by John Masters
I went in, closed the door behind me, and stopped quickly. My heart missed a beat. It was a bare room with a desk and three or four chairs. A naked bulb hung low over the desk on a long flex from the ceiling. There were maps on the walls, and the man looking at one of them was not Colonel Savage but his adjutant, Graham Macaulay.
He turned round, and I moved back half a step. He said in a low voice, ‘Sorry about last night. Don’t hold it against me.’
I said, ‘Where’s Colonel Savage?’
‘He’ll be back in a minute,’ he said. ‘My office is through there.’ There was a door in a partition to his right. ‘Yours is there.’ He nodded at the opposite wall; there was another door, open, and through it I saw a corner of a small dark room.
He said, ‘Am I forgiven? You’re so—damn it, you’re beautiful. I just forgot myself.’
I said, ‘I haven’t forgiven you, and I won’t forget.’
I looked at him, and he still gave me the creeps, but I didn’t hate him. In a kind of unpleasant way I was grateful to him, because he’d set me free. I have always admired the English and, like the rest of us, pretended to be more English than I am. When Macaulay tried to rape me he broke that chain. I was free. If I wanted to like Ranjit, I could. If I wanted to turn toward India, my home, I could.
He said, ‘Shhh! Well, you must expect some male admiration, with those eyes. I just can’t help liking you, you know——’
Colonel Savage came in through Macaulay’s office. He glanced from Macaulay to me. Macaulay had come quite close to me while he talked. Honestly, I think he was sure that I would have let him do what he wanted to the night before, if only Ranjit had not interrupted him.
Colonel Savage said, ‘All right, Macaulay.’ Macaulay went back to his office. Colonel Savage said coldly to me, ‘That’s your office, Miss Jones. What did you find out?’
He thought that I had been encouraging Macaulay again. His nostrils were pinched with anger, but I didn’t care by then. I told him what Kartar Singh had said. When I had finished he said in the same hard voice, ‘Good. I’ll talk to the Collector. I’ll let you know if we decide to move any troops. We probably won’t just yet. Your father has been kind enough to ask me down to your house tomorrow evening. He is also going to invite Mr Taylor. I am telling you in case you decide to be out at that time.’
He was making me angry in spite of myself. I said, ‘When did you see Pater—my father—sir? He’s not in to-day.’ It was a foolish thing to ask.
‘He takes Ninety-Eight Up through, doesn’t he?’ Colonel Savage said sarcastically. ‘I saw him on the platform—at sixteen-forty-four hours, if you want to know the exact time. And if you want to know what I was doing, I was just hanging idly around. And when I left the station I went straight to the Collector’s bungalow, where Taylor nearly ran over me, and you fell into my arms. You may go now. There is a lady’s bicycle waiting for you outside, complete with lamp, pump, and tool-bag.’
I saluted and went out, feeling that my face had been drained of blood and was sallow and pale brown and ugly. But there was still the undercurrent of thankfulness, of release. Macaulay had freed me; now Savage was pushing me farther away—from the English, from Patrick, from all the stagnation of the past.
At home, exasperated and tired and a little lightheaded, I was pleased to see that Rose Mary was not in. At that time of the evening Mater would usually be sitting in the back of a certain shop in the Little Bazaar, chewing betel nut and gossiping with the shopkeeper’s wife. She only went there when Pater was on a train. It was an open secret that she did go, though, and Pater was probably the only person in the Old Lines who didn’t know it. (The Railway Lines, where the bungalows of the railway people are, are called the Old Lines because they are built on the site of a military cantonment that was destroyed in the Mutiny.)
I ate a cold supper quickly and went into the parlour to read. But I could not read. On the page I saw faces instead of words. Inside myself I felt the lump that represented Patrick, and that made me think of all the people who seemed determined to drag me down. I brought their faces up, one by one, into my mind, and tried to see a single expression that was not set against me. I got up, switched off the tight, sat down again, and closed my eyes.
Colonel Savage. He was hard, cruel, rude, self-willed. I did not really understand why he made himself so unpleasant to me. But he did, and it helped. I had noticed three small round patches, near the neck, in the bush shirt he’d been wearing that evening. The ugly white light in his office showed them up on the faded green of the material. And he had a puckered dead-white scar in his neck a little higher up, on the left—bullet wounds from a machine gun, I supposed. He was lucky to be alive.
