Black Narcissus Read online

  ‘Have you written down our notes on the kitchen yet?’ asked Sister Clodagh. Sister Laura went away without a word.

  ‘Sister Laura is inclined to be enthusiastic,’ Sister Clodagh excused her like a child to Mr Dean.

  ‘I thought she sounded exceedingly sincere,’ he answered, and left her.

  She stood on alone on the terrace when he had gone. She felt a little ruffled; she was not used to being put in the wrong, and his rudeness seemed to reverberate on the air. Then she forgot him.

  The stuff of her sleeves was too thin; the air poured in as she lifted her hands, cold as snow. It ran along her arms. ‘You’ll have to get used to living in the wind,’ Mr Dean had said. Nothing seemed more strange than this feeling of coldness between her skin and her clothes, her hands were goose-fleshed and yellow with it. She seemed to be looking at herself from the outside. ‘I didn’t know until we came here, how yellow we’ve become.’

  Yes, she seemed to be altogether outside herself here; it must be tiredness and the effort of dealing with Mr Dean. She had had such odd thoughts since she saw the house; as soon as she came into it she felt it was alive.

  ‘The General’s father used to keep his ladies here,’ Mr Dean had said. ‘They call it “the House of Women”. It will be suitable, won’t it, if you decide to come?’ He had been rude before, now he was positively hostile, and so was the old caretaker, Angu Ayah.

  The woman’s face was Chinese, brown and withered like a ginger root: she wore dark blue clothes, a necklace of turquoises and sharp little silver knives, and her hair in pigtails like two grey wires. They had shown Sister Clodagh over the house grudgingly, as if they were trying to keep her away, and, instead of being indignant, she had wanted to say humbly: ‘Don’t shut me out. Let me in too.’

  She had come to report on taking over the Palace and adapting it, and at once she had a fixed determination to take it at any cost and at the same time a violent dislike of the idea of changing it. It was ridiculous. It had been offered to her Order, she had come on its behalf to see with its eyes, and here she was almost siding with this disreputable Agent and a servant against it. She had shared their wild fear that they would change it; the verandahs, that were glassed corridors with geraniums breaking under the window frames, the salon with its gilt and chandelier, the orchard with the grey-green stillness that she had known in the Irish orchards that she had forgotten all this time.

  Cosmos flowers were out there under the apple trees; they had grown so tall in that dampness that they had brushed the shoulders of her habit with pollen. Must they be cut down and paths made neat and bordered? Would the Sisters want to cut the empty terrace into beds of patterns; hearts and crosses and initials, as they loved to do? Would they want to prune the sprawling trees that Mr Dean said were roses? Must the stillness be filled with orders and rules and the sound of the bell and the bustle of pupils and patients and work? Then with a shock she remembered that there had been a school here already. It was a foundation of a vigorous flourishing Brotherhood, and not a sign of it was left, except those half-finished walls on the western lawn and the bell hanging between its posts. The silence had closed over it, only these few faint scratches were left.

  Her tiredness had gone; she would have liked to go up to that bell and ring it so that it sounded over the hill and across the gulf and down to the valley and up to the mountains. She turned her back on them and looked the ramshackle house over, promising it that it would have to pull itself together now. Already she was itching for the report book that Sister Laura had taken away.

  She turned back at the sound of voices. Below in the tea garden the pluckers were going down to the factory with the leaf, their voices were carried to her on the wind. They were women, not like Ayah, but dressed in skirts and buttoned jackets and tartan head shawls; their baskets were shaped like ice-cream cones, and, in the afternoon light, their faces and hands were the same colour as the earth that showed between the bushes of tea. As she watched them, Mr Dean came and stood beside her.

  ‘I shall like these people,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, they’ll have a lot to teach you,’ said Mr Dean. ‘Well, if you’re quite determined, I give you to the break of the next rains.’

  5

  On the fourth morning after the Sisters’ arrival in October, General Toda Rai sent a message to say that he was coming to call on them; there was a flutter among the younger Sisters as to whether they should curtsey or not.

  ‘I think we should,’ said Sister Honey. ‘We would curtsey to the Viceroy because he represents the King and is royal.’

  ‘But the General isn’t real royalty,’ Sister Ruth objected. ‘He’s more like an Archduke.’

