A Division of the Spoils

by Paul Scott

  Reaching the narrow door and the narrow staircase Rowan began to climb. His quarters were high up, on the second floor where the corridors were narrow, the rooms small, the ceilings low and the windows perpetually grimy. He had a sitting-room, a bedroom and a bathroom which suffered the drawback of having no running hot water. This had to be brought up from the basement in kerosene tins.

  Without his bell, his telephone, and without the servants who manned the corridor, he might have felt himself marooned in a little oasis of inconvenience and for the first few weeks of his temporary appointment as an aide he had in fact suffered mild attacks of claustrophobia. But he had grown to see only the advantages of the place, even to be fond of it, and when offered something better on being transferred from temporary to official duty he had elected to stay. The quarters were supposed to provide short-term accommodation only and he was now the corridor’s oldest inhabitant. One of the advantages was that the servants allotted to the corridor looked upon themselves now as virtually in his personal employ. He knew their histories, their weaknesses, their aspirations; helped them with their private problems and settled their disputes. He had never felt himself cut out to be a good regimental officer; but he was sufficient of a soldier to miss contact with men for whose welfare he was responsible. The servants were a surrogate.

  Two of them greeted him now. One took a key from its hook on the board and another a sealed envelope from the pigeon-hole used for internal messages. Jaiprakash opened the door of his sitting-room and switched the lights and fan on. Rowan handed him the key to his drink cupboard and asked him to pour a whisky-soda. Jagram meanwhile went into the bedroom and bathroom, turning on lights and fans, then came back and went out to the corridor to call the bhishti. So it was, night after night.

  To drink his whisky Rowan sat in his one comfortable chair. He opened the invitations, neither of interest to him, and then the envelope containing the internal mail. Two of the smaller envelopes inside contained bills. In addition there were various memoranda, the daily communiqué from the press office, a copy of a bread-and-butter letter from a senior officer of Eastern Command who had spent a few days at Government House and mentioned Rowan among those he thanked for making his stay comfortable. The largest envelope contained several cyclostyled pages: the general programme for the next few days, giving dates, times, functions, and the names of those members of the Governor’s staff who were required to attend. Wherever his own name appeared the clerk had inked in an asterisk. Since Rowan had drafted most of the itinerary himself he glanced through it now mainly to refresh his memory and to check whether the Governor’s private secretary, Hunter-Evans, had had to make any last minute changes.

  Tomorrow night at 1930, when his day off was finished, he was to be at the reception in the state rooms for members of the Department of Education, the Municipal Board and the Ranpur Chamber of Commerce and at 2100 at the dinner for Mr Kiran Shankar Chakravarti who in the past few years had made several crores of rupees out of army contracts and had donated a sufficient number of them to found a department of electrical engineering at Government College.

  At 10 a.m. the day after, he and Priscilla Begge (representing Sir George and Lady Malcolm respectively) were to welcome and escort to Government House Lady Burke from Delhi, whose interests were the Red Cross, the wvs and the work of women’s committees, and in the afternoon he had another reception committee at Ranagunj airport to collect a popular English entertainer who had been touring Burma and Bengal and who was to stay at Government House and give a concert at the Garrison Theatre in the cantonment. On the evening of the same day he was to accompany the indefatigable Lady Burke and Mrs Saparawala, the vice-chairman of the Ranpur Women’s War Committee, back to the station to catch the night train for Calcutta where they were to attend a conference. The day after that there was a morning meeting of the Executive Council followed by a lunch party for HH the Maharajah of Puttipur, and an afternoon visit to the quarries out at Rangighat. That was new to him. He hesitated, then remembering that the Maharajah was greatly addicted to the sight and sound of dynamiting, he took up a pencil and marked Rangighat with a stroke, to remind himself to check that someone had thought not only to warn the Ranpur Quarry and Construction Company of the Maharajah’s visit but to tell them to be sure to have a few decent bangs laid on, even if they weren’t scheduled, and whatever the weather.

  In the evening the job of helping to entertain His Highness fell to a fellow aide, Hugh Thackeray, who was to accompany HH and General Crawford to the mess of the Ranpur Regiment. HH’s son and heir, the Maharajkumar, was an officer in the fourth battalion. He had served in Burma and was presently in Rangoon. Thackeray, a Ranpur Regiment man himself, was also to accompany HH the following morning to pick up his private aeroplane at the airfield. In the afternoon of that day Rowan was to go with the Governor, the Member for Finance and the Member for Education, to the foundation-stone laying ceremony at the site of the new Chakravarti extension in the Government College grounds.

  He put the itinerary away and thought how narrow his life sounded when set out like this. Jagram came back and went through to the bathroom. The familiar click of bolts on the corridor door meant that the bhishti was on his way up with the hot water. He took his whisky over to the desk, emptied his pockets and then his briefcase of all the papers connected with the day’s assignments: at General Crawford’s office, at the CID, at old Chakravarti’s house. And – a private visit – at the Samaritan Hospital of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. Among these last was the letter from Sarah Layton which had been written two days ago, on Saturday the 11th of August. She would not expect to hear from him so soon, nor perhaps when she did, by telephone. But it was to ring her, really, that he had come back and not gone to the club.

