Nazimuddin had carried the coffee tray through into the livingroom. Following her, he stood for a moment and studied the Zoffany-style pictures and then watched while she poured coffee from a silver-plated pot. He took the cup from her, sat down.
‘What does your uncle do?’
‘He runs a course about civil and military administration in India in peace time. To attract young officers into the ICS or the police when the war’s over.’
‘English officers?’
‘Indians too. But mostly English.’
‘Does he have much success?’
‘More in Bombay than in Calcutta. He expects even more in view of the result of the election in England.’
‘Yes, I suppose some people must think the prospects at home are now pretty bleak. But aren’t the prospects for an Indian career even bleaker?’
She was stirring ghur in to her coffee, occasionally stopping, tapping the spoon on the rim of the cup and then resuming. ‘It’s some years since anyone in their right mind thought of India as a career, if you mean India as a place where you could expect to spend the whole of your working life.’
‘Is your father coming up to retiring age?’
‘He hasn’t long to go now. He’ll be one of the lucky ones, I should think. The hardest hit will be men like Nigel Rowan, I mean men of his age. It depends on how power’s eventually transferred. If there’s a prolonged handing-over period, and if Uncle Arthur’s right when he says the Indians will be glad to have experienced Englishmen working with them, then men like Nigel might have quite a few more years useful working life out here. But I don’t think Uncle Arthur’s right, do you? I don’t think there’ll be a prolonged handing-over period.’
‘Why?’
‘Because that would be the logical thing and I think the whole situation’s become too emotional for logic to come into it.’
He waited for her to continue but she seemed to have come to a stop. He said, ‘How will you feel about it, when it happens?’
‘I shouldn’t want to stay on.’
‘Why, especially?’
‘I don’t think it’s a country one can be happy in.’
‘You’d be happy in England?’
‘I didn’t care for it much when I first went home as a child. But it’s where I really grew up and started to think for myself. It’s where I feel I belong. I know India much better, but ever since my sister and I came out again after going home to school I’ve only felt like a visitor.’
‘Does your sister feel the same?’
‘I think a bit the same. She tried not to. But it’s difficult to say what she feels nowadays. She’s had rather a bad time.’
‘Major Merrick told me what happened to her husband. I’m sorry.’
‘Did he mention his part in it?’
‘Yes.’
She drank her coffee. She said, ‘I’m sorry you don’t remember Hari Kumar. Nigel does.’
He thought she intended to say more but just then they heard Merrick’s footsteps.
‘I think that’s settled,’ he said. She glanced at him as if to judge from his expression how gently he had dealt with her father. Perron glanced at him too but could tell nothing. As in the dockyard-hut the night of Karim Muzzafir Khan’s interrogation, Merrick lifted his right hand and looked at the watch which he wore with the face on the inner-side of the wrist.
‘I’ll skip coffee if you don’t mind. I’ve got some work to finish back at the hotel. And before that, of course, I must help the sergeant to find his jeep.’ He nodded at Perron. ‘If you’re ready.’
‘There’s surely time for a cup? Mr Perron, perhaps you’d like another? Or the drink you never got?’
‘The sergeant has to drive.’
‘Does he really have to? Weren’t you on duty of some sort at the Maharanee’s party, Mr Perron?’
‘Yes, I was.’
‘Well who’s to say when it might have ended? If you don’t really have to report back to Kalyan tonight we could always give you a shake-down here. Frankly I don’t think you should go all that way after the sort of evening you’ve had. We can send Nazimuddin out scouting for a taxi if your work is all that urgent, Ronald. Or you could wait until Uncle Arthur’s back. He’s using the staff-car.’
‘I think you’re asking the sergeant to risk getting into trouble.’
‘There’d be no risk of that, sir. I’m allowed to use my discretion to a great extent and there are a number of perfectly adequate reasons why I might stay in Bombay overnight if that’s what I decided.’
‘Good. Then you’ll stay, Mr Perron?’
Momentarily he was tempted to accept, help her get rid of Merrick which is what it seemed she wanted, and be alone with her for a while. But very soon the flat would be invaded by its owners, her aunt and uncle, and there would be explanations to make, chat about Purvis, chat about the course, chat about staying on in India. Raj chat. And she would fade back into that dreary predictable background. He was sorry for her. He felt she deserved better of life. But so many of them did. There was nothing he could do. Their lives were not his affair. He had his own to live. Their dissatisfaction, their boredom, the strain they always seemed to be under, were largely their own fault. The real world was outside. Impatient, he stood up. If you allowed yourself to sympathize too much they would destroy you. You would lose what you valued most. Your objectivity.
