The Towers Of Silence (The Raj quartet)

by Paul Scott

  The writing-table caught his eye next. Set out upon it with noticeable precision were a briefcase, a field-service cap and a leather-bound swagger cane. The cane was parallel to the base of the briefcase and the cap lay between them with its badge facing front, squared up on an invisible line parallel with the other two. The three items were placed on the left of the blotter as if marking out that side of the desk as the new arrival’s, to correspond with the placing – on the left-hand side of the room facing the window – of the chair with the new occupant’s clothes on it and the bed in which he was asleep. A white line drawn from the middle of the window to the opposite wall would have defined the area which seemed to have been meticulously but silently claimed in the small hours.

  But on the blotter on Teddie’s side of the line there was an intruder: a piece of paper tucked into one of the leather corners. Teddie recognized it as a page torn from a Field Service Notebook. In clear rather tight handwriting it read: ‘I hope I didn’t disturb you. The man who helped me find my quarters said our orderly is called Hosain. I should be grateful if you would ask him to wake me with tea at 0830 but not before as I did not get in until 0300. The train was badly held up. I’m told breakfast is between 0800 and 0930 but I shall skip it. I look forward to meeting you later in the day, perhaps at lunch if we are messing together. Meanwhile my thanks and my apologies for any noise last night. Ronald Merrick.’

  In this note Teddie thought there was as much self-assurance as consideration. He went to the mess and on to the daftar by push-bike. At 1130 he was back in his quarters hastily packing his bedroll – Merrick was not there – and at midday was driving with the G.I, Lt-Colonel Selby-Smith, to the airfield. At 1230 he was airborne in an RAF Dakota for Delhi where he would meet the divisional commander for the first time. He was away for six days. When he returned, feeling run off his feet but happy to have come daily under the general’s eye as the ‘young Muzzy officer who wants to get married,’ he found that Captain Merrick was away on a course. In the interval Teddie’s tin trunk had arrived from Pankot, so had Merrick’s, from somewhere else. Merrick’s was just as old and battered as Teddie’s. The rank of captain was freshly painted in, however, and a band of new black paint obliterated something that had been written underneath the surname.

  Teddie, who never gossiped to servants only just managed to resist the temptation to ask young Hosain what Captain Merrick Sahib was like. He noticed that the boy took considerable care with the things Merrick had left behind and he resented this in an ill-defined way that made him feel generally at odds with his domestic arrangements.

  He was feeling similarly at odds with his work. There was a looseness as yet about the organization of divisional headquarters which made it difficult for him to grasp what was going on. In Delhi the general had talked a lot about what he called fluidity and about the fellow Wingate who had recently been behind the enemy lines down the road in Burma with a specially trained brigade, trying to play havoc with the Japanese lines of communication and being supplied by air. Teddie thought that this operation sounded like a costly and showy variation of the old cavalry role of sometimes penetrating enemy-held country, beating up their baggage trains and galloping back home: useful, an antidote to boredom, but hardly a pukka strategical operation of war. And the supply by air thing had reportedly become a fiasco once Wingate’s troops were out of the jungle and into the plains and having to move so fast to escape being trapped that stuff was dropped to them long after they’d had to leave the place they’d asked for it to be dropped to them in. Which meant the Jap got it. Worst of all, Teddie thought, when the operation petered out Wingate had told his chaps to split into groups and get the hell out by any means they could. From Teddie’s point of view this was like an officer abrogating his responsibility at the very moment when he was most responsible. That it had been the wisest thing to do only showed how unmilitary the whole affair was.

  Even so, the casualty list had been alarming. More alarming, to Teddie, was the way his own general talked about the Wingate expedition having provided the key to the problem of defeating the Japanese. Teddie had a professional soldier’s contempt for anything that came under the heading of guerrilla tactics. He did not want to swan around in the jungle with a beard and a bag of rice blowing up bridges. And now he was not sure that he much wanted to play messenger-boy in a top-brass outfit like Div HQ. He missed the comradeship of his old battalion. He missed the good feeling of knowing every sepoy’s name, the name of his village, the number and ages of his children, the state of health of his wife, all the things that turned the fellow from a number or a statistic in an order of battle into a man whose personal welfare was a prime consideration.

