Staying on by Paul Scott ~ A coda to The Raj Quartet

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Staying On  by Paul Scott
 

Please post below if you will be joining us.  

This slim gem of a book has been billed variously as a sequel, a post script, and a coda to Paul Scott's masterpiece, The Raj Quartet,  The fact is that the book stands alone, quite happily, and will continue to delight readers of historical fiction far into the future. This last book finally brought Paul Scott the recognition that had eluded him for so long. What irony of fate, then, that he was too ill to accept the prize in person and died not long after. Staying On tells the story of a British couple who, despite the lack of certainty or assurances of their future, chose to stay in India after the precipitous partition and the hasty departure of the military an civilian personnel. The story begins in medias res and is told in flashbacks twenty-five years after the British left. The locale is still the fictional Pankot of the Raj, the hill station refuge to which the British retreated during the heat on the plains, accompanied by  their servants. How much things have irrevocably changed in the space of a quarter century is shown in this book.  It is, I submit to you, at heart a love story told with compassion, sensitivity, even pathos.

Discussion schedule:   For the start of our discussion on the weekend of April 1 and 2nd, I suggest reading Chapters 1 and 2 and encourage any and all questions. It may be useful to keep a glossary, and I'll be mindful of that.

Discussion Leader ~ Traude

[straudetwo]

Dear readers,  I am grateful for JoanP's help in setting up the header for this discussion.  To have this opportunity is the fulfillment of a personal dream, one I'd like to share with you. 
The book is available in paperback, and some libraries may have it also.

Some background information on British India and life there will be helpful, I believe, and I'll post it tomorrow.

[Gumtree]

Traude: How wonderful at last to have the opportunity of reading and discussing these last words of Scott's  Raj masterpiece. My copy is sitting on my reading table ready to be taken up and savoured which is really just to say that I'll be here with you and our fellow devotees. 

[Steph]

I will be here off and on. I have the book, but I am also doing the Major Pettigrew and have a weeklong elderhostel and then am in charge of the Literary Adventure at my home library.. Sigh.. April is going to be tricky..

[PatH]

I'm with you, too.  My book is sitting ready on the coffee table.  Thank you, Traude, for persisting and giving us this opportunity.

[Steph]

Just a peek and it is really scene setting, but oh me, I think I am going to love this one.

[Frybabe]

I'm here, I'm here, she said waving arms and jumping up and down. 

[straudetwo]

Hello Gumtree, Steph, PatH and Welcome Frybabe. It's good to have you on board.
And Steph, whenever you can stop by, you will welcomed warmly.

Today I was lucky in my search for a map that shows India at the time of Partition in August 1947 and identifies in color the territories that became West Pakistan on the western sode and East Pakistan clear across on the other side of the subcontinent. Arrows mark whence the respective parts of the population had to journey to reach the respective regions.  It became a migration of enormous proportions amid fear, terror, violence and bloodshed. I will ask for technical help to show the map in the header.

our story opens twenty-five years later and is told in flashback beginning with the death of Colonel Tusker Smalley.  He and his wife Lucy are mentioned in volume 3 of The Raj Quartet only briefly. Unlike the other officers and their wives, the Smalleys did not live in government housing nor occupied a bungalow They lived in gloomy rented rooms at Smith's Hotel - still extant 25 years later - 
which, according to Tusker, automatically precluded their having parties there for officers and families.  When they attended the invitations of others, they'd dally and wait for an invitation to share a  tonga with another couple to save the expense of hiring their own tonga.
Lucy was a member of the wives' club, helpful and efficient, always volunteering to take the minutes at meetings.  Lucy and Tusker elected to stay on when the British retreated en masse and, at the opening of the book, are the last survivors of a once glorious, proud regiment,
looked after by a Muslim servant named Ibrahim. 

More thoughts tomorrow. 

[Steph]

The characters as I read are very very vivid. I do love that.

[straudetwo]

Yes, Steph, Paul Scott was a master in portraying his characters.  The events in the Raj Quartet were often grim, but in this book there is some comic relief, for instance  the description of the generously proportioned Mrs. Dhoolabhoy, the despotic owner of Smith's hotel, and the Smalleys' landlady.
As for Indian words, it may be easier to identify them as they come up in the text.

A few more preliminary remarks will follow.
Thank you for being here.

[kidsal]

YES - HOPE TO.  MY INTERNET EXPLORER JUST WENT DOWN SO USING FIREFOX.

[Steph]

I read the Raj quartet, but it was many years ago and I do remember it as grim at best..But this one thus far is lighter.

