Authors: Bart Moore-Gilbert
Once again, I have to wait for Indore at the police station. A couple of seats along the veranda I notice a wizened,
cloudy-eyed old man in a crocheted prayer cap. What’s he saying? When I shrug, he continues to stare disconcertingly, muttering under his breath. I’m tired and do my best to ignore him. So I’m surprised when Indore’s attendant eventually beckons both of us to follow. There’s much courtly bowing and smacking his chest with an open hand from the old man when we enter. The DSP sounds as if he’s reassuring him.
‘This is the traffic man we found,’ he announces when my fellow visitor’s at last been been persuaded to sit, an honour which he appears shy of.
‘Mr Dawood says he was trying to say hello outside.’
I twist awkwardly to shake hands with the man, apologising for my rudeness. His opaque pupils sink into the creases of his smile. Indore translates in a slightly bored tone. Perhaps he’s eager to get home after his long day.
‘I was in traffic,’ the man confirms several times, as if I might be hard of hearing.
‘How did you know my father?’
‘I saw him often in his car. The back was made of planks.’
So Bill still had his ‘Woodie’ in Ratnagiri. Still, this doesn’t seem very promising. And even less so when Dawood proceeds to explain at length how much better-regulated traffic was in those days. There was only the tiny bus station and the ferry to deal with. Time enough to stop bicycles travelling without lights at night. Indore chuckles.
‘Ratnagiri was much smaller,’ the DSP reminds him gently.
The veteran doesn’t seem to have heard. ‘He was a big man, Gilbert. Very smart,’ he suddenly pronounces.
My ears prick up. ‘Did you ever talk to him?’
Dawood shakes his head. ‘ “Yes sir, no sir,” mostly.’
‘Can you remember any stories about him?’
My informant considers long and hard. He seems on the point of giving up when a memory suddenly comes. ‘A great fisherman. He was always out with his rod when he could find time.’
Memories of trout-fishing camps in the Southern Highlands of Tanganyika come flooding back.
‘Once he left some crabs with me. In the control post at the crossroads. He said he wouldn’t be long. Even though their claws were tied up, I didn’t like them scraping around my feet. I stepped down onto the road to direct the traffic. He laughed at me when he came back.’
Why did Bill leave the crabs? ‘Anything else?’
‘He was a very strong swimmer.’
‘Oh?’
‘One day he saved a woman from the sea. Near the ferry terminal. I wasn’t on duty. Head constable told me.’
‘What, exactly?’
‘That a woman fell from the ferry and Gilbert jumped into the water.’
‘He saved her?’
Dawood nods. ‘But her husband was very angry.’
What?
‘To have his wife touched by another man.’
‘Perhaps the husband pushed her in,’ Indore intervenes, with another gold-toothed chuckle.
‘Where did this happen?’
‘The ferry. Where the big bridge is now.’
He can remember nothing else. But it doesn’t matter. I’m so pleased to hear a final positive testimonial to Bill from a contemporary with no particular vested interests. We chat for a while about the man’s later career and life in retirement before it’s time to go. When we shake hands, Dawood mutters something which makes the DSP shake his head.
‘What did he say?’
‘I told him you were a doctor. He wants to know if you are good with eyes.’
I mime my apologies. On the way out, the thought suddenly occurs to me: at last I’ve encountered a Muslim police officer. Are they, like Dawood, simply relics of the past?
Before returning to the hotel, I ask the ever-patient Keitan, who’s parked discreetly down the road, if we can pop back to the estuary bridge for a moment.
‘As long as it’s not to Bangladesh,’ he grins.
On the way, he chaffs me about my obsessive interest in Raj sites and architecture. I wonder if he read the Macaulay excerpt while waiting.
‘Look, there’s a tree probably planted by the British,’ he teases, ‘certainly that house was built by
sahib-log
, maybe those pavement stones were walked on by the viceroy.’
We park up halfway across the arc. It’s a beautiful evening; the sun’s set but it continues to illuminate the horizon, while the lamps of the fishing fleet bob like fairy lights. Ratnagiri means ‘mountain of jewels’ in Marathi, but ‘sea of jewels’ feels more appropriate at this moment. The beach where we were stoned is empty even of toileteers, and looks idyllic at this distance. Below, broiling cross-currents are creamily visible. In
The Glass Palace
, this is the site of a suicide. Discovering that his wife no longer loves him, the first Indian collector of Ratnagiri launches the scull he’s brought back from Cambridge. Racing downriver, he disappears just here, where the fresh water smashes into the salty tide. Neither he nor his craft are recovered.
