by Paul Scott
Purvis called him over and handed him an envelope. It was addressed to a Maharanee. Perron glanced at Purvis, mildly surprised, but the man was leaning back again, eyes closed. To Purvis, Maharanees were probably two a penny.
II
At seven-thirty Perron arrived by taxi at a block on the Marine Drive which according to the address on the envelope bore the name Sea Breezes. The driver he had flagged down in the Queen’s Road translated this after several movements of uncertainty as Ishshee Brizhish, a place known to him. Armed with the envelope and a square package which contained the bottle of whisky, Perron entered the building and went up in the lift to the floor indicated by the board which gave flat numbers and the names of the occupants.
The décor in hall and landings was reminiscent of that in houses and apartments built in the ultra-modern style of the late ’twenties and early ’thirties, but it achieved a severe and bleak rather than a severe and functional effect. The cream-painted walls were dingy and the chromium rails bore the patina of years of contact with the human hand. The door of the flat at which he now stood was peagreen like those he had seen at successive stages through the latticework iron gates of the lift shaft and was well finger-marked round the keyhole.
He pressed the bell. No comforting sound of having got it to ring reached him and no hum of party conversation either. He wondered whether Purvis had the date right and then whether someone had tipped the Maharanee off about Security’s interest in her circle of friends so that she had cancelled the party and would be found curled up with a good book. Wondering this he next considered the possibility that she had taken a fancy to Purvis and planned to lure him back to the flat with or without the bottle of whisky on a night when she knew they could be alone together. He could not assess the power of Purvis’s sexual attraction. In such matters women had their own unassailable scale of values and judgment. But, having arrived at this possible explanation he now wondered how old she was and, if young, how well-favoured. The evening suddenly seemed full of an unexpected kind of potential.
The door was opened abruptly by a young Indian girl of gazellelike charm. ‘Hello,’ she said. Clearly she had none of that creature’s timidity.
‘Hello. I’ve got a note and a package.’
‘For me?’
He gave her the envelope. Her beautifully architectured eyebrows contracted. ‘Oh, it’s for Auntie. What a jolly shame. But do come in.’
‘Thank you.’
Perron stepped inside and let her close the door. Her scent was too cloying for his taste but welcome after the smell on the night breeze blowing in from the Bombay foreshore which Perron was convinced was used as a lavatory. Indian insistence that it was just the smell of the sea and the seaweed had not yet made him change his mind.
In the hall – the top end of a long wide passage with doors leading off from either side of it and cluttered with solid but poorly assorted furniture, including an ornately carved black Chinese settle upholstered with velvet cushions – the girl took the package from him and put it together with the envelope on an ebony table on which a heavy and thick-ankled Shiva danced in his petrified ring of fire. She said, ‘Come and have a drink why not?’ and led the way into a living-room.
Around the walls sofas and chairs were set in the solemn and rather hostile manner of the segregational East. The tiled floor was uncarpeted – perhaps for dancing. There was no balcony but the windows were wide open. The lighting was less successful than in Purvis’s flat. From the centre of the ceiling hung a cluster of bulbs in a cruciform wooden chandelier of the kind that at home was de rigueur in rooms that sported fake beams and parchment lampshades with galleons stencilled on them. But these bulbs were unshaded. A few wall-lights in glass and chromium brackets added to the glare but did nothing to eliminate the harsh shadows. Near the window was a cocktail cabinet of impressive vulgarity, and to this the girl had gone. She turned round.
‘You’re a sergeant, aren’t you? Auntie says all sergeants drink beer but there was one the other night who asked for a White Lady.’
‘Were you able to oblige him?’
‘One of the officers got it for him but it took them ages because of the glass having to be put in the refrigerator.’
‘A straightforward gin and lemon squash would suit this sergeant very well. Shall I make it myself and get you a drink too?’
‘Oh, no. I’m supposed to do this sort of thing. Auntie says it’s good for me because it helps me not to be shy. I used to be very shy. But if you like to hold the bottle and help to pour it would be nice because I find the bottles so heavy, and once I dropped one and Auntie trod on a piece of the glass and was very cross.’
Perron joined her at the Wurlitzer-style cabinet. At a rough estimate he thought there were about fifty glasses of different shapes set ready, none of them as clean as they might have been. Gravely he uncapped a bottle of Carew’s and held it above the glass she presented. She put her hand on his and canted.
‘Is that enough?’
‘More than generous.’
‘May I leave you to do the rest? I must take Auntie the letter and parcel. Oh –’ She half-ran to an occasional table and returned with a cigarette box and a lighter. After he had taken a cigarette he had to hold the box because she insisted on lighting the cigarette for him and needed two hands to produce a flame.
‘There. Please excuse me now. There are plenty of ashtrays.’ At the door she again remembered something important. ‘What is your name? If there were a lot of people it wouldn’t matter but since there’s only you it would look rude not to tell Auntie who it is, wouldn’t it?’
He told her, and added, ‘But I’m sure it’s mentioned in the note.’