[Jonathan]

Traude, I would like to participate.

[PatH]

Hi, Jonathan, it'll be good to be in a discussion with you again.

[Gumtree]

 Jonathan: How nice to see your smiling face. (off topic) - I've begun reading Orhan Pamuk's Museum of Innocence - it's more accessible than Snow but I'm not quite sure where it's going yet. Have you read it? - Museum I mean.

Traude Your synopsis of the Smalleys role in the Quartet brought them back into my mind so clearly that I couldn't resist starting to read 'Staying On' - I'm so looking forward to our time together with this book.

[Steph]

Glad to see we are going to have a nice crowd for this. I have this one in actual paper and the
Simonson one on my IPAD..Trying to get both of them in order since the first week in April, I will be at an elderhostel.

[straudetwo]

WELCOME, WELCOME,   Kidsal and Jonathan ! I could not be more pleased and honored seeing you both here.   May this discussion be as deep and enriching as those we had on Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red and Snow !
You may have noticed the
 A map has been added to the header (thank yo, JoanP), by far the best I found, that  clearly shows  - in broad strokes - what the subcontinent (of course without the tear-drop Ceylon/Sri Lanka) looked like at the time of Partition.  
IMHO,  words pale for once in comparison with the visual representation of the migration of millions to their newly assigned  homelands.

* The bod red outline is the boundary of British India in 1939
* The pal lavender? portion is the Union of India
* The green portions on the west and east sides of the subcotinent repreent East/West Pakistan, respectively, in 1947
* Grey (?) shaded areas were not included in the partition

* The yellow stars mark Border conflicts
* Sage (?) areas mark rots after partition
* The red arrows show the movements of Hindu and Sikh refugees
* The green arrows show the movements of Muslims refugees into and out of the respective regions.

The presence of the map is a personal indulgence. I learned history at my father's knee an amateur historian, and there were always maps. It's something to fall back on, if or when needed.
_______

This is a slim book - an extract of sorts, a distillation of a life's experience  with nary an unnecessary word ---but we don't know  yet how far, or into how many tangents, the discussion may take us.
As initial reading I had suggested Chapters 1 and 2 (of disparate length) but am reluctant to set limits,   simply because I do not impose them on myself.  Can we just see how far the journey takes us?

[Steph]

I simply love the story thus far.. But history is interesting of course.. Not sure that in this book, it plays any part however.

[kidsal]

Thought I had this book   It is on its way - probably this next week.

[Jonathan]

Let's start with the cover. Wherever is this book going to take us? We are told that it is 'a rich and joyful book' and that it won the author the Booker Prize. But, frankly, the scene puzzles me. The hooded, sari-clad figure in the foreground, with a mosque in the background, reflected in the water. The cover is suggestive, but gives nothing away, judging by the first two chapters.

I wish I could show you the cover on my copy of the book. Brightly done in water colors. There in the distance are the snow-covered hills. Filling the foreground is the bed of crimson canna lilies, which will serve as a bier for the dead Colonel Smalley. In the middle distance is The Lodge, the annexe, the home for the last ten years of the Colonel and his wife Lucy. And there they are on the verandah. Tusker sitting in his 'worm-eaten cane lounging chair, leaning forward, engrossed in his newspaper. We are told how well-informed he is. And there is Lucy, leaning with her elbows on the verandah railing, staring into the distance...or the future. Or the past?

What a shock to have the Colonel die in the first sentence, and what a relief to have him brought back to life for the rest of the book.

[Gumtree]

Jonathan: there are several cover designs - some have no picture - just the printed title and author's name. One has a cluster of red flowers nestled into the title.
My copy has the arched facade of what I am assuming is a mosque with a man and woman (Tusker and Lucy?) standing outside - the man in a white suit standing erect, apparently motionless but looking ahead - as befits an army man. The smaller figure of the woman is softer - she is wearing a long red skirt and white blouse and is looking at the ground- perhaps watching where she puts her feet. The light striking the building is beautifully rendered - the painting (illustration) is by Glenn Harrington and is wonderfully evocative.

And yes, Tusker dying in the first sentence fairly takes one aback, but my goodness, how it captures the imagination and leaves one wanting to read on.

[PatH]

My cover is the same as Gumtree's.  Indeed, it's very fine.

I'd like to start by expressing my admiration for Scott's style.  He says so much with so few words.  Every sentence is a little gem of spare understatement, with implications that tell you so much.  And I'm finding him very funny in a quiet gentle sort of way.

