Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - Heat and Dust

Olivia never returned to Douglas but, escaping from the hospital, she went straight to the Palace. The last clear picture I have of her is not from her letters but from what Harry has told us. He was in the Palace when she arrived there from the hospital. She was so pale, he said, that she seemed drained of blood. (Of course she had suffered great blood loss from her abortion.) It isn't so very far from Satipur to Khatm — about 15 miles — and it was a journey that she had been doing daily by one of the Nawab's cars. But that time when she ran away from the hospital there was no car. Harry never knew how she came but presumed it was by what he called some native mode of transport. She was also in native dress a servant's coarse sari — so that she reminded him of a print he had seen called Mrs. Secombe in Flight from the Mutineers. Mrs. Secombe was also in native dress and in a state of great agitation, with her hair awry and smears of dirt on her face: naturally, since she was flying for her life from the mutineers at Sikrora to the safety of the British Residency at Lucknow. Olivia was also in flight — but, as Harry pointed out, in the opposite direction.

Harry left India shortly afterwards. He never had been able to decide what were the Nawab's motives in taking on Olivia. In any case, the question — like the Nawab himself — dropped out of Harry's view for many years. He was glad. When he looked back on his time spent in the Palace, it was always with dislike, even sometimes with abhorrence. Yet he had been very, very happy there. Back in England he felt that it had been a happiness too strong for him. Now he wanted only to lead his quiet life with his mother in their flat in Kensington. Later, after his mother died, his friend Ferdie moved in with him, giving up his job in a laundry in order to look after Harry. Ferdie also met the Nawab, but that was many years later by which time — Harry thought — the Nawab was quite changed. His circumstances were changed too, and when he came to London now, he no longer lived at Claridges but was quite hard up. Perhaps that was why he never brought Olivia, because he couldn't afford it; or perhaps she just didn't want to come. She never came to England again but stayed in the house in the mountains he had bought for her.

When I told Maji that I was leaving Satipur, she asked "Like Chid?" Chid's departure back to England had amused her as everything else about him had always amused her. "Poor boy," she said. "He had to run away.” Her broad shoulders shook with laughter.

I assured her that I was not running away but on the contrary was going further, up into the mountains. She was pleased with that. I then plucked up courage and asked her, as I had wanted to for some time, what she had been doing to me that day when she said she was giving me an abortion. To my relief nothing had happened — but I felt that, if she had wanted something to happen, her efforts would not have been unsuccessful. What had she done? I asked her. Of course she wouldn't tell me, but from her sly laugh I gathered that she was not innocent. I thought of the way she had sat astride me, a supernatural figure with supernatural powers which it now seemed to me she had used not to terminate my pregnancy but to make sure of it: make sure I saw it through.

The rainy season is not the best time of year to go up into the mountains. There are always landslides and the roads become impassable for days on end. The mountains are invisible. One knows they are there — the ranges of the Himalayas stretching God knows into what distances and to what heights — one even feels, or imagines, their presence, but they can't be seen. They are completely blotted out and in their place are clouds, vapours, mists.

Just above the small town of X, there is a handful of houses scattered along the steepest side of the mountain. Even at the best of times they are difficult to get to except by the sturdiest climbers; and now during the rains they are almost inaccessible. I have been told that, up till a few years ago, there were several other Europeans besides Olivia living in these houses. The Norwegian widow of an Indian historian devoting herself to sorting out her husband's papers; a German turned Buddhist; and two ex-missionaries who had tried to start a Christian "ashram". Now they are all dead and are buried in the old British cemetery on a plateau a few hundred feet down (there are British cemeteries everywhere! they have turned out to be the most lasting monument). Only the German Buddhist was cremated on the Hindu cremation ground, and Olivia. The ex-missionaries tried to raise some objection to Olivia 's cremation — they said she belonged in the cemetery, never having been converted to any Indian religion. But she had specifically requested cremation, so it was done. I presume that her ashes were scattered over these mountains since there was no one to take charge of them, the Nawab having died before her.

Her house is still there. I had to wait several days for the rain to clear sufficiently before I could climb up. It stands quite by itself on a mountain ledge; I suppose it has a superb view, though at this time of year there is nothing to view except, as I said, clouds. There is some dispute about possession of the house which Karim and Kitty are trying to get settled along with other disputed properties of the Nawab's. They hope to do so before the Army requisitions the house. It has developed dangerous cracks, and inside everything is covered in mildew.

But it retains what I imagine to have been Olivia's ambience. There is a piano of course — not the upright she had in Satipur but a grand piano the Nawab had sent up from Khatm (together with the tuner from Bombay). The curtains and cushions, now tattered, are yellow, the lampshades tasselled; there is a gramophone. A chair and embroidery frame stand in a window embrasure: I don't know whether this is just a decorative tableau or whether she actually used to sit here, glancing up from her embroidery to look out over the mountains (now invisible). There is a row of stables outside but all they ever stabled was the sedan chair it is still there, though dusty and broken — in which the Nawab was carried up and down the mountain. He had got too fat and lazy to climb.

Harry said that he had a shock when he saw him again in London. Fifteen years had passed, the Nawab was fifty years old and so fat that there was something womanly about him. And the way he embraced Harry was womanly too: he held him against his plump chest with both arms and kept him there for a long time. And then all the old feelings came back to Harry. But afterwards he found that his feelings towards the Nawab had changed — probably because the Nawab himself had changed so much. He seemed softer and milder, and with many troubles of a domestic nature.

The court of enquiry set up in 1923 had gone against him, and as a result a prime minister had been appointed to take charge of the affairs of Khatm. Although still in name the ruler of the state, the Nawab did not under these circumstances care to spend much time there. The Begum too was not often in residence but had taken a house in Bombay for herself and her ladies. The Nawab often stayed with them there, when he was not with Olivia in X. Sometimes he also stayed/with his wife, Sandy, things having been more or less compounded with the Cabobpur family. But Sandy's health was not good, and at present she was in a place in Switzerland undergoing treatment for her mental troubles.

The Nawab's own troubles were mainly financial. Not only did he have to keep up the Palace and three separate establishments — for his mother, wife, and Olivia — but he still had many dependants in Khatm. He had to provide for all those young men — now young no longer — who had been his companions in the Palace, for they were either his blood relatives or descendants of family retainers some of whom went right back to the time of Amanullah Khan. The Nawab felt deeply ashamed of no longer being able to keep them in the manner to which they were accustomed. For years he had been haggling with the British authorities for an increase in the income they had stipulated for him out of the state revenues: but they were completely un-understanding, they had no conception at all of the obligations a ruler like himself had to discharge. That was why he had now come to London, in order to appeal directly to a higher authority. He made, or tried to make, many appointments and was for ever pulling scraps of paper out of his pocket with names and telephone numbers scribbled on them, though often he could not remember whose they were.