A Division Of The Spoils (Raj Quartet 4) (11 page)

Still holding his arm she turned back towards the room so that Perron was forced to follow. As he went Merrick said, ‘We shall be here for another few minutes, I expect.’

Directly Aneila entered the room the Maharanee cried, ‘Shut the door! I cannot stand it! Why do they hang around in the corridor when there are all the rooms to use? Why don’t you organize things better? How am I going to rest for my party with all this noise going on?’

‘Oh, Auntie, please don’t shout, people will hear!’

‘How can they hear? I cannot even hear myself speak!’

But it no longer mattered. Aneila had shut the door and stood, visibly trembling, leaning against it.

The Maharanee was still on the couch but by its side now was a small table holding a tray, the bottle of whisky and a glass.’

Pointing at the bottle she said, ‘Taste it! Taste it! What is this Purvis creature trying to do? Poison me?’

Perron went across to the couch and picked up the bottle. It was nearly a quarter empty. He glanced at the Maharanee and then at the label. Surprised, he put the uncapped top near his nose and sniffed. The label was genuine. He wondered where Purvis had managed to get hold of it. He hadn’t seen a bottle since 1939. He had first tasted the particular brand of whisky it contained at the age of eighteen when it had had an elaborately erotic effect on him. He looked at the Maharanee again, warily.

‘You see!’ she shouted. ‘It is disgusting! Taste it! The taste is even more disgusting than the smell. Aneila, why are you standing there doing nothing? Get Mr Perron a glass.’

Aneila ran into the adjoining bathroom.

‘Actually, Your Highness, it’s a very fine and rare old malt whisky, an acquired taste perhaps, admittedly –’

‘It is disgusting! What is keeping you, Aneila? I said bring Mr Perron a glass.’

‘I’m bringing it, Auntie.’

She ran in with a tumbler. It was wet from running water from the tap under which it had been rinsed.

‘Pour him one!’

But Perron took the glass and reverently poured the whisky himself. It was too precious to waste. He sipped.

‘Well? Is it not disgusting?’

‘Not to my way of thinking, Your Highness. On first acquaintance it could seem a little smoky but that’s part of its charm to people who like it.’

‘They must be depraved then. Who but people with depraved tastes could drink such disgusting stuff?’

‘There’s a very interesting story about it. They said it wasn’t until the English learnt to drink and appreciate it that they managed to subdue the Scots.’

‘Scots, English, what is the difference? You are all barbarians. Are there many of you at my party?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’

‘Who else? Aneila is hopeless. She remembers nobody’s name.’

‘So far I’ve talked to only a few. I think you know one of them – Count Bronowsky.’

She waved a hand impatiently. ‘Yes, I know. Even Aneila can tell me that. But why is he here? Why is Dmitri here tonight? I told him any time except tonight. Who is with him?’

‘The secretary who’s a son of Mr Mohammed Ali Kasim.’

‘Politics!’ she exclaimed. ‘It is too boring.’

‘And a Major Merrick with a charming girl called Sarah Layton. Count Bronowsky brought them.’

‘He is mad! And how can Sarah Layton be charming? With a name like that she must be English. I detest English girls. They are always so stupid and rude. They come out here because in England they are nobody and wouldn’t be looked at twice. It is impossible. The party is cancelled, Aneila. Tell the servants to lock up the drinks and stop preparing the food. Tell them to go to bed. I am ill. Poisoned by this Purvis creature. I wish to see no one, not even Mira if she arrives. We shall leave Bombay tomorrow. It is too full of spongers and hangers-on. I am tired of it. Tired of it.’

‘Oh, Auntie, Auntie!’

‘Is that all you can say? Is coming to Bombay and having a good time all you can think of nowadays? Isn’t it time to consider my feelings in the matter?’

‘Auntie, what can I
say
to everybody?’

‘Why should you say anything? What right have they to an explanation? Do as
I
say and then go to bed. They will soon get fed up.’

She looked at Perron and indicated the bottle.

‘Please return it to the Purvis creature or better still since you seem to like it drink it yourself and then you will not have come all this way for nothing. Only take it. I cannot bear even the smell.’

Perron bowed, retrieved the cap from the table, put it on the bottle. The paper in which the bottle had been wrapped was on the floor. He stooped and picked it up. As he did so the Maharanee reached across to the table on which the lamp stood and recovered the shade with the piece of crimson velvet. She went out like an illuminated picture that had been switched off.