He said, ‘It’s very kind of you, Miss Layton, but what I have to do in Kalyan tomorrow is more important than what I might do in Bombay, so the quicker I get back the better. In any case, I’ve already offered Major Merrick a lift to the Taj.’
‘Then I won’t press you. Incidentally, my father asked me to make sure you know how grateful he is for the whisky and how sorry he was to be so much under the weather.’
They were all on their feet now. Merrick began to go into details of the arrangements for getting to the station the following day. Perron moved away since none of this concerned him. He retrieved his pack and occupied himself pretending to check the straps. That done he stood up and humped the pack on his left shoulder and waited. Merrick was still talking as he and Miss Layton came through to the archway between dining-room area and passage, where Perron stood. Her arms were folded in the manner Perron assumed was characteristic – hands gripping elbows; one grip loose, the other tight. Too tight? An attitude more of self-control than of self-possession?
Merrick said, ‘Tomorrow, then,’ and with his right hand reached for and held her left shoulder and bent his head. Instinctively she bent hers away so that the kiss was placed somewhere near her right ear. Her eyes were closed. She smiled, as if to herself, and said, ‘Tomorrow.’ Merrick let her go. He nodded at the closed door, mutely commanding its opening. Miss Layton called Nazimuddin and then put out her hand.
‘Goodbye, Mr Perron.’
The hand was cool and dry. The delicate aroma of the scent she used added to his pleasure in holding it. He thanked her for her hospitality and said goodbye. ‘Perhaps we’ll meet again,’ she said. From behind him Nazimuddin asked if a taxi were wanted. Told that it wasn’t he opened the door and salaamed to Perron as he went out. Merrick said goodnight to Miss Layton. Just before the door shut on them Perron caught her slight gestures: a nod, a movement of one hand. They were meant for him.
*
The rain had stopped some time ago but there were no stars, no breaks in the cloud-cover. Neither had the last downpour cooled the air, although there was a hint of freshness in the warm intermittent breeze that played around the palm-fringed maidan. He walked a pace or two behind Merrick until they reached an intersection where Merrick stopped. A taxi had drawn up to let its passengers out. ‘We’ll take this, sergeant, since it’s here. It might save us getting wet. I’ll drop you and go on to the hotel.’ He got in after giving the driver instructions and Perron followed, glad to be saved the walk and the prolonging of the effort of being civil to Merrick which the walk and a jeep drive would have involved. Escape was imm
inent.
‘A very nice girl, Miss Layton, sir.’
Merrick took his time replying.
‘She has many admirable qualities. Her father certainly has cause to be grateful to her.’
‘Oh?’
‘When a man leaves a family of women behind one of them has to assume responsibility for keeping things going. I think she assumed most of it. But of course it tends to develop a girl’s domineering instinct. As perhaps you noticed.’
‘No, I didn’t notice that, sir.’ He added, ‘This looks familiar. It was somewhere about here.’
‘The next road on the left, in fact. Did she refer at all to Kumar when you were alone?’
‘Only to say she was sorry I didn’t appear to remember him.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing.’
As the taxi pulled up Merrick said, ‘I’ll wait until you’ve made sure of your jeep.’
The gates of the house at which the taxi stopped were shut, perhaps padlocked, and the house apparently in darkness. Perron was almost grateful for Merrick’s suggestion. Arrangements made by Purvis were probably not very reliable.
But in this case they were, in all respects except that of security. Directly Perron reached the closed iron gates a lamp was shone on him and a cockney voice said, ‘Come for your gharry, Sarge?’ Perron said he had and went back to the taxi.
‘Everything’s in order, sir.’
Merrick was looking out of the other window. He did not move.
He said, ‘One case you should find interesting when you join me is that of the brother of the young Indian you met tonight.’
‘Ahmed Kasim?’
Merrick turned his head, put a finger to his lips, and nodded in the driver’s direction. ‘He went over to Bose in Malaya. We got him in Manipur last year. It is interesting when you think who the father is. Right. I’ll see you in Delhi. In a couple of days or so, I expect.’
