by Paul Scott
Almost at once they were in what Rowan called very murky waters. While they’d concentrated on the political evidence it had been possible to show that the conflict was not a conflict of evidence so much as of interpretation. Directly Hari began to describe what happened after he’d passed through the room in which the five other boys were being held behind bars, euphoric with liquor, and down into the air-conditioned basement of Merrick’s headquarters, it became a question of setting Merrick’s official statements about the interrogation against Hari’s recollections of it. Recollections, or fantasies?
For example, from the police file: this – ‘At 2245 hours the prisoner Kumar having continually refused to answer questions relating to his activities that evening asked for what reason he had been taken into custody. Upon being told it was believed he could help the police with inquiries they were making into the criminal assault in the Bibighar Gardens earlier that evening he said: I have not seen Miss Manners since the night we visited the temple. On being asked why he named Miss Manners he refused to answer and showed signs of distress.’
When Hari was asked to say whether this was accurate he said it wasn’t. He had refused to answer questions but the statement left out the fact that he’d said he would refuse to do so while he was left in ignorance of why he’d been arrested. It may have been 2245 hours before Merrick finally said he was making an inquiry, but he described it first as an inquiry about an Englishwoman who was missing, then added, ‘You know which one,’ and then made what Hari called an obscene remark. He didn’t know what was meant by a distressed condition unless this was a reference to the fact that he was shivering as a result of being kept standing for a long time, naked, in an air-conditioned room, after Merrick had inspected his genitals. After that inspection Merrick had said, ‘So you’ve been clever enough to wash?’ and later, ‘But she wasn’t a virgin, was she, and you were the first fellow to ram her’. After that, according to Hari, Merrick had sat on his desk, drinking whisky, and talked to him about the history of the British in India, every so often interjecting remarks about the boys in the cell upstairs, suggesting that they looked on him as a leader, that they’d do anything he said, and again making the comment that ‘she hadn’t been a virgin’ and that Hari had ‘been the first to ram her’. From this sequence of events, Hari claimed, he gathered that he and the others were suspected of rape. He claimed that he didn’t mention Miss Manners until Merrick finally told him, at 2245 hours – a time he didn’t dispute – that an Englishwoman had been criminally assaulted, and added, ‘you know which one’ and then made an obscene remark. He refused to say what the remark was but admitted that he now told Merrick he hadn’t seen Miss Manners since the night of the visit to the temple.
Gopal pointed out to him that unless he repeated the obscene remark his explanation for naming her remained unsatisfactory. But he would not repeat it.
*
It annoyed Gopal that he wouldn’t. He went on pressing. Hari went on refusing. Gopal became heated, as if he were suddenly on Merrick’s side and intended to show that if Kumar wouldn’t repeat the remark that was because he couldn’t; it had never been made; everything he had said about Merrick’s behaviour was a pack of lies.
Hari remained unmoved. Rowan joined in again. He went over Merrick’s statement point by point, forcing Hari to agree that in a number of details it was correct. Hari had named Miss Manners. The time was not in dispute. And he had been showing signs of distress if only because he was shivering.
The rhythm of question and answer quickened. How long had Hari been kept standing naked? He couldn’t remember. Why? He lost track of things like time. One hour? Two hours? Perhaps. Was he alone with Merrick? Not all the time, other people came in. Who? Two constables. Anyone else? Yes, there may have been others. Couldn’t he remember? Why couldn’t he remember? Was he saying he was confused, giddy and cold from standing all that time? He wasn’t standing all the time. He was allowed to sit then? No, he wasn’t allowed to sit.
Gopal said he didn’t understand. If Kumar wasn’t standing and wasn’t sitting, what was he doing, lying down?
Hari said, ‘I was bent over a trestle, tied to it. For the persuasive phase of interrogation. A cane was used.’
*
Rowan said, ‘I read out Iyenagar’s report and asked him whether that was an accurate record of his interview with the magistrate. He said it was. In a way I was prepared for that answer because when I began reading Iyenagar’s report aloud it struck me for the first time how very carefully the questions had been framed. They were the kind of questions a cautious authority would ask if it was suspected that a man would be too frightened to say he’d been ill-treated and if it was felt that a denial would be better for everybody’s sake. “Have you any complaint to make about your treatment in custody?” was the first question. Hari said “No.” Most of the questions were like that. And if Hari couldn’t actually reply “no” he just said he had nothing to add to his first answer. Before I began reading it I thought I’d make it impossible for him to explain why he now accused the police of physical violence when he’d had the opportunity to do that at the time. He’d agreed that the Iyenagar report was accurate. I intended to show that he was being inconsistent. But he wasn’t. I knew the answer to this before he gave it. He’d told Iyenagar the truth. He had no complaint to make. Just that. No complaint.
