The Impressionist (20 page)

Had it been at all possible, Sir Wyndham would have cancelled. The situation in the Punjab is worsening. Even so, it is impossible. The thing has been arranged for months. He has to go through with it, even if riding about on an elephant makes him feel like an empty bottle on top of a wall. He is the representative of the Crown and the Crown must be seen to be unafraid. There it is. End of discussion. He wonders what is known about yesterday’s events. He has had Intelligence check with the Post and Telegraph people, and they told them it is indeed possible that some traffic to Fatehpur last night related to Dyer’s action at Amritsar. Possible? The incompetents. That means more than bloody likely. So whoever the local Congresswallahs are in this flea-bitten little kingdom, they know. Which means there may well be trouble. What a day to make a state visit.

Sir Wyndham does not know exactly what happened at Amritsar. Only that some kind of meeting was held in defiance of a prohibition on public gatherings. Only that Dyer went in hard. Two hundred dead, said the first reports. Must have been a bloody business. Still, everyone knew it was coming. Even the natives.

Smile and wave.

Opposite him Lady Aurelia has a set expression. Little droplets of sweat stand out on her high white forehead. Lady Aurelia is obviously Bearing Up. He leans forward and touches her on the knee.

‘Minty?’ he asks, his voice tender.

She says nothing. Minty is obviously having one of her Days. Smile and wave.

Over the years, Sir Wyndham has learnt to interpret his wife. With Minty one is never told. One is expected to guess. She is hot and, he supposes, frightened. When she is like this, she would rather be Left Alone. This is how Sir Wyndham organizes his understanding of his wife. Two-word headings. A column for every one of her various states, all the way from Fast Asleep to Hysterical Fit.

At least they have managed to keep Gandhi out of the Punjab. And most of the other bigwigs are in preventative detention outside the state borders. Firm action has been taken. In times like these the response is simple enough. It is simply a matter of nerve.

Smile –

There is a sudden rattle and crack. A rending. A tearing of the air. Instinctively Sir Wyndham ducks. Lady Aurelia does the same, dislodging her hat. For an instant their heads are close together, almost in each other’s laps. Sir Wyndham is sure he knows what has happened. Someone in the crowd has thrown a Mills Bomb. An assassination attempt. But neither he nor Minty appear to have been hit, and their mahout is looking round at them quizzically, heels braced behind the ears of his mount.

The howdah smells of fresh paint and elephant dung. Sir Wyndham cautiously straightens up. The noise is continuing. Firecrackers. Someone has lit firecrackers. A group of men are dancing about in the crowd, their hands in the air. They have opened up a space between them, a clearing in which a string of fireworks fizzes and bucks. His heart still pounding, Sir Wyndham silently curses himself for his skittishness. Minty is fiddling with her hat, trying to adjust the mother-of-pearl pin which fastens it to her hair. She will not look at him. Maintaining Order. Another one of her usuals. Sir Wyndham straightens the brim of his own topi, and risks a glance back behind him. A glance to see if any of his staff have noticed his cowardice. From the elephant behind, Vesey gives him a mocking salute. Damn. That means it will be all over every mess and common room in Lahore within a week. Fortescue taking cover from firecrackers. Damn damn damn.

Smile and wave.

He reminds himself he has a job to do. This will not happen again. He will not show he is afraid. As the howdah lurches from side to side, he finds himself suffused by a physical shame, a sickness in the pit of his stomach which is only made worse by the trembling pitch and yaw of the elephant’s massive hips as it plods towards the palace. He sits up straighter, unpleasantly aware of the weight of the row of medals on his chest.

He has a job to do. He has to smile and wave. At the moment the procedure may seem ridiculous, but it is vital to the British project in India. Sir Wyndham has explained it around any number of dinner tables, the importance of his popinjay life. His lavish tours, the presents, the sightseeing, the hunting. None of it, he tells them, is for him as an individual. If one were to mistake the respect one is accorded as an official for something stemming from one’s own personality or talents, one would find oneself in hot water. Go off the rails. Get delusions of grandeur. No, one is simply there as a sort of projection, a magic lantern image of the Viceroy, who is himself no more than a magic lantern image of the King-Emperor.

