Ellis Peters - George Felse 11 - Death To The Landlords (8 page)

Dominic came round from the kitchens with a box full of prepared food and fruit he had taken thought to order on rising, in case they should find it more convenient to picnic on the way. There were little three-cornered pastry cases stuffed with vegetables, and crisp pancakes sprinkled with paprika, the dough-cake type of bread called
nan
, and joints of chicken fried in golden batter. And fruits of all kinds, and a bottle of boiled water. No need now to go in to the railway junction at Tirumangalam; they would save a little time, and eat better with these provisions than at any restaurant they were likely to encounter on the way, not to mention being able to choose the place, the shade and the view.

Outside the back door Romesh Iyar squatted on his heels, strapping up a meagre bed-roll which presumably contained all his portable goods. Today he was not in his white tunic and turban, but wore khaki shorts and a bush shirt, and his curly hair fell in black ringlets over his intent forehead. As Dominic’s shadow fell upon him he looked up, and showed a resolute but thoughtful and wary face, which mellowed into an ingratiating smile of recognition.

‘
Namaste
, Felse sahib! You go Madurai now?’ He had been well tipped, and was well-disposed, but he did not look particularly happy. ‘I go away, too. I go by the bus soon.’

‘You’re leaving here? Leaving your job?’

Romesh rotated his head fervently from side to side in violent figure-eights of affirmation, and showed the whites of his large eyes. ‘I not stay here now, this is bad place. I not stay here where boat-boy gets killed. I tell inspector sahib, tell boss, too. This place no good for me any more, so I go.’

‘But it’s over now. It’s all over, nothing more will happen. It was a good job, wasn’t it? I shouldn’t quit just for that.’

Romesh hoisted his wide, lean shoulders under the baggy bush-jacket and set his jaw. ‘No good here for me now. I not stay here, not like it here. Must go.’

‘And Inspector Raju knows you’re leaving?’

‘Oh, yes, sahib, I tell him, and he say O. K. I report to policeman night and morning, then everything O. K. I tell him where I go, and he say all right.’

‘And where will you go? What will you do?’ Dominic fished out the small coins from his pocket. ‘You’re going to need bus fare. Here, put this away!’

Romesh pocketed the coins in his turn with a slightly brighter smile and a bob of thanks. ‘I go see my brother in Tenkasi, maybe they got job for me on railway. If that no good, I try in Quilon or Trivandrum. Every day I tell police where I stay, do everything they say. Only I not stay here.’

He had made up his mind, and nothing would change it. He squatted patiently and doggedly beside his bundle, and settled down to wait for the daily bus, his back already turned on Thekady and the Periyar Lake.

‘Well, good luck!’ said Dominic, and went on to join his companions.

On the way down the forest serpentines on the eastern side of the range they made a brief halt below the forestry bungalow, so that Larry could get his slides of the Siva stele among the trees. The light was clear and brilliant, the conditions perfect; and now that they were clear of the lingering shadow of the tragedy at Thekady they were all recovering their spirits and beginning to look forward again instead of back. Only Patti was rather quiet; still slightly dopey after her sedatives, she admitted, and perhaps also anxious to make it clear, since she had more or less extorted this invitation, that she intended to be as unobtrusive and as little trouble as possible.

The fruit-stall was there in its usual place below, lavish as a harvest festival. Only the sadhu was missing; there was no one sitting beside the lingam in the shade of the trees, and not even a flattened patch in the grass to show he had ever been there.

They halted for lunch on a strip of sand beside a stream, just off the road, where they had a patch of shade from a clump of young coconut palms, and a wonderful view of the distant, convoluted blue heights of the Western Ghats, out of which they had come, and which, under a variety of local names and shapes, accompany the southbound road almost to the Cape. And in the afternoon they passed through Sattur, and remembered Mahendralal Bakhle, whose disputed lands lay somewhere in the neighbourhood. From Koilpatti they soon turned right, at Dominic’s somewhat hesitant direction, into a minor road, white as flour, climbing gently between paddy fields greener than emeralds, and tall palmyra palms, with the half-veiled blue complexities of the hills endlessly changing shape before them. And by the first downward swoop of evening they reached Malaikuppam.