  He unfolded the letter. The telephone number was there in the printed heading. He sat at the desk, spread the letter out and sipped whisky. This morning, because of its length and careful exposition, the letter had given him the impression of there being more urgency about the inquiry she asked him to make than she thought it fair to convey. He had already done what she asked. It would be nice to ring her to say so. But, exposed again to the letter’s apparently casual tone he wasn’t sure that he should.

  Dear Nigel (she had written)

  When we last met that time I was on my way to Bombay to meet my father you were generous enough to tell me never to hesitate to let you know if there were anything you could do for me in Ranpur. I hope you’ll forgive me for taking you up on that so soon.

  I think you’ll remember my mentioning that whenever I came down to Ranpur I took the opportunity to visit a Miss Batchelor who used to live here at Rose Cottage as a PG of my father’s step-mother, Mabel Layton. I’d just come away from seeing her that day you turned up at the Spendloves where I was staying a couple of nights before going on to Bombay. I was more grateful to you than you may have realized for persuading me to go along with you to those friends of Hugh Thackeray’s, because seeing her in the state she’d reached was always discouraging. Her memory had gone, and so had her voice – she wrote everything down – but they said that was psychological. They assured me she was perfectly happy but it was such a depressing place I found that hard to believe.

  Yesterday I heard in a roundabout way that she was dead and I confirmed this by ringing the Mother Superior at the Samaritan Hospital, where she was. I’d intended to ring ever since getting back from Bombay (just three days ago, on Wednesday) to find out how she was but kept putting it off. According to the Rev. Mother she died on Monday morning and was buried the following afternoon at St Luke’s in Ranpur. She wasn’t a Catholic, and was at the Samaritan because as you know theirs is the only place in the city that caters for Europeans who are ill in that way. All the arrangements both for her being there and for the funeral were made by the Bishop Barnard Protestant Mission Schools, which Barbie used to work for.

  The line between Ranpur and Pankot is sometimes very bad and was yesterday. On t
op of that the Rev. Mother has a habit of not talking straight into the phone so she always sounds far away and if you keep asking her to repeat things she gets nervous. I mention this because I can’t be sure whether the things I gathered remain to be dealt with are things the Bishop Barnard people have neglected or said they weren’t interested in. She said she’d been going to write to me, so I asked her to do that, but she said she’d told me now and perhaps I’d call in (just like that, from Pankot!). I’ve never found her anything but competent and efficient but she has that curious nun’s vagueness about anything she’s not dealing with on the spot, face to face.

  The trouble is that in all the time Barbie was a patient there I was the only person who knew her before she became ill who visited her, and the staff got into the habit of thinking of me as a sort of go-between if there was anything to settle between the Samaritan and the Bishop Barnard who – I must say, did rather keep their distance and seemed to think it was sufficient that the bills were paid regularly although that was all done by their lawyers who were also Barbie’s. I didn’t mind going to and fro, whenever I was down there, settling odd things the Samaritan had just let pile up until my next visit. I did rather want them to feel that I had an interest in Miss Batchelor and that poor Miss Batchelor had someone taking an interest in her. I’d always assumed I’d be told if she suddenly became dangerously ill or was dying. They had my Pankot address. The fact that I was in Bombay when it happened doesn’t alter the fact that neither the hospital nor the Bishop Barnard seem to have tried to contact me. I suppose the Reverend Mother would have written to me eventually – all of which suggests mainly that whatever it is that seems to be a loose end can’t be very important.

  I rang the Bishop Barnard too but the Superintendent is on tour. Her deputy didn’t know of anything still to be dealt with. She said everything of Miss Batchelor’s had been removed from the Samaritan and signed for and was now in the Superintendent’s room awaiting disposal. Since then she may have been in touch with the Samaritan and sorted out whatever it is that seems to be a loose end. ‘Things you should deal with,’ is all I could really understand when I spoke to the Rev. Mother.

  Unfortunately the only person I know in Ranpur well enough to ask to look into it is on holiday in Kashmir. (Mrs Fosdick, Mrs Spendlove’s sister.) And perhaps it’s not a place I’d want to put Mrs Fosdick to the trouble of getting in touch with. Here, the Peplows, the rector and his wife, who took Barbie in for a while after she had to leave Rose Cottage, are in Darjeeling. Clarissa Peplow is one of the very few people who know that I kept tabs on how poor Barbie Batchelor was making out, and I know if she’d been here she’d have rung the Vicar at St Luke’s and asked him to clarify things with the Rev. Mother. So I turn to you. If you have a moment, could you ring the Rev. Mother (The Samaritan Hospital of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, Latafat Hossain Lane, Tank Road, Lower Koti Bazaar, Tel. 3124) and try to find out what ‘has to be dealt with’ and then let me know – by letter? I’d be awfully grateful. The line between GH and the hospital will probably be clearer and you always sound so calm and collected and in control of things she may be encouraged out of her vagueness.

