A Division Of The Spoils (Raj Quartet 4) (25 page)

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?’

‘Yes, but they’ve been in Pankot since the father went abroad on active service. He commanded the 1st Pankots in North Africa. He’s a prisoner of the Germans. Then there was
her grandfather, who was a distinguished civilian, Finance Member of Council here in Ranpur during the previous war. And her maternal grandfather, General Muir, was General Officer commanding, also in Ranpur, early in the Twenties.’

Rowan nodded.

‘And you, Captain Rowan? I see you were in Burma, presumably during the retreat. But nevertheless effectively. Or do you affect the traditional indifference to the Military Cross and pretend that it came with the rations?’

‘It sometimes seems the only satisfactory explanation.’

‘Were you wounded?’

‘Only exhausted. It was a long march.’

‘You have been ill?’

‘I think, rather, debilitated.’

‘The malignant and endemic fevers that used to cut life short but have learnt subtler methods of invasion. Quite. Our court physician, who doubles that far from onerous rôle with the slightly more exacting one of Minister of Health in our little Council of State and runs a hospital in his spare time, has a theory that it is only the lethargy induced in Englishmen by low but persistent tropical fevers, the lethargy and its corollary, the concentration of mental and physical resources on a particular task, that has kept the
raj
stubbornly intact. He says that the moment medical science finds a way of rendering the English bloodstream and the English bowel system immune to the attacks of Indian microbes and amoeba, then the English will all perk up, look around and wonder what on earth they are doing out here, and as a consequence roar with laughter and resign. He cites as an example of depressive and obsessive behaviour the case of General Dyer, who shot all those unarmed Indians in Amritsar in nineteen-nineteen, believing that by doing so he was saving the Empire. Habbibullah is convinced that the poor old fellow’s brain was inflamed by the accumulation in the blood stream of the poisons of chronic amoebic infection. Of course he tells me all this because he is convinced that as a European I am similarly infected, in spite of my protests that for my age I am in vigorous good health and have never shot anyone, armed or unarmed.’

‘Actually I believe General Dyer had arterial sclerosis and
died of it quite a few years later, but it’s one of the slow diseases, isn’t it? Someone did once suggest to me that it could have affected his judgment at Jallianwallah.’

‘I didn’t know that. I must tell Habbibullah. How nice to meet a young Englishman who knows a bit about the country’s history. Dyer was another man who made a mistake, or acted controversially, and remained convinced to the end that he had been absolutely right.’

Rowan did not reply immediately. He wondered whether the allusion to Merrick was intentional.

‘It surprises me a little, sir. That you should feel that. Most Englishmen who work out here have to be pretty well informed, surely. Not that knowing about Dyer is much of a test.’

Bronowsky smiled at him and leant forward, with his hands one on top of the other, supported by the ebony cane that was probably not as necessary an aid to balance as he made it appear.

‘I exaggerated, yes. But one meets so many young officers who turn out to be here only because of the war and who know nothing. Mention General Dyer to them and they say, Oh, which division is he? It’s different with the hard core of the professionals, which I take it you belong to. Do you have family connections with India?’

‘Only on my mother’s side. My father was out here at one time, but in the British Army.’

‘Ah. I have been uselessly sifting my old memory for a Rowan. What was your mother’s maiden name?’

‘Crawley.’

The old man lowered his head, raised one finger and placed it on his chin.

‘Crawley,’ he repeated. ‘There was a Thomas Crawley who was Resident at Kotala. He ran things very successfully during the ruler’s minority. Were he and your mother related?’

‘He was her brother, but considerably older. Did you know him?’

‘Only by reputation. In latter days he experienced some difficulties. It was a pity. Have you had anything to do with the Political Department yourself?’

‘I worked a probationary year just before the war.’

‘Indeed. Your ambitions lie in that direction? But the army reclaimed you for the war no doubt. Where were you? Presumably not in Kotala?’

‘No, but I did meet the Maharajah in Delhi.’

‘How did that go?’

‘Not at all, at first. When I told him Crawley had been my uncle he sheered off.’

‘You told him voluntarily?’

‘It would have been unfair not to. He was in one of his expansive moods, inviting people at random.’

‘Inviting them to what?’

‘One of his famous parties at the palace in Kotala.’

‘That must have been a temptation. To see the place where your uncle spent the best part of his working life.’

‘Yes, it was. My mother lived with him at the Residency for two or three years before she went home to get married. I’d seen all the photographs and heard all the tales about how it was in those days, and quite a bit about what happened after the ruler came of age. But I felt I’d only get the best out of a visit if I went openly as Tommy Crawley’s nephew.’

‘You said the meeting with the Maharajah didn’t go well at first, that he sheered off. Did he change his mind?’

‘Yes but I don’t know how quickly. He must have kept tabs on me through his grapevine, though, because a couple of months later when I was touring with the agent for a small group of states north of Kotala I got a letter from him inviting me to call. It was a bit of a poser because it meant getting clearance from the department as well as from the Resident in Ranikot.’

