Black Narcissus Read online

  ‘Ladies!’ cried Ayah, her eyes snapping with delight. ‘That will be like old times.’

  ‘It won’t be in the least like old times,’ said the General coldly. ‘They’re not that kind of lady at all. These are Church ladies.’

  ‘Oh! a mission, you mean,’ she said, disappointed. ‘That won’t be any fun.’

  ‘They’re not coming for fun. These are nuns. You know what a nun is? They wear long dresses and veils and a kind of a bandage round their chins.’

  ‘Why do they do that?’ asked Ayah.

  ‘How do I know?’

  ‘I’ve seen a bride in a veil,’ said Ayah, trying to irritate him, ‘and a hospital nurse. Are these ladies married?’

  ‘Does it matter if they are or not?’ cried the General. ‘You have seen a nun, so don’t pretend you haven’t. These belong,’ he looked at the letter, ‘to the Or-der of the Ser-vants of Mary. I have given them the Palace to make a school and a hospital for the people.’

  ‘You know they don’t want a school,’ said Ayah, ‘and I’m sure they don’t want a hospital. They’ve never had one before.’

  ‘How do they know what they want till they try?’ said the General tartly. Mr Dean had said the same thing.

  ‘They have all kinds of diseases,’ he had pointed out to Mr Dean, ‘they have ringworm.’

  ‘They don’t mind having ringworm.’

  ‘Tsst tsst,’ said the General. ‘They ought to mind. They are going to have a school and a hospital whether they like it or not. The Brothers failed me and I don’t understand why that was, so this time I am going to try ladies. I am not in the least old-fashioned and have no objection to women. Perhaps they will make a nice school and a nice hospital where the Brothers did not. They shall be free to all and the people shall all attend them every day.’

  ‘They were free last time,’ said Ayah, ‘and no one came. This time you’d better pay them to go.’

  The General looked thoughtful. He had known Ayah since he was a boy and, though she was blasphemous and alcoholic, she was quite sensible.

  ‘Two of the ladies are coming the day after to-morrow to inspect. They will sleep the night at the Palace and you must get everything ready. I shan’t be here myself, but Mr Dean will take my place. You will get plenty of hot water and tea.’

  ‘What are they to eat?’ asked Ayah sulkily. ‘How do I know what ladies like to eat?’

  ‘I have remembered that,’ said the General with a smile, taking up a tin. ‘Sausages. They will eat sausages when they come and before they go. Mr Dean’s cook shall cook them as I’m taking Antony with me.’

  ‘It would be more polite to leave him behind,’ said Ayah, taking the tin.

  ‘Now remember, if you give any trouble, you’ll be sorry.’

  ‘I’m sorry now,’ said Ayah, flouncing to the door. ‘I’m sorry for you. I didn’t think you’d be so silly.’

  Mr Dean had a note from the General:

  Please receive 2 Sister Ladies, Sister Clodagh and Sister Laura from the Order of the Servants of Mary. Don’t receive them now as they are coming to-morrow but I am writing this at once as I am going away. Please make them At Home and show them the Palace, where they will make us a school and a hospital, at least I hope so.

  ‘A convent almost next door!’ said Mr Dean, when he went to speak to Ayah.

  ‘A convent in the very house. How would you like that?’ said she.

  He looked at the terrace and thought of the orchard where the hard little apples were on the trees, and at the deep roof and the salon with its French blue and gilt, as if he were seeing them for the last time.

  ‘How will you like that?’ he asked.

  ‘Perhaps they won’t stay either,’ said Ayah, and she and Mr Dean looked at one another.

  4

  Sister Clodagh had been warned about Mr Dean before she met him. She was warned by Father Roberts before she left Darjeeling on her first visit of inspection.

  ‘He has a very bad reputation,’ said Father Roberts. ‘I don’t believe all I hear, but I believe he’s really a very objectionable fellow.’ He was in bed with lumbago and groaned as he pulled his pillow more comfortably down. ‘He’s said to have gone native; lives like one and they say he drinks and is – ouch – bad with women.’

  ‘Let me help you,’ said Sister Clodagh, firmly and sweetly, and pressed up the pillows just as he had got them really comfortable. ‘I don’t suppose we will see Mr Dean,’ she said as she helped him to lie back.

