The Thing about Thugs

by Tabish Khair

  ‘And your punch line, Karim?’ said Qui Hy, stitching carefully in her chair.

  ‘My punch line?’

  ‘Your punch line, Karim, for you would not have given us such an intricate description if you did not have something shocking to say at the end of it’, Qui Hy added.

  ‘Mai knows you well, bastard’, said Gunga in their patois.

  ‘No head’, replied Karim.

  ‘What?’ Qui Hy paused in her stitching. Again?’

  ‘No head. Clean cut. Swish.’ Karim drew a finger across his own neck to illustrate.

  Qui Hy looked at Amir, who sat in a huddle, unnaturally still. She knew about Jenny’s aunt. She shook her head, as if in warning or regret.

  Karim continued, in his usual determinedly heartless manner, ‘Though who would want the poor boy’s head is anyone’s guess. It was the most ugly skull I ever saw, the top of it that is. He used to keep it hidden under a cap. Such a fine-looking boy, gentle, with beautiful eyes and lips, but he had the skull of an ogre, as though a giant hand had twisted it out of shape.’

  45

  Jane Austen. My grandfather’s library had its inevitable quota of Jane Austen. He could not have been what he was without those gilded, hardbound books.

  Looking back, I feel vaguely disappointed with myself for taking to Austen like a gecko takes to the backs of cobwebbed paintings and portraits. Couldn’t I see the distance between Austen’s world of the gentry and mine, sense the loud silence of her servants and those gaps that were trips to plantations and colonies? Perhaps I could; perhaps I couldn’t. But what I could see and hear were the muffled footsteps of her female characters, their satin voices that often covered an iron will. I had heard those sounds and voices. My grandmother’s house was full of them. I knew them intimately, though in another language. It was in that ghostly resonance that I recognized the sound of Austen’s world, which was, after all, not too different from how I came to imagine the Batterstones in their ancestral seat. How else would I have been able to enter that world? For even though my grandfather’s house was not a fraction as grand as the Batterstone country seat and the twain were divided by gaping differences, I have no doubt there was also a similarity of prosperity, politeness, patience, persistence, patterns, paths.

  Lady Batterstone walked down the path to the ancient landing place, carefully restored and maintained, by the muddy river. It was difficult to imagine that this narrow river, swaddled in dark rushes in the middle of the quiet countryside, wound all the way to noisy London, which her lawfully wedded husband must now be quitting to make his annual three-hour journey to the family-seat. He was supposed to join them for dinner tonight. Not that the family was around any more — both the boys were married and settled on their own estates. And not that she had been family to Lord Batterstone for at least twenty years now, no, not in anything other than words. Yet, this was a ritual they maintained: Lord Batterstone coming ‘home’ to his country mansion from his London residence for a fortnight every year, usually, but not always, in early summer. In the past, Lady Batterstone had reciprocated by visiting London for a week or two during the season. But it was four years since she had last been there and she did not miss either crowded London or her husband’s large, spooky residence, filling slowly with skulls.

  Appearances had to be maintained though. She had to play the charming hostess for a few days every year. She had to invite interesting or distinguished guests and throw an annual ball. Lord Batterstone would be there throughout, polite and cold. She would be there too, the perfect hostess despite the various minor ailments that plagued her, her rheumatism, her migraine, her aches. And, almost without realizing it, she would manage to include in the twenty or thirty guests who visited during the period, at least one person whom Lord Batterstone abhorred.

  There was the sound of waves breaking as a small barge sailed past. The men on it raised their hats to Lady Batterstone, ceasing to row for a moment, and their barge floated like a light shadow on the dark waters of the river. Then a fish jumped, and there was the sound of a party — some of her guests — following her down the path.

