Three Continents. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
would have agreed with the Rawul that the party was a great success. He probably never noticed that many things were going on that had nothing to do with his movement but were just our own self-centered emotions. Although everyone, both from the Rawul’s family and from ours, was expected to turn out and contribute to the success of the day, there were two among us who wanted nothing to do with it—Barbara and Jean. They didn’t even come out of their rooms, except at one point Jean could be seen making her way determinedly through the crowd on the lawn to where Lindsay was in a little group around the Rani. I was alarmed when I saw Jean; and one couldn’t help seeing her, she was conspicuously not dressed up for the party but in her everyday jeans and crumpled shirt; and she was frowning too, and looked miserable. I tried to get to her before she could get to Lindsay. Other guests stopped her on the way—the people from the neighborhood who liked her for a decent, nice person. Even now, though obviously overwrought, she was decent and nice and made the right responses to Mrs. Pickles, who told her about someone permanently paralyzed from having been given the wrong injection in the hospital, to Lucy Rabin, who had been successful at an auction with an eighteenth-century pair of fire tongs, and to Mrs. McKimberley, who invited her to join a tour, with picnic lunch, of a newly restored ex-President’s house. With all these people Jean did her best, in spite of her swollen eyes, to be her usual caring self—until she got to Lindsay, and then she hissed “Come inside,” and gripped her arm.
I saw Lindsay remove her arm—as though it were held not by a person but had got caught accidentally in something. Her attention remained stubbornly fixed on the Rani, who was making conversation to the circle that surrounded her. There was this about the Rani’s conversation always—it didn’t matter what she said; one felt how kind it was of her to say anything when she really didn’t have to, when everyone was quite happy just to be near her, within her aura. But there she stood, with her arms folded over her gold-embroidered bosom, talking about—could it be?—yes, about her hairdresser, who apparently was wise and witty though what she reported sounded quite flat. Nevertheless, the Rani was smiling as she quoted him, and everyone else was laughing, obsequiously, as they eagerly listened to her. When Jean asked her to come inside, Lindsay laughed more deliberately, and that made Jean catch hold of her arm again. At that moment, Manton, who was also in the circle around the Rani, looked over at her and, waggling his fingers in greeting, called “Why hello there, Jean—where have you been? We’ve missed you, darling.” He was smiling across at Lindsay and Jean, as if he knew just exactly what was going on and was both anticipating and hoping for some misbehavior.
Lindsay went with Jean as far as the porch, and there she stopped and turned on her: “You leave me alone. Don’t you dare come near me. Because I hate you. You’d better know that.” She delivered these sentences with the force of body blows, while her icy eyes glared into Jean’s face. Jean glared back at her. They were about the same height and age—this somehow made them appear like two little girls who had got into a fight, and one almost expected them to start kicking each other’s shins, and pinching. And, in fact, their fights did sometimes have this nursery quality. The first time I saw one, I was appalled; later I got used to them and took no notice, especially as I knew they would make up very soon.
To emphasize her contempt for her friend, Lindsay swung away so violently that the impact accompanied her down the porch steps, making her hips swing, as well as her hair, which she kept long, blond, and young. Jean was left standing there, breathing heavily, frustrated in midfight. I think she would have liked to go running after Lindsay and physically stop her, and it wasn’t decorum that prevented her but age: for there is one thing about these sort of fights, these sort of strong emotions—you need to have stamina for them, and Jean obviously didn’t. She sank into a chair on the porch, and when I went up to her, I found her panting and swollen with a rush of blood to her face. She asked me to go up to her room for her pills. I went running through the empty house, through the hall and up the stairs—and as always, when it was deserted like this, empty of all its inhabitants, when it was just itself, it was so beautiful, so still and yet breathing with its own accumulated life, that I loved and wanted to keep and possess it forever. However, on my way down, I realized it was not entirely empty, for Barbara appeared at the door of her room, looking tousled and upset. She called to me, but I was in a hurry with Jean’s pills.
I sat with Jean after I gave them to her. How could I leave her? When I touched her, it felt like pulses were pounding inside her, and for a moment she held her head as if afraid it might burst. From where we sat we could see the guests on the lower lawn by the lake, and unfortunately we also had a good view of the Rani with her circle of admirers, which Lindsay had rejoined. I tried to get Jean to come inside, but she wouldn’t; she wanted to sit there and continue to watch Lindsay with the Rani. After a while, she said “Why do we do this?” She spoke calmly, and I think she was calmer, anyway physically; probably her pills had begun to work. I said “I don’t know why you do it.” And I didn’t—Jean was a sensible, intelligent woman, she had had a career and business of her own, everyone liked and respected her; whereas Lindsay—I don’t want to say anything about Lindsay because she was what she was and perhaps couldn’t help it. I knew other women like her, both of her generation and of my own—from that class; I mean the one that hadn’t had to work for a living for several generations: utterly, utterly selfish and self-centered and yet with a nervous fervor to improve themselves, literally to become better, which was a sort of saving grace in them and made people like Jean love them.
Jean said “Don’t talk about it. There’s nothing left to say; nothing that I haven’t said to myself a hundred times over.” She was right: They always had the same fights; sometimes Jean packed her bags, but she always unpacked them again, and Lindsay allowed herself to be coaxed into forgiving her.
“You mustn’t agree to give the house, Harriet,” Jean suddenly said. She wouldn’t look at me—perhaps she was shy about having to appeal to me, or perhaps she just wanted to keep her eyes fixed on the Rani’s group. “Lindsay’s irresponsible—I don’t have to tell you how she is—if tomorrow she feels like turning it over to the circus, she’d do that.” Actually, this was not quite accurate: Lindsay did irresponsible, impulsive things, but they had never before involved her in giving something of her own away. So there was a difference.
“She’s infatuated,” Jean said. “That’s all it’s about. You think she cares a hoot about the Fourth World? Or about the Rawul or any of them except his wife, if that’s what she is. You have to be firm, Harriet; you have to hold out; if you don’t agree, there’s not a thing they can do about it, she and Michael.”
“You think Michael’s infatuated too?”
She hesitated, unwilling perhaps to hurt me by talking about anything I might not be aware of. So I went on speaking calmly, to inform her I was aware: “I know how he feels about Crishi, but I’m sure it’s not the only reason he’s willing to give the house. And actually, Jean,” I added truthfully, “I’m not all that sure that Lindsay’s only reason is the Rani.”
“Oh poor Lindsay—as if she could hold two thoughts together in her poor head at the same time; or think beyond the next meal she’s going to eat, or the next person she’s going to have an affair with.” She tried to sneer, but her mouth trembled; I didn’t want to continue our conversation.
A figure had detached itself from the crowd on the lower lawn and was approaching the house. It turned out to be Crishi. I hadn’t expected him to come and join us on the porch but that was what he did, and it even seemed that he had deliberately come to seek out both or one of us.
“What’s up?” he said. He saw at one glance how Jean was feeling and drew up a chair close to her. He scanned her face intimately. “Don’t you want to come and see the Rawul hoist the flag? You wouldn’t want to miss that, Jean: It’s an historic event. And in your house,” he said, now raising his smiling eyes to me.
“What flag is he hoisting?” Jean asked—his warm manner drying up her tears.
“What flag? Yours, of course. Isn’t it one of your big days today? Independence Day or some big deal like that? I’d think you’d want to do something patriotic. Both of you,” he said, glancing at me again—but then looking beyond me, and when I turned around,