The Day of the Scorpion (25 page)

Bronowsky admitted to himself that part of the reason for his letting the education and shaping of Mohsin and Abdur become the concern of others was to be found in the fact that neither of them had ever been well-favoured in appearance or manner. He thought, though, that it had been just as well. Their plainness and physical awkwardness had enabled him to concentrate the whole of his emotional impulse on the task of making a Nawab. A couple of handsome, active youths on hand could have caused his mind and will to wander in the bitter-sweet region mapped by his inclinations, explored by his imagination, but never – for many years – entered into. The discipline and self-denial involved in voluntary withdrawal from direct physical satisfaction of his needs had not been undergone only in order that he
should never be guilty of corrupting another. He had come to recognize that the type of youth who attracted him was one whose attributes were wholly masculine and who therefore was attracted exclusively to women. The first sign that this was not necessarily so destroyed, for Bronowsky, the romantic fervour and loving admiration a young man could inspire in him, and left behind it only what he found grotesque. The man he could embrace was not the man for him. It had been as simple as that. The cessation of sexual activity had not been onerous. His affairs with men had been few: three in the twenty-one years between his nineteenth and fortieth birthdays. Physically there had been no women in his life.

Now, approaching seventy, he did not regret chances missed or opportunities wasted. He believed that if he had been born a woman he would have loved one man long, devotedly and faithfully. But having been born a man he did not now crave to have been blessed with normal appetites. He thought that anyway he had experienced to an extent few could claim the joy as well as the pain of loving unselfishly, from afar. He did not delude himself into supposing that his affection for Ahmed was the sentimental longing of an old bachelor for a son. He faced the truth. Ahmed was the latest manifestation of the unattainable, unattempted golden youth who came, sweetened the hour with his presence, and went unmolested into the arms of a deserving Diana, so that the whole world sang and the day was properly divided from the night. It amused him that this golden youth was brown, and touched him that in his old age the object of his undeclared and regulated passion should be someone his professional interest allowed a close connection with. It was as though the old Gods of the forest had rewarded him for his abstentions. He treated the reward with almost excessive care, conscious of the need to balance his emotional with his worldly judgement. Ahmed had become a feature of the policy he was formulating. It was a bonus that he filled so well Bronowsky’s personal need: a bonus and a snare. It would never do to confuse the policy with the need or the need with the policy. And Bronowsky knew that if the interests of the need and the policy came into conflict for any reason, it was Ahmed who would be sacrificed because the
policy, through all its shifts and changes to adapt to circumstances, was pre-determined by one thing that never altered: Bronowsky’s devotion to his Prince.

‘It is not auspicious,’ the Nawab said. And sat down. ‘A stone?’

‘A stone, Sahib.’

‘At one of the motor-cars?’

Bronowsky inclined his head. He motioned Ahmed to leave them. When Ahmed had gone the Nawab indicated a chair and said in the low voice Bronowsky automatically registered as a sign of special self-control, ‘Please sit.’ Bronowsky did so. He rested both hands on the gold knob of his cane. His white panama was on his lap. The Nawab sat with folded hands and crossed ankles, leaning his weight on his left elbow. The arms of the chair were carved with diminutive lion heads at the protruding tips. The room was dark from the closed shutters. A slanting column of sunlight, admitted by the gap between one set of shutters left partly open, fell just short of the Nawab’s chair. The room was overfurnished. There was a preponderance of potted palms. Strangers coming to the palace were sometimes disturbed by a resemblance they could not quite give a name to. Only the elderly and well-travelled hit easily upon the explanation. The public rooms were furnished in the manner of a plush and gilt hotel of pre-Great War vintage on the Côte d’Azur. Only the dimensions of the rooms, the arched windows, the fretted stone screens, some of the mosaics and the formal courtyard around which the main part of the palace was built remained Moghul in spirit and appearance.

‘I’m afraid I do not understand this incident of the stone, Dmitri.’

‘No,’ Bronowsky agreed. ‘It is a puzzle.’

‘It is ten years since a stone was thrown.’

Bronowsky nodded.

The Nawab looked towards the window.

‘It was thrown at the Begum.’

