Death to the Landlords

One

Thekady: Saturday Evening

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There were two cars already parked in front of the long, low, ochre-yellow bungalow when the Land-Rover wheeled into line beside the porch; and at sight of the first of them, the ancient, sky-blue Ford with the grazed door and the retouched wing, they all three uttered a hoot of recognition, at once derisive and appreciative.

‘Here we go again!’ said Larry Preisinger, switching off the engine. ‘Didn’t I say we would be running into the whole circus again before we reached the Cape? It’s always the same. I drove this thing round Gujarat State, and the same folks I saw at the first halt haunted me all the way. Might skip an overnight stop here and there, but give ’em a few days and they’d show up again. An Indian couple from South Africa with three kids, visiting the home country, a middle-aged pair from New Zealand doing the world by easy stages and two young Czechs draped with about four cameras each. Now we’ve got the French for a change.’

‘We might do worse, ’ said Dominic Felse thoughtfully.

‘Yeah, we might, at that!’ On the whole, in a wary fashion, they had approved of the Bessancourts. He looked doubtfully at the second car, a big black saloon, battered but imposing, but it told him nothing about its incumbents. A tourist car, probably, hired out for the weekend with driver, from Madurai. ‘Looks like we’ll be camping tonight. With two car-loads they must be full up inside. ’ Not that he minded; they were well equipped, with light sleeping bags, and a mosquito net that rolled up into the roof when not in use. Three can manage without too much discomfort in a Land-Rover, given a little ingenuity, and he had provided the ingenuity before he ever set out on this marathon drive round India, picking up co-drivers for sections of the route wherever he could, for company and to share the expenses. Dominic, acquired in Madras and on leave from some farming job, was one of the luckiest breaks he’d had so far, around his own age, a congenial enough companion, a good driver, and prepared to stick with him as far as Cape Comorin, and probably all the way back to Madras, too.

Lakshman unfolded his slender length from among the baggage, and slid out of the Land-Rover. ‘I will go and talk to the khanasama. ’ He paused to look back and inquire, in his gentle, dutiful voice that balanced always so delicately between the intonations of friend and servant: ‘If there are no beds, you would like at least food? It would be a change from my cooking.’

‘It might be a change for the worse, but sure, let’s risk it.’

Larry had been travelling with Lakshman Ray for nearly six weeks now, and had given up trying to get on to closer terms with him. Lakshman, whether he knew his place or not, certainly knew his employer’s place, and firmly kept him there. With the greatest of deference, amiability and consideration, but implacably. He had done this sort of courier-interpreter job before, with other lone tourists, and had encountered, or so Larry judged, patrons with very different views on this relationship from those Larry himself held. Give him time, and he’d make any necessary adjustments himself; no sense in trying to rush him. Lakshman was the youngest of the three of them, barely twenty and still a student, until want of funds had driven him out to earn money for further study by such journeys as this. He had to get everything right, and he was taking no risks. Perhaps he didn’t even want to slide unsuspectingly into a friendship for which he hadn’t bargained. A cool young person, shy, soft-voiced, self-possessed and efficient, he spoke both Tamil and Malayalam in addition to his own Hindi, so he was equally effective in the north or the south. Sometimes, Larry suspected, Lakshman had difficulty in remembering to keep Dominic at the same distance as Larry himself; Dominic wasn’t paying his wages.

The bungalow, seen by the glow from its own windows and the Land-Rover’s side-lights, was a pleasant, solid building of brick and plaster, with a deep, arcaded porch, and looked big enough to house quite a number of travellers, if the usual tourist bedroom-cum-livingroom in India had not been about as big as a barn, and with its own bathroom or shower attached. Three such suites, say, plus the kitchen quarters, and there would be no room left. No matter, the Land-Rover was good enough.

Lakshman came back gesturing mildly from a distance, and shaking his head; and behind his back the khansama stuck out a bearded head in a loose cotton turban from the kitchen door to take a look at his latest guests.

‘The place is quite full, but he will feed us. And there is a chowkidar.’ The security of the bungalow’s grounds and the protection of its watchman were not to be despised.

