A Division Of The Spoils (Raj Quartet 4) (64 page)

‘Yes. I see. Thank you. And this is all you have to tell me?’

‘I think so. I hope it’s helped you in a general way.’

‘Yes.’ He made a snap decision. ‘Tell me, Colonel Merrick – are you still troubled as I understood from Ahmed you were – I mean troubled by incidents devised to remind you that your conduct as Superintendent of Police in Mayapore – I should say suspected conduct – had made you unpopular in certain quarters and wasn’t going to be forgotten?’

Merrick smiled. A cheerful smile, Kasim thought.

‘Not until recently.’

‘Another stone?’

Merrick reached for his briefcase and began to manipulate the artificial hand back round the handle while he continued speaking. ‘No, there’s only been the one stone. Chucking stones at British officers
is
rather a hazardous operation. They’ve reverted to the subtle approach. The bicycle again.’

‘Bicycle?’

‘A bicycle. Left on my verandah. Rusty and useless, naturally.’

‘A rusty bicycle left on your verandah, Colonel Merrick? What purpose does this serve?’

‘It’s obviously a symbol of the bicycle I’m supposed to have planted outside the house of one of the boys who assaulted Miss Manners. Miss Manners’s bicycle.’ He stood up. So, after a moment, did Kasim. ‘The bicycle’s rather a good touch. They began after I’d left Mayapore just by chalking inauspicious signs outside the door of my bungalow. Then one day there was this rusty old bicycle outside my quarters. That was in Mirat, just before someone chucked the stone. The incidents have a twofold purpose, of course – to let me know it’s known where I’m currently living and working – which they do – and to undermine me psychologically – which they don’t.’

‘When and where was this new incident, this second bicycle?’

‘According to my cook, about a week ago in Delhi. I’ve been down in Ceylon and Rangoon and got back only just in time to accompany your son here. My cook said he found it leaning against the verandah rail one morning. He got the sweeper to take it to the back of the compound because there was a bad smell which he traced to the saddle-bag. He wouldn’t touch it
himself after that because the smell was that of a putrid pork chop. Since he’s a Muslim I’ve had some difficulty in persuading him to stay. He’s a very good cook. He cooks fresh pork chops for me quite happily. Just seems to draw the line at putrid ones in the saddle-bags of rusty bikes.’

Kasim averted his face to disguise his own revulsion.

‘You should report such things to the police.’

‘I always do. It doesn’t bother me personally but then whoever is responsible for this kind of childish persecution isn’t really in the least concerned either about me or about what are no doubt still called the innocent victims of the Bibighar. The Bibighar affair was used as an excuse to stir up trouble generally and it rather looks to me as if it’s going to be given another innings in conjunction with the
INA
cases because it’s been discovered I’m connected with them.’

‘Given another innings by whom, Colonel Merrick?’

‘By whoever prefers anarchy to law and order. Has Count Bronowsky never talked to you while you’ve been living in Nanoora, about the power exercised in India by uncommitted and irresponsible forces? He was very eloquent about it on the first occasion I met him.’

‘Count Bronowsky and I don’t have an intimate relationship, in spite of my younger son’s connection with him. He and I are politically opposed. He is dedicated to the continuing autocratic authority of the Nawab. I am dedicated to the diminution and final extinction of the autocratic authority of
all
the Indian princes. My respect for Count Bronowsky has become quite strong since I’ve lived under restriction at the Nawab’s court, but we are still political opponents and seldom exchange views.’

‘I suppose you and I are potentially opponents too, Mr Kasim.’

‘You and I?’

‘I and your party. Surely I’m on the list?’

‘What list, Colonel Merrick?’

‘The list of officials whose conduct in nineteen forty-two may be inquired into. I’m told it looks as if I’m likely to be on it.’

‘Told by whom?’

‘The
CID
officer I reported the new incident to. Not that it
surprised me. The fact that the subject has come up at a political level is sufficient warning. Anyway, if I’m not on it yet I imagine from what I’m told that my old friend Pandit Baba of Mayapore won’t be happy until I am. Of course it’s he who’s responsible for the childish persecution, but there’s never been any clear evidence to connect him with it. He’s not a very connectable man. You can’t pin him down with any certainty even as a member of the militant wing of the Hindu Mahasabah. But he has a genius for inspiring young men to sacrifice themselves in whatever cause he’s currently taken up. I admired him rather. In Mayapore whenever we caught one of his disciples as they called themselves breaking the law they always swore the only thing they discussed with the Pandit was the Bhagavad Gita and went willingly to prison. What I admired was his power to inspire such loyalty. In those days his activities were more tiresome than dangerous but I should say he’s capable of graduating to better things. Assassination, for instance. You know the man I mean, Mr Kasim?’

