Tilbury's Ghost

He was back in the Nilgiris in south India in a few months, and died in the house of a friend from the Rugby days.

At this stage of his narration, Jeremy turned to me to ask if I had a clue to what had gone wrong with his grandfather's life. I tried a number of rational explanations which were, needless to say, wide off the mark. Then he told me that it was a secret his father had pieced together from Mr. Tilburry's diaries and the accounts of his last days obtained from the tea planter friend in the Nilgiris.

It was a closely-guarded family secret, and I was the first outsider whom he would tell.

Mr. Tilburry had a young Nepali cook, and his wife to keep the house. In time they had a son, who grew and went running noisily about the house and the garden, breaking and despoiling a few things here and there and disturbing the calm the master and mistress of the house desired. Mr. Tilburry would often try to train the child and chide with his parents to avoid stretching memsahib's distress beyond a reasonable limit. But he soon realised that the child was a little demented, and no amount of training would help until the he grew up and developed some basic comprehension of what he was being told.

In any case, even if the child was normal, Mr. Tilburry was too preoccupied with his official work outside the home to react more often to the rumpus than absolutely necessary. But memsahib lived in the house all day and night and, with her waxing phlegm against the environment, was provoked more readily and violently by the commotion and disarrangement. The parents beat the child mercilessly at times, and the child howled and this made matters worse. One day, her patience having been over-strained, the memsahib told the cook and his wife that she would have to discharge them if they were not able to control the child.

As a result of this warning, the noise and the activity of the child ceased altogether the very next day. Mr. Tilburry was on an extended tour of the villages to settle disputes. Some days later, the cook's wife was reported to be seriously ill, and the cook sought memsahib's permission to send her to Nepal along with his brother, a sepoy in the Assam Rifles, who was going home on annual leave. The memsahib was happy to be rid of the nuisance, and the permission was granted. And everything became quiet and peaceful, just as the memsahib had wanted it to be. A local Mizo woman was employed to keep the house while the cook's wife was away.

Mr. Tilburry returned from tour a month later and was much relieved that at least one of the causes of his wife's vexation had been temporarily removed.

One evening, about five months later, Mr. Tilburry sat down all by himself in the lawn to a whisky and soda. While the cook served the drink, Mr. Tilburry noticed tears in the young Nepali's eyes.

"Missing your wife?" he asked. "Go on leave to Nepal and fetch her."

"She would not come, Sir," the cook replied.

"Eloped with somebody else, eh?" Mr. Tilburry asked.

"No, Sir," the cook said, "our child is dead."

"How and when " asked Mr. Tilburry with some anxiety.

"One day memsahib told us that we would be fired if the child annoyed her any further. I beat him up so much that he was quiet after some time and went to sleep. Next morning we found him dead. I quietly buried him in the jungle, and sent my wife away to Nepal."

Mrs. Tilburry's wife left for England the day after this disclosure. Mr. Tilburry left six months later. Then he returned to the Nilgiris and died leaving a ghost and many stories behind him.