The Island of Chamba

‘and aftre men fynden there an Ile, that is clept Ormuz: and thidre comen Marchantes of Venyse and Gene and of other Marches, for to byen Marchandyses. . . Fro that Ile, men gon be see to another Ile, that is clept Chamba, where is gret plentee of Corn and Wyn . . . The folk of that contree han a dyvers Lawe; they seyn that the Oxe is the moste holy Beste that is in Erthe . . . This Ile of Chamba, the Sarazines han wonen and holden . . . And there ben Rattes in that Ile als grete as Houndes here. . .’

— Sir John de Mandeville, writing in 1366

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Foreword

The island of Chamba was invented by someone who stuffed Sir John de Mandeville with traveller’s tales six centuries ago and it may seem a trifle perverse, when so much of interest is happening in the world, to write about the politics of an imaginary island. But I had a tale to tell which needed the background of mounting tension produced in the princely States of India by the sudden news that the British were really going. If I had set the scene in a real State, by the time it was written and published it would have been stale journalism and unripe history. So I chose a fictitious State as well as fictitious people and a course of events that did not take place in any actual State. I believe, however, that, in varying degrees, every State in India had to face a problem similar to Chamba’s. All were suddenly put under pressure to cram into a few months reforms which in British India had been spread over nearly forty years. The systems of government in the States were in most cases quite inconsistent with British political development, but we had tolerated them, and indeed taken part in them, because they worked well in practice. We withdrew our support and without consultation rescinded treaties a century old with less notice than a considerate employer would give a gardener. The background to this story is the kind of reaction that resulted.

P. W.

July 1948

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I

The day had been one of rapid action and brilliant success. The course Charles had steadily urged had been adopted and he was to have a considerable hand in carrying it out; he had been appointed a member of the Council of Regency, he was guardian of the young Sultan, and throughout the evening people had been congratulating him on the way that Salim had acted under his guidance. But at heart Charles was sick with a bitter regret, because of a moment of fear that had destroyed his confidence in himself and probably Salim’s confidence in him too.

It was partly this sick regret and partly plain fatigue that kept him from sleep. He had lain awake now for more than an hour, turning restlessly from one side to the other in the great gilt bed. Whenever for a moment he relaxed the attention needed for continuous thought, images of the day’s doings presented themselves in broken sequence to his tired brain. Armoured cars with their sirens wailing, the Sultan’s face as he said goodbye to his son and his island, the dead in the mortuary, voices over the council-table; these came and went, shadows thrown by a flickering fire on a screen of drifting vapour, and sounds no less transient; but always, insistent and dominating, there returned the sea of faces and waving arms on which he had looked down from the balcony that afternoon and the vision that had come to him of all those beings, maddened by fear, swaying forward into the palace, smashing the gilded mirrors, beating in men’s faces.

He would never sleep, he thought, if he allowed his mind to drift like this, he would never escape from the bitterness of that regret and the doubts it brought for the future. The discipline of continuous thought would tire him till at last he slept. And he began deliberately to remember how he had first come to the island, all that had led up to that moment he would not think about.

It had been chance that had brought him, he thought. For if he hadn’t, that day a year ago, found himself washing his hands for lunch at the next basin to Sir Hubert, it was hardly to be supposed that Sir Hubert would have taken the trouble to telephone, to make an appointment, to pass on that fantastic offer. No, the intention would have remained an intention, no more, and when he went back to Chamba he would have told the Sultan that no chance had come his way of carrying out the commission. And in a few days the Sultan would have forgotten the idea.

Chance, Charles repeated, pure chance had brought him to the island and led to his part in all that had happened. If he had finished the work that had lain on his table that morning a year ago, he would not have gone to the club but asked someone to bring him up a sandwich, and then he would have missed Sir Hubert. That was very nearly what he had done, but looking at the clock and then at the papers on his desk, he thought that everything worth eating would be off the club menu unless he went at once. And really he could see no reason for being conscientious after the way his firm had treated him.

He found his hat and left. As he went down the stairs, he thought that he must leave the firm. He had known for some time that he had outlived the reasons that had led him to join the Phaeton Oil Company when he came down from Oxford. Incomprehensible at the time to his friends and even to himself, they were clear enough now; he understood them and he had outlived them. All the same, that by itself would not have been enough to make him go, for, after all, the years he had spent with the Phaeton did count for something. But to drag him back from the army on the grounds that he was the one man with the experience to be head of their legal department, even to discuss with him the man he would like in his own old place as assistant, and then suddenly, without a word of explanation, to go back on what had been clearly understood even before the war and to bring in an outsider over his head, that was really too much. And an outsider who was a pompous ass as well. No, it was not to be borne and he would look round for something else, pension or no pension. It should after all be invigorating, like the sting of cold water after shaving, to start on something new at forty, an age which he was not yet used to realizing was past the middle of his days.

He looked young enough, he thought with pleasure, as he finished washing his hands at the club and combed his hair. And there, at the next basin, was Sir Hubert Carslake.

‘Very man I wanted to see,’ said Sir Hubert. ‘Are you lunching with anyone?’

Charles was not and Sir Hubert annexed him.

Private conversation was impossible during the meal, for they were placed at a round table for eight where talk was general. But after lunch, Sir Hubert found two isolated chairs in the smoking-room, ordered brandy and cigars, and began to talk.

‘Do you know anything,’ he began, ‘about the island of Chamba?’

Charles confessed that he knew little except that it was an island in the Indian Ocean mentioned by Sir John de Mandeville.

‘Exactly,’ said Sir Hubert encouragingly. ‘For some odd reason, everyone knows that de Mandeville was the first European to mention it. He says there were rats as big as mastiffs, which there certainly aren’t now, though I suppose a bandicoot is a big rat, but apart from that I think he must really have met someone who knew of the place. He says the Saracens conquered the island and rule it, but that the original inhabitants think the cow is a god and worship it. Hindus with a Muslim nobility. Quite right. Top marks for de Mandeville.’

Charles was thinking more of Sir Hubert than of what he was saying. He had known him all his life, for Sir Hubert had been an old friend of his father’s and after his father’s death had from time to time unexpectedly appeared, spent an hour or two in friendly and inconclusive chat with Charles’s mother and then vanished for a period that was as likely to be six years as six weeks. His personality had always been puzzling and now, as Charles listened to his words, uttered in that clear, rather high, persuasive voice, and watched the fine, aquiline features, the expressive eyebrows, he wondered once more what was lacking, why he felt that this man, for all his charm, for all his gifts of brain and appearance, was incomplete and negative. And suddenly he remembered a speech he had heard years ago when by chance he had gone at a friend’s invitation to a medical dinner. The guest of the evening had been a judge, and in beautifully precise language he had been expatiating on the graceful theme that medicine was the mother of all arts, for without health man could do nothing.

He took as his illustration the tale of Abelard, and spoke of how after his mutilation Abelard was left with none of the qualities that had made him great, for the fire had gone, the lover’s fire, the poet’s, the scholar’s fire that eats at his heart and drives him to seek the truth. The mind remained, the brain could reason, but nothing drove it, there was no steam in the boiler. There was nothing the man wanted to do.

‘Gone, gone, were the glands of Abelard,’ said the old judge in a melancholy cadence, with a hint of self-mockery in his bell-like voice, as though he laughed at the fate that made such a piece of work as a man dependent on so small an agglomeration of jelly.

And remembering his words, Charles knew what it was that he missed about Sir Hubert. There was nothing the man wanted. He liked to be among friends, but no one friend really mattered to him; his career as a diplomatist was pleasant, but he would not mind if it ended tomorrow. He had never married and one felt that he had never wanted to marry nor felt his blood stirred by a woman. As for wanting anything less material, any form of spiritual progress, that too seemed quite incredible. And yet there was charm and warmth when you met him, and it was long before you guessed that it was a warmth with no special object of its own, a kind of public warmth, dispensed to all. A narcissist, perhaps; and he certainly has every excuse, thought Charles, looking at those distinguished features. But he did not think that this facile phrase was really an explanation.

And Charles was beginning to wonder whether to others he too must seem like Sir Hubert, a man who wanted nothing, while in fact he wanted so much, when he was brought smartly to attention by the sound of his name.

‘Well, there you are, Charles. What do you think of it? That’s the island; that’s the Sultan; as well as I can describe them in a few minutes. What do you think of it? Do you think it would suit you?’

Charles realized that he was being offered a job, but he had very little idea what it was. He had, however, some experience of such situations. He said judicially:

‘It’s worth thinking over.’

‘You see, it’s not a thing,’ said Sir Hubert with that air of immense gusto that was so misleading until you really knew him, ‘it’s not a thing you could offer to everyone. For a married man it would be madness to throw up a safe post, such as you have in the Phaeton, for something like this which might last ten years or ten days. But it’s different for you. I don’t suppose you’re devotedly attached to the Phaeton, are you?’

It was useless, Charles knew, to talk to Sir Hubert of the sudden fierce revolt in his last year at Oxford against the idealism of his friends. It had seemed to him then that their idealism was not enough, that it was a compromise between the ruthless logic of St. Francis of Assisi and a comfortable materialism. Any compromise had seemed then a betrayal that was bound to lead to insincerity; if you couldn’t be St. Francis—and he was quite sure he could not—then at least it was better not to pretend you had anything you could give to young men or to other races African or Asiatic; let there be no smack of the missionary about your career, choose something that wouldn’t interfere with your private life at all. Far better to sign on with an oil company than make money by selling the inmost core of your being. Useless to try to explain that, or that you had outlived that diffidence and were firmly established now in a fortress from which you had the strength to make a sortie and show your flag. No use explaining that; and to talk about the way the Phaeton had let him down over the legal department, well, that would be a bore, for anyone with a grievance was always a bore. So he said firmly:

‘No.’

‘I should imagine,’ went on Sir Hubert, ‘that you could save as much in a year of Chamba as in five years with the Phaeton. And I’m sure you’d find it interesting. Adviser in Oil to His Magnificence the Sultan of Chamba. There’s a title for you.’

‘But there isn’t any oil in Chamba,’ said Charles, feeling that he was getting somewhere.

‘No, there isn’t.’ Sir Hubert was all reasonableness and went on with the gesture of one generously conceding a point: ‘At least, we don’t know of any; but there might be. Oil is very important in the modern world. No government should neglect the possibility that somewhere in their territory there may be deposits, or whatever the technical term may be. To have an Adviser in Oil is far less absurd than some of the things His Magnificence does. It’s a perfectly satisfactory title and a good reason for your presence. No nationalist, however extreme, could object to the appointment of an Englishman as adviser in oil, because no Chamban could possibly claim any knowledge of the subject.’

‘But what would one actually do?’ Charles asked.

‘Well, I suppose you could, sometime when you had leisure, make sure there was no possibility of oil. . . .”

‘Not my line? I’m not a geologist. And if there was any possibility, I’m sure our people or the Americans would have been on to it long ago.’

‘Well, you could occasionally pretend to look for oil. But actually you would be there for His Magnificence and the Prime Minister to talk to. They’re charming fellows, both of them, but they both feel the need for a little support. They’d like to feel they’ve got someone reliable at hand who is not mixed up in local politics. And you need have no fear of not having enough to do. If I know the Prime Minister, he’ll put you in charge of a Grand Industrial Exhibition and the next day you’ll be laying out Zoological Gardens or starting a National Defence College. He’s full of ideas. You’ll like him.’

‘Tell me about him,’ Charles asked.

‘He’s something of a visionary, something of an idealist,’ said Sir Hubert, with the air of one prepared to take a tolerant view of almost any folly, ‘full of ideas, always wanting to change things. Very liberal, you know. Sometimes rather too liberal for His Magnificence. Always much too liberal for the nobles of Chamba. But you’ll like him all the same. He’s a gentleman. Cultured, well-read, speaks beautiful English. He makes a good team with His Magnificence, for El Hadramauti (his great-grandfather was an Arab from the Hadramaut? Chamba’s full of them) is a bit of a theorist and H.M. for all his oddity has his feet very firmly on the ground. But the great thing about Hadramauti is that he’s above local intrigues. He really does look at things in a big way. He wants a confidential adviser just as much as H.M. They both want someone to talk to, someone who can give them a sane, objective answer. No one in Chamba can; everyone is so steeped in the queer little politics of the island that there’s no one to give a broad view. Everyone has to think how it will affect his little party and himself before he’ll speak.’

‘How does Hadramauti manage to keep immune?’ Charles asked.

‘Well, he’s in a strong position because he doesn’t mind if he goes. He’s one of the grandees of the island. He has a place in the hills, an isolated valley all his own, where, I believe, he would genuinely like to retire and settle down as a country gentleman. Until he does, he acts as he thinks right; he’s the only one who seems to be free from ambition of the pettiest kind and readiness to go is an immense asset. He was brought up entirely in England, you know. A real Victorian liberal, that’s what he is.’

‘I see. I wonder,’ Charles asked, ‘if you’d mind making me a little clearer about the island’s standing with regard to this country. I still don’t quite understand the position.’

‘No one does,’ said Sir Hubert cheerfully. ‘No one ever has. But it works all right in practice. You could write tomes about it; people have; the Foreign Office and the archives at Delhi are full of stuff.’

Here Charles broke in.

‘And the people? The original people? Who are they?’

‘Well, now, one thing at a time. Your second question first. The people. Historically, the island is layer on top of layer, but instead of mixing, as in this country, the different layers have stayed separate. There are the bushmen, the aboriginals, rather the same sort of people as the Australian bushmen, but with Polynesian affinities. Then there was the Tamil invasion and the Tamil kings, Hindus, and everyone was converted. Nominally, that is; the bushmen stayed racially distinct and in practice they remain the simple animists they always have been. Next everyone was converted to Buddhism; this was a religious reformation, not a military conquest, and to this day many of the old Tamils are Buddhists. But there was a fresh invasion from India, this time by Telegus, who reconverted most of the population to Hinduism. That was the position when the Muslims came; a Hindu king with some Telegu subjects and some converted Tamil subjects, all Hindus; and pockets of old Tamils who were still Buddhists inland. Ninety per cent Hindu, I should think, and the rest Buddhists, leaving out the bushmen.’

‘Ah,’ said Charles, ‘now I’ve got the people. But where did the Muslims come from? Arabia? Part of the first conquests of Islam?’

‘No, there was no direct Muslim invasion from Arabia. The Muslims came in the time of Tamerlane from Northern India. They were part of Tamerlane’s horde and their leader called himself Tamerlane’s Viceroy. Indeed, he was a nephew or cousin. But his descendants soon threw off their allegiance to Delhi and they were independent kings until they were re-conquered by Akbar. Akbar dethroned the last king of the line of Tamerlane and put in his own viceroy. But in the second generation, the son of Akbar’s viceroy decided he would be independent too. It’s a familiar story in the East. He married a princess of the house of Tamerlane and declared himself Sultan of Chamba.

‘Well, now for your first question. All this was before the Indian Ocean had seriously begun to attract Europeans. When they came, they naturally looked at Chamba. Both the Dutch and the French were given the right to establish trading-posts. But the French rather over-reached themselves. The Sultan of the day found them uncomfortable guests. It was the time when French and British were fighting for South India, both taking allies where they could get them. The Sultan thought that any enemy of the French was a friend of his, so he made a treaty with the British. It was a treaty of perpetual alliance, made between one sovereign and another. We guaranteed to protect Chamba against the French; the Sultan agreed to pay us for protection, to lend us troops and to let us recruit in his island. We don’t recruit there any longer, and his troops have turned into cash; instead of keeping up troops and lending them to us, he simply pays us more. But substantially that treaty still stands.’

‘So that he’s completely independent?’ Charles asked.

‘Well, that’s what no one quite knows. In theory yes, in practice no. The original treaty was made with the Crown, but it was made through the East India Company. Then the Queen became Empress of India, the successor, in a way, of the Moghul emperors, and paramount in India. But Chamba wasn’t part of India, and the monarchs of Chamba, though friendly to the British, hated the memory of their subservience to Delhi. Well in 1860, one could arrange things. Chamba hadn’t the faintest desire to quarrel with the all-powerful Britain of those days. A kind of working compromise was reached. Chamba recognized not the paramountcy but the suzerainty of the Queen. Paramountcy was kept for Indian States on the mainland. Nobody knows what either word means, but, whatever it may be, for practical purposes it’s the same in both cases. No relations with foreign States except through us, a postal and customs treaty with India, though they have their own coins and stamps, and the old treaty about defence confirmed. The only point about which there was any argument was the title. The Sultan wanted to be His Majesty. We suggested he should be a Highness, pointing out that the term Majesty was incompatible with the Queen’s suzerainty. Eventually, they compromised on that too, and we have the unique title His Magnificence. It took years to settle that; the question of British representation was much quicker. That’s a compromise too. We have an Envoy there—at present myself—and he always belongs to the Diplomatic Service, not the Indian Political Service. He isn’t called a Resident, as in the Indian States. I’m responsible in theory to the Foreign Office, but in practice I take my orders from the Viceroy. I address my dispatches to the Foreign Secretary, with a copy to the Viceroy, but by a unique convention it’s the Viceroy, if anyone, who takes notice of them. So it’s not easy to answer your question. In theory, Chamba is an independent State acknowledging British suzerainty, and one of our oldest allies. In Foreign Office language, His Magnificence is sui generis; the only specimen of his kind. In practice, the island is treated as the first of the Indian States.’

‘I see,’ said Charles. ‘But I still don’t quite see why you’ve picked on me as the confidential crony of this doubtful Majesty. Why not someone from the Foreign Office? Or from India?’

‘There are very good reasons why not,’ Sir Hubert replied. ‘If an official came to such a post, the nationalists, who are also the left wing, trying to get popular rule, would immediately say that imperialist Britain was strengthening her reactionary hold. Neither we nor the Sultan want that. If on the other hand he makes a technical appointment, and chooses a business man, no one can say a word. It would suit us admirably. We should know there was one sensible and moderating influence near H.M. And for him, if he likes you, as I’ve no doubt he will, there’ll be not only the benefit of someone reliable to talk things over with, but someone who really will get things done for him, and who’s not tied down to any formal post that takes up all his time. As to why we hit on you, I must accept the blame. At one of my interviews, H.M. threw out the idea. I liked it and encouraged him, and he told me to think of someone. Your name occurred to me, but I wasn’t convinced you were the man until I met General Prentice and heard of your work with him during the war. He spoke in glowing terms of how well you’d done.’

‘I see,’ said Charles thoughtfully. It came pat, just when he needed something new, almost too pat. It might bring the stimulus he had hoped for, but it was nebulous; he might easily find it came to nothing at all, and for a sinecure he felt deeply disinclined. He said:

‘But would it be a live job? Is it worth doing? Or is Chamba just a dreary little Oriental backwater where one would slowly fry to the uniform greasy obscurity of one’s surroundings?’

He was afraid, even as he said it, that Sir Hubert would tell him that there was quite a decent golf-course in the hills, but he had underestimated his own analysis of Sir Hubert; the brain was there, the comprehension of what others wanted. Sir Hubert said:

‘I think there is a job to be done, but it will have to be made and waited for. You’ll need the patience of a hunter but you’ve a fair chance of getting your beast. You see, the Sultan and his Prime Minister need help far more even than they realize. They live in a world in which progress has been artificially suspended. Nothing has happened in the island since the treaty with the British, a century and a half ago. Nothing important, I mean; there has been no history, because the mere knowledge that British support was there has kept the Sultans immovable. No foreign affairs, no need to make popular concessions. Members of Parliament have talked in Westminster of self-government and setting the East on the path of freedom and democracy—and been perfectly sincere in what they said. But few of them have troubled their heads about Chamba; she has been left to bureaucrats like myself. And as an observer, my dear Charles, I must admit that bureaucrats are seldom much inclined to make sweeping reforms. No wars, plagues or cataclysms, that is what we like; and that is what we have provided. In British India, Parliament were directly responsible and they forced the bureaucratic pace. But not in Chamba. Time stood still in Chamba. And now everything is coming at once. A hundred and fifty years of suspended, history are going to hit Chamba with a bang. The Sultan has to adjust himself to a new world, for the British are not going to stay in India for ever. And he cannot see it.’

Charles felt he had now picked up most of what he had missed, and after a few more questions he said that he would think over the proposition and let Sir Hubert know his answer next day. Sir Hubert had only a few days in London, so there was no time for long consideration.

It was with a feeling of exhilaration that Charles realized just how late he would be at the office, and he thought with a slight shock that he would not be feeling so pleased at the prospect of annoying Smith, the pompous ass, unless he had already half made up his mind to take the post. But it would be silly to be in a hurry. He must sleep on it and before that he must talk it over with Mell.

He rang her up as soon as he got to the office. No, she couldn’t dine tonight, but she could get away almost at once and meet him for tea.

‘Then let’s do that,’ he said, and was so delighted that he almost ran to Smith’s door to tell him that this afternoon he must manage alone.

‘Upon my word, Bolsover,’ began Smith, but the door had closed before he could say any more.

They were to meet at a tea-shop that was about the same distance from her flat and his office. Charles was there first and managed to get a table. He sat watching the door, feeling about eighteen, not thinking of the business on which he had asked Mell to meet him because he knew perfectly well what she would say, but thinking of her, her own unique quality. Even now, when he had known her so long, it seemed unbelievable that her flesh could be subject to common ailments, that she should eat and complete the processes of digestion. He had compared her when he first knew her to a lily of the valley, and he still thought of those tiny bells as her symbol. But the flower was not a complete symbol unless you remembered that it grew in soil made up of dung, rotting leaf and bone, decayed rock, that it drew up salts, acids and sap from the corruption of an older life; there was more in her than the delicate purity of the flower, a salty, earthy quality, frankness with herself and him, humour and strength. His thought about her had been unreal; that had been the trouble. If he had been sufficiently developed when first he met her to know himself and to think and feel honestly, they would both, he thought ruefully, have been saved a great deal of unhappiness.

Six penn’orth of lust, six penn’orth of laughter and a bob’s worth of good, honest liking, that was the true recipe for love.

She came and at once it was a meeting like a hundred others, as it always was with them, as though they had never been apart, the busy waitress, the pot of tea and buttered buns an intrusion. She said what he had known she would say. You must go, you must at last do a job in which you give yourself and find yourself, you must do something you will think of while you’re shaving. And he told her that already his mind was made up and he would go.

They talked of a hundred things; they talked about Raymond, of whom Mell could always speak without reserve to Charles because Charles was the only person who had understood what she had loved in Raymond and because Charles thought of Raymond with the queer, detached intimacy he had to feel for someone who had loved Mell, whom she had loved. He and Raymond were linked by wanting the same person, they were part of each other, but maiming each other like Siamese twins.

Charles and Mell talked on and then she had gone and he was paying the bill, feeling as he always did after talking to Mell, young and alive and adventurous, just from talking to her, and excited too because he was going to Chamba.

II

The plane flew slantwise across the burning afternoon sea. She was low enough for her shadow on the water to be clearly visible from the windows of the port side, a doppelgänger, a tiny familiar that moved with incredible swiftness over the burnished surface of the waters. It was the last lap of Charles’s journey and he was peering out, excited as a child, hoping for a glimpse of the island. He could see a sandy, yellow line, the coast of India, away to his left; he began to fear that the aircraft would come in towards Chamba from the east so that he would be unable from his side to see anything but sea. He did not feel he could ask any of his fellow passengers to let him lean across for a view, for he might, he thought, be committing a most serious breach of manners if he did.

In every way, he found his fellow passengers baffling. There were no Europeans among them and studying them whenever a chance came, he found he could not begin to guess who most of them might be. Remembering Sir Hubert’s talk, he wondered, looking at each, whether this one was Buddhist, Hindu or Muslim; bushman he felt he could rule out in every case. One at least must be a Muslim nobleman, one must surely be a moneylender, but for the rest, no, he had no ideas at all. His eye swept once again over the seats on the other side of the aisle and once again his imagination admitted defeat. The family opposite, now; the short, dark man in European clothes with a pretty woman in a bright skirt of apricot and green; the two children in most unsuitably warm knickerbocker suits at least two years too large for them, their eyes heavily underlined with dark blue or black, sticky and surfeited with sweets beneath embroidered gilt caps; they were utterly beyond him; as well try to assess the social position of an Eskimo woman chewing blubber in a snow hut. The two women in front of them were not so difficult; sallow of skin, slender, physically they were hardly distinguishable from Spaniards or Italians; their dresses, a charming dark maroon edged with gold, a greyish, smoke-like blue with a silver fringe, were tasteful in line as well as colour; they were clearly people with a tradition of good manners and some cultivation of the refinements of life. It was unthinkable to ask them or anyone else in the plane for permission to lean across and stare at their island.

Luck, however, was with him, for the plane altered course and as she swung westward revealed on her port bow the island’s northern coast, spread out as if part of a model, the kind of model he had seen during the war, carefully built up from maps and photographs to the likeness of some piece of territory in enemy hands. And it was, this island of Chamba, a territory he was going to assault, something on which to test his manhood, although the enemy in whose hands it lay was nothing more material than the unknown.

There it lay, just as it had been described to him, and surprisingly, absurdly, like his mental picture of it. The cliffs, black in shadow, were sharply cut off, as though by a spade; but no spade would have made a coast-line of such fantastic curves and the resemblance was more to a piece taken at random from a jig-saw puzzle, shaped in loops and in twists unexpectedly turning to sharp angles, everywhere square of edge, uniform in height. Absurd, toy-like cliffs, rising straight from the sea; from their tops, the land took on at once exactly the appearance that it displayed miles inland; there was no intermediate beach, none of that indefinable half-maritime air usually worn by the countryside close to the sea. Little fields, squares of green or brown, clusters of palm trees, square, honeycomb work of irrigation channels between trees of heavy foliage. Little, red-roofed villages, all bright in the afternoon sun. Another glimpse of the cliffs; no break in them, just as he had read, no big rivers here; a glimpse for a moment of distant hills inland, blue-green and misty, and then sea, cliffs, hills, all gone and all he could see was the network of brown earth and green vegetation, outcrops of rock, groups of boulders, red roofs, little houses, neat, small, brightly coloured, like a toy no child has yet had time to spoil.

The slanting shadow drove relentlessly over this toy-shop life, over men who could just be seen going unconcerned about their tiny business in the fields, over a road with a bridge crossing the canal and a red lorry crawling brisk as an ant along its white length, over a railway and a toy train with tiny puffs of real steam. For a few minutes the shadow drove on, then it began to grow larger and closer, the earth rose and a series of bumps and lurches induced even the hardiest to lean back and close their eyes. They were swinging in over the reddish-brown scars that surrounded the concrete of the airfield at Timurabad, the capital of Chamba.

Charles had received before he left a very warm welcoming letter from the Prime Minister, closely followed by a telegram of extravagant length asking him to come at once. He had answered by airmail letter and telegram, giving the earliest date on which he could be present.

‘The time has come,’ he thought, as he gathered up his things, ‘to start being important.’

He looked round for the Rolls-Royce and the A.D.C. as he stepped out into dazzling sunshine, a steamy Turkish bath atmosphere. Neither were to be seen; he followed the other passengers to a shabby emergency waiting-room, feeling deflated and slightly irritable because of the heat. It oppressed him; it was not intense but it was heavy, a physical presence as though of an invisible blanket. It was surprising to find that the arm could be raised without having to lift anything heavier than air. Shirt and neat tropical tussore suit were moist with sweat before he reached the waiting-room, and the whole skin felt prickly and sticky.

Charles thought the A.D.C. must be late. He would wait till his luggage was out of the aircraft. He refused an offer of tea and biscuits, said he would not go in the bus, sat irritably waiting. The luggage arrived; other passengers claimed their share and went away in cars with friends.

Charles went to the office and asked if he might telephone. The young man behind the desk wore a smart white shirt and trousers, blue shoulder straps with gilt badges of rank. His brown face was round and cheerful. He answered in English that was fluent, the accent basically B.B.C. but the idiom betraying a strong Hollywood influence:

‘Sure you can. Who do you want to call?’

Charles replied rather self-consciously that he wanted to speak to the Prime Minister.

The other was turning over the pages of the directory.

‘It’ll be the last but three in this,’ he said. ‘There’s been no new directory since before the war and prime ministers change pretty often. Habib, His Excellency and Highness the Nawab Iftik-haruddin, Wazir ul Mulk. Here we are.’

He dialled and handed the receiver to Charles, who remembered that the Prime Minister was for international occasions an Excellency but within the island a Highness. This was a gesture made by the Sultan to show how far removed he was from the Indian princes who bore the title of Highness themselves.

‘I should like to speak to His Highness the Prime Minister,’ he said.

Against the background of angry bees and buckling biscuit-tins which he was to find was always the accompaniment to a telephone conversation in Chamba, animal cries of some kind were distinguishable, but they did not sound like human speech. A vague impression of horror and consternation they did, however, convey without words, as of a performing dog asked to do a trick far beyond its compass.

Charles repeated his remark, with less assurance and the same result.

‘Here, let me give it the once-over,’ said the young man in the white shirt, stretching out his hand for the receiver. ‘No one in Chamba answers the telephone himself. Too many wrong numbers. They keep a man to do it who’s too stupid for anything else.’

He spoke into the telephone in a language that was swift and metallic, with no pauses for thought or breath. An outburst of duck-like quacks at the other end was audible across the desk.

‘Telephone orderlies,’ said the young man in the white shirt profoundly. ‘Where they breed them I can’t guess. They don’t have a thought. He’s gone to find someone.’

The next corner was clearly of a far higher grade, for he could understand and converse in the metallic polysyllabic language. After asking who Charles was, where he was, and what he wanted to talk about, he went in search of a secretary. Within little more than ten minutes of first dialling the number, Charles was in conversation with the Prime Minister’s third secretary.

‘And that’s good for Chamba,’ said his airport friend, resuming his work on baggage-forms.

The secretary was full of polite horror. Charles’s letter and telegram must have been lost in the post. His Highness had been away from headquarters, which might account for it. His Highness would be deeply distressed to hear that Charles had not been met. A car should be dispatched at once and the state guesthouse warned.

Charles was dispirited at this confusion over his arrival and at the heat. He could not wait patiently in the refreshment-room, for he was surfeited with sitting still and with reading. He thought wearily that his first days here would involve much idleness and he felt that idleness would depress him. It was all very well to come in a spirit of adventure, but probably most adventures, like war, contained a high percentage of boredom, and he was not good at being bored.

His friend in the white shirt finished his baggage-forms and approached him genially, ready for conversation. He asked questions frankly, questions to which Charles replied diffidently, for he felt a fool at telling this obviously well-informed and sophisticated young man that he had come as an oil expert to a country where there was no oil. But the appointment seemed to cause no surprise, and the young man volunteered that he was a Madrassi by race, one of the few Muslims from that province, that his parents had settled in Chamba. He had been educated in Madras and had been in the Royal Indian Air Force during the war. He thought of settling in Chamba himself.

‘Even now, in 1946, there’s a dreamy, old-world atmosphere about it that I like,’ he said. ‘Too much bustle in the rest of the world. Here a go-ahead man can still make good.’

It was a surprise to Charles to find that the old-world atmosphere met with approval not because of its aesthetic charm but as a field for exploitation, and he was just going to ask how his friend proposed to set about making good when the car arrived. It was not after all a Rolls-Royce but a sumptuous Daimler; the A.D.C. who came with it wore beautiful boots and had beautiful manners, but not much English. After a few rather stilted efforts at conversation, Charles gave it up, and concentrated on looking out of the window.

It was a fantastic landscape. What from the air had seemed a plateau of uniform height was actually made up of many small hills, none more than forty or fifty feet above the general level, but usually crowned with a cock’s comb of black rock, carved and twisted into shapes of nightmare scenery for a giant’s pantomime. Faces, figures of animals, chairs, ploughs or strange, meaningless zigzags cut every horizon. The same grotesque formations erupted from the roadside and the road would swerve politely to make room. One gave shelter to a petrol pump; another sprang up between a tea-shop and a tumble-down hovel built from the framework of an abandoned bus; a third made the corner-stone of a churchyard that ran back from the road to a strange, whitewashed church, whose baroque intention was hampered by the limitations of plaster and corrugated iron.

The dusk was gathering, pressing home, closing in; the light had thickened from the blazing, liquid clarity of midday to a warmer colouring, a deep glow softened by the bloom of dusk. Trees and rocks were inky now; in the warm gloom only the sky held colour, colour that changed and melted every moment, bars of deepest amber and blood red low in the west, against them a hard, jagged ridge of cloud as black as iron; above, as the eye mounted to the zenith and turned back to the east, pale primrose yellow, a mermaid’s green, the blue of a hedge-sparrow’s egg and that deep, tender blue that melts from colour to darkness as the night draws closer.

Charles breathed deep. This was a beauty for which he had not been prepared. It made up for much. He turned to the A.D.C. and was searching for something to say that would be intelligible and worth saying when the car drew up at the guest-house.

Sir Hubert had explained to Charles that in Chamba it would soon be known that he had arrived and that immediately everyone would begin to discuss his movements, his acquaintances, everyone he spoke to, his object in coming. If in the first few hours he went to the Embassy, word would circulate and he would be labelled for ever a British agent. For the first week it would be better that he should not go near the Embassy. Then he might call, in a state car, merely leaving a card and taking care that the driver had every chance of observing that he actually met none of the Embassy staff. In another week, he would probably be asked to lunch.

‘It’s a bore,’ Sir Hubert had said, ‘because it will be just at the beginning that you’ll be lonely, but I’m sure that what I suggest is wisest.’

So it was the state guest-house for Charles. It was a building set at the head of a series of terraced lawns rising from a lake, a building that combined moments of good taste with execrable lapses, a lavish magnificence with the most niggardly and shortsighted parsimony, as though it had been built and decorated by two architects for two masters. The front was simple and dignified, the setting of terraced lawns could hardly be bettered; turning to look back as he left the car Charles saw the lights of the city flashing across the lake, and, tired and sticky though he was, felt there would be much here that he would love. But when he stepped into the entrance hall, he saw terracotta walls, a gingery carpet, toffee-coloured plastic furniture, cushions and upholstery of rich mustard yellow, colours ugly in themselves, repulsive in combination and peculiarly unfriendly to a mind that in the heavy, steamy atmosphere craved for cool blues and greens.

A small, dapper figure, very smart in a grey flannel suit with a stripe and black and white shoes, tripped forward to shake hands.

‘Well, Oi must sy it’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Bolsover, Sir,’ were the words, uttered in an unbelievably rich stage Cockney, with which the master of the guest-house greeted Charles. ‘Reely, I’m ever sa-sorry you weren’t met, but nowbody towld us. ’Ah they expect us to know a guest’s coming I can’t imagine. Telepathy, I suppowse. Now, you’d like to see your room, of course, and then what would you like? Tea? Or a whisky and sowda? Or bowth? You’d like something to eat after your journey I expect.’

After four days travelling, Charles was tired and slightly giddy. This apparition convinced him that he was fast asleep. Naked Nubians, Arabs with burnous and dagger, even a continental hotelier with trained suavity of manner might have been recognized as predictable, but this friendly, vulgar, loquacious familiarity, no, it could not occur when one was awake.

The A.D.C., with his cavalry twill breeches, silk shirt and beautifully cut boots, withdrew in a series of charming smiles and gestures. Charles saw his room and returned to the nightmare lounge, where he found tea waiting for him by the side of one of the caramel chairs. It was set out on a black tray and presented to him with one hand by the angular silhouette of a nude female in chromium. Her other hand was raised as if she were about to throw a dart and directed an electric bulb menacingly at his head. There were foie gras sandwiches, cream buns, honey, strawberry jam, thin white bread and butter. The tea service was of the best white porcelain with the arms of Chamba in gold; every piece was square in ground plan, which made the cups extremely awkward to drink from and did not detract from the general effect of unreason.

The guest-master was back almost at once, genially asking whether everything was to tyste. His manner was nicely adjusted to invite response and pave the way to a cosy gossip, but also to make it easy for the door to shut on any such intimacy. Charles preferred to be friendly; it was a natural instinct with him and also good policy, for the more he could learn of the island the better.

‘I was surprised to find an Englishman here,’ he said amiably.

‘Funny, yn’t it?’ said the guest-master, sitting down at once and drawing up his chair with enthusiasm. ‘And yet, do you know, I ’aven’t been ’owm for twenty years. Twenty years! And don’t want to either. There aren’t the owpenings, you see, in the kytering tryde for an Englishman. All go to foreigners. Anything snug I mean, with a bit of class to it. Different in the country, of course, but then I couldn’t fancy the country.’

Charles asked how he had come into the kytering tryde in the first place and he started delightedly to tell with great detail a story, which Charles felt from the beginning was entirely imaginary, of how as a ragged little urchin near Waterloo Bridge he had seen an old gentleman with a fat, gold watch-chain slip on a banana-skin and had run to help him to his feet when what should the old gentleman say but—

A firm and dignified voice broke in:

‘His Highness and Excellency Nawab Bahadur Hydar ar Rashid El Hadramauti, Fateh Jang Bahadur, Wazir ul Mulk Prime Minister of Chamba.’

More than ever convinced that he was asleep, Charles rose to his feet. An A.D.C. was standing stiffly at the door, through which came a slight, elegant figure in a beautifully cut, grey morning coat with a rose in the button-hole.

‘My dear fellow,’ said the Prime Minister, ‘I’m delighted to see you and extremely sorry there should have been this confusion over your arrival. I have been on tour and no doubt your letter is still following me all over the island. I hope you’re comfortable.’

Charles was always to find it difficult to remember that he was not talking to an Englishman when he was with the Prime Minister. His English was perfect; an occasional slight formality in his phrasing gave an impression that was old-fashioned rather than foreign.

‘I ought to explain,’ continued His Highness, taking a seat on a mustard and caramel sofa, inviting Charles to join him with a gesture and waving away the guest-master’s attentions, ‘I ought to explain that this guest-house—how do you like it, by the way?’

Charles replied that from what he had been able to see in the dark he judged the situation to be admirable.

‘I’m glad you think so, for I chose it myself. I told His Magnificence before I became Prime Minister that he ought to have a new guest-house and that here was an admirable site. The old place was down in the city, you know, near the railway station. Stuffy. Noisy. Dirty. Now here you are up on the hill, with the lake to gaze over, removed from the hubbub. Admirable. I’m glad he took my hint.’

Charles took courage to say that he thought the interior decoration not worthy of the site.

‘My dear fellow, I agree. I have been meaning to change it ever since I came into office, but there are so few people one can trust in a matter of this kind that one has to do everything oneself. There are hardly any officials who have any taste, or even knowledge of what constitutes furniture in a European sense. They have a little card, you know, in the Public Works Department, telling them how many chairs and how many tables are needed for so many cubic feet of space in a room—and that is all they have to guide them.’

