Motherland

by William Nicholson

  *

  The heaviest snowfall of that long hard winter comes near the end, on the first Tuesday of March. The blizzard rages all that day and night, and into Wednesday. Once again the men of the village set out with their tractors and shovels to clear the roads, grumbling to each other that the bad weather will never end. But as the next week begins, suddenly the thaw sets in. The air turns mild, and the snow that has lain so stubbornly for so long over the land starts at last to melt.

  Ed travels up to London as soon as the trains are able to run again after the blizzard. There is still snow on the Downs as he leaves. Then comes several days of heavy rain, and the last of the snow disappears, leaving the land grey and waterlogged.

  The postman returns to his rounds, bringing a letter from Larry.

  I’ve accepted a place on Mountbatten’s staff and am off to India! By the time you get this I’ll be gone. I’m not at all sure what I’m to do, but it feels like a good time to be out of England. I’ll write and tell you all about it when I’m settled in. I hope you’ve all survived this foul winter and when we meet again there’ll be sun over Sussex.

  PART THREE

  INDEPENDENCE

  1947–48

  26

  Two York aircraft carry the viceroy-designate and his team to India. The second plane containing chief-of-staff Lord Ismay and most of the new appointments, including Larry Cornford, takes a slower route, stopping overnight at Malta, Fayid and Karachi. On the way Ismay and Eric Miéville, the chief diplomat on the mission, speak openly of the difficulties ahead.

  ‘Dickie doesn’t want to go,’ Pug Ismay says. ‘The Indians don’t want him. And we’ll probably all get shot.’ Then seeing that this isn’t going down so well, he adds, ‘Don’t worry. Dickie’s one of those chaps who was born with luck on his side. I like working for lucky men.’

  The three-day journey to Karachi leaves them exhausted.

  ‘Beginning to wish you hadn’t come?’ says Rupert Blundell to Larry as they emerge into the heat of RAF Mauripur.

  ‘Not at all,’ says Larry. ‘I’m excited.’

  Alan Campbell-Johnson, the press attaché, overhears him.

  ‘This is my seventh flight between England and India,’ he says. ‘Believe me, the thrill wears off.’

  They bunk for the night in the club house on the airfield, Larry doubling with Rupert. The ceiling fan makes little impact on the humid night air. They lie on top of the sheets, stripped to their underpants, sweating, unable to sleep.

  ‘Apparently one adjusts,’ says Rupert.

  ‘God, I hope so,’ says Larry.

  ‘I fixed up for my sister to come out and join us. I’m beginning to think that was a mistake.’

  ‘When’s she due to come?’

  ‘Three weeks’ time. There’s a flight laid on for family members.’

  Larry is cheered by this news. He likes the idea of meeting Rupert’s sister again.

  ‘Is she coming on the staff?’

  ‘No, no. More of a jolly, really. But I’m sure she’ll be given something to do.’ He drops his voice in the darkness. ‘Between you and me, she’s been let down rather badly by a chap. Bit of a case of broken heart and so on. Nothing like a change of scene.’

  ‘There’s been a bit of that for me too,’ says Larry.

  ‘Sorry to hear it. Rather goes with the human condition, I fear.’

  ‘Except for you, Rupert. I refuse to believe you’ve ever done anything as worldly as allow your heart to be broken.’

  ‘You think I’m too high-minded for love?’ says Rupert.

  Larry realises how foolish this sounds.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘Of course not. It’s just that you’ve always struck me as being’ – he reaches for the right word – ‘self-contained.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Rupert. ‘I accept that. I’ve become selfish, I suppose. I value what I choose to call my freedom.’ Then, after a slight pause, ‘There was a moment, once. Right at the end of the war. But it didn’t work out.’

  He falls silent. Larry doesn’t press him. He’s learning to respect this awkward subtle man, who is so easy to mock, and yet who, for all his absurdity, seems to remain untouched by the world.

  ‘What happened to your friend Ed Avenell? The one who got the VC.’

  ‘He’s married. Working in the wine trade.’

  ‘I think of him from time to time. I remember him from school, of course. I bet he’s married a pretty girl.’

  ‘Very pretty.’