After she had gone Perron went to the window. For all his doubts about its present source he had long since learned to appreciate the sensuousness of the warm smell of the East and how it could set mind and body at ease. He enjoyed a sensation almost of tranquillity and continued to enjoy it for some time, in fact until he became aware of the riding lights of a section of the anchored Zipper-destined flotilla out in the roads. And then a ludicrous but slightly worrying image presented itself, of the Maharanee standing at this very window, observing the scene in daylight through a telescope and dictating notes for the girl to record (in invisible ink) about the class and tonnage of each ship as it arrived and dropped anchor.
‘Auntie says will you come through?’
The girl was standing in the open doorway. He stubbed his cigarette and followed her into the long passage and down to a door at the end which, if closed before, now stood half-open upon a room so dark that at first he thought there was no light on at all and hesitated to enter when the girl indicated that he should do so.
‘It’s all right. Auntie has been resting but she’s finished now.’ Inside, he saw that there was a light, but this was from a table lamp in the far corner of the room whose shade was draped with a square of what looked like heavy crimson velvet. A hand, in silhouette, crept over the cloth and removed it; and in the now brighter but still deep rosy glow of the lamp the Maharanee was revealed, recumbent on a Récamier couch. Her saree was also red, but of what shade and intensity Perron could not easily judge because the material obviously took colour from the lamp shade. She seemed like an ember that might at any moment pulse brilliantly and dangerously into life. She wore no jewelry. Her skin was pale but darker than that of the Parsee ladies of Bombay. Her hair, cut and set in a style that obviously owed more to what she thought suited her than it did to any fashion of the day, was black, unoiled, parted in the middle, and fell, in corrugations of the kind obtained by using hot tongs, just short of her shoulders, framing a classic Rajput face of prominent cheekbones, full red lips, a hawklike but beautifully proportioned nose, and eyes whose luminosity was accentuated by cunningly applied kohl. Between her black brows she had painted a red tika one-quarter inch in diameter. She looked about thirty and was probably forty. She wore no choli and both arms, one shoulder and part
of her midriff were bare. Perron, half-convinced he also saw the thrust and outline of a nipple, found her seductively handsome.
‘Auntie,’ the girl said from behind him. ‘This is Sergeant Perrer. Sergeant Perrer, this is my Auntie Aimee.’
Perron bowed.
‘Have you come to my party?’ the Maharanee asked in a high-pitched but slightly hoarse voice. ‘I’m afraid you’re on the early side. Aneila opened the door to you because all the servants are resting. I make them rest because sometimes my parties go on for a day or two. Aneila, what is wrong with you? Why is our visitor still standing?’
‘I’m sorry, Auntie.’
Perron turned to help her but the chair she chose was very small and presumably almost weightless. She managed it easily, placing it two feet from the couch.
‘Now you had better go to start rousing everybody.’
‘Yes, Auntie.’
‘Tell them the guests are beginning to arrive. Do sit down. Have we met before?’
‘I’ve not had that pleasure, Your Highness.’
‘Please call me Aimee. Pandy and I are divorced. I keep the title because it is useful and servants and shop people like it and Pandy’s new wife doesn’t. Are you a friend of someone I know?’
Perron explained his mission and drew her attention to the package and envelope which were on the table, propped against the lamp where Aneila had presumably left them.
‘Captain Purvis?’ she asked, reaching for the letter. ‘He must be one of Jimmy’s friends. When Jimmy is in Bombay he brings so many people.’ She opened the letter. The paper it was written on seemed to displease her. She held it between the tips of two fingers whose nails were elegantly manicured and varnished. ‘Leonard?’ she said. ‘Leonard Purvis?’ And presently, ‘Whisky?’ The note although short called for concentration. ‘Chillingborough and Cambridge? Why does he tell me this? Why shouldn’t you have studied at Chillingborough and Cambridge? So many Englishmen do. Who is Leonard Purvis?’
‘A member of an economic advisory mission to the Government of India.’
‘Are you also in this mission?’
‘No, I’m concerned with army education.’
‘What does the mission do?’
‘I don’t think it does anything.’
‘And what do you do?’
‘Very little.’
‘What a relief. People are always dashing about. What is your first name?’
‘Guy.’
‘Have you another?’
‘Lancelot.’
She frowned.
‘There’s also Percival,’ he said, and added, ‘but I’m not keen on it.’
‘Names are a terrible problem. It is best to make them up. Will you stay to my party? It may be boring but it is difficult to tell in advance. It depends on who comes. If it is too tedious I just come back to my room and tell the servants to lock up the drinks and go to bed. It is the only way to get rid of people. Anyway tonight I will be optimistic because it has begun well. Where are you staying?’
‘In a place called Kalyan.’
‘Oh, then you are on Zipper. Nearly all the military people who come here nowadays are on Zipper.’
He thought it wiser to let this pass.
He said, ‘It’s very kind of you to invite me to stay and I do have an evening off duty. But if I’m too early shall I come back later?’
‘Oh, no. Other people will be here in a minute. If not ask Aneila to entertain you. Ask her to play the gramophone, and then you can dance. She is a very good dancer but needs practice with men. She loves it when I bring her to Bombay. Her mother is so strict with her. Her mother is my sister, the one who married that business man and has become very serious as a result. Before you go would you be so kind as to ring the bell?’