[PatH]

A question which perhaps some of the readers of the Raj quartet can answer for me--where is Pankot?  Is it real, or a made up place.  It's obviously one of the places where the English went when they could to get out of the heat of the plains, but do we know approximately where?

[straudetwo]

My apologies for joining you late. Winter has made another fierce grab at us, leaving the central part of Massachusetts  and oarts of New Hampshire with seven more inches of snow and power outages over wide areas.  Here on the SE coast we had about an inch and did not lose
power. But it  is still uncomfortably cold for the time of year.

Gumtree, Jonathan and PatH, I am grateful for your posts. Let me begin by answering Steph's recent post about history.  Yes, the tone, the mood,  of the book is lighter, but as we read more by and about the new protagonists, it becomes clear that their personal history, their experiences in the "dying das of the Empire "(Margaret McMillan) make up a significant part of their memories.

My paperback, published in 1977,  also pictures the same couple in front of a religious building on the cover. All we know is that the story takes place in the fictional Pankot, that had a predominantly Hindu majority, at least one Indian temple (visited by Daphne Manners and Harry Kumar in volume I of the tetralogy), and St. John's, an Anglican Church.  Ibrahim, a Muslim , was raised in the equally fictional princely state of Mirat. At some point there was an influx of penniless Punjabis, among them a woman with enough money on her to buy Smiths Hotel, managed by Mr. Bhoolabhoy, whom she married. Since he could not understand her Punjabi, they conversed in English.

No armed conflicts before Partition are mentioned, which could be an indication that Pankot and Ranpur remained in Indian hands. The picture on Jonathan's book cover seems to be a much more direct reference to the protagonists of the book. It would be interesting to know, Jonathan , in what year your book was published. I guess it may have been after 1977.


Yes, PatH,  Scott's style is superb, his characterizations marvelous. The reader cares for the characters and wants to know what happeans to them. It is jarring to learn in the first sentence that one of the main characters has died. Scott may have intended to establish Tusker's death as a fait accompli to better examine his and Lucy's life and how they led it under the Raj.

Ibrahaim notes (disapprovingly) on more than one occasion that "old people are totally self-absorbed".  Do you think that generalization is true ?  Chronologically I fit into the category but I do not consider myself self-absorbed or self-involved.

P.S. Kidsal,  we only just began and won't have to rush. You are welcome at any time.

[Frybabe]

I knew Mayapore was a fictional place, but I wasn't sure about Pankot. After doing some Googling, I found my answer - both are fictional. What is just as interesting is that both names are also used in one of the Indiana Jones movies.  If I remember correctly, Pankot was set in the Himilayan foothills. Here are some very lovely pictures of same. http://www.mickcanning.com/himalayanfoothills.htm

oops, sorry Traude. I was sending the same time as you.

[Frybabe]

Traude, I am also reading Major Pettigrew's Last Stand which is about a 68 year old widower and his budding romance with a 58 year old Pakistani widow. Major Pettigrew's father served in India, and the Major was born in Lahore. The book as little to do with our subject here, except that us older folks are the featured characters. It is a pleasure to be reading both at the same time.

[Jonathan]

Very lovely pictures, indeed, Frybabe. From Darjeeling to Srinigar. Isn't that practically all the way across northern India? I was surprised to read about the unnamed 6000m peaks. I suspect the guide didn't want to admit his ignorance. There are just too many deities in India for any hill to be left unnamed.

Many of the hill stations must have had marvellous settings. Would that have had a bearing on the question of 'staying on'? One of the pictures also looked like a little bit of England. On the other hand they must have seemed isolated. Why did some Britishers stay on in India after 1947?

Traude asks: 'Ibrahaim notes (disapprovingly) on more than one occasion that "old people are totally self-absorbed".  Do you think that generalization is true ?'

I believe Ibrahim says it more in sorrow than disapproval. He's observing Colonel Sahib and Memsahib very closely and sees their decline. I'm not sure he's right in his concern. By way of contrast, consider how impressed Mr Bhoolabhoy is at the Colonel's knowledge of affairs in places like London and Washington. By the way does anyone remember who was referred to in 'what Henry Kissinger had said to the dumbest blonde in Connecticut who only  wanted to send a message to her momma in Warsaw.'?

There was something like that back in the seventies, I seem to remember. Be that as it may. The Tasker kept himself informed.

My Staying On advertises itself as A Mandarin Paperback, published in 1994, in Great Britain. The painting on the cover is by Ramsay Gibb. Gum, I can imagine you painting something like this.

This has brought back a memory. As my mother reached a ripe old age, she told me confidentially and regretfully one day, now I seem to think only of myself.