‘And they have no local standards of taste? No tradition of their own?’ Charles asked.

‘Ah, no, my dear fellow, spare us that. Spare us the hotels of Damascus hung with romantic Eastern carpets to snare the tourist. No, the Muslim world has a tradition of taste in religious architecture, but not in domestic. Doesn’t Herodotus say the same of the Greeks? Or was it the Egyptians? I know one was the reverse of the other. Look where the Moghul emperors lived, in comfortless stone sheds that are only fit for cattle. No, we must turn to the West for comfort and taste in our houses, and few of us can do it without a guide. I shall make it one of your first tasks to redecorate this guest-house and then in turn all our guest-houses and palaces. It will interest you, for I see you are a man of taste, and it will be an introduction to the administrative machine. You will learn the difficulties of achievement.’ He rose to his feet.

‘Now you must forgive me, but I have an appointment. A reception for the judges of the High Court, given by the Bar Association. And I have just come from a rally of Boy Scouts at which I had promised to look in. Next I go to a Buddhist festival.’ A graceful wave of the hand. ‘That is my life. I grudge it, you know, I grudge the time stolen from administration, but it is my duty. Now, will you come with me? It will be an introduction to the life of the island and we can talk on the way.’

They stood for a moment on the steps while the Prime Minister’s Rolls-Royce moved silently towards them. Charles gazed at the deep velvet of the sky, the diamond brilliance of the stars, the lights flashing with added beauty from the lake.

‘You will be surprised to find,’ said the Prime Minister, as they settled in the deep luxury of their seats, ‘you will be surprised to find how many of our great hereditary nobles remain aloof from public life. It is so different from your British traditions. Here I am sorry to say the head of a great family is often quite unfitted by his upbringing and education, or, I should say, lack of education, for any kind of leadership except that based on feudal privilege. My father was an exception, a most enlightened man, and he created a furore in the island when he sent me to school in England. And even that did not satisfy him; he insisted that after Oxford I should travel in Europe and that I should take service in India under an enlightened Maharajah. The result is that you see in me a Cincinnatus.’ He folded his arms with some complacency.

‘You mean,’ said Charles, remembering Sir Hubert’s hint, ‘that you would like to leave the Premiership and return to plough your acres?’ But the drought of that slight and elegant figure at the plough seemed too fantastic even for tonight.

‘Not perhaps that I should like to, for there are many things to be done for my country which I flatter myself only I can do. But I am ready to go if it is my country’s wish. I can be happy in rustic retirement because I have my own resources. I am a philosopher and I can be happy anywhere with the consolations of philosophy.’

‘It is a public-spirited attitude,’ said Charles. He was extremely tired but he felt that his end of the conversation must be maintained. He went on with an effort: ‘I notice you say philosophy, not religion.’

‘I am glad you have seized on that,’ said El Hadramauti, ‘and I trust you will not misunderstand me. I am a Muslim and I believe in the destiny of Islam. But the formal observances of religion have become a curse throughout the East. They separate one man from another and cause wars and hatred, just like your religious wars in France in the sixteenth century. But here the trouble is more pervasive and more abiding. We shall not be free of it till the people become philosophers like myself and can look on the outward trappings and ceremonies of religion as unimportant. But here we are. I shall introduce you to a few people and then leave you to your own devices.’

The long room, which was the library of the Bar Association, was crowded with books, busts, pictures, was in fact just like any other library except for the heat, the fans and its occupants. At the moment it had put on an air of gaiety which was obviously foreign to its usual mood. The busts were crowned coquettishly with wreaths of evergreen, there were chains of coloured paper looped from one sombre portrait to another, a general air of the church hall decorated for the annual Christmas party. There were small tables and sofas and moving, melting, regrouping themselves between them, the shifting colours of a bed of tulips; women’s dresses, men’s coats and turbans, in deepest red, pale pink, emerald, primrose, with here a bed of saffron, gold, orange and black; here blues and greens and silver, melting and moving, changing and shifting.

Charles was led to a sofa and presented to a very small man in a long brown coat much the shape of Mr. Micawber’s surtout, with an enormous turban of ivory-coloured silk edged with gold. His face was the shrewd, kindly face of a lawyer and a scholar, the colour of old parchment.

‘One of the Hindu members of our High Court,’ the Prime Minister remarked and melted away. Charles was beyond rational conversation; he began rather feverishly to talk of his journey, his first view of the island, the heat, but before he had given his companion the chance of a reply, his arm was again taken by the Prime Minister and he was led away.

‘I must introduce you to Begum Nawaz Ali Khan. Her husband is one of the High Court judges, her uncle is Nawab Yusuf Dost-i-Fateh, a member of the Cabinet. You’ll like her immensely. She’s charming.’

She was dressed, as indeed were all the ladies, in the filmy sari that flatters the wearer and blends gracefully with others in a large party. Hers was of the palest cyclamen, and there were touches of deep blue and royal purple in the fringe and on the breasts. Her lively, black eyes flashed from a complexion of rose and ivory; she began to talk at once with a gaiety that was infectious even to Charles, worn as he was and reeling beneath the rapidity with which sounds, pictures and thoughts were striking him.

‘So this is your first day in Chamba, Mr. Bolsover? Well, I shan’t ask how you like it till you’ve been here at least a fortnight, for you won’t have had time to form an impression. But we must give you every chance. We mustn’t waste a single opportunity. Now let me see!’

She struck one finger, heavy with emeralds, on to the palm of the other hand.

‘There is Toto’s birthday party, the day after tomorrow. It is a party for children and relations, a family party really, but you must come because you will see what we are like at home, we Chambans, and you will like it—’ she stopped and looked at him—‘yes, you will like it, for I think you are simple at heart. Now, don’t try to answer that, for I know it only embarrasses the English to talk about themselves. Tell me, what do you do, you poor unfortunate English, to make up for the pleasure you lose by never pouring out your troubles to each other? To us it is the dearest of human pleasures.’

‘Some of us do,’ said Charles, ‘but those who don’t—and I agree with you there are many—I suppose are compensated by a feeling of superiority over other people. That is what they find in denying themselves a pleasure.’

‘How strange,’ she said, ‘now with us, I do not think that a feeling of superiority could ever come for that reason. But we are more simple and more gay than you. And because we are happy at home we stay there and do not roam about the world disturbing its peace as you English have done. So no one has ever heard of us. We are not famous but we are happy.’

‘But you have your ascetics,’ he said, going back to her first thought.

‘Ah, but that is different. That is duty to God, not superiority over one’s neighbour.’

‘Our Puritanism started as a duty to God, but it has stayed behind when we have forgotten the reason for it. And I agree with you, I do not much like it in its present form.’

‘Well, tonight let us not talk of Puritanism or asceticism, but you must have some of these kababs; they are roast meat, cooked in the Moghul style: and here are sweets, and nuts. And you would like some whisky. Now do not forget, you are coming to Toto’s birthday party. You will have to be simple and happy there but you will not find that difficult for I am sure you are simple at heart beneath all your Puritanism and your—what is the word?’

‘Complexity? Tangles?’

‘That is it. Complexity of the brain.’

‘And who is Toto?’ Charles asked.

‘He is my son. He is twelve. His real name is Mohammad Inayat Ali Khan. But we have always called him Toto. And after that you will come home with us and have a drink and then we shall take you to my father-in-law’s golden wedding celebration. We shall have dinner there; there will be food in the Persian style as well as Moghul and South Indian. You will enjoy it, I know. Ah, here is His Highness again.’

He was, and he had come to take Charles to the Buddhist festival. Here fortunately conversation was impossible and one could sit still, stunned as much by the flaring of paraffin torches as by the drums thudding in broken, unfamiliar rhythm, stunned by the strangeness of mail-clad dancers sweeping the dark away with swords like flails; of silver towers borne swaying and tilting through a flame-lighted circle, plumed with smoke; of bodies half-naked, brown, plump and shining, that ran doubling and turning into the light and vanished; of laughter, enjoyment, carnival and always the thudding pulse of the drums.

‘An introduction to Chamba,’ said the Prime Minister, once more on the way back to the guest-house. He invited Charles to dinner next day and drove away, leaving Charles to face the horrors of the lounge, constant offers of whisky by the Cockney guest-master, a six-course dinner, and at last, at long last, bed, bed, where it did not matter that the room was hot, stuffy and over-furnished, that the pillows were like wood, where nothing mattered at all and deep sleep engulfed him; a tormented sleep in which the Prime Minister talked Cockney and strange figures leaped in the torchlight and asked whether he was simple at heart, but still sleep, blessed sleep.

III

He had slept well that first night, Charles thought, a year later, turning over again. It was airless, lying indoors in the magnificent, comfortless bedroom, but it would have been worse in the garden, for although the night would be cooler there, the sentries would be a disturbance, pacing to meet each other with heavy, nailed boots and noisy grounding of rifle butts. Turning again, he slackened the effort that drought required, and at once images of the day’s doings flooded back, shapeless and inconsequent as the visions of fever, till they were swept aside by the memory of that moment of fear, infinitely short, infinitely long, when he had looked down on the mob.

He sat up in bed and decided to start the night again. A sip of iced water; he pulled out the mosquito net from under the mattress, swung out his feet, shuffled into sandals, for he had been warned a dozen times against scorpions. He clacked naked across the marble floor to the bathroom, turned on the shower and stepped under it. He stood, letting the water stream over his shoulders, feeling it run over his loins and down his legs. He put his face under it and wet his hair; it was tepid, for it had not cooled after the day even to the slight degree the air had done; he wished there was a touch of sharpness in it, a coolness to tingle and sting. He dried himself as slowly as he could, hoping the exertion would not make him sweat, but by the time he had reached his feet, his arms and shoulders were moist again. All the same, he was refreshed. He went back to the bed, straightened the sheet, turned over the pillow, climbed in, tucked in his net. High in the darkness under the lofty roof, the fan creaked uneasily; it did not make him much cooler because of the net, but the net, they all told him, was essential for a newcomer to the island.

Now he would try to sleep. He would shut out all thought of that moment of blind, frozen fear, he would try with all his resolution to keep out inconsequent images, to apply the discipline of thought and hope it would the him into sleep.

He went back to the point from which he had begun. Chance; it was chance that had brought him to the island. But was it after all? Wasn’t there a pattern, if only an ironical one, in the fate, or not to beg the question, the series of coincidences that had put him in the place he held, he who knew how easy it was to kill a boy’s confidence in himself and in his power to mould his character? Ironical, because of that moment of fear; if it hadn’t been for that, it might have been all to the good that he did know the kind of things you must not let a boy feel.

Images flowed back on to that drifting screen, but they were images of his childhood and he did not banish them, for they were a part of his thought.

‘Do you think you will like it here, darling?’ He could hear her voice, he could see the square, snub-nosed little boy that was himself looking up at his mother. She was a scent and a texture rather than a picture, dark, soft furs, a bunch of violets at her breast, a face that was cold through her veil when she laid her cheek on his. She was the haven, the centre of his world and he could no more make a picture of her than of life or food or breath. But he knew what he expected of her, as he did of food. There was something deep inside him that regarded her question as frivolous, that knew his answer would make no difference to whether he was sent to school here. That deep inner consciousness told him not to answer directly and all he said was:

‘Everything’s very big.’

The answer was an evasion, but it was true that bigness was the impression that remained of that first visit. Everything at Harcombe Hall was big; the stone-paved, glass-roofed lobby, the big schoolroom, a long, unfriendly room with forms, hot-water pipes and shelves; the changing-room, smelling of carbolic soap and coir matting; the wide, echoing corridors with their stone floors. Biggest of all, the headmaster, S. S.

He really was big, physically big, and a big man, however you looked at him, even now. Charles dwelt on him, trying to separate the man as he had really been from the myth, the institution, the deity, he had been to small boys. If he had been put by fate at the head of a revolutionary war machine, now, a Danton or a Cromwell, he would have inspired and terrified the ragged masses into just what he wanted, you could be sure of that. From boys too, he had got what he wanted, scholarships and wins at cricket, and he would have been shocked if you had told him he treated his pupils as cannon fodder and used them as ends for his immediate purposes only. Why, he told every boy to write to him twice a term after he left, and they did write and every letter was answered, by return, in that stiff, illegible handwriting, sharply sloped, angular, uncompromisingly masculine:

Glad to hear you got your remove and have a chance for your house fifteen. Wilkins major (minor in your time) got top scholarship at Eton last term and Dickinson was sixth at Winchester. I thought he would do better. One day I shall get top at both the same year, my life’s ambition. On the whole we didn’t do so badly with Smith at Rugby, Bostock at Uppingham and young Martin at Shrewsbury. We beat Onslow by an innings and Gale Court by four wickets so it was quite a good term. Write again soon, Yours ever, S.S.

Charles pictured him, striding to and fro in the big schoolroom before breakfast, teaching divinity, which meant Old Testament history.

‘You must understand,’ he said, ‘that the Jews came out of the desert a first-class fighting people. Forty years of training they’d had, forty years of hard living and fighting, training for what was to come. They were fit and well trained. And then when they reached the promised land they went soft. Soft and rotten. They forgot the Lord, who’d brought them up out of the wilderness. They went after strange gods. The Lord was a jealous God but a just God. He punished them. But he punished them only until they turned back to Him. That was enough. Then He forgave He weighed out the right amount of punishment for the crime.’

Just like S. S., Charles thought. Only you’d never forget him and go after other gods. He remembered the boy who had dared to glance at the clock in S. S.’s Latin hour and had had to stand on a bench for two hours on a half-holiday, holding a note-book in one hand and writing in pencil with the other the name of everyone who came into the room and the exact time of his entry. That was his idea of weighing out the right amount of punishment for the crime.

All his punishments, like Jehovah’s, were terrible in their justice. There was a clear distinction between crimes that were a moral disgrace and those that were merely a breach of discipline. Lying, bullying, those were really bad; the birch in private, or a public caning in front of the whole school, those were the punishments for such offences. And how terrible they were, those public canings. the school lined up, the culprit called out and bent over, the whistle of the cane, and S. S.’s thundercloud brow perhaps the most terrible part of the whole business!

But ragging in the dormitory or breaking a window, that carried no moral stigma. A grim smile, four sharp cuts on the rump, and it was over; no malice on either side. Slacking was something between the two extremes; there was a real stigma attached, but not to the same degree as to lying. Not only was S. S. angry but such was the man’s influence that the whole school despised you for slacking, whether at work or games. Six cuts for slacking lowered your stock; four for ragging rather sent it up.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; and they had loved him, every one of them, as the Israelites loved Jehovah; they could not help it because he was just and terrible and because he was jealous, utterly absorbed in them. No one ever made fun of S. S. behind his back, as they did of other masters; no one spoke ill of him. The fear of the Lord was always present, but it was more than fear, it was love, the spaniel’s love, the love of the completely dominated for the master who is indeed a master. And the love and fear lasted long after you had left; it was years before you questioned his judgments or his standards.

They were clear, definite judgments, neatly indexed and docketed, annotated in red ink, filed in his mind. Every boy was classified for work, cricket and character: clever but idle, clumsy but keen, a useful slow bowler but no bat, Latin prose will do but will always be slow at verses. And, like Jehovah, he was unchanging; he made up his mind and there it was. The Lord had made up His mind about David, King of Israel, whom Charles felt he knew almost as though he were a boy at Harcombe; he was the cheerful, high-spirited type that S. S. would classify as a useful all-rounder, and the Lord loved him, just as S. S. loved that kind of boy. But the Lord was much less just than S. S., for David would bump off his best friend or the man he proposed to cuckold and it was no more than ragging in the dormitory. S. S.’s justice was if anything a little more terrible for those he loved.

Nothing changed his judgments because they were always right. You knew that that relentless eye had seen your weakness and that it was filed neatly away in the card index of the brain, never to be recovered or forgotten. If others patted you on the back, if you seemed a success at public school and Oxford, it meant only that S. S. had done a good job in teaching you to hide what you knew and he knew but no one else.

Charles’s mother, of course, had had complete faith in S. S. Who wouldn’t? He had made an ally of her and those quiet, loving talks had been worse than six for slacking. She wanted so much of a boy, in every sense of the words. Well, S. S. got his results, everything he tried for, and it was only twenty years later that Charles had realized that he got them at the expense of everything he ought to have given his pupils. But Charles had come to see it at last and that was why he might not have been a bad choice to look after Salim if it hadn’t been for this afternoon, that moment of sheer panic when the mob—

But he checked himself again. His thoughts must not dwell on that or he would never sleep. The discipline of connected memories, put into words in the right order, that would bring sleep, memories of all that had led up to that moment he could not forget, memories of his first coming to Chamba, of the beginning of his work there. He would go back to his memories and then he would sleep.

IV

It was Toto’s birthday party and everyone was happy. The sun shone on the lake, a little wind, rippled the water and stirred the leaves of the tamarisks. It was cooler up here than down in Timurabad and now that the candles had been lighted, the cake had been cut and tea was finished, everyone was joining in the games. Begum Nawaz Ali Khan was leading the long string of children and grown-ups in Oranges and Lemons, her dark eyes flashing with merriment. She was singing the old song but as no one else was sure of the words, her clear voice was unaccompanied except by a kind of buzzing and humming which the others made in trying to back her up. Two members of the Executive Council of His Magnificence stood with joined hands raised over the heads of the bobbing, laughing chain, waiting with cheerful absorption for the chopper to chop off your head.

Excitement mounted as the crucial words grew nearer; everyone hurried to get through the arch and the squeals and laughter of the youngest grew louder. The last little tot was safely through, and it was the turn of the leader to run the gauntlet again. The Begum paused for a second, for as she was providing the music she was faced with a choice. It would be cheating to slow down the music until she was safely through the arch; she tried to sing at the same pace but to quicken the speed at which she moved. Inevitably the song quickened too; her ‘chop off your head!’ was lost in a peal of laughter as she darted through the arch and the chopper fell. The joined hands did not quite catch her, they scraped the sari from her head and revealed her black hair, plaited in a long, girlish pigtail on her back. But Charles was caught and firmly held.

‘Oranges or Lemons?’ whispered His Honour the Nawab Yusuf Dost-i-Fateh Bahadur.

‘Oranges,’ Charles replied hoarsely, resolved to put lemons and Puritans and complexity behind him for ever.

Oranges won the tug of war but only by a narrow margin, for untroubled by symbolism the rest of the grown-ups voted for lemons and thus balanced the children’s choice of oranges. The Begum wanted Oranges and Lemons again, but Toto asked for Twos and Threes, feeling that it was rather babyish to play Oranges and Lemons now that he was twelve. He was a neat little boy, beautifully made in miniature, with the broad shoulders and narrow hips of a boxer, quick on his toes, his skin like polished bone.

‘You must play too, Mummy,’ he cried. ‘You must all play.’

‘It’s a continual surprise to me to hear him talk English to his mother,’ Charles said to the Nawab Yusuf, who was taking off his coat and rolling up his sleeves for this more strenuous amusement.

‘It is partly in compliment to you,’ he said, ‘but then you see these are English games and you know we are almost bi-lingual in English and Urdu, the Moghul Court language. Most of us speak Telegu or Tamil as well, according to the district where our estates lie.’

They were standing in pairs in a circle. Charles stood behind the Begum. She was utterly unconscious of him, her thoughts fixed only on the game.

‘You begin, Toto,’ she cried. ‘You are it. You must chase Aunt Fatima.’

Aunt Fatima, thin and faded, in a pink sari, uttered a sharp squawk, and like a hen escaping from a would-be captor, plunged across the circle with Toto behind her, active as a hawk. The sari flew off her head, her grey pigtail flapped, with astonishing nimbleness she slipped between one couple and the next and found refuge in front of her brother the Nawab Yusuf.

The Nawab Yusuf was certainly over sixty, but he was slim as a boy. His clear, pale countenance showed his Persian and Moghul ancestry. Not a trace there of the darker, pudgier features of those who had come to the island from South India. He was wearing a silk shirt and a tussore suit; without the coat and with his sleeves rolled up, he still looked elegant, but his elegance was practical and active as though he were ready to mow the lawn himself or knock up a hundred for the parents. He stood watching Toto chase a friend of his own age; the friend was caught and Toto, twisting, doubling, slipping, shrieking with laughter, flung himself into the arms of Aunt Fatima. Now the Nawab was the quarry; he too ran and doubled, dodged and turned, hardly less swiftly than Toto.

All were absorbed in the game. They had eyes for nothing else while it lasted. Happy laughter rang among the tree-tops. But the game drew to an end, for the elders were too breathless to play longer, and the dusk was beginning to fall, the short, magic dusk of Chamba, when the sky glows green and gold and the colours mingle with the silver of the lake. Charles stood gazing over the still water by the side of the Nawab Yusuf as they put on their coats.

‘It’s a pretty place, isn’t it?’ said the Nawab. ‘And how could one spend the afternoon more charmingly than playing with happy children?’

Charles agreed with him and thought too how charming it was to meet grown people who could lose themselves happily and without self-consciousness in children’s games. And he found time now to reflect with pleasure on the strangeness of hearing the bells of St. Clement’s and the bells of St. Martin’s here in a grove of tamarisks on the bank of a lake in Chamba.

They drove back to Timurabad in the purple dusk, the stars pricking one by one through the luminous dark, the rock outcrops cutting the sky in shapes more grotesque than ever. Charles was to go to the guest-house and change, then to return to the house of Nawaz Ali Khan, the Begum’s husband. He had his own car, placed at his disposal by the Prime Minister, and asked if he could take anyone else. Everyone was provided for, but the Nawab Yusuf, feeling it inhospitable to let Charles travel in lonely state, asked for a lift. It was, thought Charles, nice of him to put it like that; an Englishman would probably have said ‘I’ll come to keep you company,’ and thus clumsily put the obligation on the other instead of tactfully taking it himself.

They did not talk much as they drove homewards but sat lapped in a friendly silence, content at the happiness of the afternoon. Only the Nawab said once:

‘These are strange times. There is much to fear but much to hope for. All who love Chamba must pray that we may be wisely guided.’

Charles asked what exactly he meant, but they had arrived at the guest-house. The Nawab promised to be more explicit later in the evening? Charles told the driver to take the Nawab home and come back in half an hour. He went to his shower and clean clothes with a feeling of idleness well-spent.

And indeed, he thought, if you were content to be idle, Chamba could be a charming place. To work here, to wrestle with obstacles, that might be different; you might find the heat at once enervating and irritating. But for idleness, it was delightful. After the first day of the heat, he had grown used to it and found that as long as no exertion was called for it filled him with a sense of well-being. And there was a depth of luxury in the continual bathing. The morning and evening shower, the midday swim and sun-bath, were active pleasure to look forward to. The evening bath in particular, when you came home sticky after the day, sticky and a little tired, that was a pleasure; pleasant to let the water run over your body, pleasanter still to emerge, clean and refreshed, to rest for a few minutes in the cool breeze of a fan, to snatch twenty minutes reading a favourite poem and reading it slowly again, conscious as you read of your refreshed and rested body.

And how conscious of the body you were at such times, conscious of every muscle, every firm and rounded surface. It is from the east and the south, from the hot lands, he thought, that consciousness of the body has come. It is they who in religion have made the denial of the body so important and they who by thought and study have raised its gratification in love to the rank of an art.

When he reached the house of Nawaz Ali Khan, the High Court Judge who was the Begum’s husband, he found that a dozen guests were already there, talking on the veranda, eating salted almonds and potato chips or Little balls of pea-flour rolled in savoury batter. He walked up the steps and then almost at once he was in a chair, with things to nibble at his elbow, with a cigarette and a drink, and at his side the Begum, undisturbed by the cares of hospitality and ready to talk.

‘You are right,’ he said to her, thinking of his afternoon, ‘you are a happy people.’

‘We are a naturally happy people, naturally happy and gay,’ she said, ‘but just now there is uneasiness in our hearts. I will not call it fear. It is not so definite as fear. But my husband will tell you of that, or my father.’

‘You make me wonder whether all people are naturally happy,’ he said. ‘You remember—“Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.” They are not only political chains. Is it only the viciousness and folly of man that has enslaved us and are we in the West twisting and tormenting ourselves for nothing, I wonder?’

‘And not yourselves only,’ she said at once, ‘for your uneasiness is disturbing the whole world. You don’t mind my being frank?’

‘Of course not. And of course you’re right. Though it was not only the West that disturbed the world in the war. Japan—’

‘Oh, I don’t mean the war,’ she said, ‘that—’ her fingers fluttered—‘that was inevitable. An upgrowth of evil that had to burst forth, like some evil in the body that has to come out. No, I mean since the war, this sickness of yours that makes you in such a hurry for new ideas.’

She paused and Charles waited, feeling that if he spoke too soon she might easily be turned aside from her real meaning to lose herself in phrases. But she was silent and he helped her noncommittally by saying gently:

‘New ideas? Sickness?’

‘You must talk to the men about what I mean,’ she said, ‘for the men give these things names. But I am sure it is true, that the West is upsetting the world because of an unrest in her own soul. You keep trying new things and pretending that there is something wonderful about them. Counting votes. Machines. Children being rude to their parents. It is like when you have fever and toss and turn in bed and all the bedclothes come off. Every thing is disturbed. The whole house is upset.’

‘And you in Chamba? You are being disturbed? It seems so peaceful.’

‘It is peaceful on the surface. There is much unrest, everywhere, more than unrest. Upheaval. But the men will tell you of that.’

‘How beautiful the nights are here,’ he said, gazing down the garden to where the ruins of a Moghul summerhouse crowned an outcrop of rock, for he felt she did not want to say more. The moon had risen and carved the silver stone with fantastic shadows.

‘Not the days?’

‘No, I do not find the days beautiful,’ he said. ‘I don’t like the glare nor the red earth nor this torrid rock. But morning and evening, the nights, these velvet skies, the lights on the lake, the brightness of the stars—’ he left the sentence unfinished.

They talked on until it was time to go to the Golden Wedding.

‘It is not really a Moghul tradition, this Golden Wedding. It is something we have borrowed from you, and so we have had to invent the ceremony you will see. We shall begin with the ceremony, and then there will be dinner and it will be just like an ordinary party,’ the Begum explained.

‘You speak, all of you,’ Charles said, ‘as though the Moghuls were still on the throne. And yet it is more than two hundred years since you proclaimed your independence of them.’

‘But we preserve their traditions. Ours are the last remnants of Moghul culture. And the blood of Akbar runs in the veins of our Sultan.’

They had arrived. They were ushered up flights of steps to a house built on top of a rock. They were led through wide and spacious halls, one opening into another, with alcoves and small rooms opening from these again, with arched openings like unglazed windows from one room to the next, bewildering as a maze. There were rugs everywhere, low divans, carpets heaped with cushions, tiger skins and panther skins in profusion, little other furniture. The guests seemed to be in hundreds, a few of the men in western evening dress, more in a tight evening coat buttoning up to the neck, beautifully cut, that was sometimes black but as often silver, blue, gold or richly embroidered with a dozen colours, the buttons of diamond or ruby or chased enamel. With the coat went a coloured turban or a plain cap of the same stuff as the coat. The women as always were in graceful saris of a hundred subtle and glowing shades.

The Begum Nawaz Ali Khan and her party arrived only just in time for the ceremony. Already two long lines were being formed.

‘These are all his descendants,’ whispered the Begum, ‘not me, for I am only connected by marriage, but his children and grandchildren and the grandchildren of his father. All the young ones.’

There was laughter, much happy laughter, much shouting of jokes, and then the honoured couple who were celebrating their golden wedding came into the room and ran the gauntlet of the two lines of their cousins and children. They were pelted with rose-leaves all the way, and the laughter rose higher and higher as they tried to protect themselves against the soft showers of petals. At the head of the line they turned to face their tormentors and sat on two small stools enveloped in gold brocade.

Everyone sat down and the girls who had been throwing roses thronged forward and settled on cushions round the thrones like a bed of many-coloured flowers. One of them began to sing, a long song of many verses, with a refrain after each verse in which everyone joined. Bursts of laughter greeted almost every line and the singer had often to wait till the laughter died before she went on. The verses seemed to describe the habits and character of the hero with affectionate mockery and he rocked with delight at the happiest hits; the refrain was clearly an integral part of each verse and part of the skill of the composer seemed to lie in leading up to the refrain with a verse that it would neatly cap.

There was the same forgetfulness of self, the same complete happiness in the moment, that Charles had noticed during the afternoon. Every eye glowed with joy; the same delight was to be seen on Toto’s face as on that of his grandfather, whose huge frame shook so much from laughter that it seemed it must burst out of his superlative coat, in which stripes of gold brocade alternated with an embroidered pattern of blue and yellow, a pattern gorgeously repeated in his turban. Toto was sitting on the arm of a sofa along which a panther skin had been draped. He held the ears in his hands and occasionally lifted the snarling head and shook it in his glee. His well-shaped little body was neatly cased in a coat of glistening cloth of gold. In contrast with the barbaric beast, his clear features and the clean moulding of his skull stood out with the beauty of line of a greyhound or a trout.

Charles looked across the parterre of singing girls to a woman sitting opposite, sitting alone, listening with a gentle smile to the voices of her friends. She was dressed in pale blue and silver; her rings and earrings were sapphire. Her face was delicate in colouring and in line, a proud face with an arch to the eyebrow, the least touch of an arch to the nose, a drooping, beautiful mouth; her hands drooped softly in her lap. He was filled with wonder at the aloneness and the individuality of man; there she sat, beautiful, smiling, utterly alone, and he could never know her spirit.

His eyes turned to a man standing a yard behind her, a tall man in a black coat, whose black cap had a character of its own, for it was taller than the usual straight affair like a forage cap, so tall that it had an air about it of the top hat, but a top hat worn rakishly by an Edwardian dandy at the races. This too was worn rakishly, and in an odd way matched the face below it, a face at once elegant and ugly, both sophisticated, for it looked as though its owner had sampled every pleasure in the world, and yet simple, for he could still lose himself happily in the sight of others being happy. The thick, black brows were steeply arched, the nose shapeless and broken, the mouth mobile, twisted, with one half smiling and the other wryly regarding it, the lips full and sensuous. The kind of face, Charles thought, that a woman would find irresistible.

And just as he was thinking that he would like to talk to that face, he felt his shoulder squeezed by the Nawab Yusuf, who said:

‘I see that you are looking at my friend Nawab Kamal Dost-i-Fateh. Let me introduce you to him.’

When he had shaken hands, Charles said:

‘I’m afraid I still find your names hopelessly confusing. Why are so many of you called Dost-i-Fateh?’

‘It is not really a name,’ said the man with the eyebrows, smiling in a way that said he liked talking to you and was interested in what you said, ‘it is a title. It is quite easy to understand, far easier than your eldest sons of peers with one kind of title and younger sons of marquises with another kind, and the daughters of earls different from the sons.’

‘It might well be easier than ours, I agree,’ said Charles, ‘and in fact I have seldom met a foreigner who knew so much of ours as you obviously do.’

‘Oh, I have been a snob, once, but I hope I have grown out of it. Now, ours—would you like me to explain?’

‘Of course.’

‘It is easy. There are different ranks in our nobility according to the estate, its size and the powers that the owner has over the inhabitants. But there is only one title, and you may have it without an estate or with one. It is personal and is given by the Sultan and he may give it to me but he need not give it to my son. Now my name is Kamal ud Din, and I should be called Sayyed Kamal ud Din Raza if the Sultan had not given me the title but because of that I am Nawab Kamal Dost-i-Fateh. We are all Dost-i-Fateh except the Prime Ministers and very occasionally someone else who is very distinguished. They are called Fateh Jang, which means victorious in war; while we are Dost-i-Fateh, which means Friend of Victory.’

‘It is a name that might well be given to courtiers all the world over,’ said Charles.

Kamal laughed.

‘That is well said and it is true, particularly in our oriental despotisms; but of course the meaning is not that. It does not mean a toady, one who follows victory, but one to whom victory comes, one who is fortunate, lucky you would say, in war against the Sultan’s enemies.’

‘Of course,’ said Charles, and after a moment’s pause he went on:

‘You seem to me a fortunate people. I have not yet been here three days, but today, my third day, I have been enchanted by the simplicity with which I have seen people enjoying themselves. A gay happiness I have seen, and invariable good manners.’

‘All, yes, good manners,’ said Kamal. ‘That is with us what you would call de rigueur. It comes before everything. You may cut a man’s throat or his purse provided you do it like a gentleman. But you may not take his wife,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘That is where we are different from your western society of rank and wealth, English and American. That would not be good manners. It is the Moghul tradition, this of good manners, you know; it does much to smooth the edges of life. But we go too far; we cannot forgive a man who is a boor, even if he is a sincere well-wisher. A man may be good at heart, but we cannot see it if he is rude and inconsiderate. We go too far.’

‘But it is more than formal good manners,’ said Charles, ‘there is a genuine kindness and friendliness in the way I have been received today. And yet two people have said to me that beneath this happiness there is anxiety.’

‘Anxiety. Yes, perhaps there is. For those who think, there is often anxiety beneath the surface. What do you say? Would you care to stroll in the cool of the garden? It is a little what you call stuffy in here.’

Charles agreed and they moved down a gravel path that ran out on a spur of rock. It ended in a small pond and a fountain, by the side of which there was a seat. Here they sat, forty or fifty feet above the level of the plateau, gazing down over the lights of the city, which sloped slightly towards the lake.

‘Do not misunderstand me,’ said the Nawab, ‘this is not what in Europe you call a police state. The yoke is very light and in private we say what we think. Of course, we of the court cannot make any public utterance against the regime, but then we do not want to, we of the old Moghul families, for we are part of it. Yes, in private we say what we wish, but all the same I am a little careful for I do not like gossip. What I might say to you could be twisted and magnified on a hundred tongues, and there are many of these people of good family who do not like my views.’

He was silent, gazing over the twinkling lights of the city. The lights from beyond the lake were reflected in the water which gave back to the moon a luminous pallor that hung like a mist over its whole expanse.

Charles said:

‘We are speaking of an anxiety beneath this simple happiness.’

‘Do you wonder?’ said the Nawab. ‘You must realize that this is a Muslim State but the people are Hindu or Buddhists. We are a feudal society from another age. We are as you say very happy, and so on the whole are the peasants. The taxes would not be any less if this was a democracy; in fact you can be sure they would be more. There would be a host of inspectors and bureaucrats to be paid. And as for freedom, the peasant here has far greater freedom to live his own life than you have now in England, where you need a permit for this and a coupon for that. He can grumble a bit, the peasant, say what he likes as long as it is not too outrageous, like you in England; but he is more free than you because he can have a drink when he wants to or keep chickens without a permit. If there was a democratic government here, it would not be like that; they would start to hustle the poor peasant. They would try to change his ways, make him educate his children and not drink so much toddy. All very well, but it makes unhappiness if you move people too fast, I mean faster than they are ready to go. It is like driving cows. You spoil the milk if you go too fast.’

‘Then this anxiety is something that has been growing for a long time? You, the feudal nobility, realize that you are out of step with the rest of the world—you may be right, they may be wrong, but you agree that you are out of step—and you fear that you cannot much longer preserve your idyllic medieval island?’ Charles asked.

‘No, it is much more than that. For a few of us, yes, that feeling has always been there, but you see we relied on the British. British rule in India we thought was there for ever. You talked of going, but we did not believe you meant it. No one believed you, no one in India, nor the Americans nor the French.’

‘That’s true,’ said Charles. ‘No one believed it but ourselves. And even we believed it rather as you believe when you are young that one day you will die, but it isn’t part of your immediate programme.’

‘Exactly. And, if you will forgive my saying so, that is just like you English. You say you are going to do something and you believe it in just that way—but you do not do it and you are really shocked when other people are a little cynical about your intentions. But we—we did not even believe it like that. We thought it was just talk to soothe the Congress. And as long as you stayed in India, we knew that you would take care that here in Chamba there was quiet and peace. Oh, there are people who would say it is hypocritical of me to talk of peace; we are the haves and of course we want peace and nothing changed. But I believe myself that peace is for the good of all in the island except perhaps a few score arrivistes who would make themselves important if there was democracy.’

‘I see. You thought it was just talk. And now?’

‘And now, in the summer of 1946, with this strange new government of yours in England, it begins to look as though you really meant to leave India. And for us, that means many decisions and much unrest. We shall resume our independence and His Magnificence will become His Majesty. That indeed is of the first importance. The first consideration. But then for His Majesty there will be a few little details to be considered. To be independent is all very grand and what you call grown up, but it is a little frightening when you are a small island in a hungry world. You know, we are very dependent. We need you to protect us in war and India to take our exports and send us rice. We have not enough rice and only India will buy our spices. We need ships from India because we have no real harbour. You have seen our strange coast. No modern steamship can come into our harbours. They are not harbours at all. It is simply a coast of cliffs. The dhows and little country ships sail across from the Bombay coast and that is all. All our foreign imports come that way, razor-blades, motor cars, bicycles, toothpaste, as well as rice and petrol and coal. So you see we are very dependent.’

‘You are indeed,’ said Charles. ‘And suppose the British find a solution to this problem of Hindu and Muslim in India? Suppose they hand over?’

The Nawab waved his hand, in a gesture of resignation, as of one who must await what events will bring forth.

‘I do not see how they can hand over to anyone but the Congress Hindus. And to us they are the ultimate enemy. They are the slaves of theories, like all who have been long critics and have no practical experience, and at heart they are greedy for money and power. And they hate our religion. I say that we must fortify ourselves against them while there is time. We must make concessions now to their theories, foolish though they are, concessions that will make it difficult for them to pick a quarrel with us. We must have an Assembly, popular reforms. They will do nothing but harm, but we avoid a greater harm. One thing more, and this would be wise in itself; we must open the army, the police, the civil service here to the Hindus. Then we may be a united people again, as we were a year ago before this unrest began. But I am not very popular with our Muslim party. They know nothing of reality. They think we can be truly independent, defy India, defy the world, rely on the army of Chamba, God forgive them! They have never heard of aeroplanes or ships, and if you tell them we have no rice, no oil—forgive my mentioning the subject—no coal, no iron, they make a magnificent gesture, and that is all. Ah, I have no patience with them. But we must go back. It will be guessed that I am corrupting you.’

They sauntered back, sniffing the fragrance of the flowering bushes with which the path was bordered. Dinner was beginning; you took a plate and went to a table, and there you filled it. But Charles stood helpless, bewildered, for he could see nothing familiar. Someone was by his side at once, a small porcelain person in a dark blue sari powdered with tiny, golden stars. She told him what to take.

‘This!’ she said. ‘And this! And a little of this! No, not that, for it will be too hot for you. This is better, it is the Persian style. No, Aruna, I have not seen him.’