‘The question wasn’t so much why he didn’t complain then as why he was complaining now. And was he telling the truth? I read out the prison doctor’s report, the one that didn’t note any visible marks of physical violence apart from the bruise on his face. But I couldn’t shake him. He implied that the doctor had seen other marks but hadn’t recorded them. We asked how many times he’d been hit. He said he couldn’t remember. Whenever they stopped hitting him Merrick talked to him to encourage him to confess. He said Merrick told him Miss Manners had already named him but that he didn’t believe her story. He believed she’d egged Hari and the others on and then got more than she bargained for and wanted them punished. Hari said that every time Merrick felt he was getting nowhere he told the constables to start again. I asked how long they had gone on. I still didn’t really believe him. He said he didn’t remember. Gopal asked if he was implying he lost consciousness. He said he never lost consciousness. He simply couldn’t remember how long he was on the trestle.’
Rowan paused. ‘Then he explained why he couldn’t remember. He said it was difficult to breathe in that position and that breathing was all you thought about. I believed him then. It’s not the sort of thing a man could easily make up, is it? And the trouble was that believing him made the next bit that much more difficult to write off as pure invention. He said Merrick sent the constables out of the room and spoke and acted even more obscenely. I asked him what he meant. I rather wish I hadn’t. He said Merrick – fondled him.’
‘Fondled him.’
‘I told the shorthand writer to strike that out, leave his note-book on my desk and wait outside until I called him back. Then I really started on Hari. I put it to him that he was lying, taking advantage of the examination of his case as a political detenu to make baseless accusations in the mistaken belief that these would protect him if a charge of rape were made even as late in the day as this. I really pitched into him. I told him he had the chance to retract and advised him to think very carefully before passing the chance up.’
‘Did he retract?’
‘No. He apologized.’
‘What for?’
‘For what he called misunderstanding the reason why he was being examined.’
‘What had he thought was the reason?’
‘He thought Miss Manners had managed to persuade someone at last that he’d done nothing to deserve being locked up and that this had been his chance to prove it.’
‘He wasn’t far out, was he?’
‘No, but I should have stuck to the political evidence. As soon as we went into the business of the rape I couldn’t hide my sus
picions and so he thought no one had really been persuaded of anything except that it was time to interrogate him again. Either that or that we were trying to salve bad consciences. He asked outright if something had happened to her. He’d had no news of her of any kind. I told him what had happened, that she’d died of peritonitis a year before, after a Caesarean operation. He asked whether she had married. She hadn’t of course. He didn’t ask if the child survived. At first I thought he was quite unmoved. Then I saw he wasn’t. I asked if he wanted time to compose himself. He said he didn’t but that we should have told him. It was very odd. His voice was quite unaffected. Physically he was composed. But he was crying. I asked him whether what he meant when he said we should have told him was that he would have answered the questions differently if he’d known she was dead. He said he only answered them because he thought she must have wanted us to ask them. If he’d known she was dead he wouldn’t have answered them at all. I reminded him there was one important question he still hadn’t answered. He knew I meant the question about where he was when she was being attacked. He said he’d never answer it. I was ready to bring things to an end but Gopal began again about the situation between Hari and Merrick. The clerk was no longer in the room. Officially the examination was over. He realized that. He seemed willing to talk – about that situation – even anxious. I didn’t stop him. I believed he’d told the truth about the caning. I accepted that. I think you have to. I don’t condone it. I’m not sure I can condemn it. It would be unfair to single Merrick out. Caning’s a normal judicial punishment in this country. There were a lot of such sentences dished out in 1942 and I don’t doubt a fair number of beatings-up in cells to get confessions. What I didn’t accept, don’t accept, without question, is – well the other thing. He could have imagined it. By his own admission he wasn’t in full possession of his senses. I see you don’t agree.’
‘The violence makes more sense if you do accept what you call the other thing. Was Merrick kind to him at any point?’
Rowan stared at me. ‘Kind to him?’
‘Afterwards.’
‘He gave him water. But he made him thank him for it.’
‘It’s the sort of thing I mean. Tell me about it.’
‘I can only tell you what Hari said. It doesn’t mean it happened.’
‘Well tell me what Hari said.’
‘He said he was taken into another room and manacled to a charpoy. Merrick was alone with him. He gave him a drink of water and made him say thank you. He bathed the cuts. He told him there’d be no more questions until morning. He said the whole evening had been an enactment of the real situation between them and that now they both knew how matters stood and what that situation was.’ Rowan paused. ‘It was a master and man situation, a simplified way of putting it, but near enough. At one point Merrick said, What price Chillingborough now? At another point he told Hari that there were only two basic human emotions, contempt and envy, and that a man’s personality existed at his point of equilibrium between the two. But when I met Merrick the other day I simply couldn’t imagine him behaving and talking like that.’
‘I’m sure he did.’
‘Yes, I thought you’d believe it. It’s one of the reasons I’m telling you.’ Again he hesitated. ‘Hari said that it was to punish himself for thanking Merrick for the water that he decided to answer no more questions. He said the situation between himself and Merrick wouldn’t exist if he dissociated himself from it and refused to say anything more to Merrick or to anyone else. Does that make sense to you?’
‘It makes very good sense. It’s what I’ve been trying to do. Dissociate myself from the situation that arises out of being chosen.’
Rowan was silent for a while. Then he said, ‘Has he chosen Sarah Layton’s sister?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’
‘Just the Laytons as a family?’
That suddenly didn’t fit entirely either. But I saw what did. I said: ‘In the way I mean by choose I should say he’s chosen the child.’
