Sombre times in Shimla this week. Aafrin returns Sita’s love letters, Cynthia’s club is overrun with small dogs and Madeleine walks in on Eugene to discover he’s dead. Yes, totally dead.
That last one’s a bit of a shock. His leg must have been worse than I thought. He also had asthma, and Coffin moved him into the crap bungalow because she hates the poor, so she more or less killed him. Though she’ll probably claim Ramu Sood astrally projected from his prison cell and suffocated him with his own moustache.
It’s not good to speak ill of the fictional dead, but Eugene was fairly boring and redundant. (As well as eulogies, I also do bar mitzvahs.) Elsewhere, everyone else is committed to being the fullest versions of themselves. Ralph is manipulating for England, Aafrin is looking trebly pained, Sergeant Singh is randomly ransacking people’s houses. Cynthia has become so racist, she’s probably installed a roulette table with only red squares.
Oh, and Sarah. After her court-based up-chuck, she has now taken to unhappily spying on Dougie, Leena … and Alice. She angrily confronts the latter, but accepts her conciliatory invitation to the club, where they’ll share a milk punch and laugh like schoolgirls. No, not really. She accepts the invitation to the club, where she’ll reveal Alice’s secret and humiliate her instead, she says. It’s ostensibly a deflection plan, but really it’s the lashing out of a wounded snake, backed into a corner, never more dangerous.
Ralph has a strange dream of Adam on a rocking horse, handing him a note that exposes his paternity. The note calls him “Devil”, and is signed “No Name”. Chilling.
A lot of to-do at the club. Cynthia, ever the opportunist, persuades Madeleine to accompany her brother’s ashes back to the US (“Women like that never come back,” she mutters to Kaiser). That’s two povvo-stricken siblings out of the way for the price of one.
No time to gloat – there’s milk punch to mix. The Nawab of Jaffa Cakes (I missed the exact name, but this is close) is coming for supper. Not sure why – something to do with Gandhi having a celebratory supper on his turf that the Brits want to nix. Ralph thinks it politic that a few natives also attend, “like window dressing”. Coffin, proud of her No Blacks, No Dogs policy, looks like she’d rather gargle hot gravel. When told the Nawab is bringing a few of his canine chums, her face puckers like she’s spitting out a pip.
The mystery of Sergeant Singh and his loyalties are revealed in a cafe, where he has lured Aafrin. He is a double agent, working for the revolutionary Nalini Ayer, who materialises from nowhere and sits in Singh’s place. We last saw her being arrested at a pro-independence rally with Sooni; jail has turned her into a fully fledged freedom fighter, or terrorist, if you’re a glass-half-empty kind of guy, which Aafrin is. She is certainly determined to use bullets, bombs, whatever it takes to get the British out of India. She believes that at heart, Aafrin is on their side and should join their fight. Should he? She gives the Hamlet of this tale time to decide.
Silliness up in the club, where the Nawab has turned up looking like the fanciest chocolate in the box, gesturing affectedly and sounding more English than Somerset Maugham. “Don’t you just adore puppies,” is one of his first lines, which lets you know he’s a rum one.
Indian Summers has been rich in cameos such as this, one-episode wonders who steal the show. “You haven’t dragged me all the way up here for the … what is this confounded thing?” asks the Nawab, played by Silas Carson, of the milk punch. (I TOLD YOU MILK PUNCH SOUNDS WEIRD. I SAID THAT ALL ALONG.) He admires the Lodge’s mountainous vista, though not as much as the Cairngorms of Scotland. “You must go, when you’re all finished here,” he advises the Viceroy, impishly.
The Raworths rock up to the supper, Sarah looking to bury Alice. But they’re met by Ralph, smoothly doing his Ralph thing, protecting his sister. He buys Sarah’s peace by offering their son Matthew a school place back in Blighty – exactly what she pines for. “Why are you doing this?” asks Dougie bluntly, because he doesn’t like Ralph doing Ralph. A rescued Alice gives heartfelt thanks to Ralph, and condolence that Madeleine will also be returning home. “What?” replies Ralph incredulously, realising he has been out-Ralphed.
The last quarter goes a bit English Patient: Aafrin smoothly removes Alice to some manner of sexy shed he’s set up. He’s done that petals on the bed thing, where they bump their considerably attractive uglies until the break of dawn. Lovely. Sita’s final words, however – “They will tear you apart” – suggest clouds are gathering in paradise.
Meanwhile, it appears Ralph’s dream was no dream. He shows Cynthia the letter, and they talk. And we finally get the backstory we deserve.
Ralph, as a young assistant magistrate, once helped a south Indian man in a land dispute. The grateful man, Chandru Mohan, took Ralph back to his home where he met his daughter, Jaya. They fell in love, in secret; but someone whispered of their affair to the village elders, and Ralph was transferred to Burma, thousands of miles away from the woman he loved – and who bore his baby. Heartbreakingly, Ralph now realises who that someone was.
“What did you think would happen to a pregnant, unmarried woman on her own with no one to protect her?”, he seethes. “I expect every dog in the district had his fun with her,” replies Cynthia, her ugliness truly shining through. The squalor of Cynthia and Ralph’s relationship has come to a head, both locked into a poisonous co-dependence without hope of escape, their lies twisted round each other like roots. “I am here to stop you falling down and hurting yourself,” pleads this twisted maternal figure.
As the series reaches a peak, it is getting darker, and better for it. Who is the hero of this story? Is there one? It is impressive how threads laid earlier are being picked up, and new mysteries spun with them. It’s the finale next week, and a sure hand will be needed to tie so many characters together. On the strength of the past few weeks, we’ve nothing to worry about. Though in Shimla, the opposite is true.
Mourning becomes him
In his skinny black tie, side parting and funerary armband, Ralph could not look more Gestapo if tried, frankly. I’m not sure that’s what Eugene would have wanted. But who knows what Eugene wanted?
The award for too much time at the dresser …
Goes to the Viceroy, in his bowler hat and voluminous burgundy cravat. Strolling with Ralph through the grounds, they look like Bradford & Bingley. Has ever a man been less employed? What does he do all day?
This government has created more jobs than any other
Did you see the man who has to run ahead and unfurl a newspaper whenever the Viceroy wishes to refer to current affairs, like a labour-intensive PowerPoint demonstration? What other staff does he have on the books? Toilet warmer? Assistant to the crumpet-butterer?
Actually, that makes sense
Cynthia’s late husband was called Reggie Coffin. Are they East End gangsters?
How deep is your love?
After the consummation of Alice, Aafrin returns home beaming like a subcontinental Alfie, jacket slung over shoulder, finally relaxed, as if he’s had a two-day shiatsu. No walk of shame here.
Singh when you’re winning
Would anyone else be up for a Sergeant Singh spin-off? Better Call Singh? I can imagine the theme music, sung to the tune of Postman Pat: “Sergeant Singh/Sergeant Singh/Sergeant Singh and his ambiguous grin.” Just me?