[PatH]

Why did some Britishers stay on in India after 1947?

I expect this book will try to answer that, but I can see some reasons.  You've been living in India for most of your life.  If you go back to England, it will partly be a strange country, and people won't understand what your life has been about.  You're comfortable here, and hate to make the change.  And you probably can't quite take in how different things will be.

[straudetwo]

Frybabe, thank you for that truly fascinating link. There's so much to see and absorb. Perhaps it could be incorporated in the header.

I did not sign on to Major Pettigrew, wanting to devote all my time to Staying On. Mention has also been made (in the Classics folder, I believe) of Jane Gardam, an English author with whom we are not as familiar as we are with Anita Brookner (Hotel du Lac), also English and the same age as Jane Gardam - whom I find irresistible. She wrote about the "orphans of the Raj" with deep understanding and compassion : The climate in India was extreme and, during the hottest season, endurable only in hill stations, like Pankot. The children of military and civilian personnel, born in India, were believed vulnerable to various infectious diseases and sent Home by about age ten, in many cases earlier, to relatives if they existed, or boarded. The parents would visit for one long vacation every few years, but the young people stayed until the end of their schooling. The experience was by no means always a happy one, as we know from beloved author Rudyard Kipling.  Even if children were with family,  the long absences from the home in India made an emotional distance almost inevitable.

PatH,, while we were reading the last two volumes of the Raj Quartet,  where the loss of Malaya and then Burma to the Japanese is described, and a number of officers and soldiers made it back from there to Pankot,  I wondered whether Paul Scott could have imagined Pankot in the region that became East Pakistan (see map), but all we know is that the station, like Ranpure and Mayapore are fictional.

[Steph]

I find the characters interesting and Ibraham fascinating. He really seems to grip his employers.. Actually I suspect they are his family to a large extent. Tusker seems to be totally in the grip of some sort of evasion. I like his wife, but Tusker not so much. Why do I think that she is in the generation of women who were never allowed to make decisions. The staying on is puzzling to me.. It sounds so dreary where they are..The writing is exceptional though.. You get a real feel for Pancot and the people there. The British Army ( probably all Armies) has such a rigid feel.

[rosemarykaye]

Hello,

I meant to join in with this, but I don't have my copy, practically all my books are in storage, and I can't get it from the library here as I should be in Edinburgh by tomorrow - whereupon I can probably get it from the Stockbridge library, but will have only very limited internet access.  Oh the joys of moving (especially in 3 stages)!

So I don't know how much I'll be able to contribute, but I have read this book quite recently - so forgive me when I forget things.  With regard to the question about why the Smalleys stayed on, I think it's because they have no money.  They had a reasonable lifestyle in India, even if they were not part of the elite, but if they go back they have no home, little income, and no children.

I think Steph is right, the Smalleys and Ibrahim have been together so long that they are like family - always bickering but actually quite close to one another.  My mother says that my aunt and her black housekeeper in S Africa were very close and inter-dependent, even though my aunt (who was not an easy person and had a very high opinion of herself) was always giving out to poor Iris.

Reading about Hari Kumar and Daphne Manners, even just in relation to the Smalleys, immediately brings back to me the tragedy of their lives. The Jewel In The Crown is such a powerful story.

Rosemary

[Jonathan]

To what degree would it be helpful, in understanding the Smalleys in Pankot, to have read the Raj Quartet? Is Staying On a continuation of themes begun in Scott's grand opus? Couldn't the author let go?

Rosemary, it's good to hear about the joys of moving. Enjoy. For some it's a torment; but saying more might be a spoiler.

[Frybabe]

Johnathon, the book refers to a few characters from the Raj Quartet, but it in no way interferes with or is necessary to an understanding of Staying On.

[straudetwo]

Rosemary,  thank you for your post. We're glad you will join us once your move is competed. No move is easy, no matter how well organized it may be. It takes time to establish a new routine, among countless other things. Continued good luck.

Jonathan, I agree with Frybabe.
The Ray Quartet is Paul Scott's Magnum Opus, his most ambitious and most comprehensive work about British rule in India.  It is also known by the collectively title The Jewel in the Crown;  each volume of the tetralogy has its own title but follows the main characters:

1. The Jewel in the Crown (the locale is Mayapore)
2. The Day of the Scorpion(the scenes shifts to Pankot, Ranpur and the princely state of Mirat)
3. The Towers of Silence
4. A Division of the Spoils

The focus is on the last tumultuous years of the Raj 1942-1947. Britain has been engaged on several fronts in the second world war, suffered losses abroad and at home, she has tired of war. The Japanese are still a menace. The Indian demands for independence can no longer be ignored. Gandhi has asked the British to Quit India but is against a division of the country.   The Muslim League wants a separate state.
After a long period of indecisiveness, Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy, impulsively declares in June of 1947 that Partition of the country into two independent nations would be effective August 15, 1947.

