Louis de Bernières - The Dust That Falls From Dreams

‘Quite so, quite so, but how would you feel about the prospect of a job where the machinery is magnificent and enormous, and made in Birmingham to boot, and the climate exquisite, and where you can live like a king?’

‘Is one able to fly there?’

‘I’ve no idea. I’m talking about Ceylon, old boy. Ceylon!’

‘Ceylon, sir?’

‘Ceylon, Daniel! The Pearl of the East!’

‘I loved it in India.’

‘Well, I have a friend who is looking for a manager. It’s a long shot, but they lost an assistant manager who ran off with another planter’s wife, and there’s been no sight nor sound of him for months. I told him all about you, and he recognised the name. My dear boy, I knew you were distinguished, but I had no idea until now how famous an ace you actually were. Why on earth didn’t you tell us? How did that pass us by?’

‘Didn’t seem worth mentioning, sir. As far as aces go, I’d say I was in the first rank of the second-raters.’

‘You are altogether too modest. I asked him what he wanted exactly, and he said he would show you the ropes, and then expect you to manage mostly on your own. You’d have to be good with the natives, learn Tamil, and keep your hands off the wives. You also have to be good at sport, or you won’t have much fun.’

‘I am good at sport. There’s nothing I like better.’

‘I understand they even have a wonderful golf course and some trout streams, and plenty of tennis. Well, dear boy, it would be a huge adventure and a tremendous opportunity. Are you prepared to take the gamble?’

‘I’d be very sorry to leave Henley’s. But yes. I think so. I’d do it. The question is, would Rosie? I couldn’t possibly leave Esther for any length of time. It’s bad enough having to be away in the week.’

‘If Rosie is difficult, I will have to steel myself to order her out of the house. We are in a knot, Daniel, and someone has to cut it. First of all we have to see if you and Colonel Bassett get on, of course. I’ve invited him to Sunday lunch.’

‘Colonel? He was a soldier?’

‘Indian Army. One of the Sikh regiments, I believe.’

‘We’ll certainly get on then.’

And they did. No one else at lunch got a word in, because all the talk was of Sikh regiments and sepoys.

Because Daniel was thirty years old, much older than the average ‘creeper’ who came out to learn the ropes, and because he was bringing a wife and child, he was to be treated less harshly than the youngsters. He would have servants, and his bungalow would be a mere mile from the factory, but he would still have to muster at dawn, and he would have to spend six months in the company of a young assistant manager at his division. Colonel Bassett told him he would have to learn twenty new Tamil words every day, and be tested on them, and his pay would at first be a pittance.

The one thing that he would not tolerate, said the Colonel, was Daniel ever thinking that he had become an expert on anything to do with Ceylon and its people until he had been there for twenty years. Until that time, only honest bafflement would do.

‘GRACIOUS ME, IT’S you,’ said Fairhead, as he stood at the door and looked at his visitor. ‘How on earth did you know where we live?’

‘Well, I am psychic,’ returned Madame Valentine. ‘I have powers, exceptional ones, such as the power to read what you wrote in my visitors’ book! And you have the only house in the street with an unpronounceable name.’

‘Sophie’s idea. It was called The Laurels, even though there aren’t any.’

‘What on earth does it mean? Paleo something or other.’

‘Paleo Periboli? It’s Greek. The Old Garden. Sophie has a notion that we should recreate the Garden of Eden in our own domain, energy and weather permitting. Ah, forgive me, do come in. My wife will be glad to see you, I’m sure. I think she’s in the conservatory mangling some pelargoniums. Darling!’ he called. ‘Madame Valentine is here!’

Sophie emerged shortly, wearing wellington boots, and bearing a pair of scissors and a ball of green gardening twine. ‘Madame Valentine!’ she cried. ‘How positively miradibulous to see you.’

‘Miradibulous?’

‘One of her neologisms,’ offered Fairhead. ‘Darling, should you be wearing wellies indoors?’

‘These are my indoor wellies,’ she replied. ‘They leak, so I can’t wear them outdoors. They are ideal for gardening in the conservatory.’

‘The ultimate fate of all wellington boots is to spring a leak,’ said Fairhead. ‘That is the habitual manner of their demise. In the trenches a leaky wellington boot did more than anything else to make one doubt the love of God.’

‘They make wonderfully eccentric flowerpots,’ said Madame Valentine. ‘Put them by the door with a geranium in each, or a little clump of marigolds. The leak acts as drainage. One can make use of one’s misfortune.’

‘I shall do it immediately,’ said Sophie, kicking them off so that they flew across the hallway and crashed into the walking-stick stand, causing the canes and shooting sticks to rattle.

‘Do be careful, darling,’ said Fairhead.

‘Henceforth I shall horticult barefoot in the conservatory, and leaky wellies shall be herbiferous.’

When they were seated in the drawing room, with their cups of tea on their laps, and Victoria sponge cake waiting on the trolley, Fairhead asked, ‘And how is Spedegue?’

‘Oh, grumpy and disapproving and truculent, as always,’ responded Madame Valentine.

‘If there were prizes for truculosity she would scoop all of them,’ said the barefoot Sophie.

There was a pause, and Madame Valentine noticed the book that lay upon the small table by Fairhead’s armchair. It was The Historical Jesus and the Theological Christ . ‘Is that any good?’ she said. ‘I’ve been thinking of reading it.’

‘It’s excellent,’ replied Fairhead. ‘It describes what we can work out about Jesus the man from the synoptic gospels, and then talks about how he got theologised, if there is such a word. I should probably say “Christologised”. The author assures us that there will be no Second Coming, which, I must say, is something I’ve already been suspecting for some considerable time. It’s a marvellously clear read, but I suppose I ought to be resisting anything that might exacerbate my scepticism.’

‘We strongly disapprove of exacerbation,’ said Sophie brightly. ‘It’s so draining. And of course one should definitely eschew egregious obscurantism.’

Madame Valentine laughed, then composed herself, and said, ‘I have come to ask you about something that is very close to my heart, and is causing me a great deal of unease.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Fairhead.

‘Yes. Well, the long and short of it is, do you think I’m a fraud?’

‘A fraud? Good God, no.Why would you think that?’

‘I worry that I might be. I mean, sometimes I don’t know the answers to things, and I just make something up. And then sometimes the things I made up do come true. Sometimes I’m certain of something and it never happens. I can’t tell you how worrying it is. And sometimes I think that perhaps I am, after all, just another madwoman of a certain age with delusions.’

‘You’re dressed very respectably in tweeds,’ said Sophie, ‘you can’t possibly be mad.’

‘Do try to be serious, darling,’ said Fairhead.

‘Oh, but I am being! Mad people nearly always dress up in odd ways, don’t they?’

‘If you were mad,’ said Fairhead, ‘it wouldn’t explain the noises and the music and the strange apports at your séances, and it wouldn’t explain why you get so many things right. How would it explain the photograph of my sister in Christabel’s camera?’