A Division Of The Spoils (Raj Quartet 4) (14 page)

When Purvis had been half-drowned for the second time that evening and Perron had dried himself on the green towel (put out on the rail by Miss Layton’s own charming hands?) he returned to the bedroom and put on a clean set of cellular cotton under-shorts and clean socks – the second of two changes carefully packed that morning. Soldiers, he thought, acquired old-maidish habits – especially in the tropics. He got into the green trousers and bush-shirt, unrolled the sleeves and buttoned them at the wrists. Then he sat on the bed and put his boots on, folded the trouser-bottoms and secured them with the webbing anklets. All that remained in the pack now was his shaving kit, small towel, clean handkerchief, webbing belt, holster, pistol and lanyard. If Purvis had known about the pistol would he have gone to the trouble of getting it out of the pack? He put these things on the bed and went round the room and bathroom collecting the stuff he had discarded and cramming it into the pack, so that the damp clothes were at the bottom. This done he replaced the stuff from the bed and secured the pack straps. He checked his breast pocket for the piece of paper on which before leaving for the Maharanee’s he had got Purvis to write down the address of the place where they had left his jeep, and which he’d fortunately not put in the pocket of the khaki uniform. It might have been illegible now, from bath water. He looked at it, rememorized it.

Finished, he glanced round the room until his attention was again taken by the brand-new khaki bush-shirt that belonged to Sarah Layton’s father. It was, Perron supposed, one of the
first things Colonel Layton would do on his return from prison-camp in Europe: get himself fitted out afresh, no doubt from necessity but also to look trim for the arrival in Pankot with the regiment. How would they march in? With bags of swank to make up for the silence in the hills?

But there was nothing particularly swanky about the bush-shirt. It hung on the chair back without distinction, like a jacket on a coat-hanger too narrow for it. There were eyelets sewn on the left breast which showed where two broad bars of medal ribbons would be pinned, but these were not there, nor on the table, and their absence struck Perron as eloquent, as a clue to some special attribute the jacket had which he hadn’t identified.

He identified it now. The jacket was new but the slip-on shoulder tabs, although pressed and starched, were old, much laundered. The cream and brown cottons of the embroidered pip and crown, and the black cotton of the regimental name, were faded.

The attribute was twofold, a combination of economical habit and modest impulse. The way the bush-shirt hung on the chair back, shoulders drooped, ostensibly in possession of chair, room, suggested a claim to occupation, but – Perron thought – a claim made in awareness of the insecurity of any tenure. He tried to give the jacket a perkier look by twitching the shoulders back up. They slipped off again. This was because the chair was too narrow, not because Layton was a man of impressive build. Perhaps he had been, before years in prison camp wore him down.

The bush-shirt began to depress him; it was threatening to undermine his confidence in much the same way that the whole experience of being in India had so often seemed on the point of undermining it. Staring at the bush-shirt, on a perch it clung to which did not properly support it, he was struck by its mute indication of the grand irrelevance of history to the things that people wanted for themselves. As in Beamish’s office, earlier, he again tuned in the inner ear, the one that could catch the whisper of the perpetually moving stream; but now caught nothing. It began to ache from the pressure of a marble silence so smooth and dense that the plop of a drop of water – the built-in residue in the nozzle of the bathroom
shower hitting the porcelain – came as a relief, an excuse to tune back in to the world in which the most significant sound was that made by a hall full of men, ignorant of and indifferent to their history, and giving it the bird.

He got out his notebook and recorded Purvis’s remark: ‘Six years waste of the world’s natural resources and human skills. I don’t think I shall ever be able to forgive it.’ That was at once a moral judgment and a revelation of thwarted ambition.

‘Sahib?’

Perron looked up. The servant Nazimuddin stood in the doorway holding the curtain aside. He indicated a direction – that of the dining-room. Perron nodded – a little surprised to be invited to eat there. He let Nazimuddin go, put his notebook away, waited for a moment or two and then followed, carrying his pack, fighting an urge to open the front door when he got to it and leave without another word.

As though to forestall him Merrick was stationed near it. Through the dining-area, beyond the archway, Perron could see Miss Layton, in profile, seated, talking to someone in the living-room who was hidden from view.

‘Leave your pack here, Sergeant.’

