The Day Of The Scorpion (Raj Quartet 2)

by Paul Scott

  Just then the vertical strip of light appeared again and widened and Aunt Fenny came out with Mrs Layton who brought her glass with her, and at once, so it seemed, a different pattern of the play was established and Uncle Arthur was on scene again, erect, sparing of movement. With the two women an element of grace entered. They sat, one on either side of Uncle Arthur who sank to his chair again, crossed his legs but kept the restless one still. Aunt Fenny was talking. The lone sound, the steady vibration of her voice reached Sarah, but not the words.

  She began to walk towards them, conscious of coming at them from a great, a lonely distance away. She shivered a bit and the thought occurred that it was foolhardly to walk at night alone. She did not want to be alone. She remembered the sense she had had of being left behind when she saw that only one of the beds in her and Susan’s room had been prepared for the night, mosquito net unrolled and draped, its counterpart left stiff and bunched above a smooth virgin counterpane.

  ‘My family,’ she told herself as she entered the geometrical pattern of light and the circle of safety. ‘My family. My family. My family.’

  BOOK TWO

  Orders of Release

  Part One

  THE SITUATION

  I

  May 1944

  The car took what she and her husband had called the Household Gate out of the grounds of Government House. Had it been called the Household Gate before her husband’s term of office? She could not remember. She brought her hand up, seeking the reassurance of the pleated front of her blouse and the mother-of-pearl buttons.

  The car was headed towards the city, but at the complex of roads that met at the Elphinstone Fountain the driver bore right, north, taking the road through the noisy, heavily trafficked commercial quarter. Behind the grandiose stone buildings of the offices and banks lay the labyrinth of the Koti Bazaar where she had shopped accompanied only by Suleiman, to the despair of Henry’s aides. She glanced at the aide who accompanied her now and realized that she had already forgotten his name.

  ‘You have a question, Lady Manners?’

  How well trained he was. She nodded. ‘I’m afraid I suddenly can’t remember your name.’

  ‘Rowan,’ he said, without fuss.

  ‘Rowan. It is a curious thing, memory. My husband had an astonishing one. Mine was only so-so. I used to try and bluff my way out of the awkward situations it seemed to lead me into, until I realized the situations weren’t awkward at all, but the bluff was. The gate we left by, is it still called the Household Gate?’

  ‘I’ve not heard it called that. H.E. calls it the side way. I think the official description is Curzon Gate because of the statue opposite.’

  ‘But Government House was built before Curzon.’

  That’s true. How about Little West?’

  ‘It will do. But so will sideway. The next Governor will call it something else. It’s a way of making ourselves feel at home in an institution. Shall you return to active duty, Captain Rowan?’ Today he was wearing mufti but she recollected from their brief meeting the day before in the Governor’s private office the ribbon of the Military Cross.

  ‘No, I’m told not. But that’s probably a good thing because I wasn’t made in the mould of a good regimental officer.’

  ‘Were you wounded?’

  ‘Nothing so distinguished, I’m afraid. But I managed to contract a number of tropical things, one after the other.’

  ‘What do you intend? A regular staff appointment?’

  ‘No. I’ve applied to get back into the political department, which is what I always wanted. I was seconded before the war and served a probationary period, but then of course the army reclaimed me.’

  ‘And you were in Burma?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They were through the commercial quarter, travelling along a tree-lined section of the Kandipat road with the railings of the Sir Ahmed Kasim Memorial Gardens on their right and on their left the houses of rich Indians, in spacious compounds. Most of the iron gates were padlocked, the occupants having retreated into the hills. An exception was number 8. She found herself uncertain which of the houses along this stretch of the Kandipat belonged to M.A.K. And another name was troubling her – the name of the girl with the look of envy who had sent a parting gift of flowers – a Pankot name.

  She turned and said, ‘Do you have the photograph, Captain Rowan?’

  ‘H.E. gave me an envelope which he said you might ask for.’

  ‘I’ll have it now, if I may.’

  He zipped open the leather document case on his knee, reached in and brought out a square buff envelope.

  ‘Would you unseal it for me?’

  She watched while he sought for an ungummed section of the flap. Having widened it he made a neat break with his finger. He handed the envelope to her. She had taken her reading-spectacles case from her handbag in readiness and now put the glasses on. From the envelope she withdrew a rectangular matt-surface print. There were two pictures on it, side by side; profile and full-face.

  For a time she avoided the flat stare of the full-face, considered instead the side-view of it, the whorls of the neat, masculine ear, the black, apparently oily, neatly-cut hair. In the processing the skin had retained the two-level density of a dark face under artificial lighting, the impression that negative and positive were aligned, one on top of the other. So that is what he looked like, she thought, and stared at the full-face, at the oddly expressionless eyes whose whites conveyed an idea that they might be bloodshot. She closed her own eyes to consider, uninfluenced, a different but familiar image and, having conjured it exactly, reopened her eyes and felt a stab of recognition which in the next moment she did not trust. She replaced the photograph in the envelope, took off her spectacles. They had entered a semi-rural area of hovels. There was a smell of human and animal excrement. A naked ash-smeared Sadhu leaned against a parapet and watched them go past, his arms folded, his head tilted. She saw his mouth open and his neck muscles swell, but could not distinguish his shout above the shouting of little boys who ran alongside the car calling for baksheesh; keeping up with it because it was slowed by a farmer’s cart ahead and a string of cyclists coming in the opposite direction. The light was opaque: one particle of dust to one particle of air. The temperature was in the hundreds.

