by Caro Peacock
Seth Robinson gestured towards the drying pages.
‘Since it’s set in type now, could we please take Mr Griffiths’s manuscript back?’ I said.
I was guessing that the printer wouldn’t have heard that his client was dead. He considered for a while.
‘Don’t see why not.’
He opened a cupboard and took out a pile of manuscript. The title page was now dog-eared and ink spattered, but the handwriting was undoubtedly Mr Griffiths’s. The printer found some newspaper and string to wrap it and, still at Tom Huckerby’s fast pace, we carried it in triumph back to Abel Yard.
By then, I was gasping for tea. I asked Mrs Martley to make it while Tom Huckerby and I sat at the parlour table and started reading.
‘He’s giving it to them good and strong,’ Tom said, after the first few pages.
He certainly was. It began:
For the past two hundred years, the stewardship of the great land that we call India has been entrusted to the East India Company. The result of that stewardship has been, largely, to convert the wealth and labour of India into profits for the City of London. It has been a process of greed, short-sightedness and corruption. Recent attempts by our Parliament to restrain the Company’s activities have led only to the continuation of the old abuses in new forms, mostly carried out by those same men whose rapacity led to the demands for reform. The purpose of this summary is to give examples of that rapacity, in the hope that they will arouse indignation in Parliament and public that even the opium-dulled consciences of our Indian traders cannot ignore.
After a while, Tom Huckerby had to leave to attend a meeting, but obviously found it hard to tear himself away from the manuscript.
‘Since your man’s paid for having it printed, it would be a pity not to circulate it. I’ll talk to a few booksellers, if you like,’ he said.
‘Why not. And he wanted to send it to MPs.’
Properly speaking, it should have been a decision for my brother, as Mr Griffiths’s executor, but I decided to spare him the worry. After all, he was a Company servant. Come to think of it, Mr Griffiths had been as well. He surely couldn’t have expected to remain one once his pamphlet was published. I said goodbye to Tom Huckerby and settled down to read more. There was no doubt that Mr Griffiths’s heart, as well as his considerable brain, was deeply involved. The first part of the manuscript concentrated mostly on land transactions and in some cases outright land theft, ranging over twenty years or so. It made the blood boil to read some of the examples and learn what had been done in our name. I wondered how much my brother knew about all this and resolved to ask him. But the blood can’t keep on boiling and I was very weary from a fast walk to Ludgate Hill and back. I turned over a few more pages of manuscript, hoping to come across the name of McPherson, but my eyes rebelled against reading so much by lamplight and kept shutting. I marked my place in the pile of manuscript, stacked it up tidily and went to bed.
Around mid-afternoon next day, Tom Huckerby was at the bottom of my stairs, hat in hand, hair disordered.
‘It’s gone. Somebody just rolled up and took the lot of it, every single copy.’
He was red-faced with hurry and anger. I fetched him a glass of water and made him drink before he started explaining, though I’d guessed almost as soon as I saw him.
‘You know you’d agreed I could approach some booksellers? I found three that were willing to take it and put it in their windows, all of them in Fleet Street, so it would make a stir. So I borrowed a handcart and went round to the printer to load up. Too late, he told me. A man had come in a carriage and collected all of them an hour ago.’
‘What man?’
‘Didn’t know the name. Middle-aged, clerk type.’
‘Useless. So he just handed them over?’
‘Yes. The apprentices carried them out and piled them on the carriage floor and seats. The man was most insistent that they shouldn’t miss a copy and was not at all pleased when Robinson told him he didn’t have the original manuscript any more.’
‘So what did he say?’
‘That a young lady who said she was a friend of the man who wrote the pamphlet had come the day before and taken it away with her. The man rolls away with the pamphlets, then a couple of hours later he’s back, saying the woman must have been an imposter and wanting a full description.’
‘Which Robinson gave him?’
‘Yes. He’s not pleased with either of us. Robinson says we put him in the wrong and we’re to give the manuscript back.’
‘When it snows in Hades, I will.’
Tom nodded. I sat beside him on the edge of the water trough in the yard. We were both downcast, Tom Huckerby because he’d lost a chance to take another tilt at the rich and privileged, I at a loss.
‘What I don’t understand is why that pamphlet’s so important,’ I said.
‘Obvious, isn’t it? The robber merchants don’t want people to know the truth about what they’re doing.’
‘But it’s not the first time people have criticized the Company. Besides, rich men are thick-skinned. Accusing them of being corrupt and greedy is about as much use as trying to shame a jackal by calling it a carnivore.’
Tom kicked at a loose stone. We sat in silence for a while.
‘So Robinson’s told the man he’ll try to get the manuscript back,’ I said.
‘The fellow’s threatening him with trouble if it’s not back by midday tomorrow.’
‘I don’t suppose he left an address for sending it?’
‘No. He said he’d call at the print shop on the stroke of twelve and Robinson had better have it there, or else.’
If I could be somewhere near the print shop at twelve, I might recognize the man. A faint chance, because it sounded as if he was acting on somebody else’s instructions, but better than nothing. I said nothing of that to Tom Huckerby. He’d done enough.
