Red Herrings

by Tim Heald

  ‘I mean “so” as in “so what?”’ she said. She spoke in an American accent which Bognor, without total certainty, identified as Bronx. He had an idea they were bossy in the Bronx. From the lodge behind her two other guards, similarly dressed, one male one female, emerged twirling sticks.

  ‘What does he want?’ asked the male, a big black man with a scar down one cheek.

  ‘He, as you call him, wishes to come in and have words with your swami,’ said Bognor, crossly. ‘And I’d be obliged if you’d open up and let me in.’

  ‘You have an appointment?’ asked the big man, who was evidently in charge.

  ‘As a matter of fact, no,’ said Bognor. ‘Nevertheless I wish to see the swami.’

  ‘Swami don’t see no one without an appointment.’

  ‘Swami see me with or without an appointment,’ said Bognor. ‘I am a representative of Her Majesty’s Government and this is still Her Majesty’s country. We do not like private police forces in this country and if I may give you a word of advice I should get through to the swami pretty damn quickly or there could be very serious trouble. There’s been one death already and if you don’t co-operate I’ll have this whole shooting match closed down tomorrow before you can say Hari Krishna.’

  Difficult to say why Bognor had become so excited. Something to do with attitudes. Now that he was middle aged he was beginning to find insolence hard to take.

  The three Blessed Followers regarded him with mild but broadly unsympathetic interest.

  ‘ID?’ said their leader, flatly, holding out a glove.

  ‘ID,’ agreed Bognor holding out his laminated Board of Trade special investigator’s identity card but prudently not letting go. Like a passport it had some impressive phrases about ‘let or hindrance’. It was signed by Her Majesty’s Secretary for Home Affairs.

  The man turned to the girls, shrugging. ‘Where is Fred?’ he asked.

  The first girl looked at her watch. ‘Playing tennis with the Minister for Extra Terrestrial Affairs,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to call the office?’

  ‘Sure,’ said the man, and the paratrooperine unslung a small walkie-talkie from her belt and pressed a sequence of buttons.

  ‘Auntie Ba?’ she said. ‘Sister Ra on main gate. We have a government inspector here wanting to see the swami.’ She paused and glanced at Bognor. ‘No not in the least,’ she said, ‘but he has ID. Just shows, you never can tell. I guess looks aren’t everything.’ Bognor pretended to ignore this but sucked his stomach in nonetheless. ‘Hang about,’ said Sister Ra into the machine, ‘I’ll check.’ She looked across at Bognor and said, ‘What did you say your name was and your outfit?’

  ‘Simon Bognor,’ said Bognor stiffly, ‘Board of Trade.’

  The girl giggled, but slightly less inimically than before.

  ‘He says Simon Bognor of the Board of Trade,’ she said, and then, ‘O.K. We’ll wait.’ She looked across at Bognor and put her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘They’re calling the swami on the tennis court right now.’

  For a minute or two Bognor stood mouthing obscenities to himself, shifting from one foot to the other, and pretending not to ogle the girl soldiers. Then Sister Ra’s walkie-talkie came to life again and she listened intently, then put her hand over it again and asked Bognor, ‘Were you at Apocrypha College, Oxford, in the early sixties?’

  Bognor’s jaw did not exactly drop but it felt extraordinarily disconnected. ‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact, but what’s that got to do with anything?’

  Evidently rather a lot because when Sister Ra conveyed the news to Auntie Ba there was an immediate change in attitude and relaxation in tension. The gate was raised, and Sister Ra and the other two smiled quite nicely and bowed their heads. Sister Ra even put down her stick and raised both hands, prayer fashion, to her mouth. Bognor, British to the last, nodded curtly, and said ‘Morning.’

  ‘Sister Ra will drive you to the court,’ said the man in charge. He seemed somewhat chastened at Bognor’s admittance. Sister Ra strode manfully to an old silver Harley Davidson and kicked it into life. ‘Get on!’ she shouted. ‘And hold tight.’ He did as he was told and they jolted off down the drive which was in mercifully good order, then swung off down a narrow path, narrowly missing a group of girls in white robes who were either kneeling in prayer or weeding the rosebeds. Ahead was a long high window-less building with a skylight.

