how it had happened, what she had done wrong. She had started with the best intentions, she hadn’t wanted to antagonize them. It was simply that she didn’t know how to behave before them.

But she didn’t care. She was dazed with bewilderment and weariness. And she was hungry. It seemed an eternity since she had eaten anything. Would it never be
time to go? She looked round, cold and despairing, at the whispering missionaries and the out-of-date copies of
The Lady
on the middle table, at the sinister, languid-voiced Mrs. Grove plucking at her scarf. She shuddered, and felt her heart coldly sinking. The petrol-lamp burned with a faint hissing noise. The room was dreary, dreary. The pale, staring, hostile faces of the women encircled her. She wondered vaguely what had become of all the men.

At last Matthew appeared – it was time to go away. They drove off again in the dark. And at last Anna could get something to eat.

Jonsen led the way to the dining-room – then came Matthew, still talking to him – then Anna. The men had not even washed their hands. Their heavy boots made a clatter in the silent house.

The dining-room was decidedly chilly. It had the peculiar stuffy chill of a room which has been kept shut up for a long time. And there was a pervasive, indescribable smell which seemed to emanate from the heavy furniture, a stale, sweetish and yet acrid smell, very indefinite, but marked, with a slight vinegarish flavour, something like the smell of the inside of an old wine barrel. The furniture was of dark wood, quite well-made, but heavy and clumsy-looking.

‘I hope you are fond of curry,’ Jonsen said. He twinkled at Anna across the table which was covered with a coarse cloth, clean, but with the look of having been rough-dried, without ironing. The plates and cutlery were old and of the cheapest description. Nothing matched.

The room was gloomy and close. Anna felt more and more depressed. But she took up her thick, yellowish fork, and ate the rice and the extraordinary brown mess of meat, burning hot and swimming in an oily sea of unknown
ingredients, that was set before her. She was depressed: but the curry was good although it burned her mouth sharply. She got it down and began to feel better. Only there was the stale, unpleasant smell in the room, rather sickly. Matthew sat at the end of the table, and ate in quick, large mouthfuls.

The servant came in with an elaborate sweet-dish, a sort of shape, ornamented with pink and white sugar. This was for Anna. The cook had made it specially as a compliment to her, because women were supposed to like sweet things. Neither of the men would touch it. But Anna took some out of consideration for the cook’s feelings, and ate as much as she could.