That evening, before it got dark, that other Tom, my brother, arrived. I poured Madeira for both of us and told him how much I respected him for organizing Mr Griffiths’s funeral rites. I think that pleased him a little.
‘I’ve just been talking to an old friend of Griffiths’s,’ he said. ‘He told me he thought it was exactly what Griffiths would have wanted in the circumstances.’
‘An old friend? Was it the Indian gentleman?’
‘No. An Englishman named Tillington with a house in Holborn. He knew Griffiths in India a long way back. He’s a Sanskrit scholar, like Griffiths. Rather an invalid. He left a note for me at East India House this morning. I went round to call on him this afternoon.’
‘How did he know about you?’
‘Griffiths had mentioned me to him. Tillington has been following proceedings of the Indian committee, very much from the same point of view as Griffiths. He has no love for McPherson and his kind.’
‘Was he surprised by Mr Griffiths’s death?’
‘He hinted that he doesn’t think he killed himself.’
‘You see!’
‘Liberty, don’t start on this again. I’d only just met Tillington. I wasn’t going to interrogate him. It was only a hint.’
I thought that if I’d been present, I shouldn’t have let it stop at hinting. I’d have liked to meet Mr Griffiths’s friend, but knew there was no hope of an introduction from Tom.
‘So have you found out anything about the Indian gentleman?’ I said.
‘I haven’t tried. I don’t think I should. It was Griffiths’s business.’
‘And you didn’t recognize him, from back in India?’
I was afraid he’d snap me up, but he didn’t.
‘Not the man, no. But the type.’
‘Type?’
‘He was a Brahmin, I’m almost sure. That’s the highest caste for Hindus, their ancient priesthood.’
‘What makes you think so?’
‘By the river there, he was reciting something from the Sanskrit scriptures. I knew just enough classical Sanskrit to recognize it. It was m
ore than that, though. There was a dignity about him.’
I nodded. I’d felt that, even as he passed me barefoot in the mud.
‘There was a woman with him,’ I said.
He sat bolt upright.
‘Where?’
‘Waiting in the carriage. I saw her hand drawing down the blind.’
‘Liberty, I told you to stop it. It was bad enough that you followed us to the river . . .’
‘So I’m not allowed to follow you to the Thames, but I’m supposed to follow you all the way out to India?’
We bickered for a while, until I backed down enough to say I was sorry I’d annoyed him. Unusual, but there was something about my brother that worried me more than ever. He was keeping something from me. You might think that was fair enough, because I was keeping quite a lot from him, like Griffiths’s pamphlets and their disappearance. I might have told him, if it hadn’t been for the argument. Truce again. We drank the wine and talked about other things. He said he must go, but didn’t move from his chair by the fire. I took the risk of asking him what was worrying him.
‘Nothing.’ Then he sighed and said, ‘Nothing really.’
So then it came out. Tom was sure that his room in the lodging house for junior Company employees had been searched.
‘I’m almost certain it happened while I was away doing what had to be done for Griffiths.’
‘Cleaners move things sometimes,’ I said.
‘Do cleaners work in the evenings? Do they go through piles of paper in a document case? I found out when I was looking for something this morning. They’d been taken out and put back in a different order.’
‘Sure of that?’
He nodded. I asked him if he had any idea who and why.
‘As to whom, I’ve no idea. With so many of us lodging there, the house isn’t locked till late at night. Dozens of people come and go.’
‘What about why?’
‘It must have something to do with Griffiths. There’s nothing of mine that would interest anybody.’
‘Was Mr Griffiths’s will in the document case?’
‘I left the original with the solicitor, but I’d made a copy of the main points. That was in there, yes.’
‘Have you been talking to anybody at East India House about the will?’
‘No.’
‘Or anybody—’
‘Leave it, Libby, or I’ll be sorry I mentioned it. I was probably mistaken.’
We both knew he hadn’t been mistaken. I left it, not wanting to start another argument, but was more worried than I could admit to him.
‘Tom, do you have to stay in that house? Why not come to us here? You could have my study for yourself and sleep on the daybed.’
I watched his face, thinking how good it would be to have my brother under my roof, even for a short time. The idea attracted him, I could see that, but he shook his head.
‘They’ll think I’m running away from them.’
It was no good trying to persuade him. I watched him go with a heavy heart and a nagging fear that I couldn’t protect him.
ELEVEN
In the evening, I went on reading Mr Griffiths’s manuscript. It was fine, fighting stuff most of the way, but towards the end it took on an almost confessional quality.
It has been well said that for evil to triumph it is only necessary that good men should do nothing. There is one story I must tell, even though the writing of it may cost me more pain than any of the preceding pages. It is the story of a great wrong done twenty years ago. To follow it from its roots, we must go further back than that. Let me call it, in a spirit of confession rather than of vainglory, the tale of The Griff.
It was midnight by then. I read with only the rustle of pages and the hissing of my lamp breaking the silence.
