by Paul Scott
‘A good idea, sir.’
‘These waiting periods are damned difficult. There’s a batch of airborne blokes due in soon. Now that the show in Germany’s over they’ll be itching to get started and give the Jap a knock. They’ll be a handful to keep occupied and entertained. I know you’ve got your own special security job to do but I’d be grateful if you’d spare half-an-hour to talk to them one morning on this Indian history thing of yours. I’ll try and come myself. Learn a bit too. Extend my range beyond the Black Hole. Never too late for that, eh?’
Perron said, ‘Actually, if you don’t mind, sir, I think they’re more relaxed without an officer present.’
Captain Strang looked relieved. To reassure the officer that his interest was appreciated but that his friendliness would not be taken advantage of and made an excuse for slack behaviour, Perron slapped up a particularly smart one when they parted and would have stamped his feet had they not been standing in a puddle. Perron had cultivated a formidable parade-ground style and soldierly manner not only to preserve that encouraging image of discipline and efficiency which heartened officers but also (after a tiresome experience with a Seaforth Highlander captain in the map-room of a camp on Salisbury Plain) to minimize the risk of his BBC accent (as fellow-NCOS called it) and his cultural interests giving them the impression that he was a pansy.
*
The sight of the armada gathering off Bombay – a city to which Sergeant Perron’s field security duties now began to take him fairly regularly – appearing, disappearing and reappearing as the curtains of monsoon rain and mist rose and fell with sinister effect, did not usually depress him. In four years of service he had learned to look upon the entire war as an under-rehearsed and over-directed amateur production badly in need of cutting. In this light the low grey shapes of the troopships and escorts could be seen as figments of the imagination of an unknown but persistent operational planning staff whose directives had caused them to appear. The same imagination could just as easily dispel them. Nothing in the army was absolutely sure until it happened and he did not intend to worry about Zipper or the danger he might be in until the ships weighed anchor with himself on one of them.
But on the afternoon of Sunday August 5 as he drove past the Taj Mahal Hotel in a brand new jeep that had been lent in temporary exchange for the motor-cycle he had left at the motor-pool for water-proofing for the sea-borne landings in Malaya, he observed that the armada had increased in size since his view of it a couple of days before. Perhaps it was the sense of futility lingering from his previous day’s lecture on the Mahrattas that chiefly contributed to his unusual feeling of disquiet, of there being something in the air that boded no good and moved him to nostalgic thoughts of a world where peace and common sense prevailed.
Being early for his appointment with a Major Beamish he stopped the jeep and gazed at the brown-grey waste of Bombay water. Without ever having taken any other personal avoiding action than that of co-operating cheerfully over the deferment of his call-up to enable him to sit his finals and obtain his degree, he had managed to get through the war so far without coming any closer to a violent end than half-a-mile away from a bomb off-loaded by a Heinkel over Torbay after a night visit to Bristol. But he had always assumed that his turn for danger would come. Posted to India in 1943 he had expected it to come quite soon but, of course, any apprehension that he felt in regard to that was combined with the excitement of finding himself after several years’ scholarly absorption in Britain’s imperial history actually in the country in which so much of it had originated.
In the first six months the luck of the draw of postings had given him opportunities to visit Cawnpore, Lucknow, Fort St George, Calcutta, Seringapatam, Hyderabad, Jaipur and Agra, and if he had felt some disappointment in these places as relics of old confrontations he had always managed to suppress it before it grew strong enough to undermine his academic confidence. ‘India’ he wrote in his notebook, ‘turns out to be curiously immune to the pressures of one’s knowledge of its history. I have never been in a country where the sense of the present is so strong, where the future seems so unimaginable (unlikely even) and where the past impinges so little. Even the famous monuments look as if they were built only yesterday and the ruined ones appear really to have been ruined from the start, and that but recently.’
