We arrived at the river, a filthy trickle.
“Could we go to the Titanic Bazaar?” I asked.
Faisal had taken me there ten years before: to a jumble of stalls on the dusty river banks, a crazy burst of colour, golden onions heaped up high, piles of red pomegranates, spices, nuts and sweets. It wasn’t like the other bazaars, with each section dedicated to one thing. The Titanic Bazaar had it all: hanging animal carcasses, baskets of skinned sheep heads next to aluminium pots and pans to cook them in, sacks of sugar, bowls of lentils and rice. Pots of red geraniums jostled with piles of batteries and mounds of nuts and herbs. Osama bin Laden’s face stared out from packets of coconut balls, surrounded by a halo of cruise missiles and jets, next to heaps of sturdy beige women’s underwear and beauty products, dirty packets neatly arranged: soap and hand cream, body lotion, tubes of make-up. Small boys stood by, selling toilet paper, a few sheets at a time.
Faisal had told me the market got its name from when the river, after being dry for years, suddenly filled and washed away all the stalls.
“And of course, from the film,” he had said. “We all loved Titanic. When the Taliban banned movies, we risked everything to watch it. We got a videotape from the market and borrowed a machine to play it. I remember bringing it home on my bicycle, hidden inside my jacket. I was so scared, but so excited. I watched it in secret with my friends. The Taliban had made us paint the windows black so the women couldn’t be seen from outside, so we were safe. We watched it over and over again. Such a beautiful story.”
As I had stayed longer in Kabul I had realized that Titanic was everywhere. Celine Dion’s voice echoed through the alleyways of the old town. Leonardo DiCaprio, arms wide, was on stickers stuck on bikes, on transfers ironed onto the seats of taxis, labels sewn onto the pockets of the shirts young men were starting to wear instead of traditional clothes. They cut their hair like his, and brushed their teeth with Titanic toothpaste. Kate Winslet was stencilled onto the walls of women’s beauty parlours, where you could have your face dusted with Titanic powder, or your fingertips dyed with Titanic henna, or scent yourself with Titanic Making Love Ecstasy Perfume Body Spray. Faisal’s sisters loved Kate Winslet’s pale skin and blonde hair, and admired the way she shaped her eyebrows.
“The Titanic Bazaar?” said Rashida now. “I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of it. Bazir? Do you know?”
He shook his head.
“Never mind,” I said. “It must have closed down.”
I was still thinking of Faisal. Usually he would have been quick to invite me to his house. I wondered if the fact that I wasn’t welcome any more was anything to do with him being married. When I got back to the guest house, I called him and said I wanted to pick his brains about how the city had changed. He asked me to dinner at his house, as I’d hoped.
Eighteen
ELIZABETH WILLOUGHBY’S DIARY
10th February 1915
Robert came to visit every day of his leave. Two of his Pathans are here, one missing a leg, the other with terrible wounds to his head. It moved me to see him sitting with them, chatting quietly in Urdu. I could see how pleased they were to see him, and how they respected him. He was patient with them, staying for hours by their bedsides, never giving any indication of boredom or of wanting to leave. Every so often he would look up and catch my eye, and we would smile at each other.
The day before he left, we sat, glum, over afternoon tea, trying to cheer ourselves up with some rather aged seed cake.
“Is it true what they say about the Pathans,” I asked. “That they’re the best fighters of all, a true warrior race?”
Robert shrugged. “There’s a lot of old guff spouted about it. The Pathans are good fighters, but so are the Gurkhas and the Rajputs and the Sikhs. If one’s invaded all the time, one becomes used to it, and up to the fight. The tribal territories where the Pathans come from, up on the frontier with Afghanistan, are wild. They’re ruled by bullets and blood feuds, so they need to be good fighters to survive.”
“Are they good at taking orders?”
He snorted and said they were, up to a point, but they bore no allegiance to anyone. At the end of last year, when Turkey entered the war, they hadn’t liked the thought of conflict with other Mohammedans, nor the prospect of fighting near their holy places, and so lots of them had deserted and ran off home. They were probably back, fighting the British on the North-West Frontier.
