The Day of the Scorpion (26 page)

The scene of the crime, the Victoria roundabout, significantly marked by the presence of a police truck and three armed MPs, caused among the occupants of the cars as they passed by it on their way to the club some speculation about the exact spot from which the stone had been thrown and the likely escape-route of the demonstrator. Neither young Bingham nor his best man had apparently seen a thing. They had been looking at the memorial or intent on what they were saying to one another. The shock of the stone coming through the window, the fact that young Bingham was hurt and that the car took some time to pull up – according to the best man who had to explain things to the guests as they arrived as well as get the doctor, ring the police, and warn the bride and her uncle to hang on at the guest house for an extra
half-hour; all of which he had done with an admirably cool head – were contributing factors to the ruffian having got away unseen.

It was probably the work of some fellow with a grudge, someone who had been dismissed for stealing from his master as likely as not – and who had heard about the wedding from a friend still employed in the cantonment and had hung about hoping for a chance to get his own back, not caring who it was he actually threw a stone at. If the culprit wasn’t a fellow of that sort he was some clerk or student whose head was crammed with a lot of hot air about the iniquities of the
raj:
the kind who needed a kick up the backside or shipping out to Tokyo as a present to Hirohito or Subhas Chandras Bose. If he was that kind of fellow he was probably a member of a group at work outside the cantonment, in Mirat City, where the cantonment police had no jurisdiction.

Some of the princely states were jam-packed with political agitators who fled from the British provinces at the time of the mass Congress arrests, over a year ago, and even a small place like Mirat was known to have had its share. There was probably still a nucleus that had escaped the Mirat city police net. In any case the city police were probably corrupt. The princes were loyal to the crown because the crown protected their rights and privileges. A prince’s subjects were often only loyal to him because they were terrified of the consequences of not being. At heart a lot of them shared the same aspirations as the Indian nationalists of British India, or had been persuaded by propaganda to believe they did. Perhaps the incident of the stone was a warning shot, a sign that dear old Mirat was suddenly going to explode. On the whole that might not be a bad thing. The Nawab would come running to the cantonment authorities for help and that would give the police the opportunity to root out the hidden subversive elements.

The danger of such elements lay in the contact they might have with Indian troops. That had always been the nightmare. It was the finest army in the world. Subvert it and it could turn and destroy its creators like a man swatting flies. With the war the dangers of subversion had increased. The
army’s ranks had been swelled with recruits whose loyalty to the salt they ate could not be counted on as part of the martial tradition of tribe or caste. And yet its loyalty seemed as sure as ever, which seemed in turn to prove that pride of service could inspire men of any race and any colour, given the opportunity. Such thoughts, spoken or left unspoken, led to the third and final change of mood. This was a mood in which it was felt that the stone had not found its mark but had rebounded from its impact with the impenetrable and unbreakable defences that always surrounded any inviolable truth. The stone changed nothing. Someone ought to pay for it but in the meantime it had to be treated as a joke; a joke in bad taste, certainly, but what else could be expected?

The two MPs who had escorted the bridal car greeted the guests on their arrival in the forecourt of the old Gymkhana Club by stopping each car and indicating where it should be parked. The MPs were brisk, cheerful and efficient, and the guests accepted their polite but firm directives with the friendly nods of people who, used to giving orders, enjoyed obeying them in circumstances they knew called for attention to the small details of security and discipline. From their cars they entered the club by steps unfamiliarly but pleasantly got up in red carpet. They went in twos and threes into the dim fan-cooled entrance hall of busts, mounted trophies and padding barefoot servants; through the ante-room, a lounge, and out through one of the open french windows on the terrace with its view on to an emerald-green lawn where a sprinkler was still at work.

Just as Captain Merrick returned to Sarah with a replenished glass of fruit-cup, the club secretary pressed through the adjacent group of people and said, ‘Excuse me, Miss Layton. Have you seen your mother and uncle?’

‘Mother was here a few minutes ago. I don’t know where Uncle Arthur has got to.’

‘I think they’d better be found.’ He showed Sarah a card which she recognized as one of the wedding invitations. ‘A
servant just brought me this. One of the MPs sent it through. I’m afraid he’s stopped the Nawab from coming in.’

‘Stopped him? But why?’

‘I suppose because he wasn’t expecting an Indian to show up. I’ll have to go out and start putting it right, but if your mother and uncle could be found and asked to come through I’d be grateful.’

‘What’s up?’ a guest asked.

‘The MPs have got the Nawab and his party stopped at the front door.’

‘Good grief!’ the guest said, laughed, and turned to pass the news on.

