Customer Reviews

Staying on

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If, like me, you've been meaning to read The Raj Quartet, but have been daunted by it's gargantuan bulk, this shorter sequel offers an ideal entree to Paul Scott's Anglo-Indian world. Here he takes what I understand are two very minor characters from the quartet, Colonel Tusker Smalley and his long-suffering wife Lucy, and makes their story the centerpiece of a sweetly elegiac comic novel.

The year is 1972 and the Smalleys have stayed on in Pankot, India even after Independence in 1947, less out of love of the country or it's people, than out of financial need and sheer spite on Tusker's part. Where the upper class Brits were able to just scamper home, the Smalleys represent the folk of the middle class, who felt that they had invested something in the colony and now deserved to get something out of it. As he explains to Lucy:

I know for years you've thought I was a damn' fool to have stayed on, but I was forty-six when Independence came, which is bloody early in life for a man to retire but too old to start afresh somewhere you don't know. I didn't fancy my chances back home, at that age, and I knew the pension would go further in India than in England. I still think we were right to stay on, though I don't think of it any longer as staying on , but just as hanging on, which people of our age and upbringing and limited talents, people who have never been really poor but never had any real money, never inherited money, never made real money, have to do, wherever they happen to be, when they can't work anymore. I'm happier hanging on in India, not for India as India but because I just can't merely think of it as a place where I drew my pay for 25 years of my working life, which is a hell of a long time anyway, though by rights it should have been longer.

But now, with Tusker's health in decline, Lucy has increasing concerns about her own future. As is, they have led a pretty precarious existence for the past 15 years, having been reduced to living in a hotel, the new owner of which is a ghastly Indian woman, who married the manager, Mr. Bhoolabhoy, one of Tusker's few remaining friends. The author etches a finely detailed portrait of his characters and in particular of the difficult marriage of the Smalleys. Tusker is an irascible curmudgeon straight out of an old British barracks. Lucy has been disappointed that their relationship did not fulfill her romantic ideals. These strains are exacerbated by the daily indignities they must now suffer as the last seedy remnants of the departed British Empire, looked down upon by the very natives they once lorded it over. In the final scenes of the novel, two letters are written which will change these peoples' lives, for better and for worse.

This is a very funny and ultimately a deeply moving story. The Smalleys are a couple the reader won't soon forget. I liked it so much, I think I may finally heft that colossal Quartet off of the shelf and give it a go.

GRADE: A-

In his sequel of The Raj Quartet Paul Scott depicts the life of two of the minor characters Tusker and Lucy Smalley. This is the appealing story of the last surviving members of the old school of British in Pankot, a town in India, 24 years after the Independence. Covering only a few months, it makes us witnesses of a whole lifetime. Frankly told, often causing us to feel a lump in our throats, Scott's novel skillfully pictures the emotional impact the débăcle of the British imperialism in India has on a family who chose to stay on.
It took me a while to become fully immersed in the book due to its unusual beginning. The very first page tells of the death of Tusker Smalley, which, in fact, is also the end of that elegiac psychological novel. As I read pretty much the same description of the very same episode at the end of the book, I felt something totally different. Since Tusker was already a friend of mine, his ways not just a weird old man's habitudes, his life not merely a consecution of events, but the result of unfavourable circumstances and crucial decisions, his death grieved me deeply.
The divergence between the story and the plot draws us into a mazy time puzzle, which we have to arrange for ourselves. We are shown into the all-embracing socio-historical setting both before and after the Independence in 1947 through the eyes of Mr and Mrs Smalley, their servant Ibrahim, and the manager of the hotel where they live, Mr Bhoolobhoy. The various perspectives contribute to the comprehension and comprehensiveness of this fading Anglo-Indian portrait of a whole civilization in miniature.
The character of Lucy Smalley is similarly developed through a number of retrospections. In her imaginary conversations with the young Englishman Mr Turner she looks back with bitterness on the days of the raj, most of which pass under the sign of the imposed British hierarchy. Just when she achieves the aspired position of Colonel's Lady "the old hierarchy collapsed and a new one, the Indian one, took its place". Thus, nothing changes for them because the new race of sahibs and memashibs places them as far down in the social scale as the Eurasians in the days of the raj.
The changes brought about by the Independence estrange Lucy and Tusker even more than before. The lack of communication cuts them off from one another and makes them live separate lives under the same roof. He has a rude awakening when he realizes that the huge rise in the cost of living in England prices them out of the home market and they must stay on in India. This leads to his "personality change", as Lucy calls it. She, for her part, is terribly lonely because in this new world she has become "a black sheep in reverse exposure". She fears the moment when her ill husband will pass away and she will be destitute because, `She would be alone in a foreign country. There would be no one of her own kind, her own colour, no close friend by whom to be comforted or on whom she could rely for help and guidance."
Staying on is not a novel of action, but one of contemplation and speculation. Its very title implies passivity. It however, turns out to be misleading for in Tusker and Lucy's case staying on in India requires strong will and endurance. In fact, this paradox makes Tusker and Lucy analyze and reconsider their lives; makes them realize that their happiness was sacrificed part because of circumstances, part for habits' sake. The profundity of their psychological portraits, the moving episodes, even the purifying humour turn this novel into a quest for our own inner selves. Thus, even though the end of Staying On is well-known from the very first line, it still strikes us with its poignancy for we have changed our perception and have turned into Tusker and Lucy's best friend who knows all they've been through,
So when Lucy sits on her "throne" in the bathroom, appealing to Tusker:
...Tusker, I hold out my hand, and beg you, Tusker, beg, beg you to take it and take me with you. How can you not, Tusker? Oh, Tusker, Tusker, Tusker, how can you make me stay here by myself while you yourself go home?
what I hear is the echo of the record Lucy loves best, Chloë:
Oh through the black of night, I gotta be where you are. If it's wrong or right, I gotta go where you are. I'll roam through the dismal swamplands, searching for you. If you are lost there let me be there too...

