A Division Of The Spoils (Raj Quartet 4) (73 page)

The queues were orderly and well drilled – you felt that the commissionaire had disciplined them to be so and that he knew, they knew, he would stand no nonsense. One of these queues stretched right round the side-street and along the main frontage. This was the one headed by Mr Nehru and Mr Gandhi and was by far the longest. But exactly mid-way along the main frontage this queue was interrupted to allow passageway from the road into the building, and it was this visual break that confirmed (or originated) the impression that the building was not really an architectural whole.

Sandwiched between what could now be seen as two interrupted halves was an older building, obviously still in the ownership of a small shopkeeper who had been surrounded, propped up, pressed up against and down upon, by the giant concern, but never wholly absorbed. A great deal of ingenuity had been shown in creating the illusion that the smaller shop was part of the bigger one, that the older structure was a mere decorative flourish that did nothing to diminish the architectural integrity of the whole edifice. The older building announced itself as ‘The Princes’ Emporium’ and was labelled, ‘Imperial Stores (Paramountcy, 1857) Ltd.’ The sticker across its one narrow window said, ‘Business as Usual’ and its narrow little Moghul door was guarded by a commissionaire whom the editor told Perron was recognizable as the head of the British Political Department.

Free access to this door from the road was secured by ropes that separated the orderly Congress queue, and Halki had depicted a very old-fashioned Rolls Royce drawn up at the pavement. Emerging from this limousine were a Maharajah and the first two or three of what looked like a car-f of wives arriving on a shopping expedition. Standing in the road just behind the car was a policeman – looking exactly like Patel, the chief enemy in the Congress camp of the Indian princely states. He was noting down the car’s registration number in a book labelled ‘Traffic Offences (Obstructions)’.

The fun did not end there. Facing the main frontage on the other side of the road there was work in progress on a giant multistoreyed building, only the ground-floor of which was completed and occupied. A placard announced:
Anglo-American Atomic and Commercial Enterprises Inc and Ltd (Successors to Box-Wallah and Co).
Through the ground-floor windows you could see men at work in the offices. An American executive sat with his feet on a desk, smoking a cigar and using three telephones. A British executive sat with his feet under the desk, smoking a pipe and talking into only one. Queueing to enter the building was a hybrid collection of Indian businessmen consulting attendant lawyers who were in turn consulting draft contracts. Already in the building too, were figures representing the great Indian industrialists (Tata and Birla). A separate side-street entrance gave access to a queue of Muslim (Pakistan) businessmen, most of whom seemed destined to end up at the desk of the American executive.

And still the fun did not end. In distant perspective, on a continuation of the main frontage of Imperial Stores, was a Labour Exchange, and here there were four queues of Englishmen and Englishwomen whose children were being comforted by faithful bearers and ayahs: a queue each for
ICS, IMS,
army and police. The queuers were going into and coming out of doors marked ‘Pension’ and Compensation’. Some of those who had collected their dues were walking across the road, holding moneybags, to join the queue waiting to enter the offices of Anglo-American Enterprises Inc and Ltd. Some, obviously elderly, were trekking in another direction, to the office of a travel agent whose windows were bannered: Cheap One Way Retirement Tickets. Bilaiti and All Best Hill Stations.

There was no caption. A caption would have been excessive.

‘Tomorrow I have a party,’ the editor said. ‘Come and see the original. At my house.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t. I’m leaving Bombay tomorrow morning,’ Perron said.

‘Then take this copy. I have never yet had in my office an Englishman all the way from London who comes to see me
entirely to discuss Halki. He will be very flattered. No, no, that is wrong. I have never yet succeeded myself even in flattering him.’

‘Thank you,’ Perron said. He felt rather moved. It was the special gift Indians had, to move you unexpectedly; unexpectedly because you felt that historically you did not deserve any consideration or any kindness.

*

Leaving the newspaper office he walked for a while along the crowded Bombay pavement, then saw and hailed a taxi. He told the man to go in the direction of the Gateway and the Taj. When the taxi reached the spot where he had drawn up his jeep just two years ago he told the driver to stop but wait for him. He walked the few yards to the wall of the esplanade, with its view on to the Arabian Sea; and its smell. Disgusting. Peaceful. I shall never go back home, one Perron cried. The other said: Take me back, for God’s sake. When he returned to the taxi he threw annas at the little crowd of children and told the driver to go to Queen’s Road.

