Staying On

Staying On is Paul Scott’s follow-up to the Raj Quartet. Tusker and Lucy Smalley have elected to stay behind after the British Raj is disassembled and Scott picks up their story in 1972, when they are living in the lodge of the Smith hotel, without any other British citizens around them. They have a loyal servant, Ibrahim, who treats them much as they were treated when they were members of the Raj, and is probably the main reason they can still navigate life in India.

I would say this is a study of a marriage as much as anything else. As they look back on their lives and the choices they have made, we are allowed to glimpse not only what life has become, but what it once was for Tusker and Lucy, and to see how the order of things has show more flipped on its head and yet remained the same in so many ways.

...because when I look back on it, when I sit back and concentrate on it, I feel that India brought out all my worst qualities. I don't mean this India, though Heaven help me I sometimes don't see a great deal of difference between theirs and the one in which I was memsahib, but our India, British India, which kept me in my place, bottled up and bottled in, and brainwashed me into believing that nothing was more important than to do everything my place required me to do to be a perfectly complementary image of Tusker and his position.

Married for 40 years, and having spent most of that in India, their decision to remain and not return to England was made mainly for financial reasons. Now they find themselves older, nearing the end, and the situation for them is all too real and desolate.

She would be alone. She would be alone in Pankot. 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. The question whether she would be virtually destitute was one that frightened her so much that even her subconscious mind had been keeping that fear buried deep.

After reading the Raj Quartet and seeing how the Raj ruled and crumbled, it is sad to see the aftermath for those who remained. Both the English and the Indian population had to make serious adjustments, and as is often the case, the older generation on both sides met those changes with trepidation. show less

Staying On focuses on Tusker and Lucy Smalley, who are briefly mentioned in the latter two books of the Raj Quartet, The Towers of Silence and A Division of the Spoils, and are the last British couple living in the small hill town of Pankot after Indian independence. Tusker had risen to the rank of colonel in the British Indian Army, but on his retirement had entered the world of commerce as a 'box wallah', and the couple had moved elsewhere in India. However, they had returned to Pankot to take up residence in the Lodge, an annexe to Smith's Hotel. This, formerly the town's principal hotel, was now symbolically overshadowed by the brash new Shiraz Hotel, erected by a consortium of Indian businessmen from the nearby city of Ranpur.
We show more learn about life as an expat in Pankot principally by listening to Lucy's ponderings, for it is she who is the loquacious one, in contrast to Tusker's pathological reticence. He talks in clipped verbless telegraphese, often limiting his utterances to a single "Ha!". He has been purposeless since being obliged to retire, and it is left to Lucy to make sense of the world herself. It is a sad story of frustration that she recounts to herself. She remembers how the young Captain Smalley came back to London on leave in 1930, visited his bank, where she, a vicar's daughter, worked, and tentatively asked her out. She was swept off her feet by the thought of marrying an army officer and dreamt of a glamorous wedding with his fellow officers making an arch with their swords, but life turned out very differently. His job was dull administration, and his early attentiveness in bed rapidly waned. He prohibited her from fulfilling herself by taking part in amateur dramatics. Not only this, but she ranked fairly low in the social pecking order among the white women in Pankot and suffered numerous indignities. A symbol of this retrospection is that their preferred conveyance is the Tonga, a horse-drawn carriage in which they choose to sit facing backwards, "looking back at what we're leaving behind".
It falls to Lucy to navigate a path between her husband's obstinacy and obtuseness and the increasingly pressing demands of India's slow transition to modernity. The question of who pays the gardener, for example, requires the skilful management of human relationships. She also tries to maintain some continuity in her life, through correspondence with her old acquaintances (characters in the Raj Quartet), such as Sarah Layton (now Sarah Perron), who have moved back to England. It is through a letter from Sarah Perron that romantic fans of the Raj Quartet learn that she did indeed meet Guy again, and they are living happily ever after with their two boys, Lance and Perceval.
It is clear she blames Tusker for insisting on 'staying on'—at one point they could have retired comfortably to England, but he has been reckless ("nothing goes quicker than hundred rupee notes"), and now she has no idea if they could afford it. She entreats him to tell her how she would stand financially if he were to die. At long last, he writes her a letter, setting out their finances and also remarking that she had been "a good woman" to him. But he also tells her not to ask him about it, as he is incapable of discussing it face to face: "If you do I'll only say something that will hurt you". Nevertheless, she treasures this, the only love letter she has ever received.
Meanwhile, we see the new India that is replacing the British Raj, symbolised by Mrs Lila Bhoolabhoy, the temperamental and overweight owner of Smith's Hotel, and her much put upon husband and hotel manager, who is Tusker's drinking companion. The richly humorous context includes the engagement of servants, the railway service, poached eggs, hairdressing and the church organ. There is an intimate relationship between the Smalleys' servant Ibrahim and Mrs Bhoolabhoy's maid Minnie.
Mrs Bhoolabhoy's greed induces her to trade her ownership of the now shabby Smith's hotel for a share in the competing consortium. She instructs Mr Bhoolabhoy to issue the Smalleys with a notice to quit the Lodge.
On receipt of this letter, Tusker flies into an impotent rage and drops dead of a heart attack. Lucy is downcast and puts on a brave face as she prepares for the funeral and a solitary life. But, at last, she would potentially be free to return to England, perhaps able to scrape by on her £1,500 a year. She is a survivor, because she can adapt, as is shown by the fact that, on the day of Tusker's death, she was about to break a previously upheld taboo and welcome her hairdresser, Susy, who is of mixed race, to dinner. In her imagination, she asks Tusker one last thing – to take her with him, for if she had been a good woman to him, as he wrote, why has he now gone home without her?
Both funny and deeply moving, Staying On is a unique, engrossing portrait of the end of an empire and of a forty-year love affair. show less