Occasionally he was tempted to blame the war for his inability to relate the country he saw to what he knew of its past and at such times he thought how interesting it would be to come back or stay on when the war was over, to examine India undisturbed. But this afternoon, looking at the unfriendly vista of the Arabian Sea which as a boy he had thought the most romantically named ocean in the world, he felt more strongly than ever how perilously close to losing confidence the actual experience of being in India had brought him; and he wanted to go home – not (like the men to whom he had lectured) merely for home’s sake or to enjoy the first fruits of a new political dispensation (for which he too had posted his vote by proxy through his Aunt Charlotte) – but so that he could regain lucidity and the calm rhythms of logical thought. These, he knew, depended upon a continuing belief in one’s grasp of every issue relevant to one’s subject and India seemed to be the last place to be if one wanted to retain a sense of historical proportion about it.
He got out his notebook with the intention of writing something down that might clarify his thoughts and expose as baseless his nagging doubts about the value of work he intended to do in pursuit of certain ineluctable truths but just as there seemed to be no connection between the India he was in and the India that was in his head there was no connection either between paper and pencil and the page remained ominously blank. This depressed him so much that he wrote out in a determined hand: ‘Tell Aunt Charlotte that Bunbury is deteriorating rapidly?’
*
‘This is Captain Purvis, sergeant,’ Major Beamish said, indicating a thin-faced, mousy-haired, ill-looking man who was dosing himself with brown pills which he washed down with water without quite choking. ‘You an’ ’e are goin’ this evenin’ to a party.’ Beamish, like so many elderly regular officers, spoke a kind of upper-crust cockney.
‘Yes, sir,’ Perron said, keeping his thumbs in line with the seams of his trousers.
Beamish was in a bad temper, either as a result of a thick Saturday night or of lingering resentment at being made to work on a Sunday. He said, ‘Fer God’s sake sit down. It’s too bloody hot fer parade-ground manners.’
Perron, who stood over six feet in his socks, chose the deepest of three available chairs in deference to Major Beamish whose trunk was short in proportion to his legs and who therefore sat lower at his desk than seemed either fair or suitable for a man of his domineering temperament. Satisfied that his eye-level was now a flattering few inches below Beamish’s, Perron met the officer’s gaze with soldierly frankness.
‘D’yer have yer civvies with yer?’
Before Perron could answer, the other officer – who was now sitting with his eyes closed and his arms folded broke in. ‘Shouldn’t advise civvies in this case.’
‘I have my Army Education Corps gear, sir,’ Perron said.
‘Those’ll do,’ Purvis said.
‘You fill ’im in, Purvis, or shall I?’
‘Would you? I’ll interrupt if I don’t think you’ve got it right. Could we have that fan on more?’
Perron got up and went to the board of switches and turned up the dial that regulated the ceiling fan. Irritably, Beamish re-allocated weights to keep the papers moored to the desk top, then lit a cigarette but did not offer the tin.
‘It’s about security fer Zipper and loose talk here in Bombay,’ he began. Perron listened attentively for the ten seconds it took Beamish to pass from the informative to the opinionative mood and then tried to tune in what he called his other ear: the one that caught the nuances of time and history flowing softly through the room, a flow arrested neither by Beamish’s concerns nor his own sense of obligation to fur
ther them by putting himself at Beamish’s disposal. Glancing at Purvis he wondered whether that officer also heard the whisper of the perpetually moving stream or whether the expression of concentration was due to the compelling effect of the brown pills. When Purvis’s brows suddenly contracted he decided it must be the latter.
‘Are yer still with us, sergeant?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Right. Tell ’im about the party, Purvis.’
For a moment Purvis neither spoke nor moved. Then he opened his eyes.
‘God!’ he said, got up and went out of the room.
‘Feller’s got squitters,’ Beamish explained.
‘Who is Captain Purvis, sir?’
‘Damned if I know. Brig didn’t say. Never met ’im in me life till half-an-hour ago. Seems a bit of a wash-out ter me. Chap should be able to keep ’imself fitter than that!’
A chaprassi came in with a foot-high pile of folders tied up in pink tape and put them by the side of a similar pile on the In side of Major Beamish’s desk. There was a single file in the Out tray. The chaprassi took this with him when he went. Beamish poured himself a glass of water then took the top folder from the nearest of the two piles.