Macaulay. It is difficult to describe how ‘bad’ he felt. Not that I do not like to be admired by men, but he was like a rubber lizard that came crawling through slime to get at me.
Rose Mary. We were sisters, but no more. She had always been man-crazy, and from the way she spoke to Patrick, and Patrick’s embarrassment, I was sure she’d slept with him while I was away. I didn’t blame Patrick, somehow, but it made everything Rose Mary did aggravate me even more than it used to. For instance, when the telegram came from G.H.Q. that monday morning, we were both still in bed. Our rooms were next to each other, and we shared the same bathroom. As soon as Nathoo had given me the telegram, Rose Mary came into my room. Her hak was in curl papers, and her face was wet with perspiration. When she’d read the telegram she was very anxious that I should somehow get out of the job. I knew she wanted to keep me away from working with Patrick. That was probably the main reason, foolish though it was, that I did not pretend to be sick.
I wondered where Rose Mary was. I think I knew, but to myself I pretended to be wondering.
Patrick. I tried not to think about him, but he came up. He had a loud voice. Sometimes he acted like a bully, sometimes like a soft-hearted old woman. He thought he was a good driver, but he just held that precious Norton on the road by sheer strength, which I know is not right. He wore his topi all day and most of the night, to show he was not an Indian.
And then I thought, he loves me, and I’ve known him since I was a little girl. I know him best of anyone in the world.
Quickly I thought of Ranjit—Ranjit Singh Kasel. Ranjit was sure the Congress had had nothing to do with the derailment at Pathoda. Why was he sure? Was he secretly a Congress man himself? I was beginning to sympathize with anyone who was against the British, and Congress was certainly against the British. Ranjit wasn’t angry with Savage or the soldiers. He had said, that night after Macaulay had gone, that Colonel Savage was only a representative of the system—imperialistic capitalism. He talked earnestly, and all the time he quoted his mother. He knew about our troubles over St Thomas’s School. He looked at me with his large solemn eyes, and I thought he was weighing me up. Would I snap at him if he gave his honest opinions? Was I interested enough to listen? He must have taken confidence, because what he said then about our situation, the position of the Anglo-Indians, was exactly what I’d come to believe myself since my return to Bhowani.
He was upset when I asked him why he didn’t wear the Sikh bangle, why he’d cut his hair, why he was an atheist. Atheists are very rare in India. He didn’t really explain; he only defended his mother’s point of view. He was a very sweet-tempered, kind man. If he kissed a girl, I thought, the girl would feel sweet and dedicated, but I did not think she would be excited. I wondered.
Sitting in the darkened parlour, I tried to imagine that the light was on and Ranjit was sitting there with me. What would we talk about? Dancing? He couldn’t dance, not our way. Music? His music was so different that it sounded to us like cats fighting. Food? Houses? Clothes? Drinks? There would be nothing for us to talk about, at that time, except serious things like politics and strikes and the future of mankind.
But now I couldn’t talk to the English or to my own people about anything except clothes and drinks and dancing.
&nbs
p; I opened my eyes slowly. The front-door latch clicked with a tiny noise. Through the wall I heard fast, light breathing in the passage. I sat still, my hands gripping the arms of the chair. I heard Rose Mary’s whisper. ‘She’s not in. I’ve looked.’
But hadn’t they seen my bicycle? No. I’d put it away at the back, and they hadn’t enough sense left to look for it there. They were thinking of other things. Patrick gasped ‘Quick, oh, quick!’
The words and the gasping were like a trigger. Johnny Tallent had said that to me, the same way, the same voice, in another dark passage as we struggled to another dark bedroom. I had had even less excuse. I had not been drinking, while Rose Mary and Patrick had. But the trigger clicked in me, and I stood up, my legs stiff and trembling, my eyes dry, and my hands like claws, the nails piercing into the palms.
I heard them shuffling along the passage and thought, Why do I care? I heard Rose Mary’s door squeak, and I thought, Why won’t Patrick disappear from inside me? I heard the bed creak to welcome them on to it.
