The Impressionist (34 page)

As the horses thunder down the dusty opening straight, he knows he has been successful. Lily lowers her binoculars and glares directly at him. He raises his hat and stares back at her, taking no notice whatsoever of the race. For a while she stoically ignores him, but as Wicked Lady struggles home fourth, she seems to make up her mind to do something about the stealth bower. Jerking her head in the direction of the members’ bar, she skilfully divests herself of her beaux, who are waving their programmes and shouting at each other, momentarily distracted by the sport. Bobby follows her, his heart pounding with anticipation. Instead of entering the bar she leads him past the door and behind a large kitchen marquee. As soon as they are discreetly out of sight, she whirls round, her eyes fierce.

‘Right, you. What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

Bobby has memorized an opening speech concerning the blessed effulgence of the dawn and Lily’s likeness thereunto. Unwilling to be put off his stride by her angry expression, he launches in, addressing her as ‘Dear Heart’ and clasping his hands together in demonstration of sincerity.

‘Shut up!’ she barks. ‘I suppose you think I’m going to give you money?’

Bobby is nonplussed. ‘Money?’

‘Look. I know what you are. You may think you’re pretty good, but I can see through you. I know people in this town, and whatever you spread around, you won’t damage me.’

‘Damage you? Why would I damage you? I love you.’

Now it is her turn to look confused. ‘What on earth do you mean? Like I say, I know people, and you could wind up very seriously hurt –’

‘I do. I love you, Lily. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever –’

‘Don’t start with any of that rubbish. So we’re the same, you and me. So what? All that means is you know what I’ve had to do to get here. So you must know I won’t let you drag me back down. I’m not going back there. Why don’t you leave me alone? Turn round and go away.’

Bobby is really confused. Does she mean? She couldn’t – she couldn’t be. ‘But I love you,’ he says again. It seems like a safe starting point. At least he is sure of that much. Feeling there, is a space to be filled, he tries ‘I adore you’ for variation. Then ‘I really do’, which sounds somehow weak. Then he breaks off. Grabbing hold of one of the marquee guy ropes to support herself, Lily Parry is laughing like a drain.

‘Go on,’ she says in between giggles. ‘Say it again.’

‘I love you,’ repeats Bobby, suddenly diffident.

‘You love me? Oh darling, do you love me?’

Perhaps things are moving in his direction. Bobby opens his arms.

‘Just you stay over there, soldier. You love me? God, you poor thing. You poor little half-and-half. You don’t have a clue, do you?’

‘Yes, I do,’ protests Bobby unconvincingly. Half-and-half? Hang on. What does she mean by that?

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ she says, seeing his expression. ‘You’re very good. Very convincing. You can fool them’ – waving a hand in the direction of the members’ enclosure – ‘but I’m different.’ She fumbles in her bag for a cigarette, and lights it. ‘You really don’t know, do you? The very idea. You, coming for me. As if I had something to give you. It’s sweet, I suppose, but what are you after, yaar? Go on, you can tell me.’ She looks at him with an odd directness. As she talks, her voice, her clipped English accent that is so very like his own, has changed, slipping, thickening, warming. All the Northern ice and suet falling away.

‘Nothing,’ says Bobby, still trying to cling on to his script. ‘I’m not after anything at all.’

Instantly, her face slams closed. When she speaks, her perfect voice is in place again, and once more she is Lily Parry, the most celebrated young lady in Bombay.

‘Run away, little boy,’ she says. ‘Go on. Piss off and don’t come back. If I see you again, here or anywhere, I’ll tell them about you. They’ll put you in prison. No one likes niggers who play at being white men.’

For a moment he hesitates, fishing blindly for some phrase that will improve things. There is nothing. Dejected, shattered, he raises his hat to her, and walks away.

‘Hey!’

At the sound of her voice he turns around. ‘What is it?’

‘Don’t do that with your head. It’s a dead giveaway. The two cardinal rules are never to waggle your head, and never let them see you squatting on your heels. All right?’

Bobby nods in mute thanks and walks away, leaving beautiful Lily Parry smoking the last of her cigarette, smoking it right down to the butt.

As Bobby walks away from the racetrack, he tries to believe Lily Parry never existed. With each step he buries her a little further. He is determined; a hand pushing her face below the surface. The next day when Gulab Miah the porter asks about the lovely memsahib, Bobby rounds on him and swears he will cut his bastard throat if he mentions her again. Gulab Miah nods nervously, but thumbs his teeth at Bobby’s departing back. Later, at the toddy shop where he goes after work, Gulab tells his drinking buddies how Prince Pretty Baby has fallen down at last, and how he had always told the boy such a time would come, because God willed it.

Bobby is not thinking about God. He is thinking about Other Things. He badly needs money, so he goes to see Mrs Pereira. Sallow-faced Mabel lets him in, an undisguised look of pleasure on her face. Bustle, bustle. Hello Bobby how are you Bobby long time no see. Her mother is in the parlour, submerged in a sagging armchair doing violence to the dead skin on her feet. As he comes in, she leaves off picking and waves for him to sit down.

‘Well, looking very smart, I see. You’ve not been here for some time.’

‘No.’

‘Just that? Just no? Such a well-presented boy and not a shred of conversation? You aren’t very happy. Still, I can’t say I’m surprised.’

Mabel brings tea, rubbing up against Bobby’s leg like an oversized cat as she puts down the clinking tray. He shrinks away from her cotton-print rump, searching in his pocket for cigarettes.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re not the only one with eyes and ears in Bombay. It was always going to be this way. What were you thinking? She a rich English lady and you a street boy, even if she is – what is so funny?’

Bobby’s face is twisted into a bitter smirk. ‘Nothing, Amma, nothing. So, do you have any work for me?’

