‘Yes, I haven’t had time for Sentinel yet.’
Is that a flicker of relief on my host’s face? He, too, seems very frail today.
‘Sorry you’ve been unwell,’ he mutters.
‘I’m fine now, thank you.’
‘I wasn’t sure you’d be coming. I got out some photographs, anyway.’
‘Thanks so much. I have some for you as well.’
Modak shuffles back indoors, returning a few minutes later with two large black albums. But his archive’s a disappointment. There are dozens of black-and-white photos, fixed at the corners with stamp hinges, pages separated by crinkly semi-transparent sheets. The first one which Modak shakily removes shows him with Mountbatten, inspecting a guard of honour. His evident pride seems another example of his Raj-identification. Other photos feature various politicians met as his career progressed. I wonder again how my host felt after Independence, as the servant of the people he’d pursued in the 1940s. It’s fascinating to see the leaders of the Parallel Government, Nana Patil and Y.B. Chavan. But these pictures date from the 1960s. The commentary stumbles along as Modak tries diligently to remember. However, he’s behaving as if I’ve come to research his life rather than Bill’s. I try to be patient. Anyway, what am I hoping for? He can’t be expected to suddenly retract his accusations. Besides, I’m not supposed to have read Sentinel and I can’t think how to probe without revealing that I have.
By the time Kiron calls us for food, I’m frustrated and rather bored. It’s a relief to come inside to the delicious aromas. We sit at the dining table as a middle-aged woman with hennaed hair in a centre-parting brings out the dishes. Looking at her, solid, comfortable and smiling, it’s hard to imagine what would have become of her but for Modak’s kindness.
‘Beef curry, dal and paratha,’ Kiron explains, waving round the dishes like a conductor, ‘rice and methi maloo.’ This last looks like spinach fried with plenty of garlic. ‘And one of your father’s favourites,’ she adds fondly, pointing to lamb cutlets and coarsely mashed potato flecked with skin. ‘We often had it in Satara.’
The English food looks insipid. But to humour Kiron for going to the trouble, I help myself. Like Bill before me, I imagine, I mitigate the blandness of public-school chow with a dollop of acid mango pickle. Modak looks at me keenly.
‘Fully recovered, I see.’
Is there a hint of knowing irony?
Over the meal, I show him my Aunt Pat’s photos. He immediately identifies the ones of the PTS. None appear to have been taken in Satara, though he doesn’t recognise all the locations. I deduce that those are from Bill’s later postings.
‘I remember his “Woodie” well,’ Modak remarks, pointing to a picture of Bill sitting in a Ford station wagon with timber framing. ‘We had to buy our own cars in those days, though we got an allowance. That’s Sergeant Staines, the drill instructor,’ he comments, pointing to a figure in long shorts to whom Bill is listening with a half-smile. ‘Ex-Guards. He always used to say, “Mr Modak, walk straight now, don’t waddle like a duck.” We were called “Mr”, like at Sandhurst,’ he adds proudly.
Police-Probationer Bill listening to N.A.P. Smith, Inspector-General of Police (in homburg) and Charles de Vere Moss (in pith helmet), Principal of Nasik PTS c. 1940
‘And these two?’
Bill looks on respectfully as two older men confer, like a schoolboy privy to a discussion between masters.
‘On the left’s Smith, the inspector-general, and the other’s de Vere Moss, the principal.’
‘ “Pembroke” in your novel.’
Modak smiles appreciatively. I show him Rajeev’s photo.
‘This is the intake before mine. That’s Ted Dodwell and Michael Mountain, can’t remember the chap between them.’
I make a note for Rajeev. Mountain features in Sentinel as a colleague who escapes Satara for a cushy post in Air Raid Precautions at the local hill station, thereby doubling Modak’s workload. My host tells one or two anecdotes about each figure, recaps aspects of the probationer’s life described in No Place for Crime and explains the syllabus he and Bill followed. There were four main elements. First, instruction in the Indian Penal and Criminal Procedure Codes and the Bombay Police Evidence Acts, with lower and higher exams in successive years. Subsidiary courses covered Hindu law. Second, study of two Indian languages. Hindi was compulsory, with the choice of another lingua franca of the province, Marathi, Gujarati or Kannarese. Then, Physical Training. This included drill, weapons, riding and team sports. Finally, the Police Manual and Investigative Procedures. When I look up, Kiron’s eyes are shut, as if she’s exhausted, or has heard it all many times before.