Perron stood up, touched the button on the wall which she had indicated, murmured his thanks and took his leave. On his way out he had an urge to turn back and explain who he was and why he was there. He had never enjoyed the part of his job which involved deceiving people and tonight deception seemed irrational. He believed that if he confessed his true identity and purpose to the Maharanee she would probably be amused, for the few seconds it took her to forget and concentrate again on her own affairs. But, leaving the room, closing the door and facing the long cluttered passage of more closed doorways he re-accommodated himself to the masquerade because Aneila was in the act of greeting more guests, let in this time by a servant. Again there had been no sound of a bell. A woman servant was hastening down the corridor to the Maharanee’s room. Perron wondered whether he was going deaf or whether the bells rang on a note that only members of the household had learned to detect; but before he could become more than passingly interested in the subject his attention was taken by something of potentially more serious consequence.
Among the new arrivals – the only one he automatically took notice of – was a girl, an English girl; but not just an English girl, the English girl; the one to whom he had had to apologize for Purvis’s discourteous behaviour at the entrance to the block of flats on the Oval. Remembering the penetrating glance she had given him he could scarcely doubt that she would recognize him when they came face to face. The question was whether she would notice his miraculous change of employment or whether the fact that he was in off-duty khaki drill and not in jungle green would be sufficient to distract her from any previous impression she had gained that education was not at all his line. The other question, of course, was whether if she recognized that a transformation had taken place she would thoughtlessly comment on it to him in the hearing of others, or sensibly put two and two together and keep mum.
There was only ten yards distance between them and no way of lengthening it. In fact it was already shortening because Aneila had waved the men in the party towards the living-room and was now bringing the girl to a room in which presumably women-guests could make themselves comfortable. This room turned out to be the one against whose door Perron was standing. No confrontation could have been more direct.
He stepped aside, smiled at Aneila and then at the girl. He thought it best to take the initiative. ‘Good evening. We meet again.’
‘Oh,’ Aneila said. ‘Do you know each other? I’m awfully glad because if not I would have to introduce you and I’m so bad at remembering names.’
‘Perron,’ Perron said, to both of them.
‘Sarah Layton,’ the girl said. Rather shrewdly, he thought, she said it to Aneila.
‘Please join the guests in the living-room, Mr Perrer. Auntie says men can always introduce themselves if there is no one around to do it and I must show Miss –’
‘Layton.’
‘– Miss Layton where to powder her nose.’ She opened the door. Sarah Layton nodded and started to go through. He caught the moment of hesitation, the slight frown, that followed the brief fall of her glance upon his left shoulder tab. Expecting the glance then to be redirected upwards to meet his he prepared to meet it as frankly as possible, but she followed Aneila into the room without looking at him again.
He continued along the passage and re-entered the living-room where a bearer was presiding over the cocktail cabinet and where he had another and rather more devastating shock.
*
Perron had been stationed in the Bombay Presidency for nearly three months but before becoming involved in operation Zipper he had visited the city only once. The reason for that visit, made in the company of his officer, had been the arrival of a ship that had sailed from Bordeaux in June bringing several hundred Indian soldiers, ex-prisoners of war captured in North Africa, who had succumbed to the temptation to secure their release from prison-camp by joining a Free India Force which its leader, the revolutionary ex-Congressman, Subhas Chandra Bose, at that time in Berlin after escaping police surveillance in India, had hoped to put into the field to fight alongside the Germans.
In England, Perron had learnt quite a lot about this embryo army and its failure to cohere into a fighting force. Details
of it had been among items of classified information it had been his job to study but say nothing about. Because of the tremendous pride the British had always taken in the loyalty of their Indian soldiers, and in the Indian Army’s apolitical nature, this evidence of a flaw in its structure had interested him, both then and later when he heard of the numerically far greater and infinitely more serious defection among Indian soldiers taken prisoner by the Japanese. They, it seemed, had formed themselves into operational fighting formations, at first under an Indian King’s commissioned officer and then under Subhas Chandra Bose (translated by submarine from Berlin to Tokyo) and had accompanied the Japanese in their attempt in 1944 to invade the sub-continent through Manipur. Some of these, recaptured in the recent successful British campaign in Burma, had, he understood, already arrived in India and were being held in special camps where presumably the contingent from Europe would join them. Many more would follow after the end of the war in Malaya and the Far East.
His duties in regard to the boat load of disgraced Indian officers, NCOS and sepoys from Bordeaux had not been exacting. Neither he nor his officer was sure where their responsibility began or ended. So far as they could tell their main job was to keep an ear to the ground and report to the military and civil authorities anything that might give cause for suspicion that a popular movement was afoot in Bombay to storm the docks and whisk the prisoners from under the noses of those in charge of them off into the bazaars or into the hills where in the past many a band of irregular Mahratta horsemen had melted away to live on and fight again. But of this there had been no sign at all. Bombay went about its business and the military quietly got on with the job of transferring the boatload by trainloads to a destination Perron understood to be in the vicinity of Delhi and the Red Fort.