The Caprices

by Sabina Murray

  “You’re a local boy, aren’t you, Harry?”

  “Not far from here. Serampore.”

  “It must be nice to be near home.”

  “I spent most of my childhood at boarding school. I know more about Jubbulpore than about my home town.”

  “You went to Christ Church?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “None of that sir, sir in the mess, Harry. Call me Edgar.”

  “Edgar.” Harry skidded his chair a few inches closer, not to be intimate, but to place himself directly under the electric fan, which was churning the smoky air with a desperate chug-chug. He glanced quickly at the bar, where Tunsdale waggled his eyebrows at him and raised a tumbler.

  “And what business is your father in?”

  Harry took out his cigarette case. “Unfortunately, my father is dead. But my grandfather is quite alive.” He tapped a cigarette on the case. “We’re in jute.”

  “Yes. Fine stuff, that.”

  “My grandfather says that he owes much to war and that having me in the military is somehow settling his debt.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Jute is fine stuff, true, but it became profitable during the Great War when it was needed to make sandbags.”

  Berystede responded with a gruff “Haw, haw.”

  At the bar, Tunsdale was balancing a cigarette on his forehead. No doubt, someone now owed him a drink. Harry looked back to the major. The major was studying Harry’s face, the aquiline nose, the deepset hazel eyes, the anomalies that made Harry untouchable and handsome.

  “Gillen . . . Is that Scottish?” asked Berystede.

  “My grandfather is from Aberdeen.”

  “And your mother?”

  “From Goa, a Christian. She met my father while vacationing in Simla.”

  “And I’m all English,” said Berystede, leaning in. “Although I think there’s a lot to be said for cross-breeding, hybrid vigor and the like.” The major signaled a waiter for another round and Harry realized that the reason he drank so lightly was that liquor went straight to his head. “Take you, for example,” he said. “The finest horseman in the area.” Berystede leaned back into the cushion of his chair. His pale blue eyes narrowed. Harry knew the conversation had taken a direction. “Harry,” said the major, “have you ever thought of joining the club?”

  “The club?” Harry composed his features and his head moved to one side. “I can’t say that I have.”

  “Well, why not?”

  “With all due respect, although I am often termed a European I am undeniably Indian.”

  “The club takes Indians. We voted on it six months ago.”

  “I’m aware of that, sir. However, how many Indians are members?”

  “You’d be the first one.”

  Harry rattled his ice cubes. “I am intrigued.”

  “You are polite. You’re wondering why I’m so determined to make you a member.”

  “I’ll ask you civilly,” said Harry and smiled. “To what do I owe this honor?”

  “Honestly? You owe this honor to polo. We lack the numbers and you’re the best player at camp.”

  Harry nodded a couple of times. Berystede’s earnest, vulnerable face was gratifying and for a moment Harry toyed with the idea of telling the major that he wasn’t interested, not at all, in joining the estimable club.

  Harry waited in line for water with an Australian named Smalls. Three years in Changi had transformed Smalls from an already wiry man into a knot of leather and bile. Smalls was Harry’s closest friend. Harry found little to like about him, but Smalls took survival for granted, and in that he was singular. He also maintained a healthy anger and could find a responsible party for any indignity or pain, which made prison life seem less of a series of divine slights. For example, the tinea that had first ravaged Harry’s feet, then buckled his nails until they dropped off. The fungus had lodged in his testicles where it burned and itched, making him sleep only in fits. There was fungus on his scalp and under the foreskin of his penis. The itch was so constant and uniform that Harry began to hear it buzzing in his ears. This buzzing itch had quickened his heartbeat and was unseating his brain.

  “I’ve got the Changi balls too,” said Smalls. “Fucking Poms.”

  “You blame the English for that?” asked Harry.

  “And who do you blame? Who sent you here? Who gives a shit if there are Japs in Singapore?”

  Harry nodded.

  “There are Singapore slanty-eyes and Jap slanty-eyes. What’s the bloody difference?”

  “You’re angry.”

