A Division Of The Spoils (Raj Quartet 4) (83 page)

‘Hardly that.’

She led him by a new way into the inner courtyard and then along one of the paths between the lawns and fountains.

Strolling up and down the colonnaded terrace on their left were four men; one of them in full Congress garb, another in a lounge suit, the other two in long-skirted high-necked coats.

‘States Department?’ Perron murmured.

‘The two on this side are. The others are members of the Nawab’s council. Finance member and food member.’

One of them called out, ‘Good-morning, Miss Layton.’

She called good-morning back.

‘That’s the food member. He’s an expert on agrarian economy. Dmitri pinched him from Calcutta before the war. I wish you could have gone to Biranpur and seen the model farm and village he set up. Perhaps you’ll be able to, if you’re staying for a while and things settle down.’

‘Perhaps you’ll go with me?’

‘I wish I could. I’d like to see it again. But I can’t think when that’ll be. Susan’s decided to go back to Pankot right away and I’ll have to go with her. I don’t know what will happen after that.’

‘What does right away mean?’

‘The day after tomorrow, I think. Ahmed’s looking into the arrangements now.’

She moved ahead of him, through the Hall of Public Audience, to a narrow archway that gave on to the courtyard Ahmed hadn’t shown him, the one overlooked by the private apartments. Going through the archway she suddenly stopped and said, ‘Oh. Wait. Do you mind?’ She went down into the courtyard leaving him alone, in the shadow of the archway.

Seated on the rim of a fountain at the centre of the courtyard was a young Indian girl dressed – how odd – in slacks and blouse. As Sarah approached her Perron saw two
older women, in sarees, getting up from squatting positions on the terrace and making
namaste.
The Indian girl’s back was towards Sarah but the movements of the women alerted her and she looked round, then down again, head bowed. Sarah sat beside her and after a moment put her arm round her.

Perron turned away and considered the Nawab’s eye-view of the main courtyard. From here there was nothing that oppressed him. The courtyard was brilliant with sunshine and colour and splashing water. Then he saw the white peacock – at least,
a
white peacock – strutting across one of the lawns, its breast carved like the prow of a Viking ship, its long trailing tail quills making stern and wake. The quills were in moult. Should it erect them now they would look like the spokes of a moth-eaten fan. But the proud statement of the bird’s slow stalking was only marginally impaired.

He went back to the archway in time to see Sarah and the girl walking slowly arm in arm, climbing up to the terrace. The women followed some distance behind. Then the girl broke away and ran in through a doorway. Sarah returned to the courtyard. The two women hastened after their charge.

He went down and waited.

‘Shiraz?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Shiraz.’ Then she took him up to the private apartments.

*

‘My dear Mr Perron,’ Count Bronowsky said, limping across the darkened, almost completely shuttered, room. ‘How can I sufficiently apologize for not having greeted you before? I don’t mean that Sarah and Nigel haven’t tried their best to cover up for me, but I’m very conscious of my personal failure in the matter of hospitality. Please forgive me.’

A single shaft of light from the louvres of a shutter exposed the half-blind face and the parchment texture of the skin. The offered hand seemed made of nothing but frail bone. There was a faint smell of eau-de-cologne. A stronger shaft of light fell on to a couch near a window. It was to this that Dmitri led him, skeletal hand lightly resting on his shoulder. ‘When I
had your letter from England, I thought – Ah! Mr Perron may be persuaded to lecture at our college on the subject of the European mercenaries and the history of the Mahrattas. But in the event the college is temporarily closed owing to what one calls circumstances beyond one’s control. The students are on strike.’ They sat on the couch. ‘In any case this was just a thing I selfishly thought you might agree to do for us. The important question is what we can do for you. You mentioned the possibility of writing and publishing something on the subject of the transfer of power as it affects states like this. I’ve forgotten the name of the paper.’

‘It’s a new quarterly review called
The New English Forum
. It probably won’t survive more than a few issues. I’m afraid my journalistic credentials are entirely spurious.’

‘I see you have this morning’s
Ranpur Gazette.’

Perron realized he still carried the folded newspaper.

‘I hope you won’t think it very discourteous of me, Mr Perron, if I ask you to hide it away. His Highness hasn’t read this morning’s issue and there’s a long editorial in it which from my point of view has come out a shade prematurely. You’ve read it? What did you think of it?’

