The Glass Palace (28 page)

‘Why?' She was suddenly alert. ‘What are you talking about?' He picked the letter off his desk and tapped it with his gold-rimmed glasses. ‘This is from the Chief Secretary, in Bombay. It came today. A reprimand, as it were. The Princess's pregnancy has awoken our teachers suddenly to the enormity of what they have done to this family. All the letters that I and my predecessors wrote had no effect whatever. But the smell of miscegenation has alarmed them as nothing else could have: they are tolerant in many things, but not this. They like to keep their races tidily separate. The prospect of dealing with a half-caste bastard has set them rampaging among their
desks. I am to be the scapegoat for twenty years of neglect. My tenure here is terminated and I am to return to Bombay.'

He brought his fingertips together and smiled across the desk in his thinly ironic way.

‘As I said, you've chosen a good time to leave.'

In the Ratnagiri boathouse there was one craft that was rarely used. This was the double-oared racing scull that had once belonged to Mr Gibb, the rowing legend.

It was the Collector's practice to go down to the Ratnagiri boat-house a couple of times each week. He had done a little rowing at Cambridge and would have done more if he had not been so busy studying for the Civil Service examinations. He enjoyed the focused concentration of the sport, the sense of moving ahead at a regulated pace, quick but unhurried. Besides, he had an almost religious belief in the importance of exercise.

Today, as he was walking into the boathouse, the Collector's eyes fell on Mr Gibb's racing shell. The elderly
chowkidar
who looked after the boathouse talked often of Mr Gibb. He was a rowing blue, Mr Gibb, and a skilled sailor besides. In the history of the Ratnagiri Club he was the only person who was known to have taken the slim, fragile craft out into the open sea and come back to tell the tale.

On his departure Mr Gibb had donated his shell to the boathouse. Since that time the boat had turned into a monument of sorts, a reliquary of Mr Gibb. It lay at one end of the shed and was never used. The Collector said to the chowkidar: ‘How about this one?'

‘That was Mr Gibb's boat,' came the answer. ‘It was in that boat that Gibb-sahib used to row out to sea.'

‘Is it usable?'

‘Yes, sahib. Of course.' The chowkidar was proud of his job and worked hard to keep his boats in good repair.

‘Well then, perhaps I'll take it out today.'

‘You, sahib?' The chowkidar gasped. ‘But Mr Gibb was very experienced—'

The Collector bridled at his tone. ‘I think I can manage it,' he said coldly.

‘But, sahib—'

‘Please do as you're told.'

The boat was carried out to the water and the Collector climbed in and picked up the oars. He rowed once across the bay and turned round. He felt oddly exhilarated. The gap between the two arms of the bay began to beckon.

For several weeks now, he'd been thinking of trying the sea channel. He'd watched the local fishermen when they were slipping out of the bay, marking in his mind the precise point of their exit, the route through which they led their crafts into the open sea.

One day, he'd told himself, one day . . . He would start with a short, experimental foray, to test the waters, as it were. One day. But there were no more days now. Next week he would be in Bombay, in a windowless office, dealing with municipal taxation. He scarcely noticed that his craft had veered from its trajectory; that its nose had turned westwards, pointing towards the opening of the bay. It was as though the shell had been reclaimed by the spirit of some other, departed official, as though it were steering itself.

He felt strangely reassured, at peace. It was best to leave these things to men like Mr Gibb: you would always be safe with them, looked after, provided for.

There was no reason to hurry back to the Residency. No one was waiting for him there. The sea seemed warm and inviting and the scull seemed to know its own way.

High above the bay, in Outram House, the King was on his way to the balcony, with his father's gilded glasses clasped in one hand. He had lain awake much of the night and was up even earlier than usual. Dolly's departure had created an unquietness in the house. He was sensitive to these things; they upset him. It wasn't easy to cope with change at his age. He'd found it hard to sleep.

He lifted the glasses to his eyes. The light was not good. The fishermen of Karla village were not out of the estuary yet. Then he spotted the thin, long shape of a racing shell arrowing across the dark water. The oarsman was rowing in a strong, steady rhythm, almost touching his knees with his forehead before straightening out again.

He was taken aback. It was a long time since he had last seen the shell steering for the open sea—not since Mr Gibb, and that was a long time ago, more than ten years now. And even Mr Gibb had never ventured out on the sea during the monsoons: he wouldn't have thought of it, he knew about the cross-currents that swept the shore during the rains.

He watched in surprise as the streamlined craft shot forward in the direction of the foaming white line that separated the calm waters of the bay from the pounding monsoon sea. Suddenly the boat buckled and its nose shot out of the water. The oarsman flung up an arm, and then the undertow took hold of him and sucked him down, beneath the surface. The King started to his feet, in shock. Gripping the balcony's rails, he leant over the balustrade. He began to shout: ‘Sawant! Sawant!'

It was early in the morning and his voice had grown prematurely feeble. Sawant was asleep in the gatehouse, on his string bed, with one arm thrown protectively over the First Princess.