  “I’m alive,” Smalls said. He seemed to find the complacency of the dead offensive.

  Four hours passed and Harry was still squatting in the sun.

  The guard in charge of overseeing the distribution of water had disappeared without explanation. Now, all the prisoners in line were quiet and vigilant. Three men had already been carted off, dead or nearly dead. Harry’s tongue was thick in his throat and he breathed with short breaths through his nose. His hands were folded over his head to shield him from the sun. He had meditated himself into a half-wakeful state in order to conserve energy and was rocking very slowly back and forth on his heels, which he thought helped his circulation. The man in front of him, whom he recognized but did not know, had blood dripping through his loincloth onto the baked dirt. Harry had closed his eyes because the redness of the man’s blood made him dizzy. He wondered if the man contemplated his imminent death, whether he took it for granted.

  The sound of a truck grinding up to the gate stirred Harry and he looked, squinting, over at the guards swinging the gate open. The sun was brilliant on the barbed wire, glittering in places like earthbound stars. No. The stars were in the space of air just before Harry’s eyes. He would soon pass out and if he did that, he might not get water and there was a strong likelihood that this would be his last memory of life. The truck entered the compound. The engine was shut off and then the tailgate dropped with a screech and boom. Harry turned his head with effort. More prisoners. More men. He watched as they lowered themselves from the back of the truck, aware of their fragility yet poised and fluid, worried about attracting the attention of the guards. Harry hazarded a deep breath. The last of the men descended the truck, a small thin man in a loincloth with a fringe of gray hair, on his beaky nose a pair of wire glasses, and for one moment Harry thought he saw the radical Gandhi. He shut his eyes briefly. It was no hallucination. The man was still there, but it was not Gandhi. No. The man in the loincloth and glasses was Major Berystede.

  “Move on, Harry,” said Smalls, who was poised at his shoulder. “Move on.” The guard had returned to the pump and slowly the coils of waiting men moved forward.

  Harry knew there was no room for mistakes. He could not slip up. A careless word here or there would be failure. A dirty cuff or a missing stud and it was over. He would have to make it through dinner, drinks, and maybe a game of poker. He would be scrutinized the whole time. The members then voted by writing a ball beside their names—a white ball would mean acceptance, a black ball rejection. But how much could Harry care about all of this? He could see his face reflected in the toe of his shoe, which struck him as extravagant and ridiculous. He remembered how his grandfather had made him jog up and down the driveway in bare feet to toughen him up, to save him from his mother’s “oily sweetness.” But even his grandfather, opinionated and coarse, with curls of hair in his nostrils and ears, whose temper sent the servants scurrying and his wife into silent fury, even he would find Harry’s membership impressive. A victory for Harry would be a victory for all Anglo-Indians. Despite the fact that Harry did not see himself as a victim, he had faithfully cataloged the many slights against him: playful references to his “touch of the tar,” the awkward moments at the end of the evening when his British friends retired to the white-only brothel and he to his room, the English girl he had met while at Christ Church who had thought him fine to fool around with, but not to take home. Harry to
ok a deep breath and went to the mirror to finish his hair.

  The table had been set according to the Order of Precedence, which meant Harry was way down at the end, but thankfully close to Tunsdale, who was also a lieutenant. Someone’s young nieces had shown up to tour India and were seated to Harry’s left and across the table. The blond one seemed both exceedingly young and exceedingly stupid. She stared openly at Harry, as did her dark-haired sister, who was older and, although not much more than twenty, somehow past her prime.

  “Harry’s a great polo player,” said Tunsdale. “He’s also a lot of fun.”

  “What’s that?” asked Major Berystede, who sat farther up, appropriately seated between the wife of a senior Indian Civil Service officer and an engineer.

  “More polo,” said Mrs. Berystede, who was seated across and two seats down from the major. “I prefer hunting.”

  “The major’s wife is an excellent shot,” said Tunsdale.

  “And hunter,” continued Mrs. Berystede. “In fact, I’ve been hunting in India for so long that I prefer jackal to fox. I think they run better.”