She turned away for a moment to speak to another woman and Charles’s hand hovered, his spoon dipped into something else that looked cool. He was sitting a minute later by the delicate little person dressed in the stars of the night. He began to talk about clothes, and she said:

‘It is nice of you to like our clothes, and I think you are right. The sari is one very good thing that has come to us in Chamba from India, and I think it is prettier than most of your western clothes. But oh, dear, what has happened? What can have befallen you?’

Scarlet and speechless, with tears pouring down his face, Charles could only point to his mouth and his plate. He had taken a spoonful of the dish to which he had helped himself while his adviser was not looking. It was as though he had bitten a hedgehog with every prickle incandescent with heat; white-hot, blinding pain for a moment, then a merciful anaesthesia. He felt now as if the whole mouth and jaw were frozen, some gigantic dentist having pumped in a double dose of cocaine behind each wisdom tooth. The agony had abated; but how to get rid of the mouthful? He felt it was unsafe to move his jaw or tongue at all; to try to chew and swallow would be the act of a madman.

But the Chambans were a kindly and considerate folk and he was led quickly to somewhere where he could spit. He rinsed his mouth and the water brought back some sensation, but it was a tender, excoriated surface that he gradually rediscovered and he went back to his table still feeling as though a dental operation had just been performed.

His little friend was full of reproaches for herself.

‘I should not have taken my eyes off you for a moment!’ she exclaimed. ‘You have taken a South Indian dish, and that is hot even to us.’

‘Do you mean to say it is meant to be like that and that you personally can eat it?’ Charles asked.

‘But of course. Though I am not very fond of South Indian dishes.’

Charles shook his head.

‘It seems to me very strange that you, so little and dainty, like a flower or a humming-bird, should be able to eat something for which I should need a lining of asbestos.’

She replied:

‘The ways of God are very various.’

It was a thought that was to occur to Charles constantly during the next year.

V

Charles wrote to Mell:

Well, today is a big day, for at last I am to see His Magnificence, or H.M. as everyone calls him. It may seem odd that I should have come to advise him—and what’s more, have been pressed to come quickly—and then to have been here over three weeks without setting eyes on him, but then things are like that in Chamba. With fingers on their mouths and secretive looks over their shoulders, they tell you it would be much better to do a thing in some very unobvious Through the Looking-Glass way, and knowing so little of the place as I do there’s no alternative to following their advice; but usually I can’t for the life of me see the point. In my own case, I suppose the argument is that H.M. mustn’t expose himself to the criticism of being pro-English; but if he’s really going to make use of me I shouldn’t have thought it would make much difference whether he started straight away or waited a month. However, perhaps he’s right; perhaps by now they will have got used to my being here and it may be that now I can do things without causing a fuss that would have started a great deal of excitement a fortnight ago. Like bird-watching; you push the hide a little closer every day.

I still have no mental picture of the man, for as I told you I wasn’t attending when Sir Hubert gave me what was no doubt a brilliant sketch of his character and appearance. I came back to the point again and asked for more about H.M., hoping Sir Hubert would repeat himself a certain amount, but he didn’t. He only inked in the bits he hadn’t told me before, which of course were the least important. As for people here, it would be asking too much to expect them to give one a clear idea of their ruler. They hint, but they can’t bring themselves to say very much. I think they are too dazzled to see him clearly; you might as well ask Sycorax and her son for a picture of Setebos. I gather that his clothes are very odd, and all his way of living highly unpredictable. They just can’t guess what he may want to spend money on next. But in politics it is easier to have an idea of what he may do, and most of them, I gather, spend their time thinking up what he would like them to say instead of giving genuine advice. The extraordinary thing, to my mind, is something I have heard from several sources very indirectly. It seems that if he doesn’t like a suggestion he will hardly ever turn it down openly. Either he will put off making a decision, on one excuse or another, until his adviser takes the hint and drops the proposal, or he will say yes, but let it be known in another quarter that he doesn’t like the idea. This may come back deviously to the original proposer, who of course packs up at once; or someone else may stir up an agitation against whatever it is, and then the Sultan, poor man, will be forced to yield to popular clamour. Not a very bright prospect for an adviser!

I have had several more talks with the Prime Minister. He I believe really does decide the line he thinks right and tries to persuade H.M. to take it. Sir Hubert was not far out; the Prime Minister is a genuine example of the Victorian liberal surviving into modern times. Not that there aren’t other examples surviving, of course, but I haven’t heard of any others in power. He really does seem to believe in democracy, the British kind of Parliamentary democracy, for this island—eventually—and wants to make genuine concessions now, but his only wholehearted supporter is the Nawab Kamal (whom I told you about in my last letter—the man with the eyebrows I met at the Golden Wedding party). The only reason why Kamal wants to start popular reforms and throw a sop to the Hindus is because he thinks that the lesser of two evils. He sees that when the British leave India, Chamba will have to make some kind of bargain with the new Indian government, and he thinks it will be Hindu and outwardly democratic. So he argues that a progressive regime which is friendly to the Hindus will get a better bargain than a reactionary Muslim government. A shrewd, charming, humorous cynic, but a kindly cynic; a realist if ever there was one. A Mediterranean type. But the Prime Minister is the British nineteenth-century statesman, a romantic at heart. Even his elegance is Victorian. He wears button boots with suede tops, beautifully made. I can’t think where he gets them.

I hope you don’t find all this too boring. I’ve never written to you about my work before, but it’s your own fault, for you wanted me to do something I should think about while I was shaving. And talking to you is like talking to myself.

I still haven’t told you about redecorating the guest-houses. The Prime Minister to my surprise really did want me to do it and he gave me carte blanche to go ahead. I could spend what I liked and do what I liked. You would never think of me as an interior decorator, and I don’t think I’ve come to look like one? I haven’t found it necessary to turn Chelsea and grow a beard. It was quite a simple matter to decide what was needed. All that was necessary was to choose a range of colours that would go together and be cool and restful to the eye. And to take away a few nude chromium females and the like. But getting it done! That was not so simple. As I went down in the official hierarchy, further and further from the wise and great man at the top who gives orders, closer and closer to the poor creature at the bottom who actually splashes about with a paint-brush, I came up against more and more difficulties. First there was a belt of officials who talked to me about indents and estimates and vouchers signed in triplicate, things I have always hated and never understood. They have an elaborate method of accounting which is based on the British system in India and is meant to avoid fraud. Of course it doesn’t, and it seems to me in my simple way that it would be far better to cut it right out. It would save much time and energy and if there are one or two honest men near the top of the organization they should be able to ensure that contractors do compete for jobs and undercut each other. They should have power to disembowel someone or do something else really picturesque and effective if costs go too high. If there isn’t even one honest man, you haven’t a hope anyhow, so why waste all this time and paper?

I cut my way through the voucher belt with a machete by going back to the Minister of Works. He gave orders to his subordinates to do as I told them and fixed on someone else to sign the vouchers and indents. All I have to do now is to sign the orders summarizing all I have said is to be done.

Next I got down to a deeper series of geological strata, pre-Cambrian you might say, where there really were tins of paint. But after we had spent hours painting little patches of wall in different colours and waiting till they dried to make sure they were the right shade of green, I came back two days later to find the half-witted creatures had happily sprayed half the house a nice bright blue. This of course didn’t go with anything else, but they put it right most cheerfully and obligingly, I must say. There have been several little set-backs of that kind, and work hasn’t been fast because most days are holidays. You see, we are so catholic about religion; we observe Muslim holidays, naturally, but Hindu, Christian, Buddhist and Jewish as well, so there aren’t many working days. Apart from all that, we get on splendidly. They are nice, amiable people and don’t resent doing things again, as I feel an English workman might. I like all the Chambans and feel happy among them.

Well, I seem to have written you a great deal, far more I am sure than you will write back, and not a word about you and me. Not that I don’t think a lot. You told me nothing in your letter about yourself; it was all about me, and very wise it was, and very gratifying of course, for who doesn’t like to feel he’s being taken an interest in? But I do long for real news about you. I never know, you see, how much you’re just being loyal and how much you do really love Raymond still. I know you did and you know that I do see what is lovable in him; but do you still? Not in the same way as at first of course; it must have changed to something more humorous and resigned, but is it still there at all, will it go on for ever, whatever he does? I told you long ago I should always love you, in a kind of way, but the kind of way has changed a lot: it’s had to. I told you. I had to make it change. You know it wasn’t easy. I’ve had to split love and lust apart; not a nice thing to do. Your love for him must have changed too—if it survives. But I don’t suppose you could tell me what has happened to it, even if you would, and I’m sure you won’t.

I’m not going on in this strain, and to make sure I don’t I shall lick up my envelope and post it at once. I’m expecting the Prime Minister, who is to take me to my interview with His Magnificence, and he’ll be here before long. What exalted circles I move in! I do enjoy it immensely, the unexpectedness of it all, the alternations between rich farce, charming comedy and Ruritanian politics—oh, the whole thing! Thank you very much, dear Mell, for encouraging me to come.

Charles

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The letter was hardly finished and dispatched to the post when the Prime Minister did arrive, rather ahead of his time and if possible more elegant than before. There was an added touch of formality in his clothes today, a white slip to the waistcoat, a very small camellia in the button-hole, grey suede gloves. He was as usual extremely cordial:

‘My dear fellow,’ he began, ‘I’m delighted to see you, I can hardly express to you what a pleasure it is to talk to someone who is intelligent and neither a gossip nor in any way concerned with local parties. How are you getting on with your decorations?’

Charles told him. The Prime Minister was amused by the belt of vouchers. He went on:

‘And don’t forget the gardens. The new guest-house with its terraces is not so bad, but the grounds of the two old ones need to be entirely recast. I told them months ago but nothing has happened. Now will you go to the Minister of Works—I will speak to him too—and get in touch with the experts and make a plan between you? Let me see it before you begin to carry it out in case I have any suggestions. I expect I shall. It’s a subject near to my heart. Be bold. Sweep away all those horrible palm trees. Let there be a clear view, and flowering shrubs on either side. Water down the middle—a series of ornamental ponds. You know the kind of thing.’

The car rolled smoothly on and reached the meeting-place of five important streets. There was no waiting for other traffic, for at the sight of the Prime Minister’s car in the distance police whistles blew shrilly and pedestrians and traffic were bundled out of the way as at the approach of a fire-engine.

‘Now here,’ said El Hadramauti, ‘there is great room for improvement. There must be an open space with grass and a fountain and probably a statue. It will mean sweeping away those shops, but in any case they are a disgrace to a modern town. The traffic will go round in a circle in accordance with modern ideas of town-planning. Lawns and water. They are the beautifiers of cities. And especially our hot eastern cities.’

‘And flowering trees,’ said Charles, with memories of Cairo.

‘Trees can be overdone. Avenues in the suburbs, yes. But here in the city, no trees, only space and wide vistas. I shall not ask you to take over this, for the Minister for Works might be hurt. Your next task must be something quite different. Have you given your attention yet to the feudal powers of our nobility?’

Charles confessed that he had not.

‘There is an excellent analysis in a dispatch sent by one of the envoys, some ten or fifteen years ago. You can get it from the Legation. It is still quite up to date. There has been no real change. The whole question is ripe for reform. It is an absurd survival; on some estates the feudal lords maintain the roads and post offices as well as being responsible for justice and keeping their own irregular troops. But we have surely reached at least the stage of development of your Tudor kings. We must centralize power in the Crown. You must make a study of the question and discuss it with me and then write a report. We will appoint a commission, introduce legislation, and reform the whole system. But here we are.’

They had arrived. The car turned in through a gate in a high, stone wall. On either side of the gate, three guards presented arms; each of the three wore a different uniform, one, as Charles afterwards discovered, being a soldier from the regular army, one a policeman and the third a member of the feudal levy from one of the great estates, for certain of the nobility had the privilege of supplying in turn a guard for the palace.

They drove across a wide square of untidy gravel and drew up in a covered porch before a vast, rambling building to which wings and rooms seemed to have been added frequently and indiscriminately. The Prime Minister remarked in an undertone:

‘I wish I could give you the task of re-designing and redecorating here.’

The Prime Minister’s A.D.C. left the front seat by the driver and opened the door of the car. Two more A.D.C.s appeared from the house. The party entered a large hall, strewn with rugs, the walls decorated with tigers and the heads of deer, bison and buffaloes; an elephant’s head, with trunk curled up as if to charge and tusks gleaming ferocious in the half-light, confronted them at the head of a short flight of wide stairs which branched into two and curled outwards to a balcony. The Prime Minister turned to his right between two stuffed tigers, who stood snarling with forepaws raised on either side of a door, and they were in a ballroom, furnished in late Victorian splendour with great gilt mirrors, tasselled bell-pulls, sofas of gilt and maroon plush.

A slim, elegant figure in uniform advanced to meet them. Charles was introduced to the Military Secretary who said in the hushed voice appropriate to the presence of the almost divine:

‘His Magnificence is in the garden.’

They went through French windows into the garden. His Magnificence turned and saw them. He came to meet them. Charles saw a short, broad figure in a snuff-coloured suit with a striped black-and-white waistcoat, a yellow tie decorated with large red horseshoes and foxes’ heads, a brown bowler hat with a very curly brim, a round, amiable, brown face behind twinkling spectacles.

‘So this is your Mr. Bolsover?’ he asked. His pronunciation of English was very much inferior to his Prime Minister’s, but he was fluent and usually intelligible. ‘Well, we have heard a great deal about you, Mr. Bolsover, and you are very welcome to Chamba. Very welcome. You have been here, let me see, three weeks. What do you think of us? Eh? What do you think of us here in Chamba? Eh? Do you like us?’

The questions were shot out in a series of amiable little pecks, but Charles had a feeling that the pecks could be purposeful rather than amiable on occasion. He said:

‘You seem to me, Sir, a people who are gay and friendly and have good manners.’

‘Gay? Friendly? Good manners? Yes. Excellent. Yes. But we are a despicable lot, you know. No character. We none of us have any character. We go to the mosques, we say our prayers, but we cannot resist temptation. Whisky. Girls. All of us. All whoremongers. Even the Nawab Bahadur here, though you would think him a Mullah to hear him talk. Eh, Hadramauti Sahib? Girls? Eh?

The Prime Minister smiled in a deprecating way, looked at the ground and appeared to blush.

‘It is the climate,’ continued His Magnificence, ‘the climate that takes away our character; partly the climate, partly peacefulness. We never have a war. When did we last have a war? Not since my ancestors came to the island. No wars, no character, no power to say no to temptation. I do not now even wish to say no to temptation. I never stop until the doctors say I must. Where shall we have tea? Tea in the garden? You will like that. An English custom. Are you fond of horses?’

Charles said he was an enthusiastic but indifferent horseman.

‘It does not matter whether you can ride very well. I do not ride very well myself. I have no longer the figure. Once it was polo, pigsticking, hunting, tent-pegging all day long. Now I am too fat. But it is important to be fond of horses. If you are fond of horses you have a warm heart. I have a passion for horses. What have I spent on horses, Hadramauti Sahib? Eh? What have I spent?’

‘I do not know, Sir. Many crores of rupees.’

‘Yes, many many crores. Do you hear that? Many crores. Mahbub?’

The Military Secretary stepped forward.

‘Show Mr. Bolsover round the stables one day. He is passionately fond of horses, as I am myself. What else do you like, Mr. Bolsover? Whisky? Girls? Eh?’

‘Both, Sir. But being a man of moderate means, I have never yet been able to afford so much of either that the doctors have had to tell me to stop.’

‘Good. Good. Good. Hadramauti Sahib, I like Mr. Bolsover. Yes. I like him. I like him. Do you know how many murders there are in this island every year?’

Charles did not.

‘More than anywhere else in the world. All because of whisky and girls. Only it is toddy for the peasants. Part of our character. No restraint. No character. We lie, we cheat each other, we kill each other. Your fault. You have protected us so long we have no wars. So we have no character. Tea. Have a curry puff. You like our Moghul food? I adore it. I find your French cookery insipid. I eat far too much. I give my doctors a busy time. But what else are they for? What do you think of our nobles?’

‘Those I have met, Sir, seem to be charming.’

‘Charming. Yes. We are all charming. If a nobility is not charming, what is it? Nothing. But do you know what goes on when they are away from Timurabad on their estates? Eh? Girls filled with red pepper. Men hung up in the fire to cook. This is what Hadramauti Sahib tells me. I know nothing myself. He has—what do you say?—a knife for them.’

‘I have already suggested, Sir, that Mr. Bolsover should study the question and write a report.’

‘No need for a report. Reading is tedious. But come and talk and we will think what needs doing. Ask Nawab Kamal as well. He is very practical. Very practical. We will all have a talk. But don’t forget. They are the backbone of my crown. Take them away and there is nothing left. They would lie for me every one of them. Would you like some music? There is the state band. And an Arab band. And a new wireless. Very expensive. The most expensive in all Paris.’

Charles said he thought music might be an interruption to a conversation which he found fascinating.

‘Quite right. I do not care for music myself. But people seem to like it so I have it. I like to see bands. I like to see them marching, you know, very much. Military bands. But these bands that sit still with—what do you call them?’ He asked the Prime Minister a question in Urdu. ‘Yes of course. Violins. Too slow. Too dull. Too boring. But these nobles of ours. They are like the rest of us. No character. No restraint. Now you English have great character. I admire your soldiers and sailors. Not your envoys. They are always frightened of doing something incorrect. Your soldiers do not say no to temptation when it begins but they stop when they have enough. There is great character in that. I wish I had such a strong character. But then they are trained. With our nobles it is partly lack of training. Are the officers of your navy of better family than the officers of your army?’

‘No, Sir, there are officers of good family in both and in both there are officers of no family at all.’

‘I thought the navy was better. But they are all trained. Our nobles grow up like grass. So did I.’

‘His Magnificence means like weeds,’ said the Prime Minister, seeing Charles look puzzled. ‘It is the Urdu phrase.’

‘I took no notice of my tutors,’ said His Magnificence with relish. ‘I never obeyed them. If my tutor told me to learn something I kicked him and ran away. I was brought up by servants. Everyone did as I told them. I did just as I liked. I was introduced to very bad ways. Very bad. That is why I have no character. Tell me, are you fond of racing? You must come to the races next week. Always I wear a new bowler hat at the races. Sometimes brown. Sometimes grey. Sometimes blue. Never black; that is so dull. I have ordered a green one from Scott’s. Did you ever hear of anyone wearing a green bowler? No? Nor have I. Nor have I. I am glad. I like to be original. A king should be different from other people.’

He remained for a moment in happy contemplation of this ideal of kingship and then went on:

‘People have talked of a special school for our nobles and princes but nothing happens. Nothing happens. They talk and our sons grow up in bad ways like ourselves. My son. He is not a bad boy but he lives on the back stairs with the servants. He does not listen to his tutors. There is no need for him to be a book-worm but he should learn to behave like a gentleman. Outdoor life. Healthy amusement. That is what he needs. He needs a father. I have no time to be a father to him. My time is taken up with the cares of state. And besides I have no character. I am idle and vicious. Idle and vicious,’ he repeated, with melancholy enjoyment. ‘Eh? Hadramauti Sahib, what do you say? Isn’t it true?’

‘It is true that Your Magnificence has no time to look after the Prince. And none of our Chamban nobility are really suitable. But an idea has just occurred to me, Sir. Why should not Mr. Bolsover take charge of the boy? We could give him a house and an establishment of his own. He could live there with the tutors and see that they did their work and that the boy attended to their instructions. A little supervision of his leisure. Take him riding. See that he behaves well at table. That would be enough. It would not interfere with Mr. Bolsover’s other activities. Do you not think that might be suitable?’

‘Excellent. Excellent. I have every confidence in Mr. Bolsover. In fact, I am going to make him Prime Minister when Hadramauti Sahib has made the pudding too hot to hold him. Or is it soup? Would you like that? Eh? Would you like to be Prime Minister?’

‘It would depend on the terms, Sir. The post would need to be very highly paid.’

‘Good. Good. Good. Yes. Very high pay. I like Mr. Bolsover.’ He talked on. At last he said:

‘Well, I am very glad to have met you, Mr. Bolsover. Come and see me again soon.’

The Prime Minister remained, Charles retired. The Military Secretary appeared, offered him a whisky and soda and a cigar, and made polite conversation, to which Charles made mechanical replies. If there was one task in the world for which he felt more unsuited than any other, it was to bring up a boy and yet here he was trapped into that very undertaking. He wondered whether he had been brought to the island for the purpose, whether the cover of being Adviser in Oil was only the public envelope to another that had been devised by the Sultan and the Prime Minister to hide the truth from Sir Hubert and himself. But there it was; he was in for it and he might as well go ahead. He had already progressed so far from his old self-mistrust that he could face this further step without too much misgiving.

‘Another year at this rate and I shall be undertaking a cure of souls,’ he thought.

He was joined by the Prime Minister who reverted at once to the sprightly courtesy he usually displayed but had laid aside like a garment in the presence of His Magnificence.

‘You have made an excellent impression,’ he said. ‘It was a great mark of confidence that H.M. should have entrusted you with the boy. I was half afraid to suggest it when the idea flashed across my mind. I have been trying for months to persuade him to make some proper arrangement for the lad, but he has continually postponed any decision. This could not be better. You will make an admirable father. I’m delighted, my dear fellow, simply delighted.’

This at least Charles felt to be true.

‘What is the boy like?’ he asked.

‘He is a nice boy. About thirteen or perhaps fourteen. Thoroughly spoilt, of course. No discipline. But he is a nice boy and very good-looking. That comes from his mother.’

‘And what about his mother?’ Charles continued. ‘Will she not object to this arrangement?’

‘No, she will not interfere. She is a strange woman, very strange. She is not, I am afraid, happy. She is a daughter, you know, of the ruling house in the island of Ormuz. They are directly descended from Genghiz Khan and have no connection with India. They have always looked westward from Ormuz, and she was educated entirely on European lines. So that from the first it was not easy, for His Magnificence never likes to leave his island. He has its interests very much at heart, you know, in spite of his manner, and he is purely oriental in his outlook. She had many ideas for bringing up the boy in various strange ways, but I am glad to say they all came to nothing and now she has given them up. She has washed her hands of him. It will perhaps be better that you should see her but she will not interfere. I will arrange for you to see the boy tomorrow.’

Having settled this to his satisfaction, he said good night.

VI

As Charles lay there in the great gilt bed a year later, turning sleeplessly from side to side, trying to remember all that had led up to the Sultan’s abdication, the rioting and bloodshed of the afternoon, events did not come to him clearly, in their right order, as a story is told. They came confusedly, now a vivid picture of a group of people talking, now the tones of a voice, slow and hesitating or raised sharply in defiance and anger, now the scent of the evening air in a garden with the stars reflected in the lake. It was like the material presented to a film producer, a jumble of sequences from which extracts must be chosen and pieced together in the right order. Sometimes he would find that a trick of association had carried him far on in the story, far ahead of the point he had last reached; sometimes he must go back and recollect a strand that had been forgotten but which must weave its way inevitably into the later texture.

So his mind went on at once from his first meeting with the Sultan to its logical consequence, his first talk with Prince Salim, two days later. But meanwhile another chain of circumstance had begun which was in the end to change the history of Chamba and the lives of Salim and Charles, the Sultan and many others. Charles knew nothing of these events at the time and afterwards was able to piece them together only by conversation and questioning and from the records of the trials. But it was on the day of his talk with the Sultan that the tale began with the disappearance of Bhaskar Rao and this, he decided, was the place it ought to take in his memories.

The first part of it Charles got from McPhee, the old Scots schoolmaster. For many years he had been the head master of the only boarding-school in Timurabad, or for that matter in Chamba. It was a school to which many of the Chamban nobles sent their sons and where McPhee, struggling against shortages of money, equipment and staff laboured to remedy those defects of character the Sultan deplored. He was an enthusiast, as every teacher should be.

‘Och,’ he would say in his grave, kindly Scots, ‘they’re all mad keen on cricket the now. Here’s a grand boy, now, small you know, as so many of these boys are, but a grand boy behind the wicket and in front of it. And here’s a lad will climb a tree quicker than a monkey though he’s not that much use at the cricket. But a grand lad, a grand lad.’

McPhee it was who told Charles of Bhaskar Rao, the innocent beginning of the whole trouble. Bhaskar Rao was one of the few Hindu boys at the school. He came from a Mahratta family whose ancestor had come to the island with the Telegu conquerors as a mercenary leader in war. This ancestor had been given as his reward an estate in the interior and there he and his small retinue of Mahrattas had made themselves a home ever since. Mahadevpur they called the village where Mahadev Rao lived with the descendants of his ancestor’s bodyguard, the score or two of Mahratta families who provided his immediate retainers. It was an oasis in the midst of the dozen Tamil villages that made up the rest of the estate, villages where for centuries the peasants had gone about their work undisturbed by the conquests of the Telegus or later the Muslims.

The village lay in the centre of the island, near the foot of the hills. Here the first ridges rose in long, saurian backbones from the level of the plateau, backbones five or six miles long, plated and spined along the crest with rock. The Tamil villages lay between them in rich valleys of rice-fields and coconut palms; the slopes had for centuries lain untilled, tangles of jungle full of pig and deer and leopard, but now for a hundred years they had been carved into the sloping terraces of tea-gardens by British capital and enterprise and by Tamil labour from India—for the Chamban Tamil was too happy to work for daily wages.

Mahadevpur was fifteen miles from the nearest railway station, to which the train from Timurabad jolted slowly once a day, taking most of twelve hours to get there. Going to and from school had been rather a business for Bhaskar Rao; he had to be met with a bullock-cart at the station and his father had to be told in good time to send someone to meet him. It might take a week or ten days for a letter to be delivered to Mahadevpur; yet if McPhee sent a letter too soon the father would forget and the boy would have to spend a night in the waiting-room. A letter three weeks ahead and then a series of telegrams was the course evolved in the end.

For the father, Mahadev Rao, was the universal type of the squireen, the hobereau, the small, landed man so sunk in the affairs of his own isolated rusticity that he had forgotten that the rest of the world existed. One reads of such squires in the remoter parts of England before the railways reduced distances. Urdu, the language of the court and the capital, he spoke only with difficulty, English not at all. The boy was one to whom the heart warmed, well set-up, sturdy, compact, with a merry, laughing face and a dark eye that was ready to flash with enthusiasm, but sensitive, sometimes plunged in melancholy. His father gave him an adequate allowance and he had good clothes which he bought himself with McPhee’s help, but at that parental care stopped. Bhaskar Rao never went home for a mid-term holiday as the others did; he stayed behind at the school. He never had a letter or news from home. Even at the end of term, McPhee would latterly wait before sending him until a telegram came to say that arrangements had been made to meet him. Often no telegram would come for days, and the boy would stay on at the school alone, while every morning McPhee appealed by wire to his father. At such times, poor Bhaskar Rao would be sunk in depression. The sense of loneliness and neglect would overpower him and all his enthusiasm be lost in apathy. In term-time, with other boys around, he would forget his home and be happy, but even then a chance remark, the mention by one of the others of a happy home with parents who cared for him, would plunge Bhaskar Rao in grief and the tears would roll down his face

McPhee had long been uneasy about the boy and some time ago he had made discreet inquiries about his home. He learnt on good authority that the father, Mahadev Rao, drank heavily and had brought another woman to his house. She was installed as mistress of the squire and his household, while the true wife, Bhaskar’s mother, lived in neglect. So it must be an unhappy home and when he learnt this McPhee decided that it was better the boy should go there as little as possible. Instead of urging the father to have him home, it would be better to arrange for him to stay with friends in Timurabad, to go to holiday camps with assistant masters, anywhere where he could be with boys of his own age in happy surroundings.

This was the position on the day before Charles saw His Magnificence. Not a remarkable story; a neglected boy whose father was ignorant and brutish, whose home was unhappy and isolated. But that morning something new happened. Bhaskar Rao’s mother arrived in Timurabad and came to the school. She wanted to see her son at once. He was in class and boys were not permitted to leave classes to see their parents without permission from the head master. A servant came to tell McPhee.

It was his own rule, but he felt that if ever an exception should be made it was now. He gave permission, waited fifteen minutes and then himself went to the little waiting-room, meant for contractors and business visitors, where Bhaskar Rao was talking to his mother.

In telling the tale, McPhee laboured to make it clear how much he had been moved by the scene he found in that dingy little room. His boys usually sprang to their feet or came to attention when he entered a classroom; they regarded him with friendliness he hoped, with a certain awe he was sure. But this time Bhaskar Rao did not seem to know McPhee was there. He stood leaning against the wall, his hands behind his back, aloof, proud, scornful, ashamed. He was arguing with his mother in a language McPhee supposed was Marathi, refusing in short, bitter sentences to do what she wanted. She crouched on the floor in the middle of the room, imploring him to agree with her, weeping, swaying to and fro.

McPhee said he found the scene almost unbearable, for although he could not understand a word that was said the emotions were clear enough. Bhaskar was only twelve. He stood there, neat, clean, well-cared for, with a certain boyish elegance in his well-cut cricket shirt and white shorts, desperately unhappy because he was ashamed of his mother, but hard pressed by her eloquence. He snapped back at her, bitter, resentful, defiant, the more angry because he was moved by her tears.

She wore the everyday clothes of a peasant woman, the full skirt of some cheap stuff that had once been gaudy and now was dingy, the waist left bare, a tiny bodice over the breasts. She had with her a girl child about two years old, naked, dirty, the kind of child to be seen in dozens in every Indian village. Bhaskar Rao had been to the homes of his friends; he had seen their mothers, beautiful, cultivated ladies in fine clothes and jewels who washed constantly and read books in English and Urdu; he had seen their little sisters, combed and curled and befrilled. It must always be bitterness to him to see his mother, whose feudal nobility of birth was unaccompanied by any civilized grace, who looked and behaved like a peasant. It was humiliating that she should come here, to expose him before his friends, giving him no time to warn her not to come, that she should demand to see him at once and ply him with stupid requests. But it was not only the humiliation of what others would think that tormented him. There was a deep, unformulated resentment against his father and that other woman, for however much his mother might irritate him, she was on his side. They, who were against him, let her go about like this.

McPhee found it so painful to see the distress of both of them that he had to act at once. He asked Bhaskar Rao what his mother wanted him to do. The boy replied that his mother was asking him to go home with her without delay. She was afraid of some danger that threatened him if he stayed at school.

‘I cannot make her see that it is the middle of the term and I am quite safe here,’ he said. He was pale and tense with emotion, keyed up as though to face torture.

McPhee sent for an assistant master who spoke Marathi and who could explain his views to the woman. She knelt at his feet and patted his boots, pouring out streams of eloquence. The assistant master said she was repeating the story that there was some danger for the boy if he stayed where he was, but she would not say what the danger might be. McPhee felt he could not let a boy go in the middle of the term for something so indefinite as this.

‘You see,’ he explained afterwards to Charles, becoming more Scots than usual in his earnestness, ‘I ken these mothers. I ken them fine. When they want the boy home they forget all but just the one emotional urrge. Any lie they will tell you to get him back, and it makes no difference to them if the boy’s to get his first eleven cap or sit for his matriculation tomorrow. There’s just the one emotional urrge. So I did what I could do to calm her and sent her away. I was wrong, as it turned out, but I could not have known and I have no feeling of blame for myself.’

So Bhaskar Rao’s mother was sent away and the boy went back to his classroom and his cricket. The rest of the story comes from the statements at the trial and the police investigations. McPhee knew none of it at first-hand except his own small part.

The following evening, the day Charles saw the Sultan, Bhaskar Rao played cricket with some of the others on a field away from the main school buildings. There was a lane about a quarter of a mile long, enclosed between hedges of a flowering shrub, that led back from this cricket field to the main grounds of the school. After the game, he strolled back along the lane with a group of other boys, chattering about the game and about nothing at all. All his friends remembered that he had seemed in unusually high spirits; they noticed this because Bhaskar Rao was always either up or down, gay and merry or sunk in gloom. This evening he was reacting from yesterday morning’s thundercloud, of which he clearly expected nothing more to be heard.

A man stepped out from the hedge. Bhaskar Rao knew him; it was Sivaji Rao, one of his father’s retainers and one of the few who belonged to what might be called the honest party at Mahadevpur, those who disapproved of the new mistress and were faithful to the old. The boy stopped to speak to him; his companions went on. They saw Bhaskar Rao talking to a friend, one of his family henchmen; one of them recognized the man, having seen him once before when he came to take the boy home. They knew Bhaskar Rao’s mother had been to the school the previous morning; nothing was more natural than that she should send a message about something she had forgotten. They went on and thought nothing more of the incident till later in the evening when it was realized that Bhaskar Rao was missing.

This was nearly two hours later,when the boys had finished supper and had sat down to their homework. No one had taken any notice of the empty place in the dining-hall, those nearest supposing that Bhaskar was having supper with his parents. But there could be no such reason for the vacant desk, and an assistant master reported it to McPhee. He, of course, remembered yesterday’s scene and wondered if the danger foretold by the mother had arrived. He asked questions. The boys who had been with Bhaskar in the lane volunteered their story and McPhee was fairly certain they were the last who had seen him. On their evidence it seemed probable that Bhaskar had gone somewhere with Sivaji Rao, and McPhee therefore had little hope of success when he ordered a search with lanterns through the grounds and down the lane. This having proved as fruitless as he expected, he informed the police and sent a telegram to the boy’s father.

The telegram might have been a dangerous step. But the delivery of telegrams in the interior of Chamba was slow and it did not reach Mahadevpur till thirty-six hours later and thus did not influence events at all. By that time, the murder, if there was a murder, had been committed.

It seemed that when he stepped out of the hedge, Sivaji Rao had at once begun to repeat all the arguments his mistress had used to her son in the morning. But he was more explicit than she had been. He told Bhaskar that without being himself discovered he had overheard talk between two of the other party which made him sure that Amrit—this was Mahadev Rao’s concubine—was plotting with her supporters something against Bhaskar Rao. If he were out of the way there was no other legitimate son and Mahadev could adopt one of Amrit’s two sons, of whom he was very fond. Sivaji Rao urged Bhaskar to come away with him at once to his maternal grandfather’s house.

Bhaskar Rao seems to have been a brave boy and level-headed in spite of his emotionalism, or perhaps it was simply that he liked being at school and did not want to go to his mother’s old home. He said he did not think the plot sounded definite; people at Mahadevpur were always plotting something. In any case he was safer at school than at his grandfather’s.

Sivaji Rao argued for a little. Then, seeing that argument was no use, he spoke quickly over his shoulder and another man stepped out from behind the hedge. One of them clapped a hand over Bhaskar’s mouth, they caught him up and carried him to the main road where a car was waiting. They must have drugged him for he did not remember much more till he woke up in a train. He was vague about the train; Sivaji Rao was there and the other man, but he was sleepy, too sleepy to argue or make a fuss or think of escaping.

The next thing he remembered was the fresh night air and the jolting of a bullock-cart. This must have been early in the following night, the second night after Charles had seen His Magnificence. Bhaskar was wide awake now and very angry with Sivaji. He scolded him unmercifully and said his father would punish him. Sivaji was repentant and submissive, but he said he was not frightened of punishment. He had burnt his boats, he was now his mistress’s man and no one else’s and he did not expect to go back to Mahadevpur till Bhaskar Rao ruled in his father’s place. Then he would come back and beg for forgiveness and if his young master decided to punish him, well, it would be God’s will and it would have to be.

That was the talk they had as they jolted slowly along, lurching over the rough track, with the smell of the bullocks coming to them in wafts in the cool air, the creaking of the wheels in their ears. They had one paraffin lamp to light them at first and nothing else till a waning quarter moon rose. Bhaskar was more indignant about his mother’s plot to kidnap him for his own good than about the concubine’s to murder him, for he hardly believed in that. However, he could not long be angry with Sivaji, who had been his attendant since he could walk and who was plainly risking much for the sake of his mother and himself. They bumped slowly along; they were of course on the way to his mother’s old home, and Sivaji said they ought to be there in another hour or so. It would obviously be silly to try to escape now, so Bhaskar resigned himself to what had happened and relapsed into sulky silence. He was sleepy again and his head ached; he fell into an uncomfortable doze.

Suddenly his arm was seized. The cart was stopping. Sivaji whispered harshly telling them all to be quiet. He was looking and listening; he must have seen some movement ahead. Then he told the driver to go on and spoke to Bhaskar in a hurried, frightened voice:

‘Run!’ he said. ‘Hide! Get away! Hide! Behind bushes!’ Bhaskar felt himself pushed over the edge of the cart; his feet scraped for something to tread on, touched the turning hub of the cart-wheel; he had to jump as the hub turned on. He fell on hands and knees in some thorny bushes; he was dazed with sleep and surprise; he half scrambled to his feet, heard Sivaji’s hoarse whisper:

‘Down! Hide! Get away from the road!’

He crouched still, where he was, among the bushes. Then he saw that he was on the edge of a water-course that would be a torrent in the rains. Now it was dry; its steep banks would give cover from the moonlight. He wriggled into it and moved away from the road. He could hear the cart creaking on its way.

Then raised voices, shouts, blows with staves, much shouting. Loud, angry shouts. He ran, crouching, in the deep shadow that lay in the bed of the water-course. The floor was sandy or stony; it was full of twists, overhung by thorn-like trees. Suddenly it ended; low but steep sandy banks on all sides of him. He peered over the edge; there were crops near at hand, crops a yard high. He heaved himself up the bank and into them. He ran on, bent double, stumbled over the baulk between one field and the next; he was still in the same yard-high millet. He heard voices calling to each other; looking back and raising his head he saw lights going here and there. They were looking for him; they were coming his way. He crouched lower; he kept still. Closer, closer; he could hear them talking; he heard the chink of a lantern’s wire handle against a bamboo staff. He kept still, listening to his thudding heart, not daring to breathe. They were past him. They went on, he breathed more easily. More shouts; they turned and came back, shouting to each other again. Once more his heart beat so hard it hurt him, his breath came fast and he had to bite his lips not to let his panting be heard. They came nearer, beating the stalks of the millet with sticks. They were past him again.

He waited. Then, cautiously, inch by inch, he moved into a more comfortable position. He waited till the moon was high in the sky but they did not come back. He was weak and very hungry, plagued by mosquitoes. He thought that the men who had been looking for him must be Amrit’s people. He rose to his feet and pushed through the millet crop till he came to rice fields. He could walk along the baulks between the sloppy fields but he did not like to venture out into the moonlight. He could see a dark mass that might be a village, but by now everyone would be asleep; if he went to the village and shouted they might think he was a thief. Someone might shoot at him. He went back to his millet and tried to sleep but he could not. The mosquitoes troubled him badly, for he slept under a net at school; he was cold too, for he had only his cricket things and his thin blood felt the night chill. He crouched in the millet, trembling and miserable, sometimes dozing unhappily, sometimes waking, during the long, long hours till dawn. Then he went towards the village.

