The Jewel In The Crown (The Raj quartet)

  Oddly enough there was a Dr Krishnamurti in Mayapore, a colleague of Dr Anna Klaus. I asked our Dr Krishnamurti whether he was any relation of the one in Mayapore and he said he expected so, if you traced the family far enough back. I told him that I was glad his name was Krishnamurti, because it was a link with Mayapore. He looked embarrassed and surprised. I’m not sure that he wasn’t shocked, my saying that name, Mayapore, so casually. He’s got over the embarrassment of having to touch me, but not the embarrassment of what it seems I represent to Indians as well as to British. This thing – whatever it is – that I represent has now passed from the purely notional to the acutely physical phase. In Pindi I saw how even the few people who came to see us – or rather came to see you in spite of me – couldn’t keep their eyes off my waist-line. Now of course the distortion caused by the unknown child (unknown, unwanted, unloved it seems by anyone but me) is the most immediately obvious thing about me. If I went down into the bazaar, and didn’t confine myself to the house and garden, I’d feel it necessary to go with a little bell, like a leper, so that people could go indoors and stay clear until I’d passed! If I’d been assaulted by men of my own race I would have been an object of pity. Religiously-minded people would probably have admired me as well for refusing to abort. But they weren’t men of my own race. And so even the Indians in Pindi used to avert their eyes when I went into the cantonment, as if they were afraid some awful punishment would pass from me to them.

  Even you, Auntie, seem to keep your eyes level with mine these days.

  *

  Of course, I wasn’t a virgin. Anna Klaus told me later that she had been asked and had given her answer. She wanted me to know that the question had come up and been dealt with. She didn’t press me for any comment. I didn’t make any. But I tell you, Auntie, to set the record straight. My first lover was a friend of my brother David. My second a man I met in London during the time I was driving the ambulances. Two lovers –but, you see, not lovers. We made love but weren’t in love, although for a time I thought I was in love with the first man.

  It is only Hari I have ever loved. Almost more than anything else in the world I long to talk about him to you, even if it were only to say, ‘Oh yes, Hari said something like that,’ or ‘I saw that one time when I was with Hari.’ Just to speak his name to another person, to bring him back into the ordinary world of my life. But I can’t. I know that your face would go blank, and this is something I couldn’t bear, to have him shut out like that, by you. He has been shut out enough. If I cry – and I sometimes do – it’s because I know that I have shut him out as well. Is it true, I wonder, that you know where he is? I often think you know, that so many of the people I count as friends know, but won’t tell me. I don’t blame you, though. Your silence is for what you believe is my good, and mine has been for what I think is Hari’s. God knows there have been affairs between people of Hari’s colour and people of mine before, and even marriages, and children, and blessings as well as unhappiness. But this was one affair that somehow never stood a chance. I’ve given up hope of ever seeing him again.

  This is why, especially, the child I bear is important to me. Even though I can’t be positive it is his. But I think so, I believe so. If it isn’t, it is still a child. Its skin may be as dark as Hari’s or almost as pale as mine, or somewhere in between. But whatever colour – he, or she, is part of my flesh and blood; my own typically ham-fisted offering to the future!

  *

  A day or two since I wrote anything in this book. I write at night, mostly, huddled in your sheepskin, close to the dying log fire. It is a land of such marvellous contrasts. Tonight, in Mayapore, the heat will be awful. One would sit under the fan, with all the windows open, but if I went to the little lattice window here and peeped through the cretonne curtains I would see the snow on the mountains. And yet in a few weeks the valley will be filled with people on leave. They will swim in the lakes and throng the river in their shikaras. Shall we move into Srinagar then, Auntie, and live on one of the houseboats and fill it with flowers and have our fortunes told?

  *

  Marigolds. How Bhalu hated it when I usurped his position and went gathering them early in the morning to put in a vase for Lili’s breakfast tray! I was in Bhalu’s bad books for trampling one of his flower beds and cutting marigolds the day Hari first came to the MacGregor House. Since I’ve never talked to you about Hari I don’t know how much Auntie Lili told you. But soon after I went down to Mayapore with her she was asked by someone, Anna Klaus in fact, whether she knew a Mr Kumar, or Coomer as it was sometimes spelt, and if in any case she could ask Judge Menen what Mr Kumar had done to deserve being hustled away by the police, hit by a sub-inspector in the presence of witnesses and taken in ‘for questioning’. Lili didn’t tell me much about any of this but I gathered that she was taking some sort of interest in a young Indian who was in trouble simply for answering back, or something like that. Her not telling me much was all part of that attitude of hers we both know so well. Like at Lahore, on our way down to Mayapore, when she sat in our compartment cool as a cucumber pretending that nothing was going on while all the time those two Englishwomen were really accusing her of having pinched a piece of their beastly luggage. As you know, Auntie, it’s difficult ever to get Lili to talk about the things Indians have to put up with, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel badly about them, or that if she can help someone who’s in trouble, as Hari was, she’ll just sit back and do nothing.

