by Jon Stock
I stared at the picture, listening to Macaulay’s words, noticing that he had slipped into the present tense.
“Sometimes they give the woman dried saffron pistils. It makes her laugh hysterically. Either that or opium. Anything to preserve the wife’s dutiful smile. It’s coming back, you know,” Macaulay said, sitting down at the table again. “Roop Kanwar was the turning point. Beautiful lass, barely nineteen, burnt to death in Rajasthan, 1987. The authorities were scared witless by the international scandal it provoked, the revival it sparked off. They’ve been covering up ever since. Have to. Nobody would ever visit India again if they knew how many satis were taking place, here in modern India, in the twenty-first century.”
I lingered in front of the picture, half listening to Macaulay, to Priyanka’s replies, her profound scepticism about a revival of sati, and then I spotted someone in the background, standing under the shade of an umbrella that was being held for him. It was not a local Joogee, or a priest. He was a Westerner, wearing a long tailed jacket, breeches, a white wig. An East India Company official, perhaps. Whoever he might have been, he was watching the burial from a discreet distance, choosing not to interfere.
“Was it a mistake, then, for the British to hand over rule?” Priyanka asked, catching my eye and raising her eyebrows as I sat down again. Macaulay sighed at the question.
“I don’t think it should be seen solely in terms of that one moment,” he said. “Mistakes started to be made two hundred years earlier. All I am saying – and I would be grateful if you could quote me accurately on this – is that things could have been done differently. The British Empire in India presented a unique opportunity for something new, a cultural synthesis that could have benefited the whole world, not just India and Britain. But we mocked Indians who took up our Western ways, and the British who adopted local customs were cruelly ridiculed, too. You just have to look at Tagore, a Bengali who only blossomed when he came into contact with European thought. Independence, for me, was final confirmation of a missed opportunity, the denial of a rare synergy that existed between two very different cultures. Can we leave it at that?”
“But you do think India should have been given its Independence?” Priyanka persisted.
“Another soda, anyone?” Macaulay said, pointedly ignoring her. He stood up and strode over to a revolving cylinder next to the drinks table. His “gammy leg”, as he called it, seemed to have dramatically improved. I glanced at Priyanka, who rolled her eyes upwards in despair. We both declined, but were intrigued by the machine. Macaulay took an old soda bottle and placed it neck first in a central drum and then turned a handle on the side, like an organ grinder. The drum spun round, clunking. Then Macaulay took out the bottle, picked up a screwdriver from the drinks table, and hammered it with the palm of his hand into the bottle’s neck, dislodging the glass marble cork. There was a sudden whoosh and he poured the soda into a glass, mixing it with a generous measure of chilled vodka before sitting down again.
“My grandfather’s,” he said, looking at me. The vodka he had been drinking all evening was beginning to glaze his eyes. I was increasingly convinced his catalogue of health problems was nothing more complicated than alcohol poisoning.
“Talking of family,” he continued, clumsily squeezing half a lime into his glass with his thumb and forefinger, “I’ve been finding out a bit more about your father.”
“Mine?” I said, taken aback. Once again he was turning the tables.
“Yes, Ram Nair of Changanacherry.” He said the words with an air of theatrical triumph, as if he were introducing a famous music-hall act.
“I didn’t know your family were from there,” Priyanka said, looking at me with surprise.
“A long time ago,” I said, already resenting whatever Macaulay was about to reveal.
“1960,” Macaulay stated matter-of-factly. “June 15th. The day your father left for Britain. After travelling by bus and train from Perunna outside Changanacherry to Bombay, he caught a boat to Portsmouth.”
I could feel my hands turning cold. I was shocked that he knew such detailed information, ashamed that I wasn’t aware of it myself. He could have been bluffing, of course, but why? The dates approximated to what little I had ever bothered to ask my father. I was conscious of Priyanka’s eyes upon me. We hadn’t been alone since our discussion on the verandah and her abrupt departure, but I sensed that she was with me now, that she had picked up on my discomfort.