  ‘I suppose I think of him because he’s the opposite of me in every way. Good-looking, confident, gets the girls. I’d give a lot to have his life for just one day.’

  ‘Ed’s got his troubles too.’

  After that they fall silent, lying in the hot darkness, listening to the clicking of the fan overhead.

  The next day the party boards the York for the final leg of the journey, over the deserts of Sindh and Rajputana to Delhi.

  ‘When you see how much of the world is desert,’ says Alan Campbell-Johnson, ‘it makes you appreciate our green little island a bit more.’

  They land at Palam airfield on schedule. The heat and glare on coming out of the plane hit Larry like a blow, punishing his travel-weary body. A convoy of viceregal cars waits on the runway to drive them into the city. He follows the others across the cracking tarmac, breathing air that smells of petrol and burns his throat.

  The drive into Delhi carries them in a short half hour across a desert, through a teeming shanty-town, and into the ghostly grandeur of imperial New Delhi. Alan Campbell-Johnson is watching Larry’s face as their destination comes into view at the end of Kingsway, the broad ceremonial avenue that links India Gate to the Viceroy’s House. Larry is duly astounded. The official home of the ruler of India is absurdly immense, a long, columned façade topped by a giant dome, with a flagpole from which the Union flag is flying. The flight of steps leading up to the main entrance is so wide that the sentries standing on either side look like toy soldiers.

  ‘My God!’ Larry exclaims.

  ‘It’s the biggest residence of any chief of state in the world,’ says Alan. ‘The house has three hundred and forty rooms. There are more than seven thousand people on the state payroll.’

  ‘Sic transit gloria mundi,’ says Rupert.

  ‘When I was here before, in ’43,’ says Alan, ‘we had all the high command of Congress locked up in prison. Now we’re about to hand over the country to them.’

  The cars pull up, and the new arrivals are escorted up the giant steps and into the cool of the building. The outgoing viceroy, Lord Wavell, is there to greet them, along with his staff. Mountbatten himself is due to arrive later in the afternoon. Everyone seems to be greeting everyone else as old friends. Larry feels both worn out and exhilarated.

  As he stands gazing round the great entrance hall he is approached by a young Indian in the uniform of a naval officer. He holds a typed list of names.

  ‘Captain Cornford?’

  ‘Yes, that’s me.’

  Lieutenant Syed Tarkhan is himself a recent appointment to the incoming viceroy’s staff. He has a handsome intelligent face, and the slightly stiff bearing of a well-trained navy man.

  ‘We’ve all been asked to muck in,’ he says. ‘Show the new team around. Viceroy’s House is quite a maze.’

  He offers to guide Larry to his allocated room so that he can wash and rest after his journey. As they go down the long corridors Larry tells him of his time under Mountbatten at Combined Operations, and Tarkhan tells of his time under Mountbatten when he was in charge of South East Asia Command.

  ‘He’s a great man,’ says Tarkhan. ‘But I’m afraid that’s not how he’s seen here. They think he’s a playboy who knows nothing about India, and is bringing in a staff who know nothing about India.’

  ‘Some truth in that,’ says Larry. ‘Not the playboy bit. But I know nothing about India.’

  ‘If I may tell you the truth, Captain,’ says Tarkhan, ‘the less y
ou know the better. India will make you weep.’

  They come to a stop outside a door. Tarkhan checks the number on the door against the list in his hand.

  ‘You’re to bunk here,’ he says. ‘If you need anything just shout for your khidmutgar, your servant.’

  ‘I’m to have a servant? I thought I was the servant.’

  ‘We all serve,’ says Tarkhan with a smile, ‘and we are all served. I’m afraid there’s no air cooling in this wing. Your luggage will arrive shortly. Do you think you can find your way back? The new viceroy is due to arrive at three forty-five p.m.’

  With that, Larry is left alone in his new quarters. The room is small, high-ceilinged, with a recessed window. The shutters are closed, leaving the room in semi-darkness. He goes to the window and opens the shutters onto blinding light, and a wave of heat. Outside across a broad empty courtyard are more grand buildings, or perhaps a further wing of this same unending house. A servant in a turban is slowly sweeping the courtyard with a broom of sticks, making a mournful scritch-scritch sound. A heavy early afternoon stillness hangs over the scene. Larry feels briefly dizzy. He lies down on the narrow bed to rest.