‘Good, then how about borrowing a shower, before the proper tenants get to that stage?’

‘It can be arranged. ’ He was looking from them to the anonymous black car, and his smile was less demure than usual. ‘Do you know who is also here?’

His look and his tone said that they were hardly likely to thank him for the information, though it might enliven their stay in its own fashion. It was not often that Lakshman looked mischievous, and even now he had his features well in hand.

‘Sure we know, ’ said Larry obtusely, his mind on his shower, ‘madame la patronne and her mari.’

Prompt on the close of his sentence, as if responding to a clue, a high, clacking voice screeched: ‘Sushil Dastur! Sushil Dastur!’ from an open window, in a rising shriek that could have been heard a mile into the forest; and light, obsequious footsteps slapped hurriedly along the hallway inside the open door to answer the summons.

‘Oh, no!’ groaned Larry. ‘Not the Manis! So that’s the chauffeur-driven party, is it? We might have known! What did I tell you? Start touring anywhere you like, and within a hundred miles radius you keep seeing the same faces.’

‘And hearing the same voices, ’ Dominic remarked ruefully. ‘Poor little Sushil, he certainly hears plenty of that one. I wonder he stands it. And Bengali women don’t usually squawk – they have soft, pleasant voices.’

‘Not this one!’ It was scolding volubly now in Bengali, somewhere within the house, punctuated by placating monosyllables from a man’s voice, anxious, inured and resigned. ‘Maybe he doesn’t even listen, really, just makes the right sounds and shuts up his mind. Otherwise he’d go up the wall. And his boss is worse, if anything, even if he doesn’t split the eardrums quite like his missus. Jobs must be hard to come by, or Sushil would have quit long ago.’

‘I get the impression he is a relative, ’ Lakshman said with sympathy. ‘Of the lady, perhaps – a poor cousin. And you are quite right, for a clerk with no paper qualifications it is not at all easy to find a good post. And perhaps he is more comfortable with this one than we suppose. It is security of a kind.’

They had run into the Manis twice since leaving Madras, once briefly at Kancheepuram, plodding doggedly round that fantastic city’s many temples, and once at an overnight stop at Tiruchirapalli, where Mr Mani had constituted himself chairman of the evening gathering of guests at the travellers’ bungalow, and unfolded his and his wife’s life story in impressive detail. They were from Calcutta, where they had several textile shops, and they had come south to Madras for the first time to visit their married daughter, whose husband ran a highly successful travel agency. Thus they had the best possible help and advice in planning an extended tour of the south of India. Ganesh had made all the arrangements, Ganesh had ensured that they should not miss one famous sight while they were here. They had certainly missed none in Tiruchi. They had been observed in the early morning, before the stone steps were too hot for comfort, toiling dauntlessly all up the exposed face of the rock, Mrs Mani with her elaborate sari kilted in both hands, and Sushil Dastur scurrying behind with her handbag, her husband’s camera and the scarf she had dispensed with after the first morning chill passed; and again later taking pictures of the budding lotus in the temple tank below. And in the afternoon they had taken a taxi out to Srirangam, and toiled relentlessly round every inch of that tremendous temple, with very little in their faces to indicate what they thought of its stunning sculptures, or indeed whether they thought at all.

Mr Mani’s name was Gopal Krishna, and he was a firm, thickset, compact person of perhaps fifty, smoothly golden-brown of face, with crisp greying hair and large, imperious eyes that fixed the listener like bolts shackling him to his chair. He was so clean-shaven that it was difficult to believe he ever grew any whiskers to shave, and so immaculate, whether in spotless cream silk suit or loose white cotton shirt and trousers, or even, occasionally, a dhoti, that he made everyone else around feel crumpled, angular and grubby. He walked ponderously and impressively; one thought of a small, lightweight but inordinately pompous elephant. His voice was mellifluous but pedantic; it acquired an edge only when it addressed Sushil Dastur.

