Death to the Landlords

Ten

Cape Comorin; Friday Afternoon

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On the last eight miles to Cape Comorin the Western Ghats had been left behind at last, the country opened level and green with paddy-fields and palms, broken only, here and there, by small, astonishingly abrupt, mole-hill-shaped mountains that erupted out of nowhere like the remains of old volcanic activity. Most of their area was bare, bluish rock; only in the scanty folds of their lowest slopes did trees and bushes cling.

‘You didn’t tell us,’ said Parushottam, in the back of the Land-Rover with Priya, ‘that you were a Christian.’

She did not take her eyes from the road unrolling dustily behind them; but she smiled. ‘I’m not sure that I am. Not sure what I am. I think I am religious, but I am not very partisan. But I was brought up as a Christian, and I have never seen any point in changing, when calling myself something else will not really be any more appropriate to what I believe. I expect I don’t think very logically about these things, but categories are so limiting, and so confusing.’

Still she watched their wake; she had been watching it ever since she had guided them out of the town by bewildering lanes and alleys, and round by cart-tracks to reach this southern highway at last. But there was no vehicle in sight behind them.

‘Why are you watching the road so carefully?’ he asked.

‘To make sure that we’re not followed.’

His mind had been too full of other thoughts to have any room for the consideration of his own safety. He had forgotten, temporarily, that it had ever been threatened. ‘We shan’t be followed now? Why should we?’

‘I hope not,’ she said. ‘But there’s no harm in keeping our eyes open.’

The tall gopuram of a temple showed ahead, rearing out of the palms. A large grove of trees surrounded it, but the tapering, gilded tower stood out far above the fronds of their crests, covered with carvings and alive with colours. In five minutes more they reached the gates, and the broad, ceremonial path that led into its courts. There were several cars standing before the entrance, and at sight of the rearmost of them Dominic laughed, and slapped a hand lightly on the wheel.

‘This is where we came in! What did we say? Provincial France has caught up with us again.’

There was no mistaking that old, sky-blue Ford, with the scratches of some ancient skirmish ripped across one door, and dabs of red retouching on the rear wing. The Bessancourts must be inside the temple enclosure with their box camera, doggedly making up the record of their travels. A tall, rangy young man in khaki shirt and shorts and a white headcloth sat on his heels, leaning back comfortably against the enclosure wall, his arms embracing his legs and his head pillowed on his knees, contentedly asleep, though they could only assume that his job was to guard the parked cars and discarded shoes.

‘Shall we stop? Do you want to have a look at the temple?’ asked Dominic, slowing down.

‘No, let’s go on,’ said Larry. ‘If everybody’s going to be making for this hotel at the Cape, maybe we’d better get there ahead of the rest. Not much doubt we’ll be seeing the Bessancourts this evening, is there?’

They could smell the sea, and trace the direction of the wind by the slant of the trees, before they came within sight of village, temple or cape. There were roofs of buildings ahead, more palmyra palms, and then a crossroads where a battered bus had just turned, clearly having reached its terminus. A few houses, small and modest, and a stall selling fruit and drinks, the cheerful stall-holder brandishing a machete to behead the coconuts, and slice a way through to the three pockets of sweet juice in the palmyra fruits for his customers. And that was all.

‘Here we must turn to the right,’ said Priya. ‘Look, that big house – that is the hotel.’

A lane brought them to its gates, and to a parking-ground within. The house was quite un-Indian; it might have been more at home in any expensive Victorian suburb of any northern commercial town in England, and indeed it had once been a British Residency; but it had broad, grassy surroundings, and a few windswept flower-beds, and it looked solid, spacious and comfortable.

‘The first chance I have had,’ said Purushottam buoyantly, ‘to be a proper courier for you.’ And he led the way inside to book rooms for them all. They followed more slowly, and in the dimmer light within looked round them among the panelling and potted palms, glimpsing through open doors and rear windows a sudden dazzling vista of sand, flowing in undulating dunes along the edge of a half-buried road; and beyond that the glitter of water. The Indian Ocean, which had seemed still far away from them, was almost lipping at their back doorstep.

Their rooms were on the first floor. As usual they were all double rooms, but because of Priya’s presence they needed three, so that one of the men was also privileged to enjoy a room to himself. ‘You take that one,’ Dominic said, and took Larry’s bag from the room-boy and dumped it within.

