Staying On

Staying On is a novel by Paul Scott, which was published in 1977 and won the Booker Prize. 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 annex 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 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!".
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