  She returned her spectacles case to her handbag. The envelope was too big to go in too. She gave it back to Captain Rowan.

  ‘I shan’t want it again.’

  Rowan put the envelope back into his briefcase. He looked at his wrist-watch and then at her. Their glances met. ‘We have about ten minutes, Lady Manners. Would you like me to go through the arrangements so that you know what to expect?’

  Again she sought the reassurance of the pleats and buttons. She looked through the double thickness of glass at the necks of the driver and his companion.

  ‘I’ve no doubt H.E. has arranged everything as I would wish.’

  ‘Not without a certain element of awkwardness being involved. Awkwardness for you.’

  ‘I couldn’t expect otherwise.’

  ‘Before we reach the Kandipat I shall pull the blinds down over the windows. The man sitting next to the driver has all the necessary documents to pass us through the gates. The car will stop twice. When it stops the second time we shall be inside the prison. We should be immediately next to a doorway that leads into a corridor and eventually to the jail superintendent’s private quarters. We shall go to the end of the corridor and into a room marked “O”. I shall leave you alone in room “O”. There are a few details about room “O” but I can explain those at the time. There is only the one door. The man sitting next to the driver will be on duty in the corridor.’

  ‘And I shall be alone in the room – throughout?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I understand. I shall see and hear but not be seen or heard?’

  ‘Yes. Afterwards it will take me about five minutes to rejoin you.’

  ‘And I should wait in th
e room until you come for me?’

  ‘If you would, Lady Manners.’

  ‘Shall I be required to meet anyone at all?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘When we leave, the car will have been reversed in the courtyard and will be parked ready. We shall then drive straight out and back to Government House.’

  Again Rowan checked his watch. He leaned far back in his seat, canting his head to get a glimpse of the area they were approaching. He said, ‘I think perhaps we should lower the blinds now. We’re coming into Kandipat.’

  He reached forward, pulled down one of the tip-up seats and transferred himself to it, stretched across to the little roller-blinds on her side of the car. Gradually the back of the car was filled with sub-aqueous light. She lost the sensation of forward movement. When he had completed the operation he resumed his seat next to her, resettled the document case on his lap. She raised her hands, feeling for the veil, groped round its prickly edge until she felt the smooth round knob of the hatpin. She pulled the hatpin out, jabbed it gently into the buff cord upholstery and coaxed the veil out of its folds, until it hung loose, shading the whole of her face and neck. Retrieving the pin she replaced it in the back of her hat.

  ‘In case I forget – afterwards – Captain Rowan, thank you for what you have done, are doing, and have undertaken to do. Can I rely utterly on your discretion?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I understood from H.E. that he chose you for a reason that would become clear to me. If he meant your courtesy and efficiency it has already done so. But whatever the reason he had in mind, I’m grateful. Forgive me for raising the question of discretion.’ She smiled, then wondered whether he would see that she did, through the veil, in the dim museum-like light. He was not smiling. But her compliments had not embarrassed him. Well, she thought, you are a man who knows his worth, accepts its obligations with interest and its rewards with dignity, and I particularly thank God for you today.

  *

  She thanked God too for Captain Rowan not talking, for not attempting to disrupt her contemplation of the mystery of the inhumanity of man towards man that a prison was the repository of and which was entered consciously even when the actual entry was made blindly, so: stop and pause, start and move and stop finally. At some point, when the back of the car was overtaken by a violently sudden darkness the line dividing contemplation of the mystery from experience of it was crossed. A chill smell of masonry conjured the sensation of enclosure within walls sweating from a low but insistent fever – the fever of defeat and apprehension. The door on Captain Rowan’s side of the car was opened. The cold damp smell of stone strengthened, came on a shaft of funnelled air with the implacable impact of an actual touching, so that Captain Rowan’s hand, offering itself to hers, was a momentary shock, the flesh-touch of someone who had accompanied her into an area of distress. There were on either side of her glimmers of filtered light and, in front, steps and a narrow doorway that was open. She mounted the steps, grateful for his cupped hand at her elbow. The corridor was stone-flagged, stone-walled, lit by one naked bulb at its farther end where already she could make out the letter ‘O’ painted in white on a closed brown door. Reaching it she saw that the corridor turned at a right-angle towards flights of wooden stairs – up and down. After he had left her alone in Room O he would ascend or descend by one of those flights: descend, more likely.

  He opened the door of Room O. A cold dry draught and a faint humming in the darkness, a subtle lethal scent as of chilled milk in frosted zinc containers – a scent that always caught her high up in the nostrils and made her conscious of the space between her eyes – distinguished the room at once as one whose atmosphere was regulated by an air conditioner. She thought: I shall catch a cold. Captain Rowan entered the room ahead of her and switched on the light – an act which registered in her mind as a consequence of particular rehearsal rather than of general familiarity.