  In fact I never heard the full story of Hari’s ‘arrest’ until Hari told me himself, long afterwards, one evening when we’d gone together to the Tirupati temple. I didn’t even know until then that the man who’d actually taken him in for questioning was Ronald Merrick. I felt badly about that. I felt that everyone had deliberately kept it from me, Aunt Lili, Anna Klaus, Judge Menen, even Sister Ludmila – especially Sister Ludmila because it seemed it had all happened in the Sanctuary, in front of her. I felt badly because I had been out with Ronald as well as Hari, and it looked as if all the people I liked and trusted had simply sat back and watched and waited to see what might happen. Since then I’ve realised that it wasn’t really like that. It was only like I think it always has been in India for people of either race who try to live together outside their own enclosed little circles. Inside those circles the gossip never stops and everybody knows everybody else’s business. But outside them it’s as if the ground is so uncertain that to stand on it is enough. Yesterday’s misunderstandings or injustices are best forgotten. You learn from them but keep what has been learned to yourself, hoping others have also learned. The important thing is to keep the ground occupied, and once you start talking about anything except today you’re adding to the danger that’s always there, of people turning tail and scurrying back to the safe little place where they know they can talk their heads off because in there they all have to pretend to think alike.

  But when I found out from Hari that it was Ronald Merrick who had taken him into custody and questioned him, and had stood by and watched a sub-inspector hit him, I felt I’d been made a laughing-stock. I’d always assumed that Ronald was much too high and mighty to have been involved personally in such a local little matter as the arrest and questioning of a ‘suspect’. I was angry with Ronald for warning me about my association with Hari (as he had done only a few days before the visit to the temple) without bothering to mention that he had personally arrested and questioned him. I was angry with everyone, but most of all I suppose angry with myself. But what I said to Hari that night made him think I was only angry with him, and even accusing him of deceit, which is supposed to be a typically Indian failing so far as the average stolid good old no-nonsense Englishwoman is concerned. I suppose my reaction struck Hari as typical too, typical of the roughshod-riding English mem. After we parted I meant to have it out with Aunt Lili when she got back, but she was late and I went to bed. I sat up for ages, thinking of the times Ronald Merrick had been at the MacGregor House, and the t
imes Hari had been (but never on the same occasion). I worked it out that the evening Ronald came to dinner, after I’d come to stay with Lili (I remember mentioning in my first letter to you from Mayapore that the District Superintendent of Police was coming that evening and that I had to change into my glad rags) must have been only a day or two after Lili had been rung by Anna Klaus and asked to speak to Judge Menen about ‘Mr Kumar or Coomer’, because I know that happened in the first few days of my stay at the MacGregor House. Perhaps if I’d been more settled I’d have asked more questions about Hari, who he was, and what had happened to him. But I didn’t. On the night Lili had Ronald there to dinner, with several other guests, she must have known that he had been responsible for taking Hari into custody and probably knew he had stood by while Hari was struck by the sub-inspector. But she never said anything to him about it, either then or later, so far as I could tell. Neither did she say anything to Hari on the few later occasions he came to the house, at least not in front of me.

  I wondered why. And why she had never told me the whole story. But wondering this I realised that no one who knew the story had ever said anything to me. I only knew that after Hari’s first visit Lili had become reserved about him. I sensed her lack of real liking for him. And this had made me hesitant about telling her much about what Ronald came to call ‘my association with Mr Kumar’. I saw the extent of the silence that had surrounded this association, and how I had automatically contributed to it. I’d also kept quiet – to everyone but you – about Ronald’s ‘proposal’, and this was the same kind of silence.

  This is when I knew that I really loved Hari, and wanted him near me all the time, and also when I began to be afraid for him. There seemed to have been a conspiracy among everyone I knew at all well to say nothing, but wait, almost as if holding their breath, perhaps wanting me to like Hari, for himself, simply as a man, but scared of the consequences and also of the other thing, that I was attracted to the idea of doing something unconventional for the hell of it, which of course would have hurt him more than me. But it was a conspiracy that seemed to be rooted in love as well as fear. I felt as if they saw my affair with Hari as the logical but terrifying end of the attempt they had all made to break out of their separate little groups and learn how to live together – terrifying because even they couldn’t face with equanimity the breaking of the most fundamental law of all – that although a white man could make love to a black girl, the black man and white girl association was still taboo.

  And then all my determination to have things out with Lili in the morning was undermined. Partly because there was nothing really to ‘have out’, partly because I was afraid. I couldn’t see myself talking to Lili about any of this, because to talk would have been to introduce aspects of my ‘association’ that had nothing to do with what I felt for Hari. But thinking of what I felt for him, and looking in the mirror as I got ready for bed, I thought, Well – but does he love me? What am I? Just a big-boned girl with a white skin whose mother justifiably accused her of awkwardness, and whose father and brother were kind as the men of a family are always kind to a daughter or sister who is a good sport but not much else.

  Sorry, Auntie. Not making a bid for your kindness. Just stating the truth, and explaining the awful doubts I had, the suspicion that perhaps what people said was true, that a coloured man who goes with a white girl only does so for special reasons.