‘Why Ranikot?’

‘When Uncle Tommy left Kotala the agency was transferred to the group that came under Ranikot. The Resident there put an assistant in at Kotala but everything had to go through him.’

‘That can’t have pleased the Maharajah.’

‘It wasn’t meant to. By regrouping his state and severing his direct link with the Crown Representative, the department thought he’d be upset enough to withdraw the accusations he’d made, that my uncle was interfering in private and state
matters to an intolerable degree, not only withdraw but beg to have him sent back. I think they were looking forward to telling him it was too late and were rather surprised when he made no complaint.’

‘Why too late?’

‘Well my uncle was getting on and the strain of their constant bickering had ruined his health. My mother came out to see him in Simla while he was on sick leave and tried to persuade him to retire at once and not wait the two or three years he still had to go. She wasn’t at all surprised when we met her off the boat and told her Uncle Tommy had died while she was on the passage home. The Maharajah wrote to her offering his sympathies. She’d known him well when he was a boy but didn’t feel up to sending him more than a formal acknowledgment. When I was coming out, though, she said that if ever I bumped into young Kotala I should give him her salaams.’

‘And did you?’

‘Yes. He was very touched.’

‘You accepted his invitation, then, in spite of the red tape. Good.’

‘I’m afraid I couldn’t. The officer I was touring with was dead against it, and actually a private trip on the side would have been a bit much for him to agree to because I was dogsbodying for him in a fairly hectic programme and supposed to be learning the ropes. So I wrote begging off. But I gave him my mother’s message and said I hoped there’d be another opportunity of meeting. A week later he turned up at our next stopping place. He’d driven more than a hundred miles.’

‘Was he so anxious to apologize for his treatment of your uncle?’

‘He apologized for sheering off. I was afraid of the other thing too. I’d worked it out years before, from all the things my mother told me or let slip that the fault had really been my uncle’s. I think she’d reached the same conclusion. As you said, he virtually ran the state while the prince was a minor and apart from that they’d formed an extremely close and affectionate father-and-son relationship. When the prince came of age all that should have stopped. My uncle should
have stood back and been content to let the young man assume full responsibility, but he made the error of continuing to treat him as a minor, of forgetting that he was a ruling Hindu prince. And, of course, that must have led to a situation in which the prince’s relatives and his state officials made it clear that they despised him for letting the Resident browbeat him and that if he had an ounce of real spirit he’d start showing my uncle where to get off. Unfortunately he did that in a young man’s over-exuberant way, spending money wildly on personal extravagances, drinking too much and womanizing, all the things that gave my uncle the opportunity to press his criticisms. In fact after a year or so you only needed evidence of cruelty and corruption and complete disregard for the welfare of his poorer subjects to have had a case to depose him.’

‘And there was no such evidence.’

‘I imagine the only harm the Maharajah ever did to anyone was to himself. And I think he felt that. I’d say it still rankled. I got the impression he would really have liked to be abstemious and upright, all the things my uncle no doubt represented to him as virtues when he was growing up, hated being unable to resist other temptations and blamed my uncle for that as well. Well as I say he apologized for sheering off when we first met but when it got to the point where it was obvious one of us ought to mention Uncle Tommy he became very edgy. He’d driven all that way so I felt the ball was in my court, but I was reluctant to play it. I’m ashamed to admit I thought there might be a price-tag on the whole thing, that the idea was to soften me up by a display of magnanimity or remorse so that I’d agree to put a word in for him over some scheme he might have going.’

‘Well, you’d been in the country just long enough to suspect he might think you new enough to try it on. How did you play the ball?’

‘I didn’t. I shirked it. So just before he got into the car to go back he confronted me. It’s the only word. Have you ever met him?’

‘No. Not the maharajah. We’ve never been to Kotala and he’s not in the Chamber. Insufficient guns.’

‘Quite tall. Very plump. He uses scent and wears rings.
Diamonds mostly. There was even a small jewelled cockade in the centre of his turban. I think you could call Kotala the walking effete-looking Indian potentate of popular English imagination. It isn’t an image that conveys what
we
mean by dignity whatever it may convey to Indians, but ever since that day I’ve tried not to prejudge from appearances. I don’t think anything could have been more dignified than his parting speech. He said he was glad to have met Tommy Crawley’s nephew, trusted we’d meet again and have the opportunity to build a relationship on the friendly basis he hoped we’d established, but that this wouldn’t be possible from his point of view unless I knew and accepted that although he had loved my uncle as a boy and had happy memories of those times, he had had a terrible time with him later, which he would never forget and could never forgive. He said, “When I was young your uncle was always saying, when you know you are in the right, fight for it, never give in, never retreat and never retract. My opinion is that in that matter I was right and he was wrong. If I regret anything it is the nature of the weapons he forced me to use and the nature of the balm he forced me to resort to to heal the wounds he inflicted.” I was so impressed that when he’d gone I went straight to my room and wrote it down.’