by John Masters
My cheroot tasted foul and I threw it far out over the battlements, so that the red spark fell in a long curve down to the river.
‘I, too,’ she said slowly, ‘I, too, have been given a second chance. India was mine. What could I not have achieved with this name, this position - Sumitra, Rani of Kishanpur? I rejected everything. I don’t know why. Perhaps because everything seemed so settled. I do not like to have my fate cut out for me. This is a custom-bound country, and Dip is more deeply held by it than you would think. I would obviously have no say in the running of the State, so I never tried. I should have looked further, but I didn’t. I went to Europe, and found men I could influence, men who were making something of themselves, against odds. Men like you.’ I put out my hand, but she only touched it delicately, then went on speaking. ‘I never thought of the British leaving India. I never expected to feel involved in the fate of peoples, only in the fate of people, singly ... Now I do, I am involved, deeply. I will come to Chambal.’
I felt a little dizzy. If the Rani of Kishanpur came to Chambal, openly announcing her support for our position, it would be a tremendous coup; and it would give us more publicity. No other rani would have served that purpose so well, because the European and American press knew her, and her name and picture meant something outside India. On the other hand, the old Nawab would look on her with deep distrust, suspecting more Hindu trickery. Perhaps not. Who was it said there is nothing so persuasive as a million dollars? She was offering more than that.
‘Where is the money coming from?’ I asked her. I still could not quite convince myself that all this was not a crazy joke.
She said, ‘The Rawan jewels. Tomorrow evening Dip and I will be wearing all that we can carry of them, and the rest will be in the vaults. I can hand the whole lot to you any time in the night. They fill two suitcases.’
The Rawan jewels were very well known. They were a fabulous collection of gems, brooches, tiaras, rings, necklaces, and other Hindu ornaments, such as anklets, and nose jewels, made up at various times over the past thousand years. One or two pieces were valuable simply because they were old, others because of the size of the gems, others again because of the artistic genius that had gone into the shaping of them. The whole collection was priceless in the sense that Ajanta or the Konpara sculptures or Nanda Devi or the Ganges is priceless. They were part of India’s heritage. They were part of the whole complex that is India.
Earlier this evening Dip had rejected that heritage. Though I understood his reasons, I despised him. If a man will not fight for what is his when the chance is given to him, he does not deserve to keep it. He himself might wish to knuckle under to India, but he could not complain if Sumitra had the courage to fight. It was also peculiarly fitting that she should bring with her not bearer bonds or Swiss francs but jewels. It was very right, and very Indian, that ancient jewels should be used to preserve an ancient dignity.
I would have to devise a plan to smuggle the jewels out of Kishanpur. I had the Bentley. I had Ratanbir. I could ... But tomorrow was another day. Tomorrow would be time enough for that.
Full realisation of Sumitra’s meaning flooded into me. ‘You will really come to Chambal - with me?’
I could say no more. It would not be quite truthful to say that I loved her. Yearning for her body, longing to learn what made her tick, fascination with her personality, these did not yet amount to love. Perhaps it was an element of self-protection that had prevented me going quite over the edge while she had seemed so inaccessible. I could hardly stand another hopeless love, such as I had given in the past to Janaki and Victoria Jones. But the sudden revelation of her ideals and sense of purpose; recognition of the depths below the narcissistic surface; appreciation of her courage in taking this tremendous step - these set off a trigger, which ignited a charge, which would, I knew, lead now inevitably to love.
I took her hands.
‘Wait!’ she said again, with a terrible sharpness. ‘Rodney, it’s no use pretending I don’t find you exciting. But I didn’t say I would come to Chambal with you. I said, I will come to Chambal ... Think, Rodney. Remember what I said to you at Pattan. I cannot promise to fall in love, as you will. I cannot promise not to betray you, as I am betraying Dip. There is a woman in me who is not subject to any rules of behaviour, or decency, or obligation. When this woman starts to move me, I go.’
I took her hands and lifted them and put them round my neck. I leaned forward and kissed her on the lips, my arms round her. Her hands tightened, her head turned away. She whispered, ‘I warn you, Rodney, I warn you!’
I found her lips again and slowly, resisting, they opened to me, and she gave a long sigh against my mouth, and I led her across the rooftop, she leaning against me and walking with dragging drowsy steps, and I took her down to her room, and locked the door, and undressed her, and as she lay naked on the bed I looked long into her eyes, which had grown dull and wide and feverish, and, having lost all frenzy in the knowledge that this was a beginning, not an end, I kissed and stroked and made love to every part of her body, and finally locked myself into and upon her in a passion of love that seemed to have no end, but went on outside time, in the motion and countermotion of a liquid eternity, until a long bar of duck-egg green light shining on the ceiling told us it was dawn.
Chapter 12
Sumitra came to Chambalpur five days after my own return there. My first day Hussein and the Nawab and the council of state kept me so busy I hardly had time to think. I told them first about my failure with Dip. The Nawab questioned me sharply. My enemies hinted that the failure was my fault. I would have found it easy to lose my temper if I had not been thinking of Sumitra. Hussein protected me from the more foolish insinuations by letting out that the mission had been regarded as hopeless from the first. Of course, I thought. How could I have believed that they would let me get the credit, if they had expected any credit to be going?