  An exquisite oriental girl in white was standing by a door. She bowed slightly and raised hands in greeting. ‘Mr Bognor, I am pleased to meet you. I am Monday’s bride, Blessed Orchid. The swami has almost finished his tennis match but he has asked if you would very much mind sitting with me in the dedans until it is over.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The dedans,’ said the little girl, tinkling an oriental giggle. ‘This is not lawn tennis, Mr Bognor, but real tennis which is the Holy Game of the Blessed Followers of the Chosen Light.’

  ‘I see,’ said Bognor.

  Inside it was quite dim. Blessed Orchid guided him into a low gallery with rows of benches. From where he sat he could see two men in white flannels. They were holding asymmetrical rackets, not unlike ordinary tennis rackets, steamrollered or mangled. At the net, which was much like a tennis net but which drooped, another bride, a big busty blonde, called out, ‘Hazard Chase the Door.’

  ‘Aha,’ said Bognor, knowingly, ‘this is real tennis. I’ve seen it at Lord’s.’

  ‘Ah so,’ said Blessed Orchid, ‘Lord’s is a very holy place. Real tennis is a very holy game!’

  The figure who now approached them in their dug-out was very short, rather stout and almost totally unrecognisable on account of the facial hair which enveloped him. You could not say that he was bearded or moustached. He was just covered in hair. As he picked two balls out of the netting which separated him from the spectators he peered into the dedans and smiled at Bognor. ‘Hello, Simon,’ he said. ‘Most awfully good to see you after all these years. This won’t take a jiffy and I’ll be right with you.’

  For a second the years rolled away and Bognor was back on the lawn in Balliol’s garden quad playing croquet with a dapper, lean, immaculate Indian lawyer whose ambition was to become his country’s Lord Chief Justice.

  ‘Good God!’ said Bognor, ‘Bhagwan Josht!’

  It was the swami’s serve at match point. Bognor watched with a curiosity which verged on incredulity. The swami struck the ball from well back in his own half, hitting it with a heavy underhand slice which propelled it up on to a sloping roof to the left hand side of the court. The ball spun off this, striking the black wall at the far end and bouncing back at ankle height and a totally unexpected (to Bognor) angle. The Minister for Extra Terrestrial Affairs did not seem at all perturbed by this for he struck the ball very cleanly and with a low trajectory straight at Bognor’s seat. The swami, evidently surprised by this defiance, did not move, and the ball crashed into the netting only inches from Bognor’s nose. ‘Fifteen forty’ called the blonde bride.

  ‘But surely that was out,’ said Bognor to Blessed Orchid, but Blessed Orchid only put a finger to her lips and said, ‘Shhh.’ Once more the swami took a ball from the netting, and cut it hard on to the sloping roof; once more the Minister for Extra Terrestrial Affairs hit the ball clean and hard but this time it came higher and sailed over the netting. Bognor heard it hit a wall somewhere above him and seconds later it came plopping down tamely, bouncing high so that the swami had time to aim carefully. This time he hit it low over the net to his right where it crashed into the base of an inconveniently situated buttress. As it hit this it came screaming off at right angles straight towards the minister who, miraculously, got his racket to it and managed to return the ball in a high arc out of Bognor’s sight.

  The swami however obviously had a good sight of it. Bognor could hear it bouncing around above and watched as the swami held his uncouth racket very high above his shoulder, elbow cocked for what he obviously thought was going to be a coup de grâce. As the ball
fell and bounced, the swami’s racket described a languid swing and the ball sailed off towards the furthest of three netted apertures on the left hand side.

  ‘Clot!’ thought Bognor. ‘He’s hit it out.’ But as the ball struck the netting and a little bell tinkled, the swami raised both arms in a boxer’s salute and Blessed Orchid cried out, ‘Beezer shot Beatitude!’ Bognor scratched his head. It was most perplexing. Perhaps the swami made the rules up as he went along.

  Outside the swami shook Bognor’s hands effusively and introduced him to the Minister for Extra Terrestrial Affairs as a ‘very very old friend from university days’. The minister looked suspicious but was swiftly dismissed. So was Orchid. The swami said he would summon her for meditation in an hour or two.

  ‘Come, Simon, old friend,’ said the Chosen Light alias Bhagwan Josht alias Phoney Fred. ‘We’ll wander up to the office and have a chin wag. I suppose you’ve come about Wilmslow, your colleague. We’ve had the police here already. Guy Wapping, no less. He didn’t recognise me, I’m glad to say. Not surprising, I suppose. We hardly knew each other at Oxford. He struck me as none too bright.’