*

He paid the wallah off, tipping excessively as though this munificence had become obligatory since Mountbatten had removed the last doubt that the British intended to go and so made them the only people left in India who were universally popular. He studied the blocks of flats. He couldn’t be certain which block he wanted, but then – believing he recognized the forecourt – he entered it, imagining Purvis ahead of him barging into the servant and the girl. He climbed the few steps to the dark entrance and went along an unfamiliar passage to the lift-shaft. This convincingly announced itself as out of order and on either side the name plates stirred other recollections. Desai? Tractorwallah? He climbed the steps to the first floor and stood, perplexed, facing the door whose name-plate should be Grace but wasn’t. He went to the door opposite. Major Rajendra Singh,
IMS.
That, surely, was right? He climbed the next flight and arrived at the flat above Rajendra Singh’s.

Hapgood. Mr Hapgood, the banker, Mrs Hapgood, the
banker’s wife and Miss Hapgood, the banker’s daughter. One of the few remaining happy families in Bombay? He pressed the bell. Would the servant be the same servant? Would they recognize one another? The door opened. He did not recognize the servant. The boy was (God help us all, Perron thought) Japanese.

‘Is Mr Hapgood in?’ he asked. He handed in his card. The boy studied it carefully, ridging eyebrows as beautifully shaped as Aneila’s. Not quite Japanese; a mixed-blood oriental from Sumatra? Singapore? Jakarta? A handsome, poisonous-looking young man who sported a gold wrist-watch. One could smell the starch on his arrogantly spotless white steward’s jacket and trousers. He wore black shoes with pointed toes. ‘I will see if Master is in.’

Perron thought: Master, now, is it? The British will always be safe.

The boy let him in, then shut the door and went in the direction of the living-room. Perron glanced down the corridor towards Purvis’s old room. The door was shut; so was the door of the adjoining room. And the flat looked as if it had not been redecorated since then.

‘Master says come.’

Perron followed the boy through the dining-room area and into the living-room which had once struck him as elegant, which now looked just a little disorganized. A quick glance at the wall behind the long settee confirmed the continuing existence of the Guler-Basohli paintings. A man stood on the balcony, as Purvis had done, holding a glass, looking out at the Oval. It was a clear evening, the sun not yet down. The man was tall and thin. For some reason Perron had always imagined Hapgood as short, rotund and red-faced; like the tea-planter at the Maharanee’s. Hearing footsteps, Hapgood turned round.

‘Mr Perron?’

‘Yes. Mr Hapgood?’

‘What can I do for you?’

‘I’m sorry to bother you. I called downstairs on the off-chance of seeing Colonel and Mrs Grace. I see they’ve gone, but I thought I’d take the opportunity to come up, because I feel I owe you an apology.’

‘Oh?’ Hapgood was a man with formidable eyebrows. His face was yellow and very creased. His jaw and chin suggested firmness of opinion. ‘Have we met?’ he asked.

‘No. You and your family were away, in Ootacamund I think. But there was an officer called Leonard Purvis billeted here – a couple of years ago. I was here the day things rather got on top of him. I wasn’t here when he smashed things up, but I saw the results, and I’ve always felt it was partly my fault that two of your Kangra paintings were damaged.’

Hapgood’s eyebrows twitched. He glanced at the wall.

‘Oh?’ Then, ‘Actually they’re Guler-Basohli school. But Kangra covers it.’

The servant had come in with a glass on a tray. He put this down on the drinks table.

‘Scotch? Gin?’ Hapgood asked.

‘Gin, thank you.’

‘Master will have gin,’ Hapgood told the boy without looking at him. ‘Why do you feel it was partly your fault?’

‘Purvis had no idea what they were, until I admired them and told him how valuable they were. So it was probably my fault that he singled them out when he was throwing bottles.’

‘Oh,’ Hapgood said. ‘Was that why? We often wondered. He never seemed to notice them.’ He strolled across the room towards the paintings. ‘But as you see, the damage has been fairly well disguised. They are exquisite, aren’t they? My wife was pretty upset at the time. But as I told her, it needs more than a bottle of rum to destroy a work of art.’

