by John Masters
Roy raised one shaking hand and waved it in the air, stabbing and slicing. ‘Watch out, General! Watch out, you and your Sandhurst friends! We have had enough of this Sandhurst spirit. You are servants of the people now. We don’t want your polo ponies and English tweed coats while the people starve! What did you do in our fight for freedom, but toady to the English!’
Max said, ‘I was taught to stand by my obligations, Mr Roy, at first in my home, by my father, and also, later, at Sandhurst. I was taught to obey constitutionally given orders whether I agreed with them or not. I took the English government’s arms, and their training, and if I had betrayed them, how do you know I wouldn’t betray you? I have an armoured brigade and an infantry division here. General Usman has a corps in Kashmir. General Rajbir has a corps in the south. Would you like any of us to forget what we were taught?’
‘That would be treason,’ Roy said. ‘You are under oath to defend the constitution.’
‘You are wrong, sahib. I am not under oath. The British never made me swear an oath, nor has our own government since Independence. What really matters cannot be put in writing, or sworn to by oaths. That’s why you are safe, and that is why my friend Rodney Savage, an officer of the Indian Army, will have at least one more half hour before any attempt is made to find him. Some Indian traditions have to be sacrificed for the future of India, but not personal loyalty. At least, not by me. I have eaten his salt ... If you wish to report the matter to the Prime Minister, I shall be pleased to accompany you to Delhi. Now I am going to have a drink.’
He turned his back, opened a drawer in the table, and pulled out a bottle of whisky and one glass.
‘Have you got another glass?’
The woman’s voice was low and tired. Roy and the general turned. Sumitra, Rani of Kishanpur, stood in the entrance to the tent, leaning against the pole, her palms joined in namasti.
Roy hurried forward. ‘Your Highness!’ He seized a chair and pushed it forward. Sumitra sat. ‘I searched everywhere for you in Chambalpur, but could not find you.’
‘I was ... in retreat,’ she said.
‘India owes you a great debt. I have messages for you from New Delhi ... You did not know, General, that Her Highness was our chief agent inside Chambalpur?’
‘I did not,’ Max said curtly. ‘Until the All India Radio announced it after the surrender.’
Sumitra looked up, her hands spread pleadingly. ‘I believed in the policy, Max. I made up my mind to do all that I could, months before Rodney came to Kishanpur that time ... as soon as I really understood that India was free and there was work for me in shaping and building it.’ Max continued to look at her, his face stern and sad. She threw out a hand towards him. ‘My God, Max, I tried to warn him, but in the end I was caught, just as much as he ... Where is he? In hospital here, still? I’ve got to see him. Perhaps he feels better now. He did his best. No one could have done more, and he must see now that what he wanted to achieve was hopeless from the beginning. If only I could have persuaded him of that, before we went to Chambal.’
‘Then he would not have gone, or taken the Nawab’s pay,’ Max said coldly.
She drank the whisky. Roy stood behind her chair, listening, surprise growing in his face. ‘But you did not really care for him, Your Highness!’ he cried. ‘He is an enemy of India!’
Sumitra ignored him, and spoke to Max. ‘I wouldn’t do it again, if I could start at the beginning ... It wasn’t worth it, but how could I know? Anything seemed worth it, for the new India.’
‘It is,’ Roy said emphatically.
Max said, ‘Murder? Deceiving people who love and trust you? Turning in your mother to the police? If you think those are worthwhile, for India, it isn’t a new India you’ll create but a new Soviet, a new Nazi Germany ... Rodney has escaped. Sri Roy and I were just discussing the best method of recapturing him.’
The Rani’s head sank into her hands. Max saw that she was weeping. ‘Alone,’ she whispered, ‘alone again, in the jungle, wounded. If only I’d come earlier!’
‘He wouldn’t have listened to you,’ Max said. ‘Here, have another drink.’ He patted her shoulders awkwardly. ‘I’m sorry I spoke like that just now. I didn’t know you had ... I didn’t know.’ Roy’s face was unexpectedly gentle. He had got over his temper. ‘I am sorry for both of you, but I, too, have my duty to do - a larger duty than either of yours, if you will excuse me. I shall give the necessary orders myself.’
