He believed that what Laura must have felt for Ratcliff this girl – whose first name he did not know – felt for an unnamed man. This was so clear to Rowan that his mind played the trick of confusing her with Laura and the unknown man with Ratcliff, and he recalled quite vividly the feeling of helplessness which had underlain the stronger emotions of jealousy and anger and which had come full circle when he heard that Laura and her planter husband had become prisoners of the Japanese in Malaya.
Bronowsky called for another bottle of champagne. It was his seventieth birthday, he explained. Spending it on duty, he had equipped himself with special comforts. The salon, got up to look like that of a travelling nineteenth century European monarch with cosmopolitan tastes, was an appropriate setting for such a celebration.
‘What news of your father?’ Bronowsky asked, turning the conversation from himself to Miss Layton. All Rowan knew from Bronowsky’s introduction was that Miss Layton was the sister of a girl who had been married in Mirat and that she had stayed with her family at the palace guest house before and after the wedding. Her father seemed to be away – at some distance – she had not heard from him recently. There was a mother. The sister was mentioned again. Miss Layton said they were both well. She herself had just been to Calcutta. She had an aunt and uncle there whose surname was Grace.
‘And the officer who was best man at your sister’s wedding,’ Bronowsky went on. ‘Captain Merrick. Have you had news of him? He interested me considerably. I thought him an unusual man.’
Spoken casually like that in these strange but civilized surroundings the familiar name, Merrick, had the same disconcerting effect as a sudden change in the intensity of light. He found himself concentrating on certain essentials. The girl was a stranger, not Laura. The Merrick she and Bronowsky knew need not be his Merrick. But her manner had altered. The prominence of bone seemed more accentuated. This, perhaps, was imaginary. She said that it was to visit this Merrick in hospital that she had gone to Calcutta. This Merrick, her Merrick, had been wounded and a Captain Bingham killed. Her Merrick had tried to help someone called Teddie and had lost an arm. He had pulled Teddie out of a blazing truck while they were under fire. He was in for a decoration. Captain Bingham and Teddie must be one and the same man. She had gone to see her Merrick in hospital because her sister was anxious to find out if there were anything they could do.
This Merrick had been best man at her sister’s wedding. Whose best man? Teddie’s? It sounded like that. If so the sister was already widowed; still prostrate, perhaps; well in health but not fit to travel; which might explain why she had sent her sister all the way to Calcutta to talk to the man who had lost an arm trying to save her husband. ‘Physical courage,’ Bronowsky was saying, ‘you could see he had that.’ Meaning her Merrick. On asking which arm Merrick had lost and being told the left the old man was quiet for a moment. ‘That’s something,’ he said. ‘I observed him picking up bits of confetti, also stubbing a cigarette. He was right-handed.’
How painstakingly observant. Rowan glanced up and found Bronowsky watching him through that one appraising eye.
‘You may remember the man we’re speaking of? Merrick?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘I don’t mean you would remember him personally. He went into the army from the Indian Police. He figured rather prominently in the case involving an English girl, in Mayapore in 1942. The Bibighar.’
Her Merrick. His Merrick. The same man.
‘Oh yes. That case.’
‘He was District Superintendent. In Mirat I had a long and interesting talk to him and found him utterly convinced that the men he arrested were truly guilty. I myself and I suppose most people since have come to the conclusion that they couldn’t have been.’
Bronowsky was wrong. At the top of the administrative hierarchy, yes, one could say that, but even there the suspicion that Merrick had blundered was tempered by a determination not to allow it to be officially admitted. Uncorroborated and inadmissible evidence that in the case of Hari Kumar the blunder was one of a peculiarly unpleasant kind looked like having to remain a haunting burden on the consciences of a few. The irony of Merrick’s act of bravery and the recommendation for a decoration was not lost on Rowan. It would justify the opinion originally held by the rank and file of the administration, and never truly altered, that in the Manners rape case Merrick had acted with that forthright avenging speed which had once made the raj feared and respected, and India a place where men did not merely operate a machine of law and order, but ruled and damned the consequences of ruling.
‘It would have been understandable,’ Bronowsky went on ‘if Merrick had begun to waver in his opinion – unless you accept that he left the police temporarily under a cloud and harboured a grudge. But he had tried for years to get into the army. He was a very ordinary man on the surface but underneath, I suspect, a man of unusual talents. Are those boys still in prison?’
‘Which boys are those?’ Rowan asked.
‘The ones arrested, not tried, but detained, as politicals.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know, Count.’
The old man smiled, possibly to convey that his inquiries were made only out of general curiosity.
‘I hope they are not forgotten and just being left to rot. The provincial authorities have an obligation in this matter, surely?’
‘I’m sure they are not just forgotten.’
‘The Indians remember. Unfortunately not only Indians of the right sort. There is a venerable gentleman of Mayapore who last year visited Mirat and engaged in some tortuous processes of intimidation.’