As with defusing the Mills bomb in Nasik, it must have taken some courage for Bill to plunge into that cauldron to rescue the woman. I wonder whether the pair was pulled back onto the ferry or if Bill dragged her all the way to the old jetty, now clearly visible from this side of the building site, where our assailants armed themselves yesterday. Perhaps on the very beach where we were nearly stoned, her husband remonstrated with him, his half-drowned wife struggling, uncertain as a pupa, to right herself in her sodden saris. I’d like to think it was restitution, an attempt at balancing the books before he quit India. Otherwise, why take the risk when he was about to leave, his whole life in front of him?
But perhaps, after all, it was simply reflex, instilled by long training.
The boy can’t understand it. Snippets of his life speed like a film through his mind, right up to just a few minutes ago, when he was talking with Mrs Ambrose and Jacqueline as they relaxed in sunloungers beside the pool at the Tabora Club
.
‘Don’t know how to swim?’ Mrs Ambrose asked incredulously, after her daughter went inside to get another Fanta
.
The boy had reddened. It’s impossible to swim in the upcountry rivers and lakes where they’ve been posted up to now. If it isn’t crocodiles, it’s bilharzia, borne by snails which deposit eggs in the urethra. At school it’s said they can only be dislodged by means of a very fine wire brush with copper hairs. But he’d felt ashamed, nonetheless, because everyone his age here – girls, too – runs and dives into the water with such abandon
.
He’d give anything to be able to do bombs off the boards like the teenagers, so confident in their supple bodies. The boy can’t bring himself even to go in the shallow end, for fear he’ll be challenged to a race. He pretends to prefer sunbathing and mocking the girls. But he was ecstatic that Jacqueline left before her mother asked the question. She’s that pretty, snake of hair down to her waist, cabled for swimming but brushed out now she’s finished her dip. Lately he’s been getting a sugary, sinking feeling when he slyly watches her, pretending to squint because of the sun
.
‘It’s easy,’ Mrs Ambrose had assured him. ‘Just run and take a big jump. Once in, you’ll know what to do. It’s natural.’
More than anything, he’d wanted to impress Jacqueline, make the straw drop from her mouth
.
He sees himself now, as if from above, in slow motion, through the fluid pressing into every opening with a transparent stifling silkiness, preparing to make his approach from the far end of the pool. Past joins present almost as soon as he hits the water. How long has he been thrashing like this, lungs burning at first, now glutinous and soggy, as he tries to touch bottom long enough to hurl himself violently up again. Once or twice he’s surfaced long enough for an almighty cough and gasp of air, but mainly it’s more mouthfuls of water. Each time, the world grows more bleary and indistinct. Liquid gravity is winning him
.
Then, from nowhere, the Ambrose girl’s suddenly next to him. She pushes him up and he catches another choking breath. But the boy’s so tired now, he just wants to hang on, anything for a rest. He puts both hands round her neck, hoping she’ll swim them both into the sunlight. For an age they struggle, limbs intertwined in an intimacy he could scarcely have dared hope for. He knows she’s shouting something from her water-gagged mouth, but the element’s too thick to hear. Suddenly she’s spent, too. Her head drops back and the efforts to free his grip weaken, her long hair drifting like weed. How beautiful it would be, her hands all over him, if only her brown eyes didn’t goggle so
.
When he’s about to surrender to the sweet languid feeling in his limbs, just as the light starts to drain out of the water, there’s an underwater eruption, as if one of the larger lads is doing a bomb. A vast shape throws deeper shadow over them. The boy feels his hands torn from Jacqueline. A moment later, there’s sun on his face and he’s half aware of his chest being scraped over the tiled edge of the pool. Shouting comes from far away, half drowned by the sound of vomiting. Once on his back he feels, rather than hears, his name being called. His face is turned to one side, supported in his father’s hands, while someone pumps brutally on his chest. It continues to pour, the water, retched out of his nose and mouth and eyes, tasting of bile and chlorine and foulness, his sides racked with cramps as he tries to yield more
.
As his vision comes into focus again, the boy sees his father’s tennis shoes still bleeding water. For once the voice above him’s thin and uncertain
.
‘Thought I’d lost you there, old chap. One minute more.’ He folds his son up to his chest and rocks him
.
