A Division Of The Spoils (Raj Quartet 4) (3 page)

‘Are yer still with us, sergeant?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Right. Tell ’im about the party, Purvis.’

For a moment Purvis neither spoke nor moved. Then he opened his eyes.

‘God!’ he said, got up and went out of the room.

‘Feller’s got squitters,’ Beamish explained.

‘Who is Captain Purvis, sir?’

‘Damned if I know. Brig didn’t say. Never met ’im in me life till half-an-hour ago. Seems a bit of a wash-out ter me. Chap should be able to keep ’imself fitter than that!’

A chaprassi came in with a foot-high pile of folders tied up in pink tape and put them by the side of a similar pile on the In side of Major Beamish’s desk. There was a single file in the Out tray. The chaprassi took this with him when he went. Beamish poured himself a glass of water then took the top folder from the nearest of the two piles.

‘Smoke if yer want ter,’ he said. ‘While we’re waitin’.’

Perron murmured his thanks but did not do so. Beamish read the note in the file, initialled it, flung the folder in the Out tray and reached for the next.

Ten minutes later Purvis came back. Beamish was reading the minute in the last folder of the second pile. Without glancing up he said, ‘Feelin’ better?’

‘Frankly, no. I think the sergeant will have to come back to my billet. I’ll put him in the picture there. In any case he’ll need somewhere to change and freshen up for this evening.’

‘All right, sergeant, get along with Captain Purvis. Are yer goin’ back ter Kalyan ternight?’

‘That was my intention, sir.’

‘Ring me from there in the mornin’. We’ll decide if there’s anything ter follow up.’

Perron stood, put his cap on, stamped to attention and saluted. As he turned he caught the tail end of a wince on Captain Purvis’s face.

‘Shoes, sergeant! Have you got
shoes
?’ Purvis asked.

‘In my pack, sir. With the uniform.’

‘Thank God for that. What are you on, a motor-bike?’

‘I’ve got a jeep today, sir.’

‘We’ll dump it at my office.’

Outside in the corridor Purvis maintained his distance a couple of paces ahead. They passed a long bench on which a line of chaprassis dozed, like figures on a frieze in bas-relief, awaiting employment. The building – currently at the disposal of the army and navy – belonged to the port authority and smelt of rope, gunny sacks and the dust on old bills of lading. Through the immense windows in the main corridor into which they turned came that other pervasive dockyard smell of oily water: Bombay, Bom-Bahia, an island swamp, part of the dowry brought by Catherine of Braganza to Charles II which it took the British five years to persuade the Portuguese Viceroy actually to hand over. Perron stemmed the stream of thought before it could disorient him; apart from which Purvis walked very fast and Perron didn’t want to run the risk of losing him in the labyrinth. He concentrated on Purvis’s back and noticed that the officer’s shoulders were hunched – probably against the ringing sound of Perron’s studded boots on the stone floor.

Descending by a broad stone staircase they reached the main entrance hall on whose marble flags stood a profusion of poles on heavy plinths which bore directional signs. None of the officers and
NCOS
passing to and fro glanced at the signs and Perron wondered how long it would take for the place to be reduced to a state of hopeless confusion if someone ever took it into his head to move the signs round. Perhaps no one would ever notice.

He smiled and at that moment Purvis stopped and faced him. They nearly bumped into one another. Whatever Purvis had intended to say he forgot.

‘Something amusing you, sergeant?’

‘No, sir.’

‘I mean if there is, do
share
it.’

Perron told him his thought about the signs. Purvis glanced at them. Without another word he led the way into the open: a fore-court normally crammed with vehicles but today fairly empty. In the minute or so since they had left Beamish’s office the sun had come out. The heat struck Perron’s eyelids.

‘Where’s this jeep of yours, then?’

Perron indicated it.

‘No driver?’

‘Only me, sir.’

Purvis went down the steps. ‘Mine’s that fifteen hundredweight Chevvy. Follow me and for God’s sake keep up. Right?’