  She knew it was futile to hope for solitary moments during her weeks of fashionable hospitality. But she was relieved when the guests who stepped out from under the trees overshadowing the path turned out to be only that pale, serious young man, Captain Meadows, and Mary Grayper, the girl he was obviously wooing. Mrs Grayper followed at a discreet distance, complaining that the young people were walking too fast for an old woman like her, but Lady Batterstone had seen enough of mothers like Mrs Grayper to know that they always allowed their protected broods ample elbow room with a suitable bachelor. In any case, everyone knew that Mrs Grayper and Mary were angling for the Captain who, Lady Batterstone had heard, was eminently suitable, now that he had come into an unexpected legacy from a distant uncle, which enabled him to live a life of ease in the London house he had inherited from his parents.

  Lady Batterstone had heard of Meadows’ ‘scientific’ differences with her husband. In fact, the Graypers, whom the Batterstones knew very slightly, had been invited in order to enable and induce the Captain to come: neither the Graypers nor the Captain were in the Batterstones’ league. Not that it bothered Lady Batterstone. She ignored such matters when she wanted to, just as she had forgotten, now that Captain Meadows was here, about the rumours of acrimonious debates between him and her husband. There was very little of note that Lady Batterstone did not eventually get to hear. London was far away, no doubt, but then, who would believe this narrow, muddy river flowed all the way to it?

  She nodded to the men in the passing barge and moved to join her guests. The rest of the party would soon follow; unless, of course, the gods being merciful, they had decided to head for the new Chinese pavilion in the park.

  46

  Major Grayper had remained in the library of the huge Batterstone mansion. It was an impressive library. The Major had been to great houses in the past, but never to one of this stature. He was, though unwilling to show it, a bit overawed. He needed moments, now and then, to recover from the majesty of the place. And the library was the only place where he was assured of privacy: most of the other guests hardly ever used it, and neither did Lady Batterstone. Captain Meadows, he knew, might have been here, but that was the likelihood Mrs Grayper was resolutely guarding against. Men never propose in libraries, she had sagely pronounced on her way to the Batterstone mansion. Ever since she had received the unexpected invitation to spend a week at the Batterstone mansion and learned that the Captain had also been invited, Mrs Grayper had not only strained to induce the reticent Meadows to accept but was now plotting insidiously to throw her daughter and the Captain together in romantic, Arcadian surroundings, certainly not bleak, bookish ones.

  So it was with a degree of surprise and mild irritation that the Major looked up when the door was flung open and a large man walked into the library. Eyes not used to the gloom of the library, it took the newcomer a few seconds before he noticed the Major at a desk. By then the Major had recognized the man as Lord Batterstone and hastened to greet him.

  ‘Oh, I am sorry to have interrupted you. I just arrived and was told that everyone was out for a walk in the park’, said Lord Batterstone, shaking hands. He did not recognize the Major, for they had met only once or twice in the past, but he pretended he did. He was used to being greeted by complete strangers ensconced in his mansion as his guests, and often, by people he would never have invited himself. It would not surprise him, he laughed inwardly, to find that upstart Captain Meadows reclining in the armchair one summer!

  But what was this man, Major whatsisname, babbling about? A garden walk, yes, yes, he knew that; a trip through their park to see the new pavilion that his lawfully wedded spouse had spent a minor fortune on just last year, yes, yes, he knew that too — though of course his smile and nods did not betray the irritation of his thoughts — his daughter, so, the Major had a daughter, called Mary, yes, what else, also out,
with his wife, the Major’s that is, of course, poor woman to have to put up with a man of military bearing and the wobbly talk of a dithering poet, his wife gone out too, with Mary, yes, who else, and what, what, Captain Meadows... Captain Meadows!

  ‘They should be back anytime’, Major Grayper was saying.

  Lord Batterstone gripped the edge of a reading table to steady himself.

  ‘Captain Meadows’, he gasped.

  ‘Oh yes, sir, he should be back soon too. I forgot that the two of you were acquainted.’

  Acquainted. Yes, yes, you could call it that.

  But Lord Batterstone could hardly enunciate those words. His throat was dry. He smiled weakly. Then he mumbled, ‘You must excuse me, sir. I forgot to instruct my man about the baggage.’

  And he rushed out of the library, leaving the good Major with serious doubts, not for the first time, about the mental health of members of the English aristocracy.