  ‘Unfortunately you may have to. Thank you,’ said Father Roberts bitterly. ‘He acts for the General, who is often away. It worries me that I can’t go with you as I meant to. I couldn’t get on a pony to save my life.’

  ‘I don’t think you need worry. I have Sister Laura with me and we are not afraid.’

  ‘Yes, but you don’t understand,’ he said crossly. ‘You are going into primitive country, almost completely isolated, among people such as you’ve never met before. We can’t get to you in under two days; it isn’t even on the route that the trekkers take.’

  ‘We shall be very careful.’

  ‘It won’t matter how careful you are,’ he burst out. ‘You’ve never had to deal with conditions like this.’

  ‘Tell us about it, Father,’ she said to soothe him. ‘You have seen the house?’

  ‘It’s a Palace,’ he said. ‘They call it a Palace, but it’s a funny place. I don’t know. I didn’t know whether to recommend it or not, and that’s a fact; and usually I know my own mind. You needed somewhere so badly and it’s a generous gift; there’s all the money to go with it. I gave a lot of thought to it, but I don’t know. It feels,’ he said slowly, ‘like the edge of the world; far more remote than it actually is, perhaps because it looks at such immensity. And the wind! It’s very pure and healthy, of course, but – If you don’t like it, Sister, you must say so. Don’t be tempted by it if you think it’s too lonely and too strange. I shouldn’t like to think my recommendation had influenced you –’ He broke off and twisted his rug into a crumple again. ‘Of course you’ll be on British Territory and that’s something.’

  ‘But will we? I thought it was ceded to the General. In his letter he said “my land”.’

  ‘It isn’t his. Government have allowed him to lease it,’ said Father Roberts firmly. ‘Anything else is nonsense. We allow every Tom, Dick and Harry to come over to us and settle and the State won’t even grant permits for us to go in, except in rare cases. I believe their side of the passes are picketed and on ours there’s not even a policeman. That’s what worries me. You’re completely dependent on the General. It’s lonely and strange, and there’s that man Dean – and there isn’t a single policeman.’

  ‘I think we shall be able to protect ourselves against Mr Dean without a policeman,’ said Sister Clodagh with a smile.

  ‘That wasn’t what I meant at all,’ cried Father Roberts. She had made him red with anger. ‘Well, if you won’t be told, you must find out for yourself. Remember you’re not infallible, that’s all. The Brothers didn’t stay, though I haven’t been able to find out why. You may find out in a way you don’t like.’

  When they had ridden down the path to the Agent’s bungalow, Mr Dean was sitting on his verandah drinking beer, and on the verandah with him were his dogs, Tibetan mastiffs, his cockatoos, a mongoose, three cats and a hooluk monkey, but no sign of any woman. Sister Clodagh was annoyed that she found it hard to keep her eyes to herself; immediately she noticed that he wore no socks or stockings, but native chapli shoes, and that his shirt was outside his shorts, and he had on, in the house, a huge battered felt hat with feathers round the band. She was glad that she had said nothing to Sister Laura, who was innocently staring.

  He did not get up at once, but looked at them over his tankard as if he were very reluctant to meet them. Then he came to them, putting out his hand, the other still holding his tankard of beer.

  She looked at his hat and the beer and said in her clear decisive
voice: ‘You must be Mr Dean.’

  ‘I must,’ he said sadly. She darted a glance at him to see if he were laughing, but he was helping her down from her pony carefully and seriously.

  ‘Can you manage?’ he asked Sister Laura, who was clumsily sliding from her saddle.

  Sister Clodagh said: ‘The Sister’s not used to riding.’

  ‘So I see,’ said Mr Dean, and helped her into a chair. ‘Excuse old Feltie. I hadn’t a hand to take him off.’ He took off his hat. He was so exactly as she had imagined – no, certainly not imagined – expected, that it was ridiculous. Blue eyes, beautiful but with heavy pouches under them, chestnut dark hair, a charming dissipated face – all the trite phrases fitted him; but it was a shock to find that his skin, and there was much of it to be seen, for his shirt was in tatters, was brown and smooth, wonderfully healthy-looking; and his lips were red, almost scarlet, which gave him the berry-stained look of the Irish children she used to play with long ago.