Sudha Mani was softer, rounder and plumper than her husband, and some years younger, and to do her justice, she was a pretty woman, with her pale gold cheeks and huge, limpid eyes, and curled, crisp rosebud of a mouth. But the eyes stared almost aggressively, and the tightness of the rosebud never moved a degree nearer blooming; and when the petals did part, she squawked like a parrot. She wore beautiful, expensive saris and rather too much jewellery, all of it genuine; but everyone here put capital into gold and silver ornaments. And she wore flowers in the huge knot of black hair coiled on her neck, but the flowers never seemed to survive long.

From her they had heard all about her first grandchild, and her troubles with servants, and the extreme sensitivity of her temperament. And from Gopal Krishna all about the state of the textile business, and his own commercial astuteness and consequent wealth.

Only almost accidentally had they ever discovered more than his name about Sushil Dastur, who fetched and carried, ran errands, took dictation, conferred long-distance with the management of the Calcutta shops and generally did everything that needed doing and many things that didn’t around the Mani menage. His name they couldn’t help discovering within half an hour. ‘Sushil Dastur!’ echoed and re-echoed at ten minute intervals, and in varying tones of command, displeasure, reproach and menace, wherever the Manis pitched camp. Private secretary, clerk, general factotum, travelling servant, he was everything in one undersized, anxious body.

In reality Sushil Dastur was not by any means so fragile as at first he appeared, but he was short, and seemed shorter because he was always hurrying somewhere, head-down, on his master’s business; and the amount of prominent bone that showed in his jutting brow and slightly hooked nose contrasted strongly with the plump smoothness of the Manis, making him look almost emaciated. His brow was usually knotted in a worried frown above his large, apprehensive dark eyes, and his manner was chronically apologetic. Curly dark hair grew low on his forehead. Subservience had so far declassed and denatured him that it seemed appropriate he should always wear nondescript European jackets and trousers of no special cut, in a self-effacing beige colour. On the rare occasions when he appeared in an achkan he looked a different person.

‘Looks like being old home week, all right,’ Larry remarked glumly. For nothing was more certain than that all these people would be heading for the Periyar Lake in time for the early watering the next morning. There was nowhere else for them to be going in these parts. From the coast as from Madurai, from the west as from the east, the roads merely led here and crossed here; and few people passed by without halting at the lake to go out by boat and watch elephants. Other game, too, with luck, sambur, deer, wild boar, occasionally even leopard and tiger, though these last two rarely appeared; but above all, elephants, which never failed to appear, and in considerable numbers. ‘You know, without wanting to seem intolerant, I’d enjoy my cruise more without the Mani commentary.’

‘We could have a small private boat, if you wish,’ said Lakshman tentatively. ‘But it would cost more, of course.’

‘Could we?’ Larry perceptibly brightened. ‘They have small launches there, too?’ He looked at Dominic. ‘How about it? We’ve stuck to our shoe-string arrangements so far, what about plunging for once?’

‘I’m willing. Why not?’

‘I’ll go and telephone, if you really wish it,’ offered Lakshman. ‘It would be better to make sure.’

‘Yes, do that! Let’s indulge ourselves.’

The advantage, perhaps, of being a shoe-string traveller, is that you can, on occasion, break out of the pattern where it best pleases you, and do something unusually extravagant. The thought of having a boat to themselves, and all the huge complex of bays and inlets of the lake in which to lose the other launches, was curiously pleasing. Even on a popular Sunday they might be able to convince themselves that they were the only game-spotters in the whole sanctuary. Dominic was whistling as he reached into the back of the Land-Rover for his towels and washing tackle.

It was at that moment that the two clear, female voices began to approach through the darkness from the direction of the gate, and there emerged into the light from the windows two girls, one Indian and dark, one English and pallidly fair, carrying nets of green oranges and bunches of rose-coloured bananas in their arms.

Two pairs of eyes, one pair purple-black, one zircon blue, took in the Land-Rover and its attendant figures in a long, bright, intelligent stare.