‘I thought it quite well-argued.’

‘The editor of the
Ranpur Gazette
, an elderly Englishman incidentally, does have quite an effective style. I suppose Nigel told you what he was hoping to achieve in Gopalakand?’

‘Yes, he gave me a rough outline.’

‘He’s been on the telephone this morning and will be back some time later today with the necessary letter from the Resident. In other words his mission was a success. But I haven’t told Nawab Sahib yet. I don’t intend to do so until after the morning audiences and petitions. He was hoping Conway would encourage him to stand firm on independence, but Nigel has persuaded him not to encourage him. If Nawab Sahib reads that article now it will put his back up. I don’t want him with his back up when I tell him that Conway is washing his hands of Mirat and that he should sign the instrument of accession if he so wishes.’

Perron handed Bronowsky the newspaper and said,
‘Perhaps you’d better dispose of it. Thank you for warning me. I might have referred to it.’

‘It was Miss Layton who warned me you might have been reading it. That is why I came out for a private word. She is a remarkably shrewd and thoughtful young woman. We shall miss her at the palace. Nawab Sahib’s daughter is heartbroken and begs her to come back soon. Miss Layton is the only person who has ever succeeded in bringing poor little Shiraz out of her shell. For years I tried. Nawab Sahib tried. I tried to get Ahmed to try. But the influence of the late Begum, her mother, seemed indestructible. Shiraz threatened to go into full purdah, can you believe it? Now she is riding and swimming and wearing modern clothes and even sometimes talking to men. Even Ahmed is showing an interest in her at last. And it is all Sarah’s doing. She is with Nawab Sahib now, saying goodbye. He too has become very fond of her. It is a piquant situation. She treats him like a father, but I sometimes think he looks at her and vaguely resents that for the past twenty years I have kept him on such a strait and narrow path. As a young prince, you know, when his father ruled, the Political Department was in two minds about recognizing him as the heir. Their files would reveal some scandalous things about him in his wild youth. Perhaps about me too. Thank God these files are all being destroyed before Patel can get his hands on them.’

‘Is Shiraz the Nawab’s heir?’

‘Oh, no. He has two sons, both older. The younger is in the Indian Air Force, not a pilot, they never succeeded in teaching him to fly, poor boy. The elder is Mohsin, but Mohsin and his wife live mostly in Delhi. He is much involved with business affairs and his wife does not like Mirat at all. She hates coming here. But finally this has had one advantage. She insisted on a swimming-pool being built in the grounds for her to bathe in. It has been very useful to Sarah, in educating Shiraz.’

‘The succession is secure, then.’

Bronowsky nodded, but did not otherwise reply. Instead he said, ‘Tomorrow I hope that these States Department people will be on their way back to Delhi with their signed bits of paper and that I shall be able to leave the palace and go back across the road to my own home. Then perhaps you will be my
guest and in any case come to dinner tomorrow evening, if all goes well. I don’t know whether Sarah will be able to come if they are to travel the next day. But I hope Nigel can be there. And Ahmed. Ahmed has promised his father to be in Ranpur for the August fifteen celebrations and I cannot deny him that. Since the Laytons have decided to go back to Pankot he may as well accompany them as far as Ranpur. It is a good opportunity.’

He stood and placed a hand on Perron’s shoulder and indicated a double set of doors.

‘Nawab Sahib is in there with Sarah. I’m afraid you will not find him very communicative. He is shy with strangers. So do not be offended if I intervene quite quickly and take him through to see his petitioners. The morning audiences are a relic of the past. All the real business is done by members of council and their staffs, but the tradition is important. I shall have to go in with him but Sarah will then look after you and take you back to Nigel’s.’

Bronowsky went to an ornate desk, opened a drawer and pushed the
Ranpur Gazette
into it. As he rejoined Perron he said, ‘Did you by any chance call on our old friend Aimee when you were in Bombay?’

‘No, I didn’t. I called on Mr Hapgood though. He sent his regards.’

‘Hapgood? Oh, the bank official. But how well I remember that evening at Aimee’s. What a terrible disaster you averted – what a terrible mistake I made, taking Miss Layton and poor Ronald there! The previous time I visited her everything was beyond criticism. You made an impression on her, did you know? The next time I saw her, I think in Delhi, she was a bit confused about the precise circumstances but she said, “Where is that British sergeant you brought to one of my parties, who gave me a lovely bottle of whisky, and then took it away with him, the crook?” So, you see? Come. Let us go in.’