Jeep-borne, Perron followed the truck through the archway which was blocked at night by a white pole but at present open to all comers and goers under the eye of a stick-guard who was supposed to inspect identity cards but was taking people on trust. They drove along a road parallel to the docks. At the end of it Purvis’s truck turned left. Caught in the midst of Bombay’s traffic – buses, cyclists, hooting taxis, overladen trucks, horse-drawn doolies and jay-walking pedestrians – Perron concentrated on not losing contact. The truck braked sharply to avoid an obstacle Perron couldn’t see. He slammed on his own brakes and stopped a foot or two short of an impact that might have snapped the tether Purvis seemed to be near the end of. Possibly the nest of spies, fifth-columnists and loose-talkers Perron gathered Purvis thought he’d uncovered was totally illusory. Driving on, but allowing more distance (and noting that the cause of the abrupt halt had been a handcart piled high with crates of live fowl, hauled by a half-naked coolie) Perron decided that so long as Purvis wasn’t at his elbow the entire evening, hissing warnings, the party might be supportable; or even enjoyable.

*

Purvis’s billet turned out to be a flat in one of the modern blocks opposite the Oval – that elegant, coconut-palm fringed rectangle of open, grassed, space; or
maidan
; brilliantly green at this wet time of year. They reached the block in Purvis’s truck, having left Perron’s jeep in the courtyard of a house several streets away which was guarded by sentries but otherwise unidentifiable as a military office. Purvis had instructed the guard-commander that Sergeant Perron was to be re-admitted on production of his identity card at whatever time of night he returned, in whatever kind of clothing or uniform, and be allowed to collect and take away his jeep; but – short though the journey was – the route then taken from Purvis’s office to Purvis’s billet seemed to Perron, in the back
of the truck, so complicated that he had doubts about finding his way back to his jeep unaccompanied. This had not bothered him much because he assumed they would go to the party in the fifteen hundredweight and be brought back from it by the same means, after which he would be taken to retrieve the jeep; but when they dismounted in Queen’s Road Purvis signed the driver’s log book and dismissed him until morning.

‘Is the party being given nearby, sir?’ Perron asked as they approached the entrance to the block of flats. Purvis didn’t answer. He was in a hurry. Reaching the two steps that led to the open doorway and a dark hall he stumbled up them, bumped into and almost knocked down a servant who was coming out ahead of a young English woman.

‘For God’s sake look where you’re going!’ Purvis shouted.

If he was aware of the girl he gave no sign of it. He brushed past the two of them and disappeared into the dark.

‘I do beg your pardon,’ Perron said to the girl.

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘I’m afraid the officer isn’t well. He couldn’t have seen you.’

She studied his uniform briefly, taking everything in at a glance as young English women in India were trained to.

‘It wasn’t me he bumped into, it was Nazimuddin. But thank you for apologizing for him.’

He waited for her to add ‘–sergeant’, but she smiled instead, an ordinary friendly smile, then put on the hat she had been carrying. The movement released a little wave of delicate scent. She came down the two steps and made for the pavement and the road where the ill-used bearer was flagging down a cruising taxi. She was a bit thin, a bit bony, but she walked well. He judged her to be in her early twenties but found it difficult to place her. Accent, style of dress, forth-rightness: these proclaimed her a daughter of the
raj
, but her manner had lacked that quality – elusive in definition – which Perron had come to associate with young memsahibs: a compound of self-absorption, surface self-confidence and, beneath, a frightening innocence and attendant uncertainty about the true nature of the alien world they lived in. They were born only to breathe that rarified, oxygen-starved air of the upper slopes and peaks, and so seemed to gaze down, from
a height, with the touching look of girls who had been brought up to know everybody’s place and were consequently determined to have everybody recognize their own.

Waiting until she had completed that movement – charming in a girl, especially in her – of climbing into the taxi, he shouldered the pack containing his Army Education Corps disguise, went into the building and through the gloom to an inner only slightly better lighted hall where there was a lift shaft and a flight of stone steps leading up. A notice, askew on a piece of string suspended from the handle of the trellis-work gate, informed him that the lift was out of order, but in any case he would not have known which floor to go to. There was no sound from above of Purvis climbing. The door of the flat immediately to his right had a dark-stained strip of wood above the bell with gold-lettering on it saying Mr B. S. V. Desai. To the left a similar notice read H. Tractorwallah. Both these doors seemed unlikely ones for Purvis to be on the other side of and neither had the look of having been opened recently.

