Chapter 4-

Remember Your Party Manners

IT was the president of the highlands Club who decided when to hold the annual Chinnar Werk, depending on which time was best suited to the more important among the guests invited. The 1938 Week was being held in October from the 11th to the 15th.

The Chinnat Week was the most important annual social event in the life of the upper Assam tea-planter. It was part tea-conference and part tamnly get together, an occasion for arranging transfers, for earmarking the night men for promotion and the wrong men for retirement it was also an occasion for parring off some of the bachelors with the season's crop of young ladies over from England.

The five days of the week were not merely the most hectic, they were also the most important day at the year. Everyone in the tea distint came with wife and children and retrievers. The Resident Directors of the three companies invited their own offical and puvate guests The planters and their tanules and their dogs stayed at the Club. thes in the permanent buildings or in tents. There was little to choose between the cluts tooms and the tents in the way of comfort except than the tents you had to put up with the zinc-tub and commode type of bathroom common in mofussil India. On the other hand, if you lived in the club rooms, you had to keep your dog out in the kennels May of the planters preferred the tents to the club rooms Duing the Week, each one of the Resident Directors gave a tea- and tennis party, with bridge and mah jongg tos those who did not play tennis. The Revident Duectors' wives between them organized a fancy dress party for the children complete with ice-cream and cakes from Firpu's and whistles and paper caps and presents for every child present. Every single seming there was a cocktail dance at the Club too, inespective of whatever private entertaining was going on, and on the last day of the Week, which was invariably a Saturday, they held the annual Chinnar tough-shoot. Over the years, the rough shoot had become a highly competitive, lite and death affair, and it was no longer possible to be casual about it. The competition was restricted to a dozen guns, four guns represent ing each company It was both an individual championship and a team event Everyone came to see the tough shoot and brought sandwiches and thermos flasks of tea or beer for lunch and walked discreetly behind the guns until the last drive of the day was over Then they all joined in the gargantuan afternoon tea served out in the open, at which the wife of the senior Resident Duector gave away the prizes

On the same evening, after a bath and a change the men into boiled shirts and the women into their best evening dresses every one hurned back to the Club for the annual Chinar rough shoot ball By now the promotions and the transfers had been decided upon, although of course the announcements would not be made until after the end of the year the matamonial pairings off had been accomplished on had misfired the rough shoot championship was won On the last night you really pot down to st and relaxed. you drank and danced danced and drank all through the might, and later you forgathered in your own groups and sang songs and as often as not male bonhres in the Club grounds aad passed round bottles of whisky in a ring ring u roses until you saw the day light cicepung over the Himalayan peak. You went off to sleep then, back to you rooms and tents and as soon as you were awake and recovered you got into your cars and left for your gardens feeling a little sad and deflated

In between the round of communal festivities, you squeezed in an equally heavy schedule of private entertaining lunch or dinner parties with other planters, pienus, fishing or boating trips on the tke you could even go for a quiet walk in the morning or get a hud game of squash with the club marker to sw cat out the ravages of excessive smoking and drinking.

Sitting in the men dressing 1oom of the Highlands Club dressed ma shut of towelling and white shouts, and waiting for one of the the club showers to be free Henry Winton was humming and whistling to himselt a tune which he had heard since coming up to Chinnar It was an Edhe Cantor song called Look what you've done He had just played seven games of squash with Babulal the marker and had managed to win three of them, and since the Highlands Club marker was the thud ranked professional squash player in the whole of India, Henry was pleased with his own showing against hum If sahib only practises regularly, he would beat Murad," the marker had assured him Henry had other reasons to feel pleased with himself besides his game of squash with Babulal. He had been told by Sudden that he was one of the four guns chosen to represent the Brindian team in the rough shout Although Henry was regarded as one of the best men with the heavy rifle in the district, no one had thought as well of his shotgun shooting is of that of Sudden himself for stance. or Bliss or Cherill or some of the others nor to be sie had Henry himself thought that he was vet in the champ onship class For competitive shotgun shooting you needed constant practice, you had to fire off several thousand rounds even before the shooting season opened each yen ist to get your eye 1, and that sort of practice was beyond a junior man iger's means Sudden rould easily have chosen someone else for his fourth gun md Henry is aware that he was beme specially tavened

But the chief reason for Henry's abounding high spots was an experience of the previous evening It had come like a flash of lightning a sudden explosion sparking longing which had not been there before tender yet burning and overwhelming While he and Jean had been trolling on the mount lawn after they had returned from the dance at the lub he hul attempted to kiss her It was a hesitant even halt hearted sort of kiss when it began, but Jean had taken it over tron. him and transformed it into a linger- ing, wearing moment of bliss, iting from now here it had become an exploration to forbidden termory a kiss of hunger and thust and desire an unamtakable preliminary to higher rewards.

