A Division of the Spoils by Paul Scott

Author:Paul Scott [Scott, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature
ISBN: 9780749322366
Publisher: Arrow Books; Random House Group
Published: 1975-01-02T06:00:00+00:00

The Dak Bungalow

(Sarah Layton)

I

THE SCENE WAS over. I can enter now, Sarah told herself.

*

But I did not enter. None of us did. I thought I saw the reason. What had held us together as a family was father’s absence; his return showed how deeply we were divided. You could feel him making the attempt to come to terms with each of us separately. There was a time for mother, a time for Susan and Edward, and a time for me; and a different kind of time for the servants, for Pankot, for the regiment.

My time was before breakfast. Between seven and eight-thirty every morning father and I rode. He associated me with these early hours of the day and during them treated me with a special solicitude, as if the pattern of intimacy which had been established on the journey from Ranpur when we shared tea and bacon sandwiches and were careful with crumbs, might develop through repetition into something complex, mysterious and satisfying. At times he had the look of a man with a secret he was patiently waiting to share; at others that of a man empty of knowledge and recollection.

After a couple of days I noticed on these morning rides that we were taking the same route – down the northern slope of East Hill into the valley – and stopping at the same place. The view wasn’t spectacular. About a mile ahead you could see a village. That was all. But he reined in and sat motionless, gazed at the distant huddle of huts and the terraced fields that traced the contours of the hill. The earth was tawny. There was always a mist. You could smell the smoke of wood and dung fires. After five minutes or so he would look at his wristwatch and say, ‘Well, better get back.’ Apart from this single comment he kept silent during the halt.

An obvious explanation of the choice of turning point was that it was fixed according to a formula involving time available, distance to be covered, expected time of return. But we did not always take the same route home and got back to Rose Cottage anywhere between say 8.15 and 8.45. The only part of the ride I could be absolutely sure of – the part that I began to feel was plotted by an obsession – was the route out and the halt and the five minutes’ silent contemplation of a village whose name I wasn’t certain of but checked on one of the large-scale maps at Area Headquarters. It was called Muddarabad.

We had never kept horses at Rose Cottage. Such stabling as there had been had – long before Aunt Mabel’s time even – become merged with the servants’ quarters and store-rooms. A syce brought horses up from the depot. In the past year or two I had ridden seldom, mother less and Susan not at all. In Bombay father had said that one of the things he was looking forward to was getting accustomed again to the saddle.

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