“How do you know these things?” Priyanka asked.
“I happened to come across him in my notes. For the book I was telling you about. He was really quite militant. Young but very committed.”
“My father?” I asked, laughing nervously, without conviction.
“Of course,” Macaulay said, his tone still rigorous. “The freedom struggle wasn’t all it could have been in what we now call Kerala. Cochin and Malabar were more active than Travancore. The local Malayalis were generally more concerned with ousting a Tamil Diwan than with the British. Your father, though, was very active in politics, inclined to the socialist wing of Congress. As a youth, it seems, he hated the English with a passion, ran several local Quit India campaigns. He was even involved in the famous Keezhariyur bomb case. I’m still checking, but I think he was one of twenty-seven people who were charge-sheeted.”
Macaulay helped himself to another portion of cold moussaka, and I scrabbled to process what he had just said, tried to equate it with the man I knew. The only time I had heard my father talk against the English was when we had once discussed Scottish devolution.
“I’m surprised they let you anywhere near the Foreign Office,” Macaulay continued; he was the only one who was having seconds. “Not exactly Eton and Oxford, was he?”
“It really doesn’t sound like my father,” I said, still conscious of Priyanka, grateful for her company. “I can’t think of anyone less suitable to be a freedom fighter.”
“If he had been so anti-British, why did the government in London let him settle there?” Priyanka asked.
“Why indeed?” Macaulay said.
“I’m sorry, it just doesn’t add up.” I stood up from the table and walked over towards the verandah, feeling a warmth spreading across my face. I needed to get away from Macaulay for a few minutes.
“Come on, Raj, it was a long time ago,” he continued, calling after me. “I’m sure he’s since sworn loyalty to Queen and country, flies the Union Jack at home, just like me.”
“The rampant lion, in fact,” I said, my back still to the table.
“Well, there you go,” Macaulay continued. “A brave-heart Scot.”
“How did you manage to find out this sort of information?” Priyanka asked.
“By over forty years of hard legwork, that’s bloody how,” Macaulay said.
“In India?” she asked.
Macaulay hesitated before answering, as if he were momentarily thrown by the question. Either that or he was weighing up how much to reveal.
“And London,” Macaulay said, finishing his drink. “Immigration records, Home Office.” He stopped, clearly checking himself, and rose from the table.
“Now,” he said, putting an arm round me as I stared out into the darkness of the garden. “A frame of snooker before the steamed pudding?”
I declined the offer, removing myself from his touch and leaving Priyanka to ask him a few more formal questions over coffee. I sat outside on the verandah again, thinking back over what he had said and why he had told me, wondering whether there was a shred of truth in any of it. Sir Ian had spoken about Macaulay’s influence in Whitehall, his credentials as a historian. I needed to talk with Priyanka but we hadn’t been allowed a moment to ourselves. I knew already that she had discovered far more about Macaulay than I ever would. We had to compare notes, however difficult it might prove. I was meant to be sounding Macaulay out. Instead he had spent the evening talking to me about my past, and to her about his own.
“Doesn’t he give you the creeps?�
�� Priyanka asked, suddenly at my side. I turned to see her putting a notepad away in her shoulder bag. I looked behind us and could see Macaulay in his study, off from the main room, talking on the phone. Behind him a young man wearing only a lunghi round his waist walked into the room. He was a Westerner, barely out of his teens, his chest pale and smooth.
“Who’s that with him?” I asked.
She turned round to look. “I’ve no idea.”
“I thought journalists were supposed to pry,” I said. The man disappeared out of sight again.
“I’ve got enough material to fill the magazine twice.”
“Is he a spy, then?”
“He didn’t tell me that. Anyway, I thought you were interested in his health.”
“I am. I’m examining him tomorrow. Tonight is purely social.”
We looked at each other for a moment.
“He did hint on the lawn that he has friends in high places,” she said, turning away.
“In London?” I asked. Priyanka nodded. “What kind of friends?”
