by John Masters
She looked at her patient. She needed another ten minutes to recover from the anaesthetic before she went under again. No more, as the pains were coming close now.
She said to Rodney, ‘I want to look at that hot water ... We’ll be in the kitchen, Sumitra, and I can see you from there.’
In the tiny kitchen she stood pressed close to Rodney in one corner, by the open door from the big room. In the opposite corner the wind whipped flames and oily black smoke round the basin set on the kerosene oil can. She said, ‘We don’t have much time to spare, but you’ve got to understand. The baby can’t be born normally because it is jammed. A surgeon in an operating theatre could perform a Caesarean, but I can’t. So ...’
‘Of course you can, Margaret! I can help. My hand will be steady, for that.’
Again the temptation assailed her. She saw the film, the trapper’s hand moving surely over the bare skin ... Her own hand shook and her voice, when it came, was high-pitched and tremulous. ‘I can’t! I’d have to cut through the skin, through the fat, through layers of tissue, and finally into the womb. The womb’s bursting under pressure, the covering is as thin as paper! As soon as the knife cuts into it, terrible arterial bleeding will begin, gushing out everywhere. In that I have to extract the foetus - the baby - and the placenta, sew everything up from the inside out, layer by layer - with those needles! I’ve seen a surgeon with an assistant, three trained nurses, and an anaesthetist only just finish in time, and the woman on blood transfusions afterwards, actually during it. We cannot give her a transfusion. I ... I ... I dare not and will not do it!’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘Want ... I must remove the foetus, in pieces, by the normal passage.’
‘But that’s murder! ... Can’t you wait? It’s past three. Someone will be here in the morning ...’
‘No. Her womb is stretching thinner with every pain. In an hour or two, if I don’t take out the foetus, it will burst, and she’ll die in a few minutes from loss of blood ... Help me, Rodney! Give me the courage to do what I must do, the way you did getting us out here from Bombay. How do you think I feel?’
Rodney pressed back against the wall away from her. Past his tense, bitter face she saw Sumitra lying still on the couch.
She stretched out her hands to seize his arm, to dig her nails into his flesh. The sheen of the surgical gloves caught her eye and she jerked back her hands, but they hovered in front of her face, between her and Rodney, the fingers crooked and tense. She cried, ‘Do you think I don’t know what this means? But what kind of future can we have, paid for with her blood, and my respect? She said once, twice, three times, that I was nothing but a woman, in love with you. I believed her. But now, here, I’ve learned it’s not true. I’m also a nurse, Rodney.’
Sumitra began to stir uneasily, her legs moving up and down, down and up. Slowly Rodney’s head swung to the right, then to the left. Then he turned completely round, looking away from her. But there was no help, no other solution but the echo of her words, and the wind.
Her voice came out flat and unemotional: ‘We must start now.’ The water in the basin looked to be hot but not boiling. Since she had no cold to mix it with, that would be good. ‘Bring the basin through, put it at the foot of the couch. Then get ready to use the chloroform again, same as last time. It will be very bad to watch. I would give anything to save you that, at least - but I can’t. I need you.’
She walked into the big room and began to make ready.
From the case she took the razor and, kneeling expertly, shaved off the lower part of Sumitra’s pubic hair. This she had done a thousand times, she thought with weary bitterness ... if this were all! She spoke to Rodney: ‘Put the basin down here beside me. Pour in three capfuls of Dettol.’ She dipped her finger in it. She’d never heard of sea water being used for sterilisation and cleaning, but no reason why not - except for the sand lying in the bottom. Must wait for that to settle. And it would sting. Since it wasn’t boiling, sterilisation of the instruments would have to be done in pure Dettol. Sumitra was deadly pale now, not far from the final collapse of exhaustion.
Margaret carefully washed her gloved hands, then washed the exposed vulva and extruded hand. She stood up.
‘Head back, Sumitra, look at the ceiling ... think of rest, think of sleep. Ready, Rodney. Start counting ... When you wake up this time it’ll all be over.’