  But then Teddie thought of Susan, of the dizzy heights advocated by her mother, and accepted his present status as an essential trial and testing of his ability to rise to them. A chap, worse luck, couldn’t remain a cheerful subaltern or company commander for ever.

  ‘Delhi was pretty hectic,’ he told Susan in the first of the biweekly letters which his return to Mirat enabled him to resume. ‘I didn’t manage to drop round to see your aunt and uncle, Major and Mrs Grace, until the last evening. I told them it’s clear there isn’t any hope now of my joining you all in Srinagar either in August or September. Naturally I’m disappointed but we didn’t really expect it, did we, darling? As for the wedding the form here seems to be that we go ahead with the plans already made but stand ready for a rearrangement perhaps without much notice. It was nice to see your Aunt Fenny again. She got rid of the cold she caught in Pankot as soon as she got down into Delhi again. I also enjoyed meeting your uncle Arthur. He said he was glad to have the opportunity of seeing the chap he’s going to give you away to. He gave me the name and address of the houseboat contractor who’s fixing you all up in Kashmir so I can send a letter to await your arrival. You’ll have a lovely family holiday, I wish I were coming too but I’ll be too busy to mope, so don’t worry. I’m enjoying Mirat and beginning to feel my feet. I still haven’t met the man I’m sharing quarters with. Please thank Tony for me and tell him the trunk’s arrived safely. Now I can settle in properly. The rain’s been terrific here but there’s a lull at the moment. If my letters become a bit irregular you’ll know it’s only a matter of business before pleasure.’

  He had been about to write: ‘You’ll know it’s only because we’re out and about on schemes and exercises,’ but even news about training was useful to spies. Teddie had been fairly security-minded ever since in Burma his battalion (he could have sworn) had been infiltrated by fifth columnists.

  *

  Through the curtain of rain the distant fort looked like a stranded battleship. The general’s artillery had been pounding its walls for two hours with 5.5. In four minutes when the barrage lifted his airborne commandos would parachute in to the south to establish a perimeter, cut off the garrison’s flight, block advancing enemy reinforcements and mop up pockets of local resistance. The tanks would advance from the north in the van of lorry-borne infantry. Two battalions had already moved in a wide arc to launch an attack from the left and another was holding the right flank.

  The general stood, wrist cocked, eyes on watch, rain dripping from the peak of his red-banded cap. Inside the command lorry the R Toc crackled. Suddenly the general’s arm dropped, he turned his face up into the rain and after a few seconds smiled beatifically. A score of officers, including Teddie astride his motor-cycle, looked up into the sky. A vicious fork of lightning ripped across it. Teddie winced, blinded by the flash and deafened by the explosive bounce of thunder. When the thunder had gone tumbling and rolling out into the deep field where old Jove had thumped it, he heard a more homely sound which the general’s sharper ears had caught earlier: labouring aero engines. A lone Dakota appeared out of the monsoon clouds, roared overhead low enough for them to see the figure of a man standing in the open port; the air liaison officer presumably; and then flew back into them.

  ‘Well, gentlemen,’ the ge
neral said. ‘I think we may safely assume that we’ve taken Mandalay. Let’s go home.’

  Teddie muttered, ‘Good.’ They had been out on the ground for two days. He looked forward to a hot bath and a man-size scotch in the mess. As Div HQ sorted itself out into its several kinds of rough-country transport Teddie kicked his machine into life and went bumping and slithering down the muddy track to make sure that the general’s staff car was waiting at the crossroads. A couple of officers representing the reserve brigade were standing miserably under thin branched trees. The fort at Premanagar had vanished entirely behind the curtain of rain.