“He didn’t elaborate.” She paused. “I imagine people who can pass on the sort of information he told you about your father. “
I smirked, checking that Macaulay was still on the phone.
“You didn’t believe any of that, did you?” I asked. “The places sounded right. I had no idea you were from Perunna. It’s where my family are from.” She paused again. “I can get it checked, if you want me to.”
“I wouldn’t bother,” I said. “You haven’t met my father.”
“It doesn’t ring true, then?”
“No, it doesn’t.”
I wished I could be at home with him now, drinking a malt in front of the open fire. He would have liked Priyanka, might even have overlooked the fact that she was from India.
“I have to be getting back,” Priyanka said. “Macaulay said the boat was waiting. Are you staying here the night?”
“No,” I replied. “Not if I can help it.” I wondered if Macaulay had intended me to stay. I turned round and he had disappeared. “I’ll come back on your boat. If that’s allowed.”
“Sure,” she said, for the first time looking at me in the way she had in Delhi.
“I’d better go and find Macaulay, say goodbye.”
I walked back over to the house, climbed up the steps and went into the dining room, but Macaulay was not around. I looked in his study and the sitting room. Both were empty. Then I heard something in the kitchen, a smacking noise, like a clap, or two pieces of flat wood being hit together. I walked down the corridor and stood outside the kitchen door, which was closed. I could hear Macaulay’s voice talking quietly, insistently, but the words were not clear. Checking behind me, I knelt down and looked through the keyhole. Standing near the stove, at the far end of the kitchen, was the boy in the lunghi. Macaulay was in front of him, prodding a finger aggressively into the boy’s bare chest, pushing him across the kitchen. When the boy backed into the stove and could retreat no further, Macaulay slapped him hard across the mouth, quickly following up with another, harder stroke, this time with the back of the hand. The boy winced, catching his breath, and then hung his head as blood gathered between his split lips. Macaulay grabbed the boy’s chin with his thumb and forefinger, lifted it and kissed him hard on his bruised mouth. After a few seconds Macaulay tossed the boy away and looked over towards the door, his lips smudged with red. It didn’t seem an appropriate moment to say goodbye.
*
I suspected fatman row-row’s steady pace suited me more than it did Priyanka as we made our way slowly across the harbour towards Willingdon Island. I longed for him to take his time, to wipe his brow, lose an oar, let us drift all night with the hidden currents below. The water lapped at the sides of the boat, glistening in the stark light of the moon, which was almost full and now high above us. We were both sitting in the bow, behind fatman, who had his back to us. Priyanka was staring out across the water to the left, in the direction of the Ernakulam shoreline, which was lit up like a Parisian boulevard.
“What’s the headline going to be, then?” I asked. “Relic of the Raj?”
“It’s more complicated than that. Did you notice the picture in the bathroom?”
“No.”
“Kali with an infant Shiva, dancing in a cemetery. People used to hang it in their houses in Calcutta to keep away cholera.”
“He’s a hypochondriac,” I said. I didn’t want to tell her about the boy in the lunghi, not yet. For the moment, as sole witness, I could deny it had happened. It was easier that way, less frightening.
“He upset you, didn’t he?” she asked, more quietly. “Those comments he made about your father.”
I watched her put one hand into the water, letting it trail through her long fingers. “He had no right to talk about him like that,” she continued, cupping some water in her hand and letting it go. “Are you a close family?”
“There’s only the two of us. My mother died a few years back.” I paused, guiltily, knowing that she hadn’t expected an intimate revelation. “We’ve never really talked about India.”
“Not even when you were posted here?” she asked, passing respectfully round my mother.
“A bit, I suppose,” I said, lying, thinking back to how my father had greeted the news with complete indifference. I had been speaking on the phone to him from London, after my second interview at the Foreign Office. The news had gone in, to be processed later, but at the time all he had done was pause, like someone waiting for a cyclist to pass before crossing the street. A moment later he was asking if I had read in the newspapers that day about a colleague of his who had been charged with embezzlement.
