A review by travisantoniog
Staying On by Paul Scott

"Maybrick was entirely within his rights to say it was Mabel layton, and that it would have been highly macabre for him to have nominated himself, even though he was the last person, and will remain so as there is no more room"

Like the small churchyard in pankot which could no longer accomodate any bodies, so too was the attitude towards the British who decided to stay on after the Raj had faded away. This was Paul Scott's last novel and is chronologically set after the events of the arak Quartet and covers the post colonial period and the experience of a retired colonel and his wife who decided to "stay on" after independence. The characters in question were featured in the Raj Quartet and intersect with the Laytons and the event that took place in Pankot.

While the book is more of a short story compared with the main novel, but it in no way has diminished Paul Scott's evocative prose.

"I thought perhaps after all the sun would come out again, between us but it didn't.. except once - and that paradoxically was after sunset" - The tenderness Tusker showed towards Lucy at the ceremony for the transfer of power

We mainly see the story from Lucy Smalley; the military wife of an unambitious colonial officer in the British Raj. The daughter of a parson and a poor relation of a minor aristocrat who had to "suffer the indignity" of having to work a regular job, Lucy's first impression of India is that it would be an escape from the rigid hierarchical class structures at home only to subsequently find that these constraints had followed her across the seas.

"I'd been brought up to know my place, but when I married Tusker and came out that all that was over... but he was only taking me back to the Vicarage" - Lucy Smalley

The novel also deals with the social changes that took place post independence and the realization that some legacies of colonialism such as the rigid class structure left behind continued to endure albeit in a native form.

"I don't mean this India...I sometimes don't see a great difference between theirs and the one in which I was a Memsahib, but our India, British India, which kept me in my place, ...brain-washed me into believing that nothing was more improtant than doing everything my place required me to do" - Lucy Smalley

A surprising aspect of the the novel was that it felt more lighthearted than the Raj Quartet novels particularly as a result of the larger than life Villain like character of Mrs. Bhoolabhoy and the farcical relationship with "management". but it does not shy away from the societal issues and prejudices and difficulties touched on in the colonial and post colonial world.

It was also a pleasant surprise to learn about the fate of some of the key characters in the Raj Quartet such as the Laytons after the event of the novel.

Overall a great send off to this simply brilliant series.

Favourite Quotes

"Another example of how you have deprived me, of the fullness of my life in order to support and sustain the smallness of your own" - Lucy berating to Tusker on him not giving permission for her to act in a drama out of fear that she might outshine the wives of the higher ranking officials

"I was always on this committee and that committee I was on it but not of it" - Lucy on the social hierachies that continued to be maintained even in India

"at the end of one's life all that was left was one's dignity and one was damned lucky to have the chance to show it." - Lucy when Tusker had a heart attack at the party

"It was different for the new generations of English and Indians who met and made friends with one another; ..the generation that had experienced all the passions and prejudices, there was somehow in that relationship a distant and diinishing but not yet dead echo of the sound of the tocsin" - Lucy reflecting on Mrs. Desai's welcome at their Holi party

"Suddenly the powers that be say, Right, Smalley, we’re not wanted here any more, we’ve all got to bugger off, too bad you’re not ten years younger or ten years older. I thought about this a lot at the time and it seemed to me I’d invested in India, not money which I’ve never had, not talent (Ha!) which I’ve only had a limited amount of, nothing India needed or needs or has been one jot the better for, but was all I had to invest in anything. Me." - Tusker reflecting on his life in a letter to Lucy