Christopher pointed mutely to one of his bags on the floor. He could see it had been disturbed and subsequently rearranged.
Cormac rummaged in the bag for a bit and finally surfaced brandishing a battered tin mug.
“This it?” he asked triumphantly.
Christopher nodded.
“Not exactly Waterford Crystal, I’m afraid,” he said.
“No,” replied Cormac as he began to pour a small libation into the cup.
“More like Rathgormuck Brass. But then you wouldn’t know Rathgormuck, would you?”
Christopher smiled.
“Is there such a place?”
Cormac nodded sagely.
“Ay, of course there is. It’s a wee village a few miles from
Waterford. Nothing much goes on there: they’re born, they get married, they have lots of kids, they die, and the kids bury them.
That’s all there is to it. Much like anywhere else, I suppose.” He paused.
“I was in London once. It wasn’t any different.”
He paused again and sipped a measure of poteen before continuing.
“So, what brings you to this wee excuse for a boil on the backside of the Himalayas?”
“Business, Dr. Cormac, just business.”
The doctor raised one grey-flecked eyebrow.
“Oh aye? Is that with a capital “B” or a small “B”? I’m just asking. Look, mister, I’ve lived in this place long enough to fart in Bengali, and I knew what you were the minute I wiped your fevered brow and smelt your vomit. You’re no more a box-wallah than I’m a yogi.”
Christopher sighed. First Carpenter and now this man.
“What do you think I am, then?” he asked.
Cormac shrugged.
“Couldn’t say exactly. ICS, IPS .. . Heaven-born, anyway.
You’ve got the look. You’ve got the manner. And you’ve got the voice, even if it is a wee bit on the shaky side at the moment. Do I get a prize?”
Christopher shook his head. It hurt.
“No prizes. Anyway,” he went on, trying to change the subject, “you’re no more a missionary doctor than I’m the Kaiser’s mother.”
The doctor unplugged his fire-water and raised it to his lips. He made a face.
“Inpoteeno veritas, my son. You might be right.. . and then again, you might be wrong. To tell you the truth, sometimes I’m not too sure me self I am a doctor, mind you the real McKay. The Queen’s University, Belfast, then a wee stint in Edinburgh with Daniel Cunningham, the Anatomy Professor. After that I got a post as a Junior House Surgeon in the Royal Infirmary. That’s where I went wrong.” He paused and took more poteen.
“You see, there was a group of Christians in the Infirmary. You know the type: spotty faces, glandular trouble, masturbation, and daily prayer. Medics for Jesus, they called themselves. I won’t tell }’ you what other people called them.
“I’m still not sure if it was Jesus that formed the main attraction or a pretty wee nurse called May Lorimer. He had the power to raise the dead, but she wasn’t short of a few miracles of the same kind herself. Anyway, I put my name down, stopped drinking, started masturbating, and prayed nightly for the love of Jesus Christ and May Lorimer both.
“I was doing all right for a man with religious mania until there was a big convention out at Inverkeithing. Three days of sermons, prayers, and how’s-your-father. On the last day, there was a call for medical missionaries. If we couldn’t save the black man’s soul, we’d save his body for resurrection and eternal torment.
“Anyway, the sublime Miss Lorimer was on the platform calling us to the Lord. I was on the floor and the flesh was calling me to Miss Lorimer. The next thing I knew, I was on the platform. And before I had time to think about what I was doing, I was on a big ship with a copy of the Bible in one hand and a bag of secondhand surgical instruments in the other. Next stop Kalimpong.” He paused.
“That was twenty years ago.”
He unscrewed the top of his flask more slowly than before and swallowed more deliberately.
“What about the divine Miss Lorimer?” asked Christopher, uncertain whether or not to make light of Cormac’s morose tale.
“May Lorimer? I asked her to go with me. I offered her the possibility of serving Jesus together as man and wife. I asked her to marry me. She was very kind about it. She said she thought of me as a brother in the Lord, but not as a husband. I had Jesus, she said, what did I want with her as well? I had no answer for that then though if the chance came my way again, I know exactly what I’d tell her now.
“A year later, I heard she’d run off with a big guardsman from Edinburgh Castle. Black Watch, I believe. Known for their sexual prowess. So I stayed on in Kalimpong without May Lorimer, without Jesus, and without much reason to go back. I took up drinking again, gave up masturbation, and became a sort of scandal. What’s your story?”
For the first time, Christopher put the mug of poteen to his lips and
drank. It took his breath away and made him splutter, but the fire
that filled him afterwards made him feel better. He looked at the pale
liquid in the tin and thought of the priest raising the chalice at
mass. Hie est enim Calix Sanguinis mei. Wine and whiskey,
blood and fire, faith and despair. He raised the mug again and drank.
This time he did not cough.
“I was born near here,” he replied to Cormac’s question. He thought he could afford to be honest with him.
“My father worked for the Political Service. He brought me up to love the country. I don’t think he loved anything or anyone himself but India. Not my mother, not really. She died when I was twelve, and I was sent to school in England. Then, when I was fifteen, my father disappeared.”
The doctor looked at him curiously.
“What? Vanished into thin air, d’you mean? Like a fakir” He pronounced the word as if it was ‘faker’.
Christopher gave a wry smile.
“Just like a fakir,” he agreed.
“Only without a rope. No rope, no music just himself. He was making a visit to Major Todd, our Trade Agent in Yatung back in those days. There was nobody in Gyantse then. My father left Kalimpong one day in October with a party of guides and bearers. The weather was turning bad, but they had no difficulty in making it over the Nathu-la They were already well into Tibet when he disappeared.
“The party woke up one morning to find him gone. No note, no sign, no trail they could follow. He’d left all his belongings in the camp. They searched for him, of course all that day and the next, but he was nowhere to be found. Then the snow got really heavy and they had to call off the search and push on to Yatung.
“He never reappeared. But nobody found a body. They sent a letter to my school; I was handed it one day in the middle of Latin class. It was very formal no compassion in it, just the formalities.
They sent me his things eventually decorations, citations, letters , patent, all the trumpery. I still keep them in a trunk at home in England. I never look at them, but they’re there.”
“So you stayed in England?” Cormac interjected.
Christopher shook his head.
“Not until recently. I left as soon as I finished school and came straight out to India to join the ICS. That was in 1898. I’m not quite sure why I came back. Sometimes I think it was to look for my father, but I know that can’t be right. Perhaps I just felt f something had been left unfinished here, and I wanted to finish it.”
“And did you?”
Christopher stared at the wall, at a patch of damp high up, near the ceiling. There was a gecko beside it, pale and ghostly, clinging tightly to the wall.