She perks up again when the cook appears to clear the plates. After a portion of kulfi and what resembles spotted dick, which I dutifully swallow, she excuses herself to make some phone calls. Modak and I retire to the courtyard again for coffee. An oil lamp’s been lit, attracting a large grey moth. I ask my host to look at the photos of Bill’s ‘girl-friends in India’. He doesn’t recognise either. Maria’s uniform, he suggests, indicates that she might have been based at Deolali army camp, outside Nasik.
‘Your novel suggests Bill Pryce-Jones had an Indian girlfriend at the PTS. Did my father?’
It takes Modak a while to understand what I’m asking.
‘Out of the question,’ he says firmly. ‘Such things were not allowed.’
‘But in your novel …’
‘My dear Moore-Gilbert, you’re a literature person, you’ve heard of novelistic licence. Some of the British certainly did such things. There was a man in Nasik, Gumbleton-something. But not an IP officer. Good Lord, no.’
Modak sounds very like the orthodox Brahmin officer whom ‘Bill’ scandalises in No Place.
‘But you talked about a lady friend the last time I came?’
‘Yes, yes,’ Modak responds testily, ‘but that’s quite another thing. I had a great English lady friend, the wife of the executive engineer in Satara. It doesn’t mean …’
He gazes impassively, as if the subject is closed. I wonder why ‘Bill’ is turned into such a womaniser. Perhaps it’s simply to give his character colour after all. I take a deep breath and ask about the novel’s treatment of police brutality.
‘How much of that was “novelistic licence”?’
My host looks uncomfortable, but he confirms the documentary nature of this aspect of his narrative, without mentioning Bill explicitly.
‘Regrettably, some officers thought it the most expedient way to get results. They were wrong. As I said yesterday, it simply fanned the insurgency. On the other hand, it wasn’t to be compared with what the Patri Sarkar were doing.’
Startled, I explain that I read Kamte’s memoir in Mumbai. ‘Was it common practice to beat demonstrators?’
‘My dear Moore-Gilbert, you have to understand what it’s like to be faced with a violent stone-throwing mob which won’t disperse and reckon the probable loss of life and property if they have their way. Sometimes we had to use live rounds.’
I’m struck by that ‘we’. But his look tells me that this subject, too, is closed. Damn it. I’m never going to find out exactly what was fact and what fiction in No Place – or in Sentinel.
Kiron returns, looking very tired. Although it’s only seven-thirty, I sense it’s time to leave.
‘There’s a lady who’d like to meet you, if you’re free now. She knew your father.’
After all the talk of ‘lady friends,’ I’m startled. ‘Who might that be?’
‘Her name’s Dhun Nanavatty. A Parsi. Widow of K.J. Nanavatty, who joined the IP a few years before your father and Emmanuel. They worked together, he and Bill. If you’re free, she’d like you to go round.’
‘Now?’
‘In an hour. It’s not too late for you?’
Kiron explains where Mrs Nanavatty lives, fifteen minutes in an auto-rickshaw.
‘I said I’d phone back if it’s not convenient.’
Wha
t luck. Thank God I didn’t cancel my meeting with the Modaks. This could certainly make up for the lack of new information here.
‘More than happy. Do you know when and where they were together?’
Kiron frowns with concentration, pulling at her lower lip.
‘In fact, do you know where my father went after Satara? His Service Record’s incomplete. The last entry says Ahmedabad, in early 1946.’
‘That’s where he must have been with Nanavatty,’ Modak chips in. ‘Keki was up there for quite a while, running the Home Guards.’
‘Didn’t Moore-Gilbert go somewhere on the coast?’ Kiron counters.
‘I don’t think so, my dear,’ Modak responds moodily, ‘I’m sure your father stayed in Ahmedabad until Independence.’
Kiron shrugs deferentially. ‘Perhaps Dhun can tell you.’
‘Now, I’ve made some telephone calls, too,’ Modak intervenes rather abruptly. ‘In case you want to go to Satara.’
Startled, I explain that I’m waiting for a call from Rajeev about Poel and the SIB archives.
‘Well, I phoned the DSP anyway. They’d be delighted to show you round. It might give you a better sense of what we were about. And you can see the fort your father used to run up to.’
