The Rose of Tibet Read online

  LIONEL DAVIDSON

  THE ROSE OF TIBET

  Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  THE decision to call this book The Rose of Tibet was made at a fairly late date and at the behest of our managing director, Mr Theodore Links. I write ‘our’ not in the editorial plural, but because I happen to work for the firm. I am an editor of it. I have been an editor, with this and other publishing firms, for eight years. My name is Lionel Davidson.

  It seems necessary to establish all this with crystal clarity because what follows is, as one of the manuscript readers has written, ‘… a bit on the weird side’. It is, however, mostly true: it is because it is only mostly true that a few introductory words are called for.

  Charles Duguid Houston left England for India on 25 January 1950, and returned on 16 June 1951. Interested students can find a report of the latter event in the 17 June issues of the Sunday Graphic and the Empire News, the only two organs who noticed it. (They will have to go to the British Museum Newspaper Library at Colindale, London NW9, to do so, however, since both of these papers, like many of the principals in this story, are now defunct.)

  He returned on a stretcher, with a sensational story to tell if anybody had been able to get him to tell it. The fact that nobody did is due less, perhaps, to his own discretion than to the interesting state of the world that month.

  In the month of June 1951, the abbreviated newspapers of the time were trying to cover the Korean war, the sinking of the submarine Affray, the search for Burgess and Maclean, and the iniquities of Dr Mossadeq, whose government was busy nationalizing the oil refineries of Abadan. In England King George VI was convalescing after an operation, in Capri King Farouk honeymooning with Narriman, in Westminster the Minister of Food cautiously forecasting an increase in the meat ration to 2s. 4d., and everywhere a large concern being expressed at the future of Yasmin and who would control it, Aly or Rita. Several murders were committed. The Festival of Britain shone bravely in the rain. The Marquis of Blandford got himself engaged.

  With such an embarrassment of riches, the newspapers had little space to spare for Houston, and so far as can be ascertained no single follow-up was made as a result of the item published in the two Sundays. It was not an uninteresting item. (It showed 29-year-old Charles Houston, former art teacher and resident of Baron’s Court, London w, being carried on a stretcher from the Calcutta plane with injuries sustained during the recent fighting in Tibet.) And yet it was not a very unusual one either. Former residents of London w, and Glasgow s, and Manchester c, were being flown in pretty regularly at the time, and from the same general direction, with injuries sustained in far more recent and newsworthy circumstances.

  Not even the West London Gazette thought to send a representative to the London Clinic (where Houston was taken directly from the airport) to inquire after the health of this former resident.

  He was thus left quite alone at a time when as a result of shock he might have been prevailed upon to tell his story; a quirk of fate that will, one hopes, benefit an increasing number of classically minded youths from about 1966 onwards.

  While his restless contemporaries were thus holding the stage, Houston was able to pass the month fairly quietly. He had his right arm off. He sought release with morphia drugs from painful memories. Only occasionally did he worry about the disposition of his half million pounds.

  The fact of the half million pounds was later, however, to worry a great many other people: it is one of the reasons why this book must be only mostly true.

  ‘Why so touchy?’ reads the memo in Mr Theodore Links’s handwriting, which lies before me. ‘I have said I liked it, and I still do. But it will satisfy R.B. if we can in some way “treat” the passages underlined. Also I feel strongly we shd go out for a fictional kind of title for the same reason. What is wrong with (d)? It is immensely more attractive than the factual ones. Also who is over-riding O’s wishes? I seem to remember only one over-riding wish! But if you feel so strongly do a little foreword explg the book and its backgd… .’

  Taking the abbreviations in order, R.B. is Rosenthal Brown, our lawyers, who have needed on the whole a good deal of satisfying about this manuscript; (d) the present title – The Rose of Tibet; and Ο … Ο is Mr Oliphant. Without Mr Oliphant there would not be a book. It is Mr Oliphant indeed who constitutes the backgd.

  I do not know when Mr Oliphant first took to writing his Latin primer, but in the first of the two letters I have from him in my file he says, ‘It is the result of many years of careful work, and incorporates, as you will see, most of the useful suggestions you so kindly made some time ago.’

  This letter reached me, with the primer, in May 1959.

  I said to my secretary, ‘Miss Marks, who is F. Neil Oliphant and when did I make him some suggestions about a Latin primer?’

  Miss Marks looked up from her typewriter and began to pat her face with both hands (a habit of hers when labouring under some anxiety which she will not mind my mentioning).

  She said, ‘Oh. Yes. That wasn’t you. That was Mr —’ (a predecessor of mine).

  ‘Have we ever published any Latin primers?’

  ‘No. He thought we might like to – Mr Oliphant did. He has a new way of teaching Latin.’

  ‘Who is Mr Oliphant?’

  ‘He is a Latin teacher.’

  Miss Marks’s face had turned a shade of pink at this unexceptionable statement.

  I said, ‘Where does he teach?’

  ‘He used to at the Edith Road Girls’ Secondary in Fulham.’

  ‘At the which?’

  ‘The Edith Road … . It’s an excellent school,’ Miss Marks said. ‘It’s one of the best girls’ day schools in the country. The academic record is quite outstanding.’