‘Well, hullo!’ said the fair girl, in the bracing social tone of one privately totting up the odds. ‘You must be the outfit that passed us just down the road, when we were haggling for this lot. Staying over? I thought they were full up.’

‘They are,’ said Dominic. By this time he was well aware that Larry never responded to any overtures, especially from females, until he had had time to adjust, and to review his defences. Some girl must once have done something pretty mean to him, and all others had better step delicately. ‘We sleep out in the moke. But yes, we’re staying.’

‘We came up by the bus. No use going on to the hotel, until tomorrow, anyhow,’ she said simply. ‘We couldn’t afford to stay here, and it was too late for this afternoon’s cruise when we got here. I suppose you’ll be heading for the lake tomorrow morning?’ Her eyes flickered thoughtfully towards the Land-Rover again; he didn’t blame her for taking thought for the morrow, public transport was liable to be both unreliable and, on a Sunday, overcrowded. But she didn’t ask, not yet. It was too early, and she wasn’t going to be as crude as all that. As for the Indian girl, she stood a little apart, cool and still, watching them with a thoughtful and unsmiling face.

‘So will everyone around, I imagine,’ Larry said cautiously.

‘You’re American, aren’t you?’ she said, interested.

‘That’s right. My name’s Preisinger, and this is Dominic Felse – he’s English. As I think you must be.’

‘Not much good trying to hide it, is it?’ She shook her pale locks and laughed. ‘I’m Patti Galloway, and this is my friend Priya Madhavan. If I had the colouring I’d like to sink myself into the background, and all that, but I decided long ago that it was no good. Priya’s from Nagarcoil, we’re making our way there gradually, and taking in the sights on the way. Where are you heading?’

‘Oh, south. Down to the Cape, and then by Trivandrum and Cochin back to Madras. Dominic drops off at Madras. After that I don’t know yet.’

Her eyes had opened wide. ‘You must have a lot of time to spare. What do you do? Have you been working here? Or do you live here all the time?’ She was restlessly full of questions, but there was something artless and disarming about her directness; and if it was disconcerting that she waited for no answers, at least that gave Larry time to make up his mind. Why not, after all? Lakshman was just coming out from the arcaded porch with a slight, contented smile that said he had been successful, and there would be a private boat for them tomorrow. And the girls had their own plans, which apparently involved the family of one partner, and therefore were hardly likely to be changed as the result of a chance meeting like this. He could afford to be generous without any risk of getting in too deeply.

‘We were just going to sneak in and cadge a shower, as a matter of fact, before eating. If you two are on your own, and would care to join us, we should have a boat of our own for tomorrow morning. Why don’t we eat together and fix everything up over the meal?’

The furniture of the bungalow’s public room was of the simplest, but there were two tables, chairs enough and electric lighting that flickered alarmingly at times, but survived; and the khansama’s omelettes were good, and the fruit from the stall fresh and excellent. Since the tables were of the same size, it was natural to break up the guests into two equal parties of five; and that made it easy for the first on the scene – and inevitably that was Lakshman – to appropriate one of them for his employer’s party and his employer’s guests. Whether he approved of the addition of the girls to their number there was no way of knowing; his manners, as always, were graceful and correct.

Patti watched the other parties assemble with wide-eyed curiosity. Sudha Mani swept in wreathed in a nylon sari (‘Not at all practical,’ Priya said critically, ‘synthetics slip terribly, and don’t drape like live fabrics.’) and a great many rather fine bracelets, forgot her handbag, and sent Sushil Dastur scurrying off to fetch it. Her husband was to be heard deploring in English, presumably for the benefit of the foreigners, the economic policies of the Indian government, and the burdens under which business suffered, but he ended, as usual, with the shortcomings of labour. And even this subject came down, inevitably, from the general to the particular, for it seemed there was a letter which Sushil Dastur should have written and dispatched, and had not, and a valuable order might be jeopardised as a result.

‘If I do not supervise everything myself, nothing is ever done properly. Employees nowadays do not concentrate, they have no wish to work, only to pass the day and be paid. I was trained in the old school, hard I had to work, and by hard work I built up the business I have now.’

