To The Coral Strand

by John Masters

I said, ‘No, sahib. Brigadier Rodney Savage, O.B.E., M.C.’

  For a moment I thought Roy was going to lose his volatile temper, but he controlled himself and turned instead to Max. ‘I did not expect to see this enemy of India at your house, General.’ Max said heavily, ‘He is an old friend, and a guest.’

  ‘Where did those come from?’ Roy indicated the garlands lying piled on the grass beside my chair.

  I began to say, ‘That is none of your business,’ but Max interrupted: ‘They were given to him by the officers and men of his old regiment, the 13th Gurkha Rifles.’

  ‘Ah,’ Roy said. ‘He has been visiting military installations? A Chambal officer, visiting Indian military installations. At your invitation?’

  Max lowered his heavy head. He looked like a bull being goaded by a bull terrier. He said, ‘Not at my invitation. At the invitation of the colonel commanding the battalion, but with my full permission and approval ... It’s an act of common courtesy.’

  ‘You put courtesy before proper military caution?’ Roy snapped. Max said, ‘I put it before anything, sahib ... Not courtesy, I mean - doing what an Indian gentleman ought to do, or any other kind of gentleman ... what he has to do.’

  ‘I see,’ Roy said, pressing the tips of his fingers together and raising himself lightly up and down on the balls of his feet. ‘I see.’

  Max was beginning to lose his heavy Jat temper. He growled, ‘Colonel Savage and others like him taught our army to do its duty, at all times. It was not he who tried to subvert the loyalty of Indian troops for political purposes.’

  ‘For political purposes, General? Can you refer to our efforts to attain the independence of our nation?’

  Max did not answer, and I thought sadly, Roy’s too clever, too intense for him. Still, they were such bloody fools. Casting aspersions on Max’s loyalty to India was like accusing Nehru of selling out to the British ... and I’d heard that said, too.

  Roy said, ‘Well, I did not come here to meet Colonel Savage ... or even His Highness of Kishanpur.’ He bowed perfunctorily to Dip. ‘I have some important matters to discuss with you, in private.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Max said and, at Roy’s side, crossed the lawn towards the bungalow.

  No one spoke. Roy’s job was to take all necessary political action, create all necessary political pressure, which would force Chambal and the smaller Indian states into the Indian Union. He had paid one official visit to Dip in Kishanpur, but was in constant secret correspondence with the leaders of the Kishanpur Progressive party. The party contained about a thousand members and everyone knew that their role was to riot for union with India on the signal from Roy - thus giving India an excuse to send in her troops to restore order. To send in Max, in fact.

  I caught Dip’s eye and stood up. ‘I think we’d better be on our way, Janaki.’ As though at a secret signal, Dip’s servant slipped out of the darkness behind his chair and murmured, ‘The Presence’s bags are loaded into the car.’ Ratanbir was there, saluting.

  I did not speak until we were ten miles out on the road to Kishanpur. Dust hung under the double avenue of trees, for bullock carts swung slowly along the wide unpaved verges or in the middle of the road, sometimes with the drivers dozing on the cart. The Bentley’s headlights bored a short wide tunnel, which shaded away from white to a dense green-shadowed brown as the dust reflected back the rays. Bullocks, and carts, and occasionally a man on foot loomed suddenly out of it, and once the leaping orange flames of a fire at the edge of a mango grove, where a family prepared to sleep.

  The familiar, appalling sense of home, of love that could not be returned, settled in me. There was no sense of time when that mood came, only place - India. I knew that a Roman legion would not come out of that dust ahead - that would be ridiculous, though I’d often expected to see one march out of a fog on the Wiltshire downs . . . but Aurangzeb might come, sick and old, carried in a litter, reading the Holy Koran, remembering all the people, all the beauty, he had destroyed in order to preserve the Faith, and knowing at the last that he had preserved nothing - only destroyed. British infantry might come, with fife and drum, Kipling’s infantry, the green flag with the bull, and Kim, and Mulvaney, Learoyd and Ortheris, and Danny Deever in the middle, a rope round his neck and the Pioneer Sergeant on his right with apron and axe ... Or the Mahrattas, Dip’s ancestors. Can you hear the light horses neighing and the muffled pad of the hoofs in the dust, round shields and steel helmets shining in the light there, and the spears slanting back on their shoulders, and the smell of blood as they canter endlessly past?...