‘Goodnight, Your Highness,’ Perron said. ‘I regret being in any way the cause of your indisposition.’

‘Goodnight, Mr Perron. You must visit me again when I come back to Bombay and give my next party. Some of my parties are very nice and go on for a day or two.’

He groped his way back to the door. Somewhere in the darkened room Aneila was crying quietly to herself.

*

There was ample room on the back seat of the limousine for Miss Layton, Major Merrick and Count Bronowsky, and for Perron and Mr Kasim on the bench that was let down to face it. Separated from the passengers by panes of glass set in panels of upholstery and figured walnut rode a chauffeur and a footman wearing what Perron assumed to be the livery of the Nawab of Mirat. The limousine had been waiting outside Ishshee Brizhish and now glided along Marine Drive towards the Oval.

‘Mr Perron, may I thank you for your thoughtful tactic in
tipping us off?’ Count Bronowsky said, breaking a rather strained silence. ‘It means I have a little less to apologize for to Miss Layton and Major Merrick. We were able to come away in fairly reasonable order.’

‘Why
have
we come away?’ Miss Layton asked. She seemed perfectly composed. She just wanted to know. He thought her behaviour admirable. When he came out of the Maharanee’s room, found Merrick and warned him that the party was over it had been obvious that Merrick hadn’t yet suggested leaving. Perron was surprised that during the time it had taken them to get away from the flat Merrick hadn’t found an opportunity to tell her what had happened. It was a better excuse than the one he might have had to invent.

He waited for Merrick to tell her now but still the man said nothing. Street-lighting alternately illuminated the left and right sides of his face and it was not until the car turned a corner and a brief but total exposure of the whole head was made that it occurred to Perron that the disfigurement of the left side in a curious way reflected something otherwise inexpressible about the right. Realizing that an explanation was being left to him, he said, ‘I have an unhappy feeling that a certain Captain Purvis is to blame.’

He told the story of the whisky.

‘What’s wrong with the whisky?’ Miss Layton asked.

‘In my opinion, nothing.’ He mentioned its official name. She said, ‘The genuine thing?’

He unwrapped the bottle sufficiently to expose the label.

‘But it’s extraordinary,’ she said.

‘You know it?’

‘Great-grandfather had some in his cellar. My father was talking about it only the other day. He said great-grandfather had the sense to keep going until the last bottle was finished. Then he died.’

Perron wondered whether Miss Layton’s great-grandfather had referred, as his own Uncle Charles always had, to this particular brand as Old Sporran. He said, ‘The Maharanee called it a drink for barbarians but she’d had a glass or two before she decided to complain. I think the whisky was just an excuse to end a party she’d decided she didn’t want to give after all.’

‘A shrewd assessment,’ Bronowsky said. ‘Poor Aimee has never made up her mind what she wants in life. But perhaps the whisky was a blessing.’ He turned to Merrick and Miss Layton. ‘I was beginning to have doubts about the wisdom of having taken you along. May I in addition to most abject apologies for the failure of the first part of the evening offer some entertainment for what is left of it? For instance the supper I misled you to expect at the party?’

‘That’s very civil of you,’ Merrick said, ‘but Miss Layton has a tiring journey ahead of her tomorrow and all things considered an early night now would be a good thing.’

‘I understand. Quite. So we have met again merely to part. But better briefly than not at all. What about you, Mr Perron?’

Unprepared for the invitation Perron hesitated. He would have liked the opportunity to talk to the old
wazir.

‘Well, thank you, sir, but . . .’

‘What the sergeant means, Count,’ Merrick interrupted, ‘is that he hadn’t expected to be asked to stay at the Maharanee’s and he’s been worried about getting back to his billet because he has no late pass. Isn’t that what you were rather delicately avoiding telling me in so many words when we were talking in the corridor?’

Perron admired Merrick’s inventiveness, but resented becoming the victim of it. He said, ‘More or less, sir.’

Bronowsky was smiling. He said, ‘I had no idea that in the education you were so regimented. Is the place where you suggested being dropped the most convenient or should we first deliver Miss Layton and Major Merrick at Queen’s Road and drive you on? We have plenty of time.’