‘Suits me,’ Larry agreed accommodatingly, and followed his belongings.

Purushottam caught Dominic’s eye, and smiled. ‘You feel responsible for me?’

‘No sense in taking any unnecessary chances, you’d better share with one of us. Doesn’t matter which.’ But it did. He was the one who would feel answerable to the Swami for Purushottam’s safety, and that mattered a great deal.

Priya’s room and Larry’s were neighbours, and faced east. The third room was approached by a small side-corridor of its own, and faced south. All three of them opened on a long balcony with railings of ornamental ironwork, supported on painted iron pillars from below. Purushottam tossed his bag on the left-hand bed, and unzipped it in search of a clean shirt. For verisimilitude he had brought away the bag which belonged to Lakshman, but he had put in his own toilet articles and pyjamas and a change of clothes. After the dusty journey he wanted a shower.

He was still revolving under the cool water when he heard, distantly through this splashing music, the shrill, peremptory shriek of a woman’s voice, and then Dominic’s resigned groan of: ‘Oh, no!’ from the balcony. In pure curiosity Purushottam emerged glistening and golden from the bathroom, trailing his towel over one shoulder and leaving moist footprints behind him.

‘Why: Oh, no! – and so fervently? What was it?’

Dominic drew back a little from the railing, and pointed down into the garden.

The Manis, in all their glory, were just returning from a leisurely stroll along the coastal road from the village; Gopal Krishna in immaculate beige linen and immense sunglasses, with his expensive camera round his neck, Sudha in a lilac and blue sari woven in subtle stripes that changed shade with the light, her wrists laden with portable treasure of good bracelets, and her pale golden face plaintive with vexation. Sushil Dastur, harried as ever, trotted at her elbow bearing her bag, folding canvas chair, cushion and book. And what had occasioned the shriek of reproof was that he had let fall her bookmark, and lost her place in the book. Profuse and voluble in apology and reassurance, he was already feverishly hunting for it again, at the peril of dropping her cushion at any moment.

‘That is what it was – the lady. You haven’t encountered the Manis yet, but you will, the minute they set eyes on us. One of those cars outside must be theirs, but I never thought. All those black hire jobs look alike. And the devil of it is that they know Lakshman. In any case, they’ll have read about Patti.’ The mention of her name was like a stab, all the more because it was entirely possible, for brief periods, and on the tide of such crazy pleasure as they had experienced at Nagarcoil, to forget all about her. The reminder was still a crude shock when it came; and reality was treading on their heels even here.

‘Do they matter?’ Purushottam asked, watching the three figures advance towards the hotel.

‘Do we know what matters? They were at Thekady. They’d seen us a couple of times before that. For that matter, the French people are surely on their way, too. The car we passed at the temple. A pity! As we were a couple of days behind schedule, I thought they might all have turned back northwards by now. Not that the Manis ever actually acknowledged Lakshman’s existence,’ he added scornfully. ‘I don’t believe they ever addressed a word to him. But the Bessancourts did. And in any case none of them can help noticing, at close quarters, that you’re not Lakshman, whether they expect you to be introduced or not. Now how are we going to account for you?’

Purushottam wrapped the towel round him, massaged his slender body pleasurably and considered. ‘Lakshman had to leave you, and I’m your new guide. My name’s Narayanan. Why not? Supposing there is anyone here who already knows of me – the chap you’re worrying about – then he knows my name. And for any others, Narayanan is a perfectly good name, common enough, you meet a few of us everywhere. It will do for a guide as well as for anyone else. Who knows, they might even take me for a plainclothes policeman detailed off to escort you!’

‘Good advice,’ agreed Dominic, after a moment’s reflection. ‘Why complicate things unnecessarily? Hurry up and get dressed, and we’ll go and brief the others.’

They had need of a united front; for the moment they appeared in the lounge, with its range of large windows giving on the coast road and the dunes, Sudha Mani rose with a small, melodious shriek of recognition and sympathy from her tea-tray, and bore down upon them in a gust of perfumed air, her sari fluttering.