‘Sawant, Sawant!'

It was the Queen who heard his shouts. She too had been up all night—thinking of Dolly, remembering how she'd come to her as a child, of how she'd been the only person in the palace who could quiet the Second Princess; of how she had stayed on when the others left.

‘Sawant.'

She climbed slowly out of bed and went over to see what the King wanted.

The King pointed to a few bits of wreckage, drifting in the distance, at the mouth of the bay. ‘The Collector!'

She took a long look with his gilded binoculars.

‘Is he dead?'

‘I think so.'

If it were not for that man Dolly would still be at Outram House: Dolly, whom she'd adopted and brought up and loved like her own child. But Dolly was gone now, and it was right that he should pay. She leant over the balustrade and spat into the garden, in commemoration of her gaoler's death.

part three

The Money Tree

 

fifteen

R
angoon's Barr Street Passenger Jetty was something of a curiosity. It was built to resemble a floating pavilion, with fine woodwork and a peaked roof, like that of an Alpine cottage. Saya John held on to one of its carved posts as he leant over the jetty's side, scanning the river for the
Nuwara Eliya
, the steamer in which Rajkumar was returning to Rangoon with Dolly. When at last he spotted the ship, it was still a long way off, just approaching the mouth of the Pazundaung Creek, fighting the powerful currents that tore at the river's mud-brown surface.

It had been decided that Rajkumar and Dolly would stay initially with Saya John, at his spacious second-floor flat on Blackburn Lane—such accommodation as there was at Rajkumar's Kemendine compound was too rudimentary for the two of them to inhabit together. Saya John had sent a telegram to Rajkumar to let him know that he and Dolly were welcome to stay at Blackburn Lane until such time as they were able to build a habitable home.

The Pazundaung Creek was the wide inlet that marked the southern boundary of the city. Many of Rangoon's sawmills and rice mills were concentrated along the shores of this waterway—among them also the timberyard that was Rajkumar's principal place of business. When the steamer drew abreast of the creek, Rajkumar, watching from the
Nuwara
Eliya
's bows, caught a brief glimpse of the raised teakwood cabin that served as his office. Then the whole Rangoon waterfront opened up in front of him: the Botataung Pagoda, the stately buildings of the Strand, the golden finial of the Shwe Dagon in the distance.

Rajkumar turned impatiently away and headed for his cabin. Since early that morning he had been trying to persuade Dolly to step outside: he was eager to show her this vista of Rangoon from the river; eager also to see whether she remembered any of it from her journey out, twenty-five years before. But over the last three days, as their ship approached Burma, Dolly had grown increasingly withdrawn. That morning she had refused to step out on deck; she'd said that she was seasick; that she would come out later, when she felt better; for the time being she wanted only to rest and collect herself.

But now there was no time at all. They would be at the jetty in a matter of minutes. Rajkumar burst into the cabin, his voice loudly exuberant: ‘Dolly—we're home. Come on— outside . . .' When she didn't answer he broke off. She was sitting on the bed, curled up, with her forehead resting on her knees, dressed in the red, silk htamein that she'd changed into for the occasion.

‘What's the matter Dolly?' He touched her shoulder to find that she was shivering. ‘What's happened?'

‘Nothing.' She shrugged his hand off. ‘I'm all right. I'll come later; just let me sit here until everyone else is off the ship.'

He knew better than to make light of her apprehensions. ‘All right,' he said. ‘I'll come back for you in twenty minutes.'

‘Yes. I'll be ready then.'

Dolly stayed as she was, with her head resting on her knees, trying to calm herself. She felt a jolt as the steamer docked and then she heard the voices of coolies and porters ringing through the gangways. Rippling patterns of opalescent light were dancing on the ceiling, shining in through a porthole, off the river's silt-dark surface. In a while, the cabin door squeaked open, and she heard Rajkumar's voice: ‘Dolly . . .'

She looked up to see Rajkumar ushering someone into the cabin: a small, portly, owlish man, dressed in a grey suit and a felt hat. The visitor doffed his hat and smiled, so broadly that his eyes almost disappeared into the creases of his deeply lined face. This had to be Saya John, she knew, and the knowledge of this made her more apprehensive than ever. This was the meeting she had most dreaded: Rajkumar had talked of his mentor at such length that Saya John had become the equivalent of a father-in-law in her mind, to be either feared and propitiated, or else to be resisted and fought with—she had no idea how things would turn out between the two of them. Now, faced with him in person, she found herself folding her hands together, in the Indian way, unconsciously, through the force of long habit.

He laughed and came quickly across the cabin. Addressing her in Burmese, he said, ‘Look, I have something for you.' She noticed that his accent was thickly foreign.

He reached into his pocket and took out a filigreed gold bracelet, wrapped in tissue paper. Taking hold of her wrist, he slipped the bracelet over her knuckles. ‘It belonged to my wife,' he said. ‘I put it aside for you.'