Then I told them about Sumitra. After a few moments of thunderstruck silence, enthusiasm became general. The public relations expert embraced me. The Nawab looked suspicious - but he always did; and even he smiled when I told them about the six million rupees.
The second day I waited with increasing anxiety for Ratanbir. We had left Kishanpur together at dawn the day before in the Bentley, with the suitcases containing the jewels just thrown into the back seat under our own. Five miles outside the city the car I had hired was waiting for us. Ratanbir transferred to it, and they set off southward on a by-road, while I continued west. I drove slowly, and a little later spent an hour sitting in a jungle clearing, the Bentley concealed. Near Bhowani, when over the border, the Indian police stopped me. That was interesting because it showed that Dip had decided to bring them into the matter; which in turn meant his total surrender, because the Indian Government had already announced that they regarded State and crown jewels as the property of the people, hence their property.
It also showed that the theft had been discovered early. Sumitra had warned me she could not give me more than an hour’s grace, and I was prepared.
While I was at the police thana, after they had searched the car and found nothing, the inspector telephoned Kishanpur. Since the Indian telephone system was primitive, and since I was in the next room, I heard every shouted word. The inspector was speaking to Dip himself. He said that he had found nothing. Nevertheless, he could arrest and hold me under Emergency Regulations if His Highness wished. A long silence. No, His Highness did not wish. Then Dip must have asked to speak to me. The inspector called to me, but I shouted, ‘I have nothing to say to His Highness.’
I felt no qualm of conscience about the jewels. If he was willing to allow India’s claim to them he could hardly treat it as a personal theft for personal gain, which of course it wasn’t. I would have liked to tell him, before it happened, that Sumitra was leaving him, but she wanted to tell him that herself. I would have liked to say I was sorry it turned out that she was leaving him for me, because in spite of everything I li
ked him; but Sumitra was going to leave him sooner or later, everyone had known that for years, and in truth I was not sorry. I was delirious with happiness and expectation.
A little later the inspector let me go. By then I reckoned Ratanbir should be thoroughly lost to view on dirt roads and jungle cart tracks in the south. He should have entered Chambal territory the same night, and reached the capital this second day.
He did not. The third day he did not come. The fourth day I left Chambalpur at dawn, drove to the southeast corner of the State, and spent the day inquiring of police officials, guerrillas, and military outposts whether they had seen such and such a car, or such and such a man, whether they had heard of an accident. Nothing. I reached Chambalpur again at three in the morning, and slept fitfully and unhappily.
At noon Sumitra arrived. The propaganda people had arranged a huge press campaign to tell the world about the accession of the Rani of Kishanpur to our side. I was waiting at the Nawab’s palace when she drove up in a big Chambali Cadillac with her maid and the Grand Wazir. A hundred photographers and journalists milled about the reception-room like a racecourse crowd. Flash bulbs exploded, cameras clicked, women scribbled, men shouted questions.
Standing with her on a dais the Nawab looked old and disgusted. He hated publicity of all kinds and could never unbend. Sumitra made a little speech about freedom and self- determination. She was very beautiful. Someone asked her whether the rumour was true that she had brought the Rawan jewels with her. Dip and the Indians had tried to keep that quiet, but something had leaked. Sumitra said she knew nothing about them.
Two hours later they drove her to one of the Nawab’s large houses by the edge of the lake, and the press finally left her alone. I was already living in another wing of that house. The fact would doubtless be mentioned by some of the journalists when they wrote up their stories. I did not care.
She came to me as soon as she had bathed and changed. We fell greedily into each other’s arms and assuaged our physical hunger. Afterwards, her face again made up, we talked business. I told her that Hussein Ali was coming round after dinner for a formal discussion of her role here. Then she ran through the names of the principal men of the State, their positions, characters, and influence. She knew an amazing amount about them and I had little occasion to correct her.
‘And now you’d better give me the jewels, darling, so that I can give them to Hussein,’ she said. ‘That’s the price of admission, after all.’
I said miserably, ‘They’re not here yet.’
Watching her arrival, making love to her, talking to her, had enabled me to forget my worry, but now it was back. She looked at me with her big eyes, which were momentarily cold.
‘Ratanbir hasn’t arrived,’ I said. I walked up and down the room, beating my fist in my hand. ‘I don’t know what the hell can have happened to him, but something has. Suppose he was caught and arrested while passing through India ... I don’t think so. There must have been an accident. The poor little devil’s lying injured in some hut miles from anywhere ...’
She got up and put her arm round me. ‘My poor Rodney ... He’s all right. The car may have broken down. He would have had to use some pretty bad roads, wouldn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He was crossing India through Bhilghat. The road’s awful.’
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘he’ll turn up soon ... I can find some other way of convincing the Nawab of my value to the cause ... though he’d much prefer to have the jewels. What was he going to do with them, by the way?’
