by Paul Scott
‘Oh, Auntie, Auntie!’
‘Is that all you can say? Is coming to Bombay and having a good time all you can think of nowadays? Isn’t it time to consider my feelings in the matter?’
‘Auntie, what can I say to everybody?’
‘Why should you say anything? What right have they to an explanation? Do as I say and then go to bed. They will soon get fed up.’
She looked at Perron and indicated the bottle.
‘Please return it to the Purvis creature or better still since you seem to like it drink it yourself and then you will not have come all this way for nothing. Only take it. I cannot bear even the smell.’
Perron bowed, retrieved the cap from the table, put it on the bottle. The paper in which the bottle had been wrapped was on the floor. He stooped and picked it up. As he did so the Maharanee reached across to the table on which the lamp stood and recovered the shade with the piece of crimson velvet. She went out like an illuminated picture that had been switched off.
‘Goodnight, Your Highness,’ Perron said. ‘I regret being in any way the cause of your indisposition.’
‘Goodnight, Mr Perron. You must visit me again when I come back to Bombay and give my next party. Some of my parties are very nice and go on for a day or two.’
He groped his way back to the door. Somewhere in the darkened room Aneila was crying quietly to herself.
*
There was ample room on the back seat of the limousine for Miss Layton, Major Merrick and Count Bronowsky, and for Perron and Mr Kasim on the bench that was let down to face it. Separated from the passengers by panes of glass set in panels of upholstery and figured walnut rode a chauffeur and a footman wearing what Perron assumed to be the livery of the Nawab of Mirat. The limousine had been waiting outside Ishshee Brizhish and now glided along Marine Drive towards the Oval.
‘Mr Perron, may I thank you for your thoughtful tactic in tipping us off?’ Count Bronowsky said, breaking a rather strained silence. ‘It means I have a little less to apologize for to Miss Layton and Major Merrick. We were able to come away in fairly reasonable order.’
‘Why have we come away?’ Miss Layton asked. She seemed perfectly composed. She just wanted to know. He thought her behaviour admirable. When he came out of the Maharanee’s room, found Merrick and warned him that the party was over it had been obvious that Merrick hadn’t yet suggested leaving. Perron was surprised that during the time it had taken them to get away from the flat Merrick hadn’t found an opportunity to tell her what had happened. It was a better excuse than the one he might have had to invent.
He waited for Merrick to tell her now but still the man said nothing. Street-lighting alternately illuminated the left and right sides of his face and it was not until the car turned a corner and a brief but total exposure of the whole head was made that it occurred to Perron that the disfigurement of the left side in a curious way reflected something otherwise inexpressible about the right. Realizing that an explanation was being left to him, he said, ‘I have an unhappy feeling that a certain Captain Purvis is to blame.’
He told the story of the whisky.
‘What’s wrong with the whisky?’ Miss Layton asked.
‘In my opinion, nothing.’ He mentioned its official name. She said, ‘The genuine thing?’
He unwrapped the bottle sufficiently to expose the label.
‘But it’s extraordinary,’ she said.
‘You know it?’
‘Great-grandfather had some in his cellar. My father was talking about it only the other day. He said great-grandfather had the sense to keep going until the last bottle was finished. Then he died.’
Perron wondered whether Miss Layton’s great-grandfather had referred, as his own Uncle Charles always had, to this particular brand as Old Sporran. He said, ‘The Maharanee called it a drink for barbarians but she’d had a glass or two before she decided to complain. I think the whisky was just an excuse to end a party she’d decided she didn’t want to give after all.’
‘A shrewd assessment,’ Bronowsky said. ‘Poor Aimee has never made up her mind what she wants in life. But perhaps the whisky was a blessing.’ He turned to Merrick and Miss Layton. ‘I was beginning to have doubts about the wisdom of having taken you along. May I in addition to most abject apologies for the failure of the first part of the evening offer some entertainment for what is left of it? For instance the supper I misled you to expect at the party?’
‘That’s very civil of you,’ Merrick said, ‘but Miss Layton has a tiring journey ahead of her tomorrow and all things considered an early night now would be a good thing.’