I’m doubly glad I didn’t cancel. ‘Thank you, Mr Modak, that’s very kind.’
‘Not at all. Who knows, they might be able to dig up those confidential weekly reports. And if they don’t, ask to see the Part IVs.’
‘Part IVs?’
He nods. ‘The station’s annual records. They provide an abstract of the main developments, communalism, crime, traffic and so on. They don’t throw those away.’
The thought suddenly occurs to me. ‘Do you know anything about my father’s involvement in putting down the Hoors? I’ve been told that’s why he got the job in Satara.’
‘The Hurs of Sindh? I don’t remember him talking about them.’
Surely, if Professor Bhosle’s right, Bill would have discussed that earlier rebellion with his colleague in the course of preparing a strategy for dealing with the Parallel Government? If he didn’t, either he was never in Sindh, or this is further evidence of the distance or mistrust between the two men. Maybe Modak’s simply forgotten, as with some of the names in the photographs. How much can anyone be expected to remember after sixty-odd years?
When I get up, Modak gives me another of his visiting cards. On the front, above his details, he’s written ‘Sent By’ in a trembling script: on the back, the name and phone number of the DSP in Satara.
‘I hope you enjoy meeting Dhun,’ Kiron says, shaking my hand warmly. ‘Do try to get to Satara, it’s only a few hours and the drive’s beautiful. Ah, Satara,’ she adds wistfully, ‘we had some happy times there. It was just after we married.’
Modak’s face, however, suggests otherwise. ‘If you come back this way, be sure to drop by,’ he mutters.
I leave with mixed feelings. Kiron’s a darling, without a bad bone in her body. As for Modak, he’s too complex to grasp in two sittings.
There’s time to kill before my appointment with Mrs Nanavatty. I consider going back to the Samrat, but can’t face being poisoned again just yet in an auto-rickshaw. Instead I head for the German Bakery to consider my options. As I walk down Koregaon Park Road, I doubt the wisdom of going to Satara. While heading south into the territory of the Parallel Government would be another adventure, the likelihood of finding Bill’s weekly reports seems remote. The Part IVs would no doubt be interesting, but I’ve already got a grasp of the main events which concern me. And since Bill wasn’t the resident DSP, I doubt he’d have had much input into those. I’m also getting a little anxious about time; it’s more than halfway into my trip. Probably better to head back to Mumbai, and be in a position to ask Poel to chase down the missing files as soon as he returns.
When I arrive at the café, it’s overflowing with blissed-out maroon-robed Oshoites and I head instead to another one across the road. That’s packed, too, with what look like young professionals and students, chatting animatedly on sofas, sipping peppermint-flavoured tobacco through their shishas. I take a table near the plasma screen. It’s showing some English-language news channel and the banner reads ‘Breaking News: Assault on Gaza’. It’s far more serious than I realised from the auto-rickshaw driver. Wave after wave of air bombardments are underway. Modern Empire deals with ‘terrorism’ rather differently than in Bill’s time and it’s reported rather differently, too. Foreign correspondents are corralled on a hilltop some kilometres from the conflict; behind them massive columns of smoke mushroom over Gaza City, rising in poetic slow motion. At least at Guernica and Coventry, the population had a few minutes’ warning of the bombers. Now death comes silently out of cloudless skies, long before the jets’ noise can be heard. A horse-faced Israeli army major insists her country’s prepared to do everything necessary, for as long as it takes, to ‘degrade the assets’ of the ‘terrorist entity’. Nothing about what’s going on at the receiving end.
‘This chair free?’ a man asks, in a northern European accent.
I’m relieved to be distracted. He’s slim and tanned, dressed in loose orange cheesecloth trousers and a pale-blue waistcoat with bulging pockets. Despite a crease-less complexion, his thick copper-gold hair’s streaked with grey. I motion him to put down his crash helmet and bag, a flimsy cotton foldover worn like a bandolier. He goes to the counter and returns with a plate of stale-looking macaroni cheese.
‘Starving,’ he explains, ‘just got in from Goa.’
‘You came by bike?’ I’m astounded.
He gestures outside. ‘Moped. Before that I crossed over to Madras and back.’
I take to him immediately. Travelling India on a moped sounds pleasingly crazy. He assures me it’s not so bad. The Honda’s extremely manoeuvrable, though he checks the brakes religiously every few days.