Kasim smiled.

‘I have never met him. I think now I must see Sayed. You are due to take him back to the fort when?’

‘When your meeting is finished.’

‘And when do you take him back to Delhi?’

‘This evening.’

‘By road to Ranagunj and then by aeroplane?’

‘Yes. I must be in Delhi tomorrow. I have to fly back to Kandy and from there probably to Singapore.’

‘Then I will say good-bye to you now, Colonel Merrick.’ Again he made a snap decision. ‘I don’t think we shall ever be opposed in the sense you mean. Not you and I personally. I am not interested in past quarrels, only in solving present and future problems. It is the only way any of us will ever make progress.’

‘Quite. Quite.’

For the first time Merrick looked uncertain of himself, disappointed, if the unscarred side of his face was anything to go by. Kasim thought: He’s proud to be on the list, in which case what people said about his conduct in Mayapore is probably true.

The man reached for his cap. Kasim did not watch him go through the awkward motions of tucking it under his left arm.

‘I’ll bring Sayed now,’ Merrick said. He hesitated then went towards the door.

‘No, please do not bring him. I wish our meeting to be completely in private and in any case it would offend me to see him physically in the custody of anyone. And there is another thing –’

He went over to the window. ‘This room is very hot and dark. It is like a cell. I closed these shutters because there is a guard outside whose presence disturbs me. I know that guards are necessary – if only as a formality since Sayed could hardly effect a credible escape in the middle of this desert.’ He opened the shutters and breathed deeply. The guard was still there, just out of earshot. ‘So I apologize for any inconvenience but I think I should prefer to see Sayed in the courtroom. At least it will be larger and airier and they can post as many men outside as they wish. That should take only a few minutes to arrange, shouldn’t it? Just a question of clearing the other people out. Perhaps you’d be so kind as to send someone to let me know when everything is ready.’

‘I’ll come myself, Mr Kasim.’

‘That is kind of you.’

He realized how little he could have seen of the Circuit House on that previous visit fifteen months ago. He did not recognize the corridor that Merrick now led him along. They stopped at a door. Merrick opened it on to a small room.

‘This isn’t the court-room,’ Kasim said. ‘It’s the magistrate’s room.’

‘It’s the best way in.’

‘No! The worst! How can I enter the court-room through the judge’s door? Where have you put Sayed? In the dock?’

‘I can bring him here if that’s what you’d prefer.’

‘I wish no one to
bring
him anywhere.’ He felt ill. He turned back into the corridor whose series of grimy windows gave on
to the verandah of the inner courtyard. The place stank of unresolved cases, of the acrid odour of legal millstones grinding fine and slow between sessions; and of his youth, pleading interminable cases in court-houses such as this. After all, interviewing Sayed in the court-room would be a mistake. It would be like putting him on trial. But then, for Kasim, what was about to follow
was
Sayed’s trial.

‘Mr Kasim, are you all right?’

‘I am perfectly all right. It is just that –’

He broke off. There was a third man whom Merrick was urging forward from the open doorway; a tall man, taller than himself, broad-boned, well-fleshed, dressed like an active-service officer in dark green cotton uniform; pale brown skin, dark-browed, brown-eyed. Between the nostrils and the lip a moustache grew, close-cropped in the British style. The hair was cropped too, but not too close. A fine-looking man. Only the eyes betrayed a weakness: the weakness that accompanied an uncertainty about the warmth of his reception.

But Sayed did not wait to find out what kind of reception he would get. Silently, effortlessly, in one flowing movement he knelt at Kasim’s feet, placed his hands on Kasim’s shoes, lowered his head to his hands and then raised it, at the same time removing his hands. As he rose Kasim instinctively performed his own task, putting his arms round him. So, for a moment, they remained.

