The Towers Of Silence (The Raj quartet) (10 page)

‘Raped,’ Isobel snapped. Lucy Smalley blushed. ‘And her name is Miss Manners. Her uncle was governor in Ranpur back in the late ‘twenties or early ‘thirties. They’ve been trying to keep her name secret but it’s leaked out as it was bound to. Did you know Sir Henry Manners, Mildred?’

‘We were in Peshawar and Lahore while he was in office. He was rather pro-Indian wasn’t he? I mean politically.’

‘Nicky?’

‘We were off station too.’

‘Dicky says he had a good reputation,’ Isobel said. ‘His widow is still alive in Rawalpindi, I gather, but nothing’s known about the girl. It could be a sticky case, from what I hear.’

Isobel did not say what she had heard. She tapped the agenda again.

‘Right,’ she said, ‘we obviously rule out Miss Batchelor, and I’m not keen on making Chatty Singh’s wife responsible for
everything
to do with the Indian community. She’ll be overworked as it is. What about the librarian, Mrs Stewart?’

*

‘My dear, my poor Edwina, (Barbie wrote), I was so shocked to read in the Ranpur Gazette about your truly terrible experience. For an age I wandered about distracted, wanting to help but not knowing how. Mayapore is so far away and even so, what could I do? My good kind friend here, Mabel, coming in and seeing me in this restless state, this state of great, of overwhelming anxiety, and learning the reason, said at once well if you can get through you must ring and find out how she is and leave a message. Practical woman! I followed her advice. It took an age. But I got the Mayapore exchange at last and then the hospital and spoke to a Sister Luke who said that you were quite comfortable, past the crisis, that she would give you my love and of course any letter I cared to send. Past the crisis! I dared not ask of what. Sister Luke seemed to think I would know, though Heaven knows how. Once again it is Mabel who lifts the veil from my uncertainty with her suggestion that after that shock and exposure, waiting, waiting in the rain, you must have been struck down with fever, perhaps pneumonia. My poor Edwina. You must, now on the mend, take care, take care.

‘All this was yesterday. I delayed writing to you until today in order to get some sense into my thoughts. The point is that presently when you are better the Mission I am sure will want you to take sick leave to get your strength up properly again. Please take that sensible course. God knows how long these terrible disturbances will last – we aren’t troubled by them in this lovely peaceful old station – but we can only hope and pray that they will end soon before more lives are lost. It is they,
they
, poor people who will suffer in the end.

‘Well now when you are better, when you are ready, there is a room for you here. It is Mabel’s suggestion. She points out that I have never had a visitor. This is true. But it would be so very wonderful to have you, for as long as you are able to spare before buckling to work again as I know you will but must not too soon. I shall say no more for the moment. But let it sink in as an idea. Pankot is a beautiful place. I’ve been happy here as you know from my previous letters. You can be sure of the friendliest welcome but all the privacy and seclusion you wish, or otherwise. It quickly got round that I knew you and people have been so kind in their inquiries. Today in the bazaar I was stopped many times and asked for news of you. All those of whom I have written before ask especially for their good wishes to be conveyed to you. The Reverend Arthur and Clarissa Peplow, Mr Maybrick who plays the organ at St John’s, Mabel of course and sweet Sarah. I have not seen Susan for a day or two. One feels dreadfully for these young girls, I mean in view of the terrible reports about that other poor woman in Mayapore. Her name was not given in the
Gazette
but we had rumours in advance and now it is freely said by people here who seem to know that her name is Manners, the niece of a one-time Governor of the province. Poor girl, poor girl. You probably know her for it seems she was much involved with charitable work among the untouchables and lived with an Indian lady, a friend of her aunt who is now a widow in Rawalpindi and who must be suffering. One is so puzzled. One senses a mystery, an imponderable – I mean in regard to those who are hurt like yourself, Edwina. Your life too has been so utterly devoted to
them.
I shall write again very very soon. Meanwhile my love and prayers. May God protect you, through Jesus. Sincere, sincere good wishes, Barbie.’