Bronowsky nodded. He remembered the occasion well. It
had enlivened his convalescence from a bout of gastroenteritis that laid him low for a week, an illness which his servants attributed to his having been given coffee and cakes during an interview in the Begum’s apartment.

‘From what young Kasim tells me,’ the Count said, ‘I believe it is one of the late Begum’s motor-cars the stone was thrown at this morning.’

‘Is that significant?’

‘I should not think so – unless the culprit is a madman.’

‘Do we understand correctly that he wasn’t apprehended, and that there is no information about him at all?’

‘That seems to be correct, Nawab Sahib.’

‘Then it is unlikely that he will be caught.’

‘Very unlikely.’

‘One man alone is not usually responsible for such an incident. It is the kind of activity several people decide. Several decide. One acts. But this is relatively unimportant. What is important is to know why the stone was thrown.’

‘May I suggest we put it another way, Sahib, and ask ourselves at whom, or even at what, the stone was thrown? If we can answer that the answer to the question why it was thrown probably follows.’

‘Very well. At whom or at what was the stone thrown?’

‘We know it was thrown at the car, but whether at the car or the occupants is the beginning of the puzzle. Let us assume it was thrown at the car. The car bears your Highness’s crest. The symbolism would then be inescapable. Ergo – the stone was thrown at your Highness. The thrower may even have thought your Highness was riding in the car. But as you say, a stone has not been thrown for ten years and when it was thrown it was thrown at the Begum. Your Highness has never been subjected to any kind of personal or even symbolic attack. And it is Ramadan. A Muslim subject would not throw a stone during Ramadan. Your Highness’s Hindu subjects are content. Those areas of the State of Mirat which suffered a poor crop are being assisted effectively by the Famine Relief Commission. Your Highness and I spent a week together in Gopalakand meeting the new Resident. I returned ahead, nothing untoward was reported to me when I returned. Your Highness was greeted on your own return last
night at the station with the usual loyal address and popular demonstration. Ergo – let us assume from all this evidence that the stone was not thrown at the car but at the occupants.’

‘Who are—?’

‘Captain Bingham and Captain Merrick, both – so Ahmed tells me – staff officers in the divisional headquarters recently formed, temporarily stationed in Mirat, and due to leave in the middle of next week for special training prior to active duty in the field. In other words, officers without any military or administrative employment in the cantonment as such, detached from local affairs, virtually strangers to the population.’

‘But British officers all the same, Count Sahib.’

‘Quite so.’

‘An anti-British demonstration—’ The Nawab frowned. ‘In which case, also an anti-palace demonstration. The wedding party are our guests.’

‘We can’t assume that the man who threw the stone at British officers riding in a limousine knew that they were on their way to a wedding, Sahib. Nor that the ladies in the wedding party have been staying at the guest house.’

‘This nevertheless is the situation. The stone was thrown at our guests.’

‘Beg pardon, Sahib. Captain Bingham is not a guest. He is the groom.’

‘That is worse. It is a great mischief. They have given me a beautiful gift. We reply with a stone.’

‘It happened in the cantonment, Sahib.’

‘They are our guests wherever it happens. What am I to say to them when I meet them? That they have Mirat’s hospitality but not Mirat’s protection? I shall want a full report.’

‘It will be as full as possible. Meanwhile your Highness can only express your regret. Your Highness might add that you are astonished and pained that such a thing should happen in Mirat, either in the cantonment or out of the cantonment.’ Bronowsky paused. ‘Even last August there were no anti-British demonstrations in Mirat. The prohibition of political demonstrations and meetings the previous July was extremely effective. Known agitators were made
persona
non grata
. The police have been active in smelling out refugee-agitators from British India, and sending them back where they came from. The incident of the stone this morning is therefore a mystery.’ Bronowsky glanced at his watch. ‘If you are ready, Sahib, I think we should go. In the circumstances it would be a proper gesture to be at the reception early rather than late.’