  I shook my head violently, shaking away the dream. I said, ‘Do you realise that that is the man - L. P. Roy - who will take over rule of your State, Dip?’

  Dip made a half-motion, touching my arm and at the same time indicating that Ratanbir and his own servant were in the back. The atmosphere in New Delhi had made him nervous and suspicious. I said, ‘A Gurkha havildar and the body servant of a Rajah of Kishanpur are to be trusted, totally. When the time comes that such men cannot be trusted, then there will be no need or place for a Rajah of Kishanpur, or for Rodney Savage - or for Max.’

  Dip said, ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  We remained silent for some miles. At length I said, ‘Feel that you’re in a swamp? I’ve been there ... There’s not much more I can say about the political side which other’s haven’t told you before, a dozen times, a hundred times, I expect - from both sides.’

  ‘Two hundred,’ Dip said bitterly.

  ‘Yes. Well, I’d like to stress another aspect. You know the Indian Government, besides taking away your powers, will also take over the State revenues and give you an allowance instead, decreasing it for your children--’

  ‘I don’t have any.’

  ‘Perhaps you will, later ... There’s a lot of money in these states, much of it in gold bullion and jewels … ‘

  ‘I have a couple of million pounds’ worth in the castle vaults,’ Dip said.

  ‘I know. And there’s plenty more under your moneylenders’ beds. That money is doing nothing. It ought to be hiring international lawyers for us, to put our case to The Hague, and the UN. It ought to be employing public relations experts for us. It ought to be buying more fighters and bombers, so that we’ll be too strong for Nehru to take the high hand he took with Hyderabad. I say “us”, and I mean “us”. If we don’t hang together we’ll hang separately. Even if you don’t want to come in with Chambal afterwards, you’re mad not to join us in a mutual defence pact. India suspects that we’ve got such a pact already - and another between all of us and Pakistan. That’s the only thing that’s prevented them sending Max in months ago. And what do you think they’re waiting for now?’

  ‘Kashmir,’ Dip said.

  ‘Of course. As soon as that’s settled, or at least put on the shelf - you’ve had it.’

  Dip groaned aloud. ‘I know, Rodney, I know! But... however much I hate them individually, however much I dislike some of their ideas, however hard I try, I can’t finally see any practical alternative.’

  ‘The new Chambal Federation is the only answer ... Tomorrow I’ll give you a long secret letter from the Nawab, written in his own hand, in Urdu so high-flown that no one can understand it - but there is a typewritten English version. It is in three parts: the terms of incorporation into Chambal, the details of a mutual defence pact, and the details of a loan programme, at enormous rates of interest to you. We need money.’

  ‘But I thought the Nawab had all the money in the world, now that the Nizam’s out,’ Dip said.

  ‘He did,’ I said, ‘but we really mean to be independent. I’ll tell you something that Mr Roy does not know yet. He will tomorrow morning. We have bought a six-inch-gun cruiser and two destroyers from a certain South American country. They will be delivered tonight, at Digra, complete with Italian crews.’

  ‘My God,’ Dip said, appalled. ‘There’ll be war.’

  ‘Not just yet,’ I said. ‘But I want you to sto
p thinking we’re all helpless, that we’re in the grip of something bigger than we can cope with. India is not all-powerful.’

  Then Dip said almost exactly what Roy had once said, ‘No, but history is.’ And I sat silent, half in fear, half in anger.

  The Bentley rolled out on to a long bridge. As we always did at this point, we looked upstream. The black bulk of Kishanpur Fort towered above the right bank of the placid river, silhouetted against the lighter southern sky. The smooth water reflected lights from the fort windows, and a thousand lights pricked the darkness from the city huddled to the left of the fort.

  ‘Home,’ Dip said.

  ‘For how long?’ I said.

  I turned the Bentley carefully through the narrow, double-angled entrance to the Fort. An old man in yellow livery made a deep obeisance. The servants appeared under distant arches, running.

  Dip climbed out. ‘Sumitra’s come down to greet us,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t often do that.’

  I watched Sumitra sweep forward with the smooth, swinging motion that sent a tremor through my loins the first time I saw her.

  She had heard what Dip said. She was smiling, her hand extended. ‘Of course I came down when the watchman telephoned. I’m the chatelaine, aren’t I? How are you, Rodney?’