  This last statement was met with some approval.

  “Is it true,” said the blond-haired girl, addressing Harry, “that Indians keep harems?”

  “Not a harem in the Arab sense of the word,” Harry said, smiling in studied calm, “but often the women are kept out of sight and in the past more wife than one was permitted.”

  “Is it true,” she continued, “that Indians burn young widows?”

  “Oh shut up, please,” said her sister. “I’m sorry. I apologize on her behalf.”

  “No, don’t do that,” said Harry. “I prefer when people say what they’re thinking. How else can we understand each other?” The table had hushed silent to hear Harry’s response. “The practice to which you refer is suttee, which is now illegal thanks to a law introduced by the British and quickly embraced by a majority of Indians.” True or not, it was the appropriate thing to say. It occurred to Harry that this ignorant girl had been seated by him precisely for the members to gauge his performance under pressure. He waited for her to approach the topic of the Quit India movement, to ask him what he thought of England’s shameless draining of India’s resources, the mayhem that would follow their (hypothetical) withdrawal. But the girl, like the majority of people seated at the table, was blissfully unaware of the movement or didn’t think it table-worthy conversation. Which was fine with Harry, because on this point, as with everything that made him choose between India and England, he was deeply conflicted.

  After dinner, Harry thought that he had earned a cigarette on his own. There were people on the veranda and Tunsdale had only just left him to go to the bathroom, so Harry did not feel the need to engage in another conversation just yet. But he was not so lucky. Berystede’s jackal-slaying wife was quickly shortening the distance between them, glass raised, and in Harry’s judgment, a little unsteady on her feet.

  “Harry,” she said, “may I call you Harry?”

  “Of course,” said Harry.

  “And I’m Christina and you may call me Mrs. Berystede or Major Berystede’s wife.” She laughed. “I’m so sorry that we are so horribly boring and pretentious.”

  Harry smiled nervously. “I haven’t judged you so harshly.”

  “You’d think we could do better in this club,” she said.

  “Better?”

  “I mean, you’re the first Indian we’ve even considered, and you’re the whitest Indian I’ve ever seen.” Mrs. Berystede flagged the waiter, who pretended not to see her and continued to another group. “Damn,” she said, “let’s go inside and get a drink.”

  “I’ll follow you as soon as I finish this,” said Harry, raising his cigarette, “in the moonlight.”

  Mrs. Berystede nodded pleasantly, then plowed inside, passing Tunsdale in the doorway.

  “Well, she’s got good strong legs, a full set of big, white teeth, and a nicely shaped head,” said Tunsdale under his breath. “She’d make a fine horse.”

  Harry closed his eyes. “They’re not going to make me a member.”

  “If they do, wonderful. If they don’t, to be honest, in your position I’d have more fun bicycling through a minefield.”

  Harry smiled. Tunsdale was right. Not only did Harry not belong in the club, but he also felt no sadness at being the outsider. He tossed his cigarette off the veranda and watched it burn briefly before it was extinguished. One day this club would be nothing but a queer memory. Now it was no more than a laughable reality.

  Harry went inside to find the major and indulge in some safe horse talk. The members were gathered in clusters, rattling ice, sweeping smoke in exaggerated gestures as if involved in an elaborate ritual to ward off the passage of time. The major was nowhere to be seen and Harry accidentally made eye contact with the dark-haired, chain-smoking niece. Harry suspected she’d been sent to India as a last-ditch effort to get her married.

  “Lieutenant Gillen,” she said, “I’d love to hear about the real India.”

  Harry steeled himself for a discussion of elephants. He sat down on a two-seater couch a comfortable distance from the girl’s chair. She put the cigarette between her thin lips and exhaled in angry, staccato puffs.

  “I was on a hunt last week and fell into a creek. Can you imagine?” She seemed disgusted by this, but somehow expected Harry to be charmed. “My whole right side is sore and I’ve got a terrible gash on my shin.”