  Two very pretty girls in white robes passed them, bowing very low indeed. The swami reached into his little leather pouch and threw two scraps of purple paper at them. The girls pounced on them and pressed them to their lips with expressions of vapid ecstasy. The swami glanced at Simon.

  ‘You’re not to laugh, Simon,’ he said. ‘These people derive great pleasure from that sort of thing.’

  ‘What are they?’ asked Bognor.

  The swami shrugged. ‘Just pieces of paper soaked in lavender water. I’ve been using them ever since I started in this business. It’s very effective.’

  ‘And just how did you start?’

  The swami chuckled. ‘I tried the law for a while. Never liked it very much. It was one thing to be at the Inner Temple but frankly it wasn’t at all the same thing back home. Then some friends took me down to Poona to see what was going on down there. Honestly, Simon, what a racket! Well, of course, I said to myself, this is the life. So I set up a little ashram and went from strength to strength. It’s all a question of marketing!’

  They had reached the big house now – a ludicrous red brick schloss on the lines of Keble College and St Pancras station, a preposterous mélange of turret and stained glass, flying buttresses and Gothic archways. Over the porte-cochère hung a vivid saffron banner saying, ‘Blessings!’

  ‘Do you mind very much taking your shoes off?’ asked Bognor’s old friend. ‘It’s a house rule.’

  Bognor didn’t mind at all though he was rather self-conscious about the hole in his socks. He wished he could persuade Monica to darn them. The swami obviously had no trouble finding people to darn his socks.

  ‘I’m on the first floor,’ he said. ‘Shall we walk or take the lift?’

  They walked. The main staircase was immensely wide and curved gently upwards from the vast marbled entrance hall. All the better, Bognor supposed, to make your flaunting entrance and exits. It was all show. On the first floor they walked along a long red-carpeted gallery, past a room labelled Communications Centre which was full of gossiping Telex machines and earnest robed men and women staring intently at computer screens.

  ‘If you’re competing with people like Rothschilds and the Chase Manhattan,’ said the swami, ‘you’ve got to have all the gear.’

  ‘I see,’ said Bognor.

  At the end of the corridor Bhagwan Josht took a plastic card from his white flannel trousers and pushed it into a slot. The door slid open and he motioned Bognor inside.

  ‘One must have a little privacy,’ he said. ‘Help yourself to a drink while I have a quick shower and change into something simple.’ He showed Bognor into a sumptuous drawing room full of leather furniture. ‘Fridge in the bookcase,’ said the swami. ‘Just press Halsbury’s Laws of England volume one.’

  Bognor did and the books retracted to reveal a large Westinghouse refrigerator full of alcohol. He poured himself a glass of white wine, spent a moment or two studying the pictures of the swami greeting various world leaders. (He particularly liked the one of him giving a piece of purple paper to Mr Andropov; also the one of him and the Queen Mother having a bit of a giggle.) Then he sat down, sifted through the magazines on the table and began to read the Investors Chronicle. Presently the swami came in wearing a shining saffron robe and smelling strongly of Fabergé.

  ‘I didn’t know you were allowed drink,’ said Bognor.

  ‘Oh, we aren’t,’ said the swami, pouring a Perrier. ‘Visitors only. Bad for business not to be able to offer some of our clients a drink.’ He sat down. ‘Well,’ he said, raising his glass, ‘chin, chin. Long time no see. How’s Monica by the way?’

  ‘She’s very well,’ said Bognor. ‘We’re married nowadays. What happened to that tall girl from Lady Margaret Hall you used to knock around with? The one with the cleft chin.’

  ‘I’m told she became a TV personality.’ The swami laughed. ‘But as you may have deduced I no longer have to worry about that side of things. It’s all taken care of. On a rota basis.’ He laughed again, slapping his little fat thigh.

  ‘Isn’t it all …’ Bognor tried to suppress a sharp stab of envy. ‘Well … immoral … I mean shouldn’t you be doing something more worthwhile?’

  ‘Like working for the Board of Trade?’ The swami laughed quite uproariously this time and pointed mirthfully at his old croquet partner.’ You should see your face!’ he said. ‘I think you should join up at once. I’ll send you the application forms.’