‘I understand. Quite. So we have met again merely to part. But better briefly than not at all. What about you, Mr Perron?’
Unprepared for the invitation Perron hesitated. He would have liked the opportunity to talk to the old wazir.
‘Well, thank you, sir, but . . .’
‘What the sergeant means, Count,’ Merrick interrupted, ‘is that he hadn’t expected to be asked to stay at the Maharanee’s and he’s been worried about getting back to his billet because he has no late pass. Isn’t that what you were rather delicately avoiding telling me in so many words when we were talking in the corridor?’
Perron admired Merrick’s inventiveness, but resented becoming the victim of it. He said, ‘More or less, sir.’
Bronowsky was smiling. He said, ‘I had no idea that in the education you were so regimented. Is the place where you suggested being dropped the most convenient or should we first deliver Miss Layton and Major Merrick at Queen’s Road and drive you on? We have plenty of time.’
Merrick interrupted again. ‘I’m afraid the sergeant is quartered quite a distance away but I think I can lay on transport for him. If that’s all right by you, sergeant?’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘At the same time you could take a document for me to the Major Beamish I mentioned. There’d be no need to deliver it until morning, but I’ll give you a note as well if you like to satisfy anyone who might try to get you into trouble for being out late without permission.’
Beamish’s name, so casually used, presumably served a double-purpose: to lend credibility to what was a complete fiction, and to alert him to the fact that Merrick had an intimate knowledge of that department. He said, ‘It’s very good of you, sir. I don’t think a note will be necessary.’
‘We’ll see.’ He turned to Miss Layton. ‘It’s all right if the sergeant comes in for a moment, I hope? The document’s in the case I left.’
‘Of course.’
Perron again offered his thanks. Merrick said, ‘A lift back to camp seems the least we can do. Your warning saved Miss Layton the embarrassment of finding the drinks locked up under her nose and all the servants gone to bed, it seems. I find it quite inexplicable.’
After a moment Bronowsky said, ‘It is India.’ He stirred, as if to ease his lame leg and turned his face fully to Merrick who had the seat next to him.
‘I hope you are not plagued still by incidents such as arose when you were in Mirat, Major Merrick? Has all that sort of thing died down?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘I’m glad. We for our part have not been revisited by the venerable Pandit who was using the boy’s aunt on that occasion. You never met the girl’s aunt, did you?’
‘No.’
‘Because I had that pleasure – perhaps I should say melancholy pleasure – last November in Gopalakand. She was staying, in a sense incognito, with the Resident, Sir Robert Conway, an old friend apparently. We didn’t, of course, refer in any way to Mayapore. In fact our conversation was confined almost entirely to the safe subjects of the weather and the historical and architectural interest of the Residency. I did gather however that she had spent most of the recent hot weather in Pankot, but in what she called the seclusion of the unfashionable side. So I don’t suppose any of you were aware of her presence, Miss Layton?’
Merrick moved abruptly as if trying to id
entify the stretch of road they were on. Miss Layton spoke across him:
‘Are you talking about Lady Manners, Count Bronowsky?’
‘Yes, the girl’s aunt.’
‘Actually she signed the book at Flagstaff House when she arrived.’
‘Indeed?’
‘And again when she left. She didn’t write in an address.’
‘How strange. I mean, signing the book. Does one interpret it as a gesture of submission or defiance, or simply an ironic observance of hill-station convention?’
‘I don’t know,’ Miss Layton said.
‘Strange. Very strange. But how interesting. And talking of this,’ Bronowsky said, attracting Perron’s attention by lightly touching Perron’s right shin with the tip of the ebony cane, ‘when you were at that school of yours you must have known a boy called Kumar.’
‘Kumar?’
‘An Indian boy, Hari Kumar.’
‘I don’t clearly recall, sir.’
‘Coomer was the Anglicization, I believe. Harry Coomer.’
Merrick again leant forward.
‘Does your driver remember the block? We’re almost there. We ought to be slowing down.’
‘I believe he does but I shall make sure.’
Bronowsky unhooked a speaking-tube and gave an order. The car which had already been slowing down just before he spoke now dropped to a crawl and came to a stop opposite the entrance to the flats.
