The Day of the Scorpion (31 page)

‘Poor Mr Kumar. It can’t have been a happy experience.’

‘Good Lord, you’d think a boy who’d had those advantages would have been man enough to face up to a set-back like that. I can’t share your sympathy for him. But then I met him face to face. Kumar wasn’t just a theory to me. I knew his type too well, and he was the type multiplied. To me it was quite clear what he was up to. He was out for revenge. Out to get his own back on us because in India he couldn’t pretend to be English any longer. One of the executives in the British-Indian Electric factory told me he could have had a decent job there as sort of apprentice or trainee. But Mr Kumar refused to call the managing director sir, and was insolent to the man he’d have been working under. His aunt’s brother-in-law was a merchant and contractor and for a time Kumar did some clerical work in the warehouse. That didn’t suit him, but that’s where he would have been first in contact with this chap I was telling you about who escaped from prison. Moti Lal. Moti Lal was a clerk in the same business.’ Merrick suddenly slapped the balustrade. ‘It’s so damned obvious. Moti Lal. Pandit Baba. Going around with those boys who were drinking in the hut. Working as a journalist. And we found a letter in his room when we searched it. A letter from an English boy warning Kumar not to write bolshie things, because the boy’s father had opened some of Kumar’s letters and objected to his son getting such letters while he was still
recovering from wounds got at Dunkirk. And he had a photograph in his room too. A photo of Miss Manners. Having a white woman running after him was the final perfect touch, from his point of view.’

Suddenly Merrick looked round at Bronowsky. He said, ‘I didn’t have to stand in the Bibighar and tell myself, yes, this is Kumar’s work. I knew it was Kumar’s work the moment I got to the MacGregor House and Lady Chatterjee told me Miss Manners had come back, in that state. I’d been at the house before. It wasn’t the kind of night you allowed a white girl to be missing, and that’s what it looked as if she was, missing. Sometimes I used to give her a lift home from the hospital. I was at the hospital that evening because of Miss Crane and when I left I looked for Miss Manners. They told me she’d gone to the club. Later I was at the club myself and inquired after her. I was told she’d not been in the club. I thought, so that’s it, she’s gone back to meeting Kumar. There was nothing I felt I could do about it, and with everything that was gong on I had my hands full. But later I went round to the MacGregor House, which was a pretty isolated place. I thought I’d make sure they were all right. I found Lady Chatterjee alone, Miss Manners hadn’t been back, and she was worried. At least, she was worried when I told her Miss Manners hadn’t been at the club. I had to go back to my headquarters. It must have been getting on for nine o’clock. On my way back to headquarters I remembered Miss Manners sometimes went over the river to that place called The Sanctuary. She helped Sister Ludmila with the clinic. So I wentd to The Sanctuary and found she had been there, but had left before dusk. It’s not far from The Sanctuary to the house Kumar lived in. I thought the situation was serious enough to go and see if she’d arrived at Kumar’s. She hadn’t. And Kumar’s aunt said Kumar wasn’t at home either. Well that made it obvious to me. They were off somewhere together. I thought, well, God, she’s welcome to him if that’s what she wants, and drove back to the kotwali at the Mandir Gate. If I’d gone the other way, over the Bibighar bridge, I’d have come across her, running home along those dark streets. I’d probably have come across Kumar as well, and those others. But I went to the kotwali. It
was chance that made me decide to detour to the MacGregor House when I finally set off back for my headquarters. I got there ten or fifteen minutes after she’d returned, exhausted, in that awful condition. Lady Chatterjee had sent for the doctor, but not the police because Miss Manners hadn’t explained her condition. But Lady Chatterjee suspected and I made her go up and get confirmation. The message I got back wasn’t clear, but it was enough. Attack, criminal assault, five or six men, in the Bibighar Gardens. I had to drive back to get a police patrol, and order a comb. A good thirty minutes or more must have passed between her leaving the Bibighar and my arriving there. We were probably ten minutes beating through the gardens, and another five at the level-crossing hut, interrogating the keeper and searching the area. And all the time I knew I was wasting time. I knew where I ought to be looking. When I finally set off for Kumar’s house I very nearly ignored that hut, in spite of the light showing that someone was there. I think what made me stop was partly a sort of automatic professional response, a realization that nothing could be overlooked, and partly a twinge of conscience, a recognition of the unfairness of leaping to a conclusion. But the sight of those boys, the revelation of what they were, who they were – well I had them out of there and into a truck and on the way back to my headquarters before they knew what had hit them. And I went on in my own truck, with three or four constables, to get Kumar. The aunt tried to stop us going upstairs. She was scared stiff. I knew I was right, then.’ Merrick laughed. ‘And do you know what he said, when we went into his room? Well, there he was, stripped to the waist, bending over a bowl, holding a flannel to his face. He looked up and said – “Who gave you permission to burst into my room, Merrick?”’