Mrs Pereira grunts, and, as Mabel pours the tea, starts to excavate something unwholesome out of her right heel. As she works she tells Bobby about Mr Dutta, a Theosophist who hopes desperately for a message from his dead brother. Something about the title deeds to a house. She doesn’t expect Bobby to find anything specific, just a little local colour to help her understand how the brother should appear in manifestation. Bobby copies down the address. Perhaps, he thinks, he even knows the man. Didn’t he see him talking once to Mrs Macfarlane? Before he leaves, Mrs P. shows off her new trick, a button concealed under the rug which triggers celestial music from a gramophone in the bedroom. It does not work perfectly yet. The needle tends to skip, but she is sure it will prove a big hit. Bobby says very nice, and tells her he will be back in a couple of days.

It is not an arduous job. When he returns, he is able to inform her that the brother died in Calcutta three years previously, and took with him the exact location of some land deeds which had been walled up in the old family mansion. It seems the documents are the key to Mr Dutta’s future financial happiness, and it is this, rather than filial love, which fuels his desire to make contact with the Other Side. There are a few other details, which Mabel carefully notes in Mr Dutta’s file. Her mother nods in silent satisfaction, scratching her chest with one hand and methodically cramming rice and dal into her mouth with the other. When she has finished eating, she rummages inside her dress, peels a few greasy banknotes off a thick wad and gives them to her visitor.

Unfortunately, as he is leaving the Pereiras’ chawl, Bobby runs straight into Mr Dutta himself. They do an awkward side-to-side dance in the narrow stairwell, each trying to get past the other. Dutta nods in confused recognition, obviously trying to place him. With the briefest of acknowledgements Bobby hurries on.

He thinks nothing of it until he is confronted, a day or two later, by Elspeth Macfarlane. She actually stands in his way as he propels himself through the parlour, his usual ruse to avoid a conversation.

‘I want to talk to you, Chandra.’

Bobby sighs and shuffles his feet. ‘Amma, I’m tired. I want to go and lie down.’

‘Look at me.’

He looks at her, and is worried by what he sees.

‘A friend of mine tells me you have been loitering around his house, talking to his servants.’

‘No –’

‘Chandra.’

‘So? I have too a friend there. The – the chowkidar.’

‘I see. And he says he saw you coming from Mrs Pereira’s apartment. I didn’t know you visited her without me. Look at me.’

He looks up again.

‘I went for a reading. I want to know my future.’

‘Why do I think you’re lying to me?’

‘I, lying? I’m not lying. Why should I lie to you?’

‘I don’t know, Chandra.’

‘I’m not lying.’

‘You make me so angry.’

‘I’m sorry, Ambaji.’

‘For what?’

Bobby says nothing. Mrs Macfarlane sits down heavily on a chair.

‘Are you sorry? What in your life actually makes you feel sorry? What are you sorry
about?’

‘I’m tired, Amma.’

‘You? At eight o’clock in the evening? You only get up at eleven.’

Bobby stares at his feet, listening to the street noise. After a while he realizes Mrs Macfarlane is crying.

‘Why are you like this, Chandra? I took you in. I helped you, and now look. Why are you like this? Mr Dutta thinks you’re spying on him. I had to tell him not to be stupid. Because you aren’t spying on him, are you? Are you,
Robert?
What do you do? What do you do all night?’

Her questions pour out one after the other, a dam bursting. Bobby is frozen. Only once before has he seen her cry.

‘Mr Dutta says you run errands for Mrs Pereira. He thinks you spy on him for her, and that you spy on all of us for the British and someone ought to get you. He says Mrs Pereira is a fraud and he will call the police. I told him not to be stupid because Mrs Pereira is a very great – she is very sensitive. And he says even if they don’t put you in prison and just let you go we’ll still know and you won’t be able to do your damage to the cause. Mrs Pereira has a gift, Chandra. You think she has a gift, don’t you. Don’t you?’

Now she has him. He should agree, but he cannot. He feels sorry for her, this woman with her dead sons, and for all the other people clutching at their dead across the void, with Mrs Pereira picking her feet in the middle.

‘Mrs Macfarlane, you should not go to Mrs Pereira any more. She is not a good –’

Before he can even finish his sentence she slaps him round the face.

‘Did you spy on me as well? Is that why you stay here, so you can spy?’

He cannot answer, tries to make ‘no’ come to his lips. She says, very quietly, ‘You can go now. Take your things and leave.’

‘Amma –’

‘Mrs Macfarlane?’

‘I’m not your Amma.’

‘Mrs Elspeth Macfarlane? Excuse me, Mrs Macfarlane?’

Behind them is an acutely embarrassed English police captain, flanked by two Indian constables. Elspeth turns round, astonished to find them there.

‘Mrs Macfarlane, I’m afraid you’re going to have to come with us. We have orders to place you in preventative detention under the terms of the Defence of India Act.’

Mrs Macfarlane is given time to collect some clothes, then led outside to a lorry. Three Indian detainees are already sitting in the back, looking silently at the large crowd which has gathered to watch the arrest. The mood is ugly, and Bobby sees the British Captain unclip the leather strap on his holster, freeing his revolver for quick use.

While his constables push onlookers away, the Captain helps Mrs Macfarlane climb up. He takes her bag and shows her to her place on the grimy wooden bench, his manner oddly obsequious, like a theatre usher who has suddenly found himself in uniform. All the time he keeps up an embarrassed flow of conversation, assuring her that nothing too awful will happen, that ft is only for forty-eight hours, that she has his personal assurance about something and his word of honour about something else. She ignores him, sitting ramrod-straight, fitting disordered strands of grey hair back into her bun.