  She looked stunning - a slim white silk cocktail dress, high heels, a single rope of rubies. As I greeted her I wondered again whether Dip knew of our affair. She had come alone to Pattan once, and Dip knew it was hard for any man to resist her if she set out to seduce him. But that was the time she returned two days earlier than he expected - so perhaps he would believe that I had resisted her. I’m afraid it didn’t matter very much to me. Whatever the basis of their marriage, sexual jealousy certainly didn’t form part of it or Dip would have committed suicide or murder ten years ago. I thought he loved her, and her waywardness hurt him only because he could not himself provide, could not himself become, whatever it was that she needed - and that was much more than a stallion. I was surprised that he hadn’t long since decided it would be a kindness to everyone to divorce her and take a new wife. Probably he had thought so, but couldn’t do it. He was like me. He just had to go on the way he was going, and take what came.

  We went up into the Fort.

  Chapter 11

  ‘You are not very exciting company tonight, Rodney.’

  Sumitra touched my arm as she spoke. We were leaning over the upper battlements of the Fort, watching the procession forming in the courtyard below.

  I said, ‘Sorry.’

  I was dead-beat. Five days had passed since Dip and I drove in that night. Every day had added up to exhaustion - long, wrestling conferences with Dip; colourful, noisy public processions; fireworks; nautches; State dinners. Dip was as tired as I. I saw his head nodding forward under the big sail hat down there in the caparisoned howdah far below me, and I saw the chamberlain nudge him respectfully. Dip started awake, and sat up. The elephants rolled out towards the lights and the yelling crowds and the rockets already soaring up into the night.

  I would not have been tired if I had won. I had lost. Before dinner this night Dip finally told me he would not join Chambal, would not sign a mutual defence pact, would not lend us any of his gold. He was in terrible distress to have to say it to me, and he still did not know what he was going to do - only what he was not. I had been plodding round and round in his personal morass with him for so long that I was almost glad to get out of it, even though in the wrong direction.

  I had lost. If only L. P. Roy had come, fanatical and threatening, it might have swung the trick. If only Max had moved his troops menacingly closer to the frontier. He hadn’t (but his division had been reinforced by an armoured brigade of Sherman tanks, I learned). I had lost. And if Kishanpur kept out, Konpara and the smaller states would certainly follow suit. They had no choice. Without Kishanpur they would be politically and geographically isolated.

  I looked at Sumitra. She twitched the blue chinchilla cape a little more closely round her shoulders and stared back at me. The starlight showed the clear outline of her face against the distant violet blur of the night horizon. I was wearing a dinner jacket, the coat buttoned against the chill from the river, and a white silk scarf thrown round my neck. I was smoking one of my cheap strong cheroots. She was wearing black diamante sandals and a slim three-quarter-length black evening dress. Her manner towards me these five days had been warm, but until now no natural opportunity had come to be alone with her, and I had created none. My whole being was concentrated on Dip and my task. Nor had Sumitra made any advance; only watched me with increasing concentration and, it seemed, puzzlement. I had been very much aware of her. There were moments when a purely animal lust stalked upon me like a lion out of its cage. Desperately I wanted to feel those satiny thighs wrap round me; but before the desire could become frenzy, a thought would come about the business in hand - some point I had not fully explained to Dip, some new angle from which I could exert pressure on him ... and lust would slink back to its lair.

  As the tail of Dip’s procession left the courtyard I said, ‘That’s that.’ I turned to her, dropped my cheroot, and took her in my arms. After a moment’s resistance she responded eagerly, and at once my exhaustion left me. In a trice we were locked in one of those belly-pressing, leg-twining, rocking, helpless clinches which can only have one proper end. I could feel her sliding down, going limp in my arms, and at the same time becoming muscularly and rhythmically alive. It would finish on the stone roof there, and that would be right. That’s that, I had said, and now the lovely beast was out of its cage for good. I moved my hand and slid it up under her dress.

  With a tremendous and unexpected effort she fell away from me and stumbled across the roof towards the far parapet, overlooking the river. I ran after her, and caught her shoulders as she leaned over. She resisted the pressure of my hands, as I tried to turn her round to face me. ‘Sumitra,’ I whispered in her ear. ‘For God’s sake! We have so little time. In a couple of days I’ve got to be back to Chambal, and then … ‘

  And then we’d be cut apart for as long as my mind could imagine. Win or lose, there was soon going to be no chance for me to revisit India or for her to come to Chambal. I pulled more urgently at her shoulder.

