by John Masters
‘What sort of a day did you have?’ Sumitra asked. I leaned back and she gently rubbed her fingers through my hair, massaging my scalp, leaning over the back of the chair, her breasts warm and firm against my head. I thought, she talks as if I’d just come back from the City on the 5.06. And what have I done? Crawled about the jungles, nearly had three men executed, thrown a woman out of her house. I began to tell her, and when it was over, drowsily, lovingly, we went to bed. Got to ask her to marry me, I told myself sleepily. This must go on for ever.
Chapter 13
The daily bus left Lapri at seven in the morning, reaching the capital four hours later. Margaret Wood, huddled among the zenana passengers in the back, was grateful that she was a woman, for the lightly drawn curtains, shielding the ladies from the public gaze, also gave some protection against the bitter chill of the upland morning. Later, exhaust fumes filtering up through the floorboards, and the swaying of the bus on the many corners beyond Sakti, made two of the women sick, and she had a hard time holding down her own queasiness. Usually, on these buses, the women chattered like magpies all the way, and she would be asked innumerable questions about her family and children; but the tension of the past months had seeped into the people’s hearts. Few talked, and they in low tones.
When the bus reached the alley which was its terminal in Chambalpur, she climbed down and walked stiffly out into the bustling street. There she stopped. Men passed her, gaping inquisitively. The dark eyes of women examined her through the mesh of burqas. She stood like a rock, awash in a half-tide.
She realised that during her sleepless night she had decided to come to Chambalpur to protest her banishment from Lapri, but she had not thought whom she was going to protest to. The government? Yes, but who in the government? The only man Henry had known was the Home Minister, and she could not remember his name. Two or three home ministers might have come and gone since Henry died. The army then. It was an army order that Faiz Mohammed had handed her. No, it was the Nawab’s own order, but given ‘on account of the military emergency’.
Rodney himself had done it, and she bowed her head in the street, remembering the sickening blow, like a kick in the stomach.
She had hurried out warm and expectant, and seen his face, cold and harsh ... He was a brigadier, and worked in Army Headquarters. It was him she must face, whatever the pain.
She beckoned to a passing tonga and told the man to take her to Army Headquarters. Sentries stopped the tonga at the gate and she filled out a form, and a chuprassy shuffled off with it. She waited. Half an hour passed and the chuprassy returned.
‘Nahin hai,’ he said, twisting his hand, palm upwards. Where had he gone, where could she find him? The man said something in Urdu which she could not understand. She asked him to repeat it and he said, in English, ‘Millitairy see-crut,’ and grinned tremendously.
The tonga driver, who had been dozing in his seat, the tonga parked under a tree, called out, ‘Who does she want to see?’
‘The English brigadier sahib.’
‘I know where he lives. I can take you to his house. He may be there.’
She climbed back into the tonga and the driver lashed the gaunt pony into movement. Rodney was living with that woman, the Rani of Kishanpur. The Indian papers had said so openly at the time she first went to Chambalpur. Margaret had no wish to meet her again. They had met once, exchanging a few polite words when she and her husband passed through Lapri on the way to Pattan. When she went through later, alone, Margaret had only seen her pass. Well, it was Rodney she had to talk to. The Rani would hardly force herself into such an interview.
The tonga stopped in front of a big house facing the lake. She paid off the driver and walked up the steps. A servant came, took her name, and left her on the wide veranda. The front doors were open, the tatty screen pulled up, and she looked into a marble hall hung with Bokhara rugs and aglitter with brass ornaments. The chuprassy returned at once, but stopped inside the hall, holding back a curtain. The Rani of Kishanpur glided through the doorway and towards her. Her violet sari made Margaret’s own khaki skirt and white blouse seem sordid.
‘Mrs Wood ... Rodney is not in Chambalpur and won’t be back until evening, I’m afraid. Can I help you?’ She smiled pleasantly.
Margaret said stiffly, ‘It is Brigadier Savage I wish to speak to, Your Highness.’
