‘Bunbury was Aunt Charlotte’s idea. When I told her I couldn’t delay my call-up any longer she said I obviously wasn’t trying and that it was most unpatriotic of me because it wasn’t going to be fair on the men for whose lives and welfare I so thoughtlessly intended to accept responsibility. She only became resigned to it when I got it through to her that I intended to serve anonymously in the ranks and when I agreed to tip her off the moment I wanted her to pull strings to get me out. Throughout my relatively short but not uneventful military career, from Salisbury Plain to Kalyan, I’ve kept her informed of my state of mind by reporting on our friend Bunbury’s state of health. His death last week will have galvanized her into action.’
‘What sort of action?’
‘She has several friends in what are called high places. Permanent establishment, not politicians. And fortunately I have a pleasant little niche awaiting me in what poor Purvis’s benefactor called the groves of Academe. Perhaps more fortunately, our new government is both anti-imperialist and pro-education. In every graduate they will discern a future pillar of an expanded state school system. Not that I intend to be one. But I have the utmost confidence in Aunt Charlotte’s ability to arrange a priority demobilization especially if she works in unison with a certain professor of modern history.’
‘Who is this Purvis you keep mentioning?’
‘Was. Not is. He’s dead too.’ Perron drank deeply, not quite finishing what was in his glass. ‘I don’t think I want to talk about Leonard Purvis. I’d rather talk about Bunbury. I had to follow up the telegram to Aunt Charlotte with a letter just in case the cable went astray. Would you like to know what I told her about how Bunbury died?’
‘How did Bunbury die?’
‘He committed suicide. Twice.’
‘Twice.’
‘The first time he did it in the bath-tub but I managed to revive him but when he did it again I wasn’t there. They’d put him in an upstairs ward and when they weren’t looking he threw himself out of the window and broke his neck.’
‘A very determined Bunbury.’
‘I’m glad you appreciate that. It’s what I feel. In determination of that calibre there is something heroic. The thought first struck me at the hurried little inquest which they dragged me up from Kalyan to attend. They made out it was suicide while of unsound mind but you could tell they knew he was as sane as they were. On the other hand what I knew was that there wasn’t a man in the room with anything like so profound a sense of what he was in the world to do, nor anything like so profound a sense of the criminal waste of human energy that we’ve seen in the last six years. I’m glad he didn’t survive to hear about the new bomb.’
‘Are you sure about not eating, Guy?’
‘Could I have something in here?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then I’d better.’ He poured more neat Scotch into the over-rich mixture. ‘Normally, you know, I’m quite abstemious, but I’ve spent the past few days discreetly stoned to the eyeballs, a condition which the Red Shadow observes with envy and malicious longing to get his corrupt and filthy thieving hands into my kit-bag to see how many bottles I have left. I for my part long to catch him at it, so that I can boot him in the arse. And believe me, Nigel, before I leave, boot him I shall, with or without provocation. It’s a point of honour. The arses of the Suleimans of India exist to be booted by British sergeants. It’s traditional. One for the sergeant, two for the regiment and three for the raj. And then the women of the Suleimans of India will laugh like drains, the wild dogs of the hills will yelp their satisfaction and there will be peace again on the Khyber. I think you’d better go, because Suleiman will be making a note of the time you and I have been alone in a locked compartment and will make his report accordingly to Major Merrick. I beg his pardon. Colonel. But it’s difficult to keep up. He was a major when I saw him in Bombay on Bunbury Sunday. A colonel when I reported at his office in Delhi on Thursday. I entertain this illusion now that it’s dangerous to be parted from him for more than a day or two. Every night I go to sleep terrified that in the morning he’ll be a full colonel or even a brigadier.’
‘I take it you’re not enamoured. Why, particularly?’
Perron sipped.