Perron shut the door and threw up a smart one which so far as he could make out Merrick acknowledged in the languid manner officers cultivated. The taxi drew away. Perron watched it go down the poorly-lit tree-lined street.
‘Oh no you won’t. You bloody well won’t,’ he said aloud.
*
Half an hour later, soaked to the skin by the renewed downpour, he gave up trying to trace the fault in the brand new jeep’s electrical system and accepted the guard-commander’s offer of a bed-down for the night. The guard-commander, a British corporal – seemed to welcome company. In the guardroom, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb the three huddled shapes disposed on charpoys in corners away from the dim light of a lamp that hung centrally above a trestle-table littered with mugs, playing-cards and worn copies of Picture Post and Reader’s Digest, he offered Perron a shot of buckshee rum.
‘Found its own way here, Sarge,’ the corporal said, and winked. Outside, in the dark, he had called Perron sir at least twice but had got over any embarrassment this might have caused him. While they sat smoking and drinking rum the corporal explained that he and his bunch had been in India for a whole month and were still wondering what had hit them. They were part of a formation that had been under orders for France just before – as the corporal put it – old Hitler packed it in. For a while they’d been looking forward to becoming part of the army of occupation. There were chaps making fortunes there right now and from what he’d heard the frauleins would do it for a packet of cigarettes or even a Naafi sandwich. The corporal had been in the army for a year and some of the men in his unit less than that. They had reckoned Germany would be a cushy billet in which to see their time out and from the way ‘old Slim’s lot’ had given the Japs ‘the bum’s rush out of Burma’ the last thing any of them had expected was to be sent out East. When you looked at the map (the corporal said) you could see that the Japanese had had it. You could hardly see where places like Malaya were. But here they were. Had the Sarge ever known such a bleeding awful place. How long had the Sarge been out here?
‘Two years,’ Perron said.
‘Christ.’
The corporal studied him, respectfully, but looking for signs of deterioration. ‘I reckon I’d be round the twist if they kept me out here that long.’ His tone became even lower; confidential. ‘What’s it like, Sarge. With these Indian bints?’
‘The colour doesn’t come off.’
The corporal shook his head. ‘I couldn’t fancy it somehow. Some of the half’n’halfs look okay but the one’s who’re white enough not to put you off are only interested in officers, aren’t they? We been warned to watch it too. They say there’s always a coal-black mum waiting in the parlour to get the banns read if you so much as touch the daughter. That true, d’you reckon, Sarge?’
‘I’ve heard of cases.’
The corporal shook his head again. Perron glanced at the sleeping men. Only one of them had his face turned towards the light. He looked about nineteen, so, come to that, did the corporal. The faces were those of urban Londoners and belonged to streets of terraced houses that ended in one-man shops: newsagent-tobacconist, fish and chip shop, family grocer, and a pub at the corner where the high road was. What could such a face know of India? And yet India was there, in the skull, and the bones of the body. Its possession had helped nourish the flesh, warm the blood of every man in the room, sleeping and waking.
‘Where do I turn in?’ Perron asked.
‘I’ll show you.’ The corporal looked at his watch. ‘Then I got to change the guard.’ He led the way out into a passage. ‘There’s a coupla wog clerks that sleep down that end, and there’s a duty officer upstairs with the phone put through. He’s a wog too. I think the officers that work here take it in turns to sleep in, not that anything ever happens, but there’s a safe in the room the duty-officer sleeps in, so I reckon there’s a lot of secret papers. There’s a spare charpoy here, though—’ he opened a door and switched on a light – ‘and a bog through that door. You got a blanket, Sarge?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll bring you one in.’ He switched on the fan and went out. The room was an office, so sparsely furnished it looked like a monk’s cell. Along one wall, under a shuttered window, stood a bare charpoy. Aslant one corner, there was a trestle-table covered by an army blanket, with one folding canvas chair behind it and a folding wooden chair in front of it for visitors. A neatly positioned telephone and blotting pad, a pen and pencil tray, an empty in-basket and an empty out-basket told a story of meticulous attention to work or of a complete absence of work to give attention to. Facing the visitor, parallel to the top edge of the blotter and the pen and pencil tray, was a triangular wedge of wood on which the name of the desk’s occupant was painted in white.
Capt. L. Purvis.