The Rani said, ‘It’s about the order to leave Lapri, I suppose? I know something about that. I can’t promise to be able to help, I’m afraid ... but won’t you please come in? You look pale. You must have come up by bus. That’s an experience to upset anyone.’
‘I didn’t think you would have travelled much by bus,’ Margaret heard herself saying and knew that her face was still set in frozen dislike.
The Rani smiled again. ‘Not much - but enough. I have taken many bus rides since coming here. You hear a lot, in buses, if you are hidden under an old burqa and let the other women talk, as they’re only too pleased to do. . . Please, Mrs Wood, let us be sensible. You have nowhere to go, you look hungry, Rodney won’t be back till six at the earliest. Please come in.’
Margaret finally managed to say it: ‘Thank you.’ She followed the other woman into the hall, through the curtain again held back by the bowing servant, and into a big drawing-room. A voice was speaking in Urdu from a radio in the corner and the Rani listened to it a moment before switching it off. ‘Mr Roy again,’ she said, ‘giving me another personal mention, too. I sometimes wonder whether the propaganda value of my coming here has not been outweighed by India’s ability to focus people’s dislike on me as a personal symbol of treachery to the cause - their cause. Me and Rodney - the Traitress and the Foreigner. . . The rather ornate furnishings are not my taste,’ she added with a gesture. ‘This is one of the Nawab’s guest houses. Make yourself comfortable. I’ll get us something to drink.’
She walked out of the room, her hips swaying, and Margaret heard her voice, faint, from farther along the airy house.
The pictures on the walls were dreadful Italian oleos, and a huge imitation-Rubens nude hung over the fireplace. There was a low coffee table, and a Buhl cabinet that clashed with everything else in the room, some chairs and sofas, the radio, and a locked roll-top desk. And on the desk a big picture of Rodney in a silver frame. She stood in front of it. It was recently taken, an enlargement of a candid camera shot of him in his Chambal brigadier’s uniform, smiling at someone off the picture to the left, his hair wind-blown and the clear mark of sun tan in the light values of his face. He looked wonderful, there, and so happy, but too thin round the jaw and cheeks, as though he were not eating enough and working too hard. This woman did not feed him properly.
She did not hear the soft glide of the Rani’s returning footsteps and did not know how long she had been standing there, in the door. The first that Margaret knew was her voice: ‘He is a man.’ The voice was sad.
Are you going to get married? Do you love him? Aren’t you ashamed of leaving your husband? Why don’t you go back to him? A hundred accusing questions flew to the tip of Margaret’s tongue; but she said only, ‘Yes.’
The Rani changed her tone. ‘Do you know why Rodney gave you that order so suddenly?’ she asked matter-of-factly.
Margaret sank on to a sofa. ‘I have no idea,’ she began formally. Then the memory returned, the cold dislike on his face, the ice in her heart, spreading so that she thought she would never be able to move again. The words poured out: ‘I don’t, I don’t! Once, months ago, I said I’d fix him, but that was when he was in Pattan and I ... I didn’t understand him, I didn’t know him. He was so different from anyone I’d met, and Henry only just dead. But I didn’t try to fix him, I didn’t do anything. I explained all that when I was ill and he saved my life, and ...’
‘He saved your life?’ the Rani said.
‘Didn’t he tell you about it?’
She could not believe that those days of her illness had meant so little to him.
‘He saved my
life,’ she repeated. Her hands weaved and knotted on her handkerchief. ‘I suppose he doesn’t remember, but he did, and I did explain it to him and I thought he believed me, and then ... and then ...’
‘Here, my dear, have a drink.’ The Rani poured out a small glass of whisky from a decanter that had appeared on the table. Had the servant come and gone while she was talking, and she seen nothing? She could see nothing now, except the Rani’s face, and feel nothing except the whisky burning her throat.
The Rani said, ‘He gave the order because he believed you had betrayed Gulu.’
‘Gulu?’ she said. ‘Who’s Gulu? I’ve never heard of him.’