Had het parents really brought her to dia to get med? IEND he Henry world take gor Icire to rum handy

The Colonel and his lady too had improved on closer acquaint ante and now seemed less brittle and artificial Henry could even picture them as alles Even as it was he was beginning to wonder whether they were not purposely leaving feat and himself more and more together He certainly hoped they wett Just how much they were co-operating perhaps he would now for certain in the evening, when they were all to visit the game cottage Sudden had reserved the cottage for the Walters family and had asked Henry to be their guide The visit to the game cottage had nearly tallen through, because the Colonel had thought his wife would not be able to manage the ladders.

'I don't think Elsie should go climbing ladders,' he had said at lunch. 'Nor should I, for that matter."

But it's absurdly easy. Sudden had assured him. 'I even took up old dowager Lady Haverell.

Well how high up is this cottage, exactly?" asked Elsie Walters.

'Exactly thirty feet. We had to have it that high because of the danger of elephants, you know." And how does one go up. Sudden?"

'Well, at first there is a short rope-ladder, just ten feet high. It takes you to a platform, complete with railing. From there you get on to another ladder, a longer one this time, full fifteen feet. but it is a nice teakwood one and placed at a comfortable incline. This second ladder takes you to the fork of the tree. We have another platform there. After that there is a proper staircase, taking you another five feet, right into the verandah of the cottage." "Well, that sounds a bit of theek-hat.' said the Colonel.

It's perfectly easy. Sudden had insisted. 'Dammit, the cottage as our show piece here, and we have made it all easy as pie. Of course, we have to go up the two ladders and the staircase-but that was all designed to provide the best observation... tumbined with safety."

Do you think Fisie would be able to manage it. Kitty?" the Colonel had asked Lady Jeffrey.

Oh, yes. she had assured him. Nothing to it And of course Henry will help you up."

Yes, of course. Henry had said.

"Oh, do let's go, Daddy. Jean had implored

'Of course we're going, dear, her mother had said, and that had clinched the matter. It was all fixed now. and Henry was looking forward to the evening in the game cottage with trembling anticipation: the situa tion, as he saw it, had immense possibilities, from the way the cards seemed to be falling.

It was a rosy, fragrant world; and it was wonderful to be alive in it: alive and pleasantly tired after the all-out game of squash with the Club pro., waiting for a tingling shower, first the hot and then the cold, and then changing into a silk shirt and tweeds.

Look what you've done.' Henry was crooning to himself, and trying to re-capture some of the wonder and excitement of the pre- vious evening when he had held Jean in his arms, ardent and de- manding.

Within an hour, there would be tea on the glazed verandah of Sudden's bungalow overlooking the lake; an elaborate, English tea served in the Company's own ornate solid-silver tea service with the Brindian crest on it. There would be scones, light and piping hot, with honey and butter, and chocolate cake, and pâté and chutney sandwiches; there would be Jean, lovely, completely a part of the daily ritual of an English tea, deceptively demure on the sur- face, delightfully volatile underneath....

The door of one of the three showers opened and Cockburn draped in a towel, stepped out; he looked dishevelled and red-eyed. No good, Cockburn pronounced. Cold shower no bloody good for a hangover." I'm sorry,' said Henry.

Ah, Winton!--some hair of the dog; that's the answer. Will you join me?" Cockburn slumped down on the cane-seated bench beside Henry.

I've been waiting for a shower, said Henry by way of excuse. 'Don't want to cool off after squash. Took three games off Babulal.'

'Babulal always lets everyone take two or three games off him," Cockburn said. Just to boost their ego. Always has done it, the old Togue.

No, he plays all out with me,' said Henry confidently.

Then you must be very good. Now don't go and tell me you played squash for Eton."

'No. Not Eton."

'In that case I don't suppose Babulal can afford to fool around, giving you points. Boy! Boy! Bring me a chota-peg, please; juldi!" he yelled. Sure you won't change your mind?"

'Here?' Henry asked. "In the dressing-room?

A chota-peg is the same wherever you drink it. Winton,' said Cockburn with mock-seriousness. 'Juldi, boy!"

Well, I'll change my mind,' said Henry, suddenly attracted by the idea of ordering a whisky-and-soda in the men's dressing-room at three o'clock in the afternoon.

"Good! BOY!-bring two chota-pegs, ekdum, yelled Cockburn.