‘Oh, Miss Madhavan – Mr Preisinger – Mr Felse—Oh, we have been so anxious about you all! It was all in the papers – such a dreadful thing, that poor young lady! Ah, how we felt for her, and for her unhappy parents, so far away! Oh, how little we realised, when we said good-bye in Thekady, that in so short a time —’ Her breath gave out; she held her swelling bosom, and heaved great sighs.

‘My wife,’ intoned Gopal Krishna, rolling ponderously up to her support, ‘is so hypersensitive. Your bad news – such a shock to hear…’

‘Yes, it is a wretched business,’ Larry agreed rather forbiddingly.

‘But why, I ask myself, should anyone wish to hurt a young English lady like Miss Galloway?’ Gopal Krishna blinked behind his dark glasses, and shook his head heavily. ‘The police have a theory? They did not detain you, I am so glad of that.’

‘No, they didn’t want us to stay put. Though of course we’re in constant touch,’ Dominic said. No harm to plant the idea that wherever they went the police might well have a shadow not far behind. ‘As far as we could gather, they think that Miss Galloway may have seen something incriminating at Thekady, perhaps without even realising it, and someone wanted her silenced. But of course we may be wrong – it’s just an impression. They haven’t found it necessary to interfere with your movements, I hope?’

Sudha raised her fine black brows, a little disposed to be affronted by the suggestion, but her husband flowed on complacently enough: ‘Oh, no, indeed no, we have not been troubled at all. But for such distressing happenings, it could have been a most pleasant trip. We spent two nights at Tirunelveli, and went out to the coast there to see the Subrahmanya temple at Tiruchendur, and the cave sculptures. We arrived here for lunch today. You are also staying overnight? That will be very nice, we shall see more of you.’

They withdrew, smiling their goodwill and shaking their heads over all that had proved regrettable and spoiled a perfect trip, and went back to their tea. Neither of them had given more than a faintly curious glance at Purushottam, who hovered in the background with a very fair imitation of Lakshman’s ambiguous manner.

‘Let’s get out of here and have a look for the Cape we’ve heard so much about,’ said Larry restively, and led the way out, straight through the lounge to an open door, and out into a narrow garden, a levelled waste-land of grass half silted over with the encroaching edges of the dunes. It was like Cornwall in many ways, the furtive wavelets of sand creeping towards the house, the sparse plantations of tamarisks, the smell of the sea.

A light, insinuating hand plucked gently at Dominic’s arm as he passed through the doorway, last of the four. He looked down into the timid, apologetic dark eyes of Sushil Dastur.

‘Mr Felse, I wanted only to say… I read in the papers yesterday, about Miss Galloway.’ He shrank a little, drawing his large, bony head into his hunched shoulders. ‘It is not for me – I am only a retainer… But I am so very sorry!’

Startled by the very simplicity of this direct approach, Dominic looked at him as if for the first time. The Manis made it difficult to view Sushil Dastur as anything but an adjunct of their passing, a kind of comic postscript. And the man himself made it no easier to see him clearly, since he saw himself in much the same manner, and would, in a sense, have preferred to be invisible. It was an act of courage and decision on his part to speak for himself. And even now he had in his other hand a silk scarf belonging to Sudha, and before he could break away she gave tongue in quest of it; ‘Sushil Dastur, quickly! There is a draught here!’

‘Thank you,’ said Dominic hurriedly, and briefly touched the arresting hand with his own. ‘We appreciate that very much. You’re very kind.’

Sushil Dastur fled. And Dominic followed the others out into the seaward garden. It was from the right, from the west, that the sand was advancing, marching so softly, so insidiously, that for long months a broom might hold it at bay, and then suddenly one morning the broom would have to be exchanged for a spade. To the left the garden opened into an untroubled expanse of grass, and a few clumps of shrubs and trees. The drive wound round the building to this frontage, braving the rim of the dunes, and here, too, a few cars had found parking space, though that at the landward side of the hotel was higher by several feet, and quite free of sand. And there among the parked cars was the sky-blue Ford with the scratched door; and just hoisting out the bags and locking the boot again was the rangy young man in khaki shorts and bush shirt, who had been sleeping placidly under the temple wall on the road from Nagarcoil.

He lifted his head at the sound of their voices, staring for a moment in tension between delight and disbelief, and then his face split open in a broad and bountiful smile, and he dropped the Bessancourts’ bags on the ground, and came gladly salaaming over the gravel pathway to meet them.

