The Crow Eaters (12 page)

‘I’d be ashamed to even think of such rubbish!’

Freddy’s face congealed into something closed, hurt and unforgiving. Without a word he drew himself forward on the bed, slid his feet into his slippers and went from the room.

AT seven o’clock the Nawab of Panipur’s younger brother, Prince Kamaruddin, sent up word that he had arrived. Faredoon, Mr Allen and Mr Toddywalla hastened downstairs. As a concession to the occasion Mr Allen wore a pair of long baggy duck trousers. The Prince stepped off his gleaming carriage, and after embracing each other the middle-aged rakes, hell-bent on gaiety, scampered into Freddy’s tonga. Alla Ditta, with a little wad of jasmine-scented cotton plugged in one ear, stroked the restive horse. At a signal from Freddy he slid onto the tonga shaft, allowing his passengers to spread out comfortably on the front seat. With a flick of the whip he started the tonga moving.

‘Ah, now we sally forth on adventure,’ said Freddy ponderously, beaming at his friends.

They spoke in English out of deference to Mr Allen.

‘Hope the girls are good, old chap,’ said Prince Kamaruddin, opening a jewelled snuff box and squeezing a pinch into each nostril above his enormous, stiffened moustache.

Mr Allen, already disconcerted by the odour of jasmine, garlic and sweat given off by Alla Ditta, was completely put off by the Prince’s impeccable Oxford accent. The bizarre effect of a swarthy, arrogant Indian with pearls in his ears sounding like an Englishman never failed to diminish his meagre store of self-confidence.

It was still bright. The sun sent fierce red shafts from the horizon. The tonga clipped through the Mall at a brisk trot. They turned right on Kachery Road and their pace slowed. The street became narrower, traffic congested, but once they were past the shrine of Data Ganj Buksh, the rush eased somewhat.

Soon they saw the dark brooding outline of the fort, and gleaming against it, pink in the sunset, the domes and minarets of the Badshahi Mosque.

At the entrance to the Hira Mandi streets, Alla Ditta stopped briefly to get a bundle of betel leaves.

‘Are we there?’ asked Mr Allen, turning round to peer at the lights.

‘Yes. You will soon see our Diamond Market – that’s what Hira Mandi means,’ answered Freddy.

‘Why Diamond Market?’

‘You’ll find out soon enough, old chap. Plenty of gems – walking around on two legs!’ said the Prince.

It was the prime hour for visitors. Mr Allen craned his neck this way and that to ogle the girls on either side of the narrow street. The girls, gaudily dressed and heavily made up, reclined provocatively on silken cushions. The wide doors to their parlours were open to the street. Musicians sat cross-legged before their sitars, harmoniums and tabla-drums, idly tuning their instruments and running up melodious snatches. The heady sound of ankle-bells drifted through the closed doors of girls already engaged.

Sitting next to him, insouciantly chewing on a
paan
, the Prince murmured, ‘Careful old chap, we can’t have you falling out of the tonga.’

A great tide of love washed over Mr Allen. The Prince is a dear old fellow, he thought, forgetting his earlier discomfiture in his presence. His heart brimmed over with adoration for the entire land and populace of India. The dilapidated buildings towering on either side, superficially decorated with trellises and carved wooden balconies, appeared to him incomparably beautiful. Bright lights pouring from the rooms flooded the darkening street with mysterious, sensual shadows. Mr Allen sighed, thinking he would have to leave all this in a few years and retire to his cold, damp and colourless little country. He’d miss it – all these beautiful, tantalising, bewitching creatures with shimmering clothes and large, darkly flashing eyes.

They drove through to the end of the street and stopped. Freddy jumped from the tonga and gallantly escorting Mr Allen and the Prince like delicate ladies, ushered them up a dingy flight of steps to a small sitting room. The atmosphere in the room was stale and musty. The Prince turned up his nose at the dust-coated paper flowers, and at the stained lop-sided sofa. He refused to sit.

A placid Hindu woman, with a roll of waist showing between her sari and blouse, came into the room and greeted them. She was kindly-looking and middle-aged and the bunch of keys hooked into her sari jingled as she plopped down on a sofa.

‘Would you like tea?’ she asked.

‘Had we wanted tea, my dear, we would have stayed at home,’ said the Prince. ‘Tell the girls to come out.’

Mr Allen blushed, looking apologetically at the woman. She wasn’t the least bit affronted. Hauling herself out of the sofa, she said calmly:

‘Well then come along, let’s go to the parlour. You’ll be more comfortable there. The girls should be out in a few minutes.’

