The Day of the Scorpion (34 page)

‘I expect Aunt Fenny will be out in a while.’

‘I mustn’t stay.’

He sat on for perhaps as long as half a minute, then rose.

‘There’s one,’ he said. ‘A firefly. The end of your vigil.’

But she did not see it. Standing, she thought of Teddie and Susan arrived already at the Nanoora Hills Hotel, observing the scene spread out below the balcony of their bridal room.

‘The end of your vigil,’ Merrick repeated, ‘and the signal for me to depart.’

She smiled, went to the light-switch on the wall near the bell-push and flicked it on. Merrick, bathed in yellow light, lost that faded density. The sleeves of his bush shirt were still
rolled up to the elbows. His arms were covered in fine blond hairs. Beneath the flesh on his cheeks the bone structure was emphasized by downward-pointing shadows. His eyes, his whole physical presence, struck her as those of a man chilled by an implacable desire to be approached, accepted. She felt reluctant to take the hand he slowly, consideringly held out as if uncertain that anyone would welcome contact.

‘Well, goodbye,’ she said, letting their hands meet. His felt warm and moist. The light had already attracted insects. They encircled the shade, distracting her. For politeness’s sake she began to accompany him down the terrace but he said, ‘No, please don’t bother. Besides, you’ll miss the next firefly.’

She watched him go – puzzled that by going he made her feel lonely. He did not look back. She returned her attention to the garden. After a while she heard the sound of the truck engine.

She paused in her walk below the terrace. The night air was India’s only caress. She was among the fireflies now. One passed within a few feet, winking on and off. Since Ronald Merrick left she had bathed and changed, but still was the first out to begin the ritual of the evening at home – home being anywhere, any place there was – say – a veranda, a bit of a view and the padding slap of a barefoot servant answering a summons. Home, such as it was, was the passing of the hours themselves and only in sleep might one wander into the dangerous areas of one’s exile (and perhaps, in one’s thoughts, between one remark and another, one gesture and another). One carried the lares and penates, the family iconography, in one’s head and in that sequestered region of the heart. Why we are like fireflies too, she told herself, travelling with our own built-in illumination; a myriad portable candles lighting windows against some lost wanderer’s return.

She laughed, chasing one of the luminous pulsating bugs and then stopped, having remembered her father. ‘I hope you are not lonely,’ she said aloud. ‘I hope you are well, I hope you
are happy, I hope you will come back soon.’ And turned back towards the terrace and was in time to see Aunt Fenny and Uncle Arthur come out and stand for a moment arrested by some unexpected thought, consideration, recollection. From this distance their exchange was all dumb show, and not much of it either. Two or more English together were very uninteresting to watch. Fenny left Uncle Arthur’s side and went to her sister’s room from which light showed behind the louvres of closed shutters. Fenny must have tapped. A vertical band of light appeared, widened, and Fenny went inside.

Alone, Uncle Arthur now sat in a wicker chair. Alone he relaxed. Alone he became almost communicative with himself. He shouted for the bearer, crossed his legs, jerked one rhythmically up and down, smoothed his balding head, scrubbed his moustache with the first joint of his left index finger, shifted his weight in the chair, drummed on the adjacent table with his right hand. Yawned. Eased his tie. Scratched his crotch. And hearing Abdur Rahman approach, stretched his neck back to speak to him. Perhaps he asked where she was because Abdur seemed to invite his glance to fall upon, to attempt to penetrate the darkness of the garden beyond the geometrical patterns of light falling upon gravel and grass.

Just then the vertical strip of light appeared again and widened and Aunt Fenny came out with Mrs Layton who brought her glass with her, and at once, so it seemed, a different pattern of the play was established and Uncle Arthur was on scene again, erect, sparing of movement. With the two women an element of grace entered. They sat, one on either side of Uncle Arthur who sank to his chair again, crossed his legs but kept the restless one still. Aunt Fenny was talking. The lone sound, the steady vibration of her voice reached Sarah, but not the words.

She began to walk towards them, conscious of coming at them from a great, a lonely distance away. She shivered a bit and the thought occurred that it was foolhardly to walk at night alone. She did not want to be alone. She remembered the sense she had had of being left behind when she saw that only one of the beds in her and Susan’s room had been
prepared for the night, mosquito net unrolled and draped, its counterpart left stiff and bunched above a smooth virgin counterpane.

‘My family,’ she told herself as she entered the geometrical pattern of light and the circle of safety. ‘My family. My family. My family.’