‘Didn’t you know Coomer?’ Bronowsky continued.
‘We had an Indian boy or two but I don’t recall the name, sir. They were rather junior to me.’
‘Yes, I see.’
The footman or second chauffeur opened the nearside door and helped Count Bronowsky on to the pavement. Perron and Kasim stayed put on the bench until Merrick had followed and helped Miss Layton out.
‘I should have liked you to meet my father, Count Bronowsky,’ Miss Layton was saying, ‘but Aunt Fenny and Uncle Arthur managed to persuade him to go out with them and they won’t be back yet. Won’t you and Mr Kasim come in for a drink, though?’
‘My dear, how kind,’ he said, taking her hand, ‘but I couldn’t claim your hospitality, having failed so badly in my own. And Mr Merrick is right. You have the journey tomorrow and your father to look after. I hope he’ll be fit again very soon. My kindest regards to your mother and of course to your sister.’ He raised her hand and kissed it. ‘You accompany Miss Layton and her father as far as Delhi, Major Merrick?’
‘Yes, I do that.’
‘Then it is au revoir to you both. If you have time when you’re in Delhi do call on Mohsin.’
‘Mohsin?’
‘Nawab Sahib’s elder son. He is at the Kasim Mahal most of the year. He’s rather a dull fellow but his wife is very hospitable. Mirat bores her. She likes to be in the swim, but her parties are beyond reproach. I shall write to them and mention you, so do send in your card.’
‘Thank you,’ Merrick said. ‘And goodnight.’ He shook the Count’s hand and turned to wait for Miss Layton who was talking to Mr Kasim.
‘I often think of it,’ she was saying. ‘And our ride that morning. Do you still go out regularly?’
Perron did not hear young Kasim’s reply because Bronowsky had turned to him to say goodnight.
‘If you are ever in Mirat, Mr Perron, a note to the Izzat Bagh Palace would always reach me even if we’re up in Nanoora.’ He gave Perron his card. ‘The Izzat Bagh Palace was built in the eighteenth century. The interior has been much modernized but there’s a lot there that would still interest you.’
Perron thanked him, shook hands with him and with Mr Kasim and as the two men returned to the limousine followed Merrick and Miss Layton into the block of flats. The lift was still out of order. At the foot of the stairs Merrick muttered something to Miss Layton. She nodded and began to climb.
‘I think the form is, sergeant, for you to change into your other uniform and call in on your way down. There is, of course, no document for Major Beamish. Incidentally, are you going to need transport?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Where actually are you going?’
‘Kalyan?’
‘Tonight?’
‘Yes, sir.’
They went up the stairs. The servant whom Purvis had nearly knocked over was just opening the door to Miss Layton who went in without looking at either of them.
‘We’ll see you presently, then.’
Perron went up to the next floor and rang the bell of Purvis’s flat. This time he noticed the nameplate. Hapgood. Hapgood the Banker. Mrs Hapgood the Banker’s wife and Miss Hapgood the Banker’s daughter. One of the happy families currently relaxing in Ooty. He rang the bell again. From inside he heard men’s voices. The door was opened by the servant who had originally met him on the stairs. He looked wildly at Perron and began to talk rapidly in what sounded to Perron like Tamil – of which he understood only a few words. At the first opportunity he interrupted, speaking in English.
‘What’s the matter? I don’t understand what you’re saying.’
There were two other servants at the dark end of the corridor, the cook and his boy, probably. The boy was grinning. Perron shut the door. The bearer had resumed his incomprehensible complaint but was clearly inviting Perron to follow him into the living-room.
Arrived there his first impression was that there had been a visit by thieves who had torn the place apart to find what they had come for. The drinks table lay on its side surrounded by broken glasses and bottles. Cushions from the settees were scattered at random. The glass protecting two of the priceless Moghul paintings was smashed and the paintings themselves damaged. Inspecting them Perron realized that a bottle of rum had been shied at them. He could smell it. Stains ran down the wall. On the settee beneath he found bottle-fragments.