*

Miss Crane, Miss Manners; Miss Manners, Miss Crane. At times there was a tendency to confuse them; to forget momentarily which of the two victims it was Miss Batchelor knew until a few seconds’ thought made the missionary connection; and then a different kind of confusion arose because there being nothing to identify Miss Crane the shortest way to her was through the familiar face and figure of her friend Miss Batchelor. At any given second a fleeting glimpse might therefore be had, as Barbie strode downhill to the bazaar, of the Crane woman doing that very thing for no particular reason unless it were to snatch the observer’s thoughts and concentrate them upon a special issue: the safety of women.

There would now enter into the pine-scented and gun-metal air a stiff breeze of the kind that cooled without actually being felt to blow and in Miss Batchelor’s, Miss Crane’s, wake all kinds of horrors coupled and multiplied and gave her the look of a woman in danger who did not know it, walking in broad daylight, inviting attack, creating conditions in which an attack could take place.

Met face on she had the surprised happy appearance of someone who a few minutes ago had survived assault. It was irritating to find that she had no information; none, that was, that stood the test of sifting from the mine-tip of her inconsequential chatter.

‘I am reminded,’ she said, ‘of Miss Sherwood. Amritsar, 1919. She was a school superintendent too. I never met her, she wasn’t Bishop Barnard, but Edwina met her I’m almost certain. She had such a pretty Christian name. Marcella. Perhaps we missionaries are singled out because they see us as agents of the dark, although actually of light. She narrowly escaped with her life. A Hindu woman rescued her, in that awful place, that little lane we sealed off afterwards and made people
crawl
down, on their bellies, in the dust and dirt, to punish them. I sometimes think none of that has been forgiven.’

The word forgiven seemed wrong in present circumstances and the introduction of yet another name, Miss Sherwood, an unnecessary complication. Miss Sherwood was not Miss Crane, neither was Miss Batchelor who after all was merely herself and in no danger except from passing traffic. What she had survived was being in wartime Pankot but not quite of it, three years of comparative obscurity now interrupted by her brief prominence as a friend of the less interesting of the two Mayapore victims.

She was a familiar enough figure though, recognizable from a distance, the length of the bazaar say, whose busy road she had a habit of crossing and recrossing or walking down the middle of at full tilt, narrowly avoiding tongas, bicycles and military trucks; intent on performing innumerable and apparently urgent tasks at bank, post office and shops, in the shortest possible time; shortest in her judgment. The actual economy of method was open to doubt, but presumably old Mabel Layton was satisfied with it. Bit by bit Miss Batchelor had taken over the running of Mabel’s household. If Mabel had been looking for someone who would make her withdrawal easier she could not have done better than choose this retired missionary; obviously the kind of person who cried out to be used, like a cow with a full udder moaning for the herdsman to lead her to the pail.

But her yield in information was low and the suspicion arose that she knew Miss Crane less well than had at first been generally assumed from her manner. If the affair of the attacked missionary had not been so serious Miss Batchelor’s association with it might have introduced a note of comedy; but it was undoubtedly serious and there were questions it would have been nice to have answers to. For instance was there any significance in the fact that the burnt-out motor-car was one hundred yards away from the dead teacher’s body? Had he jumped clear and run back along the road to Dibrapur, attempted to save his own skin, before being caught by the mob? And why after he was dead did she stay with the body and not attempt to seek refuge in the next village? Would she recognize any of the men who had hit her?

Satisfying though it would be to have questions like these settled, the picture of old Miss Crane sitting by a dead body in the road in the pouring rain was of less intense interest than the picture of the other victim, the girl who was criminally assaulted, Miss Manners, whom no one in Pankot knew, of whom no one had ever heard even if the name Manners was familiar to people whose connection with the province extended back ten or fifteen years. That the late Governor Sir Henry still had a widow living in Rawalpindi was a surprise to most people; that he had a niece in Mayapore living with an Indian woman (so the reports had it) was a greater surprise.

Apparently her other name was Daphne which for those who still remembered snippets of classical mythology produced the image of a girl running from the embrace of the sun god Apollo, her limbs and streaming hair already delineating the arboreal form in which her chastity would be preserved, enshrined forever; forever green. From her, then, the god could pluck no more than leaves. But this image could not be sustained and the other unknown Daphne stumbled on from antique laurel-dappled sunlight into a plain domestic darkness, dressed in her anonymity, and something simple, white, to suit her imagined frailty, her beauty and vulnerability; now half-sitting, half-lying on a couch in a shaded room with her eyes closed and one hand, inverted, against her aching forehead, speechless in the presence of friends who smiled when they were with her but otherwise looked grim.