  *

  It was dark when Teddie got back. A light in the window of his room showed that the servants’ quarters had been alerted and that Hosain was prepared for him. He entered unbuckling his rain-sodden equipment, yelled for the boy and then, dropping his belt, holster, straps and pack on to the floor, paused – observing the signs of renewed occupation: a row of highly polished shoes, fresh underclothes and socks – not his own – already laid out on a chair for the morning, both beds with lowered nets and pair of slippers within foot reach; and on the other officer’s side of the writing-table a pile of books and pamphlets.

  There was something else on the table on Teddie’s side: a round chromium tray, a jug of water and a glass each with a beaded muslin cover – a tray such as could only be got from the mess bar by signing a chit and sending an orderly over with it. He heard Hosain at the back calling for the bhishti. There was a note under the tumbler. He slid it out. ‘I would have waited and joined you for dinner but I have an appointment. In view of the kind of weather I hear you’ve had on the scheme I thought you’d need this as well as a hot bath. R.M.’

  The tumbler held three fingers of whisky.

  ‘I say,’ Teddie said.

  What an extraordinarily decent thing to do. He sniffed the whisky and drank some of it neat then yelled for Hosain again and sat in a wicker arm-chair with his damp legs stuck out. The boy came in with a newly pressed suit of KD.

  ‘Well done, Hosain,’ Teddie said. But the suit was Captain Merrick’s. Teddie had to wait until it had been hand-flicked and hung in one of the almirahs before he could get Hosain to come and unlace his boots. He’d had them on for thirty-six hours. Relieved of them his feet felt alternately hot and raw, cold and raw. He smoked, drank and listened to the swoosh of water as the bhishti poured it from cans into the tin tub in the adjoining bath-house. He picked up one of Merrick’s books, opened it and stared at the incomprehensible Japanese text on the right-hand page. On the left-hand page there were questions in English and, underneath, the same question in phonetics to show you how it would sound if you asked it in Japanese. What is your army number? What is the name or number of your regiment? In what division is your regiment? Tell me the name of your divisional commander. What unit had the position on your unit’s left flank when you were captured?

  ‘Some hopes,’ Teddie said aloud. If you ever got close enough to speak to a Japanese soldier one of you would be dead a second later. That was how poor old Havildar Shafi Mohammed had been killed, reporting a wounded Jap lying out in the open and volunteering to bring him in. The Jap had had a grenade in his tunic. He must have pulled the pin surreptitiously when he saw the Havildar get within a few paces. They both went to Kingdom Come. Merrick was wasting his time learning a bit of Japanese.

  Teddie turned the page and displaced a piece of square-ruled paper which must have been marking the place Merrick had got to. In the tight neat handwriting was written: Lecture Note. 1942, approx 10,000. Berlin, Tokyo, Singapore, July ‘43. Mohan Singh. Bangkok Conf.

  ‘Sahib,’ Hosain said. He motioned shyly in the direction of the bath-house. Teddie replaced the marker in the book, carried his whisky into the next room and began to shed his clothes.

  He came back from the mess early. He was too tired even to write to Susan. He scribbled a note and pinned it to Merrick’s mosquito net. ‘Thanks for the drink. Have one on me tomorrow.’ He left Merrick’s bedside lamp burning, turned off his own, climbed inside his net and was asleep almost at once.

  Hosain woke him at 0700. He brought only one tray of tea. Hosain indicated Merrick’s huddled form, put both hands to his cheek, inclined his head, shut his eyes. Teddie scratched his head, understanding himself requested to be quiet, and went off to the WC. When he left for the mess at 0800 Merrick had still not moved.

  It is possible, perhaps, for death to come slowly, even gently, civilly, as if anxious to make the whole thing as painless as possible. One thinks of death at this juncture because Merrick represented Teddie’s. Coupled with the civility and consideration a certain reluctance could be detected, almost as if Merrick knew and kept giving Teddie a chance to pack his bags and go before a meeting actually took place. A final opportunity occurred that morning because Teddie saw Merrick and heard him talking for a good twenty minutes before the moment came to claim acquaintance and establish the specific relationship. But there was nothing in Merrick’s appearance that caused Teddie to feel uneasy.