'Did you ever come across a man called Trevor?' asked Henry. Head watchman or something on one of the gardens: the hockey chap's father."

Trevor? Very familiar name. Let me see. Oh, yes, that's right; used to be head watchman at Pagoda Dale. Funny little Japanesy looking man." That's him."

'Harmless little chap. The only thing I seem to remember about him, funnily enough or perhaps not so funnily, ha, ha-is his wife. Extraordinarily good-looking woman. Oh. yes! Little odd. that, now I come to think of it. how anyone... well... anyone as insignificant as John Trevor should have married to a woman like that. But you know how it is, in India. The women don't get a chance to see their husbands-oh, what am I saying--I mean before marriage... They just have to marry anyone their parents tell them to, just anyone. Where did you run into him?" Here in Chinnar. He had come to see Sir Jeffrey."

'Oh. You know how all these old servants of the company are for ever going to Sudden asking for some kind of help. Sudden, of all people! Can you imagine his going out of his way to help anyone all played-out like that? Wrong man to go to asking for help, what? Tell me, how are you making out? Why were you singled out; any thing special in the offing.

Henry suddenly thought of Jean and tried to parry Cockburn's question, How much did he know? 'Oh, no, sir,' he said smiling. What about yourself? When are they bringing you up here? to the head office?"

Cockburn sat up with a jerk and looked at Henry as though he had said something offensive: the lines round his pale blue eyes hardened, and there were patches of white on his tanned, leathery face. 'Are you being a son of a bitch, Winton, or are you just a babe in arms?' he asked very coldly, as though he expected a post- tive answer to the question. 'Are you pulling my leg or are you...? Christ' Don't you know anything yet? How things run here?"

I'm sorry. I certainly wasn't pulling your leg, sir.' 'Didn't you know they've already cooked my goose?-Sudden and the other bastards. They're sending me back as soon as they get the new year's crop of Oxford boys.....

'T'm sorry....

'It's your sort of bastard they want, sweet-smelling, squash-

playing boys shining with vitamins and virtue whom they can push around like a pack of office boys. They have no use for real. rum-soaked planters of the old school like myself. They are all bas tards at the head office, and that white-bellied slug Sudden Death the worst of the lot. Did you know he was two years junior to me?... to both myself and Wallach?-and that in his probation year it was I who had to write his confidential report?"

He could see that Cockburn had been drinking too much and. was letting off steam. I didn't know that,' said Henry, feeling un- comfortable and hoping that the boy wouldn't come in vith their drinks just when Cockburn was saying something outrageous about Sudden. You never knew with these English-speaking Club boys. They might very well run to Sudden telling him what they had heard. After all, Sudden was the president of the Highlands Club, the burra-sahib of all the burra-ahibs.

Then what happened?' he asked Cockburn.

What happened! The war happened, that's all; a bloody world war! Wallach and myself and a dozen others went off and got Killed ur wounded or shell-shocked or broken-up in some other way. But not Sudden Dart: oh, no

Poor Sidden has a staff knee.' said Henry. A riding accident the very first year he was here. Everyone knows that. He's always re- gretted that he couldn't get into the war.

'Bad knee and a lily liver.... Ah, here's the boy with our chota-pegs.

Leave the tray on the bench, boy,' said Henry to the boy, and bring two more chora pegs in ten minutes exactly ten minutes. He was hoping Cockburn was." no say anything offensive about Sudden in the boy's heating.

He got rid of Wallach five years ago when your batch came, and now it's going to be my turn....

'You can't blame Sudden for sending Wallach home, y'know. Wallach had certainly run to seed. Henry protested.

Well, so have 1. Winton; so have I. You don't have to be polite. Keep your party manners for Sudden and his like, m'boy. Yes. Wallach and the rest of us who got involved in the war got broken up, and we all went to seed. We went and fought on the Somme. and we got shot up and gassed by the Germans, and we went to seed. Dammit! Of course we all went to seed. Cockburn laughed hoarsely. That's the thing to do. Winton, take it from me, don't get involved in any rough-and-tumble. I advise you as one who has... who has thoroughly gone to seed that if there's any kind of rumpus with this chap Mussolini or Hitler, you keep out of it. Take my tip. Try and acquire a nice game leg, now, so that when the time comes, you won't have to go. And then you won't go to seed, Winton.

I know it's unfortunate, sir,' said Henry. "But poor Sudden has got to account for things to the London office. It's they who lay down the policy...

'Poor Sudden! Ha, ha, poor Sudden! Let me tell you, Winton. you can keep your poor, misunderstood, straight-laced glamour- boys like Sudden. One Wallach is worth a hundred of them, as far as I am concerned D.S.O.?' ...a hundred. Do you know how Wallach won his

I've never been really interested."

