Free 1977 by dorin

unusual hour and, returning, taking Ibrahim on one side, explained that she had
    executed her part of the arrangement by establishing with the manager that in the
    foreseeable future the Owner had no intention of replacing the mali and might even sack the
    blind, lame youth. He confirmed that, yes, Mrs Bhoolabhoy did seem to take the view that
    since last July she had been under no actual obligation to supply a mali , and that one could
    only await developments.

    “So the rest is now up to you. Last night, Ibrahim, Burra Sahib was very upset because Mr
    Bhoolabhoy did not even raise the subject of the garden. It’s a pity we did not know Mr
    Bhoolabhoy was back, otherwise I could have had a word with him before he came across.
    But it can’t be helped. I wish it could. I find these little plots and plans foreign to my nature,
    to my preference for the way of dealing with things. There was a time when we, when we , did
    not have to go in for such things, a time when as my poor father used to say —”
    “God rest father’s soul, Memsahib,” he said. He knew she was an English clergyman’s
    daughter.
    “—used to say, An Englishman’s word is as good as his bond because he is known
    throughout the world to be an honest man.”
    “Honest because British, Memsahib.”
    “Yes, Ibrahim. But that is all so long ago.”

    Yes, Mr Bhoolabhoy had said, the sacked mali’s tools could be made available. He could
    even suggest a boy, able, willing if not very bright.
    A not very bright boy would be ideal, Ibrahim thought. Mr Bhoolabhoy explained about
    Joseph. He had found him asleep in the porch of St John’s Church one Sunday morning.
    The Christian community in Pankot, mostly Eurasians, but with some Indians, such as
    Francis Bhoolabhoy himself, had for some years now not been large enough to warrant a
    resident chaplain. Once a month the Reverend Stephen Ambedkar came up from St Lukes
    in Ranpur to conduct Sunday services and the day Mr Bhoolabhoy had found Joseph asleep
    in the porch had been such a Sunday.
    Mr Bhoolabhoy, a lay-preacher and churchwarden of Pankot’s old English C of E church
    took care to be there very early on the Reverend Stephen’s Sundays, so did Miss Susy
    Williams. Miss Williams, member of a Eurasian family once well-known in Pankot—its sole
    surviving member except for a much fairer-skinned and younger sister who had hooked a GI
    during the second world war and had last been heard of in Cincinnati—had not only
    inherited a talent for hairdressing from her mother who in the days of the raj had listed most
    of the memsahibs of Pankot among her clients, but also acquired a talent for music and
    flower-arrangement. She played the piano at St John’s (the organ had long ago seized up and
    there was no money for its repair) and also decorated the altar. On the Reverend Stephen’s
    Sundays she and Mr Bhoolabhoy arrived within half-an-hour of one another, Mr
    Bhoolabhoy first, because he had the keys, and Miss Williams just before 8 a.m. They both
    brought picnic breakfasts which they ate in the vestry.
    Finding Joseph asleep in the porch and having elicited the fact that he had come up from
    Ranpur in search of work, had no home, was hungry, and believed in the Lord Jesus, Mr

    Bhoolabhoy gave him a chapatti and a cup of tea from his thermos. Then he got on with his
    jobs. When Miss Williams turned up, laden with flowers, the boy had disappeared but Mr
    Bhoolabhoy found him later on his knees pulling grass away from one of the old hummocky
    overgrown graves, trying to tidy it up, to pay for his meal. Later he helped Miss Williams
    with the flowers, filling the vases with water and cutting the stalks. He said he had once done
    this for “the sisters” in Ranpur. Miss Williams was very pleased with him ; but while her
    back was turned, doing the last vase, he disappeared again.
    Mr Bhoolabhoy had then gone down to Ranpur and it was not, he told Ibrahim, until this
    very morning, when he went