  That was when the thought of Ireland first came to her, jerked into her mind by Mr Dean. Long ago she had been a little girl in Liniskelly, where the children were brown and free and had lips of strawberry red like Mr Dean. There had been a boy on the lake shore, a little older than she, who had shown her how his toe-nails turned white under water. Suddenly, clearly, she saw the brown feet that looked green-white in the water and as if they did not quite join the legs above them. She felt his sandy hand holding hers.

  She knew she was tired or she would not be thinking like this. Sister Laura was talking to Mr Dean; their voices came to her in a dream, not as clearly as the voices on the shore.

  Sister Laura had waited for the Sister to speak, and seeing her leaning back in her chair with her eyes closed, thought that she was tired. ‘What curious feathers,’ she said with an effort to Mr Dean, looking at his hat. ‘I never saw such a collection. Are they all from birds you’ve shot yourself?’

  ‘I don’t shoot birds,’ he said. ‘These are feathers I pick up as the birds drop them down.’ With his finger he touched one and said: ‘That was from the throat of a golden oriole.’

  ‘Not really?’ cried Sister Laura.

  ‘No, not really. We don’t have orioles here. It was from the General’s canary, but I thought it would please you more if I said it was from an oriole.’

  ‘Well!’ fluttered Sister Laura in confusion, and appealed to Sister Clodagh. ‘Did you hear that, Sister? Did you hear what he told me when he knew it wasn’t true?’ There was a puzzled appeal in her voice; her face was like a peony in her wimple. Sister Clodagh came to her rescue.

  ‘Do you shoot much here?’ she asked, but her voice was frosty.

  He seemed amused and smiled. ‘No. When you’ve shot everything,’ he said with his eyes on her, ‘it palls, doesn’t it?’

  There was nothing in that. Or was there? It was the way he said it; it sounded insolent. For the first time she felt a little uncertain, but now he was asking her gently: ‘There’s tea – and beer. What will you have?’

  ‘Some water, please.’ They would take nothing else from him, only some water before they arranged their business and left him.

  ‘A cup of cold water?’ said Mr Dean and went into the house to order it. In her nervousness, Sister Laura gave a loud giggle and then sat looking at her feet, avoiding Sister Clodagh’s eye.

  ‘We have come to see you on business,’ began Sister Clodagh, with a tumbler of cold greenish water in her hand.

  ‘Well, I didn’t think you’d come to see me on anything else.’

  Sister Laura’s tumbler clinked sharply against her teeth. Sister Clodagh sat up rigidly in her chair; then he said quickly: ‘I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair when you’re tired. Cool yourselves down with the water, and then I’ve ordered some tea to brace you up. Then we can discuss the business before I take you up to the Palace. It’s a short ride from here. You know, I’m afraid you’ll be stiff to-morrow. I don’t suppose you’ve done much riding lately, have you? Have you any Epsom’s? That’s the stuff. Sit in your bath with Epsom’s; it helps a lot.’

  Sister Laura gave another bitten-off laugh and he looked at her in surprise. He turned to his monkey scratching its ears.

  They had taken off the topees they wore over their veils, that gave them the look of the pilgrim women in Gothic tales. Sister Clodagh rested her head against her chair. The verandah was shaded from the sun, but outside the trees and the bushes were bright; the colours of the cockatoos were brilliant against the sky, the dogs scratched and the monkey ran, rattling his chain along his pole.

  ‘Couldn’t he be loose?’

  ‘He could, and run and bite you to the bone. He’s cross, poor little devil. He’s full of fleas.’

  ‘Are the fleas bad here in the rains? We were told they were.’

  ‘In the rains and out of the rains. They’re worst in spring. I see,’ he said, ‘you’ve been making some intimate inquiries.’

  A servant, as smart as Mr Dean was shabby, brought the tray. He made the tea in front of them; there was lemon and lump sugar and cream.

  ‘Look, Sister. Lump sugar and cream!’ said Sister Laura, and to Mr Dean she explained: ‘We haven’t seen it since we left England. It’s a treat that you are giving us, Mr Dean.’

  She caught Sister Clodagh’s eye and subsided.

  ‘Lump sugar a treat,’ he said almost to himself. ‘Of course, they make children of you, don’t they?’

  ‘Sister Laura meant that it made us think of home,’ said Sister Clodagh, whose quick ear had caught what he said. She put her cup down. ‘Thank you, that was a very excellent cup of tea. Now, if you’ve finished – You know that the General Toda Rai has offered us this Palace to make a new foundation of our Order here. It’s very generous of the General.’