‘I think I can probably find Major Grace,’ Merrick said,’ – if you’d scout round for your mother.’

‘I’ll try and keep him happy in the ante-room,’ the secretary called.

Sarah made her way through the guests to the far end of the terrace. She found her mother listening to Mrs Hobhouse.

‘Mother, the Nawab’s arrived,’ she said, interrupting a flow of reminiscences about the 1935 earthquake in Quetta.

‘Oh, my dear,’ Mrs Hobhouse said, ‘Down tools. Fly. We
are
honoured. He only got back from Gopalakand last night. I’d better come with you. He’s an old dear, but terribly hard going. Thank God for the red carpet. He’ll probably think it’s for him.’

‘I’m afraid he won’t,’ Sarah said – taking the glass her mother seemed not to know she had in her hand and putting it on a near-by table. ‘He’s been refused entry.’

‘Refused entry?’ Mrs Layton repeated. ‘I don’t understand.’

Mrs Hobhouse grasped Sarah’s elbow. ‘My dear, whatever do you mean?’

‘The MPs stopped him coming in. Captain Merrick’s gone to find Uncle Arthur and the secretary wants us in the anteroom.’

She began to guide her mother back along the terrace. Mrs Hobhouse followed. ‘But they can’t have,’ she said. ‘I mean surely they were warned.’ Suddenly she took Mrs Layton’s other arm. ‘Hold on. This is our job. Stay here with Sarah, and my husband and I will bring the old boy out. It’s not right that either you or your brother-in-law should be placed in a
position of having to apologize. If it really has happened it’s club business or station business. Nothing to do with the wedding. Just stand here close to the door. Or better still go down on the lawn. I see Teddie and Susan are there. We’ll bring the Nawab straight through and down. He’ll feel it’s a more conspicuous place anyway, better than hobnobbing in this crush.’

‘I think Mrs Hobhouse is right, Mother. Come on.’

She led her mother down the stone steps into the glare. It was not unbearably hot. A light breeze had sprung up, was tangling Susan’s veil. She stood in the middle of a group of Teddie’s fellow officers, laughing. Sarah, catching sight of Captain Merrick leading Uncle Arthur along the terrace, called out and beckoned them down.

‘I must say,’ Uncle Arthur said when reaching them, ‘this is turning out to be the most jinx-ridden affair I’ve ever been mixed up with, and that’s saying something. Where’s Fenny?’

‘Shall I find her?’ Captain Merrick asked.

‘Well, that’s easier said than done in this crush. I have a feeling there are more people drinking our drink and getting up their appetites for our food than were ever invited. Why couldn’t they have set up a marquee or something? Separate the sheep from the goats. I’d swear half that gang on the terrace are just ordinary members of the club muscling in on the festivities. I’ve been having a word with the contractor’s chap and warned him we’re not going to pay a penny over the quotation. He’s making a packet as it is. I say, cheer up, Mildred.’

‘What?’

‘You look half asleep.’

Mrs Layton stared at him, then said to Sarah, ‘I’d better tell Susan and Teddie what’s happened.’

‘Aren’t we going to the ante-room?’ Captain Merrick asked Sarah, as her mother left her side and went over to the group of men clustered round the bride.

‘Mrs Hobhouse thought it better if we stayed here and she and Colonel Hobhouse brought the Nawab down.’

‘Good idea,’ Major Grace said. ‘Then we can pretend we know nothing about this snarl-up or whatever it is. I say, is
this him now? Must be. How extraordinary. He looks like some downtrodden munshi.’

The chattering and laughter on the terrace did not lessen, but Sarah thought that abruptly it changed key. The Station Commander was walking slowly across the width of the terrace with a short little Indian, the top of whose truncated cone of a hat came level with Colonel Hobhouse’s left epaulette – which in any case was lower than the right because the Colonel was bending slightly. The impression given by this sideways and downward inclination was one of deafness more than deference. Behind Colonel Hobhouse and the Nawab Mrs Hobhouse was similarly dwarfed by a tall thin man with an eye-patch.

‘That must be Count Bronowsky,’ Captain Merrick told Sarah, keeping his voice low. ‘He’s supposed to have been blown up by a bomb in St Petersburg but some unkind people say it’s the result of peeping through keyholes. I’m told he’s about seventy. He doesn’t look it, does he?’

Behind Bronowsky and Mrs Hobhouse, the secretary walked with young Kasim.

