Max didn’t know what to make of Clare’s idea that Tammy had been shot at as he climbed the temple. Max and Narayan, being further up the temple wall, hadn’t seen or heard anything. Maria, meanwhile, had been too involved with her demanding little boy to notice. Clare said she’d seen the cripple standing among the fishermen, and possibly the two youths as well, while she and Max had been resuscitating Tammy. Characteristically, though, she was not without her doubts in view of the panic she had felt. Max had always admired Clare’s ability to admit she might be wrong.
Max had phoned Inspector Veerapan in Chennai, and he’d issued orders to the local police to provide the group with protection. A police guard arrived that same night. He was a smart young man, with a pencil-thin moustache that he touched with concern from time to time, as if worried it might not be sufficiently admired. He fulfilled his duties with disconcerting zeal, vigorously saluting Max and the others on every possible occasion. He enjoyed ceaseless radio communication with his headquarters, the excited sounds of which leaked past his headset in a series of shrill jabberings.
The following morning, the police guard announced, with awe and enthusiasm, that a senior inspector was coming out to see them. It turned out to be Veerapan, of course. He arrived by helicopter. Clare and Max met him in the lobby of the hotel. Max well remembered him from Madurai; how could he forget his meticulously combed hair and woeful manner. This time, Veerapan was pleased to be able to set their minds at rest. He had surprising news.
‘The evidence you gave at Madurai proved most useful,’ he told Max and Clare. ‘We deduced the assassins were part of a new, small group of hit men. Informed by a rival of theirs, we raided their headquarters yesterday. Four of them were killed, including the two we believe were Venkataraman’s assassins.’
‘How do you know that?’ asked Clare.
‘We made an identikit picture of the boy,’ Veerapan went on. ‘It was based on your description, madam, and’ – he turned to Max – ‘on your photo of him, good sir, albeit having been in quarter-profile.’
There was an awkward pause then, as if Veerapan weighing up what he would say next.
‘The boy had a bullet hole in his face,’ he said, glancing at Clare.
‘Don’t mind me,’ she replied. ‘I can handle the gory details.’
The Inspector gave an embarrassed cough.
‘It made identification difficult, you understand. We cannot be absolutely certain.’
He brushed at his immaculate grey hair with his fingers, as though nervous of a single strand being out of place.
‘About this shooting you’ve told us of,’ he now said. ‘I understand it happened at the sea temple. Shall we go there now and you can tell us what you saw.’
‘Terrorism’s getting worse in India,’ Veerapan went on, as the three of them walked down to the temple, ‘as it is in the whole world. The Twin Towers, for example. There were only twenty suicide men involved – as few as that.’
‘What that crime has done to the whole planet… it seemed to change everything, in a single day,’ Max said.
‘Yes, it was most terrible,’ said the Inspector. ‘These militant extremists! People prepared to commit horrifying murders in the cause of a fanatical ideology.
‘When most religions are supposed to be forgiving and pacific,’ Max declared.
‘Oh yes, the horrible things done from religious rivalry. Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews and Sikhs… even Buddhists. None of them should believe in retaliation, but people seem driven to get their own back, both personally and communally.’
‘But we don’t have to think it’s instinctive and inevitable,’ suggested Clare. ‘Tell me, do you have any idea who hired the assassins?’
‘Not yet, but we’re working on it. It’s more difficult now the assassins are surely dead. The mastermind is still alive, though. You think it was he who shot at this friend of yours? May I ask where he is now?’
‘He’s not yet fully recovered,’ said Max. ‘He’s back at the hotel in bed.’
When they eventually reached the temple, Veerapan asked Clare to show where she was standing at the time she thought she saw the bullets strike. She was unable to do this easily, as the tide had obliterated any marks upon the sand, and the change in the position of some driftwood was confusing. They examined the surface of the temple for bullet marks, but the stone had traces of erosion all over, having been scoured and pitted in many places over the years. Veerapan seemed not to believe that Tammy had been shot at but he didn’t like to say so at first.
‘The government’s trying to upgrade the country’s anti-terrorist activities,’ he said. ‘There is a need to stop these mad conspiracies in time.’
‘More should be done to penetrate terrorist groups,’ asserted Max. Which should be far more effective than these Western crude military interventions. So, what do you think about the crippled mastermind? Do you think he was the marksman?’
The Inspector fastidiously polished his already glistening spectacles, as if to emphasise the need for clarity in his reply. He sighed and gave a weary smile.