The bearer was now referring repeatedly to ‘Purvis Sahib’. The cook came into the dining-room. His responsibilities did not extend beyond the kitchen. What was a disaster for the bearer was for him an interesting break in routine. The scene fascinated him because he was not going to be blamed for it.
‘What happened?’ Perron asked him in English.
‘Purvis Sahib,’ the cook said. He waved his arms about then mimed a man drinking, staggering, throwing things. He tapped his forehead. Purvis Sahib had gone mad.
‘Where is Purvis Sahib now?’
‘Room.’ He shut his eyes, put his head on one side, let his tongue loll, imaging a man in a drunken stupor.
Perron went back to the corridor. The cook came with him.
‘Locked,’ the cook said. ‘Sahib ish-shleeping.’
Perron tried the handle. He knocked. He called, ‘Captain Purvis? It’s Sergeant Perron.’
The bearer joined them.
‘How long has he been here?’
‘Half-hour, Sahib.’
The cook said, ‘Drunk. Ish-shleeping.’
‘What happened?’
The bearer started to explain. Perron interrupted him, asked him to tell him in English.
A telegram had come. When? Soon after Sergeant Sahib had left with the bottle of whisky. A telegram from where?
The bearer went back to the dining-room. Perron followed. The telegram – actually an official military signal – was under the telephone on a side-table.
When Purvis Sahib read the telegram he was very angry. He used the telephone. He rang people. Nobody he wanted to talk to could be found. He tried to ring Delhi. While he waited for the call he drank. He kept ringing the operator. Because he could not get through he was shouting all the time and drinking; and swearing.
Perron asked the bearer to be quiet while he read the signal. It was prefixed Secret and Urgent. It informed Captain Purvis of his secondment to the department of Civil Affairs and ordered him to report to Headquarters, South-East Asia Command, by August 9. Copies had been sent to an impressive list of authorities. No explanation was given but that was hardly necessary. In Ceylon, Purvis would find himself attached to
a group of Civil Affairs officers bound for Malaya either with or in the wake of Zipper.
‘Did Captain Purvis Sahib eventually speak to Delhi?’
Yes. The call had come through. During the conversation Purvis Sahib had become like a wild man, shouting and screaming. Then the line had been disconnected. Purvis Sahib began to throw the cushions, and then the bottles. Finally he kicked the table over. No one had dared go near. They had watched from the corridor. When Purvis Sahib staggered to his room they ran into the kitchen. They heard the door slam. Then they heard him shouting and throwing things again. After a bit they heard him crying. Cook had tried to open the door but it was locked. Now he was unconscious with drink. What to do? What would happen when Hapgood Sahib returned from Ooty? What would Hapgood Sahib say when he saw the damage? Was the telegram not from the army sending Purvis Sahib to another station? Did not this mean that when Hapgood Sahib returned Purvis Sahib would not be here? Would the Sergeant Sahib write a chit to Purvis Sahib asking Purvis Sahib to write a chit to Hapgood Sahib offering to pay for the damage and making it clear that the servants were not to blame?
Perron, already on his way back to the locked door did not answer. He knocked loudly and called Purvis again. He grasped the handle and rattled. There semed to be only one bolt.
‘I’m afraid I shall have to break in. I’ll write a chit for the door.’
Perron launched himself left shoulder forward. The impact was as bad as the jarring shock of walking into a tree or a lamp-post. The door remained shut. The bearer started shouting again. A broken door, apparently, would be the last straw.
‘Is there another way in?’
The bearer did not understand but the cook did. He sent the boy for some keys and then opened the door into the adjoining room and switched on the light. The room must be Miss Hapgood’s. It smelt of stale powder and self-satisfaction. There was a great deal of chintz and several numdah rugs on the stone floor. The french-doors on to the balcony were open to keep the room aired but the way out on to the balcony was blocked by a thick wire-mesh screen. This was padlocked. While they waited for the boy to bring the key the cook explained that between this balcony and the one outside Purvis’s room there was a gap of only a foot or two. The Sergeant Sahib would find it easy to step from one parapet to the other. Perron hoped this would be so and that Purvis’s wire screen was not closed and padlocked too. The bearer assured him it would not be; but this remained to be seen.