The Moneylenders of Shahpur

by Helen Forrester

  ‘I haven’t done anything wrong!’

  ‘Neither of us has. But once they are here, they’ll hang around and expect to be fed – and if we really want anything done, they’ll expect suitable baksheesh.’ He finished buttoning up his white coat.

  ‘Oh,’ said Diana, immediately deflated.

  ‘Cheer up. I’m sure you’re right. But, at best, that piece of registered envelope you found is a clue; it’s not concrete evidence against the dacoits. And, you know, the villagers will be punished – and the dacoits would still get away with it.’

  That evening, after an early dinner, Diana went on the bus to see John and ask his opinion. Ranjit admitted her and managed a polite smile, a smile that faded immediately he returned to his back veranda; it was replaced by a look of great anxiety.

  John agreed with Ferozeshah. ‘I’ve heard that they have sent a good man down from Delhi to investigate, because of the murder of that Englishwoman. Let him get on with it.’

  Diana sighed. ‘I suppose you’re right – I felt so clever working it all out. But how will those poor people in Pandipura cope?’

  ‘I bet the donkeys are back in the village by now. The villagers haven’t suffered much and they’ll all be as quiet as mice – they don’t want the dacoits to burn the place flat next time they come this way.’

  ‘That’s awful! It’s bullying!’

  ‘We live in an awful world,’ responded John almost flippantly.

  His acceptance of human wickedness surprised her. It savoured of a Hindu outlook.

  He continued. ‘They probably had a plan to get the proceeds of the robbery out of the province and, because of the storm, it went wrong, so they pounced on the nearest village – they needed transport that fitted into the landscape and could carry, say, builder’s sand, with the loot buried in it. Donkeys would be perfect. Horses stick out like sore toes, here.’

  ‘Why use horses at all?’

  ‘Speed – to get away from the scene, in the first instance. They probably had a string of camels waiting, and missed them in the dark and the dust.’

  ‘My patient was so frightened and worried that she nearly died.’

  ‘That’s too bad. Is she all right now?’

  ‘Yes. She’ll be OK.’

  ‘Good. I say, can you stay to dinner?’ he asked shyly.

  Diana looked up at him and smiled. ‘I’d love to,’ she said, and hoped she could eat a second meal.

  John took up his stick and went to consult Ranjit. The bearer agreed morosely that he could provide enough food. John turned to go back into his room.

  ‘Sahib …’

  ‘Yes?’

  Ranjit, seated on the floor in front of his precious Primus stove, looked up. He looked as sour as a piece of dried tamarind. ‘Nothing, Sahib,’ and he leaned forward to pick up his paring knife.

  Really, John thought, Ranjit was a queer old stick sometimes.

  As he re-entered, John asked Diana, ‘Do you happen to know Anasuyabehn Mehta?’

  ‘No. Who is she?’

  ‘Dean Mehta’s daughter. Lives a few doors down. I just wondered.’ He did not like to say that in his cash box lay the love letter for her, left by Tilak’s servant earlier that day, which he wanted delivered to her. He had read it. It said simply that Tilak had to return to Bombay and was consulting his uncle. It would mean the world to Anasuyabehn, and, even if Dean Mehta saw it, there was nothing dishonourable in it.

  Diana watched him cross the room, leaning on his stick. ‘I don’t think that you need to use that stick all the time,’ she said abruptly.

  Startled out of his thoughts of Anasuyabehn, John glanced down at the offending stick.

  ‘Do you have any pain now?’

  ‘Not often, unless I’ve hit myself on something.’

  ‘I don’t think Ferozeshah has examined you for a long time. He’s been rushed off his feet.’

  ‘Oh, I only ask him for a sedative. In England, they told me not much more could be done.’

  She gazed at John standing uncertainly before her, his face slowly reddening with embarrassment.

  ‘Forgive me,’ she said gently, ‘for being so personal – but I saw a fair amount of similar injury during the war and how it was treated. I believe you could learn to walk without a stick – and quite straight. It would mean that the rest of your body wouldn’t ache so much from being out of position. I imagine it does ache?’

