The Impressionist (15 page)

Whence all but he had fled’

‘No! Stand up straight, boy. And say the damn thing as if you mean it. This is exactly what I’m talking about. You have to listen, boy! Listen to what the blood is telling you!’

‘The boy stood on the burning deck

Whence all but he had fled

The flame that lit the battle’s wreck

Shone round him o’er the dead’

‘Lord save us! It’s
o’er,
not
oh-ear!
Again!’

And so the recitation continues, Pran starting and being shouted at and stopping and starting and being shouted at and gradually learning to ‘puff up’ and ‘ring it out’ and in general to put all manner of ingredients into his performance from backbone and gumption to spirit and feeling, each of them seeming to consist of puffing up and ringing out still more than before, until the puffing and ringing become so moving that the Major is inspired to shout ‘Tally-ho!’ He jams himself up underneath his desk, moaning and bouncing up and down on the swivel chair. By the time Pran reaches the final stanza he is slumped back, a disconnected expression on his green-streaked face.

‘You can go now,’ he croaks. ‘Well done, my boy. Keep it up.’

‘Poetry?’ snaps the Diwan. ‘What does the filthy child mean, poetry?’

Pran begins, ‘The boy stood…’ The Diwan’s fist slams down on the tabletop. Behind him in the darkness, the mirrors of the Baroque room glint maliciously.

‘This is your fault,’ he snaps at the Picturewallah. ‘It was a simple task.’

‘How is it my fault? It is the child’s fault. He’s not trying hard enough. What about all his Agra tricks? There is a thing the brothel-keepers there teach them to do with their tongues – at least, I am
told
there is a thing they teach them. Perhaps if he was to try something like that?’

‘Could we not use some other boy? This one obviously does not meet his requirements.’

Flowers holds his head in his hands. ‘He says he likes this one.’

‘Well, then, why did he not touch him?’

‘How on earth am I supposed to know? He doesn’t tell me things like that. All I know is that he wants him to come once a week. The old hypocrite actually had the nerve to tell me he was interested in improving the boy’s mind.’

‘His mind?’

‘That’s what he said. He’s very suspicious of me. He called me a degenerate yesterday, in front of all the others. My career is in tatters, you know.’

No one seems to have much time for Flowers or his career.

The Khwaja-sara is practical. ‘At least we can work out a way to position a camera in the office.’

‘Could we not write a letter?’ asks the Picturewallah nervously. ‘Would that not work as well?’

‘We need a photograph,’ says the Diwan. ‘That is the only thing these Angrezis believe in.’

So Pran starts visiting Major Privett-Clampe on a weekly basis, to wear school uniform, recite poetry and watch him jiggle around under his desk. He puffs and rings and is told to keep it up, and gradually his English accent improves, and he learns stirring passages from Victorian poets about martial prowess and the sacred duty of keeping one’s word. The poetry baffles him, with its stiffness and violence and thumping horseback rhythms, but he discerns that it is in some way responsible for Privett-Clampe’s importance, and the importance of Englishmen in general, so he pays attention to it, hoping to divine its secret.

Meanwhile the plotters try to work out a way of insinuating the Picturewallah into the Residency, but after one of Mrs Privett-Clampe’s dogs savages him as he is creeping through her flowerbeds, he refuses to go back. Anyway, he argues, since the Major (who, Flowers claims, is consumed with guilt about his drunken lapses) never touches Pran, just bounces and tugs and shouts hunting cries, there is nothing much to photograph. Their plan is falling apart.

Meanwhile the life of the palace continues. The Nawab still strides into the zenana, and slinks out again crushed and unhappy. The only time he looks pleased is when he mounts his favourite white mare en route to one of the frequent parades on the Fatehpur maidan. On parade days he has a spring in his step, bossing around his attendants and waving his whip in imperious gestures. The Nawab adores his little army, stinting nothing on their training and occasionally redesigning their uniforms himself. A touch of braid here, a stripe there, and the whole lot ordered from a firm of regimental tailors in Calcutta as often as twice a year. His pride in his soldiers is so great that when the European war broke out, he forgot his dislike of the British and insisted on sending the Fatehpur Army to France. His enthusiasm was short-lived. On hearing that the cavalry would be forced to dismount and fight in the trenches, and worse still that they would all have to wear plain khaki, he withdrew the offer. Consequently the Fatehpur forces have never seen action. This is of course something of a tradition, diplomacy having been preferred to force by generations of the kingdom’s rulers. So the newly suspended Great War for Civilization has more or less passed Fatehpur by, much to the despair of Major Privett-Clampe. In the event, the Nawab’s contribution to the war effort consisted of a single donation, a trio of old Rolls-Royces he thought might be useful as troop carriers.

Not to be outdone by his older brother’s military parades, Prince Firoz also initiates his fair share of spectacle. In normal circumstances he would spend most of the year in Europe, but the war and Major Privett-Clampe’s policy of financial restriction have conspired to keep him in India. He is extremely angry about this, but has put a brave face on the situation, announcing drily that if Muhammad cannot go to the Riviera, then the Riviera must come to Muhammad. His house guests seem to like the change of scene. Some years ago he had his rooms remodelled in the then fashionable
Jugendstil.
Now they echo to the sound of feminine bicycling and indoor lacrosse, pursuits which take a toll on the interiors, and lead to an ugly meeting with Major Privett-Clampe, who turns down a request for more redecoration funds.

