The Last Samurai

She sailed to Bombay and it was not at all what she had expected. The Club defied description. So did the people. Also, it was rather hot. That is, she had expected it to be hot, but she had expected it to be cooler. But she looked up the rudest man she had ever met and this time they got on like a house on fire. She said that now that she had set foot in the country she could say whatever she liked and he said he was delighted to hear that she had overcome the diffidence which had afflicted her on a previous occasion. She said something rather cutting and he said something quite rude. She knew he was brilliant because her brother had said he was one of the most brilliant mathematicians he knew, but though he was brilliant and rude he was not condescending. Her brother’s other friends were unfailingly charming, so that she could not talk to one without instantly afterwards taking out a horse and setting it at a six-foot fence. She had never met a man who could open his mouth without imperilling the life of a horse.

They married in the teeth of opposition from his family, and now she wondered if she had made a mistake. Her husband was much richer than anyone she had ever met, but he also worked much harder than anyone she knew, and his business took up most of his time. His family took seriously things she could not take seriously at all. His mother once told her gravely about a recent gathering of the Kaisar-i-Hind, only Indian Chapter of the Canadian Daughters of Empire.

‘How utterly ghastly’ (the only sane response to the story) would obviously bring on palpitations. Vivian murmured some noncommittal reply and downed a gin and tonic in a single swallow. Her mother-in-law added, impressively, an illustration of the loyalty of the Guides, who had concluded an assembly by rising and shouting fervently ‘One Flag, One Throne, One Empire!’ It looked bad to be having another drink so soon, but what could one do?

It was terribly, terribly hot. She lost three babies and they decided not to try for a while. Then she got pregnant again, and this time she was sent immediately to the hills. Various female members of the family offered to go with her, but her husband (fearing that the cooler climate might tempt her into the saddle) put his foot down. She was allowed to go on her own, and this time the child was born alive, but she was not well for a long time afterwards so she did not see much of it.

One of her brothers was growing coffee in Kenya. She had heard the climate was better there, and she asked one day if they could go to Kenya. She did not really think they could, because the family was all in Bombay and the business there took up so much time. Her husband walked up and down for a minute or so, and he said he thought it might be quite a good idea. He said he thought there would be opportunities in Kenya. He said it would mean starting over again, but all this fanaticism was not really his cup of tea.

They left Bombay when Sorabji was five, and his first memories were of the journey by ship to Mombasa.

He would wake late at night and his mother would be by the bed. In the gloom he would see only the glint of diamonds at her neck and ears, the white of her gloves; she would take him in her arms and carry him up to the deck where his father was waiting. She would hold him on the rail; below the pale foam melted into the dark water, above the stars were brilliant and close.

Sometimes some other passenger would come and protest that the child should be in bed. His mother would laugh and say that they might see a comet.

She would point out constellations while his father stood silently smoking. She explained that she had seen different stars as a child; she explained that the earth was like a ball in the air, and that if you were at one end of it you always looked out the same way.

His mother died of malaria when he was 12. His father sent him to a school in Britain.

The head of the school interviewed Sorabji, and he agreed to admit him to the school as a special favour, but he said he would have a lot of catching up to do. He said he was the most ignorant boy he had ever seen in his life.

The fact was that Sorabji knew a lot about mathematics and science and nothing else. He had been taught by correspondence course in Kenya, and as soon as the packet came in the post he would do all the mathematics and science and send it back, so that he made rapid progress in the subjects that interested him. He kept the arts papers in a pile on the floor to be done as time allowed. One day he thought he should do something about it because the pile was five feet high, but the early papers at the base of the pile had been eaten by ants, so he had given it up as a bad job.