‘I didn’t think you would have. He’s a Gond chief, from the
Indian side of the border. He was working with Rodney to prepare the Gonds to rise against the Indians when the time came. Rodney had just heard that the Indians have arrested him.’
‘Is he a small very black old man, wrinkled skin and ...? He must be the man I saw once with Rodney, near a jungle footpath up the hill behind Lapri. But I never said a word to anyone!’
‘I know you didn’t,’ the Rani said sadly, ‘but Rodney believes you did ... I wouldn’t worry too much if I were you. I think the clash between Chambal and India is going to come very soon, and then everything will be different. If India wins, it won’t do you any harm to have it believed that you did give the information … ‘
‘But I didn’t,’ she cried. ‘And I don’t care what the Indians believe if he believes that I was spying on him.’ She collected herself. ‘Another missionary is coming from England, at last. He is due in Bombay the beginning of next month. I only have to last out that long, and then ...’
‘And then what?’ the Rani asked.
‘The mission will...’
‘No - what about you?’
Margaret wound and unwound her handkerchief. ‘I... I don’t know. I was just waiting, staying.’
‘And you were as near him as you could get?’
‘Yes!’ She looked up quickly, but the other woman’s face held no gleam of triumph or discovery. It was as unhappy as her own.
The Rani said, ‘You are a trained nurse. How would you like to run a nurses’ school?’
Her professional interest was touched. She said, ‘You can’t start a school, just like that. It has to be part of a hospital.’
‘There would be no difficulty in getting you a post as senior matron of a hospital, and all the facilities you wanted to turn it into a first-class teaching hospital for nurses as well.’
‘Where? Here?’
The Rani hesitated. ‘In Chambal - yes. If India succeeds ... my direct influence will be nothing, but I can still manage that for you, anywhere.’
Margaret burst out, ‘But what will happen to him, if Chambal loses? India is so strong. Mr Roy has openly threatened him, he has so many enemies, he has done so many things against India - oh, they’re all in the papers, even more than he has done, probably. Where can he go?’
The Rani said, ‘I’m afraid he will not live to be worried by that question. He is going to fight, to the end. If he does not die under Indian guns - Indian guns, O God! - he will die by a knife wound - someone here stabbing him in the back ... And there are many kinds of knife wounds.’
‘It’s your fault,’ Margaret whispered. ‘If it weren’t for you, he wouldn’t be here, fighting this hopeless battle.’
The Rani’s huge eyes burned with a dry flame. ‘Some think that it was the other way round - that he brought me here, Mrs Wood. That if it were not for him, I would still be with my husband, and, through him, attached to the Indian cause ... You love him. Don’t attempt to deny it, please. I saw your face looking at the picture there.’
Margaret said, ‘Yes. For a long time now I’ve known that Rodney is all I have to live for. All I have to live in’
‘What are you waiting for? Me to die? My God, you are like a vulture sitting on a tree.’
‘I do not think you will stay with him. As you did not with the others, in Europe. I think, soon, that he will be alone again, and lonely.’
Sumitra gasped, then said slowly, ‘I suppose that is deserved. I can see you will have him, if he lives. You have the tenacity … ‘
Margaret said, ‘I told you. I have nothing else to live for. But he does not love me. He is not aware of me, except that I betrayed his friend. I know him well enough to know that he will never forgive a betrayal.’
Sumitra’s hand trembled so that the jewelled wristlet shivered and clinked on her wrist. Her breathing came in gasps.
Margaret said, ‘I will stay here until I see him. He must know that I did not betray him.’
‘You must go,’ Sumitra cried, jumping to her feet. ‘About Gulu - I shall tell him myself. Yes, yes, I promise. What is it to me? Within a week it will be settled, one way or the other. He will be dead ... he will be mine for ever ... or he will never be mine, and this petty nothing about you and Gulu will be buried, forgotten ... I shall order your lunch now, and afterwards the chauffeur will drive you back to Lapri in my car. You will receive an order to Faiz Mohammed delaying your eviction for a week ... Good-bye.’
She stood well away, and briefly joined her palms, then turned and ran out of the room, her sari rustling like a dying wind in the trees.