Griff is a word the British in India have for a young man newly come out from the home country, an unlicked cub, wet behind the ears. Since it happened to be close to my name as well, I came in for some quizzing on that account. All three of us were originally Griffs together, coming out from England on the same boat, nearly 35 years ago. None of us had reached the age of 17. We were entering on careers as servants of the East India Company. Servants of the Company, you note, not employees. All the men who work for the Company, from the lowliest clerks, called writers, up to the governor general himself are known as its servants. It is an affectation of humility in a body of men who are collectively as proud as Lucifer.
At the start we were set to work side by side in the Writers’ House in Calcutta. The time it takes a new man to slough off his Griffishness varies. Some achieve it almost at once and within months are talking and behaving like old India hands. That was the case with the first of our trio. He was helped by the fact that an elder brother, his senior by five years or so, was already well advanced on what was to become a very successful career as a Company servant. I do not mean to imply that this man, whom I shall from now on call The Merchant, received any special favours. Simply he learned from his brother and was quick at understanding the country and its possibilities for advancement.
The second Griff took a little longer to lose his wetness behind the ears. After a while he decided that a clerk’s life was not for him and was allowed to transfer as an officer into the Company’s army. Let us from now on call him The Soldier. His choice proved a wise one and in a few years he was a lieutenant in a good regiment, with no trace at all about him of the Griff.
As for the third it must be admitted that he never lost that shameful label of a newcomer at all. Griff he remained. Why was that? He was as able as his fellow writers, diligent at his work, reasonably ambitious to rise in the Company. So what happened to him? In a word: India. From the first sight, even the first smell from the ship’s rail, India got into his heart. Every step, every breath of his first weeks there brought some new wonder. It is the mark of a newcomer to be continually surprised and curious about the life going on around him. It was this man’s fortune or misfortune never to lose that curiosity. Which is why the author of these pages must subscribe himself, for better or worse, as the Griff of the title. An eternal Griff.
Our Griff nearly committed that worst sin of the Company man in India: going native. It’s all very well, of course, for a man to take a decent interest in the welfare of his servants or, in the army, the native soldiers. It’s a commendable thing to learn a little of the native languages, Hindi, Hindustani, Persian, from a munshi or teacher, enough to pass the official examinations. It’s an altogether different matter for a man to seek out the society of the natives and immerse himself in their languages and customs. Our Griff’s seniors in the Company looked askance, but occasionally found his knowledge of language and customs useful. Increasingly, he was sent on missions away from Calcutta, acting as a translator for other men. It suited him well.
It was on these sorties that he first became aware of the importance of the poppy. He knew in theory about the constant tide of opium flowing from India to China. Now he found himself riding through a lilac and purple sea of poppy flowers. It seemed that the amount of land they covered increased with every month that passed. One day he and his small caravan of servants were resting at a serai and he got into conversation with a local ryot, or peasant farmer.
Griff: Is there much profit in opium?
Ryot: Not enough, sahib. It’s greedy for water and manure, much more than other crops. And my children can’t eat poppy. I’d rather grow corn, the way I used to.
Griff: Then why do you grow poppy?
Ryot: Sahib, I owe so much money to the man who sold me the seed, I must grow it to pay him back.
Griff: And if you’d told him you’d rather grow corn than poppy?
Ryot: I did, sahib. The next night, men came and trampled and pulled up my corn crop.
Griff (Heated): Who did this?
A very Griffish question of course. He got no more answer than a shrug.
Still, it set the young man thinking. He was indignant on behalf
of the small farmers. A few weeks later, he had a chance to put his indignation into practice. He came across another ryot, being attacked by several men who seemed intent on burning down his hovel. The young man and his servants went to the rescue, scattered the attackers and captured two of them. Again, it turned out that refusal to grow the poppy was the cause. He carried the two prisoners back in triumph and delivered them to the courthouse for justice. He was rather pleased with himself and perhaps expected praise for his prompt action. He certainly did not expect what he got, in the British quarters that evening. We were four of us, all Company men, sitting round a table drinking imported whisky. The conversation went much on these lines.
Senior Man: Well, young Griff, you’ve caused me a deal of trouble today.
Griff: How so, sir?
Senior: Letting your servants attack those two fellows. They were bleating to me for an hour about their wrongs. You owe me eight rupees by the way.
Griff: Eight rupees, sir?
Senior: What I had to give them in compensation to keep them quiet.
Griff: Compensation? But they were making an entirely unprovoked attack on—
Senior: How do you know it was unprovoked? When you’ve been out here a good few years longer, you might learn not to intervene in quarrels between natives that are no concern of yours. If you want to be the village beadle you’d better get yourself back to England and apply to some damned parish council.
I don’t suppose that the sun rising over the Ganges was as red as the cheeks of that young man. When he raised the poppy question later with a more sympathetic senior, the man was good enough to explain to him.
‘It’s a simple question of exchange. The Company buys tea in China and sells it in England. We pay for the tea by selling opium to the Chinese. The Government in Westminster puts a tax on the tea and that pays for our army and navy. So if we didn’t grow poppies the Government wouldn’t have anything to tax and couldn’t pay the army and navy, and that wouldn’t do, would it?’
A conclusive argument. At that time, we were at war with Napoleon. The very freedom of Europe, it seemed, depended on the poppy. So the young man tried not to worry about the tide of poppy and got on with his work.