I would not rank this lovely novel with the Raj Quartet in power or scope, but it is certainly a delightful read. It is tragi-comic... comic in the characters Scott presents to us; tragic (or at least sad) in its portrayal of a marriage coming to its natural end.

Though not the same characters of the Raj Quartet, this book continues the saga of British colonials in India, those who stayed on after India achieved its independence. Interesting reading now with Hong Kong being ceded to Red China this month. Many people there who spent their lives in the last British outpost will be staying on. It makes for both relevant and comparative reading at the present time

Out of all his novels, including those set in India, this is his greatest work. Funny, wonderfully written, and sometimes disturbing, this novel is truly brilliant.

This is a humorously affectionate sequel to Paul Scott's intriguing account of life in India under British colonial rule between 1942 and eventual independence in 1947. We meet Colonel 'Tusker' Smalley (Indian Army Rtd) who has elected to stay on at the old hill station of Pankot. The novel begins at the end, with Tusker's death in 1972. We meet the Bhoolabhoys, owners of Smith's, the hotel where Tusker and his wife Lucy, occupy an annexe - or small bungalow. The formidable and rich Mrs Bhoolabhoy is the owner and dominates her inoffensive husband. On Monday evenings Mr Boolabhoy drinks and reminisces wirh Tusker, who still tends to patronize Mr Bhoolabhoy, who doesn't seem to mind and enjoys listening to his stories. Tusker regularly fires his servant, Ibrahim who takes it philosophically, knowing he will soon be re-hired. On this last occasion Ibrahim hands Tusker a letter from management (Mrs Boolabhoy) just before he - Tusker - expires. One suspects the letter contains a non renewal of tenancy notice, the culmination of an ongoing dispute over fees between Mrs Boolabhoy and Tusker. The idiosyncrasies of all the characters, from the choleric Tusker to the philosophical Ibrahim and the explosive Mrs Boolabhoy, are treated amusingly, affectionately and with great skill.
We also catch up with the Laytons who also resided in Pankot - from the Raj Quartet. We learn that Lt-Col Layton has died - his snobbish wife, Mildred having predeceased him. He was father to Sarah and the tragic Susan, who took major roles during those tumultuous times. They, however, didn't stay on, but retired to their home, Combe Lodge Combe Magnus, Surrey. Guy Perron, another major character, had married Sarah Layton - the real hero and heroine of The Raj Quartet.
Staying on is wonderful conclusion to Paul Scott's outstanding series, and is a fitting epitaph to British rule in India.The Learning Process: Some Creative Impressions

In calling STAYING ON a sequel, I am not referring primarily to Paul Scott's celebrated RAJ QUARTET; this little postlude is softer in tone, and although sharing some characters, it stands entirely on its own. But it is a sequel to several centuries of British life in India, and to two of those lives in particular: Col. Tusker Smalley and his wife Lucy. The novel opens with Tusker's death in 1972, 25 years after India gained independence. Remaining after others have left, he and Lucy have settled in the small hill town of Pankot. They live now in the annexe to the old-style Smith's Hotel, which is itself overshadowed by the snazzier Shiraz next door; the old British ways are not the only ones dying out. [Scott's post-colonial world is not so different from that of a more recent Booker Prize winner, THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS by Kiran Desai.]