  What am I doing here? He thinks. And back comes the answer, I’m here to start again. I’m here to become someone else.

  He oversleeps. When his khidmutgar wakes him it’s past five.

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me before?’

  ‘You did not so order me, Captain Sahib.’

  He splashes water onto his face, brushes his hair, straightens the uniform that he has slept in, and hurries back through the great house. There seem to be more turns in the corridors than he remembers, and no clear indication of which way to go. All he can think to do is keep walking until he finds someone to ask.

  He’s hurrying down a broader corridor than the others when a door opens and a voice says, ‘Could you help?’

  It’s Lady Mountbatten, thin, elegant, careworn.

  ‘It’s my little dog,’ she says. ‘He’s done his business on the floor here, and my khidmutgar says he won’t touch it. I don’t want to step on it myself. So I wonder if you could hunt me out a servant of low enough caste to deal with it?’

  Larry can’t help smiling, and seeing him smile Lady Mountbatten smiles too.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ she says. ‘It’s all too ridiculous for words.’

  ‘Why don’t I deal with it,’ says Larry.

  He takes some lavatory paper from the viceregal bathroom and picks up the dog mess and flushes it away.

  ‘Now you bad boy,’ says Lady Mountbatten to her little Sealyham. ‘You are so kind,’ she says to Larry. ‘Who are you?’

  Larry introduces himself.

  ‘Oh, yes. Dickie did tell me. Something about bananas.’

  ‘Is there anything else I can do, your ladyship?’

  ‘You can get me out of here. I can’t bear this house. It’s a mausoleum. I feel like a corpse. Don’t you? I know it’s supposed to be Lutyens’s masterpiece, but I can’t imagine what he thought he was doing, putting up such a monstrosity.’

  ‘Intimidating the natives, I think,’ says Larry.

  Lady Mountbatten gives Larry a sharp look of surprise.

  ‘Just so,’ she says.

  *

  The next two days are taken up with organising the swearing-in ceremony of the new viceroy. Alan Campbell-Johnson has discovered that the press were badly handled at the airfield when the Mountbattens arrived, and are making complaints. The Sunday edition of Dawn shows a photograph of Ronnie Brockman and Elizabeth Ward described as ‘Lord and Lady Louis arriving’. Campbell-Johnson asks for an extra pair of hands in the press room, and is given Larry. He takes him into the Durbar Hall. A high platform is being built in the dome.

  ‘The idea is we put the newsreel boys and the cameramen up there,’ says Alan. ‘There’s going to be twenty-two of them. I want you to get them up there, and then down again.’

  ‘Is it safe?’ says Larry, gazing up.

  ‘God knows,’ says Alan. ‘It’s Dickie’s idea. They won’t like it, I can tell you now.’

  Larry is kept too busy in Viceroy’s House to venture into the old city, but reports come through of a riot in the main shopping street of Chandni Chowk. Apparently a meeting of Muslims at the great mosque of Jama Masjid has been attacked by lorry-loads of Sikhs brandishing kirpans, and several people are dead. Syed Tarkhan tells Larry over a hurried lunch, ‘You see, this is why we must have Pakistan. We must have a homeland.’

  When the time for the ceremony arrives, Larry shepherds his flock of cameramen. They grumble openly about being made to go on the high platform, but once up there they realise the advantage of the viewpoint. Larry takes up a place on the platform also. The hall below fills with Indian princes arrayed in jewelled robes, and English gentlemen in tailcoats, and politicians of the Hindu nationalist Congress party proudly wearing homespun kurtas, in the tradition of Gandhi. Two red and gold thrones stand beneath the scarlet-draped canopy, illuminated by concealed lights.

  ‘It’s like a bloody movie set!’ exclaims an American newsreel cameraman.

  The ceremony begins with a startlingly loud fanfare from trumpeters placed in the roof. Then the ADCs in their dress uniforms come stalking slowly down the centre aisle, between the crush of dignitaries. After them, side by side, come Lord and Lady Mountbatten, both in white. Mountbatten wears a mass of medals and decorations, a ceremonial sword at his side. Lady Mountbatten wears an ivory brocade dress of inspired simplicity, and long white gloves above the elbow, and a dark blue sash. The cameramen go crazy, popping their flashbulbs at the grandeur of the moment. Larry, looking on, is more struck by how plainly Lady Mountbatten presents herself. No tiara, no necklace, just the grave dignity of her slender figure.