Bronowsky laughed, and presently Merrick replied with a sour grin, looked at his watch and moved from the balustrade.

‘I shall have to go in I’m afraid.’

‘We both must,’ Bronowsky said. ‘I’m sorry to have kept you so long, but sorrier that all we had to discuss needed to be compressed into what amounts to no more than a brief encounter. Perhaps in the not wholly unforeseeable future
we may have the opportunity to resume. Anyway, if you are ever in Mirat again, or disposed to contemplate coming back, I hope you will let me know.’

They began to walk down the terrace. The sound of talk and laughter from the inner room had become louder in the last ten minutes or so. ‘You could do with a drink, I expect,’ Merrick said. ‘I know I could.’

‘I could but I must not. You’ll find Nawab Sahib holding a glass of orange or lemon for politeness’s sake, so I follow suit to keep him company. He takes Ramadan very seriously and as a matter of fact I think he enjoys the discipline of holding a glass and not so much as moistening his lips. Tonight he begins a special period of fast and prayer and cuts his intake almost to nothing, even after sundown. The îd is in ten days’ time. I’m sorry you won’t be here for it and that the charming Layton ladies will be gone too. Nawab Sahib would have liked to have you as guests to a meal in the palace.’

‘He’s been more than generous as it is—’

They turned in at the french windows. Several guests stood in the room they entered, presumably having come in there to avoid the crush in the room beyond, through whose open door the wedding party could now be seen.

Bronowsky paused and made Merrick do so too by holding his arm in a way which a stranger, had he been watching, might have interpreted as proof of intimacy and of knowledge and interests shared.

‘Tell me,’ the count said in a low voice so that Merrick automatically bent his head closer. ‘Who is the outstandingly handsome young officer with the dark hair, talking to the girl in blue?’

Merrick glanced quickly round the room.

Oh that
, he seemed about to say,
that is—

But as if suddenly unsure of something – the name of a man, the colour of a dress, his questioner’s intention, he looked back at Bronowsky and for a moment the question itself seemed to hang in the balance; and Bronowsky, observing the way the colour came and went on the ex-District Superintendent’s cheeks, released his hold on his companion’s arm and murmured:

‘Well, it doesn’t matter. Come, let’s go in,’ and led the way.

‘He was in love with her,’ Aunt Fenny said, beginning the job of unbuttoning Susan out of her wedding-gown while Mrs Layton folded the veil and Sarah laid out the going-away clothes on the bed in the little room in the annexe. ‘A woman I met who’d been in Mayapore told me. She said it was well known at the time. The DSP definitely set his cap at Miss Manners, and everyone was surprised because they’d thought of him as a confirmed bachelor and all the unmarried girls who’d been trying to hook him wondered what he saw in her. I expect her background had a bit to do with it, but when a man like that decides to take the plunge he takes it terribly seriously. It must have been awful for him when she became infatuated with one of those dreadful Indian boys. I remember this woman saying he looked positively ill after Miss Manners had been assaulted and they were trying to make the charges stick. He must have been nearly out of his mind at the thought of those men getting away with it. No wonder he wangled his way out of the police and into the army and never mentions anything about having been in Mayapore. Count Bronowsky must have an extraordinary memory for names. Captain Merrick was obviously upset having it all come out like that. Did you see his face when he got back from fetching the hat-box?’

‘Stop it, Aunt Fenny!’ Susan shouted. ‘Stop it! I’m trying, trying,
trying
to pretend that it’s a nice day. I’m trying,
trying
to remember that I’m being married to Teddie—’ She jerked at the dress – not yet completely unbuttoned down the back – and pulled it away from her body, wrenched he arms out of the sleeves and pushed the unwieldy billowing damask down over her hips, breaking the thread of one of the buttons. Clothed now in only her brassiere, pants and suspender belt, she twisted round and kicked the discarded dress away from her feet. ‘My dear child,’ Aunt Fenny began – but Susan, flushed of face and white of body, snatched a sponge bag from the bed, said ‘We’ve got fifteen minutes, Mummy,’ and grabbing the neat little pile of fresh underclothes made for the bathroom.