‘Smoke if yer want ter,’ he said. ‘While we’re waitin’.’
Perron murmured his thanks but did not do so. Beamish read the note in the file, initialled it, flung the folder in the Out tray and reached for the next.
Ten minutes later Purvis came back. Beamish was reading the minute in the last folder of the second pile. Without glancing up he said, ‘Feelin’ better?’
‘Frankly, no. I think the sergeant will have to come back to my billet. I’ll put him in the picture there. In any case he’ll need somewhere to change and freshen up for this evening.’
‘All right, sergeant, get along with Captain Purvis. Are yer goin’ back ter Kalyan ternight?’
‘That was my intention, sir.’
‘Ring me from there in the mornin’. We’ll decide if there’s anything ter follow up.’
Perron stood, put his cap on, stamped to attention and saluted. As he turned he caught the tail end of a wince on Captain Purvis’s face.
‘Shoes, sergeant! Have you got shoes?’ Purvis asked.
‘In my pack, sir. With the uniform.’
‘Thank God for that. What are you on, a motor-bike?’
‘I’ve got a jeep today, sir.’
‘We’ll dump it at my office.’
Outside in the corridor Purvis maintained his distance a couple of paces ahead. They passed a long bench on which a line of chaprassis dozed, like figures on a frieze in bas-relief, awaiting employment. The building – currently at the disposal of the army and navy – belonged to the port authority and smelt of rope, gunny sacks and the dust on old bills of lading. Through the immense windows in the main corridor into which they turned came that other pervasive dockyard smell of oily water: Bombay, Bom-Bahia, an island swamp, part of the dowry brought by Catherine of Braganza to Charles II which it took the British five years to persuade the Portuguese Viceroy actually to hand over. Perron stemmed the stream of thought before it could disorient him; apart from which Purvis walked very fast and Perron didn’t want to run the risk of losing him in the labyrinth. He concentrated on Purvis’s back and noticed that the officer’s shoulders were hunched – probably against the ringing sound of Perron’s studded boots on the stone floor.
Descending by a broad stone staircase they reached the main entrance hall on whose marble flags stood a profusion of poles on heavy plinths which bore directional signs. None of the officers and NCOS passing to and fro glanced at the signs and Perron wondered how long it would take for the place to be reduced to a state of hopeless confusion if someone ever took it into his head to move the signs round. Perhaps no one would ever notice.
He smiled and at that moment Purvis stopped and faced him. They nearly bumped into one another. Whatever Purvis had intended to say he forgot.
‘Something amusing you, sergeant?’
‘No, sir.’
‘I mean if there is, do share it.’
Perron told him his thought about the signs. Purvis glanced at them. Without another word he led the way into the open: a fore-court normally crammed with vehicles but today fairly empty. In the minute or so since they had left Beamish’s office the sun had come out. The heat struck Perron’s eyelids.
‘Where’s this jeep of yours, then?’
Perron indicated it.
‘No driver?’
‘Only me, sir.’
Purvis went down the steps. ‘Mine’s that fifteen hundredweight Chevvy. Follow me and for God’s sake keep up. Right?’
Jeep-borne, Perron followed the truck through the archway which was blocked at night by a white pole but at present open to all comers and goers under the eye of a stick-guard who was supposed to inspect identity cards but was taking people on trust. They drove along a road parallel to the docks. At the end of it Purvis’s truck turned left. Caught in the midst of Bombay’s traffic – buses, cyclists, hooting taxis, overladen trucks, horse-drawn doolies and jay-walking pedestrians – Perron concentrated on not losing contact. The truck braked sharply to avoid an obstacle Perron couldn’t see. He slammed on his own brakes and stopped a foot or two short of an impact that might have snapped the tether Purvis seemed to be near the end of. Possibly the nest of spies, fifth-columnists and loose-talkers Perron gathered Purvis thought he’d uncovered was totally illusory. Driving on, but allowing more distance (and noting that the cause of the abrupt halt had been a handcart piled high with crates of live fowl, hauled by a half-naked coolie) Perron decided that so long as Purvis wasn’t at his elbow the entire evening, hissing warnings, the party might be supportable; or even enjoyable.