  *

  After his schemes the general held post-mortems behind locked doors in the Garrison Theatre. During his career Teddie had sat through countless hours of what in common with other junior officers he called prayers. He found that what distinguished the general’s prayers were brevity, deadly earnestness and the presence – among the hybrid ranks of divisional, brigade, battalion and supporting arms officers – of VCOS and senior British and English-speaking Indian NCOS, who were seated not quite under the general’s eye but in constant danger of attracting it.

  One of Teddie’s jobs, he discovered, was to make sure that the NCOS from the British battalions did not sit in stiff-necked seclusion but were properly mixed up with their Indian colleagues. According to Selby-Smith the general had a bee in his bonnet about mutual trust and also about making the ordinary soldier feel he had a ‘share in the company’. Teddie thought that mutual trust was a matter of respect for each other’s achievements in the field more than of sitting next to a chap you didn’t know and hadn’t got time to get to know, and he wasn’t convinced of the value of the share in the company business when it involved the risk of an officer giving a silly answer to the general’s questions and making a fool of himself in front of non-commissioned ranks.

  The post-mortem began at 1100 hours. Since one brigade headquarters was stationed twenty-five miles to the east of Mirat and another twenty miles to the north and some of their battalions farther away still, most of the officers attending had had an early start. Some of them had stayed in Mirat overnight and looked the worse for it but neatness and formality of dress were among the things to which the general seemed to attach little importance. The general himself was wearing a set of cellular cotton overalls cut to look like battle-dress jacket and trousers and made in the new jungle green material that was not yet on general issue. His feet and shins were encased in black dispatch rider’s boots. This morning to Teddie’s horror he had a Paisley patterned scarf at his neck.

  He spoke from notes at a lectern on the stage. His aide and an NCO from the intelligence staff produced beautifully drawn giant-scale sketch maps which they pinned efficiently to the blackboard one after the other to illustrate the points the general was making. After a while Teddie had to admit that everything began to make sense to him. For the first time he fully understood what the scheme had been about. He was even aware that it had a kind of beauty. Formless, almost shapeless, the beauty consisted in the subtle cohesion of what seemed like disparate parts and in the extraordinary flexibility of each arrangement made to bring them together.

  Suddenly withering in his mind were the stiff and predictable patterns that made traditional military affairs so easy to grasp on paper, so difficult to put into operation when the real thing was all about you. His blood stirred momentarily with a new sense of excitement in his occupation. The general, direct and thrusting, was filling Teddie’s mind with poetry. Teddie sat physically composed as usual, w
earing the rather blank expression of a man not naturally receptive to any idea which took time to be expounded. Had the general noticed him particularly and glanced at him every so often to judge what sort of impression he was making on the young man he might have thought he was making none and so made a note to tell the Gl to replace him with a more alert and aggressive officer, in which case he would have done Teddie an injustice because Teddie’s soul, uncommitted a short while ago, had risen to its feet and was gallantly attempting to expose itself totally to the revelation.

  If recognition of talent had been the same as having it Teddie might have blossomed under the general’s eyes. When the general threw the meeting open to questions Teddie’s soul sat down, finding itself dumb, unwilling to expose itself further, but it had planted a hopeful flag. Teddie had been won over, to what he was not sure, but the boots and the Paisley scarf were now part of the man whose man he felt he could become. You couldn’t call the boots and the scarf stylish but they were not really flamboyant, Teddie decided. They were idiosyncratic marks of identification.

  The post-mortem was wound up by the general with a quick but comprehensive summary of the main lessons learnt and a look into the future from which Teddie got a fleeting but satisfactory glimpse of his own as one that involved no immediate move from Mirat. The formation was still in the process of working-up exercises. These would lead to a period of intensive training for jungle warfare.