by Paul Scott
Purvis caught his breath, placed one hand on the left side of his abdomen and then slowly breathed out. Inflammation of the colon, Perron decided. Amoebic in origin, almost certainly. Perron had become interested in the effects of tropical environment on temper and character. At home Purvis might well have been, as he had intimated, the most mild-mannered and considerate of men. Of strong constitution himself, Perron – who had not maintained his health in India without an almost valetudinarian attention to the medicinal needs of his body – had even so not been free of the shortness of temper that was one of the side-effects of an overworked and easily discouraged digestive system. The insight this had given him into the possibly important part played in Anglo-Indian history by an incipient, intermittent or chronic diarrhoea in the bowels of the raj was one of the few definite academic advantages he felt he had gained by coming to India.
‘Shall I freshen your drink, sir?’
‘Oh, God, would you?’
Perron did so. Purvis now sat back, one arm stretched along the top edge of the settee, his face turned towards the window and the view – now fading – of the coconut palms.
‘Have you ever felt it too, Perron? That the only way to survive a war is to treat it as totally unreal?’
‘The thought has struck me, sir.’
‘But have you ever succeeded?’
‘From time to time.’
Purvis was silent for a moment.
‘I envy you,’ he said. ‘I’ve tried. But I don’t seem to have the capacity to pretend.’ He looked at Perron. ‘Six years! Six years criminal waste of the world’s natural resources and human skills. History, you said?’
Perron nodded.
‘Seriously, or just as a way of spending the years of gilded youth?’
‘I intend to continue.’
‘Well, it’s different for you, Perron. If you make a study of history you make one of human folly. But sometimes I believe I simply shall never be able to forgive it. I had a breakdown, you know.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, sir.’
‘They sent me to this place full of human wrecks like myself, but I did my own therapy. Bloody fool me. I’d had a lot of spare time in the three years I was on the non-existent advisory staff. I’d been thinking about the long-term deleterious effect of imperial possessions on the economic viability and creative drive of the country that held them. Now I really got down to it. I did a paper and sent it to a chap I knew who published it. But how my benefactor in Whitehall got hold of it, God knows. I suppose he still received the journal it came out in and read it because my name was under it. Otherwise he’d given up serious reading in 1938, I should say. Incidentally, he’s probably right now in the process of landing himself a plum job with Attlee’s crowd. He was a Marxist when I first knew him, a Liberal Edenite anti-Municheer under Chamberlain, a high Tory under Winston, so why not a milk-and-water Socialist under Clem? But that’s by the way. Let me tell you what happened.’
‘The phone rang again, sir?’
‘Same man, of course. “You’ve had a raw deal, Purvis,” he said, “no one knows it better than I but it wasn’t my fault. When you’re out of that place come and see me. I think I can really help you this time if you make it soon.” Has it ever struck you, Perron, that there is nothing more gullible in the whole animal world than a human being? One has this hysterical belief in the non-recurrence of the abysmal, I suppose. One always imagines one has reached the nadir and that the only possible next move is up and out. And then, of course, there was the magic formula – third time lucky. Why not? I placed the most inordinate confidence in that third ring of the telephone, so much so that the trick-cyclists thought I’d had an unprecedented overnight recovery and congratulated themselves no end. Directly I got down to London I rang this fellow and arranged to meet him. This time it was lunch at the club he’d been bucking to get into for years. He was already veering left again because he didn’t see Churchill lasting long after the war. He introduced me to some of his new friends – I knew one or two of them myself and there was one in particular I respected. I thought, God, something’s going to be done at last. I was right, but wrong about what. Something was being done. Von Rundstedt’s attempt in the Ardennes had collapsed and all the signs were that the Germans were on their last legs. What was happening was people sniffing the peace and jockeying for position, but I was too stupid to see it like that at the time. I swallowed the whole line this fellow shot, about things now swinging the way of what he called “our sort of people” and how necessary it was to spike the guns