‘Sell them in Europe,’ I said. ‘There are ways. We would have raised about half their real value ... The Indians are watching every road now. Ratanbir may have had to leave the car miles back and come on by bullock cart. I sent a message to the Gonds to look out for him ...’
‘The Bhilghat Gonds?’ she said. ‘But they’re in India.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but they’re working secretly for me. They will be ready to rise when the time comes.’
Later, the meeting with Hussein went off well. He advised her to introduce herself to the ladies of the Nawab’s household, and the households of all the leading council members and generals. She was to keep her ears open, particularly about the strength of the ladies’ attachment to the Chambal cause. She was to visit hospitals and run fund-raising bazaars, and do anything else that would get her picture in the papers.
‘Can I not organise women’s battalions, for labour and clerical work, nursing, even fighting?’ she asked.
Hussein looked a little unhappy. ‘That is against the Nawab’s policy,’ he said. ‘We are, after all, fighting for the old ideals. Woman’s place is in the home.’
I had a twinge there. This was feudalism, but I could not complain. You have to take people’s bad ideas as well as their good ones, and do the best you can to teach them.
Hussein took an opportunity to speak to me alone the next day. He warned me to tell Sumitra nothing that was not necessary for her to know. I was indignant. ‘What is the point of having her if we don’t trust her?’ I asked.
‘We do,’ he said, ‘but in another sense, we trust nobody. You, after all, do not know exactly what I am always doing, do you? Because I tell you only what you need to know.’
‘How can you mistrust someone who’s giving half a crore’s worth of jewels to the cause?’ I said heatedly.
‘She hasn’t, yet,’ he said, smiling.
‘But damn it, I’ve told you, that’s nothing to do with her. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine.’
I began to tell him that this universal suspicion was the curse of Chambal, but soon gave up. Hussein could not abolish it any more than I could. I turned to my work.
It felt better, more worthwhile now.
Sumitra made the difference, sweeping through my existence like a current of fresh air. It helped her that she shared a house with me, because none of the high Chambal ladies - and they were as suspicious and secretive as a nibble of weasels - could think that she was after their husbands. In two days she had got to know a dozen of the most important women in the State, and became so busy I hardly saw her until late at night.
So I was surprised when she came to my study about teatime on her fifth day in Chambal. I was working on a master plan for the defence of the Lapri Gorge. I pushed the maps away and stood up. She was smiling, her arms out. She hugged me tight, and kissed my face and neck and arms. ‘Oh, Rodney, I’m so glad!’
‘What’s happened?’ I asked.
She gave me a letter. It was from Dip to her. He thanked her for seeing that the jewels were returned to Kishanpur. He told her that he had paid Ratanbir the reward. He hoped that she was well. Signed. ‘P.S. I shall always love you. Do remember that, wherever you go.’
‘Of course, I had nothing to do with getting the jewels back,’ I heard her say.
I read the letter three times. I threw it down on the floor. ‘It’s not true!’ I shouted.
She looked at me. Her smile had become sad.
‘It’s a bloody lie,’ I shouted. ‘The Indians caught him and handed back the jewels. Ratanbir had nothing to do with it.’
She held my arm. ‘Rodney, is it so impossible? He knew that you and I stole them. Didn’t you tell me, the other night, that you once had him making preparations to rob a bank in Delhi? You’re not Colonel Savage of the 13th Gurkha Rifles any more. You haven’t been for a long time. Is it so dreadful that he should not be Havildar Ratanbir any more? That he should have learned these other attitudes from you, in the same way that he learned to shoot and march?’
I could not speak. I could not accept what she said. If it were true, I could trust no one. I could not trust her.
She said, ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m so glad! I thought you had taken them for yourself.’ She caught my look. ‘What else was I to think? It didn’t seem so very terrible, to me. And you must admit that you are a mass of contradictions. How am I to know when you are going to think like a sahib and when you’re
going to think like - like one of your merchant-pirate ancestors?’
She hugged me and kissed me again, but I felt miserable. The more miserable I felt the more she warmed towards me. ‘What about that P.S.?’ I asked. ‘Do you still love Dip?’
She said, ‘I never did. This Chambal cause has given me the incentive to end a farce. He ought to marry again. I like him, that’s all. It’s finished.’ And she hugged and crooned over me.
Two days later she came in, again at teatime, and began to hug me with a warmth and affection quite distinct from sensual passion. ‘What now?’ I asked.
‘Dwarkanath and the bribe,’ she said, looking fondly at me. ‘Oh,’ I said. Dwarkanath was a man who’d landed a contract for building barracks down at Digra, the port. I had flown down, found the work far below specifications and was even then writing a report to Hussein Ali. Dwarkanath had offered me twenty thousand rupees to keep quiet. I had refused with vehemence and abuse.
‘You realise this will put So-and-so against you,’ she said, naming three generals and a minister who owed a great deal to Dwarkanath, and vice versa.
‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘I’m fighting for tradition-but not this one.’