She walked to a door and held it open. Prince Kamaruddin, followed by Mr Allen, Mr Toddywalla and Mr Junglewalla, went through into a long, enclosed verandah. A man dozing by the harmonium and tabla-drums on the floor hastily stood up and salaamed.

Prince Kamaruddin’s disdainful eyes raked the parlour. The wall facing them was punctuated by slender, arched windows. Some were open and the room smelt fresh. The window-panes were clear, carpets thick and dust-free and the mosaic floor round their edges gleamed from scrubbing. The walls were a pale yellow and the curtains cheerfully printed with peacock-blue elephants.

The woman led them to divans covered with white sheets at the far end of the room and they reclined comfortably against satin bolsters.

Suddenly the gay tinkle of ankle-bells filled the room and a
short, prettily curved girl came up to them. Bending gracefully, she salaamed. She had a beautiful face with dimpled, voluptuously rounded Indian features and large demure eyes. Mr Allen and Freddy exchanged approving glances.

The Prince leered rakishly and smoothly engaged the girl in conversation while Mr Toddywalla transported his fierce whiskers to a window and looked down on the colourful street. He was subdued and obliging, obviously invited to fill out his friend’s party unobtrusively. Although he was Freddy’s age, he looked much older.

Alla Ditta came into the room followed by a slight, pale-skinned girl holding a cloth bundle. She had on black, skin-tight satin churidar-pyjamas and a full-skirted powder-blue kamiz bordered with a silver braid. Barely glancing at the visitors, she removed her slippers and sat down by the musicians. Her movements were light and quick. She removed a pair of
pyals
from the bundle and deftly strapped the bells round her ankles. As she stood up Alla Ditta, who had settled in a corner behind the musicians, pulled her skirt straight. Freddy frowned, shocked to see the ruffian on such terms with the delicate creature. It suddenly struck him that Alla Ditta probably slept with the girls.

‘That’s Nilofer,’ said the madam, interrupting Freddy’s thoughts.

Quickly, lightly, Nilofer ran up to them and salaamed. Mr Toddywalla was left breathless by the yellow glimmer of her green eyes.

‘Must be Kashmiri,’ Freddy remarked, commenting on her light skin and eyes.

The musicians started to play and the girls, tying their chiffon scarves around their waists, began to dance and sing in shrill, nasal voices. In turn, they danced up to each guest, sang a verse, and delicately plucked the proferred coin from their fingers. Their gauzy skirts swirled high above the tight churidar-pyjamas.

The fair girl was bolder. There was an excitingly depraved air about her; cynical and insensate. She went through the
time-worn motions and expressions of the dancing-girl, swaying her hips, glancing provocatively through slanting eyes, and smiling with an impassivity that was coarse and mechanical.

The dark girl, an exceptional beauty, was also mechanical and impassive, but her seemingly refined and demure manners and natural dignity transported her above her calling. The men were aware in themselves, despite an uneasy insight at their foolishness, of a feeling of affection – an almost tender desire to protect and possess her.

Prince Kamaruddin stretched out on the cushions, raised his arms helplessly above his head and announced, ‘God be praised, but it’s hot in here.’

At once the girl with the bold eyes, the one introduced by the madam as Nilofer, knelt by him to undo the buttons on his brocade sherwani-coat. But the Prince, placing a smooth hand flat on her breasts, pushed her back. ‘Not you. I want the other girl.’

Nilofer stood up, calmly making way for her colleague. The darker girl knelt, dimpling prettily, and dexterously unlooped the endless row of buttons from neck to knee. She helped the Prince out of his coat and hung it on a peg. Prince Kamaruddin reclined in his collarless silk kurta-shirt and the girl admiringly fingered the chain of gold studs down the front.

Mr Allen, consumed by envy – and by pity for the rejected girl, wished he had something to unbutton as well. He doubled his chins in an effort to glance at his person, and seeing nothing but the four plain buttons on his front, frowned ruefully. He caught the pale girl’s cynical, smiling eyes.

‘Wait, man, I will undo your braces,’ she said in English, sinking to her knees beside him.

‘Oh, you’re Anglo-Indian?’ asked Freddy quite surprised.

‘Yes, man. What the hell did you think I was?’

‘I thought you were Kashmiri.’

The girl pulled Mr Allen forward and bending over him, reached the buttons in the back of his trousers. She stood up,
playfully stretching the elastic, and flicked the braces over the Prince’s brocade coat.