Scott's unlikely representative of the new order is the odiously comic Mrs. Bhoolabhoy, a vastly overweight and capricious empress who has purchased Smith's and married its former manager, enslaving him as her factotum and occasional sexual partner. Her driving ambition is to play with the big boys, and nothing or nobody will stand in her way. Poor Mr. Bhoolabhoy is one of a number of Indians whose lives were shaped by an almost-feudal relationship with the British Raj; in a sense, they have also been left stranded. He is also churchwarden for the Anglican church, whose services have been reduced to one per month. When a new priest arrives, a dark-skinned High Anglican from Southern India, Bhoolabhoy feels that everything has fallen apart. But the newcomer has great charisma and quickly revitalizes the little community; it is a small but welcome assurance that a successful grafting of the old and the new may still be possible.

The core of the book, however, is Lucy's story. The action jumps back three months before Tusker's death to the time of his first attack. During this short period, whether through Lucy's petty skirmishes with her husband, or her explanations to correspondents both real and imaginary, we are taken back to a vanished age, the colonial India of books from EM Forster's A PASSAGE TO INDIA through Scott's own RAJ QUARTET. Lucy's memories, though long, are not always happy; this is a world of strict hierarchy and petty snobbery, dominated by bored memsahibs who patronize Lucy as only a poor clergyman's daughter. Tusker's career has suffered as a result, exacerbated by the combination of limited talent and stubborn pride. Fueled by regrets, their relationship has become a continual squabble that teeters on the far side of comedy. But at the very end, Tusker writes Lucy a letter apologizing for his inadequacies; it is the loveliest thing she has ever had from him, and a moving end to this wry tragicomedy of a book.

This is a coda to the wonderful RAJ QUARTET. It is nearly as good as the other four novels. Tusker Smalley dies of a heart attack. At the the time of his death Mrs. Bhoolabhoy owns Smith's Hotel. Tusker and Lucy stay in a lodge on the property. The hotel is no longer the grand place it used to be. Now the Shiraz, a newer enterprise, is the really stylish establishment.

Paul Scott portrays Mr. Bhoolabhoy in hilarious terms. Mr. Bhoolabhoy functions as management at his wife's place of business and also considers himself Tusker's best friend. Just before his death Tusker Smalley fired his servant Ibrahim. Ibrahim had been fired on other occasions by either Tusker or his wife, Lucy, but of course in this instance the action is final.

The Smalleys are the last of Pankot's permanent retired British residents. Hearing of the death of Colonel Layton in England, Lucy commences to write to Sarah Layton. It is learned subsequently that Sarah married Guy Perron and a friend of theirs, David Tucker, is scheduled to visit Pankot and complicates the action by causing Lucy to make provision for his stay under the circumstances where she does not truly understand Tusker's careful stewardship of the couple's rather limited resources.

Through the memory of Lucy the book circles back to the earlier incidents of Mabel Layton's death at Rose Cottage, the fate of her house guest, Barbie, and the residency of Tusker and Lucy at that abode. Mr. Bhoolabhoy has always felt that Lucy's presence in Smith's dining room makes the place seem less seedy. In the end Mrs. Bhoolabhoy sells out to a consortium and Tusker dies clutching the notice to quit prepared by his dear friend, Frank Bhoolabhoy, the management of Smith's Hotel.

"Staying On", Paul Scott's last novel, was published in 1977 after the novels that made up The Raj Quartet and just before he was diagnosed with colon cancer, which would claim his life the following year. It is set in the small Indian hill town of Pangkot in 1972, where Colonel Tusker and Lucy Smalley, the town's only remaining British residents, live in an annex of a colonial hotel managed by Francis Bhoolabhoy, a thin and meek practicing Christian who shares drinks and stories with the Colonel, and owned by his wife Lila, whose greed and ambition is exceeded only by her girth. The Smalleys are retired, childless, and attempt to preserve the old order, although their meager income and old age limit their influence and relevance. The Colonel is tormented by poor health, a wife who no longer respects him after he decided to spend his remaining years in India without considering her, and the inhospitable Mrs Bhoolabhoy, who wants the Smalleys to leave her property, by any means necessary.

I enjoyed the first 50 or so pages of "Staying On", with its descriptions of the different elements of postcolonial Indian society, but I began to lose interest after that, as the characters became less likable and their accounts and lives became more tiresome and less amusing. The denouement of the novel was disclosed in the book's first paragraph, which also limited its effectiveness and interest to this reader. This novel would be of interest to those who have read The Raj Quartet, but it is not recommended as a first book to read by Paul Scott.

Recycling books is the best. My husband won't read anything but hard covered book, so this is the great way to purchase.
The book arrived in great condition and quickly.