'Then you don't need to know. But let me tell you one thing. When it comes to a showdown with this man Hitler, it's chaps like Wallach who will be sent to die in Europe, and it's chaps like Sudden who'll be staying here, looking after tea and helling around with the women; and prospering and not going to seed and getting their knighthoods from the King....

I do think you're hardly being fair to Sudden, Captain Cock- burn, said Henry. He has to run twenty-seven tea gardens. He can't afford to carry lame ducks."

'All right, Winton, don't let's talk about bastards like Sudden, and dead-beats like myself. Let's put on our old school ties and pre- tend we're Kipling boys running the Empire. Don't let's speak of unpleasant things about the last war or the horrors of the coming war. Let's forget all the messes we're heading for and talk about the up-and-coming boys like yourself, guaranteed not to soil their hands with anything dirty, guaranteed not to run to seed. Tell me, was that you I heard whistling before I came out?"

'Yes.'

Ah! And does that mean you're making headway with that girl I saw you with? the Colonel's daughter?

'I don't know."

"Why don't you take her out a little more, for drives and things, or boating? Boating would seem to be the ideal kind of setting... or get her to go to the game cottage with you...."

I'm taking her there to-night, said Henry, 'the whole family."

"Ah.' said Cockburn with a grin. I thought there was a catch. Well, I wish you luck. Personally, I should have thought that a I girl as attractive as she is is definitely not being, well, trotted out... Y'know what I mean."

"Yes, she's terribly attractive."

"You got my point; obviously you weren't being singled out for special treatment, to get you two paired off."

No. It was a rogue elephant. Sudden wants me to go after the Tista one-tusker. Of course, I'm terribly keen myself to shoot him,"

Oh, I see. So it's just a happy coincidence that Miss... er, Miss

Walters happens to be here.... As you say, a very happy coincidence.

'Humm. She's no despairing maiden. what? She can pick and choose as she likes. I wish you all the luck, of course, Winton; but don't take it too much to heart if you don't get anywhere. Per- sonally, I don't think she's the sort of girl who would choose to spend the rest of her life here as a planter's memsahib, what?'

There's that, of course."

Keep trying, m'boy. There's nothing like trying. But I very much doubt if Miss Walters is the kind of filly who can be tethered to a stall in upper Assam... How long are they staying here?"

They're leaving by the next but one P. and O.; booked from Bombay. You'll have to be nippy, then... Here's the boy with the lifesavers."

No Place for Failures

HENRY had never been particularly friendly with Cockburn, and yet the thought that Cockburn was being retired was vaguely dis- turbing. He tried to console himself with the thought that if Cock- burn was going back, it meant only that the London office had de- cided to extend Sudden's tenure as the Resident Director by another three years; and it was good to know that Sudden was staying on. There was no doubt that of the two, he himself would always have chosen Sudden. You could not visualize anyone like Cockburn taking over as the RD after you had been used to a man like Sudden Dart.

All the same, as Henry walked back from the Club along the sweep of the lake sparkling in the afternoon sunlight, heading for the Resident Director's bungalow and an English tea, he caught himself wishing that Cockburn wasn't going back. It was always sad to think of someone going back after all those years of service in India-particularly of someone going back as a failure.

And yet it was difficult to think of Cockburn as a failure, for as a planter he was, surprisingly, an unqualified success; hard-drinking free spending, outspoken Cockburn whose yields were always among the highest and whose plantation coolies were said to wor ship his photograph in their houses along with their heathen gods and goddesses. He was being sent back berause he was a misfit. For a man of his seniority, they had no suitable pigeon-hole in the organization; either they would have to make him Resident Direc tor after Sir Jeffrey Dart, or retire him.... It was a choice between promotion and the sack. The pity of it was that Cockburn himself had wanted neither. What he wanted above all was to go on being manager at Lamlung: remote, inaccessible Landlung: he wanted to go on being manager there until he died.

No, as a tea-planter Cockburn certainly wasn't a failure. He was being sent back because he was the odd piece thrown out by the screening machinery; the man in the wrong age group and seniority in the assembly-line of corporation employees. It was Wallach who had been sent back because he could not make the grade, Henry reminded himself; Wallach whose garden had gone to pot; Wallach, with his shell-torn, useless arm and his frayed D.S.O. ribbon, who had been his predecessor at Silent Hill-too much whisky, too many women: Wallach who was slowly going Bolshy.