  ‘But one does curtsey to Archdukes.’

  Sister Clodagh settled it curtly. ‘You’ll make our usual little bob if you happen to meet him, but I want you all to go to your work as you would do in the ordinary way.’

  ‘So we shan’t even be introduced,’ muttered Sister Ruth. ‘And why not? It’s so silly to treat us like children.’

  The General’s grooms came running down the drive in front of him; they wore uniforms of purple cloth and gold, with puggarees of violet. He rode on one of the small ponies with an elderly aide-de-camp beside him. He was plainly dressed in a dove-coloured achkan and white cotton pantaloons like jodhpurs; he was small and corpulent with a rosy face, and his hair was like a Chinese, cropped and stiff-growing; he had long sparse hairs in his moustache and his finger-nails were cut into points.

  ‘I thought they were Rajputs,’ thought Sister Clodagh as she went to meet him. ‘He looks like a Tibetan.’

  She noticed his earrings, that were diamonds so large that they looked like glass buttons; his rings, the expensive English saddles on the ponies and the fleeces they wore under them that looked odd on the Bhotiya ponies. There were two grooms to a pony, and a peon in the same purple and gold who carried the General’s pan-box and his spectacles. She wondered, as she talked to him, how rich he was. He spoke to her in English in a sing-song, carefully dividing up the syllables. She was thanking him for the great gift to their Order. ‘It is noth-ing. Noth-ing,’ he said.

  Perhaps it really was nothing to him, a flea-bite that did not even tickle. He was strange and rich, part of the strange rich State lying behind the mountains. She wondered who had put these ideas of education and philanthropy into his head, as she wondered how he could get such shrewdness and kindliness into such slits of eyes.

  She was still in the stage when the faces of the people looked all alike, and now she found, by studying the General’s, his mouth and eyes and the lines of his face, that the others seemed to spring into difference and to become faces instead of masks. She was learning to distinguish between the State natives and the hill clans, the Lepchas and Bhotiyas and Limbus; she could single out Jangbir the peon, Nima, the Bhotiya gardener and Toukay the cook.

  ‘I am a great be-lie-ver in good-ness,’ said the General. ‘This house used not to be at all good. My father used to al-low some bad goings-on. There is nothing like that about me. I want you to make the house good.’

  ‘We shall try, Excellency,’ began Sister Clodagh. ‘We don’t want to change it more than we can help –’

  ‘But you must,’ he cried in dismay. ‘I want you to.’

  ‘Well, there are one or two things that want to be done.’

  She walked with him over the house and gardens, followed by Sister Briony and the aide-de-camp, Colonel Pratap. To everything she suggested the General waved his hand and said: ‘I app-rove. I app-rove. It shall be done.’

  ‘But who – who is to do this work for us?’ she asked him.

  ‘I shall send Mr Dean.’

  ‘Excellency,’ she said after a stiff silence, ‘if you would send us the workmen, we can see that they carry out the work ourselves.’

  The General’s eyes were lost in their slits as he narrowed them to look at her, but his face did not change as he said: ‘Colonel, you will see ab
out sending men this morning.’

  They came out on the drive after the General had politely tasted the coffee that Sister Briony had made. ‘Of course I don’t know if he can take it as he’s a Hindu,’ she had said to Sister Clodagh, ‘but I think we should offer him something, don’t you?’ Her coffee was full of grits, but his face remained bland and smiling as he drank it. ‘Does he ever show anything?’ thought Sister Clodagh; the corners of her mouth had gone wry as she tasted her first mouthful.

  ‘I be-lieve in pro-gress, Sis-ter Clo-dagh,’ said the General on the drive. ‘I call a hos-pital pro-gress, don’t you? I have given orders for all the women and child-ren to att-end.’

  ‘If they are ill,’ she suggested.

  ‘Ill or well, all the same they will att-end; and all the children will att-end school at once.’

  ‘But, Excellency, we’re not ready for them and we hardly know the dialect. How shall we make them understand?’

  ‘They can come and look. It will do them good,’ said the General firmly. ‘And,’ he added, turning to Colonel Pratap, ‘isn’t there always Joseph Antony, the son of the cook?’

  ‘Oh yes, Joseph is here,’ agreed the Colonel.

