Rusty Goes to London by Ruskin Bond

Author:Ruskin Bond
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9788184753288
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2014-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

The rain had lessened, but I didn’t know what to do with myself. The hotel was uninviting, and it was too late to leave Shamli. If the grass hadn’t been wet I would have preferred to sleep under a tree rather than return to the hotel to sit at that alarming dining table.

I came out from under the trees and crossed the garden. But instead of making for the veranda I went round to the back of the hotel. Smoke issuing from the barred window of a back room told me I had probably found the kitchen. Daya Ram was inside, squatting in front of a stove, stirring a pot of stew. The stew smelt appetizing. Daya Ram looked up and smiled at me.

‘I thought you had gone,’ he said.

‘I’ll go in the morning,’ I said, pulling myself up on an empty table. Then I had one of my sudden ideas and said, ‘Why don’t you come with me? I can find you a good job in Dehra. How much do you get paid here?’

‘Fifty rupees a month. But I haven’t been paid for three months.’

‘Could you get your pay before tomorrow morning?’

‘No, I won’t get anything until one of the guests pays a bill. Miss Deeds owes about fifty rupees on whisky alone. She will pay up, she says, when the school pays her salary. And the school can’t pay her until they collect the children’s fees. That is how bankrupt everyone is in Shamli.’

‘I see,’ I said, though I didn’t see. ‘But Mr Dayal can’t hold back your pay just because his guests haven’t paid their bills.’

‘He can if he hasn’t got any money.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I will give you my address. You can come when you are free.’

‘I will take it from the register,’ he said.

I edged over to the stove and leaning over, sniffed at the stew. ‘I’ll eat mine now,’ I said. And without giving Daya Ram a chance to object, I lifted a plate off the shelf, took hold of the stirring-spoon and helped myself from the pot.

‘There’s rice too,’ said Daya Ram.

I filled another plate with rice and then got busy with my fingers. After ten minutes I had finished. I sat back comfortably, in a ruminative mood. With my stomach full I could take a more tolerant view of life and people. I could understand Mr Dayal’s apprehensions, Lin’s delicate lying and Miss Deeds’s aggressiveness. Daya Ram went out to sound the dinner gong, and I trailed back to my room.

From the window of my room I saw Kiran running across the lawn and I called to her, but she didn’t hear me. She ran down the path and out of the gate, her pigtails beating against the wind.

The clouds were breaking and coming together again, twisting and spiralling their way across a violet sky. The sun was going down behind the Siwaliks. The sky there was bloodshot. The tall, slim trunks of the eucalyptus tree were tinged with an

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