A Division Of The Spoils (Raj Quartet 4) by Paul Scott Read Free Book Online Page B

differences and agree how to work together.’
    ‘Then personally I think some people are absolutely wrong because the Indians are utterly demoralized at the very thought of having to take the ghastly mess over and run it themselves. We’ll have the devil’s own job off-loading it. And, God! one says “it” as if it’s a single transferable package which it isn’t, never has been and now never will be.’
    ‘A fact for which we’re partly to blame, sir?’
    ‘We? Don’t sell me that divide and rule stuff. The bloody place was divided when the sahibs first came and will be divided when the stupid sods go because they’ve always beencontent to sit on their bums in their bloody clubs and interfere only when the revenues were slow coming in. The place is still
feudal
, Perron. And so far as I can see the only man of influence who’s worried about that is whatever the chap’s name is, Nehru, but he’s a Brahmin aristocrat and can hardly speak any language but English, and against him you have to set the Mahatma and his bloody spinning wheel. Spinning wheel! In 1945. For God’s sake, what’s the man
at
? In the past twenty-five years he’s done as much to keep the country stuck in the mud with his village-industry fixation as the whole bloody
raj
put together.’
    Stung as much by his feeling that there was something in what Purvis said as by the sense of the unfairness of such casual elimination of any consideration that didn’t automatically fall within the economist’s habitual terms of reference, Perron said:
    ‘Your sponsor in Whitehall was right, sir. You’ve become an expert on India in a very short time.’
    Purvis stared at him.
    ‘Most Indian economists I’ve met happen to agree with me.’
    ‘Yes I see, sir. Then perhaps that is a reason for optimism.’
    ‘I doubt it, sergeant. It is in the Indian character to complain, but not to contest if a job depends on a posture of acquiescence. I’d better write you that letter. Bearer!’
    While the letter was being written, Perron waited on the balcony and gazed across the Oval to the dark bulk of the Law Courts. For a moment – perhaps under the influence of that symbol of the one thing the British could point to if asked in what way and by what means they had unified the country, the single rule of law – he felt a pressure, as soft and close to his cheek as a sigh: the combined sigh of countless unknown Indians and of past and present members of the glittering insufferable
raj
; all disposable to make the world safe for Purvis. And other men like Purvis. (And, I suppose – Perron thought – for men like me.)
    Purvis called him over and handed him an envelope. It was addressed to a Maharanee. Perron glanced at Purvis, mildly surprised, but the man was leaning back again, eyes closed. To Purvis, Maharanees were probably two a penny.
     

II
    At seven-thirty Perron arrived by taxi at a block on the Marine Drive which according to the address on the envelope bore the name Sea Breezes. The driver he had flagged down in the Queen’s Road translated this after several movements of uncertainty as Ishshee Brizhish, a place known to him. Armed with the envelope and a square package which contained the bottle of whisky, Perron entered the building and went up in the lift to the floor indicated by the board which gave flat numbers and the names of the occupants.
    The décor in hall and landings was reminiscent of that in houses and apartments built in the ultra-modern style of the late ’twenties and early ’thirties, but it achieved a severe and bleak rather than a severe and functional effect. The cream-painted walls were dingy and the chromium rails bore the patina of years of contact with the human hand. The door of the flat at which he now stood was peagreen like those he had seen at successive stages through the latticework iron gates of the lift shaft and was well finger-marked round the keyhole.
    He pressed the bell. No comforting sound of having