The Bessancourts spoke English reasonably well, a virtual necessity for other European tourists in India; and to judge by the conversation, they too had encountered the Manis previously in their travels, for the note of greeting was personal, even cordial. A familiar face in a strange land is a familiar face, and welcome, at least until you find yourself seeing altogether too much of it. Dominic could not imagine the Bessancourts and the Manis having much in common, or choosing to spend too much time together, but to have company over a meal is pleasant enough.

Madame Bessancourt was middle-aged, thick in the bust and thick in the hips, with a heavy, shrewd, sallow face and black hair, barely beginning to turn grey. She had achieved something remarkable in her solution of suitable dress for this trek. She had taken to the shalwar and kameez of the Punjabi women, in dark colours and amply cut for comfort, and astonishingly she looked completely at home in them, and almost Indian. The yellowish tint of her cheeks, her black eyes and black hair, the heavy body that belonged by rights in the unrelieved, noncommittal black of the patronne of some small hotel in Artois, nevertheless put on this alien dress with complete authority. Maybe there wasn’t really much difference between the French matron and the Indian matron, both masterful, practical and not to be taken lightly.

Her husband, on the other hand, had made no concessions. He was square and solid, with a balding head so uncompromisingly Alpine and a moustache so obviously French that any effort to conceal their origin must have failed from the start. So he wore suits exactly like those he would have worn at home, but made in lightweight cloths, and allowed himself an old Panama hat against the sun, and that was the extent of his special preparations.

‘What do you suppose they do?’ Patti wondered, watching them in fascination. ‘At home, I mean? You just haven’t a chance of guessing, have you? I suppose they could be retired, but they’re not so old, really.’

‘Heaven knows! Maybe a small factory somewhere – family business – and a son’s taken over,’ suggested Dominic, more or less seriously. Speculation is irresistible, and he had been wondering ever since he first set eyes on them. They bought that car in Bombay as soon as they landed, and God knows where they haven’t taken it by this time. They both drive – well, too. They stay in dak bungalows or railway retiring rooms, and do everything as cheaply as they can – though that may be French parsimony rather than lack of funds – but they don’t miss a thing. What they do, they do, a hundred and five per cent’

‘Perhaps,’ Lakshman suggested, ‘they won some big lottery prize, and this was a dream – and now they take possession of their dream.’

‘Yes, but even so,’ persisted Patti, still enchanted by Madame Bessancourt’s ambivalent, Indian-French solidity, self-possession and repose, ‘why India?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Larry pointedly, watching her sombrely across the table, ‘why India? Why in your case, for instance?’

‘Me? Oh, I finished school two years ago, and didn’t want to go on to a university – not yet, and anyhow,’I’m not clever, I might have had trouble getting a place – and I was stuck full of youthful idealism and all the current jazz, and I thought India was just the groovy place, the place that had the answers. You know how it was! Maybe it isn’t any more, I’ve been here two years.’ She bit into the dimpled green skin of an orange, and began to peel it, frowning down at her fingers, which were thin, blunt-nailed and not particularly well-kept; even gnawed a little, Dominic noticed, alongside the nail on both forefingers. She had a nervous trick with her eyelids, too, a rapid, fluttering blink, but perhaps that was simply out of embarrassment, because all attention was now centred upon her. ‘So I thought I’d volunteer to come out here and teach for a couple of years before I went to college, and though I’d missed the regular Voluntary Service Overseas draft – and anyhow, they might not have considered me the right type – I got this job in Bengal through one of Dad’s business friends who had connections over here. Just an ordinary school that used to be a mission school, and there was teaching in English as well as Bengali, and I had to help all the classes with their English.’

‘Did you learn any Bengali?’ Dominic asked with interest.