I stood, shaking, in the middle of the room and searched round in the darkness for something—a knife, a club. There was nothing. And yet I could still reason. I thought, I can make this another break, another horror like Macaulay’s, which will free me from another set of chains. And yet truly I was helpless. What I did I had to do.
I slipped out into the passage, making no sound, and went silently to Rose Mary’s door. They wouldn’t have heard me then if I’d fired a pistol. I waited, listening, shaking, writhing, until the worst moment, the best; then I smashed the door open and switched on the light and ran in, screaming at them.
TEN
In that moment I had gone back where we came from, which was the Indian loose women of a hundred years ago, and I had taken Rose Mary and Patrick with me. I heard the words pouring out of my mouth, out of my heart—a flood of Hindustani and our cheechee English, thick with language that I have tried all my life to believe I never knew. I saw those two locked together like animals, going red and white by turns, and I knew that I, no less than they and the whole incident, was disgusting and degraded. It was the worst side, not of our blood but of our circumstances, and I knew I had not reached any freedom or broken any chains by wallowing in that filth.
The next evening I saw their half-naked bodies still in my mind, though actually they were fully dressed and sitting together on the sofa opposite Colonel Savage. Mater was to my right, perched on the edge of the small hard chair. Pater stood in front of the firescreen. They were all, except me, dressed in their best. I had deliberately not changed out of uniform. Pater’s blue serge suit shone because it was old, and his face shone because the night was hot. It was eight o’clock, and a couple of heavy showers had cooled the air but made it more humid.
Colonel Savage had just arrived. I saw with annoyance that he had changed into his pre-war khaki drill trousers and tunic, with which he wore a shirt, collar, and tie. I had expected him to think that any old clothes were good enough for an engine-driver’s house.
Pater gave him a foaming glass of warm beer and at once began to ask him about his medals. The first one was the M.C. with two bars. I know you can get the M.C. only for bravery in actual fighting against the enemy. It is not like the D.S.O., which your soldiers can win for you. Colonel Savage told Pater what the medals were, but when Pater asked how he had got them he said, ‘Fighting, Mr Jones. Look, I don’t know about you, but I’m hot as hell. Would you and your wife mind if I took off my coat and tie?’ He mopped his brow with a big khaki handkerchief and smiled at Mater. She smiled back, like a wooden image, but said nothing.
Pater said, ‘My, of course not, Colonel. Take off your coat. I think I will join you.’
Colonel Savage praised the beer. Then he raised his glass and pointed at the big picture of my great-grandfather and said to Pater, ‘Is that your grandfather?’ So Pater talked happily about the Sergeant, as we usually called the man in the picture.
Mater sat quiet, apparently seeing nothing, but after a few minutes, she said, ‘Father, you are sweating through your best shirt.’ Pater interrupted himself and looked at her with disgust, and then tried to continue what he had been saying about the Sergeant. But he could not. I could see very clearly then that really he was disgusted with himself for marrying her and sleeping with her. He was three-quarters English; she was one-quarter.
Colonel Savage said, ‘Do you mind if I smoke one of these?’ He pulled out his cigar-case. ‘Perhaps you don’t care for the smell, Miss Jones. They are radier strong.’ He glanced at Rose Mary, but not at me.
Rose Mary said, ‘Oh, no, Colonel Savage, I love the smell of cigars. It is so rich.’
‘Trichinopolies. About eight annas each, Miss Jones, that’s all, I’m afraid.’ He offered the case to Patrick and Pater, who both accepted. When his cheroot was drawing well he nodded at the picture of the Sergeant again and said, ‘He must have been a fine man. You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if he and my great-grandfather hadn’t met in these very parts.’
‘What a surprise!’ Pater said. ‘When could that have been?’
‘The Mutiny,’ Colonel Savage said. I could not honestly make out whether he was being nice to them as a sort of joke, something he could describe and laugh at when he got back to the mess, or whether he was really pleased to be there with them. He made no attempt to be nice to me.
Pater said, ‘Ah, the Mutiny was a bad time. We learned our lesson then, Colonel, didn’t we? You can never trust the niggers.’ Pater shook his head and puffed deeply at the cigar. He was very happy.