Here behind the desk Purvis had sat, waiting for a call from Delhi that never came, and presumably here he had lain, on the charpoy, gazing at the alien geography of the ceiling, nursing his invaded gut and his invincible Englishness. And, on the wall behind the desk, he had marked off with a blue crayon the days of his martyrdom. Perron looked at his watch. Not yet midnight. Even if Purvis had learned to cheat by crossing a day off immediately before he left the office in the evening Perron did not feel he could cancel out August 5 for him until his watch showed 0001.
‘Here’s your blanket, Sarge, and something for a pillow. Anything else?’
‘No thank you, Corporal.’
‘We brew up at 0600. Okay for you?’
‘Fine.’
‘Pleasant dreams then, Sarge.’
After he had taken off his damp uniform, hung it over the chair back under the fan and mopped himself reasonably dry with the green handtowel from his pack, Perron sat in his underwear on the edge of the charpoy and slowly performed the nightly task of trying to obliterate from his mind all the disturbing residue of the day’s malfunctioning and so leave it free to crystallize, to reveal the point reached in a continuum he was sure existed but, in India, found so difficult to trace.
He lit
a cigarette and stared at his stockinged feet, then reached over to his jacket and got out the notebook and pencil. After a while he wrote: ‘Two continua, perhaps, in this case? Ours, and the Indians’? An illusion that they ever coincided, coincide? A powerful illusion but still an illusion? If so, then the raj was, is, itself an illusion so far as the English are concerned. Is that what she meant when she said she did not think India was a country one could be happy in?’
Dissatisfied with this he drew a pencil line lightly across the entry and tried again.
‘For at least a hundred years India has formed part of England’s idea about herself and for the same period India has been forced into a position of being a reflection of that idea. Up to say 1900 the part India played in our idea about ourselves was the part played by anything we possessed which we believed it was right to possess (like a special relationship with God). Since 1900, certainly since 1918, the reverse has obtained. The part played since then by India in the English idea of Englishness has been that of something we feel it does us no credit to have. Our idea about ourselves will now not accommodate any idea about India except the idea of returning it to the Indians in order to prove that we are English and have demonstrably English ideas. All this is quite simply proven and amply demonstrated. But on either side of that arbitrary date (1900) India itself, as itself, that is to say India as not part of our idea of ourselves, has played no part whatsoever in the lives of Englishmen in general (no part that we are conscious of) and those who came out (those for whom India had to play a real part) became detached both from English life and from the English idea of life. Getting rid of India will cause us at home no qualm of conscience because it will be like getting rid of what is no longer reflected in our mirror of ourselves. The sad thing is that whereas in the English mirror there is now no Indian reflection (think of Purvis, those men I lectured to, and the corporal here in the guardroom), in the Indian mirror the English reflection may be very hard to get rid of, because in the Indian mind English possession has not been an idea but a reality; often a harsh one. The other sad thing is that people like the Laytons may now see nothing at all when looking in their mirror. Not even themselves? Not even a mirror? I know that getting rid of India, dismantling all this old imperial machinery (which Purvis sees as hopelessly antiquated, a brake on economic viability – his word) has become an article of faith with the intellectual minority of the party we have just voted into power. But we haven’t voted them into power to get rid of the machinery, we’ve voted them into power to set up new machinery of our own for our own benefit, and for the majority who voted India does not even begin to exist. Odd that history may record as pre-eminent among the Labour Party’s post-war governmental achievements the demission of power in countries like this? Could it be that, in power now, and with a mandate to demit power, the party will forget or omit to demit it? It could be. But we shall see. The machinery for demission is wound up and there are, as Purvis knows, overriding economic arguments for setting it in motion as soon as the war’s over. In England the war is over. It ended on May 6. In England the war’s a dead letter except for people with sons, brothers and fathers and husbands out here. And the fact that they’re still out here simply adds to an English sense of grievance that England ever got involved with anything or anywhere south or east of spitting distance of the white cliffs of Dover. Terrific insularity. Paradox! The most insular people in the world managed to establish the largest empire the world has ever seen. No, not paradox. Insularity, like empire-building, requires superb self-confidence, a conviction of one’s moral superiority. And I suppose that when the war is really over the recollection that there was a time when we “stood alone” against Hitler will confirm us in our national sense of moral superiority. Will it be in those abstract terms and on those shifting grounds that we’ll attempt to build a new empire whose cornerstone will be the act of relinquishing for “moral” reasons the empire we actually had?’