  Since there’s been a Governor’s conference in Delhi I realize you may still be up there with HE, in any case I know you’ll be busy. Anyway, there’s absolutely no rush about this, so really don’t worry if for some reason or another there’s nothing you can do. I’ve dropped Rev. Mother a line mostly about Barbie but adding that I didn’t quite get the hang of the query she raised and have asked a friend in Ranpur to get in touch with her, since I can’t get away myself just now. I expect if it’s anything important she might write to me, but she never has before.

  I was longer in Bombay than I expected. I expect you know why because I gather Sir George Malcolm had a reception committee waiting to welcome back the main body of the regiment when it got back three or four weeks ago. Father wasn’t in awfully good shape and as a few of the men had to go into hospital in Bombay we stayed on until they were fit enough to travel. Incidentally, on my last day in Bombay I met Count Bronowsky and Ahmed Kasim and so was vividly reminded of first meeting you on Ranpur station and the game pie and champagne. We went on to an interesting but rather odd party at a flat supposedly belonging to a Maharanee but had to come away before the hostess had all the drinks locked up and turned us all out. Ronald Merrick was with us – my reluctant escort. He’d turned up in Bombay. He didn’t want to go to the party but I insisted on going so he insisted on coming. He warned me not to say anything to the Count or to Ahmed about the job he’s doing. Perhaps he didn’t trust me not to. Anyway it was quite an evening, I’ll tell you all about it when next we meet.

  It looks as if everything’s more or less over now that the Americans have bombed Nagasaki too and Russia has come in (some caustic comments here, about that). It will seem odd not to be at war with anyone. Father is looking much better now. I go riding with him every morning and don’t turn up at the daftar until eleven or so, so I’m having an easy time of it.

  Love, Sarah.

  *

  He lay the letter aside, glanced at the package and envelope the Reverend Mother had given him and then at his watch. At 7.45 on a Monday evening there was a good chance of finding her at home. But in the second reading he had been struck by that phrase ‘and let me know – by letter’. It occurred to him that the members of her family might not be among those few people who knew she had kept tabs on Miss Batchelor and that her concern for the old missionary’s health was one they did not share and would not approve of. He thought it would be very like her to respect their lack of concern by keeping her own concern to herself; just as a year or so ago she had respected their reasons for not calling on Lady Manners when they found themselves on neighbouring house-boats in Sringar, but had herself ignored the barrier the conventional world put up, by crossing the few yards of water on a day when she was alone and could do so without causing fuss or offence, and visited that old and enigmatic woman. She had attributed her action to curiosity. Initially she had used the word morbid, but then said, ‘No, that’s not right. But I was curious to see her, and the child.’ Later she had said something odd, which interested him. ‘In a way I think I envied her. But I’m not sure why.’

  From the bathroom came the sound of water being poured into the tub. Deciding it would be better to relax in a tepid bath before making up his mind whether to ring her or write to her, he went into the bedroom and began to undress. While he did so he thought of their last meeting and of the time they had spent together; and of their first meeting, just over a year ago.

  IV

  Her quiet self-reliance had been the first of her qualities to impress and attract him. Her unexpected entrance ahead of Dmitri Bronowsky into the gilt and red plush railway carriage had caught him unprepared, caused him some difficulty – sitting as he was with briefcase on knee and a finger keeping the page of the file of documents he had been studying during Bronowsky’s absence.

  It was an intrusion he would have welcomed if she had brought into that baroque interior a classic air of feminine elegance. But she was in uniform, and this was crumpled. She looked travel-worn, hastily pulled together, like someone Bronowsky had just rescued from a crush on the platform, although the side platform where the Nawab’s private train was drawn up was almost empty. It was not until she had taken her cap off and was sitting next to him on one of the ornate Louis xv-style salon chairs, in the light of the crimson shaded lamps, drinking champagne and smoking one of Count Bronowsky’s pink-papered and gold-tipped cigarettes, smiling at the old man’s gay reminiscence of his earlier émigré life in the south of France, that the first impression was overtaken by another: that in her unusual, perhaps plain, way she was beautiful. The bone structure of her face was prominent but lacked the arresting emphasis which would have made it striking. Her face had to be studied before it revealed its natural and incontrovertible logic, and then one felt instinctively that it would endure, that
in old age it would be marked by the serenity of understood experience and the vitality of undiminished appetite.

  ‘What a sad story,’ she said when Bronowsky finished the tale of the eighteen-year-old English boy who had loved and lost a Spanish girl; lost because he could talk to her only in English or in the schoolboy French Bronowsky had been hired to correct and improve. The story was subtly turned. Many girls would have laughed blankly – or, had they been aware of Bronowsky’s reputation and hence of the fact that he was probably recounting the tale of a lost love of his own (the boy), not even smiled. But, ‘What a sad story’ was what she said and then glanced at Rowan. It was no more than a glance but to him extraordinarily eloquent, and continuing to watch her it struck him that she was in love herself, that she was sustained by that, protected from all malice and unkindness and shallowness by the intensity of her commitment to the man she had chosen and the depth of her conviction that her own life was now set on a course that would bring more happiness than sorrow. The expression on her face was like that on Laura’s when Laura broke it to him that she had changed her mind and was going to marry a man called Ratcliff.