by John Masters
‘You must stay for a drink and lunch,’ Max said; and then Rodney stopped the jeep in front of the dak bungalow. Max’s orderly ran out, followed a moment later by two women. Max walked up the steps. ‘Hullo, darling. The excitement’s over.’ He caught her hand momentarily and as he did he noticed that she was staring over his shoulder, her body tense. ‘Rodney,’ she said, ‘Rodney Savage!’
Rodney came up then, a half-smile on his face. ‘In person.’ He held out his hand. ‘How are you, Janaki?’
She dropped her eyes. ‘This is the Rani of Kishanpur. Colonel Rodney Savage.’
The Rani said, ‘Rodney - the famous Rodney.’
Rodney stood and stared at her, the half-smile still on his face. ‘Sumitra.’
Max watched, fascinated, as they stood there, looking, gauging, Janaki between them. Sumitra had the classical rounded Indian beauty, wheat-gold skin, her black hair piled in a loose Western wave on top of her head. She wore a pale-blue sari, and high- heeled sandals. Janaki was much smaller, her figure in the patterned red sari seeming almost childlike beside the Rani’s full- bosomed curves. Her cheekbones were higher and the eyes wider set in the small heart-shaped face; and she was darker than the other, and her heavy head of hair was swept down from a straight centre parting.
The Rani broke the silence. ‘I have known about you for twelve years - since I married Dip. And now we meet.’
‘I can say the same,’ Rodney said.
Then the D.C. came up, and the men excused themselves and went to a spare bathroom to wash off the mud and dirt of the road and the Gond village.
‘I didn’t know you knew Kishanpur,’ Max said, slapping cold water over his face.
Rodney said, ‘That goes back a long time, too - to my great-grandfather. He and the Kishanpurs fought in the Mutiny together ... on opposite sides. Remember Sumitra Rawan, the Rani of Kishanpur?’
‘My God!’ Max said softly. ‘That one. You really are mixed up with India, aren’t you?’
The woman on the veranda was also a Rani of Kishanpur, and she was also called Sumitra; but when you mentioned those names, without qualification, it was taken for granted that you meant the famous heroine of 1857. She had led cavalry charges against the British in the Great Mutiny of that year, and had finally vanished, no one knew where or how. Some said it was to refuge in Nepal or Tibet; some said, into a Hindu ashram; some said, to lie unknown among the dead of the last great battle of the Mutiny.
Rodney said, ‘She and my great-grandfather tried to kill each other - and fell in love. Things like that used to happen. They still do ... The two families have had a sort of foster-brother relationship ever since. They sent Dip Rao, the present Rajah, to stay with us in England for a time when he was a kid - he and I shared a nanny. The same with our parents and grandparents. But I have not met Sumitra, for reasons doubtless well known to you.’
The D.C. came in, curling his beard with his fingers. ‘Well known to the entire population of India, I’m afraid. She’s intelligent and, somehow, not selfish, though. And she’s not a nymphomaniac. Whatever it is, it’s not that ... though I don’t doubt she’s - er, interested - and interesting.’
Max dried his hands, shaking his head. It was a sad business. Dip Rao Rawan, the Rajah of Kishanpur, was about Rodney’s age - thirty-five or thirty-six. He’d married this girl from an old Mahratta family a good many years ago, about ‘36 - and hardly seen her since.
The French Riviera knew the beautiful Rani of Kishanpur. Kitzbühel and La Baule and Monte Carlo knew her; Claridge’s and the Meurice and the Waldorf knew her - but, only very seldom, and for short visits, the ancient State of Kishanpur. Her love affairs, faithfully reported in shiny socialite papers and by word of mouth, were famous throughout the last years before the war, and during the war - which she had seemed to have spent shuttling between the Bahamas, New York, and Chile. It wasn’t the affairs themselves that caused the furore so much as the bizarre objects of them: a Russian count who was certainly an impostor; a middle- aged American con man who’d later gone to jail; a Cuban painter who had almost, but not quite, become famous; a young Croat revolutionary who later suffocated himself in an asylum, using his own shirt... The list was long, and full of violent lights. Yet you couldn’t help liking her when you met her; and though the big, dark eyes settled speculatively on all men, they had never seemed to Max to be predatory, still less, calculating. Rather they were inquiring, and direct - who are you, what are you, what makes you go? She was at home now, with Dip. He saw a good deal of them, for Kishanpur was only forty-seven miles east of his own headquarters in Bhowani.