‘I don’t believe your friend was really shot at,’ he said, turning to Clare. ‘You were confused by the sun, I think. It shone into your eyes, perhaps, and dazzled you. We shall keep this young man to guard you for a time, but, in view of the cripple’s note, I believe there’s little for you to fear.’
‘For me, perhaps,’ Clare conceded. Then she frowned. ‘But what about Tammy?’
Veerapan finished polishing his spectacles, as if he felt they’d never be clean enough. He gave them his melancholy smile. As he drove off to the helicopter, he waved at them with a gesture of encouragement that contained just a hint of caution.
That evening the five of them gathered in Tammy’s room, a blandly furnished, anonymous hotel room but one that had a wonderful view of the sea.
Subramaniam gazed at Tammy, who was sitting in a chair now, dressed in a long loose shirt and baggy trousers, a bandage around his head.
‘Tammy, my good fellow, what have you learnt from your Muslim friend,’ the old man asked.
‘Mutual understanding in particular. Non-Muslims tend to think of jihadis as fundamentalist Islamic warriors. But Shahpur taught me that, at a personal level, jihad means the struggle against resistance to the divine law within us. In the Koran, wars of aggression are condemned. Allah is compassionate and merciful. Islam and Hinduism could, in theory, be combined.’
‘The Emperor Akbar founded a religion of his own with that intent,’ Subramaniam replied. ‘He invited Christian priests as well as Hindu gurus to attend his court. But, Tammy, don’t entirely forget you were born a Hindu and a Brahmin.’
‘Why should I be the Brahmin I was born as? These caste divisions… how I hate the system! The outcasts, the Dalits as we now term them… at one time they weren’t allowed to sit down in the presence of Brahmins or even to enter temples. That was monstrous.’
‘That was in the bad old days. ‘Gandhi called them the harijans,’ Subramaniam insisted. ‘The beloved of God.’
‘Yes, but they’re not the beloved of the other castes. In the remoter villages they’re still made to have their own inferior wells. All right, we’ve laws against it, and we keep on hypocritically insisting that caste discrimination doesn’t exist, yet there’s still great prejudice against their marrying people from higher castes.’
‘I too hate the idea of people being outcasts,’ Narayan interjected, ‘but it’s not an essential part of Hinduism. Look, I don’t think we ought to keep strictly apart as religious groups, but surely we’re allowed to keep a sense of our identity.’
Tammy and Narayan continued arguing. It seemed amiable enough, but Max did wonder if anything further lay behind it. It was the second day after Tammy’s accident, and Narayan’s possible increased wariness troubled Max. Clare’s distress at the time of Tammy’s accident had perhaps made Narayan wonder about the nature of the feelings underlying it.
Max now understood more about those feelings. He’d seen the look on her face as they’d resuscitated Tammy, and it had seemed to be a reflection of his own grief at the prospect of losing Narayan. With great difficulty, he at last spoke to Clare.
‘Tell me, are you in love with Tammy?’
‘Yes, I am, Max,’ she said with some caution, ‘and he loves me back.’
‘I’d thought this was coming, but it’s still a shock,’ Max said. He found his hands were shaking.
‘It’s something you’ve absolutely no right to resent,’ she answered, but her voice was softer than before. ‘You have no right whatever, not in view of you and Narayan.’
‘I know it’s caused you enormous anguish. I couldn’t have felt more guilty.’
She smiled.
‘And I couldn’t feel more grateful to you both for what you did in saving Tammy’s life.’
Max leant forward and kissed her on the cheek, a gentle kiss that began to heal the breach between them.
It was getting late now. Subramaniam was chanting faintly under his breath. He stirred, opening his watery eyes. His voice grew firmer for a while before his eyelids trembled and began to droop, and the delicate chant fluttered and died out. Tammy was still condemning the caste system:
‘Those youths shot down the other day were probably Dalits. All right, Gandhi called them the beloved of God, but they felt more humiliated than beloved no doubt, and humiliation festers and corrupts. They were as much the victims of poverty and prejudice as of their own embittered bloody thoughts, and so more easily suborned to do this crime.’
Narayan seemed on the point of objecting but Tammy wasn’t quite finished.
‘I say this in attempted explanation not excuse.’
There was a long pause. The sea broke on the shore with a rushing surge. The old man’s head was bowed in sleep. His breath came sighing from him as though in sleep he sighed his life away. Then he suddenly woke and began to speak.
‘That young man who assassinated Gandhi… one of a group of Hindu fanatics. He killed him because he stood up for the Pakistanis, resisting hatred of our Muslim brothers. But Gandhi would’ve wanted us to pray for the assassin’s soul. He’d never have approved of our hating him in return… for his being hanged.’