‘What have I done?’ Aunt Fenny asked her sister.

‘Nothing, Fenny. It’s what you were saying, not what you were doing. The subject was hardly a suitable one in the circumstances, was it?’

‘Oh dear. Yes, I do see. I am sorry. Poor pet. What are you looking for, Sarah?’

‘One of the buttons came off.’

‘I’ll find it. Millie, you pack the dress away, and let Sarah get on with her own changing.’ Fenny went down on her knees. ‘I told him about our being moored close to Lady Manners’s boat in Srinagar, but he never knew her. It was a bit of a relief because it slipped out, I mean about the houseboat business, and if he’d been a friend of old Lady M’s it would have been rather embarrassing having to admit we’d not actually met her, he mightn’t have understood how difficult it was for everybody. I was dying to hear something straight from the horse’s mouth, but he was positively evasive when I suggested he come over to the guest house tomorrow or Monday and spend an evening with us. He said he might have to go to Calcutta. I mean go for good before Teddie and the rest of them leave next week. What a shame. He’s been quite attentive to you, hasn’t he, Sarah, pet?’

‘Aunt Fenny, I just don’t understand you.’

‘Ah here it is. Millie, put it in your handbag for safety. Help me up, Sarah. What don’t you understand?’

‘You’re still talking about that Manners business—’

‘But Susan can’t hear—’

‘That’s not what I mean. I mean you’re quite prepared to gloat over the details, you’re willing to sit Captain Merrick down, stick a glass in his hand and prise every last juicy bit of the story out of him, without any thought for his feelings at all. But when we had an opportunity to show friendly to the poor girl’s aunt it was you who found the perfect excuse for keeping our distance. You said a visit would embarrass her.’

‘Well, so it would,’ Fenny said, turning to help Mrs Layton fold the dress into the suitcase. ‘And if it hadn’t embarrassed her it would certainly have embarrassed me. Everyone agrees that that woman’s behaviour has been quite extraordinary.’

Sarah began to undress, contorting herself to get at the row of satin-covered buttons. She felt a tide of anger and frustration spread through her body.

‘You could actually hear that revolting crying,’ Fenny added. ‘It was like being next door to some awful Indian slum. It made one feel quite sick, the thought of an English woman living in it.’

‘I was in it too,’ Sarah said, and as she did so seemed to discover, through her finger-tips, the secret of undoing the dress, and to touch, as well, the spring of some deeper secret that had to do with the unlocking of her own precious individuality. She let the slipper-satin gown fall to her feet where it lay like an unwanted skin. ‘I spent a whole hour in the slum, talking to the extraordinary woman and looking at the revolting baby. Of course it wasn’t a slum and the baby wasn’t revolting. But I’d agree about Lady Manners. She wasn’t ordinary.’

‘You went to see her?’

‘Yes.’

‘What for?’

‘To apologize for us. Perhaps the rest was just curiosity, like yours, Aunt Fenny.’

She picked up the sloughed dress. It was a garment she would never wear again. Suddenly, the waste no longer offended her; she was glad – glad Susan had insisted on peach slipper-satin, had resisted her own puritan preference for a material that, with adaptations, could have served secondary long-term purposes.

‘Did you know about this, Milly?’ Aunt Fenny asked.

‘Yes, I knew.’

‘And approved?’

‘I find it difficult to approve or disapprove of what I don’t understand. Let’s just say I knew you and Arthur would understand it even less. I told her not to mention it. But it doesn’t matter now. May we forget it, please? May we just concentrate on getting Susan safely to the train?’

‘You’re absolutely right. I don’t understand. Apologized for
us
? My dear child, sometimes you worry me. You worry us all. You worry us very much.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Sarah said, packing the bridesmaid’s dress and satin shoes into tissue. ‘I worry me too. Shall I put Susan’s veil in my case? There’s more room.’

Automatically Aunt Fenny handed the folded veil and
tissue over. Fragile, even insubstantial, its packed bulk yet called for two hands to support it. Carefully, Sarah placed it in the suitcase on top of the other things: the veil, the most important of all the trappings of Susan’s determined illusion, now done with, put away. She remembered the day spent in Aunt Lydia’s glory-hole, the armfuls of stuff taken down into the Bayswater garden and burnt in the incinerator from whose heat she had stood back, shielding her face with a grubby hand and thinking of the perpetual light that seemed to shine upon the members of her family.