The Raj Quartet, Volume 1: The Jewel in the Crown: The Jewel in the Crown Vol 1 (Phoenix Fiction) (71 page)

If it wasn’t Ronald, then it must have been Hari himself who took the bicycle, then panicked and left it outside his house. I don’t think Hari panicked.

But I did. I told Lili to leave me alone. I wanted to think. It became quite clear. Ronald searched the Bibighar, found the bicycle, put it in the truck, then drove across the bridge,
towards Chillianwallah Bagh,
questioned the grade crossing keeper, found the boys who were “friends” of Hari’s, arrested them, drove on to Hari’s house, planted the bike and then stormed into the house. And when Hari was arrested they probably searched his room. Had he destroyed my note asking him to meet me in the Sanctuary? The note was never mentioned so he must have done. This may have been the only thing he had time to do, if he hadn’t thrown it away before. The photograph I gave him was mentioned. Ronald took it away, as “evidence”—a copy of the same photograph that I sent you and which Hari helped me to choose from the proofs that day at Subhas Chand’s. At the informal inquiry at the MacGregor House Mr. Poulson said, “Mr. Kumar had your photograph in his bedroom. Was it one you gave him?”—you know—as if trying to establish that Hari was obsessed with me and had stolen the photograph to stare at at night, and as if giving me the opportunity to recant, to go onto their side, to get rid of my silly notions of loyalty and break down and admit that I’d been infatuated, that Hari had worked on my emotions in the most callous and calculating way, that it was a relief to tell the truth at last, that I had come to my senses and was no longer afraid of him, let alone infatuated, that he’d attacked and brutalized me and then submitted me to the base indignity of being raped by friends of his, and that then he’d tried to terrorize me with threats to my life if I gave him away, threats which he said would be all too easy to carry out because the British were about to be given the bum’s rush. Oh, I know what was in
their minds—perhaps against their personal judgment—but in their minds as the story they ought to believe because of what might be at stake. Of the trio who made up the board of private inquiry, or whatever it was officially called—Mr. Poulson, a startled and embarrassed young English subdivisional officer whose name I forget, and Judge Menen—only Judge Menen, who presided, maintained an air of utter detachment. It was a detachment that struck me as that of fatigue, fatigue amounting to hopelessness. But the fact that he was there heartened me, not only because he was an Indian but because I was sure he wouldn’t have been there if there was any likelihood of the accused men coming in front of him in the District Court. I suppose if the inquiry had led to what the board by now had no hope of but the English community still wanted, the case would have gone up for trial in the Provincial High Court.

But I’ve gone a step too far ahead. I must go back for a moment to the evening of the tenth—when I sent Lili out of the room to give myself time to think because I was panicky about what might have been found that could incriminate Hari, and about who the other arrested men were, and what they might have said. Then I was overwhelmed by the typically blunt thoughtless English way I’d assumed everything would be all right for Hari if
I
said he was innocent. I’d run away from Hari, believing that just by putting distance between us I was helping him. But I saw him now standing where I’d left him, at the gate of the Bibighar. Auntie, what did he do? Go back to look for the bicycle, and remove it, thinking he was helping
me?
Or begin his journey home on foot? There was blood on my neck and face when I got back—so Anna told me. It must have come from Hari’s face when we clung to each other. In the dark I didn’t see how badly or how little those men had hurt him. I never asked. I never thought. He was bathing his face, apparently, when Ronald burst into his room. Of course they tried to prove he’d been hurt by me fighting back. But all I can think of now is the callous way I left him, to face up to everything alone, to say nothing, deny everything, because I’d told him to, but having to say nothing and deny everything with those scratches or abrasions on his face that he couldn’t account for. When it came out at the inquiry that his face was cut I said, “Why ask me about them? Ask Mr. Kumar. I don’t know. He wasn’t there.” Mr. Poulson said, “He
was
asked. He wouldn’t say,” and then changed the subject. Ronald was giving evidence at the time. I stared at him, but he refused to look at me. I said, “Perhaps he had a scrap with the police. It wouldn’t be the first time he was hit by a police officer.” It did no good.
It was the wrong thing to say at that time in that place. It made them sympathize with Ronald rather than me. I didn’t mind, though, because in any case I was beginning to hate myself. I hated myself because I realized Hari had taken me at my word and said nothing—quite literally nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Said nothing in spite of evidence against him, which I hadn’t reckoned with him when I ran off and left him.