  Harry was trying to decide whether it was courteous or indecent to look at the girl’s shin, when Mrs. Berystede showed up unexpectedly and sank down onto the couch next to him. Her knee bumped his and her drink spilled in a dark purple patch on the front of her lavender dress.

  “My fault,” said Harry quickly. He pulled out his handkerchief and handed it to her.

  “Thank you,” she said. She dabbed at herself in a casual way and her body relaxed against Harry’s. Harry edged himself onto the perimeter of the couch so that the majority of his weight was balanced on the balls of his feet. He had to turn to look at her at a pivot, over his shoulder. She looked in her glass and rattled the ice. “This evening has the smell of death,” she said, “or maybe I’m just mortally bored.”

  Harry laughed and allowed himself to look at her. Mrs. Berystede was not pretty, not even handsome. Her nose was too big and her chin just a dimple in her jaw on the way to her neck, but she had lovely eyes, large and expressive and somehow, despite her wit, sad.

  “Do you have a family, Harry?” she asked.

  “Not of my own. I have two brothers and one sister.”

  “What do they do?”

  “My older brother is in the railways. My younger brother is in training for the Civil Service. And my sister is mad about archery and jazz. She does the books for the family business.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful.” Mrs. Berystede’s hand went to Harry’s shoulder. “I want a family,” she said. “Edgar tells me that I am mother to all of India. Why do I need a baby when I am mother to six hundred million people?” Mrs. Berystede began to tear up and the handkerchief strayed to her eyes. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Of course Edgar tells everyone that it’s me, but I’ve been to the doctor. I just get so angry.” The tears began to spill, but she managed a smile. “I want to shoot everything in sight.”

  Harry nodded, then raised his glass to Mrs. Berystede and drained it. He wished he could put his arm around her. “I can tell you are a good woman,” he said, “and I’m sure that you would be a wonderful mother. I am sorry.”

  “Oh,” said Mrs. Berystede, sitting suddenly straight, “you are so kind.”

  There was a silence in the room. Harry looked up and an informal assembly was watching him. He was not surprised. In the front row was a shocked Major Berystede. Behind him and to the left was Tunsdale, who was smiling with support and sympathy. Harry knew he had just been unanimously blackballed.

  Tunsdale and Harry rode back to the cantonment together. “What an out
right disaster,” said Tunsdale. “I haven’t had that much fun at the club since I joined. What was the old bag telling you, anyway?”

  “Nothing of interest,” said Harry. “She was just a bit lonely.”

  “And wanted the company of the handsome, swarthy lieutenant.”

  “She’s right to be crazy here,” said Harry. “It shows the presence of—”

  “Of what?”

  “Of a soul,” said Harry and they laughed.

  The next morning Harry awoke to both the sting and blur of a headache. The walls were spinning around the room and his attendant, although studiously solemn, had a merry twinkle in his eyes.

  “I feel terrible,” Harry confided. “Give me some water.” Harry sipped cautiously from the edge of his glass. His stomach was very delicate.

  “Sir,” said his servant. He gestured around the bridge of his nose and Harry hazarded to touch the cheekbone beneath his left eye, which was throbbing. The flesh around his eye was swollen and tender.

  “Is it bruised?” asked Harry.

  “Quite black,” said his servant. “It looks very painful.”

  “Wonderful,” said Harry.

  With some effort and a good deal of help from his servant, Harry managed to get dressed and shaved. His mind kept flashing images at him—Tunsdale handing him his flask, the ensuing argument, Tunsdale and Harry at the army brothel (Harry fortified into feeling one hundred percent European), and the one knuckle-up punch from the unidentified fist, which had sent him flying right back into the arms of Mother India. Tunsdale had tried to pass Harry off as Welsh, despite the fact that all the men frequenting “the rag” knew him. In fact, Harry had been laughing when the punch hit him and even though his head was reeling and he had more pains than one, he chuckled to himself as he crossed the swept dirt of the garden and made the steps of the mess.

  He didn’t even notice Berystede smoking on the veranda.

  “Lieutenant,” said the major.

  “Sir,” said Harry.

  “What on earth happened to your eye?”