Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘Well, what is the premium at present? Five annas?’

‘Yes.’

‘Put it up to eight annas.’

‘I’m not sure that would work,’ said Arun. ‘I could call upon their agent in Calcutta and do that. But I don’t think he’d take kindly to it. He once mentioned that even our five-anna rate was barely competitive with what Commercial Union was willing to insure them for. We would very likely lose them.’

‘Well, do you have anything else to suggest?’ said Basil Cox with a rather tired smile. From experience he knew that Arun very likely did have something else to suggest.

‘As it happens, I do,’ said Arun.

‘Ah,’ said Basil Cox, pretending surprise.

‘We could write to Lloyds and ask them what steps had been taken to prevent or reduce pilferage from the customs warehouse.’

Basil Cox was rather disappointed but did not say so.

‘I see. Well, thank you, Arun.’

But Arun had not finished.

‘And we could offer to reduce the premium.’

‘Reduce it, did you say?’ Basil Cox raised both eyebrows.

‘Yes. Just remove the Theft, Pilferage and Non-Delivery clause. They can have everything else: the standard policy of fire, storm, leakage, piracy, forced jettison and so on, plus Strike, Riot and Civil Commotion, rainwater damage, even taint, whatever they want. All on very favourable terms. But no TPND. That they can insure with someone else. They obviously have very little incentive to protect their cargo if we fork out their claims every time someone decides to drink their tea for them.’

Basil Cox smiled. ‘It’s an idea. Let me think about it. We’ll talk about it in the car this afternoon on the way to Puttigurh.’

‘There’s one other matter, Basil.’

‘Could it wait till the afternoon too?’

‘Actually, one of our friends from Rajasthan is coming to see me in an hour and it has to do with him. I should have brought it up earlier, but I thought it could wait. I didn’t know he was so eager to have a quick response.’

This was a stock euphemism for a Marwari businessman. The grasping, enterprising, canny, energetic and above all ungentlemanly traits of that community were intensely distasteful to the leisured and gentlemanly sahibs of the managing agencies. The managing agency might borrow a great deal of money from a certain kind of Marwari businessman, but the chairman would not dream of inviting him to his club, even if it were one to which Indians were admitted.

But in this case it was the Marwari businessman who wanted Bentsen Pryce to finance him. His suggestion, in brief, was this: his house wanted to expand into a new line of operations, but he wanted Bentsen Pryce to invest in this expansion. In return, he would give them whatever insurance business arose from the new operations.

Arun, swallowing his own instinctive distaste for the community, and reminding himself that business was business, put the matter to Basil Cox as objectively as he could. He forbore from mentioning that this was no more than what one British firm did for another in the regular way of business. He knew that his boss was not unaware of that fact.

Basil Cox did not ask him for his advice. He looked at a point beyond Arun’s right shoulder for a disconcertingly long time, then said:

‘I don’t like it — it smells a bit Marwari to me.’

By his tone he implied that it was a species of sharp practice. Arun was about to speak when he added:

‘No. It’s definitely not for us. And Finance, I know, would not like it at all. Let’s leave it at that. So I’ll see you at two thirty?’

‘Right,’ said Arun.

When he got back to his room, he wondered how he would put things to his visitor, and what reasons he could adduce to defend the decision. But he did not need to. Mr Jhunjhunwala took the decision surprisingly well. When Arun told him that his company couldn’t go ahead with the proposal, Mr Jhunjhunwala did not ask him to explain himself. He merely nodded, then said in Hindi — implying an awful complicity, it seemed to Arun, a complicity of one Indian with another—‘You know, that’s the trouble with Bentsen Pryce: they won’t take something on unless there’s a bit of a smell of the English in it.’

After Mr Jhunjhunwala had gone, Arun phoned Meenakshi to say that he would be back from work fairly late that evening, but that they should still plan to go for cocktails at the Finlays’ at about seven thirty. He then answered a couple of other letters, and finally settled back to his crossword.

But before he could solve more than two or three more clues, the phone rang. It was James Pettigrew.

‘Well, Arun, how many?’

‘Not many, I’m afraid. I’ve just begun to look at it.’

This was an outright lie. Apart from straining every brain cell he could while sitting on the toilet, Arun had frowned at the crossword over breakfast and even scribbled the letters of possible anagrams underneath the clues while being driven to work. Since his handwriting was illegible, even to himself, this usually didn’t help him much.

‘I won’t ask you if you got “that confounded pane in the neck”.’

‘Thanks,’ said Arun. ‘I’m glad you give me credit for an IQ of at least eighty.’

‘And “Johnson’s rose”?’

‘Yes.’

‘How about “Knife a gentleman buys in Paris”?’

‘No — but since you’re obviously eager to tell me, why don’t you put both of us out of our agony?’

‘Machete.’

‘Machete?’

‘Machete.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t quite see how—’

‘Ah, Arun, you’ll have to learn French some day,’ said James Pettigrew infuriatingly.

‘Well, what didn’t you get?’ asked Arun with ill-masked irritation.

‘Very little, as it happens,’ said the obnoxious James.

‘So you’ve solved it all, have you?’ said Arun.

‘Well, not exactly, not exactly. There are a couple that are still troubling me a little.’

‘Oh, just a couple?’

‘Well, perhaps a couple of couples.’

‘For example?’

‘“Musician who sounds rapacious”, five letters, third letter T, fifth letter R.’

‘Luter,’ said Arun promptly.

‘Aaah, that’s got to be right. But I always thought the right word was lutanist or perhaps lutist.’

‘Does the L give you any help in the other direction?’

‘Er. . let’s see. . yes, it does. That must be “Belfry”. Thank you.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ said Arun. ‘As it happens, I had a linguistic advantage with that one.’

‘How so?’ said James.

‘The word “loot” comes from Hindi.’

‘So it does, so it does,’ said James Pettigrew. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘it seems that I’ve won the Ashes three to two, and you owe me lunch sometime next week.’

He was referring to their weekly crossword stakes that ran from Monday to Friday. Arun grunted his admission of defeat.

While this conversation, devoted largely to the peculiarities of words, and not entirely pleasing to Arun Mehra, was taking place, another telephone conversation, also dealing with the peculiarities of words, was taking place, which, had he been aware of it, would have pleased Arun Mehra even less.

Meenakshi: Hello.

Billy Irani: Hello!

Meenakshi: You sound different. Is there anyone in the office with you?

Billy: No. But I wish you wouldn’t call me at the office.

Meenakshi: It’s so difficult for me to call at other times. But everyone happens to be out this morning. How are you?

Billy: I’m in fine, er, fettle.

Meenakshi: That makes you sound like a sort of stallion.

Billy: Are you sure you’re not thinking of fetlock?