  She half turned. ‘Wait...’ she began.

  I caught her and kissed her again. Again, for a moment, she gave herself up, and was swept to me by the same violent physical need that made me tug and pull at her dress until it was up over her waist.

  ‘Rodney!’ she gasped, turning her lips away from mine. ‘Wait!’

  I stood back a pace, breathing deep, trembling, utterly aroused, my eyes fixed on her loins, where the high-riding dress hung like a theatre curtain over the remembered dark triangle of hair and the strong curve and countercurve of thigh and groin and mount of Venus.

  She recovered some of her breath. ‘There can ... be more ... time ... for us ...’ She got the words out slowly, in bursts.

  One side of the dress slipped down of its own, covering half her loins. I made a move to her but she held up her hand. ‘I can come to Chambal … ‘

  The other side of the dress slipped down over her hips and, gracefully, the whole fell in a slow draping until it hung as before, feminine and civilised, covering the female animal.

  She said, ‘Give me a puff of one of those awful things.’

  I lit another cheroot and when it was going well handed it to her. She drew on it two or three times, coughed once and gave it back to me. ‘That’s better ... Dip has made up his mind against you.’

  She was leaning back against the battlements, the stone pressing into the small of her back. I said nothing. We had never mentioned politics in front of her, and she had never showed any sign, now or before, of taking the slightest interest in it.

  She said, ‘Dip hasn’t said a word. But it’s obvious. I am not a fool, and I do have interests outside Kinder, Küche, Kirche - perhaps because I am a childless atheist with a good cook ... Wh
at would you do if I told you that I did not agree with Dip? That I thought Kishanpur should join Chambal?’

  ‘I don’t know what I would do,’ I said slowly, ‘but I know you couldn’t do anything ... short of poisoning Dip, announcing yourself as rani-regent, and issuing a proclamation. But the days for that kind of thing are past.’

  ‘What about money?’ she said. ‘Don’t you need money?’

  I found myself saying ‘Yes,’ though our financial manoeuvrings were covered in as much secrecy as our military preparations. (When the news of our cruiser broke, the Indians ordered their biggest ships up to Bombay, which is less than two hundred miles steaming from the Chambal port of Digra. Pakistan promptly sent its tiny fleet to sea, on manoeuvres. What annoyed the Indian Government most was that our cruiser hit headlines all over the world. Their interest was always to sweep the whole business under the rug and keep the world ignorant not only of the issues but of the fact that there was a problem at all.)

  ‘I could give you half a million pounds,’ she said.

  I stared at her in astonishment. Six million rupees was a lot of money. She might have saved a lakh or so, but Kishanpur was not a very rich state. The gold in the vaults had been collected over centuries. Dip had never been in a position to give her a really big allowance, nor had she picked up exclusively with multimillionaires on the Riviera.

  ‘You’re serious, aren’t you, in this Chambal business?’ she asked.

  There was something about the tone of her voice, something about the steady, penetrating look in her huge eyes, that made me pause before answering. I began to speak slowly. Yes, I was serious. I had never been so serious in my life. I tried to tell her. I tried to tell her about an Indian land where there could be dignity as well as progress, splendour as well as justice.

  ‘And you think you can attain it?’ she asked. ‘I mean you, yourself. Or are you fighting for the sake of fighting?’

  ‘I think we can attain it,’ I said. ‘Myself ... I feel that I have been given a second chance. For all the time we English have been here, certainly for the past fifty years, we seem to have been heading the wrong way. Now I’ve been given an opportunity to put that right. At the moment it’s a matter of fighting, or being prepared to fight, like Israel. But I suppose Israel has an idea beyond self-defence, something it means to become - and so do we ... Why aren’t people like Max and P. R. Sethi in public life? They and hundreds of thousands like them, some who speak English, plenty who don’t. I mean decent people, people everyone respects and trusts. Why? ... Because they won’t lie and stoop and fawn. What is right is not always popular - it’s practically never popular ... We left the democratic process here, but we did not leave England’s real secret - mutual respect among people, tolerance, independence of thought … ‘