Perron had forgotten it was rum. Hapgood hadn’t. He turned to Perron suddenly. ‘Did you know the man my old bearer told me about? The man who had to climb the balcony and pull Purvis out of the bath?’

Perron admitted that he was the man.

Hapgood said, ‘Good heavens.’ Then, ‘My dear chap. How nice of you to call – to have remembered the paintings. My wife will be sorry to have missed you. She was awfully touched that you bothered to leave the servant a chit about the bathroom door.’

Perron recalled that the servant had asked for a chit. He didn’t actually remember writing one. Obviously he had
done, probably while sitting in this room afterwards, drinking Old Sporran.

‘Perron,’ Hapgood was saying. ‘Perron. Yes, I remember now. But . . .’

‘
Sergeant
Perron,’ Perron said, to clear up any doubts. ‘Field Security, Poona.’

‘Field Security? I see. Somehow we’d always imagined the Sergeant Perron who pulled Purvis out of the bath was something to do with his so-called economic advisory staff.’ Hapgood led the way back to the balcony. ‘Field Security, Poona. Did you know a fellow who’s now in pharmaceuticals here? What’s his name –’

‘Bob Chalmers?’

‘That’s it. Chalmers. His firm banks with us. I don’t know him well. I remember he said he was Field Security in Poona and liked it so much he stayed on.’

‘Chalmers was my officer. Actually I’m staying in his flat here in Bombay. We kept up, after the war.’

‘Well bless my soul. Have you come out to join his firm?’

‘No, I’m only on a visit. Quite a short one. And I’ve not seen Bob yet and probably won’t now. He had to go to Calcutta just before I arrived, but left everything laid on so that I could stay at his place.’

‘Yes, I see. And you knew the Graces?’

‘No, I knew their niece, and their niece’s father.’

‘I’m afraid Mrs Grace has left. Poor old Arthur Grace died last year. Very suddenly. My wife and I were quite upset. He’d had dinner with us only the night before. Mrs Grace had gone up country to see her sister. The niece was getting married. Yes, I remember now. She was here to meet her father, wasn’t she, when we were in Ooty?’

‘The elder niece was here. There was a younger one.’

‘I don’t remember that. Anyway, one of them got married. Which was why Fenny Grace was away and poor old Arthur was on his own for a couple of weeks. We used to have him up. I thought he was perfectly all right but my wife said she wasn’t happy about him. She said he looked as if he didn’t know what anything was about any longer. Curious phrase. But women have these intuitions. He had a heart attack. Went, just like that.’

Hapgood snapped his fingers, but to call the servant’s attention to his empty glass. Perron’s was still half-f.

‘This was last year?’

‘Last year, yes. Middle of February. When the Indian ratings here mutinied. Things were a bit of a mess, but Fenny came back the moment we wired. Actually we thought it a bit thick that no one from her family came with her to help her get through it. But you’re right. There must have been two nieces. I remember her saying her niece wanted to come with her. She couldn’t have meant the niece who’d just got married. Must have been the other.’

‘Sarah, I should think. The one who got married must have been Susan.’

‘It rings a bell.’

‘Susan must have married a man called Merrick.’

‘I think that was it. Chap with something wrong with him?’

‘He lost an arm in the war.’

‘That’s it. Yes. Fenny left us some snaps she took at the wedding. She had them printed here once she’d dealt with the funeral. Pity my wife’s away. She’d have details like this much clearer in her mind. If you’re anxious for news of the family I’m sure I could turn up the sister’s address. Pankot, wasn’t it? Fenny must have given it to my wife, and my wife’s very efficient keeping her address book written up.’

‘I have the Pankot address. It’s just that I’ve not heard since the end of ’forty-five. My fault really. One somehow lets things slide.’

‘True. True. One lets things slide. The last we saw of Fenny was when she left for Delhi after the funeral. She was going to fly home to another sister in London. I expect the London address is in my wife’s book too, but I don’t think they wrote to one another because Fenny said it would only be a short trip and that she’d be back again. Then our daughter married an awfully nice Canadian Air Force chap we met in Ooty. We were in Montreal last year for the wedding. Pretty killing expense. But once in a lifetime. Now my wife’s back in Montreal waiting to become a grandmother. I’m expecting a telegram almost any day.’

Perron lifted his glass. ‘Good luck.’

‘Thank you.’ After drinking Hapgood said, ‘Are you committed this evening?’