*
Purvis’s billet turned out to be a flat in one of the modern blocks opposite the Oval – that elegant, coconut-palm fringed rectangle of open, grassed, space; or maidan; brilliantly green at this wet time of year. They reached the block in Purvis’s truck, having left Perron’s jeep in the courtyard of a house several streets away which was guarded by sentries but otherwise unidentifiable as a military office. Purvis had instructed the guard-commander that Sergeant Perron was to be re-admitted on production of his identity card at whatever time of night he returned, in whatever kind of clothing or uniform, and be allowed to collect and take away his jeep; but – short though the journey was – the route then taken from Purvis’s office to Purvis’s billet seemed to Perron, in the back of the truck, so complicated that he had doubts about finding his way back to his jeep unaccompanied. This had not bothered him much because he assumed they would go to the party in the fifteen hundredweight and be brought back from it by the same means, after which he would be taken to retrieve the jeep; but when they dismounted in Queen’s Road Purvis signed the driver’s log book and dismissed him until morning.
‘Is the party being given nearby, sir?’ Perron asked as they approached the entrance to the block of flats. Purvis didn’t answer. He was in a hurry. Reaching the two steps that led to the open doorway and a dark hall he stumbled up them, bumped into and almost knocked down a servant who was coming out ahead of a young English woman.
‘For God’s sake look where you’re going!’ Purvis shouted.
If he was aware of the girl he gave no sign of it. He brushed past the two of them and disappeared into the dark.
‘I do beg your pardon,’ Perron said to the girl.
‘Why?’ she asked.
‘I’m afraid the officer isn’t well. He couldn’t have seen you.’
She studied his uniform briefly, taking everything in at a glance as young English women in India were trained to.
‘It wasn’t me he bumped into, it was Nazimuddin. But thank you for apologizing for him.’
He waited for her to add ‘–sergeant’, but she smiled instead, an ordinary friendly smile, then put on the hat she had been carrying. The movement released a little wave of delicate scent. She came do
wn the two steps and made for the pavement and the road where the ill-used bearer was flagging down a cruising taxi. She was a bit thin, a bit bony, but she walked well. He judged her to be in her early twenties but found it difficult to place her. Accent, style of dress, forth-rightness: these proclaimed her a daughter of the raj, but her manner had lacked that quality – elusive in definition – which Perron had come to associate with young memsahibs: a compound of self-absorption, surface self-confidence and, beneath, a frightening innocence and attendant uncertainty about the true nature of the alien world they lived in. They were born only to breathe that rarified, oxygen-starved air of the upper slopes and peaks, and so seemed to gaze down, from a height, with the touching look of girls who had been brought up to know everybody’s place and were consequently determined to have everybody recognize their own.
Waiting until she had completed that movement – charming in a girl, especially in her – of climbing into the taxi, he shouldered the pack containing his Army Education Corps disguise, went into the building and through the gloom to an inner only slightly better lighted hall where there was a lift shaft and a flight of stone steps leading up. A notice, askew on a piece of string suspended from the handle of the trellis-work gate, informed him that the lift was out of order, but in any case he would not have known which floor to go to. There was no sound from above of Purvis climbing. The door of the flat immediately to his right had a dark-stained strip of wood above the bell with gold-lettering on it saying Mr B. S. V. Desai. To the left a similar notice read H. Tractorwallah. Both these doors seemed unlikely ones for Purvis to be on the other side of and neither had the look of having been opened recently.
Perron ascended. On the next floor the two flats were occupied respectively by a Lieut.-Col. A. Grace and a Major Rajendra Singh of the Indian Medical Service. The Indian medical officer’s name seemed to have been painted on its strip of wood longer ago than Colonel Grace’s. Perron hesitated, but then, deciding that if Purvis was billeted on this floor one of the two doors would have been left open, started on the next leg up and as he did so heard a voice above call, ‘Sahib?’