Max called after him, ‘No one will obey you. Just wait a bit, please.’
Sumitra raised her tear-stained face. ‘Has he gone?’
‘Yes.’
‘I couldn’t bear the look in your eyes, Max. My father and mother are dead. There’s got to be someone in the world who knows. I’m going to have his child. He doesn’t know. Only you. Not Janaki, nor Dip, nor anyone else at all yet. Only you. So that there’ll be one human being’s eyes that will look at me with sympathy.’
She rose unsteadily, and Max, silent and appalled, helped her into the open air.
Chapter 16
Margaret Wood pushed the falling hair back out of her eyes and began on the second shelf of the almirah in the corner. Almirah was the Hindustani word for ‘wardrobe’, but to be a true almirah it had to be this kind of wardrobe - rickety, creaky, liable to fall over on you if you tugged too hard at the door, the wood warped by forty hot weathers and forty monsoons.
One, two, three ... four pairs of sheets for the double bed, all of them patched and frayed at the hem from the vigorous beating the dhobi gave them on the flat stones by the river below Lapri. She didn’t need double-bed sheets. She could cut them in half. But that would make eight pairs - more than she’d need. She glanced down at the wooden, iron-banded trunk on the floor. Everything had to get into that, and one suitcase.
She took two pairs of sheets from the almirah, folded them and packed them in the trunk. The others she laid on a pile of linen and clothes in the corner.
Pillow cases ... face towels ... bath towels ... The same insoluble problem every time - no space to pack all that she would need, no money to buy more when she reached wherever she was going.
She was folding the towels too small now, so that they made a needless bulk. They’d go better with only one fold. She knew that quite well. Henry used to say she was a wonderful packer, a wonderful, efficient woman. Where had all that gone? Vanished, with the sense of purpose. Could an aimless, unhappy woman pack well? Thin khaki shirts, four. She’d better take two and wash them herself, like her underclothes. She held up a petticoat in disgust, and threw it on the pile in the corner.
She heard the fast-approaching roar, easily recognisable, of a jeep, and glanced at her watch. Eleven o’clock. She’d have to stop soon or she’d fall asleep over the trunk. The jeep engine stopped outside and she raised her head. Nailed boots ran up the front veranda steps, knuckles beat on the door. She climbed to her feet and opened the door. The light from the narrow hall where she was packing shone on the face of a young Indian lieutenant.
He saluted energetically. ‘Mrs Wood?’
She nodded. The jeep headlights shone across the weeds of the lawn towards the chapel and the gravestones. She saw the dim shapes of two soldiers with cradled rifles in the jeep, behind the glare of the lights.
He said, ‘A prisoner of war has escaped from hospital up the road. He is on foot, and armed, and we are warning all villages to be on the lookout for him. There is a reward of five thousand rupees for any information leading to his capture.’ He looked embarrassed, and his glance turned away from her. ‘He’s an Englishman, about five feet ten, very sunburned, blue eyes - Colonel Rodney Savage.’
‘From the hospital!’ she cried. ‘He’s hurt? But All India Radio said yesterday that he was in jail! If I’d known ...’
The lieutenant said, ‘I suppose they wanted to keep it secret, until they really had got him to jail ... You know him? He was wounded in the stomach, quite badly, but he was recovering well until he escaped.�
�� He looked full at her. ‘It’s Mr Roy who has ordered the reward ... My orders are to advise anyone living alone, like this, to keep the house locked, and to take every means to inform us as soon as possible if they see or hear of him ...’ He glanced past her. ‘You’re not going anywhere tonight, are you? I don’t think Colonel Savage would harm you, or anyone else - but he might give you an awful fright if you ran across him, and . . .’
‘Not tonight,’ she said. ‘The new missionary is due tomorrow.’ The lieutenant saluted again, ran down the steps, and jumped into the jeep. The engine kicked into life, the headlights swung round and away, along the narrow cart road towards the old Rest House and Pattan.
Rodney, wounded! When she heard that he was in jail, charged with murder and treason, a wave of absolute lassitude, and exhausted failure, overcame her. She had hardly stirred herself, even to eat or drink, until she began to pack early this afternoon. He was in jail - but where? He needed a lawyer. She knew nothing of lawyers, and had no money to hire one. He was behind brick walls and iron bars, and she had no strength to climb, no weapons to blast open. She did not know where he was, and she did not have the money to go to him.