The recollection made me smile. Sometimes his ability to shut something out could be infuriating, but there was a certain phlegm, a British stoicism, to the approach, too. In that one brief moment on the phone, he knew and had accepted the enormous implications of what I was saying, that I would soon be travelling to India, a chapter of his life that he had chosen to keep from me. His ability to continue the conversation, as if nothing had happened, was a measure of his confidence in himself, in the decisions he had made all those years ago, and in our own relationship, that nothing would change. Thinking of it now, it gave me strength, renewed my belief that Macaulay was wrong, that there were no skeletons.
“I find that very hard to understand,” Priyanka was saying. “If my father had originally come from England and I was suddenly posted to London, I would want to know everything about his time there, what it was like, why he left.”
“You would probably know already, that’s the difference,” I replied. “In our family India has been taboo ever since I can remember.”
Our boat continued on its blissfully slow progress, the peace briefly disturbed by the dramatic appearance, from behind Willingdon Island, of the dredger I had seen at lunchtime. Rusting chains were rattling against its stained hull as a vacuum boom was lowered down one side into the water. A foghorn sounded six times and a searchlight danced across the surrounding water, pausing on a fisherman’s dugout fifty yards to the stern, and then on us. We both shielded our eyes from the beam, worried that we were too close. Fatman looked briefly over his shoulder and kept on rowing.
Priyanka talked with him in Malayalam and then said to me, “He used to work on the dredger.”
“That’s all right then,” I replied, noticing that we were drawing near to Willingdon Island. My time was running out with each pull on the oars.
“Can we meet up again, professionally, to talk about Macaulay?” I asked, watching the dredger inch slowly forwards against the skyline. Some fishing boats were heading down the main channel, their engines idling as the tide carried them out to sea.
“I’ll send you the article as soon as I have written it,” she said. “And my notes.”
At least it was a gentle way of saying no. I could see one side of her face in the moonlight. Her cheek was smooth and dry. She swept a defiant hand throug
h her hair, refusing to say anything else. Part of me felt angry: without me she wouldn’t have secured an interview with Macaulay. But the feeling subsided as quickly as it had come, replaced by a heaviness of heart that I had seldom felt before. In this light her beauty was ephemeral, so out of reach.
“We can’t see each other again, Raj,” she was saying, her hair rippling in the salty breeze. She turned her head further away from me. “We mustn’t.”
“Why?” I asked quietly, hoping she wouldn’t answer. I didn’t want to hear her say it.
“I don’t trust myself,” Priyanka said, her voice wavering. Our words were slowing down, mesmerised by the oars, the lapping water. “That’s why.”
I put an arm round her shoulders, glancing at fatman, who was lost in his own world. She turned and put both arms round me, burying her head in my shoulder to stop the crying. I held her tightly and then she had lifted her head and we were kissing.
“Malabar Jetty?” fatman said, his voice separating us like an electric shock. The boat rocked precariously as we moved to either side. Fatman turned round, but all he saw were two people sitting primly. We both suppressed a giggle as Priyanka dried her eyes. And then her features hardened.
“Malabar,” she said, looking at the shore and then directly at me. There was no reproach in her eyes, just a frightened appeal. I wondered what she meant and then I turned towards the shore, barely fifty yards ahead, and saw an old man waiting for us.
13
The man on the jetty was Priyanka’s father. He bent down to take our rope and helped Priyanka to step ashore. I was left to disembark on my own but I didn’t sense any coldness towards me.
“This is Raj, the doctor who has been helping me with a couple of stories in Delhi,” Priyanka said to him, with impressive composure. “And this is my father,” she said, turning to me.
Her father nodded as we shook hands. “Raj Nair,” I said, looking at him for a moment, conscious of how the name resonated in Kerala. His face looked creased and tired with worry.
“Raj was the one who arranged the interview with Macaulay,” Priyanka said, stepping in. We were both waiting to see his reaction, wondering if he had seen us in the dark. But he had not come here to chastise us, or to pass judgment. His worries lay elsewhere.