of the old reactionary gang who’d be happy to let the war with Japan drag on and on and how our sort of people were determined that shouldn’t happen. I ought to have seen through it when he started waffling about the Singapore-mentality that had come within an inch of bringing us to our knees in ’42 and still existed out East in spite of all the efforts of men like Slim and Mountbatten to blow the cobwebs off the whole imperial-military apparatus. But I didn’t. I just said, “Where’s all this leading?” He said, “You mean what’s in it for you?” That’s the way he thought. “I’ll tell you,” he said, “that Indian paper of yours. It’s really made an impression.” I’d never thought of it as an Indian paper and I told him so. I told him it was a paper dealing in philosophical terms with an aspect of imperial economies and India came into it simply as an example, which didn’t make me an expert on India. I shouldn’t have said that. It gave him the line he needed. “But Purvis, experts on India are the last thing we want in India. We only want clear thinkers who’ll help men like Bill and Dickie cut through the Singapore mentality and put ginger up the backsides of all those curry-colonels sitting in the Bengal Club in Calcutta and living in the nineteenth century.” So I said, “Is that where you’re sending me?” And he said it would be more likely Delhi where the real damage was done because GHQ India was still a vital link in Mountbatten’s chain, the vital link, upon which the whole thing depended logistically, from the supply of men, arms and ammunition to the last piece of string and bamboo. Moreover, he said, if I wasn’t an expert on India now I would be within a few months, at any rate in my own specialized field, and since the Indian empire was simply not going to survive in the kind of post-war world he knew he and I both hoped to see, my personal experience of it should prove invaluable to whatever government had the intricate job of transferring power to the Indians and advising them during a period of transition. “And that, Purvis,” he said, “is the kind of little tree on which CBES grow for the plucking. After which you can pretty well write your own ticket. Continue in public life or retire, suitably rewarded, to the blessed groves of Academe.” ’
A flash of monsoon lightning lit the darkling flat.
‘Has he risen much himself, sir?’
‘Oh yes. You mean since ’39? Immeasurably. He might with questionable luck for the nation be a future Chancellor of the Exchequer. He wasn’t permanent establishment. I shouldn’t be surprised to hear he’s resigned his appointment and contested and won a safe Labour seat in the recent election.’
For a while Purvis sat without speaking or moving. Then he said, ‘I must admit that as a man who can see the way things are and the way they are going, he’s always left me standing. Academically it was the other way round and I don’t expect he’s ever forgiven me for that. People don’t, do they? Inside every successful man there’s often a disappointed and envious one, wouldn’t you say? Moaning and groaning and plotting and planning. You see, Perron, I know the score now. He’s got me out of the way deliberately. So that no nice little plum should fall in my lap.’ Purvis again suffered a spasm of pain. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t be so kind as to give me another refill, sergeant? I have an idea it would be dangerous for me to move.’
Perron again performed this duty. While he did so the servant padded barefoot into the dining-room area where he clicked two or three switches which turned on some of the wall lights in the living-room and a well-shaded table lamp. The effect was pleasant.
The bearer told Purvis his bath was ready.
Purvis waved him away. The bearer went.
‘Is the entire flat yours, sir?’ Perron asked, handing Purvis the refilled glass.
‘No. Thank you, sergeant. No, I wish it were. I’m only billeted here. It belongs to a senior British bank official, his ghastly wife and his beastly simpering daughter. They’re on leave in what they call Ooty, which I gather is Anglo-Indian for Ootacamund. As you can imagine, he and I don’t get on. We don’t see eye to eye on the subject of the creation and distribution of wealth. He thinks England has just committed suicide and thinks I’m mad when I point out that it’s not a socialist government but capitalist, simply substituting labour for finance. He tells people I’m a communist. Politically he’s a bloody fool.’
‘Are those paintings his, sir?’
‘What paintings?’
‘Those eighteenth-century paintings in the Guler-Basohli style. Behind you.’
Purvis didn’t look. ‘They may be part of the fixtures and fittings belonging to the bank for all I know.’