She looked up at him quickly. Her eyes were really an extraordinary colour, pale yet very bright, like a slightly troubled sea over sunlit sand. ‘Some. I can get by, but I couldn’t conduct a real conversation. Oh, it’s been fine in its way, I’m not complaining. Only I came here thinking this was where the low living and high thinking was, and the way to understanding, and India was going to show me what was wrong with all the rest of us. And what do you know? – here they are, almost the most quarrelsome race I’ve ever struck, almost the most corrupt, and all the high thinking is just talk, talk, talk, and the government is as mixed-up and inhibited and old and tired as any of ours, and I can’t see any end to it – or even any beginning of getting out of the mess. But maybe it’s me,’ she said disarmingly, and smiled up suddenly at Priya, and at Lakshman. ‘Don’t get me wrong! The best here are the best – the best you’re going to find anywhere on earth. But as for the system – did we really ever expect so much of it?’ She tilted her head, looking from Larry to Dominic, for plainly they were in this, too. ‘I’m on my finishing leave now, I get two months paid, and I’m still travelling hopefully. But where to, God knows! How have you managed?’

Dominic waited for Larry to speak, and he didn’t; for some reason Patti had shaken him, and his brooding face was the only thing about him that was going to be eloquent just yet. So Dominic filled the gap.

‘I was lucky. Every time I hear anyone else talk about India I realise it. I got pitched in here on a special job, without any time to have preconceived ideas, and everything about the job came unstuck, and I was left living off the country. When there’s a real crisis you find out who amounts to anything, and who doesn’t. That’s when I met the man I’m working for now – the Swami Premanathanand. You couldn’t very well be any luckier than that, whatever the hole you’re in. No, India didn’t let me down. That’s why I came back. But to work, not to meditate.’ He was aware that that might sound a trifle superior, but that was something he couldn’t help. ‘That’s the way it hit me, and I got hooked accordingly. And I’ve said I was lucky.’

‘But where are they going?’ persisted Patti fretfully. ‘I can’t see any future.’

‘I haven’t looked, I’ve been too busy with the present.’

‘But what do you actually do, then?’ she asked doubtfully.

‘I work for the Swami’s foundation, the Native Indian Agricultural Mission, on one of their farms near Tiruvallur. Doing anything – driving, messenger-boy, vet’s assistant, whatever’s needed. But mostly I seem to have become the district tractor-mechanic.’

‘But isn’t that sort of set-up just another way of being a big land-owner?’ Patti objected warmly.

‘Hardly! Everything we run is run on a co-operative basis. Each village is its own board of directors, and everything above a bare living for the central staff is ploughed back into the business.’ But he was not particularly disposed to talk about it; he was on leave, and she already knew everything she needed to know about him.

‘Do you think all that’s really going to change anything?’ she wondered wistfully.

‘It already has. Since we set up this particular grouping we’ve nearly doubled our rice yield annually – partly by increasing acreage, and partly with better double-cropping. Did you know that Tamil Nadu is going to be a surplus state any minute now? Not just through us, of course, we’re a very minor force, but we do work in with the government’s intensive district programme, and that’s far from minor.’

She looked reluctantly impressed, and at once sadly incredulous and warily hopeful. ‘I suppose your people farm back home? I didn’t have anything as practical as that in my background. My dad’s a retired army officer. I was born into the establishment.’

‘So was I,’ said Dominic with a fleeting grin, ‘only a different branch. Mine’s a policeman. Well, no uniform now, actually, he’s deputy head of the county C. I. D. I haven’t got anything more practical to offer than an arts degree, either, and that doesn’t dig any wells here. Or at home, for that matter. Everybody thinks it entitles him to be a teller, when we’ve already got too many tellers and not enough doers. So I thought I’d come over here and see how the doers live.’

‘Awful waste of a degree, though,’ protested Patti, rather surprisingly reverting to type.

‘Not a bit! It won’t rot.’

She considered him thoughtfully for a moment, background, parentage, eccentricities and all, and looked more than half convinced. ‘Well, maybe you’ve found something that’ll stand by you,’ she said handsomely. ‘I wasn’t that lucky. I never felt I was doing anything much, or getting anywhere. It seemed as if you’d have to smash the whole thing and start afresh before you’d see any results.’