Merrick interrupted again. ‘I’m afraid the sergeant is quartered quite a distance away but I think I can lay on transport for him. If that’s all right by you, sergeant?’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘At the same time you could take a document for me to the Major Beamish I mentioned. There’d be no need to deliver it until morning, but I’ll give you a note as well if you like to satisfy anyone who might try to get you into trouble for being out late without permission.’

Beamish’s name, so casually used, presumably served a double-purpose: to lend credibility to what was a complete
fiction, and to alert him to the fact that Merrick had an intimate knowledge of that department. He said, ‘It’s very good of you, sir. I don’t think a note will be necessary.’

‘We’ll see.’ He turned to Miss Layton. ‘It’s all right if the sergeant comes in for a moment, I hope? The document’s in the case I left.’

‘Of course.’

Perron again offered his thanks. Merrick said, ‘A lift back to camp seems the least we can do. Your warning saved Miss Layton the embarrassment of finding the drinks locked up under her nose and all the servants gone to bed, it seems. I find it quite inexplicable.’

After a moment Bronowsky said, ‘It is India.’ He stirred, as if to ease his lame leg and turned his face fully to Merrick who had the seat next to him.

‘I hope you are not plagued still by incidents such as arose when you were in Mirat, Major Merrick? Has all that sort of thing died down?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘I’m glad. We for our part have not been revisited by the venerable Pandit who was using the boy’s aunt on that occasion. You never met the girl’s aunt, did you?’

‘No.’

‘Because I had that pleasure – perhaps I should say melancholy pleasure – last November in Gopalakand. She was staying, in a sense incognito, with the Resident, Sir Robert Conway, an old friend apparently. We didn’t, of course, refer in any way to Mayapore. In fact our conversation was confined almost entirely to the safe subjects of the weather and the historical and architectural interest of the Residency. I did gather however that she had spent most of the recent hot weather in Pankot, but in what she called the seclusion of the unfashionable side. So I don’t suppose any of you were aware of her presence, Miss Layton?’

Merrick moved abruptly as if trying to identify the stretch of road they were on. Miss Layton spoke across him:

‘Are you talking about Lady Manners, Count Bronowsky?’

‘Yes, the girl’s aunt.’

‘Actually she signed the book at Flagstaff House when she arrived.’

‘Indeed?’

‘And again when she left. She didn’t write in an address.’

‘How strange. I mean, signing the book. Does one interpret it as a gesture of submission or defiance, or simply an ironic observance of hill-station convention?’

‘I don’t know,’ Miss Layton said.

‘Strange. Very strange. But how interesting. And talking of this,’ Bronowsky said, attracting Perron’s attention by lightly touching Perron’s right shin with the tip of the ebony cane, ‘when you were at that school of yours you must have known a boy called Kumar.’

‘Kumar?’

‘An Indian boy, Hari Kumar.’

‘I don’t clearly recall, sir.’

‘Coomer was the Anglicization, I believe. Harry Coomer.’

Merrick again leant forward.

‘Does your driver remember the block? We’re almost there. We ought to be slowing down.’

‘I believe he does but I shall make sure.’

Bronowsky unhooked a speaking-tube and gave an order. The car which had already been slowing down just before he spoke now dropped to a crawl and came to a stop opposite the entrance to the flats.

‘Didn’t you know Coomer?’ Bronowsky continued.

‘We had an Indian boy or two but I don’t recall the name, sir. They were rather junior to me.’

‘Yes, I see.’

The footman or second chauffeur opened the nearside door and helped Count Bronowsky on to the pavement. Perron and Kasim stayed put on the bench until Merrick had followed and helped Miss Layton out.

‘I should have liked you to meet my father, Count Bronowsky,’ Miss Layton was saying, ‘but Aunt Fenny and Uncle Arthur managed to persuade him to go out with them and they won’t be back yet. Won’t you and Mr Kasim come in for a drink, though?’

‘My dear, how kind,’ he said, taking her hand, ‘but I couldn’t claim your hospitality, having failed so badly in my own. And Mr Merrick is right. You have the journey tomorrow and your father to look after. I hope he’ll be fit again
very soon. My kindest regards to your mother and of course to your sister.’ He raised her hand and kissed it. ‘You accompany Miss Layton and her father as far as Delhi, Major Merrick?’

‘Yes, I do that.’