Passage of Arms Read Free

was through his Parsee friend that Girija heard that the new manager of a recently acquired estate in the north was asking the Singapore office for a clerk.
    His uncle was angered by Girija's decision to leave him, and talked darkly of getting a court order requiring Girija to repay the cost of his passage from Calcutta. To his astonishment the bluff failed. Girija, whom he had come to regard as a pliant and somewhat timid young man, not only laughed loudly and made a disrespectful noise with his lips, but also threatened to take his mother and sisters north with him unless their wages were immediately doubled. There was a shrill Bengali family quarrel during which Girija uttered a further and more compelling threat. He had made a secret analysis of his uncle's accounts which he was prepared to send to the Inspector of Taxes. The uncle wept and spoke of ingratitude, but capitulated.    Girija's mother embraced her son proudly and said that he was his father's true heir.
    When the time came for Girija to leave, however, he asked her for only one thing that had belonged to his father; the bus body manufacturer's catalogue. His sisters were relieved. They had been afraid that, as a man, he would feel himself entitled to the subahdar's medals.
    The catalogue was a quarto size book with a brown cover on which the name of the manufacturer was embossed in green. Inside there were forty-eight pages of thick, shiny paper displaying the specifications of twenty different types of buses together with colour illustrations of the exteriors and interiors of each. There were double-deckers and single-deckers, buses designed to enable the driver to collect fares, and buses designed to carry conductors. There were twelve seaters, twenty-four seaters and sixty seaters. There were buses for long distances and buses for local services in cities, for cold climates and for hot. The cover was dog-eared from much handling and some of the pages were loose. There was an ink stain on the title page. It was Girija's most treasured possession.
    As a small boy he had sat for hours turning the pages, studying the illustrations and re-reading the text. He had, in the end, come to know it by heart. At the orphanage, when he had been separated both from his mother and the catalogue, he had found comfort in reciting it to himself, beginning with the Foreword by the Chairman ("In presenting to our customers all over the world this, the Eighteenth Edition, of our Catalogue and Price List, we are proudly conscious that . . .") and finishing with the specifications of a forty seat medium range staging coach (available on A.E.C. or Commer chassis) "as supplied to the Argentine Government. Price £8,586, f.o.b. London."
    One day, in the streets of Benares, he had seen a new bus that he thought he recognised as a modification of one of those listed in the catalogue. It had been just starting away and he had run for almost half a mile before he had caught up with it at a stopping place. Breathlessly he had searched for the body manufacturer's name-plate. The bus had been moving off again before he had found it; but it had been the right plate and a wave of excitement had swept over him. From that moment, he had known exactly what he wanted to do in the world. He would operate a bus service.
    His first letter to the body manufacturer had been written from Singapore on his uncle's business stationery. He had been aware for some time that the original catalogue from London, precious though it was and always would be, was now very much out of date. Nevertheless, the decision to send for the latest edition had not been easily taken. For some reason that he had been unable to account for, it had seemed almost like an act of treachery.
    However, the arrival of the new catalogue had given him other things to worry about. The catalogue itself had been magnificent. Unfortunately, it had been accompanied by a courteous latter from the sales manager, informing him that the