Mourning Raga

cheap school briefcase, just as he said, and we make the payment. You make the payment, rather – and I stay out of sight and keep an eye on your shoes.’

The wild flush of relief came back to Tossa’s face, and the brightness to her eyes. Dominic let out a long, grateful breath.

‘Oh, lord, if we could! Is it really all right for us to borrow it? But you wouldn’t try anything then, would you? I mean, we agreed we had to obey instructions, for Anjli’s sake.’

‘I would not! But I’d have a shot at trailing whoever takes the briefcase, that’s for certain. Once we get Anjli back, I’m all for putting the police on to her kidnappers.’

‘But is it going to be possible to hang around and watch the place, like that? Won’t you be too noticeable?’

‘You haven’t seen the Lakshminarayan temple on a Sunday afternoon! It’s like a fun-fair. Cover galore and thousands of people. Might make it hard for me to keep an eye on him, but it will certainly reduce his chances of spotting me. It’s worth a try, at any rate.’

‘The Birla temple, he said,’ Dominic pointed out.

‘Same thing, laddie. Lakshminarayan is its dedication, and the Birla family built it. They had to do something with some of the money, it was getting to be a bore.’ There was a faint snap of bitterness in this lighter tone; no wonder, when they had need of a comparatively modest sum at this moment for so urgent a reason, and were put to such shifts to acquire it.

‘I can’t tell you,’ Dominic said fervently, ‘how grateful we are for your help.’

‘Not a word, my boy! I’ve known Dorrie for years, and didn’t she ask me to keep a fatherly eye on you over here? But I tell you what, I’d better get out of here by the garden way tonight, hadn’t I, and keep away from you except where we can be strictly private?’

He rose and stretched wearily. There were times when he looked an elderly man, but always withindoors and in presence of few if any observers.

‘Is there nothing I can be doing?’ Dominic asked anxiously, aware of having ceded his responsibilities to a degree he found at once galling and reassuring.

‘Sure there is. You can go out in the morning – maybe alone would be best, if Miss Barber doesn’t mind? – and buy a cheap, black, child’s briefcase. Somewhere round Connaught Place there are sure to be plenty of them. And about half past ten you could oblige me by being inside the State Bank of India, the one in Parliament Street. If you’re seen going in there, that can only be a good sign. And I’ll come separately, they won’t know me. And we’ll take out that two hundred thousand rupees – that’s something over eleven thousand pounds, I’d say offhand. You know, that’s not so exhorbitant, when you come to think about it! – and see it packed up all ready for the pay-off, and packed into that briefcase. And in a couple of days we’ll have Anjli out of bondage.’

VIII

« ^ »

On Saturday morning they drew out the money from the film company’s account in the State Bank of India in Parliament Street. Dominic was there waiting with his plastic school briefcase in his hand before Felder arrived; in good time to admire the imposing appearance his colleague made after a night’s rest and a careful toilet, immaculate in dark grey worsted. The clerk treated the whole transaction as superbly normal, and was deferential to the point of obsequiousness, perhaps because of the size of the withdrawal. Felder was carrying a much more presentable briefcase in pale chrome leather; Dominic had never seen him look the complete city sophisticate before. Even his tone as he asked for the money to be made up in mixed notes was so casual and abstracted that any other course would have seemed eccentric.

So that was that. They were moving at leisure away from the counter, with two hundred thousand rupees in assorted denominations in a large, sealed bank envelope, linen-grained, biscuit-coloured and very official-looking. It seemed like having a hold on Anjli again. Suddenly it seemed an age since Dominic had seen her face or heard her voice, and he remembered the jasmine flowers, with the strange ache of an old association fallen just short of love.

‘Put it in the case now,’ suggested Felder in a low voice, proffering the crisp new parcel before they were in view from the doorway. ‘Or would you rather I locked it in the office safe until the time comes?’

‘Yes, you keep it. Drop it off at the desk for us tomorrow, there’ll be plenty of people in and out. Supposing there is someone watching me now, he may think it a good idea to knock off this lot before I can get it back to the hotel, and then ask for more. How can I be sure?’

‘All right, as you like.’ Felder shrugged his shoulders ruefully. ‘I suppose it is my responsibility.’ The envelope disappeared into the chrome leather case, swallowed from sight with a magnificent casualness. Briefcases of that quality went in and out of here by the score, black plastic scholastic ones were much rarer in this temple of commerce. Dominic felt grateful that he had bought Everyman copies of the Hindu scriptures and the Ramayana and Mahabharata, to give a semblance of gravity to his own flimsy burden. They could easily have been mistaken for money, viewed from the outside.

‘In the morning, then, about ten, I’ll bring it to the desk. Better be somewhere close, in case. And when you leave the temple in the afternoon, come in to Nirula’s for tea. I’ll be there.’

‘We will,’ said Dominic.

‘Go ahead first, then, I’ll give you ten minutes or so.’

Dominic walked briskly out of the imposing doors of the State Bank of India, and away down Parliament Street, with his tawdry briefcase filled and fulfilled with the wisdom of thirty centuries of Indian thought and feeling. Worth a good deal more, in the final issue, than two hundred thousand rupees, even taking into consideration the relative impossibility of adequate translation.

It was the longest Saturday they ever remembered, and the only good things left about it were that they had at least a hope of recovering Anjli, and that they were spending the agonising time of waiting together. Felder kept away from them, and that was surely the right thing to do. And they made contact with no one, so that if they were watched the watchers might be quite certain that they had not infringed their orders. They went no farther from their hotel than the Lodi park, where they sat in the sunshine among the fawn-coloured grass and the flowers, the amazing, exuberant, proliferating flowers of the season, and looked at the towering rose-coloured tombs with which the Lodi dynasty had burdened the Delhi earth, and thought about Purnima’s modest pyre by the Yamuna, and her little heap of ashes going back to the elements, and nothing left of weight or self-importance or regret. And it seemed to them the most modest of all ways of leaving this world, and the most in keeping with the spirit’s