‘Come, let us go through,’ Kasim said, and released his son. Merrick was walking down the corridor, his back to them; but he had been a witness. Kasim led the way through the magistrate’s room, out on to the dais in the court-room and down into the well of the court. He stopped by one of the pleaders’ tables; that table at which Sayed must have been sitting. There were an empty coffee cup and a used cigarette tray. The smell of tobacco smoke hung in the air. He still drank too, probably, like Ahmed, but with at least the excuse that it was a habit acquired in army messes, just to prove equal capacity with British officers. But the smoking was new and despite himself Kasim found the dirty ashtray repugnant. He said nothing, but Sayed, also without a word, removed it, took it across to the other table.

‘Please, there is no need. If smoking has become necessary to you, smoke by all means. It doesn’t bother me.’

But Sayed left the ashtray where he had put it and came back, stood; the weakness was still discernible, the uncertainty was still there, in the eyes. Kasim sat. From this angle his elder son looked even taller and broader. Both Ahmed and Sayed dwarfed him but Sayed would make even Ahmed look slenderly built. The periods of privation must have been of short duration, unless the British had been feeding him up.

‘Come, sit.’

Sayed did so.

‘Have you seen Ahmed yet?’

‘Not yet, father. But Ronald told me he’s here.’

‘Ronald?’

‘Ronald Merrick. The chap you’ve been talking to. He said he’d make sure Ahmed and I had a word afterwards. He’s quite a good fellow really. Very decent to me.’

The voice was strong too, the accent clipped, more clipped than Kasim remembered from their last meeting, certainly more clipped than it had been after Sayed had passed out of the Indian military academy when Kasim had told him, ‘You sound like a British officer.’ They had both laughed. He could have stopped Sayed choosing the army as a career. He had been criticized for not stopping him. It hadn’t always been easy for him to explain why he had a son who held the King-Emperor’s Commission. It couldn’t always have been easy for Sayed when young Englishmen, fellow members of the mess, learnt who his father was. But Sayed had never complained and when Kasim became Chief Minister in Ranpur any embarrassment Sayed might have felt vanished. He remembered Sayed saying, ‘You are a Minister. I am an officer. We are both necessary.’ He had meant necessary to India and Kasim had been moved.

‘How are you treated then? You look well. Put on an inch or two. Like Ahmed. As you see, I have taken off. Who is commandant at the fort nowadays? Still Major Tippet?’

‘I don’t know, father. I was only there overnight. You were there too?’

‘Oh yes. Better than the Kandipat although boring after a bit. They gave me a room in the old Zenana House. I wonder
whether my bed of onions is still flourishing? It was in a courtyard a few feet from the steps to the Zenana. I watered them mostly with the water from my shaving mug. So this is how they tasted. Of soap. What one will do to keep oneself occupied. But onions are good for warding off colds. So your mother always said.’

The muscular geography of his son’s face momentarily revealed itself: an intricate map. The eyes hardened. Kasim folded his hands on the table. He said, ‘When I was released to go to Mirat they brought me here first of all to meet Ahmed. Now that I’m going back home it seemed a convenient place to tell them to bring you. If I had come to Delhi the world and his wife would have been watching. Anyway, it gives you an outing. What did they tell you. Anything?’

‘First they just told me to get ready for a trip. But then Ronnie Merrick got back from Rangoon and put me in the picture. He said Government had given permission for us to meet and that he was coming with me.’

‘The impression was that I had petitioned Government and that Government had decided to be magnanimous?’

‘Yes.’

‘It is not entirely accurate.’

‘Oh, I didn’t swallow it whole. I know how devious they can be.’

‘In this case devious to what end?’

Kasim waited. Sayed said nothing.

‘Come. Don’t hold back. Just because I am your father.’

Sayed looked down at the table. ‘They know you’ve never written to me. They think this shows you disapprove of what I’ve done.’ He glanced up. ‘It would be very useful to them to have someone like you on their side. A member of Congress, ex-Chief Minister. And a Muslim. Someone to denounce us all as traitors. They realize such people will be in short supply.’

‘Quite so. Both major parties will stand behind the
INA.
The true nature and extent of
INA
came as a surprise to many of us. But people who are locked up a long time have a lot of surprises in store when they mingle freely again and find out what has been going on. So among us at Simla it was generally agreed that
INA
would be supported.’