  ‘No but seriously,’ said Bognor, chastened, ‘I mean …’

  ‘Seriously nothing old boy,’ said the swami seriously. ‘I run a very tight ship and I do a lot of good. The people who come here are nearly always very unhappy, very lonely, very insecure, and they have no sense of purpose. We change all that. Here they belong to a community. They have friends. We protect them from the unpleasantness of what is laughingly described as civilisation. Nothing wrong with that.’

  ‘And most of them happen to be very rich.’

  ‘There’s no means test,’ said the swami. ‘Not even an admission fee.’

  ‘But there’s an overwhelming tendency to take on poor little rich people?’

  ‘There are an awful lot of poor little rich people around these days.’ The swami turned up his palms in a gesture of mock despair. ‘The other day a man came to me. His family run one of the biggest breweries in South America. He pleaded with me to let him join. Miserable as sin he was. A wreck. Now he works in the greenhouse and thinks I am some sort of god. He’s probably crazy but he’s happy for the first time in his life. What should I have done? Turned him away?’

  ‘And how much money did he bring?’

  ‘Around fifty million dollars.’ The swami shrugged. ‘Sure. It’s a lot of money. But it’s very carefully invested and he gets the benefit.’

  ‘Working in the greenhouse?’

  ‘It’s what he wants. Why should I answer.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Bognor. ‘It doesn’t seem quite right somehow.’

  ‘All communities are the same,’ said the swami. ‘Many people who have worldly goods are unhappy with them but they can’t renounce them altogether. So they make them over to cynics like myself. We look after them and enjoy the loot. The Church has done it for centuries.’

  ‘Oh well,’ said Bognor. ‘There are some things I shall never understand.’

  ‘That’s life,’ said the swami, looking profound. ‘But it’s something I’m afraid your colleague Mr Wilmslow had some trouble understanding.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You knew he’d been to see me?’ The swami raised his eyes to the ceiling which was painted by minor Pre-Raphaelites. A Judgement Day scene of peculiar lugubriousness. Bognor often wondered if all Victorians were such whey-faced drips as the PRB made out.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bognor. ‘He’d been to see everyone in Herring St George of any subs
tance. Anyone that is who was registered for VAT. I’m afraid that includes Sir Nimrod Herring who could hardly be said to be of substance.’

  ‘Yes.’ The swami seemed thoughtful. ‘Sir Nimrod. I think there may be slightly more to him than meets the eye but I’m afraid his so-called shop isn’t much of a success. I had hoped to deal with him in the interests of good community relations. Not possible. In fact, to be perfectly frank, the village is pretty impossible all round. I don’t know what the country’s coming to. A right lot of faggots and johnny-come-latelies.’ Bognor remembered that Bhagwan Josht had been to Harrow. His father had held some minor Indian title. His elder brother still lived in the family palace, crumbling slowly to dust in some God-forsaken northern city where once their word had been law. Bhagwan was better off where he was.

  ‘No, your Mr Wilmslow was a most unpleasant piece of work,’ said the swami, ‘but not the first we’ve come across since moving in to Herring St George.’ He paused. ‘I’ll be perfectly frank, Simon, we’re not everyone’s cup of tea, and partly for that reason I’m extremely careful to do everything by the book. No hard drugs, for instance. Yes, we allow marijuana but we exercise strict quality control. We have a reputation for sexual libertarianism but really by the standards of the outside world we are positively prudish.’

  ‘Present company excepted.’ Bognor grinned.

  The swami grinned back. ‘All company directors have their little perks,’ he said.

  ‘As far as money goes,’ he went on, ‘we are totally scrupulous. We can afford to be. We have a very great deal of it. That brewer I was mentioning, he’s just one of many. We invest shrewdly, of course. And at times we may sail a little close to the wind but everything is strictly legal and above board. If anyone wishes to inspect the books he can do so whenever he likes. Even you.’

  He rubbed his whiskers, and paused before continuing. ‘Now the second we arrived here we had a visit from the doctor. We have our own trained medical staff here naturally but we received him kindly until it became clear that what he was trying to do was to negotiate some sort of contract for supplying illicit drugs.’ The swami looked scandalised. ‘As far as I could make out this was something he was already doing for others, but I didn’t enquire. We sent him packing straight away.’