  47

  Lady Batterstone had, over the years, quite unintentionally of course, made Lord Batterstone eat shoulder to shoulder with people he would have crossed the street to avoid in London. But never had his Lordship taken the slightest notice of it. This time, however, he took her aside before dinner and instructed her to ensure that Captain Meadows was not seated next to him, or immediately opposite him. Where would you want him to be seated then, she asked, eyes wide with innocence. Anywhere, he retorted, his mask of imperturbable control slipping for a second, anywhere, but not too close to my chair.

  When dinner commenced, Captain Meadows was seated on the same side of the table as Lord Batterstone, but so far away as to be almost invisible. Major Grayper had been placed opposite the Captain, and the rest of the company had been arranged with due respect to social status and gender.

  Now, it is a matter sometimes observed by scientists and more often by clandestine lovers, that sound travels more freely than sight. Place a wall across sight and it is stymied, but sound seeps through bricks and stones. Sight, as cheating lovers know too well, cannot turn a corner but sound, ah, sound can find its way through labyrinths. While Captain Meadows was hardly visible to Lord Batterstone, the sound of his conversation, alas, could not be banished. Not that the Captain would have made much conversation, left to himself; the fact that Mary was so confident of success was attributable to this one flaw in Meadows’ persona. A reasonably handsome man, eligible in various worldly ways, well-read and well-travelled, he lacked the sort of frilly language that would have bestowed on him the attribute of being ‘charming.’ But at this dinner he was seated opposite Major Grayper who, having smothered the feeble poet that Lord Batterstone had detected in his conversation in the library, was now discoursing with the efficiency and loudness of a man used to marching other men in straight lines and geometrical patterns.

  At first, Lady Batterstone was relieved by Major Grayper’s decisive interventions: they served, towards the fag end of the dinner, to knit together the conversation at the table. Until then, instead of ebbing evenly like a sated sea, the conversation had been eddying and twirling, collecting in pools around Lord Batterstone, where it gave out the pungent scent of science; around Lady Batterstone and her good friend Mrs Montmorency, it assumed the fragrance of gardens and nonchalant domesticity; around Mr Reginald B. Sangrail and the young men and women next to him, it emanated an odour composed of equal portions of the ballroom and the stable; and around Major Grayper, it often leapt into the acridity of law and order.

  It was law and order that enabled the Major to thread the various other conversations at the table through the singular eye of his discourse. This was what he said, addressing Lord Batterstone first: ‘If I may take up what you have said, that, sir, was exactly the point I was making to Captain Meadows here. As you put it, sir, and so admirably, human beings are made by divinity, and God does not play dice. Now I have often been asked — why, just this evening Mr Sangrail put the question to me — I have been asked if I know who might be behind the beheadings which, as you know, have plagued London over the past few months. With the necessary withering away of the Runners, we are left without a detective body that could spread its investigations over the whole of London, and hence I have been asked by my superiors to look into all such murders, regardless of the vicinity of their occurrence. With that grave responsibility come inevitable questions, such as the one Mr Sangrail posed to me: Do I know the identity of the murderer? Well, no, I replied, I do not know who, but there are signs. For God, as you said, sir, does not play dice: He leaves marks for us to read.’

  Then, raising his voice to drown out the nasal treble of Reginald B. Sangrail, who was trying to slide into the more salubrious mud of races and foxhunts, the Major reworked the thread of conversation enmeshing Lady Batterstone and Mrs Montmorency through the eyes of his needle of Law and Order: ‘Now, as anyone who has anything to do with the working orders knows, and as you have noted a moment ago, what the working classes desire and need is order. But it is not an order they can create on their own; it needs to be imposed on them with an iron hand. It is with them —’ here the Major turned to Mr Sangrail and his circle, finally knitting them into his meta-conversation ‘— as it is with horses, that you need to ride with a firm hand. Kind, but firm. Kind, but firm. Now, sir (he turned his conversation to Lord Batterstone again), what I say is that I know what signs to look for: as soon as the culprit is found, he shall be identified by the signs.’

  ‘That is to say, Major’, Mr Reginald B. Sangrail could not help interjecting, with an iota of relish, ‘you have not found the culprit yet.’