  The room was a square of bare whitewashed walls. It contained a table and a chair. On the table, which was covered by a piece of green baize, were a carafe of water with an inverted tumbler over its neck, an ashtray, a pad, two pencils, a table-lamp and a telephone. The chair had its back to the door. It stood close to and facing the farther wall. Into that part of the wall a grille was let in at eye-level for someone sitting in the chair. Above the grille was a smaller grille with a fine steel mesh. The table was set against the wall to the right of the chair.

  Captain Rowan went to the table and switched on the lamp. It threw a small pool of light on to the white notepad.

  ‘If you would sit, Lady Manners, I’ll turn off the overhead light.’

  She sat, lifted her veil. She could see nothing through the grille, but when the overhead light went off the grille was transformed into a faintly luminous rectangle. She felt Captain Rowan come close. He reached in front of her, manipulated a catch on the grille and opened it. Behind it was a pane of glass and behind the pane wide-spaced, downward-directed louvres of wood or metal. She found herself looking through the louvres into a room on a slightly lower level. There were a table, several chairs and a door in each of the three walls she could see. The table was covered in green baize. There were pads, pencils, two wafer carafes and – placed centrally – a telephone. Suspended above the table was a light. It was on and seemed to be powerful. There was no one in the room.

  ‘Actually there’s not much to explain,’ Captain Rowan said. ‘You can keep the table-lamp on without any light on this side of the window attracting attention from below. The light over the table down there is rather strong and the shade is adjusted so that the man sitting in the chair facing you tends to be a bit dazzled by it. I’ve tried it myself and I assure you that if you look up you simply can’t see this grille let alone see anyone watching through it. But if the table-lamp here distracts you, just switch it off.’

  ‘I think I should prefer it switched off.’

  He pressed the button on the base of the lamp.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘now I feel less vulnerable.’

  ‘Good. The microphone is in the telephone down there.’ He switched the lamp on again. ‘This is the speaker, above the grille. When I get down I shall ask whether you can hear. If you can, press the button that you’ll find under the arm of the chair.’

  She felt for it.

  ‘Yes, I have it.’

  ‘Would you press it now and watch the telephone downstairs?’

  She did so. A green light on the instrument in the room on the other side of the grille came on in response to the pressure.

  ‘That is also your line of communication. If the relay system breaks down all you need do is press the button. I will then pick up the telephone and say “Hello”. Once the telephone is picked up there’s a direct private connection between this room and that. All you need do is pick your own telephone up and tell me what’s wrong. My reply may not seem relevant, naturally. But please don’t hesitate to communicate if you think it necessary. The business can always be adjourned if you want to discuss any points with me.’

  ‘Thank you, Captain Rowan.’

  ‘Are you close enough to the grille?’

  ‘Yes, and I shall put on my distance glasses.’

  ‘Shall I turn the light off again?’

  ‘If you would.’

  Again the room darkened and the picture of the room below became brighter, clearer. She leaned forward.

  ‘Then if everything is satisfactory, Lady Manners, I’ll leave you.’

  She nodded and said, ‘Yes, please carry on with your own side of things.’

  Presently she heard the door open. Light from the corridor came and went across the wall she faced. She fumbled for the clasp of her handbag, found it and opened a way for her hand into the familiar homely clutter. Without removing the case she opened it and took out her distance spectacles, put them on. Now she could appreciate the fuzzy quality of the baize, the contradictions of texture between the bai
ze and the wood of the chair that would be the focus for her attention. There was a clock on the wall above the door behind the chair. It showed twenty minutes after ten.

  Just before it showed twenty-five past the door below it opened and Captain Rowan entered. He put his briefcase on the table and sat in the chair the prisoner was to sit in and gazed at a point directly in front of him. His voice reached her rather metallically from the wall just above her head.

  ‘The table is on a low dais and someone seated opposite sits slightly higher than the person in this chair. The head of the person in this chair is therefore raised a bit when he looks the other person in the eye. So.’ Captain Rowan raised his head fractionally. ‘You should now have a fuller face view. More chin and less forehead. If you have heard and understood please press the button twice.’

  She did so. The green light on the telephone pulsed on and off, on and off.

  ‘Good. Perhaps we should test the telephone connection.’ ‘He stood, leaned over and picked the receiver off the rest. She turned to her right, groped for her own instrument, found it, lifted the receiver and placed it against her ear. His voice was now in the instrument.

  ‘Can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. It’s working perfectly.’

  ‘Shall we begin, then?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I’ll wait until I hear you put your phone back.’

  She replaced the receiver.

  He looked up, narrowing his eyes against the bright light, put his own receiver down and said – his voice coming again through the speaker – ‘I assure you no one can see the little window. I’m going outside for a moment. A clerk will come in. When I return I shall have an official from the Home and Law department of the Secretariat with me. The clerk and the official are both Indians. The clerk’s duty is to make a shorthand transcript of the proceedings. The official from the Home and Law department is here because of the nature of the business which H.E. felt shouldn’t be left entirely in the hands of someone on his private and personal staff.’