  Why ‘generous of the General’? It sounded like a silly song. She corrected it. ‘It was generous of him. We very much appreciate it.’

  ‘Yes, you’ll like the General, Sister Clodagh.’ His eyes flicked over her and he half shut them as if he were doing a caricature of her. ‘You’ll like the General. He also is a superior being.’

  Sister Laura gave a gasp, but Sister Clodagh answered him steadily and said: ‘I don’t know why you’re being so rude to me, Mr Dean. I have to talk business with you whether I like it or not.’

  ‘Talk it then, but don’t teach it me,’ he said like a sulky boy. Sister Laura thought Sister Clodagh was nonplussed. Why did he speak so rudely to her? Sister Laura could not have said herself why she so often made one angry; of course Mr Dean was behaving in an unspeakable way, but perhaps there was something in her voice –

  Now Sister Clodagh was saying: ‘Perhaps you will show us the way to the house and put us in touch with the servants.’

  ‘How will you get into touch with them? None of them, except the old caretaker, speak Hindustani or English, and she won’t help you much.’

  ‘We’re going to learn their dialect. I hope by the time we come here, if we do, that some of us will be able to speak it a little. For the present we have an interpreter.’

  ‘That man?’ he asked, pointing to Father Roberts’s clerk. ‘You oughtn’t to be with him. I know him. He’s a thoroughly bad man.’

  ‘Father Roberts must know him too and he sent him with us,’ she said in rebuke.

  ‘Is he a convert? Well in that case I quite understand that you must give him a lot of rope before you hang him.’

  ‘While you are with us’ – her words were sharp and exact – ‘and I suppose you must come with us as the General’s representative, I should like you to show us the boundaries of the Palace grounds, so that we shall neither trespass, nor be trespassed upon.’

  He gave an appreciative grin and put on his hat and led the way to the horses. Then he stopped and came back to her. ‘Try and forget what I said and listen,’ he said, ‘It’s no place to put a nunnery.’

  No place to put a nunnery. It sounded odd and uncouth, and he said it again on the terrace when she ask
ed him why the Brothers had left so soon. ‘It’s an impossible place for a nunnery.’

  This time she answered blandly: ‘Difficult but not impossible, Mr Dean. Nothing is impossible with God.’

  He pointed to the clouds in the north. ‘Straight across from here are the Himalayas, the Snows. You think that if you look level you’ll see them, but you find that you have to look up, far above your head. Right over you here, is Kanchenjunga. I have never liked anything better than that mountain, Sister, but I don’t think you will. Is yours a contemplative Order? Do you live in meditation or whatever you call it? Do you keep solitude?’

  Her laugh rang out. ‘Our Order isn’t in the least like that. We’re very busy people. Remember that here we are to open a hospital and dispensary and a school, for children and girls.’

  He did not like being laughed at. He said deliberately: ‘A school for girls. That’s good.’

  ‘You believe in education, Mr Dean?’

  ‘I find uneducated and simple people too disarming.’ Deliberately he added: ‘You will be doing me a great favour when you begin to educate the local ladies, Sister.’

  Sister Laura stared and reddened, but Sister Clodagh answered: ‘I have been told already, Mr Dean, that you did not believe in solitude.’

  There was a silence. Behind them on the terrace wall the ferns and small orchids shivered in the wind; from their quivering smallness it streamed back into the air. The nuns had to hold their veils down.

  ‘Look at the eagles,’ he said.

  In the gulf eagles were flying, circling round one small spot in the air. Higher and higher they flew, but still they could not reach the head of cloud that hid the mountain in the north; they could not reach its foot. Circling, they flew a fraction higher; it seemed that they would reach it, but always they were beaten down to be lost in the colours of the valley and they always came up to circle dizzily again.

  Mr Dean sent his hat spinning round on his finger. ‘I told you it was no place to put a nunnery.’

  Just then Sister Laura spoke. She had been listening, and was above herself with shock and surprise and the long shaking ride. ‘Oh, how can you say that?’ she cried. ‘Look at that blue and pearl colour and the light in the sky. It might be Heaven and feels like it too, the wind’s so pure and cool. It’s an inspiration just to stand here. Who could live here and not feel close to God?’