He lay back as if about to hover on the edge of sleep again, to experience some uplifting dream of reconciliation.
‘Come on. Off to bed,’ Maria said as she put her hand on Tammy’s head to ruffle his hair. ‘No more discussion, Tammy dear. You must be quite worn out.’
Tammy helped Subramaniam to his feet. Before he went to bed, Max thought of their visit to the ashram fifty miles away, and he thought about his time with Narayan.
‘I’ll stay behind in Sandeha to be with you,’ Tammy said to Subramaniam.
‘I’ll stay as well, said Clare. ‘If that’s all right.’
Max was happy with this arrangement, since he wished to have some time alone with Narayan to talk about their future. Narayan spoke so inconsistently of this.
‘Life without you is inconceivable. But where would we spend our life together?’ he’d once said.
Max had been worrying about Clare’s safety. However, he felt less anxious after what Inspector Veerapan had said, and what Clare had told Max about the reassuring note the cripple had given her. And, of course, they now had a police guard.
Max knew Clare wanted to be alone with Tammy, which both concerned him and made him feel better about his going to the ashram with Narayan. He and Clare were sleeping in single beds in the same room, and he stretched out a hand across the gap to touch her and felt her accept his touch. He knew she’d come to resent him, to hate him even, just as she’d come to resent and hate Narayan, but her attitude to them both had undergone a miraculous reversal since the two of them had swum out to save Tammy’s life.
Max couldn’t pretend that Clare’s love for Tammy didn’t make him feel deprived and insecure, but he was trying to accept that she loved Tammy. What he felt for her was a deep-rooted tenderness that had once allowed his sexual passion its full head.
The memory of her reaction to Tammy on the beach was becoming easier to contemplate. He recalled being on top of the temple with Narayan, with a dizzying drop either side. His fear of heights meant he’d had to force himself to climb it, which he’d done only for Narayan’s sake. He’d felt a liberating sense of exhilaration as he’d stood next to Narayan and watched the sun streaking the sea with a blaze of light.
The memory changed. He was with his father. His mother had died a month before, and he was trying to get to know his father better, as if he could somehow fill that appalling gap. His father had been devoted to her, doubtless resenting Max’s extreme attachment. However, he’d stumbled into a bitter argument with his father about the invasion of Iraq.
‘Bush lied about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. The enormous cost of the war should be paid for by increased taxation of the very wealthy. But Bush is cutting taxation to enrich his cronies. Paying for the war by borrowing money will have dire fiscal consequences later on.’
This had provoked an explosion of anger from his father.
‘I worked my balls off for the money I’ve paid for you and your education. I haven’t noticed you refusing to accept it. You’re wasting your time trying to be a writer and photographer. You ought to settle down to a proper job. You’ve achieved nothing and are getting nowhere. And you have the fucking nerve to talk of high taxation of the rich. My God, you’re such a lousy hypocrite!’
This touched Max’s vulnerable point. He did feel hypocritical taking advantage of his father’s money and did indeed feel he’d achieved very little. He blamed himself for blundering into that futile row, especially since his father’s health was failing. He’d craved his father’s encouragement and affection. Clare had been in London at the time, and Max had longed for her return. Their love had seemed all he had to keep him going.
He reached out for her again. He still loved her: a changed love but a strong one, which he still didn’t think he could ever do without. He began to speak about Rick.
‘I’m really worried that he’ll develop AIDS… as his former lover did.’
‘But there’ve been all these new advances,’ she reassured him. ‘Things are so much better with this combination therapy.’
This slightly encouraged him when he thought about Rick, but the idea of the disease becoming so widespread in the Third World, affecting women too, filled him with a sense of frustration and dismay. He recalled asking Subramaniam about the pointlessness of so much suffering and death and the answer he had ventured with its quiet equivocal assurances.
‘Why worry about what happens in this confusing world, which often seems so cruel and merciless? Do the seabirds worry? Do the strange seahorses care? Humankind feels pain and fear and passion, but all these things will disappear very soon… like a noise in the quiet night that wakes one from a sleep… or a distant cry that disturbs a peaceful dream.’
As Max began to fall asleep, he heard the surf roll in the distance, and from the room next door came the sound of the old man singing. His voice rose and fell, sometimes high and sweet, sometimes low and solemn. Was his song a hymn of exultation at the mystery of things… or a gentle call for his deliverance? But then the singing died slowly out, and there remained the noise of the endless waves.