BOOK TWO

Orders of Release

Part One

THE SITUATION

I

May 1944
The car took what she and her husband had called the Household Gate out of the grounds of Government House. Had it been called the Household Gate before her husband’s term of office? She could not remember. She brought her hand up, seeking the reassurance of the pleated front of her blouse and the mother-of-pearl buttons.

The car was headed towards the city, but at the complex of roads that met at the Elphinstone Fountain the driver bore right, north, taking the road through the noisy, heavily trafficked commercial quarter. Behind the grandiose stone buildings of the offices and banks lay the labyrinth of the Koti Bazaar where she had shopped accompanied only by Suleiman, to the despair of Henry’s
aides
. She glanced at the
aide
who accompanied her now and realized that she had already forgotten his name.

‘You have a question, Lady Manners?’

How well trained he was. She nodded. ‘I’m afraid I suddenly can’t remember your name.’

‘Rowan,’ he said, without fuss.

‘Rowan. It is a curious thing, memory. My husband had an astonishing one. Mine was only so-so. I used to try and bluff my way out of the awkward situations it seemed to lead me into, until I realized the situations weren’t awkward at all, but the bluff was. The gate we left by, is it still called the Household Gate?’

‘I’ve not heard it called that. H.E. calls it the side way. I think the official description is Curzon Gate because of the statue opposite.’

‘But Government House was built before Curzon.’

That’s true. How about Little West?’

‘It will do. But so will sideway. The next Governor will call it something else. It’s a way of making ourselves feel at home in an institution. Shall you return to active duty, Captain Rowan?’ Today he was wearing mufti but she recollected from their brief meeting the day before in the Governor’s private office the ribbon of the Military Cross.

‘No, I’m told not. But that’s probably a good thing because I wasn’t made in the mould of a good regimental officer.’

‘Were you wounded?’

‘Nothing so distinguished, I’m afraid. But I managed to contract a number of tropical things, one after the other.’

‘What do you intend? A regular staff appointment?’

‘No. I’ve applied to get back into the political department, which is what I always wanted. I was seconded before the war and served a probationary period, but then of course the army reclaimed me.’

‘And you were in Burma?’

‘Yes.’

They were through the commercial quarter, travelling along a tree-lined section of the Kandipat road with the railings of the Sir Ahmed Kasim Memorial Gardens on their right and on their left the houses of rich Indians, in spacious compounds. Most of the iron gates were padlocked, the occupants having retreated into the hills. An exception was number 8. She found herself uncertain which of the houses along this stretch of the Kandipat belonged to M.A.K. And another name was troubling her – the name of the girl with the look of envy who had sent a parting gift of flowers – a Pankot name.

She turned and said, ‘Do you have the photograph, Captain Rowan?’

‘H.E. gave me an envelope which he said you might ask for.’

‘I’ll have it now, if I may.’

He zipped open the leather document case on his knee, reached in and brought out a square buff envelope.

‘Would you unseal it for me?’

She watched while he sought for an ungummed section of the flap. Having widened it he made a neat break with his
finger. He handed the envelope to her. She had taken her reading-spectacles case from her handbag in readiness and now put the glasses on. From the envelope she withdrew a rectangular matt-surface print. There were two pictures on it, side by side; profile and full-face.

For a time she avoided the flat stare of the full-face, considered instead the side-view of it, the whorls of the neat, masculine ear, the black, apparently oily, neatly-cut hair. In the processing the skin had retained the two-level density of a dark face under artificial lighting, the impression that negative and positive were aligned, one on top of the other. So that is what he looked like, she thought, and stared at the full-face, at the oddly expressionless eyes whose whites conveyed an idea that they might be bloodshot. She closed her own eyes to consider, uninfluenced, a different but familiar image and, having conjured it exactly, reopened her eyes and felt a stab of recognition which in the next moment she did not trust. She replaced the photograph in the envelope, took off her spectacles. They had entered a semi-rural area of hovels. There was a smell of human and animal excrement. A naked ash-smeared Sadhu leaned against a parapet and watched them go past, his arms folded, his head tilted. She saw his mouth open and his neck muscles swell, but could not distinguish his shout above the shouting of little boys who ran alongside the car calling for baksheesh; keeping up with it because it was slowed by a farmer’s cart ahead and a string of cyclists coming in the opposite direction. The light was opaque: one particle of dust to one particle of air. The temperature was in the hundreds.