An old couple slowly eke out their days long after the departure of the British, the ending of the Raj, and the independence of India. Around them, the country modernises and Indians grow wealthy while they endure in almost-genteel poverty, reminders of the old days, but also repositories of memories. hjile Lucy and Tusker circle each other in a marriage that isn't exactly loveless but seems more like something endured out of habit, their landlady's plans do not include them staying on much longer in the old cottage that is an annexe to her hotel.

Funny, touching, bitter, a portrait of a life that has always seemed on the margins of something much grander and more epic - we get to hear news of Sarah Layton and Guy and their family, a show more graceful epilogue to the epic Jewel In The Crown - Lucy and Tusker's greatest virtue is that they somehow hang on, both in India and to each other, despite disappointment and betrayal. They seem lonely despite being part of a community that includes their servants and neigbours and fellow church-goers - but they're not British, you see. The last curse of the Raj is the seperateness it inculcated in them, leaving them isolated in their, not quite superiority, but sense of class and racial divisions.

A brilliant little novel, full of life and character and superb writing. show less

A standalone novel but truly a sequel to Scott's Raj Quartet, chock full of spoilers from those novels and with teasing glimpses of what happened to some of its characters. Colonel Smalley and his wife Lucie figured as minor characters in that saga. Where most of the British opted to return home when India won its independence in 1947, the Smalleys "stayed on" in India and became anomalies in the otherwise Indian society that grew up around them, albeit thick with British legacy.

The Quartet had a fine finish, but you won't want to miss out on this fifth foray like a fine dessert after a four-course meal. It mostly sheds the quartet's complexity, with a focus on far fewer characters and with more comedic flourishes, but it also features show more Scott's masterful dalliance with chronology and his brilliant shifts among different perspectives. Like some other favourite epics, I've arrived at the very end of this enormous one only feeling regret that there isn't more. show less

This novel operates at a lot of different levels. It is multi-layered, rich. The current plot is intricate and woven together with a back story that has the feel of someone looking back, reflecting, digesting. Tusker and Lucy are a couple in the final stages in life with all of the baggage and ruts that can come with a long marriage. But there is love there, somewhere, some type. There is also love of place, India, but is it love of British India, before the Raj, or of current day India or some mixture of the two? Does Lucy miss the British India that she seemingly so hated, the restrictions it placed on her? Has she taken on these cultural norms as her own? Tusker, the administrative genius, ultimately caught not paying attention to show more the details, which is just one of many signals that life is coming to an end. Lucy is still open to the possibilities that life presents. A most curious couple that grew up in one world but must deal daily in a world that operates by very different rules.

This was my first by Paul Scott. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I admire Paul Scott’s talent, which seems to go far beyond just telling a good story. It is a quiet story, which I like. Some will feel not a lot happens, but much of what happens is subtle. show less

Story of a couple who decide to stay on in India after the British leave and India takes over. The characters are interesting but what I liked most was the look at this aging couple and the wife's sudden realization that she is going to be left a widow in India and doesn't even know what she'll have to live on and what she will do. There is also the examining of culture. Lucy left England, she was never quite good enough in British circles in India. In Lucy's thoughts we learn all this background story. It's a story of looking back, of reflection. A symbol of this retrospection is that their preferred conveyance is the Tonga, a horse-drawn carriage in which they choose to sit facing backwards, "looking back at what we're leaving show more behind". I like themes of aging and this book really captures it well. show less

I'm still working my way through the list of Booker winners, and this one is the best I have read for some time. It is a poignant, tragicomic portrait of an ageing couple of British colonial functionaries effectively stranded in an old Indian hill station after "staying on" at independence. It mixes vibrant descriptions and comic set pieces with reflections on the legacy of the Raj and the nature of independent India.