Perron put it down near the door. When he had straightened up Merrick continued. ‘I told the servant to hurry you up because Miss Layton’s father has come back unexpectedly. He’s had dinner out and wants an early night but I’ve been telling him about you and he’ll have a few words, so come along.’

Hearing them coming, she broke off what she was saying. Her father sat at one end of a large cretonne-covered sofa. Perron stopped and, briefly, held himself in an attitude akin to parade-ground attention.

‘Father, this is Sergeant Perron. My father, Colonel Layton.’

‘Good-evening, sir,’ Perron said. He stayed where he was. The colonel got up but they were too far from each other to shake hands. He was tall, very thin, slightly stooped. He wore a replica of the bush-shirt in the bedroom. At the head of the row of medal ribbons was the
MC.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Hear you’ve been in the wars a bit tonight.’ His voice was mild and pleasant. His upper lip was covered by the regulation bristly, cropped, moustache. His head was
balding, his complexion pale; a washed-out, rather worn sort of face, but with the same bony structure as his daughter’s and so perhaps once more resolute and attractive than it now appeared.

‘The evening has been on the hectic side, sir.’

‘Mine was too. Thought I’d give the rest of it a miss. Perron. Perron, is it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Perron. Well, let’s sit down again shall we, unless I’m holding the kitchen up.’

‘It’s only a question of heating the soup, the rest’s cold so there’s no hurry.’

‘Splendid.’ He turned to look behind him, as if the act of getting up had disoriented him, left him uncertain about the location or even the continuing existence of the sofa; then, remembering the other two, he indicated vacant places and waited until Merrick and Perron had chosen seats and settled in. There were two floral cretonne-covered sofas at right angles to each other, a small tapestry-covered wing chair in which Miss Layton was sitting, and a larger matching chair which Merrick took. Perron sat on the second sofa; in this way he faced the company. The furniture was arranged round an Indian carpet. There were Benares brass coffee-tables in front of each sofa. The room was not elegant like the banking Hapgoods’ living-room, but comfortable, attractive in a homely English way. On the wall behind Colonel Layton hung a couple of faded portraits – conversation-pieces in the Zoffany style – with eighteenth century ladies and gentlemen under trees, with attendant servants: in one case transfixed in expository attitudes and in the other restraining cheetahs on leashes.

‘There are cigarettes in the box, Mr Perron,’ Miss Layton said. ‘And the lighter works. So do help yourself whenever you want.’

‘Perron,’ Colonel Layton repeated, as if trying to place the name.

Before Perron could speak Merrick said, ‘There was a man called Pierre-Cuiller who was known as Perron. He became Governor of what was called Hindustan and commanded the
armies under Daulat Rao Sindia. Originally he was a sergeant.’

‘In the French Army?’ Layton asked. The question was open to both of them but Merrick took it up. ‘I can’t recall the early origins exactly. But I seem to remember he began life as a pedlar as a result of his family losing all its money. It must be in Compton, but it’s some time since I read him. Perron was certainly in the French navy and I think he was in the French Army before that. He came out on a French ship but I can’t remember whether it was on the Coromandel or Malabar coast he deserted. Anyway he disappeared up country to seek his fortune with the mercenary Europeans who helped the Indian princes run their armies. What I do remember is that he was among the remnants of Lestineau’s brigade when they were taken over by another mercenary, de Boigne, Mahdaji Sindia’s chap. Perron was still a sergeant then but rose pretty rapidly and when de Boigne retired after Mahdaji’s death and Daulat Rao’s succession Perron took over. But of course the two Wellesleys were in control of British interests by then and the French were practically finished. The Mahratta power was fading out and Perron never acquired a reputation as high as de Boigne’s. Would you agree, sergeant?’

After a moment Perron smiled, to convey his appreciation of the point Merrick had made: that he was to be reckoned with.

‘Yes, I’d agree, sir. But compared with de Boigne Perron was second-rate. Of course he was handicapped –’

Perron stopped – silenced by the impact of one of those unexpected shock-waves, scarcely more than a ripple, of delayed response to a forgotten factor. He had meant that Perron was handicapped by political and military circumstances more complex and threatening than de Boigne had ever had to contend with, but in the split-second before he used the word handicapped he recalled another impediment, one that he was always forgetting because it had seemed to play so insignificant a part in Perron’s career. He looked at Merrick’s left hand. The gloved artifact was at rest, just off the chairarm.