  He nodded, and she got up and went to stand in front of him. ‘Would you like to try?’ she asked. ‘I’ll help you.’

  She was not a tall person and seemed very diminutive to him. Her eyes crinkled up with humour, and she said, as if she had read his thoughts, ‘I’m quite strong.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind having a bash at it.’

  ‘OK. I need first to see exactly how you put your feet down. Put your hands on my shoulders and I’ll walk backwards, while I watch your feet.’

  He laid his stick on the divan and shyly put his hands on her shoulders. It was so long since he had touched a woman that, at first, his thoughts were not about learning to walk. He stumbled, only to be steadied by a surprisingly strong arm round his waist.

  Diana held him for a moment; then quickly let her arm drop, afraid that her instinctive movement might be misconstrued. John was thinking, ‘She’s too bloody innocent for words.’

  ‘Let’s try again,’ she said in her bright, professional voice, and he glumly gave his attention to what she was saying.

  He held on to her and advanced as she retreated.

  Ranjit peeped through the half-open door and was horrified to see such abandoned behaviour. He went back to his cooking pots wagging his head in a hopeless fashion.

  It was even worse when he went in to announce dinner. The copper and the dark heads were bent close together over the desk, while the Memsahib drew indecent pictures of men doing peculiar actions with their legs.

  Ranjit hardly slept that night.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  On a littered desk, lay Mahadev’s money belt like a pallid, dead snake. Seated before it was a man leaning his head on his clenched fists. He had not moved for twenty minutes.

  An increasing ruckus outside the window reminded him that patients were gathering there for morning surgery. He lifted his bald head wearily and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, to look around his cluttered little office, where the few pieces of furniture were all piled high with dusty records. The corners of the room were festooned with cobwebs, and the uncurtained windows were opaque with dust, a myriad of smears and finger-marks. One window was open and, through it, he could see the dreary, flat, semi-desert landscape shimmering in remorseless heat.

  The chatter outside the window increased; the Mission of Holiness was a very busy place, and the missionary himself felt tired to death.

  He opened one fist.

  On his soft, white palm glittered a beautifully cut ruby, its perfection undimmed by the gloom of the office.

  It must be worth thousands, he thought, and glanced at the money belt in front of him. There must be a fortune in that!

  The money belt was a plain strip of grubby white cotton, which had been folded and stitched down one side. Along the whole length of the belt, at about one and a half inch distance from each other, lines of stitching divided the belt into small compartments. Judging by the feel of it, each compartment held a stone at least as big as the ruby.

  ‘’Strewth, I wonder what it’s all worth?’ he muttered. ‘I bet it’d buy a hundred new hospital beds, the salary of another doctor, two nurses and an operating room – and a stack of penicillin ceiling high. And bibles – dozens of them in Gujerati.’

  He again looked at the ruby and smiled grimly.

  ‘I could sell a gem like that in the jewellery market of Bombay or Delhi as easily as falling off a log – and who would know? I can simply say that he had no belt on him when he arrived here.’

  As he ruminated, the waiting patients outside were being marshalled into a qu
eue by a middle-aged Indian. The missionary had found him in a ditch, the sole survivor of a family of refugees from Pakistan who had died of starvation.

  The whole queue would be suffering from malnutrition, thought the missionary despondently, apart from their heat boils, their venereal diseases, their tuberculosis and heaven only knew what else.

  There was a knock on the door, and he hastily swept the belt into his desk drawer, and stood up.

  It was only the woman sweeper coming to do the floor, and he walked up and down one side of the room while she swept the other side. The ruby was still clutched in his hand. What was he to do? And who was this man, anyway?

  In the waist of his homespun dhoti had been knotted a return Interclass train ticket to Delhi. A small purse, pinned in the same place by a large safety-pin, had yielded twenty-three rupees and some change. His linen had, at one time or other, been marked with a D in Western script. Having found the money belt, the missionary could well understand why his patient had made such a frantic effort to escape from the train.