One just puts up with it. The lavishness.

The procession passes through the town, and approaches the maidan beside the hideous wedding-cake palace. This is Sir Wyndham’s first visit to Fatehpur, and the sight of the giant edifice makes him feel worse than he did already. The building looks feverish, decadent. As he approaches, he could almost swear it was throbbing. A gland. A great pink growth. Minty is watching it too, one hand clapped over the brim of her hat as if caught in a high wind. For the only time on their journey, husband and wife catch each other’s eye. A shared instant of horror, immediately smothered. Face to face with the embodiment of all the runaway madness it is their job in India to curb.

Waiting for them on the maidan is, of all the godforsaken things, another band. A military pipe band. Dressed in grey jackets and – is it? – yes, pink kilts, they are wheezing something raucous and threatening which alludes distantly to the ‘Skye Boat Song’. The band walking in the procession increases its volume, and for a while the two sounds clash, the howdah a mountain peak in a roiling flood of noise. Sir Wyndham is sure some of the musicians are taking the opportunity to add their own inventions, little trills and whooping drum rhythms that seem to have arrived out of nowhere. For a while it seems as if everyone is playing something different until, with a few last petulant stabs of brass, the procession band is silenced and the pipers, like a malevolent swarm of wasps, float their victorious humming unchallenged over the hot parade ground.

The salute. Twenty-one guns welcoming him. Welcoming him, Wyndham, not as Wyndham for Wyndham’s sake but as the King-Emperor’s shadow. The shadow flinches involuntarily at the noise, tries to hold the flinch inside, a crawling of the skin against the lining of his uniform. Then the flinch is countered by a little twitch of pride. He, Wyndham, the equal in guns of any maharaja.

From an upstairs window Pran watches as the Braddocks are helped out of the howdah at the palace’s Elephant Gate. A deputation awaits them on the high platform. Flanked by assorted guards and servants is the Nawab, dressed in an extraordinary get-up of blue and white paisley. He is draped in strings of pearls, as well as the sashes and stars of the various Orders he is entitled to wear. His white silk turban is set with a huge blood-red ruby. The Diwan is equally opulently attired, and Firoz elegant in his sleekly tailored morning suit. Beside them are Major and Mrs Privett-Clampe, he beetroot-faced in his white undress uniform, she standing as militarily as her husband, stiff in a summer dress. All smile winningly at their guests.

As he stoops to descend from the howdah, Sir Wyndham notices their shoes. Beneath their finery, both the Nawab and the Diwan are wearing plain black slippers.

Those entitled to wear uniform will wear undress uniform, white. Those not so entitled will wear morning dress. Patent-leather shoes should be worn by all Indian gentlemen who do not attend in morning dress.

Plain black shoes. As the dignitaries execute a little dance, trying to walk in the correct order down the narrow steps of the elephant platform, Sir Wyndham tries to read it in their faces. Is it deliberate? Are they mocking him with their shoes? What reason could they have? He realizes someone has just asked him a question. Prince Firoz, making small-talk. He begs his pardon.

They sit in a gaily decorated grandstand and the Fatehpur armed forces march past in their Ruritanian uniforms. Pink. Why so much pink? Privett-Clampe leans over and says something disparaging about their drill technique. The Nawab leans over and says something proud about their turn-out. Sir Wyndham is still thinking about shoes. Finally he can stand it no more, and twists round to the row behind to whisper in Vesey’s ear.

‘Their shoes. Do you think they mean anything by it?’

Instantly he wishes he had not. Vesey’s face is first blank, then lights up with scarcely concealed amusement. That blasted undergraduate wit of his.

‘Their shoes, sir?’

‘Oh never mind!’

The march-past ends. Refreshments are served. Sir Wyndham sips a lime soda and says yes very to the people crowding round him. Especially eager, this lot. No one letting anyone else get a word in edgeways. There is an atmosphere, a sort of vivid quality to the conversation which makes him uneasy. At least the public part of the thing is over. There should be no danger now.