‘I wonder whether he realizes their value.’
‘Are they valuable?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then obviously he doesn’t. His lady-wife locked up all the Sheffield plate before going to Ooty. Frankly, I personally wouldn’t know a work of art from a bee’s arse and I fail to see any valid reason why one bit of pigment-daubed paper or canvas should be worth thousands and another worth sod-all, unless you fix the value of such things on the comparative basis of size of canvas and amount of paint actually expended.’
Perron stopped thinking of Purvis as a man and concentrated on the image of Purvis as an officer. Apart from inflammation of the colon, Purvis was suffering from paranoia. The man ought to be treated.
‘What do the doctors say about your illness, sir?’
‘I haven’t seen any doctors.’
‘Do you think that wise, sir?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘You were taking some pills in Major Beamish’s office, sir.’
‘Oh, those. Our banker friend’s lady-wife recommended them when I first arrived and she saw I’d already got the trots. They’re supposed to cement you up. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t. The only thing that really helps is liquor. No wonder the sahibs have always gone around half-cut. If I report to the army doctors they’ll either prescribe the same treatment or send me into dock for a check-up and I can’t afford to be in dock, Perron. Not for a day. Not for an hour.’
‘Why, sir? You gave me the impression that your duties here aren’t onerous.’
‘That’s because I’m not even supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be in New Delhi. We’re all supposed to be in New Delhi.’
‘All?’
‘The six of us who formed the para-military mission sent out to liaise with and advise the Indian Government, heads of services, and the Government at home, on – I quote – “all matters relevant to the anticipated increase of military forces requiring to be based in India as a consequence of a cessation of hostilities in Europe and the continuance thereof in South-East Asia, with special reference to the supply/demand factor as it will affect the existing ratio between civilian and military claims on the Indian economy.” End of quote.’
‘It sounds very distinguished, sir.’
‘Quite. I should have smelt a rat. And I should have smelt another when I saw the names of two of my fellow missionaries, including that of the head, and another when we were sent out before the war in Europe was quite over, although in the latter case I could be forgiven for noticing no alarming odour, except that of uncharacteristic forethought.’
‘Where are the other five members of the mission?’
‘Disposed, singly, by the cunning Indian Government to various parts of the country. Only the head of the mission has managed to get to Delhi. So you see, Perron, why I must stay on my feet. I must be where the head of the mission knows where to find me. I must be instantly available to join him.’
‘Have you heard from him recently, sir?’
‘No.’ Purvis again shut his eyes. ‘No. No. I can’t bear to let myself think it but I believe he’s ratted on us. I believe he’s comfortably esconced in some niche he’s found that just fits him and no one else. I used to send him reports. I suppose the others still do. But when I began to suspect that he was collating them, falsifying them, and sending them back to Whitehall as an account of the mission’s collective activities, I stopped. Childish, I suppose, but necessary, to flush him out or persuade him to flush me out. And, of course, I’ve nothing to report except a state of total chaos far worse than ever I encountered at home.’
He opened his eyes again but only for as long as it took him to drink the rest of his rum and lime.
‘I used to think, Perron, that on the day we started handing the colonies back to the bloody natives we’d all be able to look the twentieth century in the face at last. But if India’s an example the only way we’ll be able to do that and stay sane is by wearing blinkers and dark glasses and forgetting such places actually exist, and leave them to stew in their own juice except during their inevitable periods of acute financial crisis when we’ll have to pour money into them to stop a chain reaction of bankruptcy bringing any half-civilized economy to its knees.’
‘What makes you think that, sir?’
‘For heavens’ sake, sergeant! You’ve been in India for what’s it, two years? It’s taken me no more than three months to write it off as a wasted asset, a place irrevocably ruined by the interaction of a conservative and tradition-bound population and an indolent, bone-headed and utterly uneducated administration, an elitist bureaucracy so out of touch with the social and economic thinking of even just the past hundred years that you honestly wonder where they’ve come from. Not England, surely?’