Another name clicked into place in Rowan’s mind, but again, as in the case of Merrick whom he had never met, a name without a face. The name was Pandit Baba but the face was Harry Coomer’s – Kumar’s rather, quite unrecognizable, unidentifiable with the boy Rowan had known as Coomer: hollow-cheeked, prison-pale under the brown skin: the voice was Kumar’s too, describing Pandit Baba of Mayapore in that halting staccato way: I knew him as a man my aunt hired to try to teach me an Indian language – He smelt strongly of garlic – He was very unpunctual – the lessons weren’t a success.
Between each short sentence there had been a pause, as Kumar focused on an image, probably long forgotten. The manner in which he answered the question was what first suggested to Rowan that the documents he had studied and which were damning, damning to Kumar, were not going to stand up. It was the manner of a man talking to himself as well as to the two men on the other side of a table; searching his memory for certain details to convince himself of the reality of things he knew had happened to him but had preferred not to think about for a long time. For Rowan, this careful answer to his unimportant question about Pandit Baba had been the first of a series of answers, brief spoken meditations, which drove a persistent unwavering line through recurring doubt and uncertainty, until they culminated in that shatteringly casual remark which he believed he would never forget and which had finally convinced him Kumar must be telling the truth: It’s difficult to breathe in that position. It’s all you think about in the end.
Was Pandit Baba the man Bronowsky meant, the venerable gentleman from Mayapore who had been in Mirat? What he had gathered from Kumar of the Pandit’s talent for avoiding trouble and leaving his young followers to carry the can made ‘tortuous process of intimidation’ sound right. But whom had he intimidated?
Bronowsky had turned to Miss Layton. ‘The stone,’ he said, ‘you recall the stone – was certainly thrown at the instigation of this slippery customer. He is one of those on whom we keep a watchful eye. I am told he has recently left Mayapore, but I am not told where he has gone or why. Forgive me, it is an uncheerful subject.’ Again he looked at Rowan and then began to rise. ‘And Miss Layton must eat. We shan’t wait for Ahmed. In any case he’s probably only going to be interested in the champagne.’
Rowan looked at his watch. Young Kasim and his mother were already half-an-hour late. He hoped they
wouldn’t cut it too fine. After half-past midnight the line to Premanagar would be closed to them by the regular service. It would be 2 a.m. before it could be opened again for the Nawab’s private train.
Bronowsky leant over him, lightly touched his arm. ‘We shall be able to leave on the scheduled time. Ahmed will see to it. Come.’
As he followed Miss Layton in to the dining-salon he smelt the delicate scent of cologne and pictured her dabbing her wrists and neck and forehead with it to relieve the tensions and staleness of the journey from Calcutta. She turned round and spoke, saying something complimentary about the fin-de-siècle splendours of the Nawab’s train, but he did not quite catch it. He bent his head inquiringly. He was very close to her. He was disturbed again, but in a way that did not become clear to him until later when they were eating game pie and drinking more champagne and she was telling them about her uncle’s new job in Calcutta, which was to run courses of lectures to attract wartime officers to the post-war civil administration.
She discussed the logic of this. She spoke well and clearly, in control of a line of argument that was undogmatically developed. He suspected that she was not strong on small talk, that in company she found uncongenial she might even appear shy or withdrawn. The champagne helped perhaps, and Bronowsky was a skilful and encouraging listener, capable of charming anyone out of shyness, particularly good-natured and well brought up girls for whom he presumably felt the gallant, undemanding and guarded affection of the aging homosexual.
As she spoke Rowan saw how, indirectly, she was making a point: that the situation of these men who attended her uncle’s courses – those who would succumb to the obvious temptations and those who would take a calculated risk – was in exaggerated form the same situation in which she, every English person of her generation in India, Rowan himself, found themselves. The outlook was shadowy but one could not (she implied) make this an excuse for working at half-pressure, nor for standing back from a job that was there to be done. In the course of her argument she used the word Indianisation, which suggested that the one criticism of her uncle’s efforts she would accept as valid was that they were not officially directed as thoughtfully as they could have been to that end. In a girl of her type such a view was unusual. It was one he shared. It had lain immature and unformed behind his youthful decision to seek a military and not a civil career in India; a decision he had regretted and sought to remedy before the war by undergoing a probationary period in the Political Department, in the hope of transferring to it permanently and applying what talent he had to the problems of the constitutionally backward Princely states. It was in these that he still saw the most satisfactory opportunities, the chance, when he was fit again, to do some useful work.
The oval table was covered in white damask, it glittered with silver. From the centre-piece – a gilded wicker basket of white and scarlet carnations set amid ferns which trembled in the currents of air from the electric fans – came the dry delicate scent of the flowers. Watching her, still thinking yes she is in love, he put his finger on what it was that disturbed him. Had Kumar after all been lying? It didn’t seem possible to place the image of Kumar’s Merrick alongside Miss Layton and then see them in a relationship at all, let alone one of intimacy. She had not contradicted Bronowsky when he said that most people now assumed Merrick had made a mistake but she had not agreed either. She had said nothing. But Calcutta was a long way to go even on a mission of the kind he’d gathered it was – one involving the gratitude – in other words the honour – of the family. Her aunt and uncle could have undertaken it far more easily and just as effectively.