A stone: such a little thing. But look at us – Sarah thought – it has transformed us. We have acquired dignity. At no other time do we move with such grace as we do now when we feel threatened by violence but untouched by its vulgarity. A stone thrown by an unknown Indian shatters the window of a car, a piece of flying glass cuts an Englishman on the cheek and at once we sense the sharing of a secret that sustains and extends us, and Teddie instead of looking slightly absurd getting married with lint and sticking plaster on his face looks pale and composed. The end of Teddie is not reached so easily after all. I was wrong when I thought he had nothing more to offer that he hadn’t already given. He will always be ready to offer and willing to give himself in the cause of our solidarity.

And it was a special kind of solidarity, Sarah realized. It transcended mere clannishness because its whole was greater than all its parts together. It uplifted, it magnified. It added a rare gift to a life which sometimes seemed niggardly in its rewards, and left one inspired to attack the problems of that life with the grave simplicity proper to their fair and just solution. The hot-tempered words and extravagant actions that might have greeted the incident of the stone were sublimated in this surrender to collective moral force.

From her position behind Susan at the altar steps she observed the way Teddie stood, at attention, with a military rather than a religious deference to God. To her left, and a pace or two in front, stood Uncle Arthur who had just made the gesture of confirmation that it was he who gave Susan to Teddie. He was also at attention. He seemed to be staring up at the stained-glass window above the altar as if it might be
through there that some light would fall to disperse the perpetual shadow of professional neglect it was understood by the family he suffered from and gamely plodded on in spite of. Glancing from Teddie to Uncle Arthur and back again Sarah thought: Why, what a curious thing a human being is; and was not surprised to hear Aunt Fenny sniff and to see that Susan was trembling as she put out her hand for Teddie to fit the ring on her finger. It is all over in such a short time, Sarah told herself, but in that short time everything about our lives changes for ever. We become something else, without necessarily having understood what we were before.

Teddie kissed his bride. Mercifully the cut had not been deep enough to need a stitch and the doctor had pronounced it free of splinters. Presumably it was not over-painful, but he cocked his head at an awkward angle, perhaps so as not to tickle Susan with any stray end of lint or sticking plaster. The kiss, Sarah noticed, was a firm one in spite of the angle at which contact was made. He did not wince; but breaking free smiled and touched the wound gingerly as if in a dumb show of apology for the inconvenience of it. It was the innocent gesture of a boy and the contrived one of a man with a sense of theatre who guessed that people were bound to wonder to what extent delayed shock or plain discomfort might impair the ardour of his performance, later, of private and more intimate duties.

Sarah stooped and gathered the folds of the bride’s veil, followed the family into the vestry. The organist was playing a tune she thought was probably ‘Perfect Love’. ‘Hello, Mrs Bingham,’ she said, and kissed Susan on one flushed happy cheek. ‘I wanted to say it first.’

‘I couldn’t stop shivering,’ Susan said. ‘Did it show? I felt everybody could see.’ She kissed her mother, and Aunt Fenny, and Uncle Arthur. ‘It sounds funny,’ she said at one point. ‘Susan Bingham.’

‘Oh, you’ll get used to it,’ Teddie said. ‘Anyway you’d better.’

They signed the register.

Within half an hour of the incident of the stone two NCOs of the British Military Police had arrived on duty outside the church. Mounted on motor-cycles they led the bride and groom from the ceremony to the reception at the Gymkhana Club where they were to remain until the time came for them to escort the bridal car to the station. Their instructions were to keep an eye open for any further attempted act or demonstration of an anti-British nature – for as such for the moment, it was thought, the incident of the stone had to be treated.

The roar of the motor-bikes and the stand-no-nonsense demeanour of the men astride them seemed to release in the people who had attended the ceremony and now watched the departure of Teddie and Susan and presently made their way to their own waiting cars and taxis (and in one case a military truck, logged out as on civil duties), an animus of a subtly different nature from the one which had made them feel calm, remote and dignified. It entered and stirred them like the divine breath of a God who had bent his brow to call forth sterner angels.

The affair of the stone, first reacted to with a sense of shock, then treated as lamentable, regrettable, a challenge of the kind to which the only answer was to rally round and make the young couple feel that after all their day had not been ruined, was now seen as contemptible; mean, despicable, cowardly. Typical.