‘Sahib… sahib! So I find you here also! You know me? You remember me? Romesh Iyar, boat-boy?’

‘Romesh!’ It was impossible not to be warmed by the reflection of his pleasure. Larry halted willingly. ‘We never expected to see you here, you’re way off your beat. I thought you had a job waiting on the railway at Tenkasi. What are you doing here?’

‘Sahib, I stay in Tenkasi three days, work sometimes, but no regular job. My brother very poor man, I not stay there to live on him. Third day police say can go now, not report any more. In Tenkasi is not good, no jobs there. So I go try in Trivandrum, but there also I got no luck. Everywhere many men without jobs.’

‘You’d have done better,’ Dominic suggested ruefully, ‘to stay in Thekady, where you had a job.’

The turbaned head shook violently. Anything rather than that. ‘No, sahib, no stay there. No go there again. That was bad place, bad luck, must get away from that place.’

‘But what will you do, then? Are you working for the Bessancourts now?’ Self-contained and self-sufficient, those two elderly, invincible people seemed the last pair in the world to need or want a servant.

‘I very lucky, sahib. Someone tell me, good jobs going in Dindigul, in tobacco factories, so I want go there, but it is long way, cost too much money. But then I meet Bessancourt Sahib and lady, and they remember Romesh. They say they go from here to Pondicherry. Best road to Pondicherry is through Dindigul. So I ask, please take me like servant, you not pay me anything, only food and let me ride with you, and I do for you everything. They very kind, tell me yes, can come.’

‘Fine! And you think there really will be a job for you there?’ asked Larry.

‘Oh, yes, sahib, very good jobs in tobacco factories. I am good worker, can do all.’

‘You drive a car, too?’ Not that the Bessancourts seemed to need a relief driver, but there was little else for a travelling servant to do for them, they were so used to being self-supporting.

‘Oh, yes, sahib, I drive anything with wheels, very good driver.’ He went and picked up the discarded bags from where he had dropped them. ‘Must go now, Bessancourt Sahib waiting for luggage. You stay here tonight, sahib?’

‘Yes.’ Dominic thought, as perhaps they were all thinking, it’s Thekady all over again, but without Patti. The same cast, even a rather similar Victorian hotel, the same parked cars, the same – though very different – tourist spectacle long since formalised by strict custom. Here you don’t go out to watch elephants from a boat; but the rules are no less firmly laid down. You go out in the evening towards the west, to watch the sun go down in the Arabian Sea, and in the morning you get up early and go out towards the east, and watch it come up again out of the Bay of Bengal, far away beyond invisible Ceylon.

Romesh Iyar had been an employee at Thekady for a matter of months, he remembered; and suddenly he asked on impulse: ‘Romesh, all the time you were at the lake, did you ever see a sadhu begging by the Siva shrine, the one near the forestry bungalow? Wearing this cult sign?’ He drew it with a stick in the gravel. Romesh had put down the bags again, and was gazing down at the scratched drawing with a face suddenly tight and wary. He took some moments for thought, though they could not escape the feeling that he had known the answer from the beginning. Finally he looked up into Dominic’s face, and he was no longer smiling.

‘Yes, sahib – once I see such a man. That is strange – it was that same time, same weekend when that thing happen. Day before you come to my boat, I go down to village with truck to bring flour, in afternoon I go. I see this sadhu then, sitting by lingam. I remember it because never before I see anyone sitting there. This once only I see him. ‘ His face was clouded, even uneasy; something more was stirring in the back of his mind. ’Sahib, why you ask me this?’

‘We saw him, too,’ said Dominic, ‘that same day. We wondered if perhaps he was often there.’

‘No, never before I see him. Only that once. But, sahib – there is something else, now you have spoken of this man. Just such a man I see also today.’

‘Today?’ said Dominic sharply. ‘Where?’

‘Sahib, in Nagarcoil. Bessancourt Sahib stop there for midday meal, and I go look at the town. In Krishnancoil district I see this sadhu, sitting under a tree, in Jambukeshwar Lane. This same mark he had. Sahib, was this the same man? Was it he…’ His voice foundered. The whites began to show in a widening band all round the pupils of his eyes. ‘But, sahib, this was a holy man…’

‘I shouldn’t worry,’ Dominic reassured him quickly. ‘The police wanted to check on everyone who was in the area, that’s all. Why should you be anxious about it now? You’re with the Bessancourts, and in a day or so you’ll be heading for Dindigul with them. You’ll get your job, and never hear any more about this.’