“It’s not so odd,” he said. “When one thinks about it: their forefathers probably fought against us in the first Anglo-Afghan war back in ’39, and the second one too.”
Lighting a cigarette from the end of the one that he’d been smoking, he added that perhaps he was becoming used to war, like them, and that it was curious, but somehow he wanted to get back to the Front.
“I almost miss the place,” he said. “Partly because every minute one remains alive one is really aware of it. Sometimes I feel quite reckless, somehow free.”
A sense of dejection overtook me, as if I were not enough for him.
“I’d rather you were careful,” I said, my voice sharper than I’d intended. “I’d like to have someone to marry when this beastly war is over.”
He looked startled. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Of course you would. So would I.”
There was a pause, then Robert asked me, in an off-hand kind of way, if I would write often, because my letters were something to live for. That made me feel better, and I said that of course I would.
“It would be wonderful if you could manage to write a little more too,” I said. “So that I can try to understand how things are. Sometimes it’s as if you’re back at school and worried about the masters reading them.”
He nodded, and said that he would try. He was pleased, he confessed, not to have to go through his men’s letters. All the other officers must, apart from those in the Indian Corps, who are excused from it because of the language barrier. Instead the letters are sent away to be translated and a report is posted back once a week on how morale is bearing up.
It isn’t great, apparently – morale, I mean. Robert said that it is the first time the men have fought outside Asia, and that it is terribly hard for them to adapt. A few weeks ago a wounded man wrote that he was “like a man who, once burnt, is afraid of a glow-worm”. The phrase had stuck in Robert’s mind, because it was such an Indian way of describing it. The man and his family knew what a glow-worm was, they would see them every night in their village, and so it would make sense to them. How could that same man possibly describe the trenches?
“An Indian Shakespeare would find it a challenge,” Robert said. “Let alone someone who has to get the company clerk to write his letters.”
Did he think the men knew that their letters were censored, I asked, and he said that he was sure they did, and invented little tricks to get around it, just as he had at school. It hadn’t been until he reached the fifth form that he had realized he hadn’t explained the code to his mother, and so she had never known what he meant.
“It’s no surprise that she never came to rescue me.”
He smiled as he said it, but for a moment he looked utterly lost. I thought of the little boy, aged four, being sent away from home, and felt terribly sad.
I went with him to the station, which was a mistake. As soon as we arrived I thought of the last time I was there, when the patients had arrived on the hospital train, reeling and limping along in their lice-infested uniforms. I hugged him close on the platform, breathing in the familiar smell of his hair oil, trying to imprint on my memory the feeling of his arms around me. As the train pulled away, I prayed he would come back to me whole.
Nineteen
I woke today at seven to the sound of seagulls, and for a moment didn’t know where I was. Outside, the weather was miserable, rain lashing hard against the terrace windows. I lay still for a while, letting my head sink back into the pillow, thinking over what to do. It was the kind of day for staying in bed, for reading Elizab
eth’s diary, drinking tea, but I was restless. It was too wet to go for a run, so I decided to visit the Pavilion.
Brighton was deserted, its pavements dark and slippery, salt wind whistling up through the side streets. The elegant houses of Kemptown were streaked with rain, their railings blotched with rust. The town was suddenly dismal, an out-of-season holiday destination, postcard corners curling in the damp, an empty chippy, a drab sex shop with a half-naked mannequin in the window. Cars splashed dirty water up from the road as they passed, the faces of their drivers set grim against the weather.
I stuck my hands in my pockets, put up my hood and trudged on. As I reached the Old Steine, I saw the domes and minarets, creamy white like the stucco of the seafront, next to roofs that looked like tents cast out of copper, green with verdigris. It’s such an odd building, the Pavilion, a two-hundred-year-old oriental fantasy, a seaside stage set that makes me think of the Taj Mahal and the Arabian Nights and Confessions of an English Opium Eater and ‘Kubla Khan’ all in one go – a crazy mash-up of styles and forms, a flight of fancy, fabulous, eccentric, a little bit vulgar, a folly, as out of place in Brighton as that replica of the Eiffel Tower in Kabul.