  ‘Joseph Antony is the son of my Madrassi cook. He was at school for a short while here.’ He coughed and went on. ‘He is Christ-ian and will wel-come you very much, though he is Roman and you are not. He won’t mind for that and will interpret you in the school. He speaks English as well as I do,’ said the General sadly, ‘for I never had the ad-van-tage of going to a school …’

  Sister Ruth came by to ring the bell. They had kept it where the Brothers had hung it, where the old coolie gong used to hang, between two posts like gallows by the railings. To reach it she had to stand on the horse-block. The top of the horse-block was level with the railings, she had only to take a step to fall into the gulf, to the foot of the buttresses among the bamboos. ‘It’s dangerous,’ Sister Clodagh had said; but it was thrilling to ring the bell, standing on the edge of cloud and sky, with the tea and the valley and the River far below.

  Sister Ruth went up to the bell, stepping sideways to bob to the General; Sister Clodagh saw her taking a good look at him, but she did not introduce her.

  The General smiled. ‘I like to hear that bell. That is pro-gress, isn’t it, Colonel?’

  ‘It is very great happiness to have the Sisters here,’ said the Colonel politely.

  ‘Good-bye for the pre-sent,’ said the General, holding out his hand. ‘I shall be away for a lit-tle but if there is any help you need, please ask Mr Dean.’ After a moment he added: ‘Don’t believe all you hear. Dean is a very good fel-low, Sis-ter Clo-dagh.’

  Since they came they had been busy unpacking and arranging the rooms. On the first day the clerk had sent word to say that he was very tired after the journey and could not be expected to work, and would the Lady-Sahib please send him some brandy as he was afraid he had taken a chill in the forest. The same message had come every morning since.

  ‘Now what shall I do about that?’ asked Sister Briony. ‘I only give brandy in cases of great prostration and exposure. He seemed perfectly well yesterday. It would be a great pity to waste good brandy unless he really needs it.’

  ‘He’s a lazy wretch,’ cried Sister Clodagh. ‘He knows we can’t do much without him. Mr Dean –’ she was not going to say already that Mr Dean was right. ‘Send him some ammoniated quinine,’ she said. ‘That’ll teach him. Let’s hope this young man Joseph Antony will come this afternoon.’

  He came punctually at half-past three.

  ‘Joseph Antony has come,’ said Ayah, bouncing into the office.

  ‘Ayah, you must knock before you come in. Where is he?’ Sister Clodagh looked at the door.

  ‘Here he is,’ said Ayah, pointing downwards, and there was Joseph Antony, not as high as the handle of the door; a black Sambo of a little boy in a yellow shirt striped with pea green.

  ‘Are you Joseph Antony, the son of the cook?’

  ‘Yes, lady.’

  Ayah gave him a tap behind. ‘She isn’t a lady, she’s a sister. Say “Yes, Lemini”.’

  ‘Yes, Lemini,’ said Joseph, taking all of her in, and the room and the box she was unpacking on the desk. ‘I have come to teach you the children and I have my box and my bedding outside, because I shall live here with you.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Sister Clodagh.

  ‘Would you like to see my box and my bedding, Lady? Sister? Lemini? Would you, Auntie?’ he asked Ayah. ‘They’re new.’

  ‘If you live here what will your father the cook do?’

  ‘He has gone away with the Highness. He gave me my box and my bedding and told me to take it up nicely and come here to you. I am a poor boy,’ said Joseph absently, looking at a book of coloured blotting paper on the desk, ‘and you must love me and I’ll be very good to you.’

  ‘Is this all true?’ she asked Ayah.

  Joseph scowled, but Ayah said: ‘His father has gone and there is a new trunk and a bed roll outside the kitchen.’

  ‘How old are you?’ asked Sister Clodagh.

  ‘Six to eleven.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I can remember that I am six,’ he explained, ‘but my father married my mother eleven years ago, so that I may probably be about ten.’

  ‘Take him to Sister Briony, Ayah, and ask her to arrange where he can sleep.’

  ‘The Fat Lemini who asks a lot of questions?’

  ‘Yes. Sister Briony, Ayah. You must learn to tell our names.’

  But Ayah had names for them all. The Fat Lemini, the Smiling Lemini for Sister Honey, the Silent Lemini and the Snake-Faced Lemini for Sister Ruth.