He went slowly across the rice fields, walking on the baulks. He was so stiff and weak that he could not always keep his balance. He fell off into the paste in the fields, where the liquid mud was knee-deep for a boy. He reached the village. He was too tired to be frightened now. He walked into the main street and at once saw a man coming out of a house. The man stopped dead when he saw Bhaskar Rao.

The boy spoke to him in Tamil. He said:

‘Where is the police-station? Can you take me to the police?’

The man looked at him curiously. He said:

‘Who are you?’

Bhaskar said:

‘I was at school in Timurabad. They kidnapped me. I escaped and I want to go back. The police will arrange it.’

The man asked if he was a Hindu. On hearing that he was he said:

‘You are tired and hungry. You had better come in.’

Seeing the boy hesitate, he said:

‘I am a Brahman. You can eat in my house.’

Bhaskar limped forward and entered the house. The man spoke to someone in the room behind and another man, young probably his son, came into the room. The first man said:

‘Give him food. Do not let him go. I am going to tell the Khan Sahib.’

They brought him milk and sweets which he ate while the rice was being cooked. He felt better when he had drunk the milk and had washed, but it was no use trying to look clean in cricket clothes that had spent a night in a train and a night in the fields. He was not really frightened; their behaviour in the house was odd, but he could see no reason why they should not do as he asked and show him the way to the police-station. And he had to eat, so he waited patiently for the rice.

The elder man came back. He said:

‘We are to take him to the Khan Sahib when he has eaten.’

Bhaskar asked who the Khan Sahib was. He was told he would soon find out. He did not worry much.

When he had eaten the rice, he was led to a big house, not so very different from his father’s house or his grandfather’s, obviously the home of the feudal lord of the estate. They would be Muslims, but that did not frighten him, for the few Hindus among the nobility had always been on the best of terms with Muslims of their own rank; the growing tension in the island as yet hardly affected the upper ranks of society. The nobles, whether Hindu or Muslim, were at one in their dislike of the Congress party which preached daily against their privileges. What did worry him was the thought of telling the story of his kidnapping, because this would mean talking about Amrit. He was old enough to know that there was something disgraceful in the ascendancy this woman had obtained over his father and in the way his mother was forced to live. He knew that gentlemen did not arrange their affairs like that and he would have to tell the story; it was no use going on talking about the police, now that he knew he was on a feudal estate.

Bhaskar Rao was led into a courtyard round which the house was built; here he was kept waiting for a few minutes; then he was taken into a small room, full of people. The Khan Sahib had not yet shaved and he was not dressed with the dignity he would display in Timurabad. Soiled white cotton trousers tied round his waist by a string; a collarless cotton shirt that hung outside them; these were his clothes. He was a slight man and not tall; he was sitting cross-legged on a low, wooden platform, and his toes showed through holes in his cheap, cotton socks. But there was dignity and an air of breeding all the same on his heavily pock-marked face. He told his servants and retainers to stand back and give room to Bhaskar and his escort. Then he asked Bhaskar who he was.

The boy was nervous, because he was ashamed of his father’s conduct. But he had the courage to say what he wanted and ask to be allowed to tell his story in private. The Khan Sahib waved his people away. When they were alone he made the boy sit down and spoke to him in a friendly way; as soon as he heard who his father was, he was able to make it easy for him to tell his story, for he knew all about Amrit.

Mir Afzal Husain was a noble of no great estate or personal distinction but he was not sunk in the rustic backwardness of Bhaskar’s father. He had served in the Chamban cavalry; he had been stationed in Timurabad, had played polo, taken his part in court life as a junior till his father died. Then he had left the army and returned to his estate, but he still spent two or three months in the capital every year and for the hottest month of the twelve usually moved to a hill resort in the centre of the island, where he met social equals who came to enjoy the cool, moist air like himself.

He was a man of no great originality of thought or character and a description of him would probably fit fifty other minor nobles of the island. If you had asked him what he liked best he would have said shooting and riding, but although he did spend much time in these pursuits the truth was that nothing in the world was so dear to him as a long talk with friends. He was amiable in that he wished to hurt no one; but his education had not equipped him with any intellectual interests and he had no ambition to be in any way superior to others of his rank.

But something had just happened to Mir Afzal Husain, something familiar enough to the West of the Middle Ages, rare now but still common in the East. He had been ill and had seen a vision. He could not describe the vision but he was certain that he had heard a voice telling him to restore the worship of the mosque of his namesake Pir Afzal. Familiar enough, for there was no scepticism among the Muslims of Chamba; there would not be found one among them who made any question of the power and goodness of God. A few might look with detachment, as the Prime Minister and Nawab Kamal did, at the ceremonial injunctions of Islam, but none doubted God’s active presence in the world. His name was constantly on their lips and if He was not always in their hearts it was due to forgetfulness, to wilful sin, never to doubt or indifference. Hence in illness, when the will to sin was weak, when the pursuits of the world no longer distracted, the deep of the heart took charge and men saw visions.

Afzal Husain had not been deeply religious and his life had not been virtuous. But he came back to health with a fixity of purpose he had never known before, a double purpose to live a better life, devoted to the ways of God, and to restore the worship of the mosque. The first part of his purpose was the more difficult to carry out and in the light of common day it slowly, slowly faded; the second was easier and it lived on intensely.

Pir Afzal, after whom Afzal Husain had been named, was a saint who had died three centuries ago. He had been a preacher and an ascetic; there were tales of his sayings and miracles still told by Hindu and Muslim alike. His bones had been buried where he died, in a village that was part of Afzal Husain’s estate but lay on the border, the next village belonging to Mahadev Rao, Bhaskar’s father. An ancestor of Afzal Husain had built a mosque round the tomb and had installed a priest who for many years had intoned at the appointed hours every day the long, high call that summons the faithful to prayer. But no one came to the summons, for it was a Hindu village and it was a long twelve miles to the centre of the estate and the seat of its lords. After two generations, the priest’s allowance was forgotten and the priest disappeared; after three, there were no more repairs to the mosque, though the Hindus, with a generous, all-embracing piety, lighted lamps nightly and placed them at the feet of the saint. The main fabric still stood; a natural terrace of rocky ground had been squared, one corner being built up to the remaining level, three sides of the square being finished by a wall that was low from inside, higher from outside. On the fourth side, the side turned towards Mecca, was a platform and behind it a lofty structure with pulpit and sacred niche between two minarets. In the centre of the terrace was the tomb of the saint; there was a tall, stone gateway; that was all.

A simple building it was, but impressive, standing there open to the skies, inscribed with the name of God and with verses from His holy law, as simple, austere and beautiful as Islam. It was built of stone and it stood; nothing had fallen; but in the course of centuries it had suffered. Grass grew between the stones of the lofty wall above the niche, a thorn tree had thrust its way up through the flags of the platform. But something worse than that had happened.

As you came to the gate of the mosque you went up steps that brought you on to the terrace. Here you stood on turf that only thinly overlaid the natural rock. On your left the ground had been built up to complete the square; on your right the natural rock ran on to the corner where it ended in a single, upstanding rock with which the wall had been merged. From the inside that rock stood up ten feet above the level of the wall; on the outside it dropped twenty feet to the level of the surrounding turf. Twenty yards of waste land surrounded the mosque before the ploughed fields began.

Now the rock leaned outwards and ten years ago a wandering Hindu sadhu, a religious beggar, had camped beneath its shelter. Probably at first he had meant to stay only for a night or two, but he was past his youth; perhaps he was tired of wandering, perhaps the villagers pressed him to stay. At any rate, he stayed. There was a well close by and there was a pipal tree, sacred to Hindus, whose trunk rose only two yards from the foot of the rock. And it was a holy place, the tomb of a saint; that he had been a Muslim did not matter much in a Chamban village in the days before 1946. The sadhu built himself a tiny shrine at the foot of the pipal tree. At first, it was only a stone placed on end and painted red, but year by year it became a little more elaborate. Now, after ten years, there was a solid superstructure above the original stone, as tall as a man, carved with the figures of gods. It had been given by a rich shopkeeper. There was a wall, which the sadhu had made himself from uncut stones, running out from the great rock that made the corner of the mosque, running out beyond the pipal tree and returning, making an enclosure that was regarded as a temple. The rock itself had been painted from top to toe with tiger stripes of red and black and white, the mark of a temple throughout South India. A second inner wall enclosed the tiny space below the leaning rock where the sadhu ate and slept. If a faithful Muslim had come alone, had stood at night in the extreme corner of the mosque enclosure, his hand on the rock that made its corner-stone, alone under the stars with his one all seeing and invisible God, he would have stood immediately above the sleeping head of the sadhu, ash-smeared, idolatrous, an unbeliever. But the few country Muslims who passed that way were not so faithful as to raise objection; they were happy to pay their respects to the saint without worrying about the sadhu.

The sadhu had built up his little domain gradually and no one had objected, for no Muslims lived close by, and after all, Hindu and Muslim alike were God’s creatures and everyone in the Chamban countryside lived happily together. He had become an institution and villagers came to his shrine from several miles around, many from the estate of Mahadev Rao. And Mahadev Rao himself had stopped half a dozen times as he rode by, to make an offering of money and pay his duty to the shrine.

That was how things stood when Afzal Husain was told in a vision to restore the mosque. When he saw the sadhu’s enclosure and the paint on the rock, anger surged up in his heart. Feeling was mounting in Chamba already; in Timurabad and the hill capital, the Mullahs were already preaching the purity of Islam, calling for the old, clean faith and no truck with idolaters. Yet here in the heart of Afzal’s own estate idolaters had defiled the holy place, the tomb of the saint for whom he was named; his first instinct was to sweep all away at once. But he restrained himself. Every noble and every magistrate had received orders from the Sultan to be most careful in the present difficult times to do nothing that might stir up trouble between Hindus and Muslims. Afzal contented himself with giving the sadhu a month’s notice to quit.

The sadhu had no intention of moving unless he was moved. He sent a villager to tell Mahadev Rao what had happened. Mahadev Rao instructed his steward to write to Afzal in protest, saying that the temple had been there a long time and was a centre of worship for the Hindus of all the surrounding villages. The steward toned down what Mahadev had told him to say, but even so the letter was enough to make Afzal’s blood boil. He replied curtly that the mosque had been there three hundred years and the temple only ten. The sadhu had trespassed and must go at the end of the month. He chose builders to start repairs and a squad of his estate police to see his orders were obeyed. But he was uneasy; he did not want trouble and he searched in his mind for some way of managing things peacefully. And then two days before the month expired, Mahadev’s son appeared at Afzal’s house.

No wonder that Afzal Husain was interested. This might be just what he needed. It sounded from Bhaskar’s story as though there had been an affray, perhaps even a murder, last night, within his own jurisdiction. The offenders were retainers of Mahadev Rao’s; if, as seemed likely to happen, Mahadev tried to shelter them, here was a handle against him that might induce him to give up his support of the sadhu at the tomb of Pir Afzal; for if Mahadev told the sadhu to go quietly the affair could be carried through without attracting notice. The sadhu would never resist by himself and then there would be no stirring up of trouble between Hindus and Muslims, no breach of the Sultan’s orders.

It was not a very wise line of thought, but then Afzal Husain, though normally of a kindly disposition, was not a very wise man, and at the moment he was under the influence of an obsession about the tomb of Pir Afzal. He did not stop to think long about what he had just been told but ordered the boy to show him the place where he had jumped out of the cart. Bhaskar said he wanted to go back to school at Timurabad and asked that this should be arranged. Afzal said impatiently that all that would come later.

It was not difficult to find the place where Bhaskar had crouched all night among the millet, and the millet was not a big patch. Things looked very different by day, but there was only one dry water-course that led back to the road. They were soon at the place where he had been pushed out of the cart, they were soon walking along the road in the direction the cart had taken while he crouched among the thorns.

A hundred yards further along the road they found just what Afzal had hoped for. The ground was trampled, as though many people had surrounded the cart. There, by the side of the road, on the grassy edge, lay a stout bamboo pole, a Mahratta turban and a dark patch where blood had soaked into the grass.

A crowd of people had come with them. They stood talking, arguing, gesticulating. Afzal Husain stood apart and let them wrangle. He was thinking it out. The cart had been on its way to Bhaskar’s grandfather, his mother’s father, and it was to be presumed it had come from his house. If the cart and driver had not turned up, everyone there would be anxious to testify to that effect; they would want revenge on Mahadevpur. But the boy’s mother would be there and it would hardly be possible to conceal from her the fact that Afzal had possession of her son. Once she knew where the boy was, Afzal could not very well keep him, but he did not want to let go what might be a valuable card. How to make an ally of the mother and yet keep the boy as a weapon against the father, that was the problem.

He was in this dilemma when he heard the sound of a motor car and noticed that everyone with him—and by now this was most of the village—was looking towards a cloud of dust that was moving slowly towards them. The road was not a made road in the English or American sense; it was a track or trail, free from bushes and high growth, winding between the fields. The surface was a light, sandy dust, ankle deep, except where water from rice-fields had turned it to a paste. So a car moved slowly.

The car arrived and drew up. To Bhaskar, standing disregarded on the edge of the crowd, the man who stepped out looked like McPhee, and McPhee was the one haven of security he knew. He was frightened now, for Afzal had shown no inclination to send him back to Timurabad. He was a child again when he saw that reassuring figure. He ran forward and caught its hand; he burst into tears, crying, in English:

‘Take me back to Timurabad, Sir! Please take me back!’

Mr. Philomel Olson was an American and a Baptist missionary. His short, sturdy figure did not at all resemble the lanky McPhee’s but the two men were the same colour, for both wore that look of bleached bone which the fair Northerner takes on when he has been too long without leave in the tropics. And there was some resemblance too in character, for both were kindly, hardworking, conscientious. It was a superficial resemblance, for in their hearts two men could hardly have differed more. McPhee behind his dour exterior was a romantic, almost a poet; Olson was a neat, precise, orderly body who liked organizing and did it well. He was a minister because his father had been a minister but nature had cast him for a business executive. Not for him the rapture of the mystic; but, being a minister, he made a good job of it, living poorly, neither drinking nor smoking, labouring all day among the poor and the oppressed, training children, supervising schools, finding employment for his young men, looking after the sick. He was not the stuff that saints and martyrs are made of but he was a good man, happy in doing good work.

He patted Bhaskar Rao’s hand and said in English that he would look after him. Then in Tamil he asked:

‘What’s happening here? Who is this boy and why this crowd?’

The villagers looked at each other and said nothing. They did not know what Afzal Husain wanted, so none of them were foolish enough to speak. Afzal stood still, removed from the crowd, on the edge of a field. He had lost the boy, that seemed clear, for he could see no plausible reason for getting him back and it would be folly to take him by force. For a moment he was filled with resentment. Then as he thought, trying to make the best of it, he saw that Bhaskar was a doubtful weapon against Mahadev Rao, who probably preferred Amrit’s sons, while his loss cleared the way to the boy’s mother and grandfather. He might get evidence now from the mother’s party that would involve the father. If he had kept the boy, both would have been his enemies. He could never have brought himself to give the boy up; now it had happened, he made the best of it and decided to reap the reward of an angel of light. He stepped forward and spoke in Urdu.

Phil Olson shook his head. His work lay among the poor and depressed; the courtly language was no use to him. He had not even the smattering of servants’ Urdu that most Englishmen acquire in India, for he had only one servant and he was a Christian who had been a sweeper, a Tamil outcaste.

Afzal turned to English, in which he was fluent though not very correct. He said the boy had come to his village, alone, in the early morning, with a story of having been kidnapped. It sounded as though there had been a fight of some kind within Afzal’s jurisdiction as a magistrate and he had come to inquire into what had happened before sending the boy back to school. He would be grateful if the missionary would look after him, but first he must answer a few questions, for clearly something had happened. He pointed to the dark stain of blood on the grass.

Olson agreed. He was on his way to an outlying village, and he did not like putting off a visit that had been announced and for which his poor Christians would have made preparations. But it would clearly be cruelty to take the tired boy with him there, to wait while he spent the day in meetings and discussion. He would have to take him back to his headquarters and hand him over to his wife’s care first. It was a pity, but he could not ignore the boy’s appeal. There could be no doubt Bhaskar was frightened and, reasonable though Afzal sounded, Olson had his own views of the feudal nobility.

Afzal Husain’s inspector of police asked a few questions. All he wanted now was the names of the men who had been with Bhaskar Rao in the cart before he jumped; the only name the boy knew was Sivaji’s. When he had given that he was allowed to go with Olson. An hour later he was at the missionary’s house, where he was firmly put to bed by Mrs. Olson, a woman as kindly and conscientious as her husband. He was too tired to be puzzled by the features of their life he did not understand; he slept the clock round and was back at school on the fifth day after he had left. There Bhaskar Rao passes out of the story, a small, uncertain figure, very much alone in a strange world. He goes out of the story as a person, but as a symbol he remains, for his name, which up till now had been the label only for his sturdy little frame and mercurial temperament, became a battle-cry to Hindus and Muslims.

The inspector took a horse and rode to Shibpur, where Bhaskar Rao’s grandfather lived. Here he found all in a ferment; Bhaskar’s mother was there, frantic at the miscarriage of her plans and the loss of her son. The bullock-cart and its driver, Sivaji Rao and the man who had been with him, had none of them turned up. The inspector took a number of statements; the people at Shibpur had been expecting Bhaskar Rao by train—they did not say why he was coming—and had sent the party of three men to meet him. They had never come back; that was all they knew. They identified the turban found by the wayside as Sivaji Rao’s.

The inspector returned to Afzal with satisfaction. A triple disappearance to be explained; a pool of blood and a turban to show that the offence had been committed in Afzal Husain’s jurisdiction; he had the makings of a case. What he would like to find now was a village on Afzal’s estate through which a suspicious-looking cortège had passed at midnight, a cortège which had perhaps paused on the outskirts of the village to adjust the yoking of a bullock or to negotiate a muddy bit of the track. It might be that the light of a lantern had shone for a moment on a face, on a long, sinister bundle from which a hand protruded limply, just as a villager who had left his house to relieve himself happened to pass. It might well be that he would find evidence of this kind; and sure enough he did.

The next step was to go to Mahadevpur and make inquiries about a crime which appeared to have been committed within Afzal Husain’s jurisdiction. Mahadev Rao was a noble of rank inferior to Afzal’s; he had no police of his own although he was a coroner and a magistrate. He could not legally refuse to let the inspector ask questions but he could claim that any of his retainers or peasants who was charged with the crime should be tried in the Sultan’s courts. He wisely kept to the law. He let the inspector ask questions. One of his retainers was identified as the man on whose face a lantern had flashed in the night.

But this was shaky and it was all the inspector could get. Bhaskar’s mother, they said at Mahadevpur, had left a few days ago to stay with her father, taking Sivaji Rao and another man with her. Nothing had been heard from her since. What was the matter? What had happened! No, no one had ever seen that turban before.

It was difficult, trying to reconstruct the whole affair afterwards, to know just what had happened at Mahadevpur in the previous few days, but reading the interrogations, asking questions, talking it over with McPhee, it seemed to Charles that he could make a good guess. Probably Amrit had begun to think of a plan for kidnapping Bhaskar, but it was far from ripe. She had not even decided to carry it out; it lay in her mind waiting germination, a possibility, something she would like to do, something she would some day set about formulating precisely. Then talk of it had come to Bhaskar’s mother, hurt, humiliated, jealous, fearful for her son; she had obeyed what McPhee called the one emotional urrge and had tried to gather Bhaskar under her wing, so that she knew where he was, so that she could be free from anxiety at least while he was in her presence. She had set out for Timurabad to fetch her son.

The moment Bhaskar’s mother left Mahadevpur, Amrit must have guessed something was afoot. She must have had the station watched, a horseman waiting to bring news quickly as soon as Bhaskar, dazed and drugged, arrived in Sivaji’s care. Probably she had told Mahadev nothing of what was going on, but, if that were so, she must have been confronted in the small hours of that night with an awkward problem. The corpse of Sivaji, killed in sudden anger, must be supposed to have come back to Mahadevpur, with two live witnesses whose evidence must be suppressed. It was too big for her to deal with alone and to keep from Mahadev. She had to tell him something; perhaps she said that she had learnt of a plot to kidnap Bhaskar and in her love for Mahadev and his son she had sent men to save the boy. By all accounts he was so besotted that he might have believed it. At any rate, by morning, they were all agreed at Mahadevpur. They knew nothing; they had not seen Sivaji Rao since he went away with his mistress. There was no trace of the three men, two living and one dead.

It was the best line they could have taken and it left Afzal’s inspector with a weak case, a case that without corroboration would never convince a properly impartial court, though there were strong grounds for suspicion. But if put in the hands of the Sultan’s police, the story could be very tiresome for Mahadev. The police were after all ninety-five per cent Muslim and Afzal was a bigger man than Mahadev; it would need only a little friendly persuasion from Afzal to interest them. Afzal sent over to Mahadevpur a trusted negotiator who was to draw attention discreetly to the possibilities, to suggest in the most delicate way in the world that the case could be dropped if Mahadev would withdraw his support from the sadhu.

Mahadev was drunk when the negotiator arrived, not blind drunk nor cheerfully drunk but stupidly drunk. He listened as though he did not understand what was said, but somehow the message must have soaked through to his muddled brain, for when the negotiator had ended, his small eyes opened and flashed. They were the eyes of a wild boar or a wild elephant, tiny eyes set in broad slabs of flesh that had once been hard muscle, now sagging fat. The small eyes flashed for a moment and then turned dull; he uttered one short, rude sentence that meant he would fight it out and not concede a point and Afzal could go to hell for all he cared.

The message came back and in Afzal’s heart too anger was fierce. Till now he had been uncertain whether to turn out the sadhu by force. He knew it would anger the people of the surrounding villages and he had the Sultan’s instructions to walk warily. If it had not been for the Bhaskar Rao affair, he would probably have decided to be patient, to continue with persuasion, to offer the sadhu some neighbouring site and make it ready for him. But he had reckoned that the murder would make Mahadev combine with him to finish the affair at once; he had counted on it, and this abrupt refusal infuriated him. All his dislike for Mahadev flared up; an idolater, a drunkard, a country sot who presumed to rank with the nobles of Chamba and allowed his mistress to oust his wife, this man to stand in the way of his holy work! He sent the whole tale of the midnight affray and the probable murder of Sivaji to the nearest judicial officer of the Sultan. He reinforced his police at the tomb of Pir Afzal and on the critical day went himself to see that his orders were carried out.

Now Chamba was a peaceful and well-disciplined island. The monarchy and the rule of the feudal lords was in theory absolute but in practice it was mild and easy. The island had for two hundred years happily and confidently rested on British support; and although the Envoy was not supposed to interfere in internal policy, the Sultan had always known that if his autocracy was not reasonably benevolent the Envoy would convey a reproof, and that if he persisted suzerainty might even include the right to depose him. Never in two hundred years had it come to that; the Sultans had been sensible if not very distinguished princes. But the thought was there.

And with that possibility present, some recognition must be given to popular demands, which because of the island’s close association with India followed the lines of those on the mainland. Opposition could be actively discouraged, it must not be ruthlessly repressed. There were therefore some among the Hindus of the island who openly belonged to the Congress party of India; there were even some communists. There were not many of either yet, but a few open members there were, more secret sympathizers, a very few active organizers and speakers. As far as the villagers were concerned, there was not much difference between a Congressman and a communist; both spoke against the Sultan and the feudal nobles and talked of a wonderful future when there would be no more rent to pay for their land. It meant nothing to the villager that one party meant to change the existing order, the other planned to destroy it first and then build something new.

It happened that just at this juncture there was a Congress speaker in the neighbourhood of Pir Afzal’s tomb. He had been talking about rent, about votes for Hindus and places in the army and the police; he had been talking without much success. But when he heard that a Muslim noble was going to oust a Hindu religious ascetic from his shrine, he licked his lips. He passed round the word to all his friends to be there. He came himself.

The sadhu too had told all his supporters in the village to be present. There was a crowd of several hundred within an hour of dawn. All morning villagers were coming in, till by noon there were thousands. All morning the Congressman harangued them, telling them of their rights as free human beings, telling them of the wrongs under which they suffered, appealing to them in the name of their religion.

Had Afzal been an experienced administrator, had he not been infuriated by his disappointment over the Bhaskar episode and the rebuff sent him by Mahadev, he would have waited. He would have taken away his police, let the crowds disperse, returned in a couple of days at dead of night. But he was too angry to be reasonable. He had given the sadhu till noon on the thirtieth day and he would not give him a minute longer. He would show these effeminate creatures who wore skirts like women that this was a Muslim realm and they could not defile a mosque.

He marched up with his police on the stroke of noon. They pushed the crowds aside and reached the shrine. In a sullen silence the villagers watched and listened. Afzal called on the sadhu to come out.

The sadhu sat cross-legged inside. He affected to be lost in meditation and made no reply. Three times Afzal called on him to come out. Then with pig-headed courage Afzal went inside the wall of the shrine with two policemen. They laid their hands on the sadhu’s shoulders.

There was a roar of anger from the crowd. A thin line of police had been holding them back with bamboo poles. Now they surged forward, overwhelming that thin line. They surged towards the temple.

Afzal turned to face them. He had a dozen armed police, men with muskets loaded, ready for just this possibility. He ordered them to fire. They fired two rounds each, rounds of buckshot from their smooth-bore muskets. The crowd did not wait for more; it broke and fled, leaving a score of dead and dying on the ground, among whom were two of the first line of police. When the crowd had fled, Afzal proceeded with his purpose and the sadhu was ejected.

Mir Afzal Husain went to his home feeling elated but uneasy. He had, it was true, done just what the Sultan had told him not to do, but surely every Muslim would support him and agree that he had ended the matter satisfactorily. He was right in thinking the Muslims of the island would support him but in one thing he was wrong, for the events of the morning were not an end but a beginning. Although these were the first shots fired by the police in Chamba for several years, they were far from being the last.

VII

Two days after the firing at the mosque of Pir Afzal Charles wrote to Mell:

I am sure you’ll understand when I speak of suddenly feeling, I mean really feeling, something that one has always known. Some saying, a proverb, a line of poetry, a verse from the New Testament, something that has seemed so familiar and so obvious it’s not worth repeating, all at once seems full of meaning; you feel it emotionally and cry out, surprised and sad: ‘And oh, ’t is true, ’t is true!’ Well, that’s how I’ve been feeling all yesterday and today and the platitude over which I’ve been clucking like a hen with a new-laid egg is the one about people being islands shouting at each other across oceans of misunderstanding. I’ve known it was true, of course, however close you are to anyone, but I felt it today overpoweringly. Perhaps it’s less true of some people, of the inarticulate folk, than of us, who rely on tongues and pens so much that we’ve lost the art of talking without them. Perhaps the old gipsy tinker, wheeling his battered pram along the downs, knows without words when his wife is tired and wants to stop. Like bees or teal, who do the same thing like one creature, all at the same moment. But for us who have nothing but words, what an ocean it is! What shells we live in! More like crabs than islands. Even for the closest. And the people I’m thinking of are shut away from me by every kind of barrier—race, religion, upbringing, sex or age.

I mean, of course, Her Magnificence and Salim, the heir to the throne. I’ve seen them both and I want to try to tell you what they’re both like, or rather what they seem to me to be like. I hope I’m not crowding your mental portfolio with too many people, but after all people are more interesting than anything else in the world.

Let me begin with the Queen. She’s less difficult than the boy because difference of sex may not be a barrier at all, while age is probably greater than any other. I shall call her the Queen, for one can’t go on calling anyone Her Magnificence, and to us the Sultana sounds like something you get from the grocer if you have enough points. She lives in a palace of her own within the grounds of the Sultan’s palace; there’s no significance in that, for it’s part of the Moghul tradition for the Queen to have her own quarters. But there is significance in the difference of atmosphere which you feel the moment you set foot in her house.

You see, the public rooms of the main palace are a kind of Wardour Street dream of a Scottish baronial hall. Huge rooms strewn with rather absurd trophies of the chase. The whole thing completely soulless, stuffy and dull; you feel it was done by a firm of furnishers fifty years ago. Not a spark of personal feeling anywhere. As for what the private rooms may be like—well, I can’t begin to imagine. But the Queen’s palace is modern, French and personal. You know at once that it’s arranged the way someone likes it. Modern water-colours, flowers everywhere, clean, light-coloured paint with little touches of vivid colour, cool and airy and exciting. Nothing could be more of a contrast with everything else I’ve seen in Chamba.

And she’s like the rooms; she’s personal, an achievement, something different. Tiny; light as a feather; you could blow her away like a dandelion clock in the summer fields if you could ever get close enough to blow. But you can’t. One minute she’s there, close to you, talking to you like one person to another and the next she’s gone, miles away, into infinite space, and there’s nothing to do but sit there and wait till she comes back. While she’s there, she’s altogether a person; nothing at all of the Queen giving an interview to a foreigner, but a woman talking to a man. You, I know, are the one person in the world who won’t misunderstand me or exaggerate my meaning when I say that I can’t talk to a woman without the consciousness that she is a woman. There are men, I’m sure, who can; but I’m a different breed. And most women, if they are aware of anything, are aware of the fact that I’m a man. Well, that awareness would be there, between us, as we talked; we would be talking with pleasure I know, of interesting things, of what it’s like to be alive, of books and plays and pictures—and suddenly, puff! She would be gone, away into that region of infinite space where the silence frightens me. Another trite quotation; but that’s one that I felt as well as knew, oh, many years ago.

But you will be wanting to know what she looks like and what we talked about. She’s tiny, as I’ve said, tiny and exquisite. You would say from her complexion and speech that she was French, except that she was wearing a sari when I saw her. It was an enchanting shade of grey—a smoky blue-grey. Lots of quite unbelievable pearls, bigger even than the ones you used to be able to buy at Woolworths for amateur plays. She came to the point at once and said she had been told I was going to look after Salim. She said:

‘I wonder if you will understand him. The poor boy. It is not easy for him.’

Then she began to tell me about herself and why she could help him so little.

It’s the saddest story, Mell. She comes from Ormuz, an island which to de Mandeville was just part of the Orient; Arab and Bengali would be all the same to him. But we can see the difference. At any rate, I can, here; I can feel all the difference in the world. From Chamba, the people of Ormuz look like Europeans. In the first place, they’re all Muslims and every Muslim is much closer to us than a Hindu or a Buddhist. Muslims after all are brought up on the stories of Noah and the flood, Jonah and the whale, just as we are. They’ve heard of Plato as well as Job. Their thought has the same pedigree as ours; by Greece out of Palestine. And there’s a big difference between the Muslim from the Middle East and those from India and beyond, because the Middle East went through the same mill as we did and was part of the Roman Empire, while the Muslims of India have picked up touches of Hindu thought and custom. So the people of the Middle East look Westward, not perhaps expecting much from the West, hoping rather to be left alone; but that is the way they look. Ormuz is not an appendage of India, as Chamba is, but of the Middle East, and it has always looked Westward. The Queen is a true daughter of her island; she looks Westward; she went to school in Paris and thinks in French. And from school she was sent straight to Chamba to marry the Sultan—think of it! I like what I’ve seen of him—but as the husband of a schoolgirl—no!

She was almost embarrassingly frank about all this. She said:

‘There is nothing I can discuss with my husband, for we have no common language.’ And it must be true, for he really is Asiatic and she is European. She has shut herself off from him; she seems to feel she has done her duty in giving him a son and there’s an end of it. What I don’t understand is where she turned when she shut that door. Or rather where she turned when she shut the second door.

For I think, reading between the lines of what she said and remembering what the Prime Minister told me, that to begin with she turned to her son—the natural line of the wife who has nothing in common with her husband. He was always with her when he was small and she concerned herself immensely about his education and his future. But clearly something happened when the boy was about eight. Something almost surgical. Can it have been a love affair? Certainly not a conventional one. But someone must have influenced her tremendously. Or was it perhaps no direct human agency—a book, or the accumulated result of her own brooding and reading and meditation?

Wherever it came from, she seems to have acquired a belief in individual self-sufficiency—as far as this world is concerned; I suppose she would say just the reverse about what used to be called the next world. Did I say a belief? It’s a fanatical creed though she doesn’t explain it very clearly. I’m not at all sure that I understand her but I think she feels that each soul should be in such direct communion with God that there’s no room for earthly ties. On earth it must rely on itself and God alone. And the path to this state of communion is one you have to find yourself. No help for each other. No belief in a church. It’s a reaction more likely to occur to a childless woman than to her, which is one reason why I feel that in her case there may have been an outside influence. It must have been a great struggle to her—and in fact she says it was—when she made up her mind to leave the boy alone. It’s not at all true to say, as the Prime Minister said, that she has washed her hands of him; she’s concerned about him, thinks about him much, but won’t let herself become so bound up in him as to form too strong an earthly tie, and as for help, she thinks she can help him best by letting him come to her in his own time. She must leave him alone, she would say, so that he can learn to be self-sufficient, as she is. I should guess she prays for him, though I dare say she would maintain that was the wrong word and that prayer was an importunity, that it belonged to a low level of development. But at any rate she knows that she mustn’t be greedy about him and try to swallow him up. If only my mother had known that. How wise she is. Though with an odd kind of black-and-whitishness she’s gone to extremes over it. Once she’d made up her mind what her attitude ought to be, she seems to me to have expressed it to herself in words and acted on it in all its stark, verbal harshness. But an attitude can hardly go into words without being overstated and I think she is overstating it. Most people would have paid lip service to the idea but in practice gradually slipped back into the old ways. She has precipitated the idea and kept it hard as crystal. She’s a very strong character; and most strong characters tend to be black-and-whitish. They see no half shades; they do it or they don’t.

You’ll see we went pretty deep for one interview but I am only guessing at what she meant. She has a way of uttering an enigmatic sentence that might mean—oh, anything—and then going right away; hands folded, face blank, gazing into space. I’m interpreting what she said as well as I can, but what gaps there are—how little I understand and how imperfectly I say what I do understand! I can’t express to you how inadequate I find words are. I wonder if I begin to make myself at all clear. Even if I don’t, it is my dearest pleasure to write to you, darling Mell, I here in my lonely exile. A pleasure in itself because I’m writing to you, and a great help to me too, for thoughts become clearer as one tries to write them. Dearest Mell! There’ll be more of this tomorrow. I really must sleep now.

Next day

Now for the boy. And the boy really is damnably difficult. As you see, I think I have some clues to her; but Salim! I know so little that there won’t be much to say.

He’s a sad figure too. Whenever I think of the young—I mean those who are more than children; those in their teens, I suppose—I’m more and more impressed with the frightful difficulties of living in unrelated worlds. The peasant boy who does well at school and is conscious every day of learning things his parents can’t begin to understand; he’s a pathetic figure, with no roots for his mental world at all. He has no common language with his parents; so he is bound to go to extremes. He makes his own judgments, without any help from experience or tradition. And the boy with old parents, who’ve remained unchanged in a changing world. He knows they’re no help to him. He’s a sad figure.

But this boy has them all beaten, or so it seems to me. There’s a natural nobility in his looks and movements, but a sad, lost, rather defiant look. He’s about fifteen; I suppose it was natural he should look rather defiantly at me for what am I here for except to prevent him from doing everything he wants? And who wouldn’t be defiant if he knew everyone was talking about him and wondering how to improve him? But I feel his defiance is directed at more than me, at a whole world with which he has nothing in common. For he has no one with whom he can feel any companionship. He’s still a boy, still strangely innocent just because of his loneliness; he can have no sense of companionship with his father, who apart from everything else has no time for him. As for his mother, there’s no quality in her of tenderness or understanding for others. I can see that for her what she thinks of as worldly ties would really be ties, neither more nor less, ties of the most binding nature both for her and the person she loved. Her love would be greedy. She gives me the impression that she could love someone overpoweringly for him and heart-breakingly for herself, but never tenderly and understandingly. And her world is so utterly different from his, from any boy’s, but most of all from his. Hers is feminine always, sometimes sophisticated, sometimes spiritual, sometimes artistic and above all European; his is boyish, physical and Chamban. Horses and motor-car engines, shooting and fishing; other boys. But there is room for something else; he’s the sort of boy who might for instance suddenly be interested in poetry.

However, I’m only guessing about him, except that I’m sure of his loneliness and what I can only call his essential nobility. He stood there and gazed at me, unbelievably handsome, with his lost, lonely look, calling me Sir and saying yes and no and very much thank you. I made him sit down and talked a lot myself and tried to make him talk. We talked about what he liked doing and what we would do when we set up house together; not really a great deal more. What is quite clear to me is what I have got to do. I must try to give him confidence to tackle problems by his own judgment. Confidence! Not exactly self-confidence, least of all that assertive self-confidence that hides distrust of self, but confidence in a set of values that will enable him to steer his own course.

Confidence first, and then the power of detached inspection. First to know where you want to go and then to see where you are going. It’s a gift one takes too much for granted at our age—the power of standing back and looking objectively at one’s life and steering a course. It seems to me to be very rare in Chamba, and of course it’s always difficult for the young. If you could give that to just one person you’d have done something in life. If I could give him that! I, of all people, who have taken so long to get it myself.

The way to do it is not so easy. I’m sure routine and discipline are the first steps. Do you remember the boringness of complete liberty when you were a child? I do, vividly. I used to look forward wildly, breathlessly, to the holidays, but after the rapture had passed there were days when I just couldn’t think what to do next. It must be far worse for Salim. He has first to get into a regular routine; then it must gradually be relaxed and he must be allowed to pick up interests he will desperately want time for; and then gradually get more and more time for them.

Do you remember John Carstairs? He was one of my greatest friends, but he had the oddest phobia against going the way you wanted him to go. If you burst into his room, as I used to at first, with a book that had filled you with enthusiasm and tried to make him read it, he would agree, but when you’d gone he’d feel it was something he ought to do. It would be just one of those things you have to do some time and it would lie unread on his shelves for weeks. But talk about it, never suggest he should read it, leave it on his table by mistake—then he would be deep in it as soon as you left the room. That must be the technique with Salim.

This is an intolerably long letter but I must add a few scraps. I have to plunge now into practical details of getting our house and establishment ready. The Prime Minister is really a wonderful man in his ability to spare me time for things of that kind amid his many distractions. He’s very worried about the course of events in India, the continued talk of the British going but their inability to reach a settlement that will please everyone, and above all the growing hatred between the communities. It’s bound to grow so long as we talk of going and don’t go, and it’s reflected here, where for centuries the lion and the lamb have lain happily together. Now the lion is licking his chops and the lamb showing signs of acute anxiety. At the moment, the P.M.’s worried about something that has just happened in a village in the middle of the island. The police of one of the feudal lords—all Muslims—fired on a riotous Hindu mob; a quarrel about a temple and a mosque in which, in some obscure way I don’t understand, an alleged murder and the kidnapping of a boy are all mixed up. It is the first time for years that the police have had to fire and it is made much worse by the fact that they were feudal police and not the Sultan’s. The Prime Minister says it’s the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand. He is a wise and far-seeing statesman and I’m afraid he may prove to be right. It is certainly causing a lot of feeling; you hear talk of it everywhere.