“‘I do not love thee, Dr Fell, the reason why I cannot tell” .’ He sipped again. ‘On the other hand I’ve been working out why. He’s the man who comes too late and invents himself to make up for it. Even that arm, you know, is an invention. You needn’t think it happened in a flash, with a bang, or even on an operating table. It appeared quite gradually, like the stigmata on a saint’s hands and feet and side. So that the world would notice, and pause. The pause is very important. I think you’d better join him. He doesn’t like being neglected or kept waiting.’
‘What takes him to Pankot?’
‘The case of one Havildar Karim Muzzafir Khan, late of the Pankot Rifles.’
‘I think I may know a bit about that.’
‘You were always insufferably well-informed. About rowing for example. What bit do you know?’
‘If it’s the one who joined Bose’s people in Germany’ – Perron nodded – ‘then Miss Layton’s father has put in a request for permission to see him. Is Merrick arranging it?’
Perron drank more whisky.
‘No. We’re going up to take statements from the havildar’s former fellow NCOS.’
‘No chance of an exception being made.’
‘An exception?’
‘No chance of Colonel Layton being allowed to see him?’
‘None at all. What’s so special about Colonel Layton?’
‘Nothing. But what’s so special about Havildar Karim Muzzafir Khan that Delhi sends a half-colonel all the way to Pankot to take statements?’
‘Oh, that’s easily answered. The havildar was special because Merrick chose him.’
‘You mean as an example?’
‘I mean he was a chosen one. It’s part of the technique of the self-invented man. Merrick looks round, his eye lights on someone and he says, Right, I want him. Why else do you think I’m here. I’m a chosen one. I expect Coomer was.’
‘Coomer?’
‘Coomer. Kumar. Harry. Hari. Don’t tell me you don’t remember him. Miss Layton said you did. It puzzled her when I said I didn’t. It aroused her suspicions. Very embarrassing. It made her wonder whether I was only pretending to have gone to Chillingborough. So she dropped a name or two. Yours was one. And then there was Clark-Without.’
‘Clark-Without? How did she come to know him?’
‘I think she said they met in Calcutta. You remember his reputation, I expect. Hasn’t she ever mentioned him?’
‘There’s no reason why she should.’
‘But of course she’s told you about meeting me. Obviously.’
‘Not all about it. Why did you say you didn’t remember Coomer, by the way?’
‘The subject was taboo. Not fit for mixed company. Merrick ordered me not to discuss it. The easiest way to avoid being drawn into a discussion was to pretend I didn’t know him. Did you know our friend Coomer put cricket behind him and went in for rape and that our friend Merrick caught him at it?’
‘Is that what he told you?’
‘Has he got it wrong?’
‘There are two schools of thought. How did you come across Merrick? Just by being posted to his department?’
‘Attached. Not posted yet, thank God. But no. I met him one warm night. On the docks. At Bombay. It sounds romantic, doesn’t it? Then I didn’t meet him again until the evening at the Maharanee’s. But, already I was chosen. Fate. It has driven me to drink, to Bunbury and Aunt Charlotte, and to a refutation of Emerson.’
‘Emerson?’
‘ “Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation today, next year die, and their experience with them.” Emerson failed to see that
there were exceptions. People like you and me.’
Rowan smiled. He made neither head nor tail of it and on the whole saw no reason to try. But a penny had just dropped.
‘Did you meet a Count Bronowsky at the Maharanee’s? Sarah told me he was there.’
‘He was certainly there. Why do you ask?’
‘He put that idea into your head, didn’t he? About Merrick inventing himself and the arm?’
‘He certainly didn’t. It’s my copyright.’
‘Coincidence then. He has much the same idea. I’d better leave you to it, Guy, and get them to bring you in some supper. By the way, when I was still out on the platform just now did Merrick take the opportunity to ask you how you and I knew one another?’
‘He did.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said we knew one another quite well before the war. I don’t think it satisfied him. He probably thinks we’ve been in touch recently because neither of us showed any surprise at meeting.’
‘You didn’t mention Chillingborough?’
‘I had a feeling it wasn’t necessary.’
‘It doesn’t matter either way but one likes to be prepared.’
‘Because of Coomer? What interests you and Sarah Layton about Coomer? The fact that he’s an old Chillingburian who has been in what used to be called a Spot of Bother?’