It lay on a gentle slope, facing south-east, and the rice here had become a different strain, a hill-rice, the upland crop almost golden in colour, and in one field being cut. Groves of trees framed the village as they approached it. There was a pond on one side, and two boys were splashing along its edges, minding the water-buffaloes that wallowed in its coolness with their blue-black hides gleaming and their patient, placid faces as near expressing happiness as they would ever be. In one place they saw tobacco growing, its huge leaves shading from pale green to yellow, its stems five feet tall. It did not look rich country, but neither did it appear depressed or poverty-stricken; and yet life in rural India is commonly lived on a knife-edge of debt and destitution, and they all knew it.

There were women just gathered at their evening chore of drawing water from a big, stone-rimmed well on the dusty village square. One of the girls stood aloft on the four-foot-high rim, outlined against a sky turning to orange and gold, and the others handed up their brass pots to her to fill. Poised with thin brown toes gripping the stone, she dipped and raised the brimming pots, her anklets and bangles gleaming, and all her gestures were pure and graceful and economical, a lesson in movement. Larry halted the Land-Rover, and all the dark female faces turned to stare at them in candid curiosity, and laugh aloud in frank appreciation of their oddness and incongruity. It was a disconcerting experience which all the foreigners among them had suffered several times before. But when Lakshman leaned out and asked for guidance in fluent Tamil, the nearest woman approached willingly and cheerfully, and pointed them the way. Higher than the village. A little way uphill, and they would see the gates.

They saw the wall first, lofty and white, capped with crude red tiles, and it went on almost as far as they could see. Then they came to the gates, wrought iron gates that stood wide on a short, dusty drive and a broad central court, round which the various buildings of the household were grouped somewhat haphazardly, many of them having been added at different times. Everything was low, one-storeyed and white, and shaded with overhanging eaves; and the first buildings they passed were clearly the dwellings of farm-servants and household retainers, of whom there seemed to be a great many. Then there were buildings that appeared to be barns and store-rooms, all space around the broad open area of trodden earth that gave place, a little higher, to a paved court. The end of the vista was filled in by a wide terrace, with steps leading up to it, and crowned by a long, low, single-storey house, white-walled and red-tiled, a little like a ranch-house but for the strong batter of the walls and the shaping of the roofs. Over the tiles the ornamental bushes and fruit trees of a garden peered, and beyond was a grove of forest trees looking over the boundary wall.

‘Riches without ostentation,’ Patti said critically. ‘I sort of knew it would be like this. At least it doesn’t look English. Have you ever been in the Nilgiris, and seen all those dreadfully unsuitable houses that look like something left over from Queen Victoria’s jubilee, and are all called “Waverley” or “Rosemount” or “The Cedars”? You wonder whether you’ve slipped through a crack in space and time, and ended up somewhere quite different. At least this
is
rural India, not suburban Cheltenham.’

‘I was once invited to a Women’s Institute meeting,’ Priya said unexpectedly, ‘in Bangalore.’ Everyone turned, even at this vital and anxious moment of arrival, to gape at her in astonishment, the statement came so startlingly, not in itself, but from her. ‘I didn’t go,’ she said demurely, ‘I had an extra duty. I was nursing there then. But I would have gone, if I’d been free.’

‘Isn’t it marvellous?’ Patti said, gratified. ‘You know when the real imperial rot set in? When the British memsahibs arrived! The men were quite willing to learn the ropes and go quietly and discreetly native, and no one would have been any the worse for it. But once the wives were let in, and the families, and the damned establishment, it was all over. Everything had to conform to the home life of our dear queen, and everybody stopped learning anything about the home life of the native Indian, and profiting by it. It didn’t matter any more, it was just something to be brought into line. Which of course it never was. Thank God! You can’t just run around the world trying to teach other people respectability, when what that really means is respect for an Anglican doll in a crinoline!’ She caught Dominic’s eye, dwelling upon her consideringly as Larry brought the Land-Rover to a halt close to the terrace steps. ‘Yes, you’re right, I’m talking too much because I’m nervous. I invited myself here. I know it.’