  I began to see possible reasons for Miss Marks’s staunch championship of this school, and also for her anxiety.

  ‘I was there myself, actually,’ she said, confirming them.

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘Yes … . Look, I’m sorry about this,’ said Miss Marks with a rush, becoming, with every moment, pinker. ‘I’ve sort of kept up with him. He’s a nice old man. He happened to mention once that he was writing this book, and he didn’t know anything about publishing or anything… . I mean, I told him, naturally, that I wasn’t in a position to guarantee –’

  ‘That’s all right, Miss Marks. Do we have a copy of the correspondence?’

  ‘Mr Links would have it. He took it over when Mr — left.’

  ‘Oh. Why did he do that?’

  ‘Because it was all his fault, really.’ Miss Marks said.

  She explained why.

  It seemed that Mr Oliphant’s primer had come in first in 1955. Mr — had promptly rejected it, and that would have been the end if T.L. had not happened to come into the room while it was still lying in his out-tray. T.L. had been having at the time one of his not uncommon raves; on this occasion for the mental-disciplinary benefits of a classical language. He thought that Mr Oliphant’s book had something. The book had gone out to a specialist reader, who thought otherwise. None the less, T.L. had suggested a number of amendments to Mr O
liphant. The amended book had reappeared in 1957. By this time, T.L. had lost his earlier enthusiasm, but he felt a certain uneasy responsibility for Mr Oliphant’s two years of additional work. Had the book been then even remotely publishable, he would have published it. But it was not. It had gone back with further suggestions.

  These were the suggestions now incorporated in Mr Oliphant’s latest work.

  I said, ‘Well, that’s easily settled. Let’s just bung it through to T.L.’

  ‘I don’t think that would be a very good idea,’ Miss Marks said. ‘He was in a bit of a temper with it last time.’

  ‘But I don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘No,’ Miss Marks said, patting unhappily.

  It was at this point that I spotted a fortunate flaw. Three consecutive chapters of Mr Oliphant’s book were headed What the Science University Entrant Needs to Know, (1), (11), and (111). Even with my own limited knowledge of the subject I was aware that Science University Entrants did not now need to know any Latin; there had lately been a considerable discussion about it in the Press with some fierce broadsides from Mr Oliphant’s Latin-teaching colleagues.

  I said, ‘Your Mr Oliphant doesn’t keep up with the news much, does he?’ and told her why.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ Miss Marks said sadly. ‘That poor old man.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘He must be getting on for 80 now.’

  ‘H’m.’

  On form, it seemed to take Mr Oliphant two years to rewrite. In the natural order of things it was unlikely that he would be doing so many times more… . Any solution that would not involve dashing, once and for all, an old man’s hopes, would be a charitable one.

  I said, ‘Look, Miss Marks, write him a letter,’ and told her what to put in it. ‘Make it a nice one. I’ll sign it.’

  I didn’t, however, have to. That very afternoon, Mr Oliphant telephoned. Perhaps somebody had put him right about Science University Entrants. He asked for his book back. Miss Marks and I exchanged a look of relief as she replaced the telephone. I had been listening on the other one.

  Our relief was short-lived. For with only three chapters to attend to instead of a whole book, and perhaps with some intimations of mortality rustling in his ears, Mr Oliphant went into top gear. Just four months later, in October 1959, the familiar primer came homing in once more.

  It came at a time when I was inclined to view the problems of authorship with a certain kindly sympathy. My first book The Night of Wenceslas (Gollancz, 13s. 6d.) was awaiting publication. I had been shown the various niggles of the manuscript readers. I hated the manuscript readers. Manuscript readers, non-creative people generally, it seemed to me, should try and create something – anything – some tiny thing; then we could hear further from them. It was iniquitous, it seemed to me, that such people should sit in judgement on the works of creative people. To spin something out of nothing, to put something together, to make something quite new in the world – this was an admirable, a laborious task. The people who did it, it seemed to me, should be given votes of thanks, slapped on the back, not subjected to a barrage of vile criticism for their pains.

  In this frame of mind, Mr Oliphant became my brother. I regarded his work with the warmest admiration. He had had it all typed out again, which was certainly a point in its favour. His hand-written corrections were neat and unobtrusive. He had fussed about with colons and semi-colons in a way which made my heart go out to him. And moreover, so long as the reader brought a little effort to the job – a millionth part perhaps of that lavished by Mr Oliphant on his – he could very easily pick up a little Latin from it. Why, after all, should we not publish such a book? We published 124 books a year. Why not Mr Oliphant’s?

  I did not, however, as the heart dictated, send the manuscript directly to the printer’s. I sent it out to the reader again.

  The reader was not waiting to have a book published.

  He regarded Mr Oliphant’s work with something less than my own admiration.

  He said it was written in a style of pedantic facetiousness that had gone out at the turn of the century. He said the exposition was pitched far above the comprehension of a modern schoolboy, and the wit far below. So far as he was able to judge it was aimed at an audience of unsophisticated crypt- ologists aged about seventy.

  I took this report in to Mr Links. I couldn’t see what else was to be done with it.