The locale of Staying On is Pankot twenty-five years later. What we see is no longer a vast tableau of characters,  only one British couple that stayed on after the majority of their compatriots had left. This is the story of Lucy and Tusker Smalley and how they fared in the intervening years. Each of the major characters reflects on his/her memories of the increasingly distant past, an echo of which is all that remains of the themes in the tetralogy.  Sic transit gloria mundi.  

[Steph]

Lucy seems to have a better grip on everyday life, but Tusker does not at all.. I dont quite get Tusker at this point. Very dictatorial.. and not even the tiniest bit willing to bend.. He was like that as a young man as well. Am not quite convinced they have no money.. He mostly just seems cheap..If its something he wants, that just fine, not so for anything else.

[Frybabe]

What does everybody think of Mr. Bhoolabhoy so far. He seems to expend a great deal of time and energy trying to stay out of the line of fire and trying to smooth things over (mostly with his wife). Whimpy? Lazy? Or does he just like things running smoothly? What a contrast of personallities Mr. and Mrs. Bhoolabhoy are.

[Jonathan]

Sic transit gloria mundi. 


Pity the poor Colonel. Tusker is a very sick man. A dying man, looking, as Ibrahim puts it, like a man who knew he'd left it too late to go to Mecca.

The glory days of the Raj are over. From helping to run the Empire, Tusker is reduced to worrying about his uncut grass, his unwatered flowers and checking the lease he has on his cottage. And he has found his match in Mrs Bhoolabhoy. (She has already emasculated her husband.)

Such scorn in Ibrahim's thought about Colonel Sahib's plight: 'What has become of the world, when a fat money-grubbing Punjabi woman can cause a Christian Sahib a moment's disquiet.'

Militarily Mrs Bhoolabhoy would rank very high. What Lila wants, Lila gets. She's responsible for the Letter (always capitalized) which kills Tusker. She's very single-minded, it seems to me.

Ibrahim again: it's the irritants that are keeping the Colonel alive. And of course, the scandals reported in his newspaper. What a sorry end.

[PatH]

The Smalleys are outdated leftovers from the Raj, but so is Ibraham.  His attitudes toward Sahibs would not be held by his more modern countrymen.

[straudetwo]

Re your question in #31, Jonathan, yes, I believe that Scott could not let go. India was in his blood, and he had more to say. Staying On is an almost necessary post script and, I feel, constitutes closure.

One of the bases for British rule in India was the principle of man-bap; the rulers considered themselves as both mother and father to the Indians whom they treated like children and considered ethnically inferior; the other principle was rigid segregation between rulers and ruled, without exception.

But the rulers withdrew and yhe principles were no longer valid.  How totally things have changed is evident when we read (on the fourth page of Chapter 2)  Ibrahim, the Smalleys' only servant,  musing   "Years younger than both he felt for them what an indulgent, often exasperated but affectionate parent might feel for demanding and unreasonable children whom it was more sensible to appease than to cross." -- a complete reversal of the master-servant relationship.

Frybabe, a good question about Mr Bhoolabhoy. With the whale of a wife (who is always right) he is to be pitied. Worse than her excessive weight (16 stones, at 14 pounds per stone) are her questionable dealings with mafia-like types and her tempers.  All 'Billy-boy' wants is a peaceful life, managing Smiths hotel, which he would love to refurbish.

My suggestion to read Chapters 1 and 2 were meant to be the start. We may not have covered all aspects as yet, and some question may remain.  But I won't stop you from reading on.

Yes, PatH, the reasons why Tusker and Lucy stayed on will be narrated in the book. You have already mentioned some reasons why people might have been tempted to stay, and we'll get back to that.  

Steph, the financial straits in which Lucy and Tusker find themselves are quite real and will also be revealed in detail.

[Gumtree]

I'm here for only a moment - so just a quick note.

Throughout the Raj Quartet I think almost every reference to the Smalleys contained some mention of their straightened financial circumstances. There is no reason to suggest their situation would have changed during the years of retirement.

Scott got it right in having Tusker conferring the nickname "Billy Boy' on Mr Bhoolabhoy - It's exactly what a man like Tusker would choose - I can hear his English voice saying it.