‘You talked a blue streak of truth there,’ Dominic said honestly. ‘I wouldn’t worry about your rights and titles. This sort of caravansarai absorbs visitors wholesale. Come on, let’s go and find the host.’

They clambered out, shaking the dust out of their clothes self-consciously. Lakshman withdrew into the background here; this was no duty of his. It was Dominic who led the way up the staircase to the terrace, and crossed to the open door under the wide eaves.

And suddenly, none of them ever quite knew how, there was a young man standing under the lintel, waiting formally to welcome them. They had heard nothing; he moved gently and fastidiously, after the manner of his race and the code of his aristocratic line. But he had heard the Land-Rover arrive, and needed no other summons, being the punctilious host he was. Probably he had been listening for their engine for an hour and more, whatever he had been doing in the meantime. He stood quite still in the doorway of his house to welcome his guests, the least pretentious figure in the world, and the gravest, a slim, neatly-moulded young man in thin grey flannels and an open-necked white shirt, with short-cropped black hair that waved slightly on his temples, and a spark of something remote and touching, hope of companionship, recollection of gaiety, faith in the possibility of friendship, something intimately connected with England and the English, in his large, proud, aloof and lonely dark eyes.

‘I’m Purushottam Narayanan,’ he said, in a clear, courteous, almost didactic voice. ‘Everything’s ready for you. Do come in!’

The hospitality of the Narayanan household was absolute but not elaborate, the furnishings of the rooms comfortable but simple, and Indian style, like the dinner they presently ate in a large and rather bare room overlooking the terrace and the small, glimmering fires and lamps of the village below. Cutlery and some nine or ten dishes of various vegetables and curries were set out on a large table, and everyone on entering was handed a warmed plate and turned loose to charge it as he felt inclined. The host, attentive, grave and reserved as yet, told them what each dish contained, and added punctilious warnings where he felt the contents might be rather highly spiced for their tastes. Then they all sat down with their selections at a smaller table set in the window, and two servants hovered in the background, ready to offer replenishments at a nod from their master.

Afterwards the servants brought bowls of a creamy sweet made with rice, its surface covered with tissue-thin sheets of silver foil, which were also meant to be eaten; and fruit, in a bowl of water, and rich, strong coffee.

By this time they had exchanged all the courtesies, the host expressing his gratitude for their company and his pleasure in it, the guests their thanks for his kindness and their appreciation of all the thought he had given to their comfort; and still they were no nearer knowing whether his pleasure was personal or formal, his gratitude heartfelt, even desperate, or merely an acceptable phrase. He sat among them, cross-legged at one end of the long seat built into the window, talking intelligently about merely current things, such as the Indian scene, and their journey, and their intended onward journey, his large, unwavering dark eyes moving intently from face to face, and no gesture missing and nothing undone that could contribute to their well-being; but some inward part of him might as well have been, and probably was, a million miles away from them.

He was by no means a small man, being fully as tall as Dominic, though still a couple of inches short of Larry’s gangling height; but he was built in the slender South Indian style, with light bones and smooth, athletic flesh, and in repose he looked almost fragile; an impression reinforced by the refinement and tension of his face, which was clearly but suavely cut, without any of the hawk-likeness of Lakshman’s Punjabi features. The moulding of his lips was fastidious and reticent, the poise of his head very erect, even drawn a little back, as though in insurmountable reserve. And out of this austere countenance the melting southern eyes gazed doubtfully, withholding communication, even while he discoursed politely and plied them with favours.