  The Lord Chief Justice of India, Sir Patrick Spens, administers the oath of office. The new viceroy then makes a short address. Up on the platform Larry is unable to hear his words; and he sees from their postures that the politicians below are straining to hear. Later, when the short ceremony is over, Alan thrusts a number of stencilled copies into Larry’s hands, saying, ‘Make sure they all get this. No one heard a bloody word.’

  It turns out Mountbatten has asked India to help him in the difficult task ahead. This seems natural enough to Larry, but from the reaction of the press it’s unprecedented. Eric Britter of The Times says it’s as good as admitting the British have made mistakes in India, and if so, it’ll win Mountbatten a lot of friends.

  Rupert Blundell and Larry escape the marbled halls of Viceroy’s House that afternoon, and Larry gets his first taste of the real India. They drive into old Delhi, which is now under curfew following the riot. There are no signs of the recent violence. The alleyways and bazaars are bursting with life and noise and colour. Everywhere Larry looks he sees, with his painter’s eye, thrilling and jarring juxtapositions of scarlets and ambers and deep greens. The air smells rich with perfume and tobacco, dung and sweat. On foot now, moving through the bazaar, the crowd surges past them on either side, parting before them without touching them. Larry remembers Lady Mountbatten saying, ‘I feel like a corpse.’ It seems to him then that his people, the British, are dead, and only the Indian people are alive.

  ‘What are we doing here?’ he says to Rupert. ‘I mean here, ruling India.’

  ‘Not for much longer,’ says Rupert.

  ‘This isn’t our country. This is another world.’

  ‘Does it frighten you?’

  ‘Frighten me?’ Larry hasn’t thought of it this way, but now that Rupert says it he realises it’s true. ‘Yes, in a way.’

  ‘We English set such a high value on moderation. It strikes me that India is not moderate.’

  An ox-cart passes, its driver shouting at the crowds in his way. Several voices shout back, hands raised in the air. The cart is piled high with manure and clouded with flies. There are children everywhere, their big solemn eyes tracking the Englishmen as they go by.

  ‘The sooner we g
et out the better,’ says Larry.

  ‘If only it were as simple as that,’ says Rupert. ‘I’m part of the policy planning group. Our options are very limited. You could say the pot is boiling, and we’re the lid.’

  *

  Over the next week the leaders of India take their turns in talks with Mountbatten. Larry, officially appointed assistant press attaché, is initiated into the complexities of the independence process. Syed Tarkhan shows him on the map of India how the Muslims are concentrated in what is called the ‘ears of the elephant’, Punjab in the north-west and Bengal in the northeast.

  ‘This will be Pakistan,’ he says. ‘Jinnah will accept nothing less. There must be partition. We Muslims cannot live in a Hindu-controlled nation.’

  ‘But you’ve lived in a British-controlled nation.’

  ‘That is different.’

  The difficulty with partition is that the ‘ears’ are not exclusively Muslim, and the rest of the elephant far from exclusively Hindu. What is to happen to the many who will find themselves in a fearful minority? Syed Tarkhan shakes his head over this.

  ‘Nothing good,’ he says.

  ‘What does Gandhi say?’ Larry asks.

  ‘Ah, Gandhi. He of course wants a united India.’

  ‘I’ve always had the idea that Gandhi is one of the few men alive who truly believes in the power of goodness.’

  ‘The power of goodness?’ says Tarkhan, raising his eyebrows. ‘The mahatma is a very holy man. But whether goodness will prove to be powerful enough in the end, who is to say?’

  Larry gets his own chance to see the mahatma when he makes a call at last on the new viceroy. A large gathering of newspapermen assembles to report on the meeting. Larry is on duty with Alan to attempt to control the story.

  ‘You have to remember,’ Alan tells Larry, ‘that although Gandhi is the father of the nation and so forth, he’s a Hindu, not a Muslim. So Jinnah and his lot are naturally suspicious of us getting too close to him.’