They hurt him, didn’t they? Tortured him in some way? But he said nothing, nothing. When they arrested him he must have stood there—with the cuts on his face, my photograph in his room, my bicycle in the ditch outside, and said nothing. At one time during those days of question and answer Lili told me, “He won’t account for his movements. He denies having been in the Bibighar. He says he hasn’t seen you since the night you both went to the temple. But he won’t say where he was or what he was doing between leaving the office and getting home, sometime after nine. He must have reached home about the time you did, Daphne.”

And of course these were the other things I hadn’t reckoned with or known about: Ronald’s first visit to the house in the Chillianwallah Bagh, his visit to the MacGregor House, his visit to the Sanctuary. When I left Hari at the Bibighar I suppose I assumed that all he had to do was to pretend to have been at home all evening, to persuade Aunt Shalini to swear he had been at home, if the question ever arose, or to make up another story, whatever he thought best, whatever he thought would work. But for Hari, no story worked.
I never gave him a chance to calm me down and say—as I would have let an Englishman say
—“Look, for Pete’s sake, if I haven’t been here in the Bibighar, where in hell have I been? How do I account for this swollen lip, or black eye, or scratched cheek,” whatever it was.

I never gave him the chance because even in my panic there was this assumption of superiority, of privilege, of believing I knew what was best for both of us, because the colour of my skin automatically put me on the side of those who never told a lie. But we’ve got far beyond that stage of colonial simplicity. We’ve created a blundering judicial robot. We can’t stop it working. It works for us even when we least want it to. We created it to prove how fair, how civilized we are. But it is a white robot and it can’t distinguish between love and rape. It only understands physical connection and only understands it as a crime because it only exists to punish crime. It would have punished Hari for this, and if
physical connection between the races is a crime he’s been punished justly. One day someone may come along, cross a wire by mistake, or fix in a special circuit with the object of making it impartial and colourblind, and then it will probably explode.

After Lili had told me about Hari’s arrest and I’d thought for a bit I rang for Raju and told him I wanted Poulson Sahib sent for. I’d got over my panic. I was angry, even angry with Lili. I felt she’d let me down by allowing them to hold Hari in custody without doing a thing to stop it. She was very patient with me, but we were shut off from each other as we’d never been before. She said that if I really wanted to see Mr. Poulson she’d ring him. I think she believed I was going to confess. She knew I’d been lying. But for her the truth would be as bad as the lies. She had brought Hari into the house, and he was an Indian. A fellow-countryman. For a day or two after the Bibighar, I felt like an interloper, one of her harpies who’d inexplicably become involved with the life of an Indian family, and had taken to sitting in her bedroom the better to keep what was left of her racial integrity intact.

Mr. Poulson came after dinner. Lili brought him up. She asked whether I wanted her to stay. I said it might be better if Mr. Poulson and I were alone. Directly she’d gone I said, “Why didn’t you tell me they arrested Hari Kumar last night?” Normally I liked him. Tonight I despised him, but then I was ready to despise everybody. He looked as if he wanted to fall through the floor. He said Hari had been arrested because the evidence seemed to add up that way, in spite of my “belief” that he hadn’t been involved. I said, “What evidence? What evidence that can possibly contradict
my
evidence. You must all be mad if you think you can pin anything on Hari.”

He said that the evidence last night had pointed to Hari, and that it couldn’t be ruled out that he was there, in spite of my belief that he wasn’t.

I said it wasn’t a question of belief. I asked him whether he really thought I wouldn’t
know
if Hari had been among those who attacked me. That scared him. He was afraid of an intimate confession. When I realized this I thought I saw how to play the whole thing, play it by scaring them at the thought of what I might come out with, in court. I asked him about the other men. He pretended he didn’t know anything about them. I smiled and said, “I see Ronald is keeping it all very much
to himself. But that’s no wonder, is it? After all, it’s pretty obvious he planted the bicycle.”