‘And I always use earplugs. The truck klaxons, man, they blow you out of your seat otherwise.’
Anders is sixty-two, Swedish, and has fallen into the habit of wintering in Goa. He goes home in spring, spending the warmer months on his boat, moored in one of Stockholm’s harbours. Mostly he eats fish which he catches himself, and saves his pension for winter breaks. He got bored this time and decided to do some travelling. Despite India’s apparently enthusiastic embrace of globalisation, foreigners still can’t buy any sort of vehicle in India, so a local friend did it for him.
‘You certainly travel light.’
He dangles his bandolier from one finger. ‘That’s it. Change of clothes, my documents, toothbrush and a book. What’s that you have there?’
I hold up Gandhi’s Autobiography. Anders looks sceptical. ‘Got anything lighter you’ve finished with?’
‘Perhaps back at my hotel.’
On my recommending the Samrat, Anders decides to check it out. ‘I’ve been in some real dumps this trip, man. Like to treat myself every so often to a hot shower.’
He asks what I’m doing in Pune, and I give him an abbreviated version.
‘Sounds amazing,’ he responds. ‘Never really talked to my old man after my parents divorced. Regret it now. Not that he had an interesting life in the colonies or anything, he was an accountant in suburban Stockholm. But what he felt, how he looked at things, what was important, I never thought of asking before he died. You gotta grab a chance like this, squeeze it for all it’s worth.’
I explain my dilemma over Satara.
‘Satara, you gotta go, no question,’ he declares. ‘You’re meeting people here who knew your father. Maybe the same will happen down there. Perhaps there’s some old constable who worked with him?’
What an idiot I’ve been not to think of that before. Modak may be the only survivor from the officer cadre of the IP, but that was minuscule compared to the other ranks.
‘You’re on a roll, man, go with the flow.’ He smiles at my doubtful expression. ‘Mind you, personally I’d prefer to spend time in Pune.’
I explain I haven’t seen much apart from Yeravda, not even the local attraction, the Osho commune.
‘I dropped by just before I came here. Thought I might spend New Year there. I hear the parties are wild. Get most of my chicks on the internet at home. Shame that’s not so well developed yet in India.’ He grins wolfishly. ‘Goa’s full of hotties. But with AIDS it’s too much of a lottery. Should have started coming thirty years ago. Want to come for a drink?’
I decline, citing my appointment with Dhun.
‘OK, maybe see you later at the Samrat.’
As I leave the café, I make the decision to head for Satara. Anders is right. Who knows what I might turn up there? Besides it’s entirely possible that Poel may be away until the New Year. In any case, Satara’s only a few hours away, so I won’t lose much time if Rajeev calls me back from there. Go with the flow; I repeat the mantra as I step into the road to hail an auto-rickshaw.
Mrs Nanavatty’s is even more modest than the Modaks’, a two-bedroom flat in a small development one block in from the reeking river which drags its viscous carcase through the north-east of the city. I’m met at the door by a striking woman with short dark hair who tells me she’s Mrs Nanavatty’s daughter, Erna. It’s difficult to judge her age, and I’m wary after my experience with the Modaks. Mrs Nanavatty, however, is clearly very old. She’s tiny and stooped, face deeply lined behind pebble glasses which make her toffee eyes look huge. She has piled-up thick grey hair and wears a wrap over one shoulder like a toga, half concealing a blue silk top. A faint scent of cardamom hangs in the air.
‘Come in, my dear, so pleased to meet you. I couldn’t believe it when Kiron phoned me to tell me you’d come. Do call me Dhun. Now I’m ninety-four, so you’ll have to speak up.’
Her eyes are much younger, almost playful as she motions me to a white leather armchair in the cramped living room. I feel much more at ease than at the Modaks’.
‘A peg?’
It takes me a moment to remember she’s using the Raj-era term for a shot of liquor. I ask for fresh lime-soda instead. Erna bustles out to the kitchen. No servants here. I slowly realise why the room feels claustrophobic. It’s crammed with game trophies, of the kind familiar from childhood, antlers on the walls, a leopard skin hanging. In one corner is a pair of elephant tusks, thick ends capped with engraved brass. Jammed between the glass coffee table and the sofa is a display cabinet. The familiar IP sword sits next to another I don’t recognise.
The Setting Sun Page 14