I passed under an ornate arch, stopping to read the inscription:
This gateway is the gift of India in commemoration of her sons who – stricken in the Great War – were tended in the Pavilion in 1914 and 1915.
Inside the Pavilion was decorated in lavish chinoiserie, another spice to the mix. A hundred bells hung in the long room that I went into first, dripping from the ceiling, interspersed with tasselled lanterns. Enormous Chinese figures looked down from a stained-glass window halfway up a staircase, complete with bamboo handrail.
I remembered Elizabeth saying that the walls had been covered up with khaki boards to protect them – and looking at them now, I could see why. They were gorgeous: crimson in the music room, overlaid with golden palm trees and pagodas, serpents winding around pillars and dragons breathing fire from the top of the curtain poles. The rest of it was just as extraordinary, the banqueting room set for a feast with silver and candles. Trompe-l’œil palm trees pointed their leaves down at the diners below; a chandelier dripped with strings of crystal beads.
Little boards in each room told the history of the place. It started off as a farmhouse bought by George, Prince of Wales – or Prinny, as his friends liked to call him – at the end of the eighteenth century. When his father went mad and he became Prince Regent, he got John Nash to transform it into an oriental palace and spent more and more time there, holding lavish parties and having a great old time. Later, Queen Victoria wasn’t amused by the decadence of her naughty uncle and sold it back to Brighton. She preferred to spend her summer holidays on the Isle of Wight, which tells you all you need to know about the difference between them.
I decided not to go to the exhibition about the Pavilion being used as a hospital – I didn’t want to ruin Elizabeth’s story. The rain had stopped and so, instead, I decided to take a wander down the Steine. At the very end of it, the pier was open for business as usual, jutting out over the sea, its neon lights brave against the dark sky. It’s as odd as the Pavilion, in its own way and like old Prinny and his entourage, the people on it are determined to enjoy themselves, to have a good time. On a whim – it seemed to be a day for whims – I decided to take a look.
Hardly anyone was on the wooden boardwalk except a few truant teenagers and an old lady with a shopping trolley eating a curled-up sandwich. Seagulls perched on the railings next to her, waiting, following every mouthful with bright black eyes. Despite its lack of customers, the pier was full of action and noise: lights flashing on the helter-skelter, a ghost train’s creepy laughter, waltzers spinning, the rickety-racket of the roller-coaster, the turning of the carousel. Bumper cars crashed into one another, the tide rushed underneath, all to a background of tinny stadium rock.
I looked back at the beach, the hunched figures making their optimistic way over the pebbles, at what was left of the heroic West Pier, still resisting the sea’s advances. The smell of chip fat and candyfloss was making me feel nauseous, and it was starting to rain again, so I decided to shelter in the arcade.
It was hot inside, blasts of warm air coming from vents to ruffle the leaves of plastic pot plants. The carpet was sticky underfoot. I blinked as I entered, first at the darkness, then at the lights flashing everywhere, inviting punters to come and play, to win money piled up high on the penny falls or grab a stuffed meerkat in military uniform.
The noise was even worse: banging music, the whizz-zoom of Formula One, machine-gun fire, explosions. Men stood, legs apart, clutching plastic guns, shooting at screens where virtual opponents ran through jungles and swung across ravines. I leant against one of the slot machines, watching a teenage boy play a game called The Terminator in a chair that lit up, spun him round and catapulted him into a war zone. He gave it his full attention, dodging snipers, shooting from the machine gun attached between his legs to the chair. He was utterly focused: shoulders hunched, mouth tight, eyes narrow.
I recognized the look on his face, complete concentration combined with a pleasure that was almost sexual. That was what threw me. Suddenly the clinking and beeping and explosions, the flashing lights, the heat were too much. I began to twitch, first my head, then my shoulders and the rest of my body. Sweat ran down my face and my back, and I felt my heart pound hard in my chest. I closed my eyes, trying to block out the noise and the lights and the smell, but then saw bodies lying at broken angles in dark rivers, and myself trying to make my way through it but being dragged down until I was gasping for breath, gulping, choking, almost drowned. I tried to scream but could only hear the tak-tak-tak of machine guns.