I must positively stop but it won’t be for long. So much that is interesting happens that the itch to tell you about it can’t be resisted. Goodbye, my dear, till I next pick up my pen. The moment I do that I feel as though you were sitting on the other side of the desk.

VIII

Some months later Charles was driving down to Timurabad from the house in the hills where he had established himself with Salim. A good car to drive, he thought, powerful and easy to handle. You could afford to think of other things as you drove and when the mind came back to driving there was no need to worry about nursing a clutch that took hold with a jerk or a brake that might not take hold at all. He thought of the queer habits of the first few cars he had owned and laughed aloud as he remembered them in succession. No time to think of anything else when you were driving an old racing car that went either very fast or not at all! And they had all been more or less like that.

His mind turned to the house and the changes he wanted to make in it and dwelt again, with an irritated consciousness that there was no solution, on the problem of getting stables closer at hand. He would be seeing people about things of that sort tomorrow and had made appointments, but he had no appointment with the Prime Minister. He would ring up an A.D.C. to say he had come and sooner or later he would be summoned to some strange function. The later the better, for Hadramauti would certainly want to talk about the political situation, and Charles felt he would need a little time to get abreast of recent developments.

He turned a steeply banked corner and drove slowly through a village, a dozen sordid little shops for the surrounding peasants, a petrol pump for the lorries that used the road, a few small hens, very near to the original jungle breed that were parents of the whole hen tribe, a dozen stray goats. The road turned again in a hairpin bend and slanted down the face of an almost sheer precipice of rock. The main vegetation was cactus; he was getting down to the level of the plateau. He stopped the car, took off his coat, drove on in his shirt-sleeves.

There were a dozen minor things to worry him, little things that had to be put right if his household in the mountains was to run properly. He glanced at them in succession; oats for the horses, warm coats for the grooms; better pay for the servants who had come from Timurabad and left their families there; a new typewriter; petrol supplies; something very technical about the pensions of Salim’s tutors. But he had been through all this; he knew what he wanted; he had only to go to the right people and batter their doors with infinite politeness till he got his way. He was going over it again to make sure it was all there, to snatch perhaps at some new argument that he had not thought of before.

His mind slid away to his work on the feudal powers of the nobles. Not for the first time he wondered whether the Prime Minister really thought anything would come of it, really wanted his help. It might be that this was just a device to soothe Charles’s opinion of his own importance; what they had really wanted him for was to look after Salim and the rest was eyewash. But on the whole he did not believe this.

He thought he knew now what feudal powers the various nobles possessed and he could make a guess at the abuses. Some stories he had heard, some old scandals he had dug up, but all the same, it seemed to him that the system of hereditary rule worked in practice much better than might have been expected. It was the kind of government the people understood; they knew where they were when they had to deal with one man of known likes and prejudices. He was something far more intelligible than a system of law or a committee. And in practice there had been tranquillity and even friendship between the different communities until now.

There were a few shocking exceptions but on the whole it had worked, indefensible though it was in theory. Now here was Nawab Kamal, who thought it should be changed as a gesture to placate the Hindus and the Congress in India; Hadramauti the Prime Minister who thought the feudal powers should be swept away because they were intrinsically wrong and evil; the Sultan and Nawab Yusuf who were inclined to regard any change just now as a mistake, arguing that it would upset the precarious balance by which the peace was kept and that the moment you began to tinker trouble would start.

No one in his senses, Charles thought, could doubt that however well the system had worked in the past, it must change soon; the question was whether it was now too late to make a gradual change. If you couldn’t do that, it would be violent. The right thing, surely, if there was time, would be to keep the good parts of the old and then you might, you just might, escape upheaval, bloodshed and loss of life. If only some wise, far-sighted statesman had started reforms ten years ago! It was true there was a risk in making any change now, there could be no question of that; the hive would buzz with fury, the Muslim nobles would protest against any change at all, the Hindus of the Congress would say the measures didn’t go far enough. But to do nothing meant the certainty of violence; you might put it off for six months or a year, but you couldn’t put it off for ever. And meanwhile, every day, things in India seemed to be getting worse. Wholesale murder in Calcutta, massacre of Hindus in East Bengal, slaughter of Muslims in Behar; surely there must soon be some purging crisis that would end this oppressive, mounting tension.

He was coming into Timurabad now, driving along the bank of the first of the chain of lakes. It was late afternoon and the sun was growing less fierce, his rays, that had been white with a heat that killed all colour, turning to a mellow gold. Beyond the lake, to the right, the clouds were piled in billowy heaps, firm, snowy mountains toppling and piling higher and higher, toppling but never falling, white as the firm, silky plumage of a swan, curved like its neck, billowing up and up. When he looked at those clouds, Charles felt happy again, soothed and calm; his worries slipped from him like the sweaty clothes of a bather stepping into cool water.

He was at the guest-house, where he was to spend three nights. The entrance hall was now a clear and delicate green, warmed here and there by gold and cream paint, by touches of deepest crimson. He looked round with renewed satisfaction. It was better than he remembered; his first job in Chamba had been done well.

The guest-master minced elegantly forward, his small, brown eyes beaming on one whom the Prime Minister delighted to honour.

‘Well, reely, Mr. Bolsover, Sir, it’s a pleasure to see a friendly fyce. Now, you’ll be tired after your journey, tired and thirsty—’ the note changed from the genial to the solicitous—‘and you’d like a whisky and sowda, I know. I’ve myde so bowld as to order one already and here it is. Now tell me, Sir, ’ow are you getting on with your domestic arryngements?’

Charles outlined his difficulties and the steps he proposed to take. The guest-master was sympathetic.

‘Drive you mad, they do, with their audit and their budget and the wife’s cousin who wants a job. Now, Sir, if I might myke a suggestion, why not ask ’em all to a party? Believe me, Sir, I’ve been ’ere twenty years and there’s nothing they love so much as a party. Ask everyone you want to soften a bit, you know what I mean. It’ll be no trouble to you; leave it all to me. I know what they like and I’ll fix the ’ole affair, from cocktails to brandy. Not that most of ’em ’ll drink much in public. But I know what they like. Hors d’oeuvre, soup, fish, a roast, one Moghul dish and an ice-cream, a bomb or something of that. I’ll myke it a number one affair like the Prime Minister gives.’

Charles thought it might perhaps be a good idea and wondered what it would cost.

‘Bless your ’eart, Mr. Bolsover, Sir, you down’t ’ave to worry about that. You’re a styte guest. It’s all on the Styte, and after all you’re not doing it to please yourself. It’s just a wy to get what you know’s right for the young Prince to ’ave.’

This of course was true and Charles stifled a qualm of conscience at the contrast between the meal proposed and the meagre rations which had to be enough for the labourers of the island. He asked about the difficulty of getting supplies. The guestmaster spread out his hands in horror.

‘You’d ’ardly believe what it’s like. I’ve always done everything ’ere in first-class style, all the cooking in pure butter, everything reelly good. First-ryte stuff. You know what I mean. But the struggle to keep up one’s standards! Now ’ave you noticed the bread? Pure white bread. You won’t get that in London now. But the time I ’ave getting it!’ His note changed again to one of anxiety. ‘But what d’you think, Mr. Bolsover? Do you think there’ll be a plyce ’ere in the future for an Englishman? It’s very disturbing, you know, all this political trouble. I don’t fancy settling down in England now, with fish queues and bread-rationing and no eggs nor butter, not so as you’d notice. What d’you think, Sir?’

It was not an attitude with which Charles could feel much sympathy, but he said that in his view whether Chamba was part of the British Commonwealth or independent or part of India, it would make no difference to the need for someone in the guest-master’s position. There would presumably always be European visitors to the island and if the State wished them to be properly looked after there would have to be someone to do it. At this point he stopped, for he saw a familiar face.

John Wynyard’s long nose and rather sarcastic mouth had first poked into Charles’s life in the Western Desert. Charles had been staff officer to a divisional commander at the time and he could see John now, his long legs tumbling over the side of a truck on that first morning; he had been travelling all night and was a sufficiently disreputable figure, red-eyed with lack of sleep, unshaven and dirty, muffled against the bitter air of early morning. Not prepossessing, and the moment his feet touched the ground he started asking questions. Another bloody journalist, thought Charles wearily; absurd to take so much trouble to keep things secret, when people whose sole job in life was to broadcast news were positively encouraged to come nosing round.

But in a few minutes his view was less biased, for from the first question there was a pleasant astringency about John’s attitude that showed he did not take his profession too seriously. He was ready to laugh at the stuff he turned out to the public, the little tributes to local feeling—‘South Welsh commander of a famous division’—the attempts to build up an eccentric personality—‘who always shaves with a pipe in his mouth’; and he had a proper understanding of the importance of saying nothing that would interest the enemy. He stayed twenty-four hours; Charles liked him better and better. There was a freshness in his acid comments on men and affairs, an Elizabethan vigour in his overstatements and behind the pungency a real enthusiasm for something that he was slow to reveal, perhaps a way of life and a way of thought that was clear to himself, who could tell? They had met again half a dozen times during the war and afterwards in London.

The guest-master saw that Charles had recognized a friend and politely withdrew.

‘A human face,’ said John Wynyard. ‘Thank God. For days I’ve seen nothing but these elegant deadbeats at the Legation and the extraordinary, the fantastic inhabitants of this absurd island.’

Charles said he rather liked them.

‘You like everyone,’ said John. ‘You have an amiable nature. You even liked generals in those far-off days when we were battling for the right and a brave new world and all those freedoms. How many freedoms was it we were fighting for? I always forget.’

‘You haven’t seen enough of them,’ said Charles, sticking to the point. I know they’re maddening in some ways, but I’m really getting fond of them.’

‘Fond? But there’s a cynical contempt for all human values in being fond of them. You can be fond of a spaniel but not if it pretends to be a human being. Bring me a whisky and soda. No, bring me the bottle, and several sodas in a bucket of ice. I need enormous quantities of drink to combat the spectacle of these absurd creatures in their Pompeii with the glowing lava slowly rolling down the mountain side, piling up beyond their city till it hangs over them and at last engulfs them. Do you know the planter’s motto? Never sit down to dinner sober and never go to bed drunk. That’s the only life for Chamba.’

‘You seem to have absorbed a certain amount of local atmosphere,’ said Charles mildly. ‘Why are you so infuriated with these nice, peaceful people? Who are we talking about, by the way? Nobles, peasants, Hindus, Muslims?’

‘Nice? Peaceful? Nice peaceful ghosts, your nobles are. I don’t know whether to be furious with them for living on two centuries after they became anachronisms or to be sorry for them because they can’t see what’s coming to them. I’m furious when I see the luxury in which the court lives, as though this were a land flowing with eggs and butter, while the ordinary folk have eight ounces of adulterated rice a day; I’m sorry for them when I see their absurd, artificial life still going on while any ordinary man can already hear the roar of the avalanche as it gathers way and thunders down the mountain to overwhelm them.’

‘Volcanoes and avalanches,’ said Charles appreciatively. ‘You are doing them proud. Won’t you say something about the rumble of the tumbrils on the cobbled streets? And the heads dropping into the baskets?’

‘But that’s exactly what makes the whole atmosphere so fantastic. Even yon can perceive that it isn’t the first time this has happened. Everything I’ve said would have been fair comment in Paris in the spring of 1789. There you had nobles who were anachronisms flirting and dining and going to parties as though their whole life stretched before them. They ought to have known what was coming to them but they didn’t. Still, one can just forgive them. They had a faint excuse. They’d only outlived their time a century or so. But to have it still happening in 1946! People who’ve been dead for at least three centuries still walking about! Study them, my dear Charles, by all means; put them under the microscope; send them to the Society for Psychical Research. But don’t say you’re fond of them; don’t treat them as human; they can’t be. They just can’t. Ghosts or automata. No other choice.’

John had come for a few months to India as the representative of a group of papers. He had not thought it was enough to stay in Delhi but had gone far and wide, to every province; now he was going to the States of India and although strictly speaking Chamba was not one of the States, it was certainly part of the Indian question.

‘But it’s all so obvious,’ he was saying as they went in to their six-course dinner, all cooked in the best butter. ‘They make me tired. As long as the British yatter on about going and don’t go, things are bound to get worse in India. Hindus and Muslims simply have to ask for everything they want and go on asking, hoping wildly that at the last minute some impressionable mountebank will come out from Whitehall, swallow their story, reject the other party’s, and give them everything they want on a plate. There’s no hope of reality until we fix a date and say that we’re going on that day. Then they may begin to act like responsible folk. They may; but they certainly won’t at present, while we talk about getting them to agree before we go. Look how it pays them to overstate their case. Pakistan was the cry of a few fanatics a year ago; now it’s a thing that people who are otherwise quite intelligent talk about as though it made sense.’

‘Surely,’ said Charles, ‘no British government would be so crass as to repeat the Irish solution and leave a country split in two. When our greatest achievement in India has been unity.’

‘Don’t be so sure,’ said John, and went into confidential disclosures of currents of thought in London.

They had finished the roast duck and were both regretting the impossibility of dealing with a Moghul dish of curried mutton as well when Charles said he felt it would be sad if Chamba did not achieve independence from whatever emerged in India.

John leaned forward in his chair and said in tones of incredulous horror:

‘Now why? Now tell me just why, you old sentimentalist.’

‘They have a tradition and a culture of their own, they’ve been peaceful and happy a long time. I don’t see why they should be continually embroiled in the affairs of warring empires in which they’re not interested.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought you could be capable of uttering such a farrago of nonsense,’ said John solemnly. ‘Let them keep their culture, just as the Welsh have, if they want to; though you know perfectly well that there’s really no such thing. A code of manners, perhaps, but that doesn’t make a culture. But don’t let’s argue about that. They can keep it as a province of India. As for not being involved in warring empires, what do you think? Had they more or less chance of avoiding Japanese invasion by themselves or as part of the Empire?’

‘Oh, obviously, they must have a defensive and commercial alliance, but I don’t see why India should want any more than that.’

‘You don’t? Never heard of aeroplanes of course. Never thought what the position of India would be with a hostile power holding Chamba, like an enormous aircraft carrier anchored off her shores.’

‘And what names you’d call me if I used that argument about Ireland,’ Charles said softly.

‘Ireland has nothing to do with it. We’re an old people who’ve made our name in the world and can afford to be generous. But that’s not the main argument against the independence of Chamba. India’s going to be Hindu; make no mistake about it. And the reason is not that the Hindus are more numerous but that they’re more intelligent and more energetic; their thought is more virile. Instead of clinging to traditions that died centuries ago they’ve developed an industry, they’ve heard of science. It’s no use you huntin’ and shootin’ folk saying the Muslim’s more of a gentleman and anyhow the Hindus have always been against us. It’s just because the Hindus have got more guts that they have been against us. Wouldn’t you have been against us?’

He paused to accept a liqueur brandy, and went on:

‘Well, how can Hindu India tolerate an island only seventy miles from her coast that’s full of Hindus and therefore part of India but is ruled as an independent state by Muslims? And is oligarchic, feudal, medieval, everything India isn’t going to be. Why, the island would be the rallying post for every dissatisfied reactionary. The minorities in India would never settle down and become good citizens. They’d keep a separatist party headquarters over here and there’d be no end to the trouble. The island would be a dagger pointed at the heart of Hindustan.’

‘Haven’t I heard that phrase before somewhere?’ asked Charles politely. ‘It seems to call to mind the memory of Czechoslovakia. But do go on. The Hindus have been giving you a good time.’

‘Don’t imagine I like them,’ said John. ‘I dislike their clothes, their food, their appearance, their smell, and most of all their manners. But I do claim to face the facts.’

At this moment a servant said Charles was wanted on the telephone. When he came back, he said:

‘A man I had to do business with tomorrow. He has to break his appointment and very decently said he’d come round to see me now. My business won’t take ten minutes. He’s Director of Technology and is going to find me an instructor in metal-work. When we’ve finished, I’ll bring him to see you. You’ll like him. There’s more punch to him than most Chamban officials.’

Khan Sahib Nadir Shah was an active, well-built man of thirty-five with a round, resolute face and a crisp manner. He had all the evening before him and said he would be glad to meet Wynyard. As Charles led him from his private sitting-room to the public room where John was waiting, Nadir Shah said:

‘Have you heard the latest developments of the Bhaskar Rao case?’

Charles said he had not.

‘It is not far from your house that it happened. But of course you would not hear there. No one there would tell you. Everyone in Timurabad is talking about it. But I must not bore your friend with our local politics.’

John said he was interested in everything about Chamba and had just heard of this case. He would like to hear more.

Nadir Shah said:

‘In the beginning it is a very simple case. There is a rustic squire, a Hindu, whose mistress lives with him openly and has turned out the wife. The wife is uneasy about her son and plans to kidnap him from school to protect him from the mistress who hears of it and arranges—what do you call it?—an ambush. No, thank you; a lemon squash perhaps. Well, in the ambush the son escapes. He goes to the home village of Afzal Husain, who is one of our nobles, a nice fellow, very nice, not highly gifted, but a good fellow. Now Afzal Husain has on his land a mosque which he wants to restore. But on that mosque there is a tiresome fellow, a sadhu, a Hindu so-called ascetic, who has trespassed and will not go away. And the rustic squire, the boy’s father, is giving the sadhu support. So what happens? When he sees the squire’s son walk into his house, Afzal Husain thinks to himself: Aha! Now I have him. He goes to the place of the ambush. He finds a pool of blood, a safa, what you call a turban-cloth, signs of a fight. He asks questions. It is pretty clear that someone has been killed. Now, what does he do?’

He stopped and looked round.

‘Tell us,’ said John.

‘I am only guessing now. But what I guess is this. He thinks that if he agrees to give up this murder case, his troublesome neighbour the squire will agree to let him turn out the sadhu. So he sends someone to say this, but the squire says no. He tells him to go to hell. So what? Afzal Husain is very angry. He goes to turn out the sadhu. There are many Hindu villagers—sent by his enemy the squire. They are a riotous mob. They try to stop him when he is carrying out what is quite lawful. And because he is angry and to save himself and his police, he fires on them.

‘Well, now,’ went on Nadir Shall, who was enjoying his story. ‘Now you have your famous case. No sensible man can doubt that the squire’s people—what is his name? Mahadev Rao—did commit a murder that night. It is another thing to prove it. And now Afzal Husain’s people have done the silliest thing. You see there were three men in the cart with the boy and they have all disappeared. They may all have been killed but it is not likely. It was an ordinary village fight. One of them must have been killed, because if it were not so no one would take the trouble to make the other two disappear. Well, Afzal Husain’s people say they have found a blood-stained cart; they say it was hidden and it must be the cart in which the corpse was moved that night. It is identified by the wife’s people as the cart in which the party were travelling that night. That is all right. It may be quite another cart but no one can be certain of that. It is the kind of evidence that might help the prosecution and cannot harm them. But now they have been silly. They have found a man who they say is one of the other two who are missing. An eye-witness. One of the two men in the cart who disappeared. Of course all we Muslims believe he is that man. But the Hindus say he is quite another man and, between ourselves, to me it smells very funny. If he is not that man, then it will spoil the case. An eye-witness who was not there; no one can convict in a case like that.’

‘But won’t the Hindus find it rather difficult to prove that he isn’t the right man?’ Charles asked. ‘I suppose the squire’s people say they know nothing about the whole incident? They can hardly say they know this isn’t the real man because they’ve got the real man tied up somewhere else.’

‘But that is where the communal cleavage comes in. Afzal Husain was relying on the wife’s people, because it was one of them who was killed; if the wife’s people all said they had seen the cart set out with the witness driving, well and good. That is what they would have said, in ordinary times; but now Hindu-Muslim feeling is so strong, and there is this quarrel about the sadhu. They cannot be relied on. Many of them will be Hindus first and they will give the name of the man who did drive the cart and identify this witness as somebody else. And I think that will be the truth.’

‘What I don’t see,’ said John, ‘is why this local squabble should worry the capital.’

‘Well, at first it was because we are not used to communal troubles here. But now it is much more than that. I am a Muslim and although I am a sensible person and can see the truth, as a Muslim I can only have one opinion. Afzal Husain must be supported, because this is a Muslim realm and the magistrates must have authority and be respected. As for the murder case, I do not mind very much about it by itself but one must not give way to these people. And the Hindus, you see, they are making a big fuss. They say that Afzal Husain must be punished for firing on the mob and the murder case must be dropped because Afzal Husain started it from private enmity against the squire. That was bad enough. It would undermine all authority to give way to them. And now it is much worse. The Congress have made a constitutional case of it. They have claimed—’ He paused. His whole expression had changed now and he was no longer enjoying his story. After a moment he went on:

‘I see you have not heard. You must excuse me. It is hard for me to speak of it because for a Muslim obedience to his king is his duty. It comes next to his duty to God. We feel deeply about an insult to our king and what these people have done is unheard of insolence. They have claimed that they cannot expect justice in the Sultan’s courts because of the communal feelings that have been aroused. They have petitioned that if the case is to go on it should be tried in British India.

‘But surely,’ said Charles, ‘that’s quite impossible. No British Indian court would have jurisdiction.’

‘Of course it is impossible. They have done it only to insult the royal family and to rouse mob emotion. They want to make riots and trouble here and to prejudice our case for independence.’

It was obvious that Nadir Shah was restraining his anger with difficulty. Charles said maliciously:

‘Mr. Wynyard has been arguing that Chamba has no case for independence.’

Nadir Shah did not move or speak. But it was not a pause of weakness or irresolution. He was controlling a strong emotion and gathering his forces.

John was too good a journalist to let his own views come between him and the chance of hearing someone else’s. He said:

‘I was only putting a point of view.’

‘Will you come with me?’ Nadir Shah asked quietly. ‘I want to show you something. My house is quite close.’

They went out. His car was at the door and in a few minutes they were there. It was a small, modern house standing among orange trees, the eastern equivalent of a bank-manager’s house in Balham; white concrete, a severe design that the moonlight flattered. They went up steps into a plain little living-room. Nadir Shah still did not speak. He led them through a curtained alcove into a bedroom.

There was a night-light burning on the washstand and the moonlight fell from a hexagonal window in a geometrical pattern on the floor. A child of about four lay asleep on the bed. His dark hair was ruffled; one hand, still a baby’s hand creased at the wrist, lay thrown back on the pillow above his head. His face showed warm as ivory in the dim light; the long lashes made a dark fringe on his cheeks. On the table by the bed were a few toys; tiny models of cars and aircraft, a teddy bear.

‘My son,’ said Nadir Shah quietly.

Charles said:

‘I’ve no son, but seeing him makes me wish I had.’

A sword hung on the wall over the boy’s head. Nadir Shall took it down and beckoned to the others to come with him into the living-room. He turned on the electric light. He held out the sword to them.

‘Look,’ he said.

The scabbard was of green velvet, old and worn; the metalwork on it was of gold. The hilt was ivory inlaid with gold. Nadir Shall half drew the curved blade. It was curved like a sickle, a quarter-circle of dull steel inlaid with gold.

‘This kind of sword we call an Abbasi,’ he said, ‘after the kings of that dynasty. It was made in Damascus. See the inlaid work. And see.’ He drew it right out of the sheath. He showed them how the supple steel bent to pressure. They felt its razor sharpness. ‘My fourth great-grandfather brought it from Syria. I mean the grandfather of the grandfather of my grandfather. He came with Akbar’s viceroy. He used it in war. It is our family sword. Now it is mine. Some day, if we do not all perish together before he is grown, it will be the boy’s. But in any case, I shall give him a sword when he is a man, a sword of his own. Like this it will be an Abbasi. Oh, no doubt it is only a symbol, only a form. A sword is no use against machine guns. It would perhaps be better to have dollars. But you see we do not think so. When my son puts on his sword he will take vows as I did. For we are old-fashioned; we are still believers. That is what Islam means. The faith. The belief. Do you know anything of Islam? It is not a faith of the towns. It is a faith of the desert and the mountains. It is not like modern philosophies which say this may be right for you but not for me. It is clear. It is true. It is hard. It is like the edge of a sword or the shadow of a rock in the desert at midday. It says this is right and that is wrong. It tells us that God is Power and Mercy and Pity. It tells us to worship God and God only. We do not worship monkeys or cows or prostrate ourselves before account-books. And it tells us that it is wrong to give up this land, that our fathers took with the sword. You may tell us to compromise, to make concessions, but there is no compromise in Islam. There is right and wrong. It is not perhaps much that you ask us to give up to these corn-chandlers who eat cow dung and wear sheets round their waists. Only our faith. Only our poets. Only our language. Only the swords of our fathers and the honour of our wives. We know these people well, better than you know them, and we know what they would leave us. Breath in our mouths and a little bread. Oh, yes, that we should have. But make no mistake. We of Islam will not take breath and a little bread in return for our faith. Our swords may not be much use against the tanks and machine guns and aeroplanes you have taught these skirted folk to use, but we shall not give up our swords. For us it is all quite simple. It is better to the fighting for Islam than be false to our faith. And we shall fight if you betray us.’

He sheathed the sword and went back to the boy’s bedroom to hang it up. When he came back he said:

‘I am sorry if I have embarrassed you. Will you have a drink? Shall we talk of something else?’

Charles said:

‘No, we’ll say good night and go. Thank you for telling us what you feel. My country has too many beliefs. I sometimes wish we had one belief as clear as yours.’

When they were outside John said:

‘You may be an old sentimentalist but you have a courtesy that makes up for a lot.’

IX

There is no temptation to lie long abed in Chamba, where the sun springs to life newborn as a lusty youth and there are no blankets to snuggle under. But in every breeze there is a moisture from the sea which for an hour or two in the early morning creates an illusion of freshness. Charles shaved and breakfasted with a determination not to let the day escape him. There was much to be done and he would be brisk and businesslike about it. But he found everywhere that though a lively interest existed among those he had to visit it was reserved for affairs not his.

The first official on his list was responsible for many of the practical details of the Chamban food rationing system. He held a rank midway between the wise men who make policy and the humble who actually carry it out; his it was to interpret the wishes of the great and translate them into practice. Charles had to see him because the food he bought for servants was insufficient and adulterated, while getting it involved the maximum of inconvenience. As in India, food rationing affected the well-to-do only indirectly, through their servants, because it was necessary to ration only what the poor could afford to buy. Meat, eggs, milk and butter were thus automatically off the list.

Charles had an appointment and after only a few moments waiting was shown in. The official he had to see was seated at a desk facing a semi-circle of some ten or a dozen persons. They were smoking cigarettes, chewing pan; one had a cup of tea. The official rose to meet Charles, bowed, waved him to a place among the others in the semi-circle.

‘I will send for the papers in the matter you wrote to me about,’ he said.

He rang for an office servant who went to fetch a clerk. The official resumed a discussion in Urdu, which Charles could not follow, with a small, alert-looking man in a dark green sports shirt and elegant, fawn trousers. It was conducted with so little interest on either side that Charles could not believe that the green-shirted man was, as he had at first supposed, a member of the public trying to get something from the official. He was still puzzling vainly what it could all be about and was inclining to the theory that green-shirt was a professional agent for someone else, when the clerk arrived, an incredibly thin man in a dark red fez and a long linen coat. He was sent to get the papers; the official abandoned inconclusively his discussion with green-shirt and appeared to resume another with someone else. Like a chessmaster playing ten games at once, drought Charles, but he doesn’t seem to want to win. Nor for that matter did any of his opponents; in fact they all looked so bored that it was difficult to see why they had taken the trouble to come.

At last Charles’s papers arrived. The official finished a cup of tea, gave it to an office servant, threw out a casual remark that was clearly the next move in his game with a third member of the audience, and picked up the papers. He glanced through them to refresh his memory and turning to Charles began to explain in English the technical difficulties of the course Charles proposed. They seemed to Charles highly artificial and he suggested three ways of avoiding them that to him looked like common sense.

The official shook his head languidly and explained why none of them would accord with the rules of his game. He did not question the principle that the servants of the ruling house must get what they wanted. This was a principle that Charles regarded with dislike, but in which he had acquiesced because he could hardly condemn the servants he had chosen from the palace to worse fare than those he had left behind. He had come prepared to argue about this aspect of the case, but principle was never mentioned. It was a matter of getting round technicalities; the official wearily suggested a fourth method which to Charles appeared ludicrously complicated. But it gave him what he wanted and he agreed.

The official scribbled a note of the conclusion he had reached and sent the papers back to the clerk. Then, settling himself deeper into his chair as if in happy anticipation of well-earned relaxation, he said:

‘And what do you think of the case of Bhaskar Rao?’

Everyone stirred. One man leaned forward, another laid down his cigarette, a third pushed aside his teacup. Even the most bovine suspended the chewing of pan and gazed at Charles with interest.

Charles said cautiously:

‘It seems to be a matter in which people take sides without worrying very much about the merits of the case.’

Surprisingly, everyone laughed.

‘But of course,’ said someone. ‘This is Chamba.’

He was immediately challenged.

‘But it used not to be like this. Only a few months ago, we were all friends; Hindus would light lamps at the tombs of Muslim saints.’

Everyone began to talk about the growth of ill-feeling. They gave instances and told stories. Someone said:

‘It is because the women are coming out of purdah.’

No one agreed with this.

‘No, it is because the English are leaving India.’

‘The Hindus do not want us to get our independence,’ said a third and turning to Charles, he asked:

“What do you think about our independence?’

‘Well, I am for the moment a Chamban official,’ Charles replied. ‘Naturally, I should like to see the island independent.’

‘But what do you think as an Englishman?’

‘Speaking as just one Englishman, holding no British official position, I should like to see our old ally prosperous and independent. But I speak only for myself’

‘But your Government want us to submit to these Hindu Congressmen.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Charles. ‘I suppose—’

‘Oh, I know it. We all know it. Just as you would not help the Czechs to resist Hitler.’

‘Well, I suppose they do want to leave a strong, central Government in India.’

‘But why must it be at our expense? Why must we submit to the tyranny of these Bombay money-lenders? They are practically communists, you know.’

‘Well, I hope you won’t have to. But are you sure they would be tyrants?’

‘Of course. They would upset everything here. They would never let things go on as they are. And we have been very happy.’

‘Well,’ said Charles. ‘I take it you are all Muslims. Yes? Well, you Muslims have been happy; you have had all the jobs—’

‘But the Hindus have the land and business. We have all been happy together in the past. Why must they upset us?’

‘Forgive me,’ said Charles, ‘but I must go. I have an appointment. I can only say again that I personally hope you get your independence.’

It was the same everywhere. At each interview he had a feeling that the matter he was discussing was something that had to be attended to but it was a tiresome preliminary. There was something else, something exciting and important, that the man behind the desk wanted to talk about. And at last it would come; he would push aside the papers and lean forward.

‘Tell me,’ he would say, ‘what do you think of the case of Bhaskar Rao?’

Things moved slowly in Chamba and it was four months since a sudden blow in the moonlight, in confused struggle round the cart, had ended Sivaji Rao’s life. There had been interest in the story from the first because of the police firing, but the Prime Minister had appointed a commission to inquire into that and the excitement had died down, as he had meant it to, while the commission groaned ponderously on its way, its wheels creaking slowly just as those of Sivaji’s cart had creaked through the night. At last the police had completed their case and were ready to bring to court three of Mahadev Rao’s Mahrattas, one who was supposed to have struck the blow and two accomplices. And on the results of that case would depend a further case against Mahadev Rao himself; for if the prosecution were right, he must have suppressed evidence. Now the Congress party’s claim that the case should not be tried in Chamba had brought it into the realm of high politics and excitement was mounting again.

Charles escaped from it only at lunch, when he met John Wynyard at the Legation swimming-pool and announced firmly that he would talk of love, life, literature, anything but Bhaskar Rao and Chamba. They swam in cool, green water, ate sandwiches in the sun, plunged sun-baked bodies again into water that seemed almost to hiss as it lapped their tanned flesh. Irritation and weariness had dropped away when they came back to the guest-house where Charles was to find a stenographer and record the decisions taken at his morning’s interviews. The stenographer brought him a note from the Prime Minister asking Charles to come that evening to a display by the Chamban Girl Guides and to talk on the way.

By half-past four Charles had finished his notes and letters, and was outwardly spruce and neat in a clean silk suit, though already somewhat sticky beneath his clothes, waiting to be picked up by the Prime Minister’s Rolls-Royce. He was ready with his opinions on the feudal nobility, Bhaskar Rao, the future of Chamba, the education of princes, fountains in public squares and avenues of palm trees. In fact, he thought, my mind is just like the correspondence column in The Times.

The Prime Minister shared with all Chambans one trait at least, a courteous desire to express to his hearer the pleasure he felt at meeting him. Charles had now overcome the slight embarrassment which this had once caused him and he even tried to reply in kind. It was therefore after several exchanges that the Prime Minister sighed and said:

‘My dear boy, I am very worried. This is the second time I have been Prime Minister of Chamba and I have besides been Prime Minister in two States in India, but I can truly say I have never before been worried. Depressed sometimes, yes; apprehensive, often; but worried, never. I have always been able to turn from my work in my rare moments of relaxation to philosophical studies or conversation with friends, and to turn with an easy mind. But now there is so much at stake that my mind is perpetually exercised.’

He was silent. Charles asked if it was the case of Bhaskar Rao that was troubling him, but he dismissed it with a wave of his elegant hand.

‘That is a symptom,’ he said, ‘and it is folly to be concerned with symptoms. We must think of the disease. Much of it is beyond the reach of our art. We cannot deal with the spread of communism in India. That is a danger to religion and morals, the most serious danger of our time. But here in Chamba there is much we could do and I believe we could reach once more a happy way of life between Hindu and Muslim. But to my mind we can do that in one way and one way only. To me it is clearly the statesmanlike course. We should institute at once far-reaching liberal reforms and a complete revision of the feudal powers of the nobles. There should be a two-chamber legislature and an executive responsible to the legislature. In short, the monarchy should become constitutional and we should announce it at once. These I know are nineteenth-century problems; they must seem strangely old-fashioned to you, but for us they are real and modern. Then, or rather at the same time, we must make a bargain with the Congress. If we make a bargain now, we can get good terms, because the princes of India will follow us. The Congress are eager that we should give the States a lead and to put it bluntly, they will pay us well to give a lead. If we wait, it will be too late, and we shall get no terms at all. The princes will come in before we do and then we shall have to pay to come in. It is the only statesmanlike course to take the initiative now. Once we had announced reforms and established a bargain with the Congress we should be on firm ground again and everyone would get on with their work and be happy. But I cannot get His Magnificence to agree. Between you and me, I am seriously thinking of resigning. This is in strict confidence. But we will go together to His Magnificence later in the evening. I have arranged it.’

They had arrived at the roped-off square of dusty green where the Girl Guides were to display their art. The Begum Nawaz Ali stepped forward to greet them, wearing a modified sari of white and blue over a blue skirt. The effect was faintly nautical in a musical comedy way, but both feminine and workmanlike. She was the Chief Commissioner of Guides for the island and it was her duty to welcome the Prime Minister. She spared for Charles a glance that said they were old friends and would find time to talk later.

The girls ran here and there. They seemed strangely lumpy, but this, Charles decided, was not due to any deformity but to wearing Moghul underclothes. They demonstrated the resource with which Guides would rescue an invalid from a burning hut or succour a wailing mother whose child had fallen down a well. They posed in simpering tableaux illustrating civic virtues, or rhythmically took exercise to music. The sun shone fiercely, earnest ladies watched their protégées with anxiety or made announcements on a loudspeaker. All very English, except for the sun. The Begum sat by Charles for a few minutes and told him what strides had been made in the emancipation of women, and how all this would have been impossible a few years ago. Charles admired her enthusiasm and was sure she was right; he wished he did not find it all slightly comic and very boring. He dripped slowly in the shade of the marquee and longed for fresh air, even for the sunshine of Chamba. Waves of slumber swept at him; he dug his nails into his palms, pinched himself as painfully as he could, bit his tongue. It would be the height of ill manners to fall asleep, but he could not help it, each succeeding wave was worse than the last. He nodded, caught himself jerked upright, bit his tongue again; he had survived that one, he must get ready for the next.

Then suddenly the Prime Minister was on his feet, speaking well and incisively about the girls of today and the mothers of tomorrow, the future of the island and its race. And then they were smiling, shaking hands and saying goodbye.

They drove straight to the palace and in a few minutes were with His Magnificence, who had just changed into a glistening white evening suit. He wore an orthodox black tie with a striped footman’s waistcoat of pale blue and yellow and an enormous pink rose in his button-hole.

‘Ha! Mr. Bolsover!’ he said. ‘You are learning the strings. My next Prime Minister has come to pick up tricks of the trade. Hadramauti Sahib is very kind. He takes you as his disciple although he knows you are going to steal his place. How do you like being a father! Are you lonely in the mountains? No girls, eh? But plenty of whisky I hope.’

Familiar jokes that we have laughed at once already, the jokes of an uncle, Charles thought, and certainly they are the easiest way to bridge a gap between people who have little in common and so they are right for uncles and school-masters and royalty.

‘Well, we must go on with our lessons,’ His Magnificence said at last. ‘Today it is English lesson, eh, Hadramauti Sahib? Very good, begin. Put up your blackboard. I will not kick you as I used to kick my tutor.’

The Prime Minister reminded His Magnificence that Mr. Bolsover had been making a study of the feudal nobility and had come to talk about it. Charles described the present position as he saw it and suggested that the right policy was to try to preserve as much as possible of what was good. But that meant sweeping away much that was bad. Unless changes were made now the whole system would disappear in revolution. An announcement should be made at once that sweeping reforms were to take place and a commission appointed to inquire into the details. There might be dangers in this course, but in any other he felt disaster was certain.

Hadramauti nodded his head as point after point confirmed his own opinions. Charles wished he would not; he had made up his own mind independently and felt it would carry more conviction if the Prime Minister disagreed with him.

‘I congratulate you, Mr. Bolsover,’ said His Magnificence at last. ‘You are very apt pupil. You have learnt your lesson well. You go to the top of the tree. Or is it into the top drawer! Your English expressions are very confusing. But you have forgotten one thing, both of you. Have you not another expression about falling between two chairs?’

‘Stools,’ said Charles automatically.

‘Stools?’ said His Magnificence in a puzzled voice. ‘But I thought that meant something else. Very medical. My doctors are always talking about stools. Very undignified, to fall between two stools. But you are so outspoken. It is because you have such strong characters. We have weak characters so we try to be dignified. We hide things. We are timid. We are not outspoken. I shall prefer to say chairs. Well, you are trying to make me fall between two chairs. You see, my nobles would lie for me. Now you ask me to give them slap in the face. What will happen if I do as you say? An old gentleman all his life has told his peasants what to do and kept them happy. Now you change everything. Now he cannot tell them to do anything but he must write a report to some youngster in a town who does not know his peasants at all. The old gentleman will be very angry. He will say I have left him in the—in the what?’