Mr Allen beamed. Now that he knew she spoke English he felt a special tie with her. He relaxed completely, talking easily with her and tried desperately to focus his eyes on both girls at once.

The Prince had monopolised the other girl. Noticing his friend’s cockeyed endeavours, Freddy caught the girl’s eye and signalled her in Mr Allen’s direction. The girl excused herself with practised poise and went over to the Englishman. But the Prince was having none of this. ‘Come here, you. Come back to me, my dove,’ he demanded drunkenly. Eventually, galvanised into a spurt of energy by his exasperation, he got up and lifting the girl clear off the floor like a baby, carried her to the cushions away from the others. ‘Now you sit right here and talk to me,’ he said, patting the divan with an autocratic hand.

The madam smiled indulgently at the Prince’s antics. She could see he was enormously taken by the dark beauty and mentally calculated the price she would wheedle out of him in the future.

Mr Toddywalla and Faredoon were not interested in the girls. They sat there in the capacity of glorified pimps, more or less, steadily imbibing whisky and pretending to be lascivious.

Meanwhile, Mr Allen could not keep his hands from touching Nilofer. She kept brushing his fat fingers off good-naturedly and chatting in her coarse voice. She liked him as she liked all Englishmen; identifying herself, however tenuous her claim, with the British.

Freddy heard a snatch of conversation as Mr Allen teased her. Leaning forward foxily, his little blue eyes roguish, he baited the girl where she was most vulnerable.

‘Go on, you’re more Indian than English! I bet you eat food with your fingers at home. I bet you prefer chapaties and spicy curry.’

‘Of course!’ the girl retorted, stung to the quick and
defensive. ‘But we also eat English food – Irish stew, roast beef, custard, mint sauce and all that. It’s tasteless, but we eat it.’

‘There! You see! You don’t really like it. Now, if you were English, you would. And your name – Nilofer isn’t an English name!’

‘That’s not my real name. My name is Rosy.’

Something clicked alert and angry in Freddy’s alcohol-blurred mind.

‘Rosy what?’ he interrupted suddenly.

‘What’s it to you?’ the girl snapped.

‘Watson?’ he persisted.

The girl turned to him. Her green cat-eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. Fear, anger and surprise kindled the first genuine spark of life he had seen in her all evening.

‘What’s it to bloody you?’ she hissed.

‘Nothing. I was just guessing. Watson’s a common name.’

The girl turned away contemptuously.

A murderous, monstrous rage straddled Freddy. He knew this was the girl his son wished to marry. And despite his anger, a strange heat surged and congealed in his loins. But ‘she’s only a child,’ he thought, shocked by his reaction. However much he endeavoured to subdue his rage and perverse passion, he could think of nothing else.

The rest of the evening passed slowly for Freddy. He merely went through the motions of catering to his guests, and of joking and laughing in keeping with the spirit of the party.

At about three o’clock he slid over to the madam. Mr Toddywalla was sleeping as soundly as a bewhiskered baby on the cushions. The Prince had disappeared with his favourite. Mr Allen was yelling an unintelligible pub song.

The madam led Freddy behind some curtains and through a passage to a small dimly lit room.

He was trembling. He paced up and down, racked by a thousand conflicting thoughts and emotions. When the girl came into the room he stared at her with austere eyes. She was
disconcerted. ‘Well, man, what d’ya want?’ she snapped.

‘What do you think I want?’ said Freddy slowly, in his heavy English accent, not removing his cold eyes from her.

The girl held his eye for a moment. His look was noncommittal. Wordlessly she went to the bed and wriggled out of the kamiz, revealing her slender, small-breasted torso. Her hair fell forward, shading her face as she struggled to pull the tight, black churidar-pyjamas down her ankles. When she removed them Freddy snatched them from her hands and flung them to a corner. Throwing her back on the bed he flung himself upon her. He squeezed the taut, nubile little breasts until she cried out. He fumbled around feverishly, seeking ways to humiliate the girl and assuage his anger – but the girl submitted to everything he did with her usual impassive apathy. She had been through much worse than Freddy could ever dream up.

When they returned to the parlour, Mr Allen beamed his blue questioning eyes upon Freddy. Freddy avoided his eye.

Mr Allen was too polite to query his friend after that. Freddy, abashed by his rudeness and neglect, sat beside him and confided, ‘Quite good – except her breasts have been chewed away by goats.’

Mr Allen was dumbfounded by Freddy’s curious expression. Then getting the drift of his meaning he mumbled, ‘Fried eggs, we call them – same thing I suppose. How old d’you think she is? Fourteen?’