They had had the same Resident Director, of course, five years ago, but he had been plain Mr. Dart then; the knighthood had not come until the Birthday Honours of 1935. At that time, too. he was the most juntor of the three Resident Directos at Chinnar; but he was, even then, the most forceful personality Henry had encountered in his twenty-five years. 'Wallach, Sudden Dart had told Henry Winton when he had gone to report to him at Chinnar on his first arrival, 'is a failure. He's gone to seed; his garden's gone to seed. This is no place for failures. I want you to bear that in mind, Winton."

And Henry Winton had winced and tried to keep a straight face, and to meet the hard gaze of those level, steel-blue eyes without flinching; hoping that Sudden would not be able to fathom rhe barely suppressed awareness of inadequacy within himself, nor scent out the constant, deep-seated fear of failure.

For he, Henry Winton, he too had been a failure, now desperately trying to repair the ravages ten thousand miles away from the ne of his sont, determined to make a success of himself at all costs, living up to an altogether new sense of values aimed exclu- sively at success.

Henty Winton's failure may have been a different kind of failure. but it was a failure all the same, and it was just as complete a failure as Wallach's. It was not the result of inefficiency or sloth or dis- honesty, nor, thank God, of the degeneration of drink or dope or anything like that. It was just that the qualities that had been so carefully bred into hun hid not served him in his particular environments.

Henry Winton had played rugger for his school, and had one day hoped to play rugger for Oxford. But in 1929, Henry's last year at school, his father had died: the small, carefully built-up, century- old family business of exporting coarse, highly coloured cotton cloth to South Africa and Kenya had been wiped out almost over- night. After the smoke had cleared and the creditors had gone away, clicking their tongues and shaking their heads, after the furniture had been auctioned, the house sold, and his mother had moved into two dingy rooms, there was no longer any question of Henry's going up to Oxford. He had to find a job.

The job they found for him was not bad: for thirty shillings a week and a generous commission on sales, he worked as a salesman in a firm of second-hand motor-car dealers. As Henry saw it, the used car business was a colossal racket where the size of the profits depended to a large extent on the gullibility of the customer and a number of little and big near-friends to boost a car's performance during the trial, and above all on sales talk that was a naked insult to his upbringing and education. At the end of a year, he had left the job in disgust and set up a used-car business of his own operated on clean lines. He had invested all his savings in the venture, and every penny he could raise by borrowing from his mother and other relatives Two years later the world slump had reached Eng- land, and the business folded. By that time, of course, he had been able to pin down the causes of his failure: by temperament and upbringing, he was not suited to the rough-and-tumble world of business; his public school education had not prepared him for the world of commerce in the cut-throat days of the great depression. But it was already too late. The creditors had come again, chauffeur- driven in sleek black cars, taken over his stock, appointed their own manager and men, and had magnanimously agreed to waive all further claims. He realized, of course, that his failure as a dealer in used cars was a failure of St. Bede's and Mill Hill; it was a failure of the Old School tie and Kipling's 'If': a failure of middle-class rectitude. He was twenty-four years old, broke hut wiser, tougher, more practical.

For the next few months, he had taken on whatever work had come his way, and for an agonizing five weeks he had acted as a tout and general errand man for a street bookie. They were crucial, all important weeks, for it was during those weeks that Henry Winton had discovered that it was dead easy to make a living if you eased up on your sense of values, learned to regard the tenets of the boyhood code as only a kind of snobbishness-even if you had to get used to a permanent bad taste in your mouth.

He was lucky to be away on his rounds when the shop was raided; he was even luckier to have in his pocket thirty-three pounds of the firm's money which he had just collected from an unsuccessful chent..

He had been lying low, keeping away from his racing circles, when his mother had sent him a cutting from the "Situations: Vacant column of The Times. The qualifications stipulated had. almost made Henry laugh, lor they were the very qualifications that he himself had decided were totally out of place in the hard world of business.

What they wanted was a public school man, not too young but unmanned, who would be prepared to go to India at short note. Henry had sent off an application almost as a lark, and he was quite surprised when they had called him up for an interview. He had put on his old school tie and gone to the London office of the Bendian Tea Company, and as soon as they had discovered that he had played gger for his school they had stopped asking him any further questions They had sent him off to Calcutta, first class all the way, and from Calcutta he had been sent on probation for 4 course of traming on one of the ompany re-gardens in Bengal. But even before his six months of probati in we r over, he had been transferred to North-Western Assam and told to report to the Resident Dues to at Chinnar It seemed that they had to fad a replacement in a hurry for a man called Wallach. It seemed that they wee getting rid of Wallach because he had been a Lalent 1 lemy Winton, it had been a sobering thought.