‘In the lurch,’ said Charles.

In the lurch. Yes. What is a lurch? But never mind for that. He will be angry, this old gentleman. And it will not please anyone at all. The others will only ask for more. They will both be angry with me and then I shall be in a soup. Or do I mean in the stew? One of your English dishes that are so very very dull to eat and not at all nice to be inside, up to the throat. But I will think it over. I will think over what you say. Have you seen my Zoo? Very fine kangaroos. The best kangaroos anywhere. Like very big rabbits. I like them very much. Once I went every day to my Zoo to look at my kangaroos and spent much money but now I do not go ever. Mahbub! How long is it since I went to my Zoo?’

‘It must be quite two years, Your Magnificence,’ said the Military Secretary, who had appeared through a door at the sound of his name.

‘There you are!’ said His Magnificence with an air of triumph. ‘There you are! I do not go to it ever now. It is strange how one alters.’

Recognizing that the subject had been effectively changed, El Hadramauti began to talk about the Bhaskar Rao case.

‘At first,’ he said, ‘I tried to delay a decision as much as possible, hoping that the excitement would subside. But now we cannot delay much longer. The commission who inquired into the firing have reported to me; but no one as yet knows that and the public must not know until Your Magnificence has reached a decision. The police are ready in the other matter, the trial for murder, and because of this move of the Congress a decision is necessary on that too. Either the trial must go forward, and then the Congress will be very angry and the newspapers in India will take it up, saying the trial is unfair, or we must tell the police to drop the case.’

He paused but His Magnificence said nothing, continuing to look at him with interest, his eyes twinkling behind his round spectacles as though he found his Prime Minister as intriguing as he had once found kangaroos.

‘It is strange,’ went on El Hadramauti reflectively, ‘how often in life what is clearly right in the eyes of God is also the best course to confound and surprise one’s enemy. At least, that is my experience.’

‘And I will tell you something else that is strange,’ said His Magnificence, leaning forward with interest. ‘Often you want to do something very much. But you think it is not right in the eyes of God. And then you think about it more, and more, and more, and you begin to see you were wrong and God will not really mind very much, or perhaps not even at all. That has been my experience. In many matters. And Mr. Bolsover, whose tastes are so like mine, will I am sure agree.’

The Prime Minister did not treat this as a reflection on the disinterestedness of his own mental processes but as an interesting piece of self-revelation. He went on:

‘I have thought, Sir, with great care, what would be the just way of dealing with this case, just I mean in the eyes of God; and when I had reached conclusions I considered them again in the light of the political situation and it seemed to me that from that point of view they were the most expedient as well as the most just. What do you think of that method of reasoning, Mr. Bolsover?’

‘It is a very English line of thought and one that has served us well in India,’ said Charles. ‘You were spared the conflict that would have arisen if justice and expediency had diverged.’

‘Yes, I was spared that.’

‘And what are these notorious conclusions?’ inquired His Magnificence.

‘First, Your Magnificence, let us take the sadhu. He had no right to settle down where he did. For I understand that his sleeping-place was actually under the mosque, which is contrary to law; while it is common sense not to start a temple against the wall of a mosque. So I think that Afzal Husain’s decision to turn him out was right in the eyes of God. But as to his doing it at midday, in the presence of a Hindu mob, I think he was very ill-advised. And since it led to firing he should be punished. For such period as Your Magnificence may decide, I think he should cease to hold powers as a magistrate; and for the same period his police may be put under the orders of one of the officers of Your Magnificence.’

‘And the murder case?’

‘I am convinced that much of the evidence in that is fabricated. No impartial court would convict. And on those grounds Your Magnificence may order it to be dropped.’

He paused. No one said anything. At last Charles asked diffidently:

‘And the expediency of this?’

‘We avoid the challenge the Congress have given us. It is far better to refuse battle on such poor ground as that. And the Muslims will be glad that the sadhu is to be turned out.’

‘But—’ Charles began, and stopped.

‘I am sure His Magnificence would wish you to continue,’ said the Prime Minister with grave courtesy.

‘But won’t the Muslims say that you have given the two most important decisions to the Hindus? Won’t they refuse to take comfort from the poor little sadhu? It seems to me, so far as I understand the case, that you are right from the point of view of justice. I’m only asking whether after all the conflict with expediency has not arisen. Won’t the Muslims say you have given in to Congress?

‘But in the first place we must remember that eighty per cent of the subjects of His Magnificence are Hindu. And then, it is true, what I have said. The evidence is fabricated. Anyone with experience of murder cases can tell that at once. It is just the kind of evidence the police need to make up their case, and it comes forward very late when all else has failed. It is suspect at once.’

The Sultan said:

‘At last Mr. Bolsover is on my side. He thinks I need a little comforting. And he is right. I do need comforting. You see I do not like dead people. When I am a little boy I dream always about dead people. The doctors say it is too many mangoes or too many sweets but I do not see why too many mangoes make one boy dream about tigers and another about dead people. Awfully horrible dead people with knives in their stomachs and their heads cut off. Still I dream of them. And I do not want a lot of dead people in my island. And this is what I think. People are happy when there is someone to tell them what to do and when they do what they are told. I know because I have never done as I am told and I am not happy. Look at the soldiers in my army. Listen to them cutting jokes when they finish their drill. When I go on shooting-trip I listen to the villager singing as he goes with his plough to the fields. He only eats twice a day and it is food for cows or goats. We should be sick to eat it, you or I. He is thin and I am fat but he is happier than I am. Eh, Mr. Bolsover, what do you think?’

‘I don’t know much about your Chamban villager, Sir, but I am sure you are right when you say most people are happy when they are told just what to do. For a few, it is misery.’

‘Well, they are happy,’ went on the Sultan. ‘Most of them are happy. And I do not want them dead. If they are dead it is like my dreams. Now if you make changes, they ask questions. They do not know what to do. They do not know who to obey. They run about here and there like—what are they like?’

‘Sheep without a shepherd. Bees without a queen,’ supplied Charles.

‘Sheep do not sting. Nor bite. I think that is right. I never heard of a sheep stinging anyone, did you? Then it is bees they are like because they sting each other and everyone they see and my island is full of dead people, like my dreams. That is why I think always to keep them quiet. And to keep them quiet we must please the old gentleman.’

‘The old gentleman?’ Charles was mystified. The Mammon of Unrighteousness, he wondered, but it was the Prime Minister who wanted to make friends with him.

‘The old gentleman who lives on his estate and tells them what to do. If he is happy they will be quiet and happy too. If not—’ an expressive wave of fat, jewelled hand—‘too many dead people. Too many bad dreams. Tell me, you have a good digestion, Mr. Bolsover? No stomach-ache? No bad dreams? Good! You are fortunate. Well, I will think of what you tell me, but we must keep that old gentleman happy. It is time for dinner, I think. I have talked too much and now I shall certainly eat too much and drink too much and perhaps sleep too much. I hope I do not dream too much. Good night, Mr. Bolsover. Good night, Hadramauti Sahib.’

When they were back in the Rolls-Royce the Prime Minister looked at Charles seriously and said:

‘You see? He does not look at anything as you or I do. But mark you, he is very shrewd. Often I am deeply surprised when I see how much shrewdness there is behind this manner—well, really—’ he lowered his voice at the blasphemy—‘this manner of a buffoon.’

Charles said dreamily:

‘I think one should talk to him about people and things not movements or tendencies.’

‘You are right. He does not really understand the conversation of an educated man. And I cannot get him to see the right policy. It is very hard for me to reconcile it with my conscience to stay on. I wonder every morning whether I shall resign before evening.’

Charles felt at the thought a sharp pang of apprehension, for El Hadramauti was the one calculable factor in Chamba and without him the island would indeed be unknown territory. With the apprehension came a genuine personal regret at the thought of losing constant talks with someone he liked. He tried to say this and went on:

‘But apart from my own feelings, which don’t matter to anyone else, wouldn’t your going upset the whole island? I don’t of course really understand your politics, but my impression is that the Hindus regard you as the only Muslim who will give them any consideration at all. If you go, they will become desperate.’

El Hadramauti nodded.

‘It is true,’ he said, ‘and that thought alone induces me to stay. You see I am the only Muslim they trust because I have been trained to think like an Englishman. I am not a flatterer, but you are the only people in the world who are impartial.’

‘It doesn’t seem at the moment as though being impartial was getting us much credit with anyone,’ Charles said. He went on:

‘Who else could His Magnificence possibly appoint? Nawab Kamal?’

A vision rose before him of that ugly and attractive face twisted in Puckish amusement by the thought of supreme power.

El Hadramauti shook his head.

‘His views are too like mine. He reaches the same conclusions, though for different reasons because he is, I am afraid, a thoroughly cynical person. But those same extreme Muslims who object to me would object to him. And then—’ he spoke solemnly—‘there is his way of life.’

Charles was aware of a pleasant thrill of anticipation. Scandal about Kamal’s life would surely be on a grand scale. But the Prime Minister continued:

‘He drinks whisky in public. It is even said that he has eaten bacon. Like myself, he was educated abroad but he is occidental not only in his thought but in his everyday habits. I am not, as you know, a bigoted Muslim, but—’

Charles reviewed everyone else he knew in Chamba. There was no one else. He said:

‘I can only say I hope you stay, Sir.’

At the guest-house he found John Wynyard packing to leave by tomorrow’s plane for Bombay and Delhi.

‘But I shall be back,’ he said, ‘don’t you worry. Where the corpses are, there the eagles gather. And there are going to be plenty of corpses in this island before long.’

John himself left next morning, having made arrangements to come back in ten days for the party the guest-master had suggested he should give.

X

It was the evening of Charles’s party. The green room in the guest-house by the lake had been swept and garnished. Charles had sipped and tasted the guest-master’s productions till he was satisfied. He was walking to and fro looking at his watch. It was not yet the time for which guests had been asked and they would probably be late; no need even to be ready yet, let alone impatiently pacing about. But you could never tell, someone might think it polite to be in time.

Sure enough, there it was, the sound of a car drawing up. Bound to be someone dull and difficult to talk to, Charles thought gloomily; we shall be plunged in laborious monosyllables for half an hour before anyone amusing comes to my relief. But to his surprise it was Nawab Kamal, his black cap worn even more rakishly than usual, elegant in his coat of black silk with its diamond buttons, his wicked, good-humoured face twinkling.

‘Well, Charles, so I am the first. But that I must confess is not entirely from anxiety to see your beaux yeux but because I am so eager to establish an alibi. What? Are you surprised? Don’t you know what is happening tonight?’

Charles did not. He had only that afternoon driven down from the mountains and no one had yet told him the news of Timurabad.

‘Well, all that I will tell you later. But first quickly, before they come, tell me who are your guests. And why you have asked them?’

Nawab Kamal was the only person in Chamba, except the Queen and Begum Nawaz Ali, who spoke to Charles entirely as an equal, with no barrier of race, age or religion. Charles said:

‘Why are people usually asked to parties? There are some people from whom I want something, some I ask because they are so distinguished that the others will be flattered to meet them, and one or two whom I ask just because I like them. All three reasons of course apply to you. Here is the list if it interests you.’

Kamal looked at the list as a cockerel looks at a choice but unexpected insect, his head a little on one side, one absurdly arched eyebrow even more steeply Gothic than the other. Charles looked at him with pleasure. He found Kamal’s a richly entertaining personality. Suddenly the face he was watching was split by wrinkles; the pieces flew apart as though a small explosion had taken place behind it; it broadened alarmingly like the rubber face of a doll pulled by a child’s fingers.

‘No, Charles, it is not true! You have made up this list to deceive me. It is rather a childish joke but you did it so well, I was taken in at first.’

‘Of course I didn’t. That’s the only list there is. What’s wrong with it?’

‘Then it really is true?’ said Kamal, with incredulous delight. ‘Charles, it is too rich. I do not know when I have been more pleased. I am like your Puck:

“Those things do most please me
That befall preposterously.”’

Charles was becoming agitated. He sat down.

‘Do please tell me what I have done,’ he said.

‘You really do not know?’ Kamal shook his head slowly. ‘You have asked El Hadramauti and Nadir Shah together and you still do not see what is wrong?’

Charles remembered Nadir Shah standing over his sleeping son, standing with the sword from Damascus half-drawn in his hands. He said:

‘Why ever shouldn’t I? Nadir Shah is a perfectly ordinary official, except that he has more drive than most. What has he done? Has be run away with the Prime Minister’s wife?’

‘That I admit is a situation that would have possibilities,’ said Kamal, ‘but that would at least be a private matter and they could pretend not to notice each other. But it is worse than that. Nadir Shah has resigned from the Sultan’s service two days ago to take up the leadership of the Jamayat-i-Muslimin-i-Chamba—you know, the militant Muslim extremists—and tonight is the third night running that he has held tremendous meetings which he has addressed with great eloquence. He is a real orator. Waves of emotion sweep over his audience. And about half of what he says is abuse of El Hadramauti.’

‘Oh. I see. Yes, it would have been awkward. But Nadir Shah can’t come if he’s holding a meeting. I don’t think he answered the invitation. And I don’t think El Hadramauti will come either.’

Kamal shook his head.

‘I do not suppose the police will let the Prime Minister out of his house tonight. So after all there is no chance of their meeting. Only for a moment I pictured it. It pleased me very much.’

‘Tell me more,’ said Charles. ‘Why is he abusing my friend the Prime Minister?’

‘Because the Prime Minister is too kind to the Hindus. You see, El Hadramauti’s policy is one of appeasement. He appeases the Hindus in the island, he would like to appease the Congress in Delhi if His Magnificence would let him.’

‘But that is what you want to do as well.’

‘Yes, but with a difference. You see, I am a realist; the only realist in Chamba except perhaps a little His Magnificence. I know that we have a choice between two evils and I choose the lesser. But El Hadramauti pretends to himself that what he is choosing is good. And so he is dangerous, for people who pretend are always dangerous, and those who pretend to themselves are worse than those who pretend to other people. He would be shocked if you told him he was making friends with the Mammon of Unrighteousness. And how, by the way, do you explain that saying of your prophet? It has always seemed to me inconsistent with the rest of his teachings and yet in politics, if you will forgive my saying so, it is the only one you follow.’

‘The unjust steward,’ said Charles slowly; ‘it has puzzled me too; I think it was perhaps badly reported. The story perhaps had an unexpected O. Henry twist at the end which has been left out, and the moral was ironical.’

‘It is a convenient way of dealing with an inconsistency. But at any rate, Nadir Shah and Hadramauti are alike in one thing. They both think wrong to have any dealings with Mammon, while I am all for making a bargain and reaching a way of living with an enemy who is too strong for me. The difference between them is that Hadramauti has persuaded himself that Mammon is the true God, while Nadir Shah knows he is Mammon and will make no compromise with him. So Nadir Shall denounces Hadramauti like a prophet of old. And tonight there will be fireworks. You see, tonight the news will break. I mean Hadramauti’s decision about the Bhaskar Rao case. Your guests do not know that. But I expect they are most of them a little uneasy all the same. Here they come!’

There was a group of people arriving and Charles had to leave Kamal in order to greet them. Once or twice in the next half hour he caught a glimpse through the crowd of those sharply gabled eyebrows and a twist of that impish and sensuous mouth, a twist which meant that Kamal knew Charles wanted to hear more and enjoyed keeping him in suspense. At last there was a lull; there was no one else to come; he could for a moment disengage himself. He made his way to Kamal, took him firmly by the arm and led him into the garden.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘tell me quickly, for I must go back in a minute or two.’

Kamal looked at his watch.

‘It is almost the critical moment,’ he said. ‘I think your party will soon begin to develop unexpectedly. But I will be merciful Charles, and tell you. His Magnificence refused to make a decision on the Bhaskar Rao case. There is nothing unusual in that, but what is most unusual is that he said his Council were to announce to the public the recommendation they have made to him. That means he will see what public reactions are before he commits himself. Now what the Council recommend is exactly what Hadramauti wanted. He persuaded them with some difficulty to say what he thought was right. I think you have heard from him what his views are. Personally, I did not altogether agree; I would have dropped the murder case as he wants to, but also I would have dropped the inquiry into the firing and taken no action against Afzal Husain; that would have been more even between the parties I think; however, I gave in because Hadramauti is the only possible Prime Minister. If he and I disagree, there is confusion. Now, it is an old trick of Hadramauti, if he has something awkward to announce, to let it come out too late for the evening papers. Then there is no time to get up an agitation that night, and by morning people have, as you say, slept on it and they have become a little used to the idea. Nadir Shah knows this and he knows there must soon be something announced about the Bhaskar Rao case. So he arranges his mammoth meeting every evening, knowing that one day the news will break during his meeting and then he will make the most of it.’

He paused and added reflectively:

‘Hadramauti is a shrewd old fox, for all his generous liberal ideas; what he would like to do is to keep Nadir Shah waiting—to let him go on having his meetings till people are tired of it. But His Magnificence has ordered him to publish. No one knows that it will be tonight except we who are Members of Council, but everyone guesses that it will be soon.’

‘So H.M. is going to let him down?’

‘That sees itself. For some thoughts, French is a much more suitable language than yours. Yes, there will be another Prime Minister soon, and I am very apprehensive of what will happen. We live in stirring times.’

‘I must go back.’

‘Yes, and I think you will find things happening at your party.’ Charles had refused the guest-master’s suggestion of a formal dinner-party with places assigned, preferring the kind of entertainment usual in Chamban private houses. So far, all had gone according to pattern. The guests had sipped drinks, nibbled nuts and savouries, moved from group to group talking and greeting each other. There were just the right number, few enough to see who was there and to talk to anyone you wanted, not so few that anyone need be forced to meet those he would prefer to avoid. Now the stage had come when the host would shepherd his guests to tables groaning with food. They would help themselves and eat at little tables in groups as they chose.

Charles thought it was time to find Begum Nawaz Ali. He would ask her to make the first move towards the sideboards. As his eyes searched the room, he thought that his party looked as though it were being a success; if people were anxious, they did not show it. The room was bright with colour; everyone was talking and laughing. But as he moved through the crowd he found himself for a moment checked by the back of the Financial Secretary who was talking to the wife of the Director-General of Education. A servant was handing the Secretary a tray on which there were glasses of champagne and little caviar crusts. Neither had seen Charles; he noticed that the servant said something in an undertone which did not appear to be anything to do with the tray in his hand. Charles sidled past the Secretary just as he was saying to the Director’s wife:

‘Excuse me. My driver is at the door with a message. I must go and see what it is.’

Charles saw the look of watchfulness and anxiety come into her face, heard her say:

‘Oh. I will find my husband.’

He reached the Begum Nawaz Ali, asked her to move to the supper tables, started to ask others nearby. But as he talked, he kept an eye on the door; he was tall enough to see over the heads of most of the crowd. He saw the Secretary come back, saw him hunting for his wife, saw their hasty debate, guessed that they were anxious about their home, torn by the desire not to be ill-mannered. He saw they could not decide, went quickly to them, thinking as he went that Kamal would sardonically have left them to wrestle it out. He said:

‘Have you had bad news? If you feel you ought to go you mustn’t stay, much though we shall miss you.’

The Secretary’s wife looked at him gratefully. She said:

‘Oh, thank you, Mr. Bolsover. I am so sorry. Please do forgive us. We are anxious about the children. Our house is—’

Her husband broke in:

‘One of them seems to be ill. A servant brought a message. It may be nothing, but if you will excuse us—’

They withdrew, full of thanks and protestations.

The Director-General of Education must also have slipped out to get news from the drivers, for now Charles saw him come in through the front door and stand for a moment looking round for his wife. The room was emptying as the bright saris moved to the supper room, and the men followed, elegant in black or gorgeous in gold brocade. The Director moved nervously after them. Charles, at his heels, saw the little movement of his head as he caught sight of his wife, saw these two in their turn plunge into anxious colloquy. He went on to the supper tables and as he went he felt ripples of disquiet widening across the room. Here, as he watched, laughter would be wiped from a happy face, replaced by strain, watchfulness and then realization, the look of a soldier’s wife who hears the click of the garden gate and sees the postman walking up the path with a telegram. It has come, that look says, the news I dared not face; is it the worst? A slim hand hovering over the supper table would check, the spoon be laid down, the gay sari turn away. Here and there that cold wind would touch and chill one and then another, but quicker and quicker it moved, more and more felt its breath, till none were left unharmed. Salads and mayonnaise, Turkish pilaff, quails in aspic, curried chicken, sauces of cream and almond, spread their temptation in vain; like milk suddenly curdled, the guests huddled into anxious clots.

Charles felt a sharp pang of personal irritation and disappointment. the idea of a party to soften the hearts of those from whom he wanted help had long ago been submerged; its place had been taken by the more generous impulse to make some return for hospitality and to show his Chamban friends the pleasure he found in their company. But he suppressed the pang. They were anxious, his guests, about their children, their homes, their whole way of life. The evening as a source of pleasure was spoilt for anyone but the most Iago-like of mankind. Better to face it, to make it easy for them to go.

He made his way back to Begum Nawaz Ali. He said:

‘I can see you have all had bad news. What is it? Can I help?’ She gave him a quick unhappy smile.

‘You know what has been happening in Timurabad?’ she asked.

‘Yes, Nawab Kamal told me.’

‘Well, now we have heard that Nadir Shah has led everyone from his meeting, and this is thousands of people, to the Prime Minister’s house to protest against what is being done. And we are all worried. Nadir Shall himself of course will not mean harm to come, but when there is commotion like this and great crowds of people, the looters and gangsters will take advantage of the disturbance; they will come out in bands. So we are frightened for our homes and children. And we are all deeply unhappy too because this is the end of our island way of life. It is the beginning of terrible things.’

Charles remembered the Sultan who did not want his island full of dead people. He said:

‘I do understand. Well it’s a great disappointment to me, but if you feel you ought to go, of course you must. But won’t you eat something quickly first?’

‘Thank you very much, but there will be something at home. And since you do excuse us—we will go at once. We are very anxious. It is kind of you to understand. Will you please come and see us before you go back to the hills? Thank you again very much. Do forgive us.’

Her husband was by her side. They had shaken hands and were moving towards the door. Others saw them go and took it that they too would be excused. Couple after couple came up, like children after a party, some voluble with apologies, some shyly inarticulate, assuming that Charles understood what was happening. In ten minutes, there was no one left but Kamal.

‘There is a good deal for us to eat,’ observed Kamal. ‘I told you your party would not go according to convention, Charles. It is a pity, for it was a good party so far as it went. What are you going to do now?’

‘I must go to Hadramauti’s house,’ said Charles. ‘I must try to help him. What will they do? Do they want to kill him?’

‘Revolutions do not begin with extreme violence. This is the oath in the tennis-court. The guillotine will come later, probably for all of us. There will be people stabbed in back streets and lanes tonight but the big crowd will be orderly. You had better have something to eat before you go.’

‘I suppose I should.’ Charles told the servant to order his car but added that he would drive himself. He went on to Kamal:

‘But I feel I want anything but food. I feel as nervous and apprehensive about the whole thing as though I were a Chamban myself. Are you coming with me?’

‘I? I am the last person to take. Nadir Shah thinks I am as bad as Hadramauti and Hadramauti will probably think I have engineered the whole thing. That was why I was so anxious for an alibi. No, I will go quietly home. And I tell you, Charles, in sober sadness, I am thankful to God that I have no life to lose but my own.’

Charles did not know what he was going to do. He did not see how he would be able to reach the Prime Minister’s palace if it was surrounded by an angry mob. But he would at least try. He drove slowly along the lake towards the palace.

Timurabad was admirably lighted. Along the broad boulevard by the lake there was a double row of lofty lamp-posts and you could see the road and footwalks clearly. Traffic was never heavy; usually there were a few strollers, a thin stream of cars on their way to cinemas and dinner parties. Tonight there was nothing, no one.

At the head of the lake the boulevard met the main road which came up the other bank and went on towards the city. Here there was usually a traffic policeman in a white coat, brilliantly lighted by a lamp over his head. But tonight his little scaffold was empty.

Charles drove into the main road and turned towards the city. Whenever he had been in this street before, there had been cars, lorries, foot-passengers, bullock-carts, continuously until late at night. Here again, this evening there was nothing. Bright, empty streets. Not a car nor a cart nor a living person. Then, after a few hundred yards, at last something; a body huddled in the gutter, quite still. Charles stopped, wondered whether to get out and see if he could help, decided with a sense of relief that he need not examine that small, limp bundle because his first duty was to help Hadramauti. He drove on. Several more bodies, but now he did not stop.

He turned out of the main road, up the hill towards the residential quarters. This was on high ground, a continuation of the ridge where the guest-house stood. It was crowned by the Prime Minister’s palace. Charles remembered driving there with Hadramauti, the police whistles shrilly blowing and the traffic melting away before the Rolls-Royce. Here too there were no cars tonight, but there were people, hurrying up the hill towards the palace. A car flashed past, driven as hard as it would go. Someone in a hurry to get home and protect the children, Charles thought.

The stream of men moving up the hill grew thicker. They were right across the road and he had to go slowly, sounding the horn almost continuously. No one tried to stop him; the figures in the road sheered aside from the headlights as reluctantly as a herd of cows and with as little interest. Slower and slower, as he drew closer to the gates, those stately gates crowned with lights, guardroom on one side, sentry-box on the other. Slower and slower, less than walking-pace now. All he could do was to edge the car forward a yard or two when the chance came. The lights were still burning and he could see that the gates were thick with humanity; he would never get through unless the crowd surged suddenly forward. Give up and go home? Wait patiently for a chance to get on? Leave the car and try to force his way through the crowd? That would be hopeless, marked out as he was by his clothes and his indifferent knowledge of the language. He sat still, sounding his horn, making a foot’s advance when he could.

Someone sprang on the running-board and peered inside. It’s come, he drought? I shall be questioned, they may turn on me. But the voice that came was friendly. It spoke English, B.B.C. English with a touch of Hollywood.

‘Mr. Bolsover! Pleased to meet you. May I get in?’

The door was opened and someone was sitting by his side. Charles peered at him but could not distinguish his features. He switched on the roof light, stared into a face that was familiar but could not place it. Then he remembered his arrival at the airport and the man in a white shirt who had helped him with the telephone.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said. ‘Still at the airport?’

‘Not on your life. Chucked it three months ago. I’m in business on my own. Started a garage and a fleet of taxis. Well, a small fleet. This is a nice bus. I came out to see the fun. Wondering if it’ll be good for business. Most of my rivals are Sikhs or Hindus. What do you think?’

‘I don’t think it’ll be good for anyone’s business,’ said Charles. ‘Maybe you’re right. You just out to see what you can?’

‘Not exactly. I want to get in, to see the Prime Minister—and Nadir Shah. They’re both friends of mine. How quiet the crowd are.’

‘Nadir Shah told them to be quiet and what that boy says goes. Funny. No one had heard of him a week ago. Friend of yours, you say: We’ll get in on that.’

He opened the door and stood on the running-board. He shouted something; in the crowd’s stillness the sound was startling. A few men in front of the car moved outwards. He stuck in his head to say unnecessarily:

‘Move her forward when you get the chance.’

‘What happened to the guard?’ Charles asked.

‘Surrendered their arms. All locked in the guard-house. Best thing they could do. Taken by surprise.’

He stood up again on the running-board and shouted once more. People moved aside, mechanically, not looking round. Foot by foot Charles edged forward. They were through the gate and the crowd was a trifle less dense. Movement became almost continuous, though at less than walking-pace. No going back now. Charles’s breath came fast as he tried to picture what he would find in the palace.

The crowd filled the drive, but loosely. Men were not packed tight as they had been at the gate. They stood everywhere on the lawns, on that noble flight of steps in which El Hadramauti had taken such pride. Here Charles stopped the car. The men on the steps of the palace were standing still, neither talking nor jostling, standing intently and waiting. The man who had once worn a white shirt at the airport jumped off the running-board and again said something officiously in a loud voice. His words made no stir. Those nearest made way, stepping to one side or the other without looking round. They were still under the spell of an eloquence that had swept them out of themselves, out of the workaday world of high prices and coupons and adulterated rations.

Charles got out of the car. He began slowly to climb the steps. His friend went in front, repeating his announcement but less and less noisily. Occasionally he pushed someone aside, but it was seldom necessary. Charles felt as a bee might feel if it found itself suddenly in the midst of a swarm from another hive. He was surrounded by people who were dazed with an emotion that had no meaning for him; you could have picked them up and poured them through your fingers without being stung; they had no thought for anything but their queen. It had no meaning for him, their emotion, but it infected him; he could not be there without feeling it. He too was a little dazed as he walked up the steps.

He did not know what he should find at the top nor what he could do. Nadir Shah might well say this was no business of his; he was a foreigner and must keep out. There would really be no answer to that. But it was useless to picture in advance what he would find in the palace? Hadramauti bound before his accusers, threatened with death unless he immediately reversed his policy, or Nadir Shah, drunk with oratory, bombarding him with words—either might be equally far from the truth.

The top of the steps. On either side stood a sentry in the green shirt and black astrakhan hat of the newly formed Muslim Volunteers. They had rifles that must have been taken from the guard at the gate. They made no attempt to stop Charles and his conductor. Inside the hall, Charles put his hand on the other’s arm. He said:

‘Quiet. Listen a minute.’

It was surprisingly still. The great hall was empty, there was no sign of life. But away to the left from an open door could just be heard a murmur of voices. Charles said:

‘Come on quietly,’ and moved that way.

He paused again at the door and then stepped in.

An empty room. But beyond it was a veranda looking out over the lights of the city. The voices came from the veranda and Charles went there.

It was a veranda so spacious that you hardly noticed the dozen or so Muslim Volunteers who stood to one side in a group. The eyes fastened at once on a circle of bamboo chairs and little tables where Nadir Shah, the Prime Minister and some half-dozen others were sitting and talking quietly. It might have been a friendly tea-party.

Nadir Shah looked up, saw Charles, but took no notice of him. He went on talking. El Hadramauti sat still with his hands on the arms of his chair. He had lost his spectacles and had the blind, pathetic look of a person who usually wears strong glasses suddenly deprived of them.

Nadir Shah was saying:

‘It is quite simple. This is a Muslim State and the Sultan is a Muslim ruler. We, the Muslims of the island, will no longer tolerate the present trend of affairs. His Magnificence is being given advice that is contrary to the wishes of his Muslim subjects, and, we believe, contrary to his own wishes and best interests. Independence is our aim and we cannot win it by truckling to Hindus. You must resign.’

El Hadramauti’s voice sounded much older than usual. He said:

‘His Magnificence chooses his own advisers. If he wishes me to resign I have of course no alternative.’

‘He is a Muslim. It is the voice of the Muslim people,’ said Nadir Shah.

‘Of a small section of them,’ Hadramauti persisted.

‘We are the Muslims of Chamba and it is our island which our fathers took by the sword. Under the Sultan, we are the rulers of Chamba and here in Timurabad we are the majority. It is our will and you have no choice.’

Hadramauti’s eyes were still blind and puzzled but his voice was firmer. He said:

‘You are right when you say I have no choice. But everything else that you say is wrong. And what you have done is wrong. This is the beginning of the end for Chamba. From now onwards whenever anyone does not like the Sultan’s policy he will come with a mob and threaten the Sultan’s ministers. And in the end the Hindus will come with a larger mob than yours.’

‘Leave them to us,’ said Nadir Shah grimly.

‘We have no Air Force and no Navy and India can strangle us economically,’ went on Hadramauti.

‘The British will never let India use force against us,’ said Nadir Shah. ‘They will not forget their faithful allies. It is not to their interest.’

‘You lean on a bamboo cane that is split and it will pierce your hand. The British will never fight to maintain your rule over the Hindus. And they are right because it is unjust that the few should rule over the many. And you are no true Muslim, Nadir Shah, to coerce your King.’

‘Bring him paper,’ said Nadir Shah in the voice of one whose patience is ended. ‘Has your Highness a pen?’

Charles moved round to Hadramauti’s side. He said:

‘I am here, Sir. Can I help you?’

Hadramauti was aware of his presence for the first time. He said:

‘You! My dear fellow, it was good of you to come. I am glad I have one true friend. But there is nothing you can do.’

A Muslim Volunteer came with paper. El Hadramauti began to write. Nadir Shall said to Charles:

‘Why are you here?’

‘I am neutral in your politics,’ Charles answered, ‘but the Prime Minister has been a good friend to me. I heard he was in trouble so I came to him.’

‘I hope your country will remember past friendship too,’ said Nadir Shah. It seemed to Charles, looking him now for the first time in the eyes and speaking to him, that there was a mad, brooding look on his face that had not been there before. But every movement was decisive and practical. It was that madness of which a man must have a little to be the leader of a mob.

El Hadramauti finished writing. He said:

‘This is what I have written:

Your Magnificence: In view of the demonstration made today by some of the Muslims of Timurabad against myself and the policy which I have had the honour to advise, I realize that Your Magnificence would be relieved of an embarrassment by my resignation. I therefore humbly crave permission to resign my office as Prime Minister and await an intimation of Your Magnificence’s pleasure in this matter.’

Nadir Shah said:

‘It is not some of the Muslims but all. There is no one against us except a few Quislings. But what you write does not matter. This will do.’ He put out his hand for the paper. ‘I shall take it myself’

‘Now? With these men at your back? Do you mean to force your Sovereign to agree?’

‘It is the future of Chamba that is at stake. The Sultan is not so careless for his island that he will mind having his rest disturbed.’

He went, followed untidily by his entourage and by Charles’s friend from the airport. El Hadramauti remained seated, silent, waiting. Charles did not move. They heard Nadir Shah’s voice, resonant and clear even from that distance, ringing out as he spoke to the crowd in two short sentences from the top of the steps. Cheering began in the drive, it spread further and further away as the news passed, till the whole island seemed to be cheering. Then suddenly those near at hand stopped and slowly the silence spread outward again. They heard Nadir’s voice again; movement; the sound of cars; and then at last stillness.

El Hadramauti rose to his feet.

‘I wish I could find my spectacles,’ he said. ‘Now where was I when the deputation arrived? Writing over there at my desk. I had just taken them off to clean them and I must have put them down. I can write without them and even read but I cannot see faces and you must forgive me for not knowing who you were when you came. It was very good of you to come.’

Charles found them for him.

‘That is better,’ he said. ‘Thank you. How lost one feels without them.’ He paused and went on: ‘Did not an English statesman once say: “You are ringing your bells now but you will soon be wringing your hands”?’

‘He’s supposed to have done. I expect he really made it up afterwards.’

‘It is always so,’ went on Hadramauti reflectively. ‘It is easy to rouse hatred and intolerance, hard to hold men in the way of justice and reason. It almost makes one doubt one’s faith in democracy. Yet I am a democrat by faith, perhaps the only Chamban who is. In the end, at the last, it will come. Well, my fate is that of Socrates. I am rejected by those I tried to lead. Still they have not yet condemned me to the hemlock and I shall be able to go to my estate and there, as I think I told you when we first met, I shall read the philosophers and poets. Perhaps I shall write a book. He mused for a little and shook his head. ‘But the future for Chamba is very black.’

‘You think your resignation will be accepted?’ Charles asked.

‘Of course. That is what H.M. wants. He has a rather peculiar way of letting one know what he wants, but it is quite clear to me. And in my letter, which that young man has just taken, I have let him see that I understand and for that he will find it hard to forgive me. So now for me it is the life of Ovid in exile. There will be many compensations, provided only that my friends come and see me. You will come, will you not?’

‘Of course, I shall be delighted. But what will he do? If he accepts your resignation, who will he make Prime Minister?’

‘I expect it will be Yusuf. A charming fellow, charming, but he has no ideas of his own. He will do exactly what H.M. says and he will never suggest a policy. That is what H.M. wants but it is not being a Prime Minister; it is being a scullery boy. I am afraid Chamba is doomed, while if they had taken my way it could have been saved. You have been present this evening, my dear boy, at the making of history, even though it is only the history of Chamba. Now, my dear fellow, let me offer you some refreshment.’

Charles shook his head.

‘I’ll go home to bed, if you are sure there is nothing I can do to help. I left a car at the bottom of the steps. I don’t know if it’s still there. Or shall I sleep here? You seem to be all alone.’

El Hadramauti would not hear of Charles staying. His servants were hiding and would come back in a few minutes. There was nothing Charles could do. He said good night with real affection, putting his hand on Charles’s arm and thanking him again for coming to him in his trouble.

Charles too said good night with a feeling of affection and left reluctantly, wondering whether he ought to have insisted on staying till the servants came back. A strange character, he thought, for he seemed so completely absorbed in his sweeping liberal reforms, his avenues of trees and fountains in public places, his improvements of the coinage and the prison system, yet the crisis had passed over his head like wind over a young sapling. Shallowness, affectation or an immense and deep resilience, he wondered, and thought it was the last.

He found the car where he had left it and drove slowly down the drive. As he let in the clutch, he saw a figure step out from the bushes on the lawn and walk towards the car. He put back the clutch and waited, but the man did not come to the car; he passed behind it to the palace steps. One of the servants coming back, Charles thought; his mind was on other things and it was not a conscious judgment nor could he have said why he made this assumption, but he had no doubt about it. He felt with relief that now he could go home with a clear conscience.

Next morning he read in the newspaper that late the night before an unknown fanatic had found El Hadramauti alone in the palace and stabbed him fatally. On the handle of the knife was a paper on which was written:

‘A dagger for the heart of every traitor to Islam.’

XI

That day all public offices were closed as a sign of mourning for Nawab El Hadramauti. Little work would have been done in any case and no doubt it was also judged wise that as many people as possible should be permitted to stay quietly at home. Almost all the shops were shut and their fronts barred and boarded against looters. By noon a firman or royal edict had been published expressing the Sultan’s deep regret at the death of El Hadramauti, paying a tribute to his many years of public service and appointing the Nawab Yusuf as his successor.

There was nothing Charles could usefully do and he debated going back at once to Timpanagalla, his mountain home; but on the whole it seemed best to start next morning, by which time he should be able to make a guess how things were likely to go. The wireless news at midday included not only the royal edict but Nadir Shah’s instructions to all Muslims to remain calm. A message from a Hindu leader might perhaps have been more to the point, for it was the Hindus who felt they had suffered a loss. They had regarded El Hadramauti as the one Muslim who was likely to give them fair play. Still, there was no doubt the Muslims were frightened of Hindu reprisals and might decide to anticipate them, so that one could look on Nadir Shah’s injunction as useful—if only it had been immediately followed by one from a Hindu political leader! But if any message for the Hindus was forthcoming it found no place in the State broadcasts.