  *

  When I first met him I thought him horribly prickly. He was supposed to come with his Aunt Shalini, but he came alone and was ill at ease. Later Aunt Lili said she wasn’t surprised he’d come alone, because his Aunt Shalini was probably one of those embarrassingly shy little Indian women who either never went anywhere or cast a blight on any place they did. I’d virtually forgotten whatever Lili had told me about ‘Mr Kumar’. It was some time in March and she’d decided to have a small cocktail party. When she made out her list she said, ‘And we’ll ask young Mr Kumar and see what he looks like.’ I said, ‘Which Mr Kumar?’ and she said, ‘Oh, you remember. The young man I was asked to speak to Judge Menen about because he got arrested by mistake.’ Then she said, ‘But don’t for goodness’ sake say anything to him about that.’ Well, you know me! I’ve always tended to put my foot in it by coming out with things bald-faced. I used to be much worse, because I was so dreadfully shy and conscious of being clumsy, and the only thing I could think to do not to look awkward was to chat at people and say the first thing that came into my head, which more often than not turned out to be the wrong thing.

  I’ve forgotten who most of the people were who came that time for cocktails. There was Dr Anna Klaus, I know, because that was the first time I’d met her, although I’d seen her talking to Dr Mayhew when she came to the Mayapore General for some consultation or other. And Matron was there. And Vassi (the lawyer, Mr Srinivasan, who was a friend of Lili’s and also of Hari’s aunt and ‘uncle’). Hari’s editor on the Mayapore Gazette, Mr Laxminarayan, was also supposed to be there but didn’t turn up, probably because he found out Hari had been invited and he didn’t feel the protocol would be right if he and a junior member of the staff were at the same function! At least that’s what Hari said later. I know the Whites looked in for half an hour, and there were some teachers from the Higher School and the Technical College.

  He was late turning up. He hadn’t wanted to come, but had decided to face it. He was ashamed of his clothes. He didn’t know any of us except Vassi and they didn’t like each other much. When I say he didn’t know any of us I’m wrong. He knew quite a lot of people by sight, because as a reporter on the Gazette it was his job to. He let slip to Aunt Lili that they had met before and that she had once answered a question he put to her when she won second prize for her roses at the flower show. I was standing next to her when he let on about that. He made it sound as if she ought to have remembered talking to him. She pretended to, but from the way she pretended I could tell that she disliked being made to pretend, which she only did because she thought he was hurt not to be recognised. And he saw through her pretence too. And at once became what I call prickly.

  I put my foot in it too. When he spoke he sounded just like an Englishman. So I blurted out, ‘Wherever did you learn to speak English as well as you do?’ He just looked at me and said, ‘England.’ So of course I bashed on in a panic, expressing astonishment and interest, falling over myself to be friendly, but only succeeding in being inquisitive. Then Lili took me away and made me talk to some other people and the next time I saw him he was standing more or less alone, on the edge of a group of the teachers. So I went up to him and said, ‘Let me show you the garden.’ It was getting dusk and we were already in the garden, so it was a frightfully stupid thing to say. But it was this time of speaking to him that I really noticed how good-looking he was. And tall. So many of the Indian men I talked to I topped by an inch or two, which was something that usually added to my hysteria at a party where I was feeling shy and awkward.

  But he let me show him the garden. Which is why I remember I’d been in trouble with Bhalu that morning. I showed him the flower bed I’d trampled on getting at the marigolds. I asked him whether he’d had a nice garden when he lived in England and he said he supposed it had been all right but that he’d never taken much notice of it. Then I said, ‘Do you miss it all, though?’ and he said at once, ‘Not any more,’ and sort of moved away and said it was time for him to go. So we walked back and re-joined the party which was breaking up. He said goodbye to Lili and thanked her rather brusquely and then just nodded goodbye to me. And I remember afterwards, when he’d gone, and one or two people stayed for dinner, all Indians, how forcibly it struck me that except for the colour of his skin he wasn’t Indian at all – in the sense I understood it.

  When everyone had gone and Lili and I were having a nightcap she said, ‘Well, what were you able to make of young Mr Coomer?’

  I said, ‘I think he’s a terribly sad man.’ It was the first thing that came into my mind, and yet
I didn’t seem to have thought of it like that until then. And Lili said nothing except something like, ‘Let’s have the other half and then bash off to bed.’

  *

  I’m glad that I’m writing all this down, because even if you never read it it’s helping me to understand things better. I think I’ve been blaming Lili for taking against Hari. No, let me be honest. I don’t think I’ve been blaming her, I know I have. And I think I’ve been wrong. Reliving that first meeting with him I see how Lili, who was responsible for me to you, probably watched the way we left the party to inspect the garden, and didn’t misinterpret but responded to the little warning bell that she must have learned, during her life, never to ignore. Remembering all the wonderful things about Lili, I must be wrong to think that she could ever really have harboured resentment of Hari for the critical attitude he adopted towards her in those few insignificant moments when they first met at her party. And Lili, after all, is a woman too. She can’t have been totally unmoved by Hari’s physical presence. Nor unconcerned, when she saw us going off together (only for ten minutes!), about me, and how Imight be moved by it.