Perron ascended. On the next floor the two flats were occupied respectively by a Lieut.-Col. A. Grace and a Major Rajendra Singh of the Indian Medical Service. The Indian medical officer’s name seemed to have been painted on its strip of wood longer ago than Colonel Grace’s. Perron hesitated, but then, deciding that if Purvis was billeted on this floor one of the two doors would have been left open, started on the next leg up and as he did so heard a voice above call, ‘Sahib?’

Purvis’s servant, he supposed. The man salaamed, stood back as Perron reached the next landing, and indicated the open door of the flat above Rajendra Singh’s. As he entered he heard a groan. The servant closed the door and went quickly down a corridor to a curtained doorway. The groan was repeated. A tap was turned on. Perron put his pack down, went in the opposite direction to the one the servant had taken and entered a dining-area. This was separated from a living-room by a wide uncurtained arch. The living-room was elegantly furnished, filled with aqueous light of sunshine filtered through a set of louvred shutters. On a wall behind a long settee hung a series of what looked like paintings from
the Moghul period, which upon close inspection Perron identified as genuine. He was still admiring them when the servant came in and invited him to go along to Captain Purvis’s room.

This room, although large, was barrack-like by comparison. Apart from an almirah and a wooden table littered with books, papers and some discarded shirts, there was nothing else in it except a rush-seated chair and the camp-bed on which Purvis was lying, one hand over his eyes, the other hanging free, almost touching the floor. But an open door afforded a glimpse of a well-appointed green-tiled bathroom.

Purvis said, ‘I’m not going to be able to make it, sergeant. You’ll have to go by yourself or forget the whole thing. I wish to God I’d kept my mouth shut. It’s all an utter waste of time. Every bloody civilian in Bombay knows where Zipper’s going and why it’s going and how it’s going. We’re the exceptions. We know where. But they know where better. They can even name the damned beaches. It’ll be a shambles, a complete and unholy utter bloody cocked-up shambles.’

Suddenly Purvis uncovered his eyes and stared wildly at Perron.

‘You
are
Field Security?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Beamish isn’t. What the hell is he?’

‘He has certain responsibilities for liaison between intelligence and operations.’

‘But he’s not your officer?’

‘No, sir. My officer is in Poona at the moment.’

Purvis shut his eyes.

‘Poona,’ he said, almost under his breath. ‘It scarcely seems possible.’

‘Poona, sir? Or that my officer is there?’

But Purvis didn’t say. Outside the barred but open window there was a sudden piercing contest of crows and then a human voice below in the courtyard raised in what to an untutored ear must sound like a protracted cry of pain but which Perron knew was only the call of an itinerant tradesman. Purvis groaned and turned on his side, the side away from the window. At that moment the sun went in and the sluice-gates of the wet monsoon re-opened. Purvis’s lips
began to move but Perron could hear nothing above the noise of the rainstorm.

The bearer parted the curtains and came in with a tray of tea for two. Perron assisted by clearing a space on the table and when the bearer had gone he looked at Purvis intending to say, ‘Shall I be mother, sir?’ but the officer’s eyes were open, fixed and unreceptive – in fact, glazed. For a moment Perron thought he was dead, extinguished by the single clap of thunder that had heralded the arrival of the tea.

*

Refreshed, bathed and now disguised as a sergeant in education, Perron walked – shoe instead of boot-shod – along the tiled passage to the living-room where he found Purvis standing on a balcony that had been revealed by the folding back of shutters and windows. It was now a beautiful evening with a sky the colour of pale turquoise. The coconut palms framed a view of the Law Courts and clock tower on the other side of the
maidan.

‘I appreciated the bath, sir. I’m afraid I used some of your Cuticura talcum.’

Purvis had a glass in the hand that rested on the balustrade.

‘Help yourself to a drink, sergeant. You’ll find everything on the tray.’

There was, if not everything, a generous selection: Gin, whisky, rum, several bottles of Murree beer and various squashes and cordials. The spirits were country-distilled so Perron – not caring much for rum of any kind – chose the gin which he found more palatable than Indian versions of Scotch. He added lemon-squash and – luxury for him – a cube of ice from a zinc-lined container.

‘Cheers, sir.’