‘Yes,’ said Romesh, but abstractedly, and as he picked up the bags for the third time his face was still taut and alert with something that did not quite amount to fear – wariness, uncertainty, disquiet. He would be glad when the sky-blue Ford headed north-east again. ‘I go now, sahib, must go, got work to do.’

He set off round the corner of the house, and they stood looking after him until he vanished.

‘You don’t suppose,’ Larry said tentatively, ‘that he was making up today’s sadhu, just to oblige?’

‘No,’ said Priya quietly, ‘he is speaking the truth. The man was there. I know, because I saw him, too. Perhaps you did not notice – Jambukeshwar Lane is the name of the road where we live.’

She told them the whole story. ‘If the Bessancourts were at lunch, that would be about the right time. I think Romesh must have passed by and seen him before I noticed him. When I went out again, he was gone. I think he knew I had seen him, and he did not wish to be seen at closer quarters. So I thought the best thing to do was to get you away from there at once, while he was keeping out of sight for his own sake. And that is what I did.’

‘But why,’ demanded Purushottam, aghast, ‘why did you say nothing? If I’d known we were being followed – if I’d known they were watching us – I’d never have brought you with us into this danger.’

She looked at him with a pale but radiant smile, and said: ‘But that is why. Now I am here, and there is nothing you can do about it. It was not only that I wanted to come with you, it was partly because there was no time for explanations, and I did not want to alarm my family. Also I did want to get you out of Nagarcoil by a roundabout way, in the hope of losing our shadow. And we may have done so, you know – I hope so. I feel sure no vehicle actually followed us. It seems that they know quite well who you are. But if they now know where you are, it’s because they knew in advance where we were going, or at least were able to guess. Or because once again they have simply found us, as he found us in Nagarcoil. A Land-Rover is not so anonymous as one of those black hire-cars and taxis.’

Purushottam said, with eyes for no one but Priya, and in a hurt, reproachful voice, like a baffled child: ‘You shouldn’t have done this to me. Of all things in the world I wanted you safe.’

‘Of all things in the world,’ said Priya, almost crossly. ‘I want you alive.’

It struck Dominic as being one of the oddest, as well as one of the briefest, love-scenes of all time, but it was exceedingly illuminating. Even Larry, whose perceptions were inordinately obtuse where women were concerned, looked astonished and enlightened. The retrospect of Nagarcoil acquired undreamed-of implications. That fantastic set-up knocked on the head all considerations of caste, and even of poverty and wealth. On the one hand this girl so extravagantly rich in relatives and so poor in terms of money, and on the other this lonely, aristocratic, voluntary exile from caste and class, with his head full of exalted ideas and his life empty of kin. An excellent arrangement, Dominic thought, the pooling of equal but different resources. I wouldn’t mind betting the Swami saw this coming. For a life-long non-swimmer he is certainly pretty good at forecasting the tides.

‘No point in arguing, anyhow,’ he said reasonably, standing-in for his distant mentor, ‘she’s here now. Look, you go on out to the shore, and I’ll join you in a few minutes. I’ve just remembered something I’d better do now, while I think of it.’

What he had remembered – though he had never actually forgotten it, or detached his mind from it – was that he had promised to telephone the Swami whenever anything occurred that might be relevant to the matter in hand. And a Saivite sadhu seated in contemplation outside the little house in Jambukeshwar Lane seemed, in the light of past experience, alarmingly relevant.

‘I see,’ said the distant, meticulous voice, with evident concern, ‘that I have miscalculated. I was afraid of it. Nothing has happened here. Lakshman is exemplary and immune – and I must say that I now feel every confidence in him – and no suspicious characters have been seen within a radius of miles. I am afraid no one is interested in us. The hunt has not been side-tracked. You understand what this means? Someone knew about that change of identities.’

There seemed no other explanation. From Koilpatti down to Nagarcoil they had seemed to have the road almost to themselves. If they had been followed – and they must have been – it had been at a most discreet distance. The pursuer had not had to depend on keeping his quarry in sight. And why set out to shadow the Land-Rover at all, unless someone had watched the embarkation, and observed and understood the change in the cast?