  The sweeper opened the door to the passage and swept through it the dust she had collected. She began to sweep her way slowly and ineffectually towards the front door.

  From beyond the door she faced, came the sound of loud, authoritative voices. A rifle butt was banged on the woodwork.

  With lightning speed, the missionary shut the door of his office, snatched the money belt out of the drawer and bundled it and the ruby into the wall safe.

  The sweeper opened the door and came flying into the room, at the same time trying to touch the feet of the police officers accompanying her. After them came the Mission’s head nurse, protesting in Gujerati that the Doctor Sahib was very busy. It seemed suddenly that the room was filled with armed men, though, in fact, there were two police constables with rifles and one officer with a pistol in his holster.

  Calmly and benignly, the missionary rose from his desk chair, one hand raised as if to bless. On the desk lay his bible, open as if he had been studying. ‘Good morning, gentlemen. What can I do for you?’

  The belligerent attitude of the police gave way to faint respect. The small man with the pistol stepped forward and answered him in good English. He said that they were looking for a missing Bania and that they had heard that he had recently had a Bania as patient. Before he could be answered, he turned to the constables and told them to wait outside.

  The missionary answered calmly, ‘Please sit down,’ and motioned his unwelcome visitor to a chair. With his eyes on the doctor, he sat down with a rattle of accoutrement.

  On his part, the missionary weighed up his visitor. A Bengali by the accent, supremely shrewd, a very senior police officer judging by the good cut of his khaki uniform. From a corner, the head nurse watched them both, and tried to stop his teeth chattering.

  ‘We do have a man here, who by his dress appears to be a Gujerati Bania,’ agreed the missionary.

  ‘I believe he arrived here under unusual circumstances and that he had a bullet in him.’

  ‘Yes. He has had high fever for three days, so we have no idea who he is. Had his temperature not gone down during the night, you would have heard from us today. He is now under sedation. He is obviously exhausted and needs to sleep.’

  ‘I’d like to see him,’ said the officer, still watching the missionary.

  ‘He won’t wake for at least two more hours. You could try waking him now, of course, but I doubt whether you would get any coherent response from him.’

  ‘You should know that in circumstances such as these, the police should be informed immediately.’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course, quite,’ the missionary was at his vaguest, with a gentle smile. ‘We have no telephone – and we are so busy – you have seen the queue outside. I could not spare anyone to go to town. I knew he would recover. It was not a question of murder.’

  ‘It’s a question of attempted murder,’ replied the Bengali tartly. ‘I’ll leave a constable to sit by his bed, and I’ll return in about two hours; I’ve other business in the neighbourhood.’ He stood up, ready to leave. ‘Exactly how did this man come to you?’ He had already heard the story from the Mission’s lorry driver, who had been roughly questioned a few minutes before, but he wanted to hear the American’s version.

  Now, he found that it tallied quite well with what he already knew.

  ‘The Pandipura villagers saved his life, of that there is no doubt,’ the missionary told him. ‘They are to be commended.’

  ‘It would seem so,’ grunted the officer.

  After the officer had gone, the American took out the money belt and carefully eased the ruby back into it. Then he went to see his patient.

  Mahadev was sleeping quite relaxedly and his colour was good. By the bed, sat a police constable, his rifle across his hairy knees. He was already dozing.

  ‘Are you ready, Doctor Sahib?’ his nurse inquired. ‘There’s a long queue.’ He had his hand on the door latch of the dispensary.

  The American sighed and said he was ready. How much penicillin would a ruby buy, he wondered?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  That morning, old Desai was so anxious that, for the first time in his life, he missed reading his morning mail. After drinking a glass of milk, he set out at daybreak for the Mission of Holiness. A servant drove the carriage, and Desai snarled at him unceasingly to hurry.

  The old man had a brass box of lunch on his knee and a full water-jar on the seat beside him. Next to the water-jar, sat Baroda Brother. He was placidly polishing his spectacles on his shirt end; the morning was relatively cool, and he was enjoying the drive through the half-awakened city. By the driver sat his son, thrilled at the adventure.