*
‘The child,’ Lady Manners had said (meaning that other child fathered by a person unknown). ‘The child. But even now I can’t be sure, only surer. She was so sure.’ The other thing she said was, ‘He spoke the truth’, but qualified it later as they drove through Kandipat, blinds down. She said, ‘One has to make do with approximations’ and that this was what one meant when one said he spoke the truth. When Rowan left Room O he too was sure he had heard the truth. He told Lady Manners that Kumar would be released but regretted this later when various impediments to such a release had all contributed to a partial revival of disbelief, to a renewed conviction that Kumar had somehow been involved in the assault. Lady Manners had asked to be taken back to her hotel and not to Government House. As they parted she thanked him for having undertaken such a distasteful task and asked him to give Malcolm a message: a very short one. ‘I know my niece did not lie, that he never harmed her and is very wrongfully imprisoned.’
When he gave the message to the Governor, Malcolm said they would discuss it when the record of the examination was typed up and he’d had the chance to read it. He was going to Calcutta for a few days and preoccupied with other matters. He told Rowan to give the confiscated shorthand book to Cynthia, Her Excellency’s private secretary. He thought it unwise to have it transcribed by the shorthand writer at the Secretariat. ‘Don’t worry,’ Malcolm said. ‘Cynthia’s pretty broad-minded.’ All the same, Rowan tore out the page which the shorthand writer had drawn a line through before handing it to her.
She must have worked late. The following morning she sent him a sealed envelope containing the notebook and a top and two carbons of an impeccable typescript. When he rang through to thank her she merely said, ‘Oh, well. Press on you know. Only way to get round the course.’ When he read the typescript through he was astonished at her apparent equanimity. It sounded even worse in print. He kept notebook and typescripts in a locked drawer until Malcolm returned, and hourly expected Gopal to ring him and ask when the shorthand writer could complete his job by typing the record. But Gopal didn’t ring.
When Malcolm had read the typescript he told Rowan it was a pity he hadn’t been able to stick to the political evidence. The transcript showed that he had tried and also why he hadn’t succeeded. But it was a pity. He explained that although senior police officers had always stood by Merrick, and that included the Inspector-General, the Inspector-General’s private opinion was that Merrick had botched the evidence by being over-anxious and emotionally involved because he had been fond of the girl himself. If the IG saw this transcript he would be so shocked by Kumar’s accusations that he would write them off as pure fantasy and point out that the only result of the examination had been to revive suspicion of Kumar’s guilt, and that this would be sufficient reason to keep the fellow locked up until the end of the war. The IG would say that to release Kumar now would be as good as recording a reprimand on Merrick’s personal file and that this could count against him, very unfairly, when he returned to the police after his army service.
‘Then the best thing,’ Rowan had said, ‘will be to file the transcript away and forget all about it.’
But Malcolm said he didn’t think he could allow that. In Kumar’s case Rule 26 had fairly clearly been abused. The abuse was less obvious in the case of the other boys. If they had had a political leader at all it would have been Vidyasagar who wasn’t among those arrested for rape but who was arrested a couple of days later for printing seditious literature on the press in the Mayapore Hindu office. In comparison with Vidyasagar even the others might be thought of as lambs led to the slaughter. Kumar, Malcolm was sure, hadn’t even been a member of the flock. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘why did you confiscate the book and end the examination so abruptly?’
Rowan told him.
‘It isn’t in the transcript.’
‘I removed the offending page.’
‘And deprived Cynthia of the dénouement?
What happened after you sent the shorthand writer out?’
Again Rowan told him.
‘And Lady Manners heard all this?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did she make any other comment in the car coming home apart from giving you that message?’
‘I gathered she was now surer Kumar was the father of the Manners child, but not as sure as her niece had been.’
‘What did you infer from that?’
‘That Miss Manners told her aunt she and Kumar had been lovers.’
‘Her niece told her nothing. She left a written statement absolving Kumar completely. The old lady found it after her death, but she wouldn’t show it even to me.’
*
Rowan felt like exploding with irritation.
‘If we’d had Miss Manners’s statement we might have had a more successful examination,’ he told the Governor. But the Governor pointed out that the examination had been of a man detained for political reasons. Miss Manners’s statement, presumably, dealt entirely with her emotional involvement with Kumar. The only value a statement like that would ever have would be in the event, now highly unlikely, of a charge being brought against Kumar for rape, when defending counsel might construct his case from it. In Malcolm’s view, Lady Manners was perfectly justified in otherwise keeping it to herself. Neither she – nor her niece – had ever had any answer to the political charges, which lay outside their competence, however deep the conviction was that political detention had been imposed out of sheer frustration; the frustration felt by the civil authority which had wanted to nail Kumar much more effectively. And in that regard, in the matter of the charge of rape, Malcolm suggested, Miss Manners’s silence, Kumar’s refusal to answer questions, during the period when a charge of rape might so easily have been brought, had not only been effective then but was eloquent now. Just how eloquent, Malcolm wasn’t sure. Except that he believed it suggested that they had loved one another and that, loving him, she had been afraid for him.