Though Firoz is, if anything, more profligate than his brother, he remains the obvious favourite of the Raj officials. For all the Nawab’s cars, songs and uniforms, he remains a Mughlai prince, the type of traditional monarch who takes little interest in irrigation, land surveys or the rational distribution of agricultural resources. It is obvious to the British report-writers that the Nawab is happier eating from a metal thali set on the floor than the fine Meissen table-setting which is brought out when they dine at the palace. They sense the passion in his eyes as he recites a Persian couplet or turns over a piece of enamelwork, and know that in his heart he considers them an interruption, their eighty years of ascendancy over his land an incident in a longer history, unfolding under the crescent moon of Islam.

Firoz, on the other hand, has a mania for novelty. Though it alarms British sensibilities attuned more to past than future it is (they feel) in keeping with the progressive spirit of the times. Nothing embodies the Prince’s modernity more completely than the private cinema he has installed in the smaller of his two ballrooms. Several times a week he shepherds the Brazilian gamblers and American actresses, the racing drivers and lady flyers and feckless younger sons, into a darkened room where, amidst groping and spillage of Martinis, they watch Mack Sennett comedies. As Fatty Arbuckle takes another pie in the face and Carol or Clara pretends she has not noticed the hand exploring her underwear, Firoz peers through the darkness and reassures himself that he is no cringing native, ignorant of the ways of the world.

By day the house guests are entertained with polo and tennis and shikar, the one activity where all the factions of the palace, from the stiffest Britisher to the limpest dandy, the fiercest Mughlai courtier to the most timid heiress, can take part and be as one. The massacre of gamebirds at the Fatehpur lakes is a release, a complex ritual that soothes the passions which dominate life within the palace walls. A Fatehpur shooting party is always a jolly affair. Even one or two of the zenana women are allowed to join in, which is how Pran comes to attend, and to have his first sight of the celebrated Mrs Privett-Clampe.

As usual, protocol is at the root of things. The wives of the various players in Fatehpur politics are expected to support their husbands in the Raj’s most delicate cottage-industry – the production of entente. Thus, although Mrs Privett-Clampe was twice winner of the Annandale Ladies Cup and has shot everywhere from Gilgit to Bharatpur, she is obliged once in a while to suffer the indignities of the purdah-butt. Located at a discreet distance from other butts, this structure looks over the Sultan Jheel, the largest of the Fatehpur lakes, and is camouflaged from prying eyes (both duck and human) by a cunning set of screens. From the outside it looks like another of the tangles of high reeds which dot the marshes, but inside is just as well appointed as the other royal shooting butts. Canvas chairs, pegs for coats and hats, a chest of refreshments and a table whose numbered compartments are crammed with shot and cartridges all serve to make a morning’s shooting pleasant and comfortable. Religious complexities arise with loaders and retrievers, since obviously palace men cannot do the job. Instead specially trained maids and a few grumbling hijras are drafted in.

To Charlotte (‘Charlie’) Privett-Clampe, being surrounded by a bunch of chaps in saris is only slightly more bearable than the sight of women in trousers would have been to her father. Still, the burdens of the Englishwoman in India are heavy, and it has never been her way to shirk responsibility, especially when Our Mission to Civilize is at stake. When the party reaches the lakes and positions are assigned, she makes no complaint as the men and the other European Ladies head excitedly off to their places, her husband taking comradely nips of whisky with a visiting colonel from Hodson’s Horse. Instead she grits her teeth and attempts to make conversation with Zia Begum and Amina Begum, the Nawab’s junior wives. Neither of them has an opinion on the weather. Neither of them actually speaks any English worthy of the name. It will, she fears, be a long day.

Pran, for his part, is rather awestruck by the stern middle-aged memsahib striding along between the two court ladies. Even Zia Begum, known for her foul temper, looks cowed and diminutive next to this athletic figure, whose battered topi towers at least a foot and a half over the bobbing heads of her companions. As Mrs Privett-Clampe’s commanding voice rings out over the quiet lake, Pran wonders whether the Major prefers boys because he is afraid of her. Asking such a woman to perform sexual acts might be unwise.

Sexual congress does not rank high on Charlie Privett-Clampe’s list of pleasurable pastimes. Certainly not as high as shooting duck or riding to hounds. She and Gus have not: had children, and it has never occurred to her to view this as a disappointment or a failure. Her maternal instincts are largely directed towards the pair of Purdey twelve-gauges she is holding, one crooked under each arm. Arriving at the butt, she loiters outside for a while, breathing in the damp morning air and adjusting the padding on her shooting shoulder. Her loader, a palace maid who winces at her kitchen Urdu and looks as if she is more used to cosmetics than cartridges, is obviously going to be a dead loss. Still, if she is lucky, she might bag a brace or two of the Gadwall flying insouciantly overhead.

Pran is disconcerted to find that it will be his job to retrieve the dropped birds. He is even more worried when Yasmin pushes him into a narrow flat-bottomed boat and begins to punt him out into the water in front of the butt.

‘But won’t they kill us?’ he asks the young hijra, who is having trouble keeping his pole free of weeds.

‘Very likely,’ says Yasmin gloomily. ‘Amina Begum is a terrible shot. And Zia Begum might shoot low just for the fun of it.’

This does Pran’s mood no good at all, but he has no time to reflect, for a whistle rings out over the lakes, and the beaters begin their distant racket of drumbeats and catcalls. A wave of snipe take flight over the water, and all hell breaks loose as twenty-five guns start trying to bring them down. Involuntarily Pran flings himself full length on to the bottom of the boat, almost pitching Yasmin into the lake.

For the next two hours Pran cowers in the boat, reaching over the side to pull in bird carcasses and sometimes, under Yasmin’s direction, slitting their throats to make them halal. He lives in constant fear that the next target will be him, although, as Yasmin points out, being steersman he has to stand up straight and so is in far more danger than Pran. As the sun climbs higher, their hands and clothing begin to reek of bird-blood, which makes death seem still more present and tangible.