Merrick said, ‘I suppose you could call it a handicap but I
don’t remember it ever being said to worry him. Which hand was it by the way?’

Monsieur Perron had lost a hand while throwing a grenade that exploded prematurely. Perron said, ‘The right, I imagine, unless he was left-handed or being particularly hard-pressed.’

Merrick said, ‘I don’t think it was important.’ He turned to Colonel Layton. ‘The real answer is that he didn’t have de Boigne’s luck and of course it’s difficult stepping into the shoes of an outstandingly successful man. It’s an interesting coincidence to come across a modern Sergeant Perron, especially one who’s making a study of British-Indian history.’

‘Are you connected?’ Layton asked amiably. ‘I mean descended?’ Perron said he was not.

‘But the mercenaries are what you’d call your subject?’

‘No, sir.’

‘What is?’

‘At the moment, sir, Field Security in the Bombay Presidency.’

Layton waited a few seconds then put his head back against the sofa. ‘Ha!’ And then added, ‘Jolly good answer.’ He crossed his legs, glanced at Merrick, then returned his attention to Perron. ‘All the same, war over and all that, what’ll be your subject then?’

‘Eighteen-Thirty to the Mutiny, I think, sir.’

Layton narrowed his eyes. ‘Good period. Bad too, I suppose. That your point?’

‘I haven’t got a point yet, sir. Choosing a period’s rather like sticking a pin in a map of likely runners. Eighteen-thirty or eighteen-thirty-three to eighteen-fifty-eight is simply the period between the East India Company’s loss of its trading charter and its metamorphosis into the Indian Civil Service. So it represents about thirty years’ dress rehearsal for full imperial rule. Some of the clues to what eventually went wrong are probably there. That’s an over-simplification but it’s the neatest way I can put it.’

Colonel Layton was still observing him through those narrowed eyes, apparently paying close attention, but his next remark showed that his attention was on Perron himself and not on what he was saying.

‘Perron. I’ve remembered now. There was a Perron at the school I was at. Younger than me, but a big boy. Remarkably fine athlete. Before the First World War. Place called Chillingborough.’

‘That would have been my father, sir.’

‘Would it now?’ Did Layton’s eyes stray to the stripes on his sleeve? Had the reference to Chillingborough been carefully prepared? Or had Merrick said nothing to Layton? On the whole Perron preferred to give him the benefit of the doubt.

‘So you’re Perron’s son, then. Don’t suppose I’ve thought of him since I left. Is he still going strong?’

‘He was killed in 1918, sir.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

‘Ironically enough, on November the tenth.’

‘What awful luck. And your mother?’

‘She died in 1919, of Spanish ’flu.’

‘You poor fellow. Still, you’d be too young to know anything about it, I imagine.’

‘Yes, sir. Actually I had a very pleasant childhood. I was brought up by some rather eccentric aunts and uncles.’

‘Eccentric enough to send you to Chillingborough too?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Which house?’

‘Bank’s.’

‘The same as your father.’

‘No, sir. He was Coote’s.’

‘Ah. Yes. So he was.’

Layton turned his body rather awkwardly and put his left hand into the nearest of the two large side-pockets of his bush-jacket. Coote’s was a nickname. Perron had used it quite unconsciously but it was the sort of thing only someone familiar with Chillingborough lore would be likely to know.

‘Did you know someone called Clark?’ Miss Layton asked.

‘I knew two. One with an e and the other without.’

She sat back and folded her arms, cupping the elbows. She said, ‘I’ve always thought of him as Clark without an e. But now you mention it I’m not sure. My aunt and uncle would know. I only met him once. His first name was James.’

‘They were both James. So we called them Clarke-With and
Clark-Without. Clark-Without otherwise lacked very little. I thought of him as someone who would go far in life.’

‘Then the one I knew must have been Clark-Without. I met him on the sixth of June last year.’ She had turned to speak to her father. ‘I know it was the sixth of June because that’s the day I visited Ronald in hospital in Calcutta and the day we heard about the second front.’ She looked back at Perron. ‘He was flying to Ceylon the next day to take up some glamorous-sounding job at South-East Asia Command Headquarters. I’ve not heard of him again, though.’