And the violence done to her was not over yet. In due course she would have to leave the darkened room, go half-blinded by sunlight (or soaked by rain) to the ordeal of courtroom evidence unless she could be spared that which was not likely, so deeply had the democratic process undermined personal privilege. No closed doors for Miss Manners. The press would make sure of that. And the arrested men would not lack clever Bengali lawyers who would plead without fee, anxious for the publicity and the opportunity to sling mud, to impugn the morals of an English girl. It would be a high court case with a full gallery and the police out in force in the city to discourage the inevitable demonstrations on behalf of the accused. The judge would probably be an Indian. It was hoped so. The sentences of transportation for life to a penal settlement would come better from Mr Justice Chittaranjan than from Clara Fosdick’s brother-in-law, Billy Spendlove. And then, only then, might poor Miss Manners fade back into the oblivion from which she had been cruelly dragged.

But her name would be written on the tablets.

*

The riots spread to Ranpur. Several lorry-loads of British and Indian troops left Pankot, ostensibly on convoy exercises but in fact bound for an encampment outside the city. In Ranpur the city police fired to disperse mobs. The military assisted them on two occasions. An attempt to sabotage the railway between Ranpur and Pankot was discovered in time. The night train up and the day train down now went under armed guard. For several hours the telephone connection was cut. When it was repaired reports came in thick and fast. The
Ranpur Gazette
offices had their windows broken. A mob had penetrated the civil lines with the intention of surrounding Government House. This mob carried banners demanding the release of ‘the innocent victims of the Bibighar’, meaning the boys arrested for the rape. Scurrilous pamphlets appeared accusing the Mayapore police of torturing and defiling these six Hindu youths by whipping them and forcing them to eat beef. Factories were at a standstill and so was public transport. Life was reported quiet in Ranpur cantonment but there was a sense there undoubtedly of calm before storm. Things were said to be very bad farther afield, particularly in Mayapore and Dibrapur.

Politically in Ranpur it was a difficult time; in Pankot peaceful and, climatically speaking, marvellous: clear skies by day, refreshing rain by night, the perfect combination and a rare one even in the old station which was protected from the streaming and steamy monotony of the southwest monsoon by the very hills that made Ranpur so wet and humid. As Isobel Rankin said – at least the weather was pro-British.

There was bridge at Rose Cottage: the first session for some time. Mildred said she was tired of the club where the Pankot emergency committees had been meeting. Through the open french window came the velvet smell of roses and the marquee smell of cut grass. At mid-day Aziz brought drinks out to the verandah and cards were abandoned. Mabel was still in the garden cutting flowers for the house. Miss Batchelor was out shopping in the bazaar. Mildred Layton, Maisie Trehearne, Clara Fosdick and Nicky Paynton had the place to themselves. Presently the girls were due with some of the boys; and there was to be curry lunch down at the club.

But into this idyll, this scene reminiscent of more pacific times, Barbie erupted unexpectedly accompanied by the spectres of broken bloody victims and the Reverend Arthur Peplow’s wife, blue-eyed Clarissa, whose expression was one of constant challenge to the devil, an uncomfortable attribute but useful so long as it did not get out of hand which it had never been known to. Her presence was a kind of corrective to over-optimism, at the same time calming. She had a still clear voice and used it tellingly like a gift harnessed for professional purposes.

‘Of course,’ Miss Batchelor was saying, ‘we weren’t at all bound by such things at the Bishop Barnard. Oh, hello. Hello. I was telling Clarissa, that it was teaching first last all the time, well practically speaking, that is especially after the Great War. Miss Jolley is non-conformist which hides a multitude of sins. In my day and Edwina’s day it had to be C of E. It’s in my trunk or should be. I’ll go and look and bring it out and then everyone can see. If I can find it. In spite of one’s resolution to be neat and tidy, as my father used to say a human being’s no better than a magpie.’