Chapter 14
‘First, we will hear syndicate solutions to the problem. Then Brigadier Savage will bring out the main lessons, and I will sum up.’
General Gokal Singh sat down and I stood up, leaning on my pointer staff. We were running a cloth-model study based on an Indian attack up the Lapri Gorge. I had thirty senior officers of the Chambal Army there, divided into six syndicates. The cloth model, set out on the floor of a huge room that had been a reception hall, was about 30 by 60 feet and gave a very fair representation of the ground between Lapri and Sakti. After explaining the locations of our own troops, and two different versions of what the enemy might be doing, and putting out various flags and toys on the model to represent the troops, I posed the problem: How and where to engage the enemy? An hour later General Gokal made his little speech and I called on Colonel Nazr Ahmed to begin.
After the first two sentences I knew I didn’t have to listen to him. My mind could run about among its numberless worries. Mid-January and our affairs fast coming to a head. The Indians were ostentatiously strengthening their garrisons along our northern borders. Prince Afif and I were convinced it was a feint. There was too much desert up there, too many miles of nothing, all open to our excellent air force. Gokal Singh, in command of the corps which was our only striking force, wasn’t so sure, and we were having a hard time preventing him moving the armour and part of the infantry northward. I said flatly that the Indians would not come from the north. Gokal said with pointed politeness that the responsibility was not mine. I ground my teeth.
Our defence forces were standing by, some at thirty minutes’ notice, the rest at four hours’. The morning cold was like a razor these days, until the sun rose. Then the shadows retreated fast, withdrawing like an army across the empty courtyards, leaving the bare stones bathed in dry golden light.
Two more syndicates spoke - unimaginative nothings. I called on the next. A young Rajput major stood up. ‘Our object,’ he said, ‘is to draw the enemy’s armour into battle piecemeal against our own armour, concentrated, and supported by all our anti-tank guns.’
I glanced up. This fellow had the idea. I made a brief note on my pad. The young major went on. He was good, at least on the theory of it.
The other syndicates followed. My opinion had been better expressed by Churchill: ‘The answer is in the plural, and they bounce.’
... One of the fealty rajahs in the northern part of the State had refused to move his private army unless the Nawab agreed to transfer a few thousand acres of desert from a neighbouring barony to his. That quarrel had been going on for three centuries and now he saw his chance. The Nawab had flown up to beg his rajahs to be reasonable; or, possi
bly, to throw them both into the dungeons.
L. P. Roy had been on the radio, swearing that India would never use force in the solution of its problems. Nevertheless, India’s patience was exhausted. Chambal’s provocation, Cham- bal’s suppression of its people, Chambal’s aggression ….
Margaret Wood was still at Lapri, saved by Sumitra’s soft heart. Gulu was still in an Indian jail.
The last syndicate gave its solution. I made a few more notes and began to dissect what had been said.
The vital point was obviously that Max had to get his armour out of the Lapri Gorge and up on to the Sakti Plain, by one steep, twisting road, in rocky jungle-covered hills. Numerically, our armour about equalled his. If we could attack him, with all our armour, at the moment when the leading half of his tanks had come out into the plain and the rest were still in the gorge, we would stand an excellent chance of destroying him completely - because he would either have to retreat or push forward the rest of his armour and let us destroy that in its turn. Max was no bloody fool, and there were many manoeuvres he could pull to circumvent us ….
I won’t go into any more detail. Of the six syndicates only one, the young major’s, had produced a sound plan, because only he really understood what we were trying to do. Few syndicates had thought to use our air forces at all, and only two had used them properly.
My suppressed anger carried me into some harsh words. Why hadn’t all these matters been studied for the past weeks and months? Because Gokal Singh insisted that secrets would leak out, plans become known. Yes, but there were ways round that, and anything would have been better than to leave these semi-trained officers in any doubt of their exact objective.
When I had finished a brigadier stood up, his face taut with spleen. ‘My opinions are entitled to more respect than you have given them,’ he said. ‘I have twenty-eight years’ service …