  The narrow city streets gave way to wide gravel boulevards, lined with trees shading the graceful houses and bungalows of the city’s well-to-do millowners. These petered out to become a rough track; and the last mile was little more than lorry wheelmarks in the sand, through which the horse could hardly drag the carriage. Finally, the passengers got down and walked along beside the vehicle and made better progress.

  Meanwhile, Mahadev lay in his hospital bed, under a mosquito net, and listened. His head ached so intolerably that he could not bear to open his eyes. When he tried to shift himself slightly, the pain in his back made his senses reel. One of his arms seemed to be tied to his chest. A short distance from him a number of voices made a steady hum – he wondered if it were the dacoits and lay very still, so as not to betray his presence.

  Then he realized that he was in a bed of sorts, and made himself open his eyes for a second. He caught a glimpse of an old-fashioned English screen making a wall around him. Above the wall, he could see a shelf with glass containers sitting on it; over them a squirrel scampered.

  He tried to think.

  That was it! The trip to Delhi, to return the Maharaja’s jewels. He had borrowed against them to set up a radio factory and now he wished to pay his debt.

  The jewels!

  With his unconfined hand, Mahadev felt round his waist. The belt was gone.

  The shock was so alarming that he tried to sit up, only to fall back as rivets of pain went through him.

  ‘Doctor Sahib,’ called a voice beside him, and he forced himself to open his eyes again.

  He did not know what he had expected, but the sight of a constable gaping down at him was a further shock. Apprehension about the loss of the stones gave way to fear for his personal safety. What had he done that he should be under arrest? In a split second, Mahadev saw himself flung into a filthy prison or, at best, reduced to utter poverty, a lender of single rupees.

  In response to the call, a man came round the screen. An Englishman! The sense of lunatic nightmare increased.

  ‘Ah, I see we are better,’ the missionary said, his professional smile covering his own despair. ‘I’m probably damned if I steal that belt,’ his thoughts ran, ‘and, if I don’t, I’m condemned to this unmerciful round of watching patients suffer for the lack
of simple drugs. Why, O Lord, why?’

  He took the patient’s wrist in pudgy, capable fingers, and added to himself, ‘And if this guy pays his bill, I’ll be lucky.’

  ‘How’s the head?’

  Mahadev ignored the question. ‘Where am I?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re in the Mission of Holiness Hospital. I brought you in from Pandipura, near Ambawadi.’

  ‘How badly am I hurt?’

  ‘Bullet lodged in your shoulder – I’ve got it out, and a neat furrow across your skull where another one hit you – that was a near thing.’ He turned and asked the constable to help him prop up Mahadev, while he looked at the head wound. The constable, who had never been in a hospital before, was fascinated, and did what the doctor ordered very carefully. Mahadev cried out with pain, however.

  The doctor was undoing the bandages round his head. ‘You’ll be OK,’ he assured the shattered moneylender, who was certain nothing would ever be OK again. The conversation was in Gujerati and the police constable watched and listened attentively. ‘What happened? Do you know?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘The dacoits must’ve been short of men, because none of them caught hold of my carriage door, so I opened it and slipped down on to the track and ran for the embankment. A huge dust storm was raging – confusion – horses – screams. I started to climb further up the embankment where there were trees and bushes. They must have seen the movement.’ He sighed and winced. ‘When I came round, the train had gone.’ He stopped; the effort of talking was too great. The missionary removed the dressing, and when the pain of it subsided, he went on, ‘I remember trying to crawl to the new main road – and a woman washing me.’

  The constable spoke. ‘It’s better to stay in the train in a raid by dacoits. If you hand everything over quickly, you’re usually all right. Not so with Muslims, of course.’

  Mahadev looked at him sourly and nearly shrieked when the missionary muttered, ‘Ah, healing nicely,’ and clapped a new dressing on to his head. When he had replaced the bandages, he said, ‘Well, sir, you’ve had a lucky escape. Later on today, you could try moving around a little. But, first, I want to look at your shoulder. And I want to know who you are, so that I can inform your family.’