Sea of Tranquility(3)

“And how’s your brother?” Thomas asks, changing the subject. He means Niall.

“Making a go of it in Australia,” Edwin says. “He seems happy enough, judging by his letters.”

“Well, that’s more than most of us can say,” Thomas says. “No small thing, happiness. What’s he doing down there?”

“Drinking away his remittance money, I’d imagine,” Edwin says, which is ungentlemanly but also the probable truth. They have a table by the window, and his gaze keeps drifting to the street, the shop fronts, and—visible in the distance—the unfathomable wilderness, dark towering trees crowding in around the periphery. There’s something ludicrous about the idea that the wilderness belongs to Britain, but he quickly suppresses this thought, because it reminds him of his last dinner party in England.





4


The last dinner party began smoothly enough, but trouble started when the conversation turned, as ever and always, to the unimaginable splendor of the Raj. Edwin’s parents were born in India, Raj babies, English children raised by Indian nannies—“If I hear one more word about her goddamned ayah,” Edwin’s brother Gilbert muttered once, never finishing the thought—and raised on tales of an unseen Britain that, Edwin couldn’t help but suspect, had been slightly disappointing when they first laid eyes on it in their early twenties. (“More rain than I’d expected,” was all Edwin’s father would say on the matter.)

There was another family at that last dinner party, the Barretts, of similar profile: John Barrett had been a commander in the Royal Navy, and Clara, his wife, had also spent her first few years in India. Their eldest son, Andrew, was with them. The Barretts knew that British India was an inevitable detour in any evening spent with Edwin’s mother, and as old friends, they understood that once Abigail got the Raj out of her system, conversation could move on.

“You know, I so often find myself thinking of the beauty of British India,” his mother said. “The colors were remarkable.”

“The heat was rather oppressive, though,” Edwin’s father said. “That’s one thing I didn’t miss, once we came here.”

“Oh, I never found it terribly oppressive.” Edwin’s mother had a far-off look that Edwin and his brothers called her British India expression. There was a haziness about her that meant she was no longer with them; she was riding an elephant or strolling through a garden of verdant tropical flowers or being served cucumber sandwiches by her goddamned ayah or something, who knows.

“Nor did the natives,” Gilbert said mildly, “but I suppose that climate’s not for everyone.”

What inspired Edwin to speak just then? He found himself dwelling on the matter years later, at war, in the terminal horror and boredom of the trenches. Sometimes you don’t know you’re going to throw a grenade until you’ve already pulled the pin.

“Evidence suggests they feel rather more oppressed by the British than by the heat,” Edwin said. He glanced at his father, but his father seemed to have frozen, his glass halfway between the table and his lips.

“Darling,” said his mother, “whatever can you mean?”

“They don’t want us there,” Edwin said. He glanced around the table, at all the silent staring faces. “Not a great deal of ambiguity on that point, I’m afraid.” He listened to his own voice as if from some distance away, with wonderment. Gilbert’s mouth had fallen open.

“Young man,” his father said, “we have brought nothing but civilization to these people—”

“And yet one can’t help but notice,” Edwin said, “that on balance, they rather seem to prefer their own. Their own civilization, that is. They managed quite well without us for some time, didn’t they? Several thousand years, wasn’t it?” It was like being strapped to the roof of a runaway train! He actually knew very little about India, but he remembered having been shocked as a boy by accounts of the 1857 rebellion. “Does anyone want us anywhere?” he heard himself ask. “Why do we assume these far-flung places are ours?”

“Because we won them, Eddie,” Gilbert said, after a brief silence. “One assumes that the natives of England were perhaps not unanimously delighted by the arrival of our twenty-second great-grandfather, but, well, history belongs to the victors.”

“William the Conqueror was a thousand years ago, Bert. Surely we might strive to be somewhat more civilized than the maniacal grandson of a Viking raider.”

Edwin stopped talking then. Everyone at the table was staring at him.

“?‘The maniacal grandson of a Viking raider,’?” Gilbert repeated softly.

“Although one should be grateful, I suppose, that we’re a Christian nation,” Edwin said. “Imagine what a bloodbath the colonies would be if we weren’t.”

“Are you an atheist, Edwin?” Andrew Barrett inquired, with genuine interest.

“I don’t quite know what I am,” Edwin said.

The silence that followed was possibly the most excruciating of Edwin’s life, but then his father began speaking, very quietly. When Edwin’s father was furious, he had a trick of beginning speeches with a half-sentence, to catch everyone’s attention. “Every advantage you’ve ever had in this life,” his father said. Everyone looked at him. He began again, in trademark fashion, only slightly louder, and with deadly calm: “Every advantage you’ve ever had in this life, Edwin, has derived in some manner or another from the fact of your being descended from, as you so eloquently put it, the maniacal grandson of a Viking raider.”