‘And what will you do now?’ asked Larry, watching her soberly over the bowl of fruit. “When your paid leave’s over, I mean? Go home?’

‘I suppose so. I’ve got some of my A levels to repeat if I want to teach seriously, but I haven’t made up my mind yet. Yes, I guess I shall go home. Maybe try somewhere else. There’s supposed to be a second country somewhere for everybody, so they say. Maybe the stars have to be right. How about you?’

‘Me? Oh, I suppose I came here looking for the pure wisdom, like you. Though I ought to have known better. I’m an anthropologist by inclination, but a civil engineer by profession. I’ve been working on the plans for a small irrigation project up in Gujarat, but it looks as if various committees are now going to sit on the idea for years, and if they don’t squash it altogether they’ll probably alter it around until it’s useless. I thought I might as well have a look around the country while they’re considering the matter, so I bought the Land-Rover in Bombay, and set off more or less at random southwards. And Lakshman here comes along to take care of me.’

Lakshman gazed back at him serenely and amiably, but did not return his smile. Indian people, except those of the hills, do not find it necessary to smile whenever they catch your eye, but will gaze back at you directly with faces unyieldingly grave and thoughtful. In the hills they smile because they obviously enjoy smiling. And Indian people, Dominic thought critically, studying the two golden amber faces beside him, who can be the noisiest people on earth, also know how to be securely silent and to withhold even an eloquent gesture. Priya’s delicate face, silken-skinned and serene, betrayed nothing at all beyond a general, detached benevolence. Suddenly he felt more curiosity about her than about her companion.

‘Now we’ve all declared ourselves, except you, Miss Madhavan.’

‘I am not at all novel or interesting,’ she said in her quiet, lilting voice; and now she did smile, her chiselled lips curving and unfolding as smoothly as rose-petals. ‘I am a nurse at the General Hospital in Madras. I have a large family of brothers and sisters, and my eldest sister happens to be a teacher in Bengal, and a colleague of Patti’s. So now that I have my long leave, and Patti is free to visit the south, I invited her to meet me in Madras and come home with me for a visit. That is all about me.’

It was very far from all about her; there were reserves behind that demure face and those cool, thoughtful, purple-black eyes that would take half a lifetime to explore.

‘So you’ve actually known each other, apart from letters, only a matter of days? We’re all starting more or less equal,’ said Larry. ‘I picked up Dominic in Madras only five days back. We’d corresponded, just fixing things up for the trip, but we’d never seen each other until then.’ He took a banana from Patti’s hospitably offered bowl, a bulbous bow in an incredible colour between peach and orange and old rose. ‘This at least I’ll never forget about India, the fruit. Did you ever see such a shade as that in a banana before?’

‘Never!’ she agreed vehemently. ‘And I’ve seen them all kinds and sizes, from the three-inch curvy ones like a baby’s fingers, to hedge-stakes a foot long and pale, greenish lemon. I saw these when we passed the stall in the bus, and we simply had to walk back and get some.’

‘Where was that?’ Larry asked. ‘I never noticed any stall as we drove up.’

‘It was getting dusk then, and he hadn’t lighted his little lamp, you wouldn’t notice us. But we saw you go by. Two turns down the road – I expect he’s packed up long ago, probably just after we were there, there wouldn’t be much traffic up here after dark. One turn down the road there’s what’s left of a shrine of Siva. It looks pretty old, too, the carving’s nearly worn away, but they still bring oil and marigolds.’

‘No, really? As close as that? I might take a flashlight down and have a look at that presently.’

‘Wouldn’t tomorrow morning do?’

‘Not a hope! We’ve got to be afloat before six, or we shall miss the best of the show. They might not hold the boat for us, either – don’t forget it’s Sunday. The best times, the two periods in the day when the animals come down to water, are from six on in the morning, and about half past three in the afternoon until dusk. And it takes a little while to get out to the best vantage-points – there’s a whole lot of lake up there.’