Although the boy can’t see his father’s grey eyes, he can taste salt on his cheeks, feel the thick arms trembling. As he continues to be rocked, he’s transfixed by the sight of Jacqueline Ambrose. Her swimsuit’s pulled down off her shoulders. There are angry weals on her neck, above the lovely swellings on her upper chest. Her mother cries helplessly as a friend comforts the girl. Jacqueline stares blankly at the boy before sitting up on one elbow and pulling her straps up. He wants to say he hasn’t been looking. But he feels too peaceful to care. He doesn’t mind how long he stays like this, buoyed in his father’s arms, sun slowly fluffing up his flattened hair
.
‘You stupid woman, you bloody stupid woman,’ the boy’s father suddenly yells after the retreating Mrs Ambrose
.
Her daughter, hair once more in its pigtail, glances back tearfully. Club members look on, sympathetic but astonished. After all, the boy’s father’s a byword for gallantry
.
CHAPTER 15
Two Farewells
My last morning in India, I return to Rajeev’s flat to find him in trainers, fleece tracksuit pants and striped hoody, Elvis once more warbling from the corner of his day room. He looks pumped-up.
‘Aren’t you cold?’ he asks, staring at my bare arms. ‘People are freezing to death up in Lucknow. They say it’s minus five in London.’
My heart sinks. ‘Well, I’m going to make the most of it. Been running?’
‘I like to do a fast walk at five-thirty in the morning,’ he explains. ‘Clears the head and gives me time to think. And the air’s OK to breathe at that time.’ He offers tea. ‘Did you bring that Shinde book?’ he asks, when it comes.
I get
The Parallel Government
out of my bag and pass it over. He leafs through the opening pages.
‘I thought so. I asked around about this fellow after you left. You see, this is a kind of semi-official publication. The foreword was written by Y.B. Chavan himself and, look here,’ his finger stabs the page, ‘Shinde acknowledges receiving “a sumptuous publication grant” from the chief minister’s office.’
I recall Avanish Patil’s mournful comments at Kolhapur University about how patronage is essential these days in order to get local history published in India.
‘Listen, my friend.’ Rajeev reads from the foreword: ‘Chavan claims that “Police excesses on men, women and children are … narrated factually.” Of course he’d say that, given he was one of the leaders of the Patri Sarkar. I don’t suppose Shinde
felt able to question some of the behaviour of the movement in the way you told me Nayakwadi was.’
I demur. True, Shinde perhaps ought to have gone to Chafal to check the account given by the Congress worker on which he relied so heavily. Equally, he interviewed only those engaged on the nationalist side: no equivalent police testimony’s adduced, other than excerpts from the elusive confidential weekly reports. But there’s no reason to doubt that he used his sources in good faith. Besides, there’s Modak’s evidence, too, even if aspects of it now seem questionable. Rajeev’s surprised I wish to defend him.
‘Well,’ he shrugs, ‘I suppose everyone tells the stories they need to. None of us can really be objective.’
He gets up and goes to his desk. To my astonishment, it’s littered with what look like 1950s comics and trash-mags. Except for one blue folder.
‘This is what I dug up while you were away.’
Extraordinary. Original typewritten orders relating to Bill’s later career. The first’s from N.A.P. Smith, the inspector-general of police and is dated 16 January 1944: ‘Mr Moore-Gilbert, who is officiating as DSP, Nasik, until Mr Price’s return on 23-1-1944, should thereafter be appointed as an additional ASP in the Belgaum district. The purposes of this appointment are in a sense confidential and have been outlined in a separate letter addressed to the Adviser. But it can be broadly stated that it is intended through Mr Moore-Gilbert to effect an improvement in the training of the armed police operating against the Radderhati Berad and other gangs in the Belgaum area.’
‘What’s the Radderhati Berad?’
Rajeev shrugs. ‘Probably some outfit like the Patri Sarkar.’
So Bill was never supposed to go to Satara? I wonder what place he’d have in history had his original secondment proceeded as planned. Perhaps all controversy would have been avoided. Then again, had he gone to Belgaum, Bhosle might
never have emailed me and I’d have had no reason to come to India. There’d have been no need to track down Modak, I’d never have been passed onto Dhun Nanavatty, visited Chafal, or been put in touch with the old nationalist leaders and constables. I wouldn’t have met Briha, Keitan or Rajeev. I’d know no more about my father than I did before I came here. I’d have learned a lot less about myself, too, my investments in my childhood memories, my adult values.