Out of India by Michael Foss Read Free Book Online Page B

their own tracery grumbled over a destabilized railbed, metal squealing even on the slowest of curves. In the carriages, smuts from the engine lay on the dirty rep of the seats. Weather streaks obscured the windows and a greyish grit coated most surfaces. Water in the lavatory, if it ran at all, came from the tap in brown driblets.
    In an old photo I see my mother arriving under the hooting, echoing, dingy canopy of the London terminus, a pert little town-hat at a cockeyed angle on her head and a tentative smile on her pale face. The day had hardly begun and already she looked wan and pasty.
    On all sides in London were mementoes of old wars. War is the one big game common to all complex societies at all times. The evolution of modern man is set out in the streets of our cities as a true via dolorosa , by way of fire and sword and bullet. How much public commemoration stinks of death! Implacable generals with a full book of killings sit proudly on frantic horses, all arched neck andflaring nostrils and bulging eyes. Swords are uplifted, pikes aimed at bellies, gun-barrels levelled with terrified faces. Cannons thrust their heavy snouts skywards. Women carved in stone, with wild weeping hair, disrobe out of pity for the fallen.
    At the bottom of Lower Regent Street, Florence Nightingale with her lamp, under the grim visages of three hairy guardsmen, pointed my mother towards the door of Cox & King’s, a bank once brought to its knees by the accumulated debts of all those sad young officers smashed in the trenches of the Great War. Now this old institution was subsumed under the bulk of a large national bank but still, as it were, acting as its military branch. Here Mr Reynolds, a lively gnome with a bony bald head and heavy glasses, awaited her.
    My mother was not good with money. Prodigal with her left hand, she grew guilty at expense and became tightfisted with her right hand. Costs crept up on her and took her by surprise. She had been used to the cheap prices of India, and an airy way of living. In wartime England she could never quite determine what was a necessity and what was an indulgence – a bowl of soup in Lyons Corner House, a winter vest, shoes for growing boys, lipstick in a new colour, a Penguin paperback of Priestley or Compton Mackenzie. A packet of Benson & Hedges rather than the cheaper Woodbines? Her husband started the war as a captain in an Indian regiment where the rates of pay were not calculated to support a family life in England. He remitted what he could but payments were sometimes delayed and always not enough. Adrift with two young children in the wash of war, in a land that was not hers and where she could make very few claims, my mother found herself in the midst of preoccupied people, harried by dangers, fears and worries, kind enough in intention but without the time or energy to take on the woes of others. After a struggle against her finances she collapsed into debtand appeared before Mr Reynolds in trepidation, feeling like a child caught with fingers in the sweetie-jar.
    Mr Reynolds was an old-fashioned bank manager, formal in dress and speech, punctilious as to detail, calm and authoritative in decision. He was also, in my mother’s eyes, something of a saint. He took a lofty view. What was a small amount of debt, in the circumstances? There was security, in the form of my father’s regular salary, which was likely to grow with promotions, if he could avoid getting killed. A modest sum now would be enough to tide her over, even though she had the expensive responsibility of small children – food, clothes, lodgings, education, as well as little easements to compensate for sad times. Trust Mr Reynolds, he knew. In the meantime, he said, she might look for a little job, for extra income and for peace of mind. ‘Secure the home front, so to speak,’ he told her, glasses twinkling. ‘There are plenty of wartime tasks waiting to be done by smart young ladies.’
    So we packed and went