He sat patiently, talking little, awaiting an opportunity to find out more about her. Bronowsky was now telling stories of pre-revolutionary St Petersburg, of his émigré life in Berlin and Paris and Monte Carlo, but omitting (as he was reputed always to omit) the most interesting tale of all, which was perhaps apocryphal; the story of his successful negotiation between the Nawab, then a young man, and the European woman whom the Nawab had followed from India in a towering Oriental passion at being deceived: a negotiation for the return of jewelry the young prince had given her as any ordinary young man might give a girl a diamond engagement ring on the assumption that she would return it if she backed out. What pressure Bronowsky had brought to bear on the woman was a matter for conjecture (Rowan had heard several versions) but when the Prince returned to Mirat without the woman, according to the story, he had the jewelry, and he also had Bronowsky for whose tact and skill he was supposed ever since to have had the deepest admiration; an admiration that was not shared by the Political Department until they could deny no longer that under Bronowsky’s guidance the wild and potentially dissolute young prince had become a model of rectitude and political wisdom.
The return to the salon for coffee brought no change of subject. The old man talked on and presently Rowan noticed that Miss Layton had become anxious about the time, about what was happening on the platform. Obviously she had a connection to make. It was twenty minutes to midnight. The only train he knew of due to leave Ranpur at that hour was the nightly train up to Pankot.
‘I must go, I’m afraid,’ she said, putting down her cup. Bronowsky pleaded for another five minutes but she said, ‘If I stay another five minutes I shall never want to go, and I’ve got my compartment to get unlocked.’
They stood up. Bronowsky kissed her hand, thanked her for her company, asked her to visit Mirat again one day. She said she would like that, then turned to Rowan.
‘Goodbye, Captain Rowan.’
He said, ‘I’ll see you to your compartment.’
But Bronowsky claimed that as his own privilege and there was nothing for it but to stand aside and let her go.
*
Just before midnight while Bronowsky was still absent young Kasim arrived with his mother, who was in purdah. He did not introduce her to Rowan but took her straight to the adjoining carriage where there were sleeping berths. At five past midnight Bronowsky came back. There were consultations with railway officials. Rowan settled in a corner, smoked, read documents, trying to reconcentrate on the matter in hand. The train left on time. He declined to join Bronowsky and young Kasim in the dining-saloon. From behind the closed curtains he heard Bronowsky’s voice. He considered going to bed but the steward had brought him brandy and he sat on, drinking this, and doubting that he would sleep in the few hours it would take to reach Premanagar where he and Ahmed were to leave the train for the rendezvous at the Circuit House with Mohammed Ali Kasim, who was probably sleepless too, keeping watch through the small hours of his last night as a prisoner in the Fort.
Rowan did not envy young Kasim the task he had undertaken, that of breaking the news to his father that Sayed had been captured fighting in the INA and that the release from the Fort was only a partial release, that he was to live now under restriction, in the protection of his kinsman the Nawab. Rowan’s own part in the affair was of minor importance. Officially he was merely representing the Governor, but it was the second time Malcolm had given him a job that fell outside the ordinary limits of the duties of an aide. The first had been the examination in camera of Hari Kumar at the Kandipat jail, little more than three weeks before. It interested him that tonight he should have found himself face to face with two people who knew Merrick.
But how well did they know him? He sipped his brandy, closed his eyes and put his head back. The kind of knowledge he had in mind was the sort one could describe as elusive; to her, perhaps, inaccessible; as obscure as the dark side of the moon. It irked him that he could do nothing to warn her of its existence. Its possible existence. Merrick was protected by shadows of doubt that could never be dispersed, and by the iron system of the raj itself. If there had been a weakness, a fissure through which rumour and conjecture could flow and adversely affect Merrick’s future, it had now been sealed up by the heroic act.
Rowan smiled, but at the irony of it, and – opening his eyes – found Bronowsky sitting opposite him,
smiling too. The carriage, well-carpeted and sprung, ran smoothly and quietly. Bronowsky must have come in at a moment when the train was crossing points.
‘Have I woken you?’ he asked, raising his voice just sufficiently above the muffled rhythmic clatter for Rowan to hear him clearly across the width of the carriage. ‘If so I owe an apology. Your dreams were obviously pleasant ones.’
‘Satisfying recollections. I hadn’t expected such a splendid supper.’
‘Nor such charming company? I met her but the once, in Mirat, when they were staying there for the wedding, and tonight out there on the platform I didn’t recognize her in uniform. Many girls would have been piqued, at the same time thankful not to have to stop and exchange banalities with an elderly foreigner. But Miss Layton made herself known. In Mirat I underestimated her. I marked her down as shy, even as a trifle colourless in the way – forgive me – that only well-bred English girls can be colourless. But I now see what it was. In Mirat she was taking a back-seat because it was her sister’s wedding and the sister is extremely pretty and vivacious. Or was. Now she is expecting a baby, and already a widow. She and Captain Bingham had such a brief time together. He was killed in Imphal in April. I saw the notice and wrote to them but I knew nothing of the dramatic circumstances until tonight.’
Rowan nodded. A pregnancy could explain why Miss Layton rather than her sister had travelled to Calcutta.
‘I’ve not been in Ranpur long enough to know everybody,’ he said. ‘Are they a Ranpur family?’