“But you seem to me like an educated man. More like the sort of man who might make a career in the Civil Service or the Political Service. Not a small trader, really. Please don’t take any offence.”
“That’s all right. I chose to go into business. But perhaps another career would have suited me better. Things haven’t gone too well lately.”
“And you live in England now, is that correct?”
Carpenter was interrogating him, discreetly but carefully.
“Yes. My wife and son went there when war broke out. I returned last year to rejoin them, but Elizabeth died soon afterwards. I decided to stay on with William.”
“I see. What did you do during the war? You stayed in India, take it.”
“I was a supplier to the army. Grain, fodder, rice: all the staples.
I made a little money for once. But not enough.”
“And who hates you enough to steal your child? Whom do you suspect?
Why did you come to India to look for him? To
Kalimpong?”
Christopher sensed more than mere curiosity in Carpenter’s questioning.
The missionary was worried about something. He did not believe
Christopher’s cover-story. But there was more than that: he knew
something and he wanted to know just what
Christopher knew.
“I’ve been advised not to talk about that,” Christopher said.
“Who advised you? The police?”
“Yes. The police.”
“Did they fly you here? Forgive me for seeming inquisitive. But it puzzles me that a man like yourself should have enough influence to be flown to India. Just to look for a child, however precious he may be to you. The authorities are not normally so obliging.”
Christopher decided it was time to go.
“Dr. Carpenter, I’m grateful to you and your wife for such a delightful evening. I’ve enjoyed your food and conversation immensely.” He turned to Carpenter’s wife.
“Mrs. Carpenter, please accept my thanks. You have been a most considerate hostess. But now, I fear, I must take my leave. I am still tired after my journey, and I fear I may become boring company if I stay any longer. And you must have your duties to go to.”
“Of course, of course. How thoughtless of us to keep you talking.”
Moira Carpenter got to her feet. Her husband followed suit.
“If it would not tire you too much, Mr. Wylam,” said the missionary, “I would very much like to show you our boys’ wing.
The children are asleep now, but it would please me very much if you would step in to see them before you leave.”
The boys’ section was not far away. A green baize door led to a short corridor, off which lay a long dormitory bathed in moonlight.
In orderly rows, like patients in a hospital ward, the children slept in a silence that was broken only by the sound of their heavy breathing. Carpenter walked between the beds with a dark lantern, showing the sleeping boys to Christopher like a curator in a waxwork museum taking a visitor on a tour of his exhibits. On narrow beds, the boys huddled beneath thin blankets, dreaming desperately.
Christopher wondered why Carpenter had brought him here, why he had asked him to dinner at all. Had it been to reassure him, to counter that afternoon’s impression of nervousness? As he watched the sleeping boys, he began to ask himself whether William had been here. Was that it? Was that what lay behind Carpenter’s nervousness, behind his probing? But no sooner had the idea intruded itself than he dismissed it as ridiculous.
The Carpenters showed him to the door, still heaping sympathy on him like confetti. The rest of the orphanage was silent.
Christopher imagined the girls in sleep, their dreams haunted by visions of dark gods and goddesses, black Kali dancing on the bodies of her bloody victims, Shiva with gory hands, destroying the universe. Or did they dream of cannibals in the mountains, eating the flesh of English children? And if so, what was that to them?
It was after ten when he got back to the rest-house. The common room was in semi-darkness, filled with small restless mounds:
people were sleeping, planning an early start at one or two a.m.
Word had come that the weather to the north was improving, and there was every likelihood the passes into the Chumbi valley would be open in a day or two.
He climbed the rickety wooden stairs to the first floor, carrying the
reeking oil-lamp he had left downstairs for that purpose. The thin
wooden panelling of the house kept out nothing of the freezing cold. It
was stained with damp from the rains and cracked with frost. In a room
along the corridor, someone was moaning in pain, but no-one came. Outside, dogs were prowling in the streets, old dogs, thin and diseased, afraid to show their faces in daylight. He could hear them howling, lonely and desperate in the night.
He did not see the man who hit him as he opened the door, nor did he feel the blow that dropped him, unconscious, to the grimy floor of his room. For a moment, he saw a bright light and faces moving in it, or a single face, blurred and shifting. Then the ground lurched and fell out from under him, and the world shimmered and reddened and was swallowed up, leaving him spinning and howling and alone in the darkness.
He was at sea in an open boat, tossing deliriously on blue salt waves. Then the boat vanished and the water opened up beneath him and he was sinking into the blackness again. Somehow the blackness passed and he was rising once more towards the light.
There must be a storm on the surface: he was tossed again and again, a piece of flotsam on the back of giant waves. Then, as if by a miracle, the waves were stilled and he was drifting on gentle, inland waters, rocking in a soft, rhythmical motion.
There was a face, then a pair of hands pulling at him roughly, then he was no longer afloat on still waters but lying on a hard bed. The face was European and unshaven, and it kept slipping in and out of focus.
“Can you hear me, Mr. Wylam? Can you hear my voice?”
The face was speaking to him in English, but with a heavy accent. His first thought was that this must be the Russian, Zamyatin; but something else told him that was ridiculous.
“Can you sit up?” the voice insisted. Christopher felt hands pushing against his armpits, raising him to a sitting position.
Reluctantly, he allowed himself to be moved. Upright, his head began to spin again, and for a moment he feared the blackness would return. He felt nauseous: the mysterious meat and its lugubrious accompaniments had chosen their moment to break free: they had swollen out of all proportion in his stomach. Rapidly, they were acquiring a life of their own.
“Do you want to be sick?” the voice asked.
He managed to nod, sending flashes of green light in every direction through his reeling brain.
“There’s a basin beside you. Here on your right. Just let it out.
I’ll hold you.”
He felt a hand guiding his head, then something exploded in his guts and travelled upwards with the violence of an express train on its home journey. Hot liquid rushed into a metal bowl.
Spitting sour vomit, he fell back exhausted against the back of the
bed. Someone had taken his head off and replaced it with a spinning
top. And a mad child stood over him, cracking a whip and sending the
top round and round without stopping,
“Better?” the voice sounded stronger this time. He’d heard the accent before, but still could not place it. Scottish? Irish?
“If you want to be sick again, there’s another wee basin here. And if you fill that, I can get another. Can you open your eyes?”
His mouth felt foul. Someone had gone for a walk in it, wearing large, muddy boots.