  She kept an eagle eye on the furniture, pouncing on them if they moved anything.

  ‘But it’s ours,’ Sister Honey protested. ‘The General gave it to us and we can do as we like with it.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it,’ said Ayah. ‘If you’d been with royalty as long as I have, you’d know better than to depend on that. How do you know he won’t ask for it back?’

  ‘Oh, he couldn’t do that. He gave it to us. Once it’s given it’s given.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it. They’re all the same. How many times would my Srimati Devi say “Here, Ayah, take this” or “Take that” and then, in a day or two, “Ayah, Ayah, where is my so-and-so?”’

  The nuns laughed. They were always making Ayah tell them stories about the Princess Srimati, and some of them were not altogether stories for them to hear.

  In those first days they were happy. The place might, they agreed with Sister Laura, have been Heaven; they were filled with a kind of ecstasy. They woke in the late October mornings before the sun had reached the hills, and saw its light travel down from snow and cloud over the hills, until it reached the other clouds that lay like curds in the bottom of the valley. The mountain stood out, glittering into the air.

  ‘It’s the sun on the snow-fields that makes it glitter,’ said Sister Ruth. ‘The fields never melt and that mist that blows across is a blizzard. It’s hard to believe it, it just looks pretty from here.’ The wind drove her in to put on a jacket of black crochet wool, edged like a shawl with bobbles of wool.

  Now, on the morning of the General’s visit, she came out to ring the bell. She stood on the horse-block ringing the Angelus. She must look, she thought, like a fly that had fallen into a green and blue bowl; the midday light ringed the tea bushes with myrtle green; she had not seen tea growing before; it looked a little silly on that wild hill, she thought, like rows and rows of neat green buttons. Who needed buttons on a naked hill? Then far below she saw a pony on the path, with a figure that looked like a little Chinese in a speck of blue and a large flat hat.

  ‘That must be Mr Dean,’ thought Sister Ruth, and she sent the bell out with a clang. She should have been saying the Angelus, but she found it hard in this freedom of space and air not to watch the clouds and the colours and count the peaks of the snows.


  They all found it hard. At recreation they walked on the terrace and sat on the block to watch the views, but that was not enough. Sister Honey would stop with a needle in one hand and the cotton in the other, gaping out of the window, and sometimes Sister Philippa would find that it had taken her an hour to pick the cosmos for the altar vases. She was standing in the flowers, red and clove pink and ivory as high as her breast, and her hands were empty.

  ‘Even in my thoughts I’m discourteous and ungrateful,’ she sighed. ‘We came here to work for God and here I am already neglecting the smallest things I have to do for Him. Very well. I shall go and hoe, myself, what is to be the onion bed.’ She worked until her hands were blistered and her back ached so that she could not walk upright.

  The first thing they had done was to make a chapel of the small room on the east side of the corridor opposite the bell. They had only a table for the altar, a strip of carpet, a prie-dieu that they had brought with them, and three benches, but it was shaded and peaceful when the schools were empty. A second door led from it to Sister Clodagh’s private room, which was also the office.

  Sister Philippa had been made Laundry and Garden Sister and had all the outside work and servants to superintend; she looked after the hens and cows and the old pony that General Toda had left for them and whose name, the horse boy said, was ‘Love’. There were not many flowers in the garden, the beds were overgrown and the orchard and thickets were a tangle of weeds; the vegetable garden was lost in the grass. ‘That must be attended to first,’ said Sister Clodagh. ‘Then you must clear the fruit trees and after that we will see about flowers.’ It seemed an immense amount of work to Sister Philippa, but, as usual, she set about it without saying a word.

  Sister Briony had taken the conservatory from her to use as a dispensary. ‘It’s standing empty, and it’s a pity to waste it,’ she said. ‘I must have somewhere to work in because people are arriving already and I’ve nothing unpacked. Sister Ruth is upset, she must have a chill on her stomach. It’s awkward when the plumbing won’t work, and the General had it put in especially for us. I must get at the chlorodyne. Think of all the money they’ve spent on it and now it won’t work; the plumbing I mean, not the chlorodyne. So you must let me come in here where at least the tap runs. It’s a nice big place and will do for the present. It’s a pity to waste it.’