  ‘It is not the finding that is important, sir. It is the reading of signs — as in, what is that (lacking the word, he looked at Captain Meadows, who supplied it: ‘phrenology’)... yes, phrenology. Once you know how to read the skull, you have your man. Now, I know that this man is either a native from the colonies or a working man, perhaps Cockney, who has been abroad. And there are other signs: I simply have to look for the signs, and...’

  The Major snapped his fingers to signify the ease of the prospective capture.

  ‘But that, Major’, said the Captain in his quiet, studious way, ‘that is where I beg to differ. The signs, the physical signs, are not enough: they can signify different things, depending on the man’s background, experiences, and so forth.’

  ‘Humph’, pronounced Lord Batterstone, finally entering the discussion, ‘you mean to say, Captain, that God is a gambler.’

  ‘Who can really know, sir?’

  ‘That might be laudable freethinking in some London circles, Captain, but you and I differ on the matter. We differ very much, sir. I cannot express to you how much we differ.’

  ‘And yet, Lord Batterstone, I must defend my position. I am not dismissing the science, I am not dismissing the hand of divinity; I am simply suggesting that signs are not enough, that God does not provide easy answers. And in any case, how can we know enough about the brain of a man, encased as it is in its bony casement, to be able to judge him...’

  (Lady Batterstone, wary now of the direction of the conversation, tried to intervene with a comment on one of the dishes, but was ignored by her lord.)

  ‘By reading the bony casement, sir. I think that is what we do, don’t we?’

  ‘There, if I may say so, Lord Batterstone, a majority of our colleagues would disagree with you: the skull gives you indications, not answers. We need to look deeper.’

  ‘You are wrong, sir, if I may say so. Indications, not answers! It is the mark of ignorance, if not disbelief, to attribute a failure to read the signs to the absence of signs. God has made the skull to fit the brain: if you read the covering, you read the content. It is as simple as that...’

  The sea of conversation was heaving dangerously on the fragile table, shiny with silver and candles, and Lady Batterstone took the drastic action of ringing for dessert, even though some of the guests had not finished the food on their plates. Holding his pince-nez decisively in place, Mr Reginald B. Sangrail c
ame to her rescue by turning the conversation, with uncharacteristic resolution (born of utter boredom with matters relating to science, law, order, and the working classes), to the ball that was going to be the highlight of the week.

  48

  Breakfast in his chamber. His butler entering, helping him into his slippers and gown, and leaving soundlessly. The maid placing the silver tray, as was the custom, on the table in front of a deep window seat. From there, Lord Batterstone could look out and see a sizeable portion of the terrace and the park, while consuming his breakfast slowly, between occasional glances at a book or newspaper that he seldom read in a consistent manner. Lord Batterstone had established this tradition simply in order to avoid his guests for as long as possible. If he could manage to avoid them until noon, he would feel capable of bearing their company into the evening if required.

  Lord Batterstone was counting the days. After the ball next evening, he would be a free man for a year. And, if things went well, next year, he would be in Africa collecting scientific samples and not wasting his time with a bunch of social nincompoops, invited haphazardly and perhaps spitefully by his dear wife. He was grateful that Major whatsisname had been called back to London yesterday morning with news of yet another beheading — some beggar or prostitute found in an abandoned ruin — though he had, unfortunately, left his family and that insufferable Captain Meadows behind.

  Beheadings, forsooth! When had London ever lacked beheadings?

  49

  Mary and Captain Meadows stood in the small pagoda in one corner of the landscaped parks that surrounded the mansion of their hosts. They were not thinking of beheadings. Or, at least, Mary was not; Meadows was a bit worried about the way talk in London rags had moved towards accounts of thugs. It was only a matter of time before someone pointed a finger at Amir Ali, he thought. The Captain was convinced of Amir’s innocence, but he had his doubts about the authorities — despite the fact that the Major was in charge — and he did not trust the London mob. In any case, he hoped that Amir had availed of his discharge from the Captain’s service to board the first ship going east.