  He gnawed his lip as he read it. He turned to the manuscript. ‘There was something here,’ he muttered, leafing through. ‘I remember I got quite a flash from it… . I told him adult education – the discipline of a classical language for adults… .’

  ‘Well, that’s what he seems to have done,’ I said. ‘You’ll see here in —’s report, he says the book is aimed at – at quite mature people.’

  ‘It won’t do,’ he said. ‘No, no… . Oh, my God! … You know, this is my fault, not his. I thought he could do it… . My mistake.’

  ‘Well, what’s to be done about it,’ I said, in the silence.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘We can’t publish it as it is.’

  ‘We can’t publish it whatever he does.’

  ‘Who does publish primers?’

  ‘Macmillan, Longmans… . The snag is, it isn’t a primer now.’

  ‘Would an agent take him on?’

  ‘With this? … Look, see if he’s still got his first version. There was something there. I saw it. Help him with it. I don’t think it’s anything for us – I’m sure it isn’t now. But after all … Give him the right outline. See if someone in the office can rough it in for him. I’ll look at it myself if you like. And then we’ll see. We’ll get it in a publishable state for him, anyway.’

  This assignment – to tell my brother Oliphant that his four years of work had been wasted and that all we could do now was to show him how to write a book that we didn’t intend to publish – seemed to me a highly unpleasant one. I said as much.

  ‘I don’t see how I can possibly put all this in a letter,’ I ended.

  ‘No. No. I don’t think you should. I wasn’t suggesting it. As I remember, he’s quite an old man. Go and see him. It will be a nice gesture.’

  I said, with extreme reluctance, ‘Of course, if you think I should …’

  ‘Certainly. It will be much easier face to face. You know,’ he said, returning the manuscript, ‘there’s not a bad lesson in publishing here. It’s fatally easy to encourage the wrong people. You’ve got to be on guard all the time. Kindness,’ he said, seeing my hesitations, ‘is no help – to the author or to the publisher. It can be a very cruel thing.’

  ‘You don’t think,’ I said, fumbling, ‘we should let him have another go, off his own bat. I hear he’s getting on for eighty now… .’

  T.L. blew down his pipe for a bit and shook his head. He said slowly, ‘We can’t do that. We can’t do it… . You know, I wasn’t wrong to begin with. There was something there, a tiny kernel. Someone could publish it. Let him have that pleasure before he dies.’

  ‘All right,’ I said.

  Mr Oliphant lived in Fitzmaurice Mansions, Fitzmaurice Crescent, Baron’s Court. I rang him up that afternoon and drove out the following one.

  Fitzmaurice Mansions turned out to be a vast ornamented Edwardian pile in reddish-orange stone. I went up very slowly to the second floor in a little dark lift with a highly complicated arrangement of folding doors. There was no window on the landing, and the light wouldn’t work. I fumbled around looking for number 62a.

  Two half-pint bottles of milk stood outside the door, and the morning paper was still jammed in the letter-box. I rang the bell, and a minute or two later had to do so again.

  There was presently a shuffling noise inside. I braced myself as the door opened. A tall, thin, bent man in a dressing-gown looked out.

  ‘Is it Mr Davidson?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Come in. I hope you haven’t been waiting long. I dozed off.’
/>   I had my hand outstretched, but he didn’t seem to see it. He reached beyond me for the milk and the newspaper. There was a peculiar smell inside, the smell of old people who live in close places.

  He closed the door behind me. ‘I’ve not been too well lately. I was having a little nap.’

  ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you.’

  ‘Not a bit. Not the least little bit. Through here. I’ve been looking forward to it. I don’t know how I happened to go off like that.’

  In the light it was possible to see that Mr Oliphant was exceptionally grimy. He looked ill and unkempt. His face was immensely long and thin like a greyhound’s; and at the moment much in need of a shave. He put the milk and the newspaper down, pulled his grey stuff dressing-gown more closely round him and slicked down his sparse hairs.

  ‘I’m sorry you have to find me like this. I meant to clear up a bit,’ he said, looking round at the terrible confusion of clothes and bedding and old meals. We seemed to be in his bedroom. ‘I thought I would just rest for a minute or two after lunch. I had no sleep last night.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said, somewhat nasally, for I was trying to breathe through my mouth in the appalling stench of the room. ‘What’s the trouble?’

  ‘Bronchial. I get it every year about this time. Hard to breathe, you know,’ he said, tapping his throat.

  His breath did seem to be whistling a bit. There was a faint, soft suggestion of Ireland in his voice. I said, ‘If you would like to put this off to another day, Mr Oliphant – there’s quite a lot to talk about.’

  ‘No, no. I wouldn’t hear of it, my dear fellow. I’m only sorry for all this. Let me get you something. What can I get you? We haven’t shaken hands or anything …’ he said, holding out with embarrassment his own skeletal and by no means clean one.

  I shook it. I refused refreshment. He pulled up a couple of chairs to an electric fire, and we began to talk.

  There was not, after all, very much to talk about. For despite his apparent senility, Mr Oliphant had kept his marbles in very fair trim: he summed up the situation in a trice and at once with an old-fashioned and perhaps racial courtesy began to ease it for me.