‘It is a possibility,’ admitted the Swami, ‘that someone already knew Purushottam by sight, but it cannot be put higher than a possibility. Much more probable is that someone was watching who knew Lakshman. And now you tell me that there are no less than six people there who know Lakshman quite well, from the events at Thekady.’

‘Seven,’ said Dominic, reluctantly. ‘There’s Larry. I don’t seriously believe he’s anything but what he seems, but I daren’t take it for granted. And if one of us was involved, there wouldn’t have to be any watcher to find out the score, would there?’

The Swami blandly ignored the omission of Priya, even though the blanket phrase ‘one of us’ could have been interpreted as including her. He pointed out practically: ’But there was a watcher. At Nagarcoil, if not at Malaikuppam, he was seen. By two quite independent witnesses, whose evidence is mutually corroborative. However, I agree with you, we must lose sight of no one, of no possibility.’

‘You do take this seriously, then?’ He was dismayed but not surprised; he had known in his own heart that it must be taken seriously.

‘I take it very seriously indeed. And since it is known to all these people that Purushottam is in the hotel, that is clearly the most dangerous place, and what I feel we must do is get him out of it as much as possible. Forgive me,’ said the Swami with his habitual subtlety and courtesy, ‘if I say “we”, for of course in every case you will do as you see fit, and I have complete confidence that you will do rightly. But since it was I who sent you there into danger, in the belief that I was sending you out of it, I must take my share of the responsibility for your situation.’

‘Give me your advice,’ said Dominic. ‘I need it.’

‘It will be best if you behave exactly as visitors to Cape Comorin are supposed to behave, and take advantage of the possibilities that offers. It is nearly time now for the evening ritual. Go out loudly and noticeably in a party to the sand dunes to watch the sunset. In dispersed groups everyone will be doing the same. Out there you will soon find more company, the women and boys who sell shell necklaces and other souvenirs. It will be quite cheap to add them to your party – a little conversation, a few strings of shells, and they will gladly go with you for the evening, and hope to make a few more sales on the dunes. Surround Purushottam on all sides – go to the village and the temple afterwards if it is still too early to disperse for the night. No one will attempt the assassination of someone enclosed in a large, mobile group visible for miles around. And I do not think the enemy will be found among the humble people encountered there on the spot, the poorest of the poor who make shell necklaces to sell to tourists. In all their lives few of them travel more than twenty miles from home, or are acquainted with news from much farther afield than that. Also I do not think it will be advisable to eat at the hotel. At the temple and in the village there will be booths. Where there are pilgrims there are always people to supply their needs. And when you come back to the hotel – how are your rooms situated?’

Dominic told him.

‘Good, that may simplify things. Then say good night to the others, lock your door, disarrange your beds as though you have slept in them, and leave by the balcony, taking the key with you. It should be a warm, gentle night, you can safely spend it out in the sands or in the village. Do not come back until the hotel begins to stir, then rouse your friends and go out to see the sun rise. And everything with care!’

‘And not a word to Larry? – or even to Priya?’

‘The innocent are safer knowing as little as possible,’ said the Swami very seriously, after prolonged consideration. ‘From tomorrow it may be necessary to improvise afresh, but let us first take care of tonight.’

‘It seems crazy,’ Dominic said in helpless protest, ‘that four of us here should be virtually under siege from one miserable individual. Aren’t we attaching too much importance to this threat?’

‘The man without scruples,’ said the Swami sadly, ‘to whom every life but his own is expendable, always starts with an advantage worth a whole army over the man who regards life as holy. And the man who creeps in secret is more dangerous than armies. Never be ashamed of taking precautions against snakes. Though indeed,’ he added remorsefully, ‘not all snakes are vicious or treacherous, they want only to defend themselves. Men who should walk upright, but creep in the grass with poison like snakes, have no such justification.’

‘And tomorrow?’ Dominic asked. ‘Do we pay our score and get out of here?’

The distant voice, after due thought, said gently and finally: ‘Cape Comorin is the end of the world, where is there to go beyond? In the end one battlefield is as good as another.’

Dominic waited, but there was nothing more. And after a moment he heard the soft click of the distant receiver being replaced in its cradle.