‘I suppose that provides a very rough basis for an interest.’
‘As for everything else? This, for instance?’ He gestured round the compartment. ‘I imagine Colonel Merrick’s coupé isn’t half as comfortable. This cosy little compartment is symbolic, don’t you find?’
‘I hadn’t thought of it. What is it symbolic of?’
‘Of our isolation and insulation, our inner conviction of class rights and class privileges, of our permanence and of our capacity to trim, to insure against any major kind of upheaval affecting our interests, and of course of our fundamental indifference to the problems towards which we adopt attitudes of responsibility. Not moral responsibility, ownership responsibility. A moral responsibility would be too trying. Even poor underprivileged Purvis was clearheaded enough to admit that. Property on the other hand can always be got rid of and new property acquired. New property, new responsibility, but the same manner, the same deep inner conviction and the same snug cosy sense of insulation. I know where I shall find mine when I’m back home. Where will you find yours, Nigel, I mean when India is got rid of?’
‘I’ve really not thought about that, Guy. It’s just a shade too far ahead.’
‘You haven’t thought about it. But of course you don’t need to. Neither of us does. Nothing can erode our ingrained sense of class security. Your face has taken on that remote patrician look that tells me you would find what I say offensive if you thought for one moment I meant it. Well I do. Every bloody word. Emerson was obviously too much of a peasant to appreciate the significance of you and me. Society is a wave. The wave moves onward. You and I move along with it. Emerson was writing for the Merricks and Purvises of the world. The ones who get drowned. Merrick hopes not to be. But he will be. Can’t the fool see that nobody of the class he aspires to belong to has ever cared a damn’ about the empire and that all that God-the-Father-God-the-raj was a lot of insular middle- and lower-class shit?’
‘An uncle of mine took God-the-father God-the-raj quite seriously, I should say.’
‘You mean he had principles?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘I bet that if you cut right through the principles you’d find all he took seriously was his unassailable right to deploy things and people to his uttermost personal advantage and private satisfaction.’
‘Is Merrick a principled man?’
‘Principled as a rock. He thinks people like you and me are scum. He believes we’ve abandoned the principles we used to live by, what he would call the English upper- and ruling-class principle of knowing oneself superior to all other races especially black and having a duty to guide and correct them. He’s been sucked in by all that Kiplingesque double-talk that transformed India from a place where plain ordinary greedy Englishmen carved something out for themselves to balance out the more tedious consequences of the law of primogeniture, into one where they appeared to go voluntarily into exile for the good of their souls and the uplift of the native. The transformation was illusory of course. A middle-class misconception of upper-class mores. But a man like Merrick can’t be expected to see that. He’s spent too long inventing himself in the image to have energy left to realize that as an image it is and always was hollow. He only notices it has become rarer. Poor Coomer obviously never stood a chance. An English public school education and manner, but black as your hat.’
‘Not so black.’
‘Black enough for Merrick. But most of us are as bad as black to him. There aren’t many real white men left. And the odd thing is that when he comes across any he despises them. Colonel Layton for instance.’
‘He despises Colonel Layton? Why?’
‘White man gone soft. Guide and correct, remember? The two pillars of wisdom. Despises because Layton has and is everything Merrick covets. But Layton hasn’t the nerve or guts to live up to it. He’d clasp the Bose-tainted havildar to his bosom, for instance. Tears of sorrow rather than the lash of anger. Too many bloody tears altogether. Even over a half-empty bottle of Old Sporran. So God help us tomorrow. Have you got any by the way?’
‘Got any what?’
‘Old Sporran. Doesn’t Government House run to it?’
‘Not nowadays. Why God help you tomorrow?’
‘Not nowadays. No. Nowadays Old Sporran is reserved for the Purvises. Damned proletariat getting in everywhere. He hanged himself.’
‘Who hanged himself? Purvis?’
‘No, Purvis fell. The havildar hanged himself. Havildar Karim Muzzafir Khan, son of subdar Muzzafir Khan VC.’