‘Shall we join the ladies?’ he said formally.
‘You’re going to be my guests,’ the D.C. said, ‘though I think I shall be sick if I even smell alcohol. I’ve got a couple of bottles of Black Label. My bearer should have put them out already.’
The three men walked together down the central passage and out on to the veranda. Rodney said, ‘I’ll be with you in a minute,’ and went on down the steps to his jeep, parked in the shade of a tree across the drive. Max, turning aside to join the women at the small table set up with drinks, saw his friend lean in over the jeep side and put his hand on his chauffeur’s shoulder. Ratanbir smiled ruefully and patted his own head. So even he, a Gurkha, had a hangover. It must have been a long night.
The Rani’s husky, very French-sounding voice broke in on Max’s thoughts: ‘The colonel knows how to handle the natives, I see.’
Max answered shortly, ‘When he has to, Rodney can handle anyone - one way or another.’
‘So Dip tells me,’ she said. ‘Except, perhaps, himself.’
The jeep drove away and Rodney joined them. The D.C. rose to his feet, a glass of lemonade in his hand. ‘Ladies and gentlemen - as Indians, I ask you to join me in a toast to an Englishman, who yesterday saved our government a great deal of embarrassment, and also probably saved a score of lives - Rodney Savage.’
Max quickly poured himself a lemonade and raised his glass. ‘You were bloody marvellous, Rodney.’
The women murmured politely and sipped their fruit juice. Max began to relate the whole story, from the beginning. Every now and then Rodney threw in derisive comments and humorous pastiches of things seen, and soon they were all laughing. Max noticed the Rani’s steady, weighing look fixed on Rodney. Janaki also was watching him, less obviously, and also seemed to be weighing, and judging, as though she had never met him before - although actually she knew him well. They had met soon after his marriage, when Rodney had first joined the 13th Gurkhas in Peshawar as a very young second lieutenant and he himself was a senior lieutenant of the Dogra Regiment - fifteen years ago, good heavens.
When he finished his tale, Rodney said, ‘Taken by itself, without meaning, it was a good time - that trip to Bhilghat ... That’s what people like me love about India. To us that is India. We haven’t had much contact with people like you, for reasons you know as well as I do - our political dominance, our destruction of your class, your sulking in your tents. But we knew the poor, the peasants, those who live in the woods and the mountains ... in the past, if you like.’
‘Kept there, sometimes,’ the D.C. interposed softly, brushing up his moustache.
‘Yes ... but damn it, Ranjit, the Gonds are different, so are the Bhils, and the Nagas, and the Mishmis, and ... ’
‘And the Lahoulis?’ the D.C. asked, naming a hill people who lived on the high northern border, touching Tibet. Those Rodney had named were more decidedly ‘tribal,’ mostly animist in religion and Stone Age in culture.
‘The Lahoulis are a borderline case,’ Rodney said. His face was eager and alive, his eyes sparkling.
The D.C. said, ‘I’m afraid there can’t be borderline cases now. There can’t even be enclaves of quaint old customs, needing special handling till Doomsday. We haven’t got the time. In England you couldn’t accept the idea that the people of Lancashire were a special tribe which had to be specially handled, their speech preserve
d, schools kept away from them so that they’d always remain isolated. At least you never have. Nor can we accept the idea of “reservations”, like the Americans.’
‘Suppose they don’t want to go to school?’ Rodney said. ‘Suppose they don’t want to join the modern world?’
‘They have no choice,’ the D.C. said. ‘History is marching in a certain direction, and they are going with it - whether they go willingly or get trampled on.’
Max sipped his lemonade and thought sadly, the D.C. was quite right; the Prime Minister was quite right; nevertheless, it was a pity. How many generations, how many short years, would pass before such a way of life as they had entered last night would vanish forever from the jungles, along with the handmade pottery, the wood crafted by their own hands, the weapons shaped by love and ancient skill? In all that village there probably were not ten rupees’ worth of articles that had not been wholly made there.