She returned her spectacles case to her handbag. The envelope was too big to go in too. She gave it back to Captain Rowan.

‘I shan’t want it again.’

Rowan put the envelope back into his briefcase. He looked at his wrist-watch and then at her. Their glances met. ‘We have about ten minutes, Lady Manners. Would you like me to go through the arrangements so that you know what to expect?’

Again she sought the reassurance of the pleats and buttons.
She looked through the double thickness of glass at the necks of the driver and his companion.

‘I’ve no doubt H.E. has arranged everything as I would wish.’

‘Not without a certain element of awkwardness being involved. Awkwardness for you.’

‘I couldn’t expect otherwise.’

‘Before we reach the Kandipat I shall pull the blinds down over the windows. The man sitting next to the driver has all the necessary documents to pass us through the gates. The car will stop twice. When it stops the second time we shall be inside the prison. We should be immediately next to a doorway that leads into a corridor and eventually to the jail superintendent’s private quarters. We shall go to the end of the corridor and into a room marked “O”. I shall leave you alone in room “O”. There are a few details about room “O” but I can explain those at the time. There is only the one door. The man sitting next to the driver will be on duty in the corridor.’

‘And I shall be alone in the room – throughout?’

‘Yes.’

‘I understand. I shall see and hear but not be seen or heard?’

‘Yes. Afterwards it will take me about five minutes to rejoin you.’

‘And I should wait in the room until you come for me?’

‘If you would, Lady Manners.’

‘Shall I be required to meet anyone at all?’

‘No one.’

‘Thank you.’

‘When we leave, the car will have been reversed in the courtyard and will be parked ready. We shall then drive straight out and back to Government House.’

Again Rowan checked his watch. He leaned far back in his seat, canting his head to get a glimpse of the area they were approaching. He said, ‘I think perhaps we should lower the blinds now. We’re coming into Kandipat.’

He reached forward, pulled down one of the tip-up seats and transferred himself to it, stretched across to the little roller-blinds on her side of the car. Gradually the back of the car was filled with sub-aqueous light. She lost the sensation
of forward movement. When he had completed the operation he resumed his seat next to her, resettled the document case on his lap. She raised her hands, feeling for the veil, groped round its prickly edge until she felt the smooth round knob of the hatpin. She pulled the hatpin out, jabbed it gently into the buff cord upholstery and coaxed the veil out of its folds, until it hung loose, shading the whole of her face and neck. Retrieving the pin she replaced it in the back of her hat.

‘In case I forget – afterwards – Captain Rowan, thank you for what you have done, are doing, and have undertaken to do. Can I rely utterly on your discretion?’

‘Of course.’

‘I understood from H.E. that he chose you for a reason that would become clear to me. If he meant your courtesy and efficiency it has already done so. But whatever the reason he had in mind, I’m grateful. Forgive me for raising the question of discretion.’ She smiled, then wondered whether he would see that she did, through the veil, in the dim museum-like light. He was not smiling. But her compliments had not embarrassed him. Well, she thought, you are a man who knows his worth, accepts its obligations with interest and its rewards with dignity, and I particularly thank God for you today.

She thanked God too for Captain Rowan not talking, for not attempting to disrupt her contemplation of the mystery of the inhumanity of man towards man that a prison was the repository of and which was entered consciously even when the actual entry was made blindly, so: stop and pause, start and move and stop finally. At some point, when the back of the car was overtaken by a violently sudden darkness the line dividing contemplation of the mystery from experience of it was crossed. A chill smell of masonry conjured the sensation of enclosure within walls sweating from a low but insistent fever – the fever of defeat and apprehension. The door on Captain Rowan’s side of the car was opened. The cold damp smell of stone strengthened, came on a shaft of funnelled air with the implacable impact of an actual touching, so that
Captain Rowan’s hand, offering itself to hers, was a momentary shock, the flesh-touch of someone who had accompanied her into an area of distress. There were on either side of her glimmers of filtered light and, in front, steps and a narrow doorway that was open. She mounted the steps, grateful for his cupped hand at her elbow. The corridor was stone-flagged, stone-walled, lit by one naked bulb at its farther end where already she could make out the letter ‘O’ painted in white on a closed brown door. Reaching it she saw that the corridor turned at a right-angle towards flights of wooden stairs – up and down. After he had left her alone in Room O he would ascend or descend by one of those flights: descend, more likely.