Some words are like goads. In the old days it hurt me to hear such words as ‘cheechee’ or ‘blacky-white’. In the last year, and particularly in the last week, it had become increasingly painful to me to hear ‘Wog’ or ‘nigger’ or even ‘native’.
Colonel Savage said, ‘In some ways the present situation is radier like eighteen fifty-seven.’
Pater said, ‘You mean there is going to be another mutiny, Colonel? Don’t say it—my God, no, don’t say that!’
‘There won’t be another mutiny,’ Colonel Savage said confidently. ‘But change is in the air. People are restive.’
Here was another goad—for Patrick this time. Even before Savage had finished speaking I turned toward Patrick, hoping he wouldn’t make a fool of himself, but knowing he would burst out with something.
Patrick said, ‘Everyone is always saying that. But nothing happens. Nothing will ever happen.’ I think that he had already drunk a lot of beer to give himself the courage to face me.
Colonel Savage said politely, ‘In many ways I hope you’re right. I’m not sure that I want any change, and I certainly don’t want it to be the cause of fighting, or to be caused by fighting. I don’t want to fight any more just yet.’
The light shone full on his long row of medal ribbons. Rose Mary asked him whether he liked fighting. Rose Mary had a trick, which she thought attracted men, of sometimes speaking very hesitantly and coyly, as though she was a little girl of eight.
Colonel Savage laughed quite naturally. He said, ‘On the whole I do like fighting. But not this week.’
‘Oooh, you like it!’ Rose Mary squealed. ‘You like killing people? I think you must be a very dangerous man, Colonel.’
Pater smiled fondly at her and at me, to see us both here talking freely with an English lieutenant-colonel. Patrick poured himself more beer, spilling some on the bearskin. Colonel Savage said, ‘It’s too difficult to explain unless you’ve been to the wars, and heaven knows I——’
Patrick said loudly, ‘Everybody couldn’t go to the wars.’
Colonel Savage said, ‘Of course not. I was only——’
‘The railways had to run!’ Patrick said. I think it had been a long time since anyone had interrupted Colonel Savage like that while he was speaking. Patrick got louder and more excited. He said, ‘It was essential work. Four times I tried to enlist, but they would not take me. They said——’
Then P
ater interrupted him by saying, ‘They would not make you a captain like you deserve, you mean!’ Pater meant to be unpleasant. He did not really like Patrick.
‘That’s not the point, Mr Jones,’ Patrick shouted. ‘They said I was essential! I had to stay and run the railway. There were no medals for that, though there was danger too. There were strikes and derailments sometimes, and men burned alive on the footplate in forty-two. There was plenty of danger on the railways, Colonel Savage, I tell you, but there were no medals.’
Colonel Savage kept calm, but Patrick’s shouting and excitement had infected Pater, so that now he was yelling. ‘Did they derail your desk, then, man?’ he yelled. ‘I was on the bloody footplate in forty-two, not you. You were making out your bloody graphs!’
I couldn’t stand it. I said, ‘There is no need to shout, Pater.’ I tried hard to speak softly, but I know that I was shouting.
Patrick took no notice of my warning. I had tried to tell him, to tell all of them, that we were behaving just the way Anglo-Indians are supposed to behave in the worst stories against us; but he blundered on. He shouted, ‘There was danger everywhere. I say the colonel does not know what it is like to be in danger all the time from people all round you, not knowing whether the police even would come in and cut our throats in bed, and having no guns to look after ourselves with. Nothing! I bet the Gurkhas would not like that, eh, Colonel?’
It was strange, since I understood Colonel Savage so little, and cared less, that I knew immediately that he would retaliate when Patrick mentioned the Gurkhas. His mouth relaxed, he leaned back more comfortably in his chair, and he said lazily, ‘Oh, the Army had that kind of danger too, you know. I hear that a good many chaps were evacuated with shellshock after three weeks in Calcutta—taxis backfiring on Chowringhee, Dakotas buzzing the Great Eastern, military policemen with dirty great guns in their holsters—loaded guns—American Pfcs with ten-ton lorries and six rows of gongs. I tell you, it was really terrifying.’