‘Oh. When?’
‘Tuesday you said? So, a few minutes ago it was Monday. Sunday morning, then. Some time on Sunday morning. Before daylight. Which is why there’s no chance of Colonel Layton being allowed to talk to him. There’s no poor weary shagged-out shamed and insulted havildar to talk to.’
‘Shamed and insulted by whom?’
‘Merrick of course.’
‘You witnessed it?’
‘Only the beginning and the end. Bombay in June and Delhi on Friday. I expect I missed the best bits in the middle.’
‘What happened in the middle?’
‘I don’t know. The real working-over I expect.’
‘Physical working-over?’
‘No sign of that on the body. I don’t think that’s Merrick’s style.’
Perron emptied the flask into his glass. The liquor was now neat.
‘You saw the body, then.’
‘Oh yes. “Come over to D block, will you, sergeant? There has been an interesting development.” At four o’clock in the morning.’
‘Interesting?’
‘That’s what he said. It was quite deliberate. So that I should be unprepared. He presented the scene like a tableau vivant, well not so vivant, but one he’d set up which he wanted me to react to. I’m surprised he let them cut him down before I got there.’ Perron swigged whisky. ‘The whole thing was unspeakably ugly and sordid.’
‘What did he use?’
‘The havildar? You mean for rope? Torn strips of shirt and vest knotted together. He’d tried to cut his throat first with a broken bit of mess-tin. I’d prefer not to talk about it. I’ll just tell you what Merrick said. “Not a very prepossessing looking chap, was he, sergeant?” ’
‘Yes, I see. So the real reason for the journey is to report the death to Colonel Layton?’
‘No. The real reason is to sustain the connection. The role of friend of the family. Nothing brash of course. Nothing pushing. Just a persistent air of quiet competence and capacity and authority. Occasional sudden concentration of effort and flurry of activity that show the range and de
pth of feeling and concern. Like this visit. The human touch. And all these statements to be taken from the havildar’s ex-comrades. As if anything that can be recorded now in the havildar’s favour is not only welcome but a white man’s duty to discover and put on the file.’ Perron closed one eye and stared at Rowan as if he suddenly found it difficult to focus. Then he nodded and said:
‘He’s chosen the Lay tons, too.’
Perron opened the closed eye and added: ‘But don’t worry. I mean if you do worry, don’t.’
‘Worry about what?’
‘His choosing the Laytons. I said Laytons; not any one Layton in particular. At least I shouldn’t think so. So don’t worry. What was her name?’
‘Whose?’
‘The stunning girl Aunt Charlotte took a shine to.’
‘Laura Elliott.’
‘Laura Elliott.’ Perron put his head back as if tired. ‘What a sad name. What happened?’
‘She married someone else.’
‘Anyone I know?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. She met him in Rangoon. His name was Ratcliff. He planted rubber in Malaya.’
‘What was she doing in Rangoon?’
‘Visiting me.’
‘When was this?’
‘Nineteen-forty-one.’
‘How did she get to Rangoon in nineteen-forty-one?’
‘Her parents were in Mandalay. Civil service.’
‘I always thought of her as army.’
‘Her brother was.’
‘Sandhurst together?’
‘Yes.’
‘Same regiment?’
‘Yes. The three of us came out on the same boat.’
‘Were you and Laura Elliott ever engaged?’
‘Eventually.’
‘When you went to Burma.’
‘No, we became unengaged in Burma.’
‘Were you in the Burma show in ’forty-two?’
‘I never think of it as a show. Just as a retreat. I was in that.’
‘Well, show or retreat, you survived. Did Laura Elliott’s brother?’
‘No.’
‘Did Laura and her rubber-planter get out of Malaya?’
‘The parents got out of Burma but only Mrs Elliott’s still alive. She lives in Darjeeling and writes to me occasionally. She heard from Laura once early on, after she’d been interned by the Japanese. There was no news of Tony and Laura’s never written again. At least nothing’s been received.’