The Best of Ruskin Bond by Ruskin Bond Page A

slippers, and he placed his hand gently on the old man’s shoulder.
    When they returned downstairs and emerged into the sunlight, Prem was surprised to see himself—or rather his skinny body—stretched out on the charpai. The hookah lay on the ground, where it had fallen.
    Prem looked at Astley in bewilderment.
    ‘But who is that—lying there?’
    ‘It was you. Only the husk now, the empty shell. This is the real you, standing here beside me.’
    ‘You came for me?’
    ‘I couldn’t come until you were ready. As for me, I left
my
shell a long time ago. But you were determined to hang on, keeping this house together. Are you ready now?’
    ‘And the house?’
    ‘Others will live in it. But come, it’s time to go fishing. . . .’
    Astley took Prem by the arm, and they walked through the dappled sunlight under the deodars and finally left that place for ever.

The Funeral
    ‘I don’t think he should go,’ said Aunt M.
    ‘He’s too small,’ concurred Aunt B. ‘He’ll get upset and probably throw a tantrum. And you know Padre Lal doesn’t like having children at funerals.’
    The boy said nothing. He sat in the darkest corner of the darkened room, his face revealing nothing of what he thought and felt. His father’s coffin lay in the next room, the lid fastened forever over the tired, wistful countenance of the man who had meant so much to the boy. Nobody else had mattered—neither uncles nor aunts nor fond grandparents; least of all the mother who was hundreds of miles away with another husband. He hadn’t seen her since he was four—that was just over five years ago—and he did not remember her very well.
    The house was full of people—friends, relatives, neighbours. Some had tried to fuss over him but had been discouraged by his silence, the absence of tears. The more understanding of them had kept their distance.
    Scattered words of condolence passed back and forth like dragonflies on the wind. ‘Such a tragedy!’. . . . ‘Only forty’. . . . ‘No one realized how serious it was’. . . . ‘Devoted to the child’. . . .
    It seemed to the boy that everyone who mattered in the hill-station was present. And for the first time they had the run of the house; for his father had not been a sociable man. Books, music, flowers and his stamp collection had been his main preoccupations, apart from the boy.
    A small hearse, drawn by a hill pony, was led in at the gate, and several able-bodied men lifted the coffin and manoeuvred it into the carriage. The crowd drifted away. The cemetery was about a mile down the road, and those who did not have cars would have to walk the distance.
    The boy stared through a window at the small procession passing through the gate. He’d been forgotten for the moment—left in care of the servants, who were the only ones to say behind. Outside, it was misty. The mist had crept up the valley and settled like a damp towel on the face of the mountain. Everyone was wet, although it hadn’t rained.
    The boy waited until everyone had gone, and then he left the room and went out on the veranda. The gardener, who had been sitting in a bed of nasturtiums, looked up and asked the boy if he needed anything; but the boy shook his head and retreated indoors. The gardener, looking aggrieved because of the damage done to the flower-beds by the mourners, shambled off to his quarters. The sahib’s death meant that he would be out of job very soon. The house would pass into other hands, the boy would go to an orphanage. There weren’t many people who kept gardeners these days. In the kitchen, the cook was busy preparing the only big meal ever served in the house. All those relatives, and the Padre too, would come back famished, ready for a sombre but nevertheless substantial meal. He too would be out of job soon; but cooks were always in demand.
    The boy slipped out of the house by a back-door and made his way into the lane through a gap in a thicket of dog-roses. When he