At the head of the steps the Nawab paused, half turned with his left hand held in a gesture of command and invitation, and Ahmed detached himself from his position at the rear, came to the Nawab’s side, made a firm elbow upon which the Nawab now placed his hand. Slowly they descended the steps. Sarah saw the thin face of the old man with the eye-patch twitch, as if something had both pleased and amused him.

When they reached lawn level the Nawab removed his hand and Ahmed stood back to enable Mrs Hobhouse and the Count to precede him.

‘Mrs Layton,’ Colonel Hobhouse said, ‘his Highness, Nawab Sir Ahmed Ali Guffur Kasim Bahadur.’

Mrs Layton nodded her head and murmured, ‘How do you do. I’m so glad you were able to come.’

The Nawab returned the nod and waited.

‘Nawab Sahib,’ Colonel Hobhouse said, ‘Mrs Layton wishes me to say on her behalf and on behalf of her family how deeply she has appreciated your many kindnesses in regard to the arrangements at the guest house.’

‘Indeed, yes,’ Mrs Layton murmured again.

The Nawab raised one hand, palm outwards. The lids fell over his eyes. The head jerked fractionally to one side.

The Station Commander hesitated, as if he had not been fed with a line and felt he could not now say what he had rehearsed and make sense. Sarah guessed his predicament. He had expected the Nawab or himself to make some reference to the incident of the stone, to express regret or make light of it. But the stone and the insult just given at the door cancelled each other out. Thanks had been offered for hospitality, been autocratically dismissed as quite unnecessary and without the formal expression of regret and reassurance that might have followed in regard to the stone there had emerged a silence which although short-lived was profound. Sarah, narrowing her eyes against the sunlight, was moved to a special intensity of feeling for the texture of the clothes she wore. The breeze was pressing the ankle-length skirt of her bridesmaid’s gown against her legs. She had a fleeting image of them all as dolls dressed and positioned for a play that moved mechanically but uncertainly again and again to a point of climax, but then shifted its ground, avoiding a direct confrontation. Each shift was marked by just such a pause and the wonder perhaps was that the play continued. But the wind blew, nudging her through the creamy thinness of peach-coloured slipper satin and she and they were reanimated, prodded into speech and new positions. The Count Bronowsky, Chief Minister in Mirat. My daughter, Sarah. My brother-in-law, Major Grace. Captain Merrick. And this is my younger daughter, Susan, now Mrs Bingham.

Almost imperceptibly they had moved closer to the group that had surrounded Susan and which had now opened out leaving her exposed, vulnerable, tiny and tender in the ethereal whiteness of stiffened, wafting net and white brocade, several paces away from the spot where the Nawab’s slow progress had finally come to a halt. For an instant Sarah thought that her mother would allow the presentation to end there – as if her duty were to show the Nawab no more than an image of the bride, an effigy set up to demonstrate the meaning and purpose of an alien rite. Her mother made a
gesture, vague, evasive, but it – or some instinct of Susan’s own – prompted the bride into motion, the totally unexpected motion – charming, unprecedented – of a curtsy. She sank into the billowy whiteness, bringing the effigy to life, and causing a hush among the watchers on the terrace. An Englishwoman did not curtsy to an Indian prince. But the hush was only one of astonishment and disapproval for the time it took for the watchers to feel what those closer to her felt almost instantaneously: a little shock-wave of enchantment: and when the Nawab was seen to take a hesitant step forward and then a firm one, and offer his hand, keeping it there until, rising, she put her own into it, the prettiness of the picture she made was enhanced by recognition of the fact that her impulsive action – so delightfully performed – had achieved what words and formal gestures could not – the re-establishment without loss of face of the essential
status quo
.

‘Thank you for coming to my wedding,’ Susan said, and Sarah – losing the drift of the Nawab’s response, his involved but courteous good wishes for the health and happiness of bride and groom – considering still what Susan had just said, sensing something odd about it, turned her head and let her gaze come to rest on Count Bronowsky. By his side Mrs Hobhouse stood, silently watching – with a contented smile – the exchange of pleasantries between the Nawab and Susan and Teddie who by now had also been introduced. Bronowsky had a panama hat in the hand unencumbered by the ebony, gold-topped cane. She imagined what he would look like with it on and wondered whether he had worn it in the motor-car. Perhaps, under the hat, the pale pink skin would look like that of a high-caste Hindu. If he wore a cap such as the Nawab had on he might look very like a wealthy Muslim from the north – so subtle sometimes was the distinction between that kind of Indian and thin gaunt Europeans who had lived for years out East. Additionally shaded by the brim of a hat, travelling in a car with two Indians, the MPs could have assumed there was no white man in the small party arriving and expecting admittance.