‘Go willingly or get trampled on,’ Rodney repeated slowly. He stared into his orange juice. ‘You’ll have plenty doing both ... and sometimes the people concerned won’t even know which they want to do, or are doing. For God’s sake, though, Ranjit, go as slowly as you can, as carefully as you can. A tribal, patriarchal society may be a pain in the neck to you and Nehru, but it means a lot to the people who live inside it. It’s all that holds them together - and not only the group, but the man himself, inside himself.’
He finished his juice quickly and poured out a whisky and soda. Sumitra of Kishanpur said, ‘You seem to have found a solution, without going or getting trampled on.’
Rodney nodded, ‘I travel all over India. I have responsibility. In a way, I’m getting many of the advantages of the Raj without the disadvantages - all India to roam in ... reasonable independence ... general control from the Viceroy - I beg his pardon, I mean the Managing Director ... policy from a board room in London. It doesn’t seem very different, sometimes. And yet - it’s strange, being an outsider. Just watching India, instead of being a part of it. On that basis I can’t get trampled on. But sometimes I can hardly bear it. I was not born to be a bystander, not in India. I’d rather have the involvement, like last night-and the trampling.’
The D.C. said slowly, ‘I’m afraid that’s what it would be.’
The jeep drove up from the direction of the town. Ratanbir came to the veranda steps, saluted, and handed Rodney two letters.
‘Aru chhaina?
‘Teti ho, hujoor.’
Rodney said, ‘Excuse me,’ and opened one of the letters. Max turned to his wife with small talk, and Sumitra to the Deputy Commissioner. It took Rodney a long time to read the letters, and before he had finished them the D.C. told his servant to serve lunch.
Rodney stood up, folding the letters carefully and putting them in his pocket. ‘I’ll have to be off now,’ he said, smiling. ‘Thank you so much for the drinks. And thank you, Collector, for allowing me to come with you yesterday.’
Max rose. ‘But, Rodney, aren’t you staying for lunch? I thought...’
‘I’m afraid I’ll have to go. Business before pleasure, you know, McFadden Pulley need me.’
‘But surely ...’
He felt a sharp pain in his foot and grimaced involuntarily. Looking down he saw that Sumitra, Rani of Kishanpur, had jabbed her stiletto heel into his instep. ‘See you later, then,’ she was saying, smiling sweetly, ‘I’m going back tomorrow, but Max and Janaki will be here for a week, and you know you have a standing invitation to Kishanpur.’
‘Thanks. Yes. Good-bye.’ The Englishman ran quickly down the steps and jumped into the jeep. Ratanbir engaged gear and the little vehicle drove away.
Max said, ‘I’m sure he said he’d have lunch here.’
Janaki said, ‘Darling, you are very dense sometimes.’
‘I was never supposed to be very bright,’ Max said. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Couldn’t you see? The letters.’
Chapter 3
After dinner General Dadhwal, dressed now in lightweight trousers of black cotton and a long, high-buttoning jodhpur coat of white silk, left the dak bungalow and walked slowly towards the town. Janaki told him he must go and see Rodney; he himself wasn’t sure. Janaki said Rodney had had to make a tremendous effort to hide his shock while reading the letters. Janaki said she’d never seen a man hit by a bullet in a vital part of his body, but that’s what it made her think of, watching Rodney from the corner of her eye. ‘He didn’t gasp or wince. I don’t think a muscle of his face moved. He turned pale, then fought to get the colour back. His hands began to clench and he fought to make them relax. You must go ...’ All this in the darkened bedroom after lunch, while he prepared to take a nap.
But what right does a man have to intrude on another man, Max thought unhappily? Women don’t understand. They can’t hide their misery from another woman, so they don’t try to. Every woman is part of the club, Womanhood. Someone’s husband runs away, she likes her friends to come and comfort her. We don’t. We’re all as lonely as the single stag under the shade by the stream.
. . . After ten o’clock, and a hint of the first fresh breeze of the cold weather to come; not here yet, for it was only September, but promising to come, in the clear atmosphere and the fading rains...
The quarries, still ablaze with lights, were at the near end of the town, and McFadden Pulley’s guest house nearer still, only a quarter of a mile from the dak bungalow. Light poured out from a front window, and there was a huge black car-shape silhouetted in front of it. He came close and saw that it was an old Bentley tourer. He shook his head and whistled in admiration. Those things went about six miles to the gallon. Rodney must be doing very well for himself. He squared his shoulders and walked up on to the veranda, and in through the double doors. A door on the left stood ajar and light streamed out over the coir matting on the hall floor. He knocked and called quietly, ‘Rodney? It’s Max.’