Charles was restless and distracted; he tried to see Kamal during the morning but he was at a meeting of the Sultan’s Council. Though he was used to being alone, and was not ordinarily a man dependent on the society of his fellows, today Charles longed for someone to talk to. He thought of the Legation, but he had carefully avoided becoming intimate with the staff there because he knew his usefulness in Chamba would suffer if he did. And he recoiled from talking about the death of his friend with anyone he did not know well. He fell back on a long letter to Mell and in the afternoon went to call on the Begum Nawaz Ali Khan.

She said:

‘Oh, I am glad you have come. I wanted to see you again after last night. It was so rude of us to go.’

‘I don’t think it’s a time to worry about correct behaviour in a drawing-room,’ said Charles.

‘Yes, I know you understand and forgive us for leaving, but you are wrong to think it does not matter. Now more than ever we should cling to our good manners, because it is the one thing left to us and everything around us is melting.’

‘Do you think it is as bad as that?’

‘That is how I feel, how we all feel. I do not pretend to understand politics. I leave that to the men. All the men felt Nawab El Hadramauti was giving in too much to the Hindus, and I dare say they were right, but all the same we liked him. He was a gentleman and a Chamban and a good, kind man; and we knew he was a great man and were proud of him even when we did not agree. And that he should have died like this, and at the hands of a Muslim! If it was really a Muslim, and not a Hindu trying to bring trouble upon us. It is terrible, a disgrace to us all. It is not the kind of thing that happens in Chamba, here where for centuries we have been so happy and peaceful together. Anything may happen after this.’

There seemed no answer; Charles shook his head and they were both silent for a little. Then he said:

‘I know this is cold comfort, and to you, who are deep in the troubles of the island while I am only an observer, it may seem an impertinence; but to me it has always seemed that society does on the whole progress, but by fits and starts. There is a long, quiet period, then one of turmoil and misery from which something new emerges. We had our religious wars, and then Catholics and Protestants learned to live together peacefully. The same kind of thing is happening in Asia; there will be misery and upheaval for some years perhaps, but in the end Hindu and Muslim may reach agreement. You believe in God; you must believe in some purpose in history.’

‘Your God is so like a man,’ she said, ‘or rather like a small boy, like my Toto. He meddles too much; He is always digging up the plants in his garden to see how they are getting on. Our God is not like that. He is concerned with each of us, but history is something that comes from man’s passions. And in Asia always from man’s worst passions.’

‘And your God,’ said Charles, ‘seems to me strangely isolated and remote.’

They talked on. Later she said:

‘The Hindus had their place here and were happy in it. Some of them are lawyers and judges; they have nearly all the business of the island, and although we are landowners they till the soil. Now they want to take everything; the more they get, the more they want; the Congress say there is to be no more rent paid by the peasants, so we are to lose the land altogether, and they are to take our places in the army and the police and public service, so there will be nothing left for our sons. El Hadramauti has encouraged them to think they will get all this; now Yusuf will try to stop it before it is too late and there will be trouble. He thinks it is better to have a little trouble now than more later, but I do not like trouble at all. And every woman in Chamba will say the same. It is we who sit at home with the children; we have nothing to do but think of the bandits and gangsters who will start their work while the men hold their monster meetings and make speeches and get excited.’

Charles got back to the guest-house in time for the six o’clock news. It was announced that His Magnificence had rejected the advice of his Council regarding the Bhaskar Rao case and had ordered the new Council under the presidency of the Nawab Yusuf to submit fresh recommendations. Charles groaned in spirit.

‘Why doesn’t he say what he thinks himself and have done with it?’ he thought.

He was still listening to the news when the arrival was announced of an A.D.C. with a car and a summons to go at once to the palace.

Charles went with mixed feelings. He had a considerable respect for the Sultan’s intelligence and he never met him without feeling that he liked him personally; there was an engaging childishness about him, a lack of pretentiousness that was refreshing. He approached a problem with the air of a child planning to get sweets from its mother, an air that no one could call statesmanlike but that was almost endearing. But it was difficult to forgive him for El Hadramauti; for that murder he must be held responsible, for had he said plainly and clearly that he did not agree with the Prime Minister’s proposals, Nadir Shah would never have made his speeches and hatred would not have swept over the island.

The Sultan received him in a small room where Charles had never been before. He was sitting quite still with his hands on his plump knees, dressed with his usual exuberance, but with a very different expression on his fat, brown face. He had the serious look of a small boy who is aware of discomfort and is wondering what it can be that is wrong with him. He rose when he saw Charles and came to greet him with cordiality but with little of his old twinkle.

‘Ah, Mr. Bolsover, you have come to comfort me again,’ he said. ‘I need friends, you know. I need them badly. I am very sad for Hadramauti Sahib. He was an old friend of mine and a friend of father’s. He is a great loss.’

‘He was my friend too,’ said Charles.

The Sultan’s fat face was heavy.

‘And you think it was my fault?’ he said. ‘But I warned you at the beginning what we are like, we Chambans. We do anything not to say no. If you ask me for something I will say yes, yes, anything to get rid of you, but when you have gone away, I will do something else. We are all like that. It is better to be blunt and rude like you important people who get on in the world. But you cannot change us now. We are as God made us. Tell me, what do you think of Yusuf? You will like him. He is a very nice man.’

‘I do like him,’ said Charles, ‘and I agree with you, Sir, that he is a very nice man.’

‘But you do not want him as Prime Minister. You would rather have Kamal. He was at your party last night and you talk to him much. Eh? Would you not? Until I make you Prime Minister yourself. That will be next time.’ But today he did not laugh at his aged jest; he spoke mechanically, making his joke from habit. Charles said:

‘Well, yes. Now that our friend has gone, I do think myself that Kamal would be best; he has energy and ideas.’

‘But he is the same as Hadramauti only not so good. I tell you, Mr. Bolsover, a—what do you call it? a long speech in church—a sermon—is no good if the Mullah does not believe in God. And Kamal does not believe in anything so nobody will believe in him.’

‘That is true,’ Charles admitted.

‘Well, I am glad you like Yusuf. And I am glad you came to see me because I want to talk to you about Salim. Everything is very disturbed. I am a little worried about him.’

‘I have already arranged to go back to Timpanagalla first thing tomorrow morning,’ Charles explained.

‘Good. That is excellent. And we will double the guards. I will send you a hundred strong young men under a captain. They will be under your orders. I shall make you a colonel in my army. Mahbub! Did you speak to the Commander-in-Chief about the guard for Timpanagalla? Good. Well, then, Colonel Bolsover, that is settled.’

He sighed. He sat still for a moment, his knees wide apart and his fat hands resting on them pudgily.

‘I have much to make me sad. Now I have Hadramauti Sahib to dream of as well. But I am lucky in one thing, in one thing only, in the way I am made. When I am awake, I do not believe in trouble till it comes. My doctors tell me I shall have the stomach-ache, but I do not believe them. Then it comes and they are right but I do not have it twice over, once before and once when it comes. Now your Envoy, Sir Hubert, he has always the stomach-ache just coming. Always warning me, warning me. Only in dreams it comes to me twice over. If I were like your Sir Hubert, I tell you, Mr. Bolsover, I should be mad, not just a little mad about kangaroos and bowler hats like I am now, but truly mad. I tell you, I should. Tonight I shall drink a great deal and perhaps I shall not dream.’

He sighed deeply and stood up, sadly resigned to the prospect of an orgy he did not think he would enjoy. Charles took his leave and early next morning drove back to Timpanagalla.

XII

A few weeks later, in a letter to Mell from Timpanagalla, Charles wrote:

I feel I’m making real progress with Salim. That touchy, defiant look seems to me to have left his face altogether. I hope it isn’t just that I’ve got used to it, but I don’t think so, for he does turn to me for advice and he even talks about himself in a way that would have been quite impossible when I first knew him. He was so reserved then that he would hardly speak of himself at all, even about the most mechanical and external of his likes and dislikes. Not that I’m encouraging him to be introspective. But I think the best way you can possibly give anyone confidence—and I told you that was the object—is to be frank, to say: ‘Now this you do well—this you don’t, but you could do it much better if you set about it on these lines.’ Nothing could sentence one to perpetual damnation more completely than the hard, competitive atmosphere of my own private school, where you were always up against others and unless you were naturally good at something you were classified as hopeless and left to sink or swim—made for instance to go on playing some game you hated and never shown how to improve. While if you were good, you were forced and driven till you were dizzy with it. The thing is for a boy to realize that he isn’t stuck in a category for life. He can improve.

Charles put down his pen and remembered, and because it was so long ago and he had outlived it all, he smiled. He went over what he supposed had been the entries filed against his name in S. S.’s brain and thought of the one chance that had ever come his way of escaping from the charmed circle and being re-classified.

‘Clever but idle; needs to driven,’ that he was sure had been the first. It should have read dreamy, not idle, but that would have been a distinction too subtle for S. S.; the remedy was the same in either case and there had been no half-measures about applying it.

The next entry had certainly been: ‘No use at cricket and not keen,’ and this one was exactly true. Charles had no positive objection to batting or bowling, but had seldom much chance of doing either for long. Fielding he found provided too much leisure. He was always thinking of something else when the ball came his way and so was always on the edge of trouble, for inattention at cricket was nearly as bad as at Greek.

Then it occurred to him that there was one place in the field where he would have no time to dream. He began to keep wicket and rather enjoyed it; he liked dressing up in pads and gloves, stamping about as though in armour; he became quite good. S. S. strolled down one afternoon to look at the lower game, and see if any of the young entry were likely to be useful; he saw Charles at the wicket, recognized merit, and next day gave him a trial on the upper game.

When his chance came, Charles made a good start. The school fast bowler was on at the other end and not one ball of the over could the batsman touch. They came down the pitch fast and got up with a bump. Charles took them over his head with an air of style and tossed them back to the bowler with a feeling that he was doing well.

For the second over there was a slow bowler and again Charles acquitted himself creditably for five balls. The sixth ball the batsman drove to the boundary. The grass was long and there was some delay in finding it. When it was found and returned to the bowler the umpire decided that it was over, and everyone began to move. The pause was long enough for Charles’s mind to wander, and as he walked up the pitch he was back in a world of noble savages, long before the age of machines, a people whose warriors wore greaves like the pads on his legs, great gauntlets to protect their wrists like his wicket-keeping gloves; they carried two-handed swords with a two-edged blade like a cricket bat. He was already one of the most famous of their warriors, invincible in battle, about to fight for the hand of the king’s daughter, when he became aware of a cricket ball in the air, hurtling towards his face. He stepped aside politely to let it pass, as he would have made room for a bus or a bear or any other intrusion on his droughts, then realized with sudden despair that it was the first ball of the over and the other side had run a bye.

‘Bolsover!’ It was S. S.’s voice of doom. ‘You funked that.’ A moment’s thought told Charles that if he said no he would be branded liar as well as funk. He had not been frightened; he had just not been interested. But it was no use trying to explain that. He said:

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Take off your pads. Go back to the lower game.’

So his classification stood. Useless at cricket; and a little note in red ink, ‘Liable to funk.’

He made a wry face at drat, even now, for it had never been forgotten while he was at Harcombe. ‘Liable to funk’; well, who wasn’t? But surely one should tell a boy that though everyone was liable to funk, it was possible to learn not to. He picked up his pen and went on with his letter:

The thing is for a boy to realize that he isn’t stuck in a category for life. He can improve.

Till this last year, of course, Salim has been treated just the opposite way from me, but with an even worse result. He was never made to do anything he didn’t immediately like. If he didn’t find it easy, he just didn’t do it. Result—a deep distrust of himself because there were so many things he couldn’t do. He was like a niece of mine who at the age of seven desperately wanted to be a boy and have adventures with pirates and Red Indians. She wanted a bow and three arrows she’d seen in a shop window; she wanted them more than anything in the world, so at last I bought them, all shiny and yellow, covered with varnish; red and green rings round the arrows and little brass tips, most lethal. She was delighted of course, the world wasn’t big enough to hold her; she’d been reading about Robin Hood and thought she could split a wand at eighty yards as he could. But when I took her out into a field to show her how to use them, she couldn’t even hit the target. I shall never forget the expression of utter gloom with which she threw the bow down on the grass and said:

‘I never thought I should have to practise.’

Salim was like that about every thing; he would try once, find it wasn’t easy and give it up; so he was convinced in his heart that he could do nothing and was useless. After all, there are very few things, from arithmetic to roller-skating, that one can do without any practice at all. He’s quite intelligent enough to know he will always be flattered and to recognize flattery as meaningless; it doesn’t affect his estimate of his own real worth, which he puts very low but which is considerable. I drink I have shown him that he can make a job of most things if he takes the trouble. So he begins to have confidence.

Confidence leads to courage—and every day I live I feel more convinced that courage is the cardinal virtue without which no others are any use. Not only for you and me but for nations—if we weren’t at the moment a timid nation we shouldn’t have smothered ourselves with bureaucracy. You have to take risks to stand on your own and we spend all our energy at the moment covering ourselves against every possible risk. But I’m digressing; what I’m sure of is that without courage you can’t be generous, you can’t love, you can’t even be grateful. You’ve got to have courage and confidence in the world even to see its beauty; the pessimists can’t, they find everything obscured by their fear. That’s the one thing I try to impress on him directly, that courage is thee essential ingredient in all good. Perhaps I think about it too much because I need it myself; but that I hope is the kind of thought he won’t have.

We were riding home the other morning over the lovely grass hills that surround us - hills that are smaller than Westmorland, bigger than Sussex, and remind me at different times of both—when Salim pointed and said:

‘Look at that, Sir!’ (He’s always most punctilious about calling me sir; if he weren’t a prince I should stop him, but as it is I think it’s good for him.) There was a sudden drift of silver rain across the hills in front of us and the nearest ridge stood dark against it with every tree outlined in the tiniest detail, as fine as filigree, black on silver. It was the sort of picture a Chinese artist would paint; lovely. But I wasn’t sure whether he had seen the beauty of it or meant we should get our jackets wet, so I said nothing, only watched and waited. He didn’t turn to me and then become confused and self-conscious, as most English schoolboys would have done, but went on looking at what had stirred him and said:

‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’

He wouldn’t have said that to me a few months ago, nor I think to anyone. He’s a nice boy; we like each other more and more. He’s busy all day, learning or doing something and never has time to be bored or lonely. I feel sure he’s happier than he’s ever been before.

But it’s hard to try and bring up a boy to have confidence in the world about him when everyone else in that world is terrified that it’s going to fall to pieces. I’ve written to you much more about my occasional days in Timurabad, with its strange political background, than I have of our daily life here in Timpanagalla, because this is a routine, it’s here the whole time, it just goes on and on, running fairly smoothly now; but it is the background to all these excursions and alarms. Rides every morning, in brilliant sunshine or sudden drifts of rain, on lovely moorland turf, or brushing through woods of blue gum or eucalyptus, bending over the saddle with the low boughs scattering cold drops on your neck; or week-end picnics and the aromatic smell of a camp-fire, burning eucalyptus leaves and the smoke rising straight and blue; the shadows of the trees on dewy grass in the morning, lengthening again in golden evening light; I shall always remember all this, and so I hope will Salim. But when we come in from our ride or our picnic, while he’s changing his clothes and hurrying off to carpentry or French, he hears from the servants or the Chamban masters their fears, the rumours that reach them.

And such rumours! One day all the Hindus in the island are marching on the capital and His Magnificence has told his Muslim army to defend their homes to the last man; the next it’s the other way round and there’s a pogrom of Hindus in Timurabad. Actually, there has only once been an outbreak of rioting since the murder of El Hadramauti. There was a big Muslim meeting and a procession through the streets; some Hindu loafers threw stones at the tail of the procession, which broke off to chase them—and then came what I believe is the familiar pattern of communal riots in India. Bands of scallywags, of both religions, hear there is trouble and turn out to see what there is in it for them; defence leagues of good citizens get together to protect their homes, start patrolling the streets, come on a smaller group of the other party and beat them up. Then there are reprisals for this outrage, and so on. There were between twenty and thirty reported killed; probably many more really; nothing of course compared with what has been happening in India, but quite new to Chamba, and to the peaceful Chambans appalling. They are all frightened that it’s going to get much worse.

As far as I can see, the emphasis has shifted in the last weeks. Hadramauti was a statesman and looked ahead. He saw that with British suzerainty gone and a powerful Hindu State across the water, the Hindus of the island couldn’t possibly be expected to keep to their place in society so happily as they have in the past; they were bound to demand a share of public office and the direction of public policy. So as a matter of common sense, to keep the island happy, he wanted reforms. But now that the British have fixed a date for going, the whole thing has become much more urgent, much more a matter of external compulsion. And the fact that there are to be two successor states, Pakistan as well as Hindustan, makes it far worse for Chamba. If there had been one India, the central Government would have had to show some consideration to the ninety million Muslims and therefore to their small Muslim neighbour; but a Hindu Government in Delhi won’t—or so I feel. They’ll have nothing to restrain them. And we can’t join Pakistan, for we must get our imports from the Bombay coast. Karachi is too far for the small dhows which are all that can get into our strange, rocky little harbours. The Hindus have always talked of Chamba rather as Hitler talked about Czechoslovakia; their talk is getting worse and soon they’ll be able to act without any check by the British. So far their open threats have mentioned nothing worse than economic blockade; that before August 15th, when the hand over by the British comes, they should be threatening at all is to my mind a gross betrayal of our ancient ally. And I don’t know how long it will be before they begin to talk of armed intervention.

We had a chance—you see what a Chamban I have become!—of striking some sort of bargain with the Indian Government while Hadramauti was in control; they looked at him with much less suspicion than at anyone else in the island and he was very able. But Yusuf is regarded as a diehard and he’s not in their class at all as a negotiator. He flies backwards and forwards between Delhi and Chamba every other day and makes no progress at either end. It all looks very black and seems to get blacker. And this wretched business of the boy who was kidnapped drags on. Both H.M. and Yusuf think they can go on putting it off on one excuse or another and that people will gradually lose interest.

That would have been all very well in normal times, but now the case is regarded as an excuse for agitation by both parties; either can whip up excitement over it when they like. At first, they did drop it for a little; the Muslims were deeply shocked by Hadramauti’s death and the Hindus were for a few days thoroughly frightened. But it keeps on cropping up in the Press and at every meeting; a decision can’t be postponed much longer, and whatever it is there’ll be a flare up.

I went to see the Queen again. She’s most sensible about Salim, by which of course I mean ready to leave things to me. A trifle too transcendental about the future of Chamba; she is the only person in the island who understands me at all if I speak of a meaning in history but I can’t say I understood her. She does, firmly, quietly and confidently, believe that the island and its Moghul culture will live on, independent and free; but whether in actuality or in some kingdom of the mind, as a sort of Platonic idea of what Chamba ought to be, stored up in heaven, I’m not at all sure. She talked a good deal about the Platonic idea; I have no doubt she believes in that as something indestructible, but I couldn’t make out whether she thinks that because her ideal island exists in heaven it must have some counterpart on earth.

How distant this seems from the little shop where we had tea and first talked about the island, over our tea-cake and one small pat of butter each, the waitress in a hurry with her pencil and pad of bills to be paid at the desk as you go out!

Charles ended his letter and walked slowly up to bed. Everyone else was asleep long ago; the hall, heavily panelled in wood not yet mellowed, looked harsh and empty, the deers’ heads out of place and absurd, but as he turned out the electric bulbs one by one and restored the healing darkness, the fire of logs dying on the hearth came to life and in its soft glow you could almost believe the place was a home. Charles went upstairs slowly, his hand on the broad rail of the banister, thinking of Mell.

He thought of the intoxication of those days when he had first known her, when they had been like boy and girl together, companions delighting in each other’s friendship; he thought of his own words, the words he had just written about fear. Had it been all fear, the fear of losing the boyish warmth of her company, that had dictated those long arguments he had held with himself? He remembered the pang with which he had heard he was to go abroad for two years, a sharp pang that he knew was because of Mell and no one else, for before he knew her he had asked to go. Long arguments, when a part of him had wanted to put off going for a year, when another part had obstinately said there must be no shilly-shallying and he must get on with it and take what came to him; when at one moment he made up his mind fiercely to take Mell in his arms and make her marry him now, only to listen an hour later to a cold and acid voice that said he had no money and no home and it wouldn’t be fair on her to tie her for so long and it wouldn’t be fair on his mother. Long, long arguments, and a hundred reasons for not acting, but behind it all fear, fear, fear of losing what was now so precious.

But perhaps it was not fear but ignorance and sentimentality, ignorance of the heart of woman, ignorance of his own heart, sentimentality and too many romantic fairy-tales. For in the fairy-tale there is never any doubt; the youngest son knows there is no other girl but the Princess and she knows there is no one else but he. She is perfect. And that of course was something you couldn’t say about Mell, who carried her faults like a banner and waved them in your face, who turned her honesty into acidity and pretended to be hard because she wouldn’t be sentimental.

He had argued it one way and decided the other, not once but half a dozen times. But when he had been on fire to make it now, there had been no chance, he could not get her alone; when he had her alone the other arguments had crowded his mind. The truth was he was too young, too late in growing up, over-developed intellectually, backward in everything else. So in the end he went in silence and came back two years later to find Raymond in his place.

He wrenched his thoughts away and went to bed. He knew how wrong he had been and it was no use moaning about it now. Get on with what is to hand, he thought, and resolutely he went back to his plans for the next few days, and on those he fell asleep.

Mell’s letter came two days later. She wrote:

Charles, he’s left me. I feel so lost. I was proud, all those years, because he scolded, because he was selfish and rude, because I had to do everything for him. I felt it made him dependent on me. You were the only one who understood that. I was like the coster girl who’s proud her man makes bigger bruises than her neighbour’s does. I never flattered myself that he was faithful, but I was sure he’d always come back to me, if it was only because I pressed his trousers and found him something to eat. When you wrote and asked if I still loved him I didn’t even ask myself the question. I thought, why go into that! Here we are and here we always shall be. He knows I’m the only person who cares what becomes of him; he’s so brilliant he’s made enemies of everyone who talks his own language and women to him are just shapes. He’s not interested in what anyone drinks but himself, so they’re all alike to him and none of them will ever hold him. He’s only got me. That was what I thought. Now he’s gone I don’t ask your question either; I just feel lost and hurt and lonely. I suppose he’s found a woman who’s content to be a shape, who never tries to make him get out of bed to go and do something. I suppose I was smug. I suppose I patted myself on the back for being so loyal and putting up with him. I suppose he knew that and it irritated him. I feel so lost. Write to me quickly, Charles. I wish I could see you.

Charles read the letter slowly twice. Then he sat still, thinking. For the first time in all those years, bitterness against Mell rose slowly in his heart. She cuckolded me, he thought, all those years ago; for I have always been her husband though I never shared her bed. I was her husband; she came to me for help and companionship. He was her lover; he enjoyed her and took her care and service and went his way. He never helped her or played a husband’s part. She cuckolded me all those years ago; she has wasted all these years of my life and all these years of my children’s lives. She has squandered my companionship with them, for I shall be too old now to be their friend. She drove me to divide love from lust. She drove me to those sordid nights of pretence. She knew that, but she knew I was faithful, Cynara, in my fashion. Now she wants to cash in on my faithfulness. Now she wants me to forgive her. And in his mind he began to choose hard, bitter words to write to her.

But he stopped; he took hold of himself. He could not say such things to Mell, whose flesh was still pure and transparent as a lily of the valley. He would not write yet. Six penn’orth of lust, six penn’orth of laughter and a bob’s worth of good, honest liking; that was the recipe he had pretended was the true one. But that wasn’t enough; it was no use thinking it was. As far as Mell was concerned there were all those and at least three shillings’ worth more of something else he couldn’t define. And again anger rose in his heart that she should take him so much for granted. But again he took hold of himself. He would wait till he was calmer. But then he remembered mornings when it had been his turn to wait, trembling with impatience, for the postman’s step, the sick realization that there was nothing today. She would be waiting like that. He took his pen quickly and wrote:

I have just had your letter. I can’t write about it yet. I must think. I will write soon.

He wrote no more and posted his letter quickly before he could have time to change his mind.

XIII

He had two telegrams in his hand. The first was clear enough. It was from the Commander-in-Chief of the Chamban Army. It said:

Squadron armoured cars dispatched this morning provide escort Prince Salim for return capital stop expected time arrival Timpanagalla 1200 repeat 1200 hours stop squadron will be under your command stop two repeat two companies infantry posted guards Fateh Darwaza Palace also under your command will be in position by 1800 repeat 1800 hours today stop infantry now under your command Timpanagalla will proceed by train rejoin parent unit immediately after Prince’s departure stop must be no delay as unit urgently required internal security duties and must be up to establishment stop acknowledge stop Commander-in-Chief stop.

Charles put it down with the reflection that there must still be some British officers with the Chamban army and turned to the second. This was clear as to meaning but the motive was to Charles obscure. It was from the Private Secretary to His Magnificence and ran:

Under the orders of His Magnificence I am to request you to return with Prince Salim to Timurabad today. Fateh Darwaza Palace is placed at your disposal and adequate staff of servants including cooks has been sent. Commander-in-Chief is making arrangements military guards and escorts.

There had been telegrams, each contradicting the last, for a week and long telephone messages suggesting or hinting that return would be a good thing. Charles had been firm with hints and suggestions; a move would dislocate his plans for Salim’s education and there was no point in it. The Prince was much safer where he was than in Timurabad; there had been rumours of trouble before and nothing had come of them. Now here were orders he could not disregard.

He sent for one of Salim’s Indian tutors, an old and wise man who had been tutor to His Magnificence.

‘I don’t understand all this, Maulvi Sahib,’ Charles said. ‘To my mind, if there is likelihood of trouble it is an argument for keeping the boy away from Timurabad, out of harm’s way.’

‘That is how your mind would work, Sir,’ the old man replied, ‘but His Magnificence is quite different. There is sure to be trouble on August 15th, and if there is trouble he will want the Prince near him. I have known him so long I know what he will feel.’

So there was nothing for it but to go, bag and baggage, at two hours’ notice. Charles gave the orders to the dozen or so who had to be told. They were complicated, because he had to leave behind a crowd of stewards, butlers and cooks, grooms and orderlies, tutors and aides-de-camp, who would clear up and follow. Then he went to see to his personal packing. It was only a matter of telling his servant what to put in and it did not take long. He had a few moments to himself; he stood at his bedroom window looking out over miles and miles of blue distance. I have been happy here, he thought, happy because I was busy, because it is a beautiful place, because I liked Salim. Now we are going somewhere else and it will be different; more stirring, more exciting, it is sure to be and I am glad to go, but this is something good that will never come again.

He heard the cars arrive and it was time to see to the last details of departure; he turned from the window and put off the mood of pleasant melancholy; as he went he thought with relief that the next few days would indeed be stirring and busy; there would be no time to make up his mind about Mell and how to write to her.

They arrived in the middle of the afternoon and Charles found there was little he could do until things had settled down. There was a message instructing him to see the Sultan later in the evening. He rang up Kamal, but as usual the Nawab was at a Council meeting. Charles went to call on the Begum Nawaz Ali.

He found her eating a mango. She gave him one and said:

‘Do you like mangoes?’

‘I’m not quite sure,’ Charles said slowly. ‘Sometimes I think nothing else in the world will compare with them. Sometimes I think they almost disgust me. They are so different from our fruit; the fruits of Christendom—the apple, the cherry, the plum—all have a virginal freshness; the mango, one feels, is old in every kind of delectable sin.’

‘It is because you are still a puritan,’ she said, finishing with remarkable neatness and dipping her fingers in a silver bowl. ‘You are afraid of them because they are so nice. But why do we talk about such things? The life we have known is coming to an end and we talk about mangoes.’

‘I wanted to know what has been happening,’ Charles said.

‘Rumours,’ she said. ‘We meet for a meal and each of us has heard some horrible story of what is going to happen. And usually each has a story of what has happened. Yesterday it was my story; my washerman was stabbed. He is a Hindu of course. He lived at the bottom of the garden and last night someone came along the lane and called his name outside his house. He was sitting with his wife; the children were asleep; he went out; his wife heard a cry and there he was, with a knife in his back and no one in sight. He was such a nice little man. How can such things be?’ She paused in wonder and went on: ‘But people are driven mad by fear. There is nothing to choose between us. We are as bad as the Hindus; perhaps in Timurabad we are worse. You see, we Muslims are frightened of the peasants rising and coming in from the districts.’

Charles said:

‘I wonder what the Sultan wants me for tonight.’

She went on; following her own thought:

‘If I believed in your God, who interferes in the babyishness of men, I think I should hate Him.’

‘And yours?’ he asked.

She shook her head.

‘He is there when I go to Him and then I am quiet and still and do not mind what happens to my body on earth. He has nothing to do with all this. But when I come back to the world and think of Toto and his life and all this folly of man’s making, I am sad and frightened. Ah, it is all so changed. All because you in the West want everyone to play with your new toys that to you are so wonderful.’

‘But what has happened now?’ Charles asked. ‘Mounting tension, yes, it has been mounting for months, but why does everyone seem so certain that it will break on August 15th? Why have I been called back, with an escort, as though it were civil war?’

‘You are a state official and part of the Royal household and everything is easy for you, but if you were a householder who bought things privately, you would know how bad things are. If a private person buys petrol, it is fifteen, twenty, twenty-five rupees a gallon. We have no salt mines and no beaches, only cliffs, so salt is like—what is that fishy stuff you like so much because it is expensive? Caviar—salt is like caviar. And if you want a bottle of quinine from the chemist, you cannot buy it. They have begun the blockade. They do not say so but no dhows have come for a fortnight. Poor uncle is worn thin with going to Delhi and they talk to him there as we should not talk to a groom. They talk as though he had done something wicked. And now the Congress have held a monster meeting and passed resolutions, about the Bhaskar Rao case and about becoming part of India. They have said, if you please, that H.M. must do what they want by August 15th. And all the Hindus who are not in the Congress and have so far been good subjects have held another meeting. They have petitioned H.M. to join India because of the blockade and because they cannot bear to go without salt and petrol and all the other things. And Nadir Shah has meetings too, huge meetings, where thousands of people listen to his speeches telling them to do without petrol and make their own salt from sea-water and the fighting to the last man. Ah, this is not like Chamba. It is not the life we knew.’

They talked on till it was time for Charles to go to His Magnificence. The Sultan was sitting in the small room where Charles had last seen him. The face that had been brown and plump was grey and flabby now; the striped waistcoat, the carnation in the button-hole, which before had seemed fantastic but appropriate, were now meaningless and discordant. The Nawab Yusuf sat near him, still elegant in cream suit and silk shirt, but haggard, a man who looked too tired to keep to his purpose.

‘Ah, Colonel Bolsover,’ said His Magnificence. ‘Have you any orders for me today? Forgive me for making jokes. You know it is my habit and truly I know you are a friend but I am getting a new habit of taking orders from people every day.’

Charles said that the move from Timpanagalla had been carried out in safety and that Salim was as comfortable as could be expected in his new quarters. His Magnificence nodded heavily and said:

‘I told you before that I never believe in the stomach-ache till it comes. Now it has come and it is very bad stomach-ache. And it is worse because I do not think I have deserved it. Too many mangoes, yes, I know I deserve a pain and it was worth it and I shall do it again; but to have the stomach-ache from eating a little thin gruel the doctors told me to take, no, that is injustice. I never thought I should be in the jam because I trusted the English. All these years I take my gruel. I listen to your Sir Huberts and Sir Richards and Sir Percivals telling me to be cautious and not to have fun. I listen and I know it is good advice like the doctors give me but all the same it is gruel to me. I would rather have mangoes and chicken curry. And now you tell me that unless I take my orders from these Bombay moneylenders you are going to screw me up.’

‘Put on the screw,’ said Nawab Yusuf in the voice of a tired old man. ‘That is what they say in Delhi. In London they say no pressure is being used but in Delhi they say that unless we join they will put the screw on us.’

‘It does not sound nice, eh?’ said His Magnificence, ‘to have a screw turning round and round and going deeper and deeper into your stomach. But that is what they are doing. You know, there have been six of us,’ he went on, ‘six since we made a treaty with the King of England. I am the sixth. We have kept the treaty for one hundred and fifty-seven years. We have done everything we were told like good little boys. We paid you for regiments to defend us and you used them to conquer Burma and Afghanistan, of whom we were not afraid, and Germany and Japan, of whom we had never heard. We did not mind that, even when you gave all these countries away again. But now you say tomorrow it is all finished. There is no more treaty. We can do as we like but we must not be independent as we used to be and you will not have us in your Empire any longer. I would not believe it. I remember Father telling me always to be friends with the English. They are dull, he said, and their food is not nice, but be friends with them because they always keep their word. That is the only advice of his I listened to. And now you are screwing me up. I am sorry to make you uncomfortable, Colonel Bolsover, but I am very uncomfortable myself and so I like to give it to other people.’

Charles said:

‘I am very much ashamed, Sir.’

‘And what am I to do now?’ inquired His Magnificence with the air of one not expecting much comfort.

‘Do you really wish to know, Sir? It will be gruel. Worse than gruel, medicine.’

‘Please. I am very brave about medicine. I am so used to it. I am not brave about the pain that comes after it.’

‘Well, then,’ said Charles slowly. ‘I suppose the Hindus want your island for a good, old-fashioned reason, the reason for which one wants anything that belongs to one’s neighbour. But they cannot very well say so.’

‘Good, good, good,’ interjected His Magnificence, vigorously agreeing.

‘What they say is that they are interested because of Your Magnificence’s Hindu subjects. If it is true, and if that is really their only reason, so much the better. But whether it is true or is only an excuse, to my mind the right thing is to give what they want to the Hindus in the island. Make a Hindu Prime Minister. Give the Hindus four seats out of five in the Council and promise to do what your Council recommends. Then, and only then, proclaim your independence. I know it is very nasty medicine. You must go much further now than would have been enough in Hadramauti’s time. But it is the only way. Because then you have stolen their thunder and they have nothing to say. They have no excuse for interfering.’

‘Stolen the thunder,’ repeated His Magnificence, greatly struck.

‘If you see a man running at you with a sword in his hand crying that Islam is in danger,’ said Charles, ‘a wise man would also cry that Islam is in danger and run by his side. That would be stealing his thunder.’

‘Stealing the thunder. I must remember that. But you need to be very brave to steal the thunder. I think I should run away from the man with the sword and shout for help. And then you see, Colonel Bolsover, it is not quite like you say. It is my friends who say that Islam is in danger and someone else who is running at them with a sword. You want me to join him and start cutting my friends with a sword. And when he and I had finished cutting them it would not be long before he started cutting me.’

Charles was silent. He felt for a moment that the Sultan was right and he felt ashamed to be trying to persuade him to do something base. But when he left the metaphor of the man with the sword and thought of Chamba, the island and its people, it still seemed to him that he was right. Fear, he thought, it is fear and mistrust that hold him back. If only he and his nobles had the courage to be generous. He went on doggedly:

‘But it is not really like that either, Sir. Here is a man who has been crouching at your feet for centuries. You tell him to stand up, to be a man, to join you; you put weapons in his hands, it is true, but is it not possible that he will put his back to yours and help you to fight a common enemy?’

‘Oh, no,’ said His Magnificence, with complete certainty. ‘He would use the weapon against us. And I tell you it is very sharp and he is very strong. We have been too kind, too merciful, all these years, and so he is strong. We must not let him get the sword. No, Colonel Bolsover, what I say is thank you for your gruel only it is time for chicken curry. But I do not think it will be nice now. We have been eating gruel such a long time now that perhaps the chicken has gone bad.’

Charles looked at the Nawab Yusuf, who said wearily:

‘His Magnificence is right. We have tried everything. His Magnificence has been patient and conciliatory too long. It makes no difference. Things only get worse. They only ask for more. It is like buying a carpet. Now the time has come to show we are not going to pay any more.’

‘Yes,’ said the Sultan, ‘that is what it is like. Buying carpets. You walk away. Not interested. You are not interested. Then he runs after you and his price is a little less. It is time to walk away from these people in Delhi. Their price is too high. They want to put their soldiers here in my island to tell us what we may do. But it is hundreds of years since we listened to what they told us in Delhi. Even when there was a Moghul Emperor my ancestor would not listen. Now they are shopkeepers so how can we listen now? We must walk away; we are not interested. And the people in my island will see that we are walking away and that there will be no more talk and then they will be quiet and good.’

It was no use trying to persuade them that there was still a chance if they made concessions. Yusuf, Charles felt sure, was too tired to believe that anything made a difference; he had reached a stage of fatalistic apathy where all seemed lost and there was nothing left but to make a good exit, to end like a gentleman. The Sultan had held the balance for as long as he dared, but it was a feat that needed nerve and his had gone; now he too was tired and he had to commit himself to one side or the other. And he persuaded himself intermittently that if he was firm he could get better terms from Delhi without a disturbance in the island. He produced the proclamation he had made up his mind to make.

Charles stayed two hours, going through the proclamation word by word. He was able here and there to modify a phrase of panic-stricken bravado that seemed to him more provocative than the rest, but nothing could change the facts that the statement claimed independence from the new government in India and made no mention of reforms within the island. Charles was able to put in a clause asserting the Sultan’s readiness to make a treaty with Delhi; remembering Hadramauti’s practice, he suggested that the proclamation should not be published till after the evening papers were out, but no, there must be no delay, it must be out at midday tomorrow, August 14th, to prepare the Muslims of the island for what all feared on the 15th. Then at least, he urged, leave the decision on the Bhaskar Rao case till another occasion; it has waited months, it can wait a few days longer. But on this too they were like men bewitched, bereft or reason, driven by panic and weariness to get it over, to get it done with.

‘What about the Muslim Volunteers?’ he asked; it was one of the chief demands in Delhi that they should be disbanded. Not unless the Congress party also ceases to enrol members and to hold parades, was the answer, and he had to admit there was reason in that. But we will keep aloof from both, added Yusuf.

‘Put that in too,’ Charles suggested, and they agreed.

There was nothing more he could do and he went home full of foreboding.

There was a room in the Fateh Darwaza Palace, their new quarters, that had been set aside as a common-room for Salim’s tutors and the aides-de-camp of the household. At noon next day all these people were in the common-room, listening to the wireless, all but one, who was teaching Salim geography. Charles joined them.

He heard the proclamation read. He saw faces lengthening with fear and anxiety as it proceeded. There were four Muslims, two Hindus, but the gloom was common to all; all had hoped for some magic formula that would avert trouble.