*

Extract from Perron’s diary, Tuesday August 5.

– to a smaller room, a salon, decorated and furnished in the
Empire style. The Nawab stood at the window indicating something to Sarah (it turned out to be the view of the fishermen on the Izzat Bagh Lake – so-called because an earlier Nawab had declared that the
izzat
, the honour of the ruling house, would be maintained for as long as the lake didn’t dry up). Dmitri left me near the door, said something to the Nawab, a small man in comparison with Dmitri. The Nawab came across. I advanced a step or two and bowed. The offer to shake hands was slightly delayed. One sensed that today he distrusted all Englishmen. His long-skirted coat was amazingly shabby. The cuffs were frayed and the material was very thin around the button-holes. (He is a rich man, generous and not mean. His austerities are wholly personal, Sarah tells me.) The face is narrow, lined, quite a deep brown, curiously anonymous. The kind of face you easily forget. But he has the sort of presence you remember, self-containment, suggesting restraint of packed nervous energy and intensity of feeling – suitable in the descendant of men who were feared, before whom Mirat trembled, years ago.

An exchange of compliments. A bleak pause. Dmitri hovering in the background, a gaunt one-eyed guardian, smiling but alert. Then the Nawab offered some samples from his stock of small-talk. I replied in kind. Suddenly he frowned. Perron? he asked. A descendant of the successor to Benoit de Boigne? His ancestors could have had no love for either of them. Relief, when I disclaimed connection. Then the preliminary to courtly dismissal. I must be sure to inform Count Bronowsky of anything necessary to my comfort and to my researches. A friendly, shy, smile. No handshake in parting. He turns to Dmitri as if wondering whether he has omitted anything. One realized his dependence and his current distraction. Before he went he silently pressed both Sarah’s hands. Then he and Dmitri went out through another set of doors. A glimpse of a much larger chamber with about a dozen people in it, who bowed deeply; one even making full obeisance.

Sarah and I leave in solemn but not too solemn silence. We run the gauntlet of servants making
namaste
(to her, not to me, I think). Then she drove me back to Nigel’s bungalow.
Tippoo was waiting on the verandah. She wouldn’t stay for a drink. I didn’t press her. She seemed preoccupied.

But before I let her go I said, ‘What
did
happen to Ronald?’

She said, ‘Don’t ask me, Guy. Ask Nigel. Or Dmitri. Or better still, nobody.’

After lunch he slept again. But sleep was intermittent. There was another storm, brief but disturbing, and the rain brought out that smell of damp, of decay. He woke between dozes with a persistent sense of ill-being and was thankful when Tippoo brought in his tea at four o’clock. He thought of starting a letter to Aunt Charlotte, but the room was suddenly intolerable. He dressed and went out to the rear compound to get air and sunshine. There was no sound from Merrick’s compound. He inspected the banyan tree. How old would it be? One hundred years at least? So fine a specimen would be especially holy. But its holiness lent no tranquillity to the bungalows in whose compounds it grew.

He found the gate in the compound wall unlocked so went through. Today Merrick’s garden looked less well-tended. Overnight the grass seemed to have grown an inch. All the green tattis between the white columns had been rolled up, exposing windows obviously locked and shuttered. One could visualize indoors the shrouded shapes of furniture draped in dust-covers, signs that the occupants had gone and that no one knew when they might be back.

He went towards the house intending to go up on to the verandah but then decided he shouldn’t intrude on so much absence, so much impending absence, so much darkness, so much loss. He took the path that skirted the side of the bungalow and came out into the front and stood still, hackles rising.

A van was drawn up. Down the steps from the front verandah two men were carrying a black coffin. The coffin was tilted downwards, resting on their shoulders. When they reached ground level they jog-trotted to the van, then shoved the coffin into the back.

Not a coffin. Merrick’s trunk. Another man was bringing down the long sagging sausage of the rolled hall carpet. This went into the truck too. Then the rear flap was put up and fixed. Two of the men got in the back, the other went to the front. Khansamar came down the steps carrying an object that glinted. A picture in a frame. The boy’s picture of the old Queen. He handed it to the driver and then went back indoors.