Snow fell, spreading from the western regions, at first gently, heavy flake by heavy flake; then, as the wind rose, in smaller, tougher, flying gobbets. Downstairs the servants debated, severally in their many languages, then jointly, in English the master tongue, whether or not to fight the stuff from the door with spades, shovels and brooms. The night might well bring a thaw; and even if it did not and the snow continued, all effort must in the end be wasted. Snow was like that, as those who had spent more than a winter in this foreign climate could attest. Time disposed of it more effectively than man. Snow fell, and froze, and hampered normal activity to one degree or another, but then at least it disappeared, leaving everything much as it had been before. It was preferable, any day, to earthquake, volcano, tidal flood or cyclone, all of which had the power to alter the landscape itself.
Upstairs, Joan Lumb was listening too intently to Murray’s words, waiting too hopefully for Murray’s smile, to pay much attention to the blizzard outside. Rendered soft and impractical by desire, she quite forgot to organise. Snow whistled through the air and grew thicker and yet thicker on the ground, and Joan Lumb did nothing. She complained a little about the lateness of the journalist from The Times, and decided to delay dinner on her account for half an hour, no more, and deplored her rudeness in not at least telephoning to explain herself.
(Sisters, this is no criticism of the female state, that love should thus make a strong woman impractical. Men are no different. They lose whole empires in a loved one’s eyes, lose God himself, and think nothing of it. Pity Caesar’s Antony, pity Sampson, pity poor Joan Lumb.)
‘It may be the weather,’ said Murray. He had once spent a winter on the Falkland Islands, trapping a saboteur who was falsifying reports on mineral deposits to the south. He’d been tricked and tripped and lamed and almost frozen to death. He knew cold lands as well as hot.
‘Oh, poof, Murray!’ said Joan. ‘A little snow! People make far too much fuss!’ She had snowballed and sledged as a child, and blown warm breath on chilly hands, and loved every minute of it. Snow had never stopped Joan Lumb doing anything she wanted.
Murray had declined whisky, saying it gave him indigestion, and coffee, on the grounds that it made his heart race. He asked for Perrier water. Joan Lumb rang for Acorn. This precious hour, alone with Murray! Her heart was light. She was happy enough that dinner was delayed. The other guests had so far kept tactfully to their rooms, waiting for the dinner gong.
The Friday afternoon, below stairs, had not been tranquil. As well as the preparation of cucumber sandwiches and gâteau-au-rhum, it had seen a death, and a tragic one, and witnessed a sudden and unexpected power struggle between Acorn and Inverness, the groundsman, his second-in-command. Inverness, a small, quiet, grey, bespectacled ear surgeon from Pakistan, who enjoyed the trust and confidence of the downstairs community, had challenged Acorn’s authority.
This is what happened.
Miriam, a young woman from Sri Lanka, of whom both Acorn and Inverness were fond, was in labour in one of the back pantries, a small but warm and well-lit room frequently used as a hospital. She was attended by Inverness. Inverness had witnessed Bhutto’s death in prison: now he hid from Colonel Zia, and no nation would officially have him. So he swept leaves and saved roses from black-spot at the Shrapnel Academy. Those of you who have skills and professions, and can practise them in peace, be grateful. It is not given to everyone so to do.
Miriam was warm and cheerful: her eyes were large and liquid and her mouth soft and sweet. She was not so pretty as Hilda, or so intelligent, but she was worthy of Acorn’s attention. The baby which now attempted to batter its way out of her helpless, gentle embrace was his.
‘She will have to go to hospital,’ said Inverness. ‘She has to have a Caesarian.’
‘You must do it yourself,’ said Acorn. There were no proper facilities for surgery in the pantry, although Inverness had once, triumphantly, there performed a successful appendectomy, using a kitchen knife. It was not possible to involve the health authorities, even in emergencies. Names, passports, visas would be required and none were available. Immigration officers would arrive on the doorstep and deportation for all be the almost inevitable conclusion. The young and vigorous would survive well enough, but the old, the weak, the feeble in mind and body, women and children, the homeless and stateless, would have little future outside the shelter of the Shrapnel Academy.
‘There is no way I can do it,’ said Inverness. ‘She will die.’
‘She must take her chances,’ said Acorn. ‘But save the baby, if you can.’ Given a choice between mother and baby, the surgeon must save the baby: this is the tradition of the world, and who is to say it is wrong?
So now Miriam sweated and groaned and the baby butted and fought and found no way out. Miriam bled and the flow would not stop. Matilda the Mexican girl used towel after towel sopping up the blood. Drops fell right through the mattress, through the spaces of the rusty wire bed springs and onto the well-swept, well-scoured floor. The bright bare lightbulb flickered and dimmed, as the wind and snow hit the power lines, but then recovered. Inverness used his kitchen knife, and saved the baby. Otherwise both would have died. Inverness rocked the baby to his slight chest, and wept, and presently went with the child in his arms to the staff dining-room. Acorn sat at the head of the table, devouring a chicken, tearing it to pieces with strong, greasy hands. All around him stood and sat the staff, half-admiring, half-alarmed, more civilised by half than he, but twice as helpless.
‘Acorn,’ said Inverness.
‘Lord Acorn—’ said Acorn.
‘You’re joking,’ said Inverness.
‘I am not,’ said Acorn, and the people around grew still.
‘Lord Acorn,’ said Inverness. ‘here is your baby. Miriam is dead.’ A sigh went up: a sob or so, quickly silenced. ‘Something like this was bound to happen sooner or later. We can’t go on this way.’