Then I was sitting in a glass cubicle that smelt of floral air freshener, a middle-aged man kneeling at my feet.
“Get her some water,” he said, and a girl with a blond ponytail went quickly out of the door.
The man put his hand on my arm. I flinched.
“Are you OK?” he asked.
He looked anxious. I wondered what had happened.
“Yes,” I said. “I think so.”
“You had us worried,” he said. “At first I thought you were drunk, but then it looked like some sort of fit. Then you passed out, so we brought you into the office. Heather’s done a first-aid course. She said it was OK to move you.”
I looked at his round, concerned face, the face of a man who had never done anything bad in his life.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ve been a bit ill. I’m sorry for bothering you.”
“Should we get someone? A doctor or something?”
I stood up. “No, no, it’s all right. I’m sorry. Thank you.”
I left the cubicle just as the blonde girl came back with a beaker of water.
“You all right?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, and stumbled out.
I know I should go to the doctor to see if I’ve caught something. I wouldn’t be surprised – I’ve lost count of the times I’ve caught giardia from bad water, scabies from dirty sheets, malaria from when the mosquitoes managed to get through the layers of repellent and socks and nets.
Do you remember when I came back from the Congo with it – malaria, I mean, the bad sort, cerebral? How you came to get me at the airport and I walked straight past because I didn’t recognize you? I was so hot, even though it was December. You just grabbed me and hugged me and took me to the taxi. I remember sitting in the back, leaning into you and smelling your Italian perfume – what was it? Acqua di Parma, I think – and knowing that I didn’t have to do anything any more, just let you take me home and put me into bed, where there’d be fresh sheets and a glass of cool water on the nightstand. There isn’t anyone to do that now, Susie. This time I’m on my own.
Twenty
ELIZABETH WILLOUGHBY’S DIARY
14th February 1915
Robert listened to what I said about writing more often. This morning was Vale
ntine’s Day, and a postcard was waiting for me on the hallway table: hand-stitched embroidery on fine muslin, bright silks, red and yellow, spelling out the words “Thinking of you” against a background of flowers and birds and a single butterfly, its wing a Union Jack. On the back were four short words:
I AM, I DO.
It brought a tear to my eye, meaning just as much as the most passionate of letters, because I knew that Robert must have seen it somewhere in France just as he arrived back from his leave, thought of me and bought it then, and so what he had written was true.
As luck would have it, when I arrived at the Pavilion, I was met by more postcards: a box of the ones made from Mr Fry’s photographs had been delivered. We passed them around, excited. The Pavilion was splendid, the patients beautifully turned out, with not a whisker out of place.
The one of the banqueting room was the best, I thought. He had taken it in a clever way so that the lotus chandeliers fitted into the picture and light streamed into the room through the long windows, shining onto the patients. I was in the middle of the picture, lit by a sunbeam, like some sort of angel of mercy in an Italian painting, which was flattering, if somewhat far from the truth.
I sent one to Robert, tucked inside an envelope.
“Spot your Florence Nightingale!” I wrote on the back.
It seemed a little odd to be sending a postcard to the Front, although not perhaps as odd as receiving one. It’s as if we’re all trying to pretend that nothing very bad is happening. But the list of the dead in the Gazette gets longer every week, and it is just as bad for those who have survived.
This afternoon, just after I had written my postcard to Robert, Lal Bahadur had another of his terrible fits. I happened to be passing by his bed when I noticed him staring ahead of him. His eyes widened, fixed on whatever it was that he saw, then he started to shake. I knew after the last time that I wasn’t supposed to help, but I couldn’t stop myself. I went to him and took hold of his shoulders, trying to bring him back to reality. It didn’t work: he began to howl, like before, but worse: an eerie, terrible noise that wasn’t human.
The Repercussions Page 8