‘Max? There’s a man who’s always welcome. Come on in.’ Rodney was sprawled in one of the long cane chairs that were the feature of every dak bungalow, club, and guest house in India, its arms extended into leg rests, his long legs raised on to them. Two bottles of whisky stood on the table beside him, one of them three-quarters empty. There were two zinc buckets on the floor, filled with ice and bottles of soda water. Half a dozen empty soda bottles stood in a military rank against the wall.
‘Sit down. Pour yourself a drink.’ His eyes were bloodshot and his voice a little slurred. ‘I don’t want to get drunk to forget,’ Rodney said ‘- only to remember. And perhaps to shake up the machinery inside my head. The old equipment doesn’t seem to be able to deal with things quite as efficiently as it used to.’
Max poured a drink and sat down. ‘What’s happened? If I can ... Well, damn it, I’m here.’
‘Because Janaki sent you, I’ll bet. You can hide nothing from a good woman. You can hide anything from a good man - the better, the easier, if you follow me. And you are very very good, Max ... What shall I do? Rather, what will I do? Not what should I do. Certainly not! What will I do? Me, the ruthless chap looking after poor me. What will Me do? Wait till next week’s thrilling instalment ... Will Me go willingly or will Me be trampled on? Will Me find a new way to Happiness? ... It was like having a lover, a married woman. You got her by force perhaps in the beginning - not rape-force, just power, and you didn’t have to use it. Women like power because they need it. Yet they dislike you for having it, and dislike themselves for liking it ... So part of her always hated you for that, and another part was flattered. You were strong and the husband wasn’t. Then in time you fell in love, and there were enough times of physical ecstasy, power and sensuality fused, so that she fell in love too, a little. You thought it would go on for ever. But it wouldn’t, and her husband claimed her, softly, inevitably. You hadn’t noticed it, but the tide was going out. She floated out and away. She had to.
High and dry, now your power’s gone, the sheer hypnotic power of the erect and rampant stallion go
ne ... You know the feeling, when a woman says sadly, “You’d better go now?” No, perhaps you don’t, Max ...’
‘What’s happened?’ Max asked again, speaking very gently. Rodney was talking about the mysterious woman again, and yet Max was sure it wasn’t really a woman. At least, not any one woman. He wondered suddenly whether his friend had become impotent. One of the letters might be from his doctor confirming that there was no cure.
Rodney put his hand in his pocket and brought out the two letters. Max did not think, from the clean folds, that he had looked at them since the first time at the dak bungalow. It was a rare man who could do that. ‘This one is from McFadden Pulley. From Sir Andrew Graham, in person. He deeply regrets not having been able to tell us before, but the negotiations were of such delicacy that, etcetera, etcetera. In other words, the other chaps insisted on secrecy ... McFadden Pulley, private sterling company, is being sold to a public company, Indian owned. The people who are floating the new company have declared as policy that all non-Indian executives will be replaced within five years, three quarters of them within one year. With generous compensation, of course - subject to Indian income tax of, say, 97 per cent.’
He drank unhurriedly, almost lovingly, from his tall glass.
Max said, ‘But you’ve done well, Rodney. They may keep you for the five years.’
‘I am the most recently acquired non-Indian, bar two youngsters in Bombay. Anyway, it’s only a question of time ... and I’m damned well not going to go on, business-as-usual, knowing that these chaps are playing Russian roulette with my head. No, I’d have to get out sooner or later, and it will be sooner - because of my addiction to duty. The new owners are a canny bunch. They’re giving a nice directorship to an important Congressman. Guess who. L. P. Roy.’
‘Oh, my God,’ Max breathed. Rodney Savage was one of the few army officers whose name was known to political India. Two years earlier he had hunted down and shot the Communist firebrand K. P. Roy, while the latter was causing riots and sabotage in Bhowani. The fact that K. P. Roy had also attempted to assassinate Mahatma Gandhi, and had caused the deaths of many innocent Indians, had been played down in Nationalist circles; Roy was anti-British, and that was enough. This man L. P. Roy, now to be a director of McFadden Pulley, had made an attempt to have Rodney court-martialled shortly after the incident. He was K.P.’s younger brother.