It went on, unmoved, uninterested, that conventional, slightly pompous voice, reading in B.B.C. English the proclamation that would be repeated in Urdu and Tamil. His Magnificence had decided to resume the independence enjoyed by his ancestors; his first care in the future as in the past would be the welfare of his subjects. Since it had come to his knowledge that much public interest had been roused by the Bhaskar Rao case, he had reached a decision on this and had approved the resolution of his Council which would follow. Finally, he called on all his subjects to remain calm, to guard their homes, to take up their new independence with dignity.

The resolution followed. The evidence in the murder case was insufficient and the prosecution would go no further. But the eviction of the sadhu was upheld and Afzal Husain was exonerated of all blame for firing on the villagers.

‘This will please Nadir Shah and his hot-heads,’ said one of the tutors.

‘But no one else,’ said another. ‘If there had been at least some reprimand—But there is nothing. It will give the Congress a handle.’ For by now the Congress were demanding that Afzal should be tried for murder.

The old man who had been tutor to His Magnificence said to Charles:

‘Sir, none of us should go out today.’

‘No,’ Charles agreed. ‘I am going out myself, but no one else should.’

‘It is not wise,’ the old man urged.

‘Perhaps not, but sometimes one must do things that are unwise.’

‘Then at least, Sir, you must keep to the main streets. Do not go up narrow lanes.’

Charles thanked him for his concern and went in the big Daimler to pick up John Wynyard from the guest-house. John had come, as he had said he would, like a vulture to a battlefield; he had been sure there would be trouble in Chamba on August 15th, and he wanted to see it.

They drove slowly along the main streets. Already the shutters were up, the shop fronts barred. There was no one on foot. The few cars were driven furiously as though the occupants were seeking shelter before a storm. One bullock-cart they saw, the driver prodding and lashing his beasts, glancing back over his shoulder, prodding again, as though he were hunted by wolves. There was nothing else to see. The wide streets lay empty beneath the noonday sun, bare, hot, empty streets, a city of fear deserted.

‘We’ll see nothing this way,’ said John. ‘Let’s leave the car here and walk up the side-lanes for a little. Not for long. I must get back to the guest-house soon to pick up news and send off a cable.’

The driver looked at Charles with scared eyes. He spoke a little English. He was afraid to be left by himself with the car, but he seemed to be less frightened of driving through the streets than of standing still. Eventually Charles persuaded him to go away and come back for them in half an hour. He promised to come back, but he did not like it, and they were doubtful whether he would.

They moved up a side-lane. Shutters barred, windows closed, not a soul. Flies; a mangy dog; open drains down the house walls from first-floor rooms; a smell of sewage. Still no one.

They went on. At last they saw someone. A door opened a few inches; a man slipped through the crack, pushing it hastily shut. He stood with his back to the door looking first one way and then the other, his fingers spread out, the palms of his hands against the panels behind him. Then he ran to the corner, stopped, peered round.

‘After him,’ said John.

‘You’ll frighten him worse,’ said Charles.

‘This is my job. I don’t have to worry about people’s feelings. And he couldn’t be frightened worse.’

The man ran down the next lane, stopped again at the corner. Whether he was a Hindu in a Muslim quarter or the other way round, neither of them knew, nor could they guess what desperate errand had driven him out in such an extremity of fear. At the third corner, he peered round as before then stiffened and drew back with a sound half gasp, half cry of terror. He turned and came tearing back past them. They went on, turned the corner and saw what he had seen, a knot of half a dozen struggling men.

They were like hounds on a fox, struggling to get at something in the middle of the group.

Charles shouted and ran towards them. John cried:

‘Don’t be a fool!’ and he caught at his elbow. But the shout was enough. The hounds fled guiltily, fearing the lash, leaving a huddled figure on the ground. Charles and John turned it over. It was a man, quite dead, his clothes torn, the pockets ripped open, covered with blood from wounds in the back.

‘Leave him,’ said John. ‘We can’t help him.’

They had seen enough. Back to the main street. They saw no one else in the deserted lanes. They paced up and down the main street till the car came, till they saw the frightened look on the driver’s face turn to one of relief when he saw them.

In the car on the way back, Charles asked:

‘Do you still feel the same? About Chamba, I mean? Seriously; do tell me, without flights of hyperbole.’

‘There’s no reason in what we’ve seen today for changing my point of view. I see the world as a bacillary agitation; units forming groups, coming together, uniting with other groups, splitting again, coalescing; whenever I see a chance of union I’m pleased—fissure is one more devil’s triumph. I’m a Victorian at heart, you see. Now is a chance of union which may never come again.’

‘Ireland,’ said Charles softly. ‘Poland. The creed of Napoleon, Bismarck and Hitler. Strange to hear it on your lips. But I give you the end. For the moment, we’ll agree that union is what we want. Surely it’s no use jamming your groups of bacteria against each other by force; you must wait till they’re ready to coalesce. If they’re not ready, they’ll merely resist each other. Patience is needed. And our part in it sickens me. Haven’t our Sir Huberts and Sir Percivals for the last generation encouraged Chamba to be separate, to be politically backward, to be a last stronghold of the good old days? And now we shrug our shoulders and let the Chambans take the consequence.’

Back at the palace, Charles tried to occupy himself with his usual work, but it was obviously silly to go on compiling his report on the feudal powers of the nobles nor could he put his heart into the new arrangements for Salim’s carpentry and metal-work. In the evening he rang up the guest-house to hear any news John might have.

‘You know all meetings have been forbidden by proclamation,’ John said. ‘Well, there are two being planned all the same. Gokalaswamy and the Congress are calling a big one in a Hindu quarter—I forget what it’s called—and Nadir Shah and his boys of course are having another. I shall go to both if I can, but to Nadir Shah’s first; I know the Congress arguments better. Come with me?’

Charles said he would try to meet him at Nadir Shah’s demonstration. He thought that first he would go to the Begum Nawaz Ali’s. For one thing, hers was the only home into which he felt he could intrude at such a time, and he wanted to see the impact of the day’s news on a home; but it was not only curiosity that drove him, it was anxiety. He remembered the fear that had sent people home from his party on the night of El Hadramauti’s death; things were worse now and he could not feel sure that his friends were safe unless he had seen them.

Yes, of course, the Begum was delighted to see him. She made him sit down and began to talk. But she was distracted; she repeated herself; she had nothing new to say because she had stopped thinking. She snapped at Toto and packed him off to bed; she apologized to Charles and then the telephone rang and with another apology she went to answer it.

If only he could be in this, doing something, however useless it might be, Charles thought. He paced about the room, looked out of the window, looked once again without seeing them at the Persian miniatures on the walls. The Begum came back; fresh apologies; she made him sit down.

‘Uncle is coming,’ she said. He knew she meant Yusuf; the thought crossed his mind that it was odd the Prime Minister should have time to visit his niece tonight, but he did not dwell on it. She was so obviously ill at ease that he rose again, determined to go, ashamed of having come at such a time. But she caught his hands.

‘Please stay,’ she said, ‘please, please stay. No, you must not go yet. Sit down again and wait till uncle has come. But you must forgive me if I leave you. I have to see the servants. You must stay to supper.’

She fled again. Charles cursed himself for coming; he sat on the couch and waited. Nothing happened. He got up and walked about. He looked out of the window. There was nothing to be seen but a balcony. He opened the window and stepped out, found he was looking down into a courtyard. A car drove into the yard and he recognized the weary stoop of Yusuf’s shoulders as he went into the house. A second car, with screened windows, a car for ladies in purdah, still common enough in Chamba; but when the door opened there emerged no cowled and shrouded female shape but the resolute figure of Nadir Shah. The black astrakhan cap with the silver crescent was worn on one side; the Damascus blade hung from a Sam Browne belt over the green shirt of the Muslim Volunteers. There was an aggressive angle to his head and shoulders as he strode across the court to the door.

It was dusk already in the room; in another quarter of an hour it would be dark. Charles stood still in the gloom with a feeling of utter uselessness and depression. Only yesterday they had told him they would keep aloof from Muslim Volunteers and the Congress alike, yet here was Yusuf meeting Nadir Shah in secret. Probably that meant that the Congress meeting would be stopped by the police but no notice taken of Nadir Shah’s; both were due to start in half an hour.

He decided he must go and had his hand on the door when the Begum returned.

‘I’m afraid I’ve seen them both; there’s no need to keep me longer,’ he said, and left her in distress.

He drove back to the Fateh Darwaza Palace, inspected the guards, spoke to the tutors and to Salim. Then he went out again, driving himself; he went to the hall where Nadir Shah’s meeting was being held and managed to get in, but he soon left. He had heard it all before; swords, ancestors, land of our fathers, death before surrender; he was tired of it. Now if ever was a time to see someone else’s point of view, to be rational and moderate? I suppose I’m being absurdly English, he thought, but I do like these people, I want them to be independent, and they are destroying every chance of it.

He drove towards the Hindu quarter where the Congress were meeting, but he never got there. Empty shuttered streets; blazing electric lights; until he came to the main thoroughfare called the Halwai Chauk. This was filled with a torrent of people so thick that no car could enter. They were streaming across his front from right to left, intent, hurrying figures, jostling and pushing each other to get somewhere. Ants or bees, he thought, driven in pointless flux by some force more than human, for it cannot be simply the will of the leader Gokalaswamy that drives the Hindus in this desperate, jostling river. And he sat for a few minutes, watching them pour past in the bluish glare of the neon lights, abashed by the mystery of the human will, its apparent individuality, its obedience to forces that are beyond reason.

It would be useless to go into the Halwai Chauk, he thought, jerking himself back to consideration of his own immediate purpose, for even when the crowd had passed I should be wedged behind it and could not see what happened. He reversed, went by side streets in a direction parallel with the main road, turned inwards towards it again, found the same stream pouring past. They must, as he had guessed, be making for the Sultan’s palace.

He repeated the process, going towards the palace himself. But again he was checked. A second great artery converged on the Halwai Chauk about a quarter of a mile before the palace; this too was filled with a surging mass of human beings, pressing on towards the junction.

‘It’s come,’ he thought, with a feeling of sickness that he should be so helpless. ‘It’s come. This is Nadir Shah’s lot. They’ll meet at the junction and the slaughter will begin.’

He heard sirens blowing down the road; armoured cars; they came closer, driving waves of men aside as they ploughed along the street. The leading car stopped; an officer put out his head and shouted questions. The car swung out of the main road past Charles’s car, making for the Halwai Chauk; others followed, two squadrons. The next cars swung away left-handed, making by side streets for the palace, meaning obviously to turn and come back to the junction. Firing could already be heard in that direction. The Hindus will be getting it, Charles thought; the police and the troops will do anything to avoid firing on Muslims.

He slipped into the wake of the last of the armoured cars making for the palace and was able to cross the street. At the sound of firing and the sight of the cars, the crowd was beginning to melt. In less than five minutes he was in the Halwai Chauk at the palace end, driving back towards the junction. The sound of firing ahead grew louder; the leading car of the squadron must be at the junction and now suddenly he could hear its machine gun opening. There had been only single shots before; now it was automatics, and others could be heard further down the street as the first squadron came to meet them. The car ahead of Charles began to spray the houses with bullets but there was no one to shoot at; the crowds had melted into the lanes at the sound of the sirens and the guns.

It was all over in a few minutes; the leading cars met and the streets were empty of living people. But there were corpses.

There was no more firing now. The two leading cars had stopped, facing each other; all down the line, the tops of the cars were open and men were leaning out and talking. The car ahead of Charles began to turn; they would be patrolling now for a few hours to see that the trouble did not start again. An officer asked Charles what he was doing.

‘What about the wounded?’ Charles shouted.

The officer turned and pointed; a van with a Red Crescent had arrived and men were moving among the huddled figures by the side of the road. All right, Charles would go home.

He went back slowly to the Fateh Darwaza Palace, his imagination busy with what might be happening up the side lanes. All was quiet at the palace; the guard at the gate formidable, with a Bren gun mounted on either side of the entrance, men patrolling with Stens under their arms. He went inside. It seemed wrong to go to bed but there was nothing else he could do. At last he went, slowly, dispirited and unhappy, to lie down in the comfortless luxury of the great, gilt bed in the middle of the wide, marble floor. He lay sweating under the fans and at last fell asleep.

XIV

Next morning it was possible to piece together most of what had happened. Part of it came from the staff of tutors, aides-de-camp, officers of the guard; they had had it from servants or friends. Part came from John Wynyard; part from the official news on the wireless.

The police had tried to prevent the Hindus assembling to hear the Congress leader Gokalaswamy. But they had had orders to avoid firing if possible and they had been in insufficient strength; they had been able to keep only a few people away and several of their smaller detachments had been roughly handled. Men had come to the meeting in a mood of irritation and defiance, but speeches about politics and the constitution had not stirred them to action; it was only when someone began to talk about the Bhaskar Rao case that tempers really mounted. For every Hindu believed that Afzal Husain ought to be punished for firing on Hindu villagers and now he had been acquitted of any fault. Vengeance for the blood of the innocent martyrs was the cry raised as the crowd spontaneously poured out into the Halwai Chauk and towards the palace.

As Charles had supposed, no serious attempt had been made to prevent Nadir Shah’s meeting, which had proceeded on the usual lines until the news arrived that a Hindu mob was making for the palace. Then the Muslims too had come out in fury.

When they reached the junction of the two main roads, the police were already in action and it was only a few minutes before the armoured cars arrived. There had hardly been a weapon among the Hindus; they had dispersed at once into the side-lanes. Not much of a battle, not many dead on the main roads, not at least by recent Indian standards; but in the lanes no one yet knew what was happening. Men and women, whatever their creed, were terrified and furious; gangs of looters were out for what they could get.

That was the story as far as it could be collected. Charles talked it over with his staff; the two Hindus had both sent their families to the country a week ago, but they were anxious about their friends. One of them said:

‘The police are not impartial in a matter of this kind, Sir. If they see two men fighting they will hit the Hindu to stop it.’ This was an opinion that no one contradicted.

Routine, Charles decided, routine for everyone but himself. Salim would be busied exactly as usual with arithmetic, history and geography; none of the tutors was to leave the palace. But Charles took a light truck, three soldiers from the guard, and a subaltern whom he had met several times at Chamban parties and who happened now to be in the guard detachment. He went out to pick up the wounded and helpless in the lanes.

As yesterday, the main streets were empty, shuttered and barred. They drove the truck up one of the larger lanes till it could go no further, left a man to guard it, went on foot up a tributary. Nothing at first; silent houses, closed doors; then a huddled figure in the gutter, motionless, stripped; nothing they could do for him. Then a man crawling, groaning and bleeding, painfully towards some imagined shelter. He lay still as though dead when he heard them coming.

One of the soldiers said something in a wondering voice.

The officer interpreted:

‘He says only a year ago we were all friends together. What has happened to us, he wonders?’

They put the limp figure on a stretcher and took it to the truck. During the morning they collected half a dozen wounded and got them to the hospital. They saw no fighting; here and there a corpse, a wounded man, a wrecked or smouldering house.

The young officer said:

‘This is a Muslim quarter. It is bad and we are to blame but it would be much worse if the Hindus had the upper hand. They are the cruellest people on earth when they have the power. Do you know what they did to Muslim women in Bihar? I heard when I was in Delhi. . .’ He launched into a recital of horrors.

In the afternoon, he said:

‘We are getting to a Hindu quarter now. It may be dangerous.’ Charles said:

‘I am going straight ahead as chance directs me. You may go if you like.’

They went on. Here for the first time they found looters at work; a group of a dozen men pulling things out of a small shop. It stood by itself at a corner of two lanes and everything worth taking had already been piled in the road. Flames and smoke could be seen coming from behind the shop.

The looters looked at Charles and his small escort sullenly and suspiciously. The subaltern began to finger his revolver.

‘Leave that alone,’ Charles said. ‘Ask if there is anyone in that house.’

‘They say God knows. They found it burning.’

The door was open. Charles ran to it and looked inside. The room was full of smoke; he could see nothing at first. He called out:

‘Is anyone here?’

There was no answer but he continued for a moment to peer into the smoke. An eddy showed him something, a huddled figure on the floor. He crawled in on hands and knees, coughing in the bitter smoke. He found a hand, followed the arm to the face; his fingers explored it; they touched features still warm but there was no movement; a woman; she was dead. Again a moment when he could see; a cot bed by his side; surely there was something under the cover? Still on his knees, he pulled off the sheet and found a naked child, a year old, asleep or unconscious, but alive. He picked it up and ran out. It began to cry. He was dripping with sweat; face and hands were black.

The looters were sullenly and warily getting their booty away. Some stood watching the soldiers, who stood irresolute by their officer. The wrong word or a threatening gesture would have been enough and they would have attacked.

‘Let’s get away,’ said Charles to the subaltern. ‘We came only to save life.’

Towards evening they went back to the Fateh Darwaza Palace. Charles had a mouthful of food and a cup of tea, then went to the telephone. He rang up the Military Secretary and asked if he could see His Magnificence.

‘There is a Council meeting in an hour,’ was the doubtful reply.

‘Never mind, ask him.’

He was back in two minutes. Yes, His Magnificence would see Colonel Bolsover now.

Charles was like a man in a dream moving without will of his own. He had no mercy on the fat, unhappy old man whom he found. He said:

‘I have been taking wounded to the hospital all day. Will you come with me, Sir, and see the hospital?’

His Magnificence said uneasily that he had a meeting.

‘We can be back in time for the meeting.’

His Magnificence made a wry face.

‘You give me very nasty medicine but I think you want to cure me. Very well, I will take it. Mahbub!’

They sent no warning. They drove into the courtyard where army trucks were still coming in with wounded. They saw them lifted out and laid on the ground; there were neither beds nor stretchers. They went along a row of figures, groaning and writhing or still and shrouded like the dead. They saw the doctors giving first dressings. They went into the long, dark wards where the first to be brought in lay on wooden beds. They smelt the smell of the wards, a smell of darkness, sickness and corruption, carbolic and latrines.

Charles said:

‘Have you seen in England the milking-parlours where cows are milked by electricity?’

‘Yes, yes, yes, I know,’ said His Magnificence. ‘Much cleaner, much lighter, much better. Hadramauti was going to put the hospitals right. I have wanted a long time to make them better, but I do not know how, so I keep away.’

‘I will put them right if you give me the money,’ said Charles.

‘Yes, I will; you shall have all the money you want. Tomorrow. Tonight. But you did not bring me here to get money for hospitals. Tell me what it was and let us go.’

‘No I did not.’ Charles turned to the house surgeon. ‘Show His Magnificence the woman I brought in this evening. With the wounds—’ he moved his hands—‘You remember?’

‘She died. She is in the mortuary.’

‘Show His Magnificence the mortuary.’

The doctor turned to the Sultan for orders. He said:

‘It is not suitable for His Magnificence.’

‘I have seen enough. I have seen enough. I need not see any more. Colonel Bolsover, I need not see any more.’

‘You must decide, Sir, whether you have seen enough. You have not seen the dead in the mortuary.’

‘I have seen enough,’ repeated the Sultan, but now he spoke sullenly.

He appealed to Charles. ‘Let me go. It is enough.’

‘You will not get me to say it is enough,’ said Charles inexorably.

The Sultan did not move and after a moment he went on impatiently to the doctor:

‘All right, all right, Show me, show me.’

They saw the mortuary. There was not enough room there to dispose of the dead tidily and bodies had been heaped in piles like sacks of meal. You saw a head thrown back, hanging from the pile, the face smeared with blood, upside down and gaping, or a hand that strayed out by itself, drooping. But they knew where the woman was whom Charles had brought in; they remembered her; they showed the Sultan her wounds.

Charles and the Sultan went back to the palace.

‘My meeting will be ready. You come with me,’ said the Sultan. He went to his Council meeting. It was not the whole Council. His Magnificence sat at the head of the table, a fat, unhappy old man. Yusuf, the Prime Minister, was on his right, haggard and drawn, far out of his depth and no longer swimming, holding feebly and for a little longer to any spar that he saw. Opposite was Kamal, detached and cool because he was detached from life, because to him life was only times when he was interested and times when he was bored; now he was interested and so life was good; next to Kamal the Minister for Home Affairs, a small, dry, fierce little man, chafing to be at them. Charles took a seat next to Yusuf.

His Magnificence asked heavily whether there was any fresh news.

The Home Minister explained that there was order in all the main thoroughfares, the wide modern streets where troops and armoured cars could move. But in the lanes, the narrow wynds and alleys, there was looting, murder and arson; odd cases, not large-scale rioting. The danger was that Hindus from the districts were beginning to come into the Hindu quarters; the Congress were calling for more and more.

‘So far,’ he went on, ‘we have, on Your Magnificence’s instructions, used troops as little as possible and only for patrolling the big streets. But by tomorrow evening the Hindu quarters will be full and they will come out, making demonstrations, unless they are checked. If I may venture to advise, I suggest that infantry should be used in the Hindu quarters at once; all meetings prohibited, curfew enforced an hour before dusk, troops to carry out the orders; it would all be over in a week and the island would be quiet.’

His Magnificence turned leaden eyes on Kamal.

‘And the news from Delhi?’ he inquired.

Kamal had in one hand a spring clip holding a bundle of telegrams. His other hand stirred them lightly, running through them while he talked as though through the hair of a beloved child.

‘The newspapers in Delhi,’ he began, ‘the newspapers are enjoying themselves. Your Magnificence can imagine the headlines. And as for the Government, well, we know their views. They protest of course. They think all our troubles would be ended if we gave up our independence. And they say so again.’ He read out the protest.

‘So there is nothing new from there,’ said His Magnificence.

‘No,’ Kamal agreed. ‘Nothing exactly new.’

His Magnificence asked each man in turn for an opinion. The Home Minister had already said what he thought; he was for firm and immediate repression within the island and defiance of any authority outside. He added:

‘After all, most of the Hindus are still faithful subjects of Your Magnificence and do not wish for anything but independence.’

Yusuf, the Prime Minister, was on the whole of the same opinion, though less definitely. Charles, sitting next to him, found it was his turn. He said:

‘Your Magnificence knows that I advised an entirely different course of action. I still think that is best. It would be more difficult now than a day or two ago, just as it was then more difficult than in Nawab El Hadramauti’s time. But it could still be done. If, however, Your Magnificence is determined to pursue the present course, then the Home Minister is right; the sharper and quicker the surgery the better. There is no doubt you can restore order in the island that way, if you are sure it is what you want; as to your chance of resisting external pressure—well, you can judge.’

Kamal agreed with Charles; they talked on, round and round; nothing new was said. At last His Magnificence said:

‘There are two things I want. I do not want my island full of dead people like Colonel Bolsover has been showing me. No, I do not want that at all. And I want my island to stay by itself. I do not want it mixed up with a lot of other people who do not understand our ways. The Home Minister tells me I must fill up the island with dead Hindus and then we can stay by ourselves. But I do not like that because I do not want dead people and the Hindus after all are God’s creatures and my subjects. Colonel Bolsover tells me to do just what the Hindus want and then we can stay by ourselves. But I do not like that either because it is a kick in the face for all my Muslim nobles. They would die for me, I know, and sometimes just for a minute or two I must think what they would like. We will meet again tomorrow, and I will tell you. I know what you are thinking, Kamal ud Din, but truly I will tell you tomorrow and I will not do anything else first. You will all come tomorrow, Colonel Bolsover too.’

Charles went back to the Fateh Darwaza Palace in a mood which he found on examination to be mildly shocking. He ought, he felt, to have been distressed by what he had seen and concerned about what was to come, but he was elated, pleased to be active and in the centre of Chamban events, pleased with himself for a good day’s work, a day of rapid action and success, pleased above all because the whole day through he had not once stopped to think. He fell asleep as soon as he lay down.

XV

When they met again the next morning, each of the five men sitting at the table felt that the time of tension and waiting had passed. It was there in the manner of each of them, expectant or resigned, no longer puzzled and deliberating. The wave had caught up with them, already they were rushing towards the beach, in a few moments now they would either be on land, breathless, triumphant and happy, or overwhelmed in a thunder of smothering surf.

The Home Minister told them what was happening. The Congress had called a meeting in the Hindu quarter; there would be thousands of villagers there and they would be armed with rustic weapons. It was inevitable that they should again make for the palace; their leaders knew there were orders not to shoot, they knew that without the use of troops they could not be stopped. Whether they reached the palace or forced the Government to shoot, they would score. And Nadir Shah had summoned a parade of his Muslim Volunteers; they were at this moment being drilled by his lieutenants and he himself was at the palace asking for an audience.

The Home Minister ended. Kamal said:

‘And what was it you told me they were saying among the Muslim Volunteers?’

‘It—it is not suitable for His Magnificence to hear.’

‘But His Magnificence should know what they are saying.’

‘Well, they are saying that if the Government does not give orders for the Hindus to be dispersed by force, Nadir Shall will make himself Prime Minister and rule the island with firmness.’

‘It is quite true. Nadir Shah will be giving orders to me very quickly unless I give them to him first,’ said His Magnificence. He paused and looked round the table; he went on heavily:

‘I said I would tell you this morning. And you see I am telling you. I do not want my island full of dead people. But you must do it, Colonel Bolsover. I told you a long time ago a sermon is no good if the Mullah does not believe in God. None of us can do it because we do not believe in it; only you and Hadramauti believed in it.’

He was silent. They were all puzzled. Charles felt a sudden, deep weight of responsibility. He had given his advice as he might have formed a judgment on a situation in a book or on the acts of a statesman in history; it had not seriously occurred to him that it might be followed. Now it sounded as though he had carried the day. He said:

‘What is it you want me to do, Sir?’

‘Mahbub!’ The Military Secretary was by his side. ‘I want an aeroplane to take me to Monte Carlo at once.’

‘For how long, Magnificence?’

‘I shall not come back, ever.’ Tears rolled down the fat cheeks, but he wiped them away, sniffed resolutely, and went on:

‘The Queen will be Regent but she will not interfere. Prince Salim will be Sultan but of course he will go on with his spelling and lessons for three more years. There will have to be a new Prime Minister. A Hindu, but not Gokalaswamy. He can be Finance Minister. A good Hindu. There are plenty of good ones, you know, only they do not talk so much as the bad ones like Gokalaswamy. Radha Kishan perhaps. And Kamal must be Home Minister.’

‘If Your Magnificence will permit, I would rather resign—’

‘No doubt, no doubt. And I would much rather not resign. But you will do as you are told. And Colonel Bolsover had better be a minister too. I told you one day I would give you a big post. Minister for something we have not got. Oil, eh? Minister for Oil. Or salt? Eh, Colonel Bolsover? That would do just as well as oil because we have not got any salt either. But there is one thing important. There must be a proclamation and it is no good if I make it because nobody will believe me. They know I am an old fox. I have been Sultan twenty years and they know I promise anything and do something else because I have no character; no character, only a little here in my head, more than people think. It must be Salim that makes the proclamation and Colonel Bolsover who reads it out for him. They all know who Colonel Bolsover is and they know he was Hadramauti’s friend and they know what he has been telling me to do. They always know that. It is funny that they will still believe an Englishman. Excuse me, Colonel Bolsover, it is funny, but still it is true.’

Each in turn tried to persuade him that he need not abdicate. He said:

‘I have never been in a battle and if I was in a real battle, with swords and bullets, I think I should be very much frightened. Perhaps I should scream and run away. But I should not change sides and fight my own soldiers. If a king can win battles, that is best; but if he cannot win, then it is better to run away. Not to change sides.’

Someone mentioned Nadir Shah. His Magnificence said he was to be admitted. He strode into the room, resolute and alert, the man of action and feeling in the presence of old men who sat still and talked. Everything about him was in contrast with the men at the table, the pose, the military swagger, the black astrakhan hat with silver crescent cocked aggressively, the dark green bush shirt, workmanlike with rolled sleeves; the revolver holster, and the sword, the curved Abbasi sword from Damascus.

He bowed from the waist and thrust forward the hilt of his sword in homage. He uttered a short, conventional sentence about his duty to the King, his readiness to lay down his life. He stood still, defiant, brimming with emotion, longing for action.

‘Tell him, Kamal. Tell him what I have decided. I have decided. My mind is made up.’ His Magnificence rose and left the room.

Kamal caught Charles’s eye and expressed his opinion of this task with a quirk of mouth and eyebrow. He began to explain that His Magnificence had decided to abdicate. Charles rose and followed the Sultan. He was able to catch him in the room beyond and was lucky to find him harassed by his Military Secretary, his Comptroller of the Household, his Private Secretary and several others, all eager for decisions on a dozen points. He turned with relief to Charles, brushing them aside.

‘You must speak one word to him, Sir. He will not listen to us; if you do not speak to him again he will fight, and you know what that means. Many dead people.’

‘I do not want to resign but if I must I wish you would let me do it in peace. Very well, very well.’

The Sultan returned. Kamal had finished and Nadir Shah was in the midst of an impassioned speech in Urdu. The Sultan said in English:

‘Listen to me, Nadir Shah. It is not any use making lectures about your sword and your ancestors. I have a sword just as much as you and I am not going to bother any more about my ancestors so I do not think we need any bother about yours. You are to put down your weapons and go quietly to your houses and help your wives to cook the dinner. Now, that is enough.’

Nadir Shall began:

‘Sir, the people of Chamba are at my back. They cry out for leadership—’

But he was interrupted. The Sultan said angrily:

‘Nadir Shah, you are no true Muslim to threaten your King with force.’

Charles saw the light of memory in Nadir Shah’s eyes as he heard the words Hadramauti had used an hour before his death. Anger faded from the fierce, boyish face; mouth and eyes turned sullen; the hands dropped slack, the shoulders drooped. Then life came back, the rich, theatrical life that made him a leader, that expressed every emotion in action and gesture. The head rose, the shoulders squared, the sword flashed out, rose in salute, hilt to forehead, clattered lifeless at the Sultan’s feet. Nadir Shah turned like a soldier, walked away square and resolute, the empty scabbard of green velvet mocking every firm step.

The Sultan turned to go. He left the men round the table very busy. First, they sent an urgent message to the Congress leader Gokalaswamy, asking him to come and discuss the Sultan’s abdication, and meanwhile to keep his meeting quiet if he could. Another message to Radha Kishan, the proposed Prime Minister, a liberal Hindu, a constitutionalist, one who had long hoped that reform would come from the monarchy. Yusuf and the former Home Minister resigned their offices and left.

Lying awake that night, trying to recount all that had happened, Charles could not remember the course of the discussion that had followed. There had been too much said, too many points of view. But the impression remained of Radha Kishan soothing and placatory; Gokalaswamy reasonable and intelligent but a member of a party, tied by a compulsion beyond the council room to a programme conceived in opposition and essentially unreal; Kamal and himself together seizing every handhold, every solid niche of agreement, wresting themselves foot by foot up towards the level ground of the summit.

And there had been much agreement. Radha Kishan to be Prime Minister in a provisional government, Gokalaswamy Finance Minister, Kamal Home Minister, Charles guardian of the minor Sultan, and a kind of minister without portfolio. The first task of the provisional government would be to restore order and the second to hold elections on a new and wide basis; the new legislature would then confirm them in their offices or choose new ministers.

‘There is a chance,’ said Radha Kishan, ‘that, now it is to be our own government, most of us, most of the Hindus, will wish to be independent.’

Even Gokalaswamy agreed that there was a possibility, but he would have to consult his party; at present, of course, the party was committed to the opposite policy, but if they were to rule themselves, it might be different.

They talked hurriedly, for all this time Gokalaswamy’s lieutenants were trying to keep the crowds quiet at his meeting, and what Nadir Shah had done they did not yet know.

A police message came to Kamal, now Home Minister. News. Nadir Shah had addressed his parade of many thousands of volunteers. He had told them to lay down their arms, to go home, as the Sultan had ordered. He had thrown his empty scabbard on the ground and then had drawn his revolver and shot himself before them. There had been speeches, debate, divided councils, but in the end after much turbulence, most of his men had gone home; others were roaming the streets in bands, looking for trouble.

It went on, the discussion in the Council Chamber. They must restore order, they must get ready the proclamation, they must go to the airport to say goodbye to the Sultan. Arguments over the wording of the proclamation, to be made in Salim’s name, to be read by Charles. Gokalaswamy must go to his meeting. He did not think he could disperse them without hearing the proclamation. He would bring the whole mass to the Fateh Darwaza Palace to hear Charles proclaim it from the balcony. An electrician for the loudspeaker; translators to read the proclamation in Urdu and Tamil; Kamal’s orders to the troops and police.

The airport. Salim saying goodbye to his father. The Sultan speaking to Charles, and for a moment the picture was clear and bright again and he could hear every word.

‘I tell you, Colonel Bolsover, in Monte Carlo I shall go to the dogs. I think that is what you say. There will be nothing for me but whisky and girls and gambling and they do not make me happy so I shall have more and more and more of them, too much, much too much. I do not like them really, you know. Only I cannot stop having them. All I like really is my island. I like it very much. You will please come sometimes to Monte Carlo and see a fat old man who has gone to the dogs and wants to talk about his island.’

And then Charles was driving through the streets with Salim, streets full of people now, disturbed, uneasy people, uncertain and frightened, everywhere the police pushing to keep them back, pushing and hitting with sticks; no firing here, but here and there in the distance you could hear rifle fire, and from the balcony of the palace you could see over the rooftops columns of smoke, here, there, everywhere.

Not time yet for the proclamation and now he was with Kamal, driving as fast as they could to wherever trouble was reported, seeing here a huddle of still figures on the ground, where a party of Nadir Shah’s men had come on some offshoot of the great swarm that Gokalaswamy was trying to lead to the palace; finding here a police post desperately holding out against a mob, unreasoning, senseless, with no thought in their hearts but anger and fear; now watching the armoured cars, hearing the scream of their sirens as they rumbled up to relieve the police. Now he was back at the palace for the proclamation, reading it through again, sitting nervously with the other members of the provisional government. Now the moment had come, it was on him at last; he stepped forward to the microphone and there before him was the mob; he could hear the threatening roar of it, see the immensity of that sea of brown faces and waving arms, feel its unreason, its anger and its fear. For a moment, he pictured those thousands of beings maddened by fright, swaying forward into the house, smashing the gilded mirrors, beating in men’s faces, throwing the bodies in heaps like the dead in the mortuary; for a moment, his brain was scalded as clean as a pan is scalded by superheated steam. Not a word would come; his mind was paralysed; for thirty seconds of blinding fright he stood still without thought or speech.

And then Salim stepped forward, took the paper from his tutor’s hands and began quietly and clearly to read it into the microphone.

XVI

They were finished, his memories, and still he was awake, sweating and uneasy under the net, with the fans whirring overhead. He was still awake and there was nothing but fatigue to make his failure any easier to bear. But fatigue had dulled the edges and now as the story ended he sank into an uneasy doze, the first sleep of the overtired. Nothing so clear as a dream haunted his sleep, no single impression of sight or sound or smell, but he was floating in a medium made up from shattered fragments of impressions, a sea strewn with rubbish by the explosion of the ship in which he had been sailing, so that as the swimmer’s hands struck out they brushed against a cricket-pad, a woman’s dead face, a pair of spectacles, brushed them aside in the water and went on for the next stroke; a sea agitated by high waves, torn by foam, rising and falling in great tides in a dark well.

And then suddenly he was awake, broad awake, quiet, strangely rested. It was a little cooler. He slipped from under the net, clacked in heel-less slippers across the marble floor to the balcony and stood there looking out. The moon, just past the full, was low already; it would not be long till morning. He gazed out over the city, over the lake; all was peaceful now, there was no smoke to be seen, only cool, blue shadows, a silvery radiance, the dome of a mosque, the velvet sky, the stars. Nothing now, nothing but peace; he felt a sharp contempt for himself, that he should have fussed so much over his failure. For my own part, he thought, is a very small part of all that has happened and here in this peace and stillness it does not seem to matter very much whether I failed or not.

You are pretending, said a small, quiet voice in his ear, you are pretending, just as you always have done all your life. You have tried all your life to pass for a solid, square little extrovert with no nerves and no imagination and you pretended so long you began to think it was coming true. Then you get a jolt and you know it isn’t true, but because the moonlight makes everything look unreal and sentimental you start pretending again. It does matter. It matters because of Salim. The others may have thought that you told him what to do or that you were just waiting to clear your throat, but you knew, Salim knew. And it is the biggest part of your job to have Salim’s confidence. It is important and you know it is. How can he have any confidence in you?

He turned from the rail of the balcony with a feeling of sick distaste for the argument that was beginning again. If I could only abdicate in peace, he thought with a wry smile, resign in peace and go to sleep.

A cock crew in the distance. And as he groped his way in the darkness back towards the bed, he saw something very clearly. Saturday morning before lunch; it must have been autumn because he could smell the chrysanthemums; the wet brass of the vases, the rank, rotten smell of the water he emptied outside the vestry door when the old flowers were taken out; the stone of the window ledge and the chisel marks on it that looked like shortbread; drops of water in the white, stony dust; his mother giving him two of the newly arranged vases to carry from the vestry to the chancel; the small boy walking very carefully not to spill. Then, when he had put them down, the pew end, the end of one of the choir pews, his favourite thing in church. Peter kneeling and weeping, his face covered with enormous hands, and the cock, enormous too, crowing just over his head. What would Peter do if it dropped anything on him? Would he stop crying? Would he have to wash his hair? But Charles did not like to ask his mother such a question.

Charles could see that carved panel very clearly now, Peter weeping and the cock crowing. Something that everyone has done, he thought. And sitting there on the edge of the bed, thinking of Peter, thinking of the stature Peter put on in the few weeks that followed that morning when he heard the cock crow, of the authority with which he answered the learned, the confidence with which he healed the lame, he wondered whether the others would have done as Peter told them in quite the same way if they hadn’t known the story of the cock. If it hadn’t been for that failure, would they have given him their unquestioning obedience? They knew he was a man like themselves; they had seen his weakness and the courage with which he took command in spite of it. A good kind of leader that, better than the man you couldn’t imagine with any human weakness, a leader who overwhelmed you, whom you thought of as Jehovah.

I’ll tell him, he thought, I’ll put it in words? I’ll say I was frightened? I’ll thank him for coming to my rescue. Then everything will be easy, hard work because there’s so much to do, but straightforward, no kinks to disentangle. Up to now, I’ve been someone pale and superior, talking a foreign language and urging him to do things he didn’t want; now there’s a new barrier between us, something he’s done for me that I haven’t acknowledged. When we’ve talked it over, I’ll be someone he’s helped out of a jam, who’s done just the kind of thing he might do himself. Then he’ll listen to me.

Charles was in bed now, turning over to sleep. How stupid I’ve been, he thought. If you must look inwards, and you can’t help it if you’re made that way, look in from further out. How stupid, too, I’ve been about Mell, putting off writing, putting it off and putting it off. My own dear Mell, whom I’ve wanted all my life. She wants to come. Of course she does. I’ll send her a cable tomorrow.

He fell asleep and this time slept peacefully until the cock crew again and it was morning.

The End