The Bessancourts were withdrawing, with polite good nights to the Manis. They passed by Larry’s table on their way to the door, and bowed comprehensively to the company, uttering in assured, incongruous duet: ‘Au ’voir, m’sieurs, m’dames!’ Everyone turned to smile startled acknowledgement, for once united: ‘Good night, m’sieur, madame!’

‘The French,’ said Patti with conviction, as soon as they were out of the room, ‘are formidable!’ It was a good word for the Bessancourts. ‘What can they want here?’ she demanded in a feverish whisper. ‘What brought them here? I don’t understand!’

Dominic, still charmed and touched by that courteous departure, so reminiscent of a respectable couple quitting a small restaurant in St Dié or Chaumont, wondered if it was so vital to understand. Wasn’t it their business? Why not just be glad about that impressive, three-dimensional reality of theirs? But Patti wanted to recognise, to docket, to know all her landmarks.

‘Where did you first see them?’

‘At Mahabalipuram, among all that fabulous free sculpture. In the Mahishasura-Mardini cave, actually, standing like another rock, staring at the sleeping Vishnu. She looked exactly as if she was studying the joints in a butcher’s window before buying, but I’ll swear for ten minutes and more she never moved. Her old man stands just as still and gazes just as attentively, but in a different way. As though he were standing respectfully but impregnably in a church that wasn’t his own, but still he saw the point for those who belonged there.’

‘You like them,’ said Priya suddenly, in her soft, detached voice, and smiled at him with her eyes as well as her lips.

‘Yes, I like them.’ Heaven knew he wouldn’t have the art ever in this world to achieve communication with them, short of a miracle, but he believed confidently there was everything there to like.

The Manis were leaving, too, in a series of short, abortive starts and stops. ‘Sushil Dastur, my bag – you have left it behind!’

‘Sushil Dastur, please arrange about the breakfast and early tea…’

‘Sushil Dastur, don’t forget you must see to that letter, there will be a post from the hotel… And the alarm at five, remember!’

(‘That goes for us, too, don’t forget! ’ Larry warned in an undertone. )

They passed in procession, pausing momentarily to exchange valedictory compliments.

‘You’ll be making the morning run?’ asked Larry politely.

‘Ah, but not with the public launch! ’ Mr Mani wagged a triumphant finger and beamed his superiority. ‘We have an introduction to an influential resident here. He has a villa on the lake, and the hotel places a boat at his disposal. He has invited us to be his guests tomorrow. It is a great honour.’

‘A privilege!’ sighed Mrs Mani, adjusting her green and silver sari over her plump and tightly-bloused shoulder. ‘He is a most distinguished man – and wealthy!’

‘A business associate of Ganesh, our son-in-law. Ganesh has very important connections…’

They departed in a cloud of self-congratulation, and Sushil Dastur, trotting behind, turned his lustrous eyes in a timid smile and said: ‘Good night, ladies – gentlemen!’ with almost furtive goodwill, as if he feared he might be doing the wrong thing.

And with that the evening ended, since the next day was to begin at five. Except that Larry had sufficient energy left to light himself down the two coils of road between the black, perfumed walls of the forest, to examine the Siva stele. Lakshman felt it to be his duty to go with him, and even to repeat, very seriously, his warnings about never going out in the dark in open country without a strong torch, for fear of snakes.

When they came back, Dominic and the girls were still standing beside the Land-Rover, looking up at the immensely lofty black velvet sky coruscating with stars, and festooned here and there, as in India only the hill-skies and the shore-skies normally are, with coiling plumes of cloud.

‘That’s a find you made down there, Patti,’ Larry said approvingly. ‘I want to stop off before we go down again to Madurai, and get some slides. I’d need to consult somebody who knows more about style than I do, but my guess is that figure wasn’t carved any later than about the seventh century. It could even link up with some of the stuff at Mahabalipuram, to my mind, only it’s had a rougher passage.’

‘I suppose the sadhu isn’t still sitting there?’ said Patti idly, withdrawing her zircon-blue eyes from the heavens.

‘Sadhu?’ said Larry in vague surprise, dropping his torch into the front seat of the Land-Rover. ‘What sadhu?’