She stood at the open door, her mind lifting like a boat on a rising wave. He was wounded, and free, and she was a nurse. Now, if she could find him, she could at last do something to give him an inkling of her love. Later she would give him her body, which he had once asked for and she had refused; and once she had offered, wrapped in her soul, and he had rejected, through indifference more than hate.
She turned to go into the bungalow. The shadow came up the steps almost beside her. She had her hand on the door when she realised, and his voice said, ‘Inside, and close the door behind me.’ He followed her in, she closed the door, and with one hand he locked it and pushed the bolt across. In his other hand a blue-black automatic pistol pointed at the pit of her stomach.
‘Into the bedroom,’ he said. She walked down the passage and he stopped at the door, in the shadows. ‘Draw the curtains, tight. Lock and bolt the back door. Now the door out of the ghuslkhana.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘They won’t come in again.’
He stood in the middle of the bedroom, swaying like a poplar tree in a gusty wind. His face was a greenish grey under the fierce tan, and the blue eyes swam in and out of focus in time with his swaying, so that now they were sharp and cold, now dim and blurred.
‘Lie down on the bed,’ she said, trying to keep her voice calm. ‘You’re ill.’
His mouth twisted. ‘Lie, sit - prang, I’ve had it. Then five thousand chips for you. Didn’t they - pay enough for Gulu? Sorry, that wasn’t you, was it? What’s the difference?’
She drew a deep breath. ‘Rodney, the difference is that I love you. I’ve had no way of showing you, when you so obviously didn’t care. You don’t care now, and I can’t make you in a minute. I only want to tell you, so that you’ll know. I never want anything or anybody else but you.’
‘That’s what - she said - in the end.’ His eyes flickered on and off her face. ‘They want me,’ he mumbled. ‘Murder. Listen radio. Killed three Indian babies. Ate them, apple sauce.’ He twisted slowly and began to fall.
She had been waiting for it and from long experience was able to judge to the moment when and how it would come. She caught him, feeling her arms strong enough to hold him for ever, and eased him on to the bed. She lifted up his legs and unfastened his boots. In the stomach, the lieutenant had said. She undid the buttons of his shirt and unfastened the buckle of his web belt - Indian Army uniform, she noticed, and practically new, though stained and scratched where he had fallen and stumbled. Six miles, in the hills, at night, from the edge of the Sakti Plain. He lay on his back, his right arm dangling over the edge of the bed, the pistol in his hand. She knelt and gently tried to disengage it, but his grip was like steel and she could not move it.
She eased down his trousers. The exit wound was in the left anterior section of the abdominal wall, two inches from the navel. No granulation yet. Wound lacerated and about two inches square. Some recent bleeding and exudation of serum. The bandage had worked loose and hung round his loins. They seemed to be teaching the Indian Army the Evans Over-Cross Tie for abdominal wounds. The bullet couldn’t have damaged any viscera or organ in its passage, or there would have been tubing in him, or signs of an operation. She turned him over gently. Entry wound small, one inch left of the spine at the sixth thoracic vertebra, barely missing the left kidney. Granulation tissue forming. Some recent bleeding beginning to clot. Temperature 101, pulse 108.
Systematically she began her preparations, her hands working with detached, unfumbling efficiency at their tasks, her heart soaring in dizzy ascent, singing like a lark towards the sun. He had come to her. This time she must not let go.
He groaned, stirred, and tried to sit up. She reached his side before he could move, and laid her hand on his forehead. The eyes looked long at her, but dim and blank, and the pistol did not fall from his hand. The kettle boiled. Quickly she made tea, stirred in plenty of sugar and milk, and two aspirins, and held the bowl to his lips. He drank deeply, and when he had finished the first bowl, whispered, ‘More.’ She made him another, and crooned over him as he drank, his head so close to her breast that there was a contraction in her womb and a swelling of her breasts. Later, in his sleep, he will wet the bed, she thought. She hoped he would, that she could wash and clean him and do, out of the fullness of love, all and more than he had done for her out of indifferent duty.