Acorn put down his chicken. He looked at his own strong powerful hands. They were good for tearing meat, for strangling. They could also make love wonderfully, for all the good that that had done Miriam. He did not speak at once.
‘Miriam’s blood is not on my hands,’ he said. His voice began to rise. ‘Guilt rests with those upstairs, who have deprived us of our freedom. The scales must be righted. There must be justice! We will have vengeance!’
He shouted the last word, releasing his audience from their burden of quiet: those who spoke English translated the words for the benefit of those who did not: there was an agreeable and exciting buzz of voice and communion.
‘Mad,’ thought Inverness. ‘Finally flipped. What have I done? Triggered a psychotic response? I should have kept my mouth shut.’
‘Vengeance,’ said Inverness to the crowd, ‘is not an appropriate response,’ but he didn’t have the trick of public speaking, and very few took any notice. Why should they? Acorn had charisma: Inverness had not. Acorn said what they wanted to hear: what Inverness said was boring. Inverness handed the baby to Matilda for safekeeping, and prudently left the room, before Acorn’s anger could focus on the bringer of bad news. A few like-minded allies went with him.
That was during the Friday afternoon. By the time the guests arrived, and the gâteau-au-rhum was prepared, the servants’ quarters were throbbing with the pleasure-pain of welling subversive thought, as a boil throbs excitingly, just before it bursts. Acorn came striding down the vaulted corridor to the blue living-room where Joan Lumb spent this precious hour alone with Murray Fairfield. He opened the door without knocking, as he was right to do – a good butler only ever knocks on the doors of bedrooms – and stood framed in the doorway, shiny black, energetic. Murray sat peacefully on one side of the wide fireplace, and the leaping flames sent shadows over his grizzled face. Joan Lumb sat on the other side; she turned her flushed face slowly towards Acorn: she looked almost pretty, almost young, almost soft. So much love does. Murray, of course, thought she looked like this all the time. How could he not?
‘Acorn,’ she said. ‘Did I ring? Yes, I rang. Some Perrier water for Mr Fairfield.’
‘Madam,’ said Acorn, ‘on your instructions we keep no Perrier water in the house.’ And this was true enough. Joan Lumb objected strongly to paying through the nose for water, however charmingly bottled, however lively to the palate, for did not water fall freely from the sky, and run freely through the fields, and flow all but freely from taps? But now Murray asked for Perrier water, and she had none!
‘Well then, Acorn,’ she said. ‘Bring Mr Fairfield some iced water and lemon.’
‘No lemon,’ said Murray. ‘Too acid for my digestion. I’m happiest these days on just plain mealie-bud mash.’ Whatever that might be.
‘Iced water, Acorn,’ said Joan.
‘Hold the ice, Acorn,’ said Murray. ‘Too much of a shock to the system. Room temperature. Tap water will do me fine.’ Acorn bowed politely, and went to do Joan Lumb’s bidding. As for Murray, he concluded that Joan Lumb was a good sort of woman, as white women went, and politeness was due to her as his hostess, but she did fuss, and not as brown women fussed, with soft looks and touches and smiles, but awkwardly, as if a dog, attempting to be a cat, had jumped on a lap. Murray imagined there were little brown women amongst the staff – he had seen the flash of a young dusky shoulder vanishing down a corridor when he arrived, the movement of small buttocks under silk – and hoped Joan Lumb would have the sense to see that one came knocking at his door during the night. But he doubted it. That was the trouble with having women in men’s jobs.
‘Plain water and mealie-buds,’ cried Joan Lumb. ‘A man who risks not just his life but his digestion in the cause of freedom – oh, Murray!’
She laid her hand on his. It seemed to Murray a curious thing, very large and white, and the nails were blood-red. But he did not like to remove it. He even felt some explanation was necessary.
‘I was once made to drink acid in a San Salvadorian jail,’ he said. ‘My insides haven’t been the same since. Fortunately I was able to get to water in time. They were doing the drowning trick. They hold your head under water, let you up, hold you under – well, I just swallowed and neutralised the acid. Torturers are stupid people. It’s the only hope one has.’
‘Oh, Murray!’ The hand tightened. He patted it.
‘Actually I didn’t hold my tongue that time,’ said Murray. ‘I talked. Broke.’
Why was he telling her this? This plain white woman whom nobody loved?
‘But that’s true courage, isn’t it,’ she said, and he was grateful. ‘Not just heroics. To know fear, succumb to it, recover, carry on—’
‘It made no difference, of course. The people I betrayed had already been discovered, wiped out –’
‘Not betrayal, don’t say betrayed—’
‘But it was betrayal,’ he said, sadly. ‘Once I broke, they simply let me go. I guess they were disappointed in me. I’d let everyone down: friends, foes, myself. I can’t tell you what I felt. It was worse than pain.’
He found he was weeping: his hand clenched upon hers: hers responded. In all the rest of my life, she thought, they can’t take this moment away from me. It is happening, it has happened. Murray Fairchild holds Joan Lumb’s hand, trusts her, and weeps.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said presently. ‘I guess it’s just that you remind me of my mother.’
Her heart seemed to falter. It was a shock. It was not at all what she had hoped to hear. How cruel life is, to women of a certain age, who keep forgetting that that is what they are.
At that moment Acorn returned with a glass of water.
‘Thank you, Acorn,’ she said. And then – ‘Acorn, you touched the rim of the glass with your hand. Go downstairs and fetch another. I know you people have no grasp of hygiene, but couldn’t you at least try to learn?’
Well, she was upset. Acorn didn’t hit her or kill her, he just went to fetch another glass. He was biding his time.