A Suitable Boy(54)

If the old man was puzzled by Maan’s unusual sense of timing, he did not show it. He nodded and was about to go.

‘What do they call you?’ asked Maan.

‘Ghulam Rusool, Huzoor,’ said the old servant.

Maan nodded and he left.





2.11


‘DID you sleep well?’ asked Firoz, smiling at Maan.

‘Very. But you rose early.’

‘Not earlier than usual. I like to get a great deal of work done before breakfast. If it hadn’t been a client, it would have been my briefs. It seems to me that you don’t work at all.’

Maan looked at the two little pills lying on his quarter-plate, but said nothing, so Firoz went on.

‘Now, I don’t know anything about cloth –’ began Firoz.

Maan groaned. ‘Is this a serious conversation?’ he asked.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Firoz, laughing. ‘I’ve been up at least two hours.’

‘Well, I have a hangover,’ said Maan. ‘Have a heart.’

‘I do,’ said Firoz, reddening a bit. ‘I can assure you.’ He looked at the clock on the wall. ‘But I’m due at the Riding Club. One day I’m going to teach you polo, you know, Maan, all your protests notwithstanding.’ He got up and walked towards the corridor.

‘Oh, good,’ said Maan, more cheerfully. ‘That’s more in my line.’

An omelette came. It was lukewarm, having had to traverse the vast distance between the kitchens and the breakfast room in Baitar House. Maan looked at it for a while, then gingerly bit a slice of unbuttered toast. His hunger had disappeared again. He swallowed the aspirins.

Firoz, meanwhile, had just got to the front door when he noticed his father’s private secretary, Murtaza Ali, arguing with a young man at the entrance. The young man wanted to meet the Nawab Sahib. Murtaza Ali, who was not much older, was trying, in his sympathetic, troubled way, to prevent him from doing so. The young man was not dressed very well – his kurta was of homespun white cotton – but his Urdu was cultured in both accent and expression. He was saying: ‘But he told me to come at this time, and here I am.’

The intensity of expression on his lean features made Firoz pause.

‘What seems to be the matter?’ asked Firoz.

Murtaza Ali turned and said: ‘Chhoté Sahib, it appears that this man wants to meet your father in connection with a job in the library. He says he has an appointment.’

‘Do you know anything about this?’ Firoz asked Murtaza Ali.

‘I’m afraid not, Chhoté Sahib.’

The young man said: ‘I have come from some distance and with some difficulty. The Nawab Sahib told me expressly that I should be here at ten o’clock to meet him.’

Firoz, in a not unkindly tone, said: ‘Are you sure he meant today?’

‘Yes, quite sure.’

‘If my father had said he was to be disturbed, he would have left word,’ said Firoz. ‘The problem is that once my father is in the library, well, he’s in a different world. You will, I am afraid, have to wait till he comes out. Or could you perhaps come back later?’

A strong emotion began to work at the corners of the young man’s mouth. Clearly he needed the income from the job, but equally clearly he had a sense of pride. ‘I am not prepared to run around like this,’ he said clearly but quietly.

Firoz was surprised. This definiteness, it appeared to him, bordered on incivility. He had not said, for example: ‘The Nawab-zada will appreciate that it is difficult for me…’ or any such ameliorative phrase. Simply: ‘I am not prepared…’

‘Well, that is up to you,’ said Firoz, easily. ‘Now, forgive me, I have to be somewhere very soon.’ He frowned slightly as he got into the car.





2.12


THE previous evening, when Maan had stopped by, Saeeda Bai had been entertaining an old but gross client of hers: the Raja of Marh, a small princely state in Madhya Pradesh. The Raja was in Brahmpur for a few days, partly to supervise the management of some of his Brahmpur lands, and partly to help in the construction of a new temple to Shiva on the land he owned near the Alamgiri Mosque in Old Brahmpur. The Raja was familiar with Brahmpur from his student days twenty years ago; he had frequented Mohsina Bai’s establishment when she was still living with her daughter Saeeda in the infamous alley of Tarbuz ka Bazaar.

Throughout Saeeda Bai’s childhood she and her mother had shared the upper floor of a house with three other courtesans, the oldest of whom, by virtue of the fact that she owned the place, had acted for years as their madam. Saeeda Bai’s mother did not like this arrangement, and as her daughter’s fame and attractiveness grew she was able to assert their independence. When Saeeda Bai was seventeen or so, she came to the attention of the Maharaja of a large state in Rajasthan, and later the Nawab of Sitagarh; and from then on there had been no looking back.