But there was nothing indecisive about the face, and nothing to suggest that the part of him he kept private was not engaged at this very moment in furious and resolute activity of its own.

‘I must apologise,’ he said, when even the coffee had been cleared away, ‘for being such a poor host. I have been too preoccupied with this responsibility here, to which I’m not accustomed at all. Give me a few months, and when I have all this moving as I want it to move, then you must come again, and let me have more time to show you the countryside.’ Not a word of his father’s death and his own recall to take over the household; such family concerns must not be inflicted upon girl guests. ‘I realise that you have made your own plans, too, of course. But you will at least have tomorrow? You need not leave until the next day?’

‘No, Wednesday morning we’d planned on moving,’ Larry agreed.

‘And at what hour ought you to set out?’ For the first time he smiled, a little self-consciously. ‘I’m sorry, that sounds terrible. I would be happy if you need not leave at all that day, but you see, my father’s lawyer is coming that morning to help me clear up all the affairs my father left in confusion. He was ill for some time before he died, though we never realised how ill, and things were a little neglected, not to mention a law-suit he had with a cousin over a plot of land lower down in the plain. That’s why I have been locking myself in his office all day and every day, trying to get everything sorted out for when the solicitor comes. I would like to arrange my meeting with him for an hour that won’t inconvenience you at all.’

‘We ought to make an early start,’ said Larry. ‘We have to drop the girls in Nagarcoil, and then go on to Cape Comorin. I think we should say seven in the morning.’

‘Then I shall arrange for Mr Das Gupta to come at eight. I shall send my car down to Koilpatti to fetch him, after you have left. He drives, but badly, and our road up here is not good, he will be glad to have transport. Now we need not think any more about departures. You have tomorrow, and we can do quite a lot with that.’ He looked across at Dominic. ‘You will come out with me and have a look at the set-up here? I should be grateful. I have some ideas, but you will know better than I if they are practicable.’

‘I’m only a herald for the Swami,’ Dominic said, ‘he’s coming down himself. as soon as he can. But naturally I was hoping to get a look at things while I’m here, and let him have an outline of what you have in mind. There’ll be a good deal of ground to cover?’

‘We can put in all day on it, easily. Perhaps we could borrow the Land-Rover for the day?’ He turned to flash a sudden engaging smile at Larry. ‘And Dominic tells me – he mentioned it on the telephone – that you are a civil engineer, and have been working on an irrigation scheme up north. Is that right?’

Larry admitted it, without bothering to add that he feared for his plan’s survival.

‘Then you’re just the man we want! Please come out with us. You see, further up here towards the hills we have a small river which is a tributary of the Vaipar, and centuries ago there was a whole system of tanks built down its course, with earth dams. They’ve been out of use and overgrown – oh, three hundred years, I’d guess – but I believe it wouldn’t be impossible to reconstruct the whole system. With earth dams they were a poor risk in the rains – if the top bund went, the whole lot went, that’s why they were abandoned. But it wouldn’t be so difficult, with a little capital, to put in a more durable system now on the same line. Come with us, and see!’

‘Sure I’ll come, glad to!’ And Larry would have been willing and ready to launch into a whole technical discussion of the water situation in Tamil Nadu, and the possibility of harnessing more of the rivers of Kerala, on the narrower, better-watered west of the Ghats, to irrigate the drier plains on the east; but Purushottam diverted the flow. It was necessary to make plans, but as briefly as possible. Tomorrow they could talk water, and rice, and terracing, and the mysterious ancient tanks of Malaikuppam, the whole day long. Tonight they must devote themselves to making the girls’ stay here pleasant.

‘And for you, Miss Galloway and Miss Madhavan, I think we can arrange something more interesting. I hope I have done the right thing. Dominic mentioned when he telephoned that you had originally intended going to Kuttalam. It’s less than forty miles from here, so why should you miss it? My car will take you there tomorrow, if you would like that, and Lakshman will take care of you while we are busy. In the evening we shall all be together again.’