‘Perhaps it’s the enervating effect of the climate, sir.’
‘It’s nothing to do with the bloody climate. The fact is places like this have always been a magnet for our throw-backs. Reactionary, unco-operative bloody well expendable buggers from the upper and middle-classes who can’t and won’t pull their weight at home but prefer to throw it about in countries like this which they’ve always made sure would remain fit places for them to live in. They’ve succeeded only too well. The most sensible thing for us to do is get rid of it fast to the first bidder before it becomes an intolerable burden.’
‘Wouldn’t that be rather unfair, sir? Historically, we have a moral obligation, surely?’
‘I couldn’t disagree more. Moral obligation! What next? It’s disastrous ever to feel a moral obligation for other people’s mistakes.’
It was in Perron’s mind to say that he’d always been under the impression that certain material benefits had flowed from the imperial possession, enriching Britain if not demonstrably impoverishing India (but somehow widening the gap in the two standards of living?) and that moral considerations could surely not be totally ignored by economists and accountants. But he thought it better not to aggravate Purvis who in any case would almost certainly be a member of the school of thought which held that the flow of benefit had petered out several years ago and a law of diminishing returns set in so that now the flow was operating in reverse. He compromised.
‘All the same, sir, and though I do appreciate what you say, I should hope to see the transfer of power accompanied by some indication of our continuing interest and concern.’
‘I’m sure you’ll be gratified then, sergeant. The demission will certainly be accompanied by such pious assurances. But they won’t mean what it will be hoped they’re thought to mean. Labour capitalism is no more generous than finance capitalism. Incidentally, we talk about transfer of power, demission of power, getting rid of it, whatever phrase you prefer, but that’s going to be easier talked about than done.’
‘Do you think so, sir? Some people say that once it’s appreciated that we sincerely mean to go the Indians will sink their
differences and agree how to work together.’
‘Then personally I think some people are absolutely wrong because the Indians are utterly demoralized at the very thought of having to take the ghastly mess over and run it themselves. We’ll have the devil’s own job off-loading it. And, God! one says “it” as if it’s a single transferable package which it isn’t, never has been and now never will be.’
‘A fact for which we’re partly to blame, sir?’
‘We? Don’t sell me that divide and rule stuff. The bloody place was divided when the sahibs first came and will be divided when the stupid sods go because they’ve always been content to sit on their bums in their bloody clubs and interfere only when the revenues were slow coming in. The place is still feudal, Perron. And so far as I can see the only man of influence who’s worried about that is whatever the chap’s name is, Nehru, but he’s a Brahmin aristocrat and can hardly speak any language but English, and against him you have to set the Mahatma and his bloody spinning wheel. Spinning wheel! In 1945. For God’s sake, what’s the man at? In the past twenty-five years he’s done as much to keep the country stuck in the mud with his village-industry fixation as the whole bloody raj put together.’
Stung as much by his feeling that there was something in what Purvis said as by the sense of the unfairness of such casual elimination of any consideration that didn’t automatically fall within the economist’s habitual terms of reference, Perron said:
‘Your sponsor in Whitehall was right, sir. You’ve become an expert on India in a very short time.’
Purvis stared at him.
‘Most Indian economists I’ve met happen to agree with me.’
‘Yes I see, sir. Then perhaps that is a reason for optimism.’
‘I doubt it, sergeant. It is in the Indian character to complain, but not to contest if a job depends on a posture of acquiescence. I’d better write you that letter. Bearer!’
While the letter was being written, Perron waited on the balcony and gazed across the Oval to the dark bulk of the Law Courts. For a moment – perhaps under the influence of that symbol of the one thing the British could point to if asked in what way and by what means they had unified the country, the single rule of law – he felt a pressure, as soft and close to his cheek as a sigh: the combined sigh of countless unknown Indians and of past and present members of the glittering insufferable raj; all disposable to make the world safe for Purvis. And other men like Purvis. (And, I suppose – Perron thought – for men like me.)