Lili had been shocked, but her shock was nothing to Jack Poulson’s. He said, “What on earth makes you say a thing like that?” I told him to ask Ronald. It seemed wiser to leave it at that, to leave Mr. Poulson with something tricky to bite on. Before he went—and he went because “in his view there was nothing it would be advantageous to pursue for the moment”—I said, “Hari wasn’t there. I doubt that any of the men you’ve arrested was there. It’s the usual thing, isn’t it? An Englishwoman gets assaulted and at once everyone loses all sense of proportion. If Ronald or any of you think you’re going to get away with punishing the first poor bloody Indians you’ve clapped hands on just to give the European community a field day you’ve got another think coming. It’ll never stand up in court because
I’ll
stand up in court and say what I’m saying to you. Only I might be more explicit about a lot of things.”

He got up and mumbled something about being sorry and that everyone appreciated what a terrible time I’d had, that he was sure no one who was innocent could possibly be punished. I said, “Then tell me this. Forget the
one
innocent man you’ve got locked up at the moment. Do the others fit my description of them at all?”

He said he didn’t know. He hadn’t seen them. But I wasn’t letting him off so lightly. I was chancing my arm, but it seemed worth it. I said, “Oh, come off it, Jack. You know all right. Even if you haven’t seen them you must know who they are. Are they what I said? Smelly peasants? Dirty labourers? Or boys like Hari? The kind of boy Mr. Merrick seems to have it in for?”

I’d hit the mark. But he still insisted he didn’t know. He said he believed that one or two of them were known for or suspected of political activities of “the anarchist type.” I pounced on that. I said, “Oh, you mean educated boys? Not smelly peasants?”

He shook his head, not denying it but closing the way to further discussion.

Retrospectively, I’m sorry for the bad time I gave poor Jack Poulson. But it had to be done. I’m pretty sure he went away thinking, “It won’t stick. Not with those fellows Merrick’s got locked up.” I don’t know how much more he would say when he got back to the Deputy Commissioner’s bungalow, which was almost certainly where he was headed. To Mr. White probably all he needed to say was something like, “Either
she’s lying, or Kumar is innocent, but if she’s lying or continues to lie he ranks as innocent anyway because we’ll never prove him guilty. The same goes for the others. Merrick’s made a gaffe.”

Robin White detached himself from the affair, to the extent that he left Jack Poulson in charge of it up to the point where a final decision had to be made. If he’d been a man like his predecessor Mr. Stead (whom men like Vassi loathed) God knows what would have happened. I suppose to Robin the assault on a silly English girl wasn’t very important when he compared it with the other things he had to deal with. I don’t know whether Mr. Poulson ever said anything to Mr. White about the bicycle and my accusation against Ronald. It wouldn’t have been an easy thing for him to pass on. At the inquiry the bicycle was never mentioned, and the only time Hari was mentioned was when Ronald was giving evidence of arrest. He answered questions which Jack Poulson seemed to have worked out carefully in advance. In fact the evidence of the arrest struck me as ridiculous. Mr. Poulson read out the names of the men arrested and simply asked Ronald where, and at what time they’d been taken into custody, and what they had been doing. As I already knew from what Lili had told me the other poor boys had been drinking hooch in a hut near the Bibighar bridge but at the inquiry the
unfairness
of it struck me all over again. According to Ronald, Hari was in his bedroom, “washing his face on which there were cuts and abrasions.” I nearly interrupted and said, “What about the bicycle?” but thought better of it. The bicycle not being mentioned was a good sign. I wondered if Jack Poulson had talked to Ronald in private and decided from the answers he got that he’d better keep the bicycle business quiet, not only for Ronald’s sake, but for the sake of the Service, the flag and all that. But I did come out with the remark about the cuts on Hari’s face when Jack Poulson asked me whether I recalled “marking” any of the men who attacked me. I mean the remark about Hari probably having had a scrap with the police.

After the so-called evidence of arrests Ronald was dismissed and then they got down to the business of going over my statement again and asking questions, and I saw how the evidence of arrests was so thin that although it proved nothing it could also prove anything. Judge Menen had kept quiet—I mean he’d not asked me any questions so far, but towards the end he said, “I must ask you why you refused the other day to attempt to identify the men held in custody,” which I had done, when the worst of the troubles in Mayapore were over and they wanted
to push the case to a conclusion of some sort and get it over with. I said, “I refused to attempt identification because they must be the wrong men. I shall say so in court, if necessary.”