William Methwold

William Methwold is the departing British owner of Methwold’s Estate, and his sale of its four houses makes him an intimate, theatrical presence in the lives of their Indian purchasers. He presents the property transfer as a game timed to coincide with the end of British rule: the houses and everything inside them must remain unchanged until midnight on August 15. In this way, Methwold’s departure is more than a transaction. His conditions carry colonial habits into the homes of their new owners, while the exact timing binds his private performance to the national transfer of power.

Identity and Estate

Methwold enters the story on June 19, two weeks after the Sinai family arrives by train, as the Englishman who owns the palaces on a rise near the sea. The narrator introduces the estate as a small kingdom at the heart of his childhood: four substantial, matching houses, each with red gabled roofs, corner towers, verandahs, and servants’ quarters reached by iron staircases. Their European names—Versailles Villa, Buckingham Villa, Escorial Villa, and Sans Souci—place the architecture within Methwold’s cultivated colonial world. Gardens, pools, roses, and cane chairs complete the scene.

The houses are offered for very little, but their price comes with conditions. Purchasers must buy them with every object inside and retain all the contents; legal transfer will occur only at midnight on August 15. Methwold’s restrictions turn household furnishings into part of the bargain. Amina Sinai objects that she cannot discard even a spoon or comb, and asks about an unwanted lampshade. Methwold answers that these are his terms and describes them as a departing colonial’s small game. The low price thus comes with a demand that the new owners temporarily inhabit not simply the houses, but the previous owner’s material world.

The Estate as a Game of Transfer

Methwold openly connects his arrangement to the larger political transition. He says he has an itch to transfer power at the same time as the Raj, and asks Ahmed Sinai to humor him because the price is favorable. Ahmed, despite Amina’s doubts about the seller’s eccentricity, insists that Methwold is a man of honor and that he has already agreed to the terms. Methwold’s game is therefore accepted not through ignorance alone: the purchasers recognize its strangeness but agree to its exchange.

During the countdown to the transfer, the estate’s contents become a steady source of irritation and accommodation. Lila Sabarmati complains about talking budgerigars, moth-eaten dresses, and used brassieres; Nussie Ibrahim dislikes the goldfish and the half-empty Bovril pots Methwold insists she keep. Ibrahim Ibrahim fears that a ceiling fan will fall, while Homi Catrack suffers on a soft mattress and Doctor Narlikar objects to the pictures of children above his bed. The contents are not neutral leftovers: their retention obliges the incoming residents to negotiate daily with the tastes, routines, and assumptions of their former owner.

Yet the arrangement also brings pleasures and unexpected practical lessons. Lila discovers that the pianola works, and Ahmed finds a cocktail cabinet in Buckingham Villa, where Methwold himself had lived. The new residents gather in their gardens at six for cocktail hour. When Methwold visits, they adopt imitation Oxford drawls; they also learn about ceiling fans, gas cookers, and the care of budgerigars. While their complaints suggest that they remain aware of the imposition, the routine gradually softens the estate’s sharp edges. Methwold oversees this transformation and murmurs that all is well. The transfer is already changing its recipients before the deeds formally make the houses theirs.

Appearance and Performance

The narrator presents Methwold as a tall, polished figure with a precisely centered part in thick, black, brilliantined hair. That carefully arranged appearance is more than a detail of dress: the narrator associates the hairline with the movement of history and sexuality, and imagines Methwold’s charm as part of the influence he exercises over women. Methwold’s appearance becomes a form of performance, as controlled and memorable as the rules he imposes on the estate.

The account also makes clear that the narrator never personally saw Methwold. The descriptions and significance attached to him are part of a retrospective story about the narrator’s beginnings, not the testimony of a direct encounter. This distance gives Methwold an almost emblematic presence: he is remembered through the estate, the transfer conditions, and the image of a man whose polished surface will eventually be exposed.

Departure and Afterlife

On the evening before the transfer, as the estate’s residents gather for cocktail hour, Methwold stands stiffly in the garden. He raises a hand to his hair and pulls away a hairpiece, revealing that the defining feature of his carefully maintained appearance was false. He throws the hairpiece through the car window, distributes the signed title deeds to the palaces, and drives away. No one at the estate sees him again.

His departure completes the transaction but does not erase his influence. The residents have spent the countdown living among his possessions and adopting some of his habits; the estate has, in the narrator’s account, been changing them. Methwold himself disappears at the moment of formal transfer, but the houses and routines he leaves behind continue to structure their lives. The contrast between his staged composure and the exposed hairpiece makes his exit a final reveal: the colonial proprietor’s authority has rested partly on an image, even as the property and practices he arranged pass into other hands.

Narrative and Historical Significance

Methwold’s sale links private property to political chronology. His insistence on a midnight transfer makes the change of ownership coincide with the end of British rule, while the retained contents prolong the old order inside the new owners’ homes. The estate becomes a domestic stage on which the transition is both enacted and rehearsed: the purchasers acquire the houses, but first learn to live according to the departing owner’s terms.

The narrator’s treatment of Methwold combines remembered architecture, reported conversations, and openly acknowledged distance. Methwold is both an individual with a carefully cultivated persona and the agent of an arrangement that outlasts his presence. His game cannot preserve British ownership, but it does make the transfer uneven and theatrical: the deeds change hands at midnight, while the habits and objects of the previous household remain. His final disappearance therefore marks a departure without a clean break.