They move in to the diwan-i-am for the durbar. Embroidered awnings have been hung between the pillars of the huge hall. A slight breeze blows over the marble floor, cooling hot English cheeks, bringing slight smiles to sweaty faces. As they take their places, fragments of conversation come to Sir Wyndham’s distracted ears.

‘I will give you the name of my London tailor,’ says Prince Firoz to Vesey.

‘It was at the Borders,’ says Minty to Mrs Privett-Clampe. ‘Or was it that tennis party at the Retreat?’

‘The Nawab-Sahib has undertaken many large programme of reformations,’ says the Diwan. Silence. Oh, are you talking to me? I beg your pardon. His accent is really very bad.

‘Lochinverarie,’ says Mrs Privett-Clampe. ‘I’m sure it was a dinner at Lochinverarie.’

‘That would be too kind,’ says Vesey.

‘Yes, very,’ says Sir Wyndham, settling himself on his mock-Louis Seize chair, careful to copy the Nawab’s easy posture, one foot up on the footstool, arms resting on the gilt arms of the chair. From the upper gallery he can feel the eyes of the palace women on him. Invisible women behind carved marble screens. Occasionally he sees a shadow up there, catches a susurrus of barely audible whispering.

One by one the local dignitaries are introduced. The Treasurer, the military and legal members of the Council of State, the Household Treasurer, the Commissioner of Public Works. Sir Wyndham shakes hands or returns an adaab, cupping his hand and raising it to his forehead. Beside him the Nawab embraces, nods, clasps. Behind him unseen juniors shuffle their feet. May we present the Senior Medical Officer, the Chief Inspector of Police, the Superintendent of the Gaol, the Head of the Department of Forests and Lakes. Indian gentlemen in patent-leather shoes.

When the last Junior Commercial Minister Temporarily Attached to the Excise Department has passed, Vesey hands Sir Wyndham a telegram.

‘Just in from Simla’ he whispers.

The telegram says that Dyer fired without warning on a crowd at a political meeting, and that the death toll is currently estimated at five hundred. Sir Wyndham folds it neatly and slips it into a pocket.

The necessary balance of hospitality must be maintained. Home and away. So after the durbar comes a ritual exchange of farewells and a short separation before the performance of the Return Visit. Sir Wyndham (not as himself, as England) is to receive the Nawab at the Residency. Then luncheon for two hundred on the back lawn. A big job.

The Nawab’s arrival is slow and stately. Preceded by a dozen attendants. Followed by fifty Fatehpur Household Cavalry, this season wearing pink trousers, blue tunics and (in an innovative touch) dyed pink bearskins. A few English flowers, clinging on to life in the beds by the driveway, are dusted Empire-map red as the car swings past. Stray flagwavers cluster by the gate, kept at bay by khaki-uniformed chowkidars. Then the chauffeur’s clockwork salute, the car door opening, a (plain-black-shoed) foot touching gravel – and the Nawab is out of the car. Next come the steps.

At the foot of the steps are two uniformed ADCs, twin heel-clicks synchronized (how do they do that?) to the millisecond. They escort the Nawab halfway up – a total of eleven steps – to where Vesey (not as himself but as Punjab States Senior Political Officer) salutes and escorts him the remaining ten. The uneven number of steps has been the subject of a long exchange of memoranda. Simla’s arbitration on the meaning of the term ‘halfway’ was needed to settle anxieties about the political implications of one division over the other. At the top of the steps is Sir Wyndham, who escorts the Nawab the short distance between the front porch and the drawing room, where he offers refreshment – another lime soda? – and has his offer declined. This short moment has its potential for intimacy (the conversation, the look into the eyes, the murmured
so how are you really?)
dampened by the presence of the Nawab’s six chobdars. Three attendants carrying maces in the shape of peacock feathers, another three with rather natty silver-mounted yak tails, all of them frowning, as befits the solemnity of the occasion. Sir Wyndham stoically ignores them, pretending to clear his throat.