She cleaned his wounds with antiseptic and retied the bandage. His head fell back on the pillow, and he slept on the instant, but his grip never loosened on the pistol. The sound of the jeep engine, returning from Pattan, grew in the west. She crouched over him, glaring at the door; but the jeep did not pause this time, and in a minute the sound died.
She pulled up a chair and sat beside the bed, staring down at the drawn face. The thin lips fluttered with each rapid, noisy breath, the chest rose and fell in an uneven rhythm and both hands sometimes trembled, the left shaking the top of the sheet, the right causing the pistol to make a rapid drumming rattle on the wood floor.
After half an hour the movements began to quieten and slow, and finally to cease altogether. She took his wrist. Pulse 80, temperature about 99.5.
He said in a low distinct voice, ‘O.K., Harry, let’s go down to the ford.’ Then he spoke longer, in a language she did not understand. Then he laughed, a low happy chuckle, and said, ‘Hut teri ma!’ That she knew. It was soldiers’ language, meaning ‘Up thy mother’s!’ He was smiling, and she smiled with him.
He said, ‘There’s cloud on the pass but we ought to ... Barf, choro, barf. Snow, my son, snow . ..’
The voice changed again. Now it was sharp, yet deep with a tremendous yearning. ‘We’ve got to try. How many of you are going to die in the next ten minutes?’ Then edged and confident, ‘Achchi bat, choro-haru, advance garnu parchha. Tayyar chhan? Jaun!’ He winced, his jaw set.
It took a long time for him to recover the original calm. Then he whispered, ‘Janaki, Janaki, how can your legs be so slim and so strong?’
She looked anxiously over her shoulder, and about the room. The lamp burned steadily on the table. The curtains were drawn. She should not be hearing this, eavesdropping on his soul, until he trusted her. Smiling, he mumbled in a strong Anglo-Indian accent, ‘Oah, Vickee, come in out of thee sun, you will get all brown!’
The minutes floated by, into half hours, into hours. Like a slowly revolving wheel his life passed. After a time she waited to hear him speak of his mother, of his father; of school in England, of green fields and cricket. He never did. Sometimes he spoke in Hindi, which she could understand a little, sometimes in the other language where only a word that was the same as Hindi came through. The sentences fell separate and disconnected from the fluttering lips, but formed a single world, a single life. Snow glittered on mountain peaks, and men climbed a long slope towards them. Indian g
irls danced in a closed room, very hot, and she heard the chinking of their bangles and saw his amused eyes fixed on their lascivious bellies. Rain fell, and he lit a cheroot and swore at the cook. There was a battle, and she heard orders given and taken, and the rumble of tanks under his suddenly raised voice. He danced, holding the women desirously in sardonic flirtations, and then suddenly, so that she imagined him still in his dinner jacket, he was striding fast through light jungle, and the sambhur stag was feeding beside the river.
She waited for the anger she knew so well, for the bitterness. Surely he must have hated? All his life seemed to be lust and violence and war. But there was none. A hundred names he spoke, and every one of them, English and Indian, brought a faint smile and a subtle change to the voice, an ache of love which was the same whether he spoke of mountains or of the satin heaviness of a woman’s breast.
Yet there is bitterness, she thought, a bitterness too deep for words. Sumitra’s name he never spoke, and for the rest, all was of the past. This had been. For the future - nothing; except the pistol held tight in his thin fingers.
Her head began to bow of its own weight, as though someone were pressing it gently down against her breast, and she felt a tear fall on her blouse, then another.
He awoke at four, an hour before dawn. The first sign was the clatter of the pistol falling from his hand as his muscles relaxed. She stooped quickly to pick it up, but he was quicker. He grabbed it, transferred it to his left hand and unflexed the muscles of his right. ‘Mustn’t lose Max’s pistol,’ he said. His voice was strong, his eyes unnaturally bright.
She sat down again and tried to smile, but the tears rushed up to the very brink, and she looked away until she had recovered her composure.
‘I want something to eat. Quickly, please. And I’ll take whatever other food you have away with me.’ He swung his legs out of the bed, turned pale, and hung on to the bed with both hands.