Sumitra said, ‘The baby ... baby … Her mumbling died away under the pad as Rodney’s hand came slowly, shaking, down.
Margaret took up the bottle of Dettol in one hand and in the other the long surgical scissors. From Rodney she heard, amid the dead monotone of his counting, a falling sigh that sounded like the stifled scream of an anguished child. She poured the antiseptic liberally over the scissors, put down the bottle, and bent over between Sumitra’s raised spread legs.
Half an hour later she stood up. At once she clutched the side of the couch to prevent herself from falling. On a torn sheet at her feet lay the separated head and body of Rodney’s child, with the placenta and umbilical cord that had so long nourished it. A pool of blood congealed under Sumitra’s body and the cane latticework of the couch was sticky with blood. Rodney stood like a dead tree, brittle and white, at the head of the couch.
Margaret dropped the scissors into the basin, dipped her hands, and began to massage the outside of Sumitra’s belly. As she worked steadily away, neither seeing nor feeling anything, Sumitra returned to consciousness. ‘It’s over,’ Margaret said dully. ‘Look at the ceiling! Rodney, do this ... dig in with your fingers, not too hard, knead gently … ‘
Rodney stepped forward, two wooden paces, and did as she told him. Margaret knelt to gather up the sheet bearing the remains of the baby.
Rodney said, ‘I’ll do that.’
She stood up. Rodney was right. She should stay with Sumitra - but to expect him to carry his own dead, mangled child was too much. He went into the kitchen and she heard the door being forced open. The wind seemed to have lessened a little, though it was still strong. He came back, lifted the sheet, and went out. She closed the door after him and returned to her place, massaging to help Sumitra’s uterus in its contractions.
Sumitra’s voice was faint. ‘Was it a girl?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is he burying her?’
‘Yes.’
She filled a syringe. ‘I’m going to give you an injection in the arm. It’s to help contract the womb. There.’
‘I ... I think I’m going to sleep. I’m terribly, terribly ... tired.’
‘Yes. Sleep. I’ll be here.’
She sat down on the hard chair and waited, watching the other woman. After a time she picked up a wrist and felt the pulse. Still weak but rebuilding. Ought to give her some hot tea when she awakes. No water. Temperature still high. Ought to get her to a hospital at once, too. Penicillin. Hardly could have avoided infection, in these conditions. Janaki and Mr Dutt would come. When? Noon, perhaps. Rodney was being a long time. Burying his daughter. Burying his future. And hers. Where had he gone? He should have waited for her. She had to stay by the patient, an hour at least, after the delivery of the placenta. That was the rule. More if no one else was present. Past four o’clock, everything absolutely blank, no smell, no hearing, no touch, no taste, no emotion, sight fading.
Five o’clock. Six o’clock. Dawnlight, green and pale, the patient sleeping soundly. She rose stiffly and went to the door, opened it, and looked out. Something moved along the dunes on the mainland, about half a mile away. It was a Weasel, one of the army’s small amphibious vehicles. She watched as it came closer, and at a quarter of a mile recognised the bald dome and round figure of Mr Dutt, standing up in the back with Janaki and a sepoy. Two more soldiers were crammed into the front seat.
She turned, walked through the room without another glance at the patient, and went out the back door. The peninsula was covered with palm trees, sparse beach undergrowth, and patches of long grass. The trees waved
and swung in the wind but now merely with energy, instead of frenzy. After ten minutes the palms fell back and she came out on the final point of sand.
The wind blew strong, the sea heaved and plunged to the horizon. Driving sand thrust sharp arrows into her skin. The beach was littered with wreckage, wreckage of huts, of trees, of a world. At the farthest point of the peninsula, where the sea raced past, furious and yellow and deep at the edge of the steep slope, a man stood, his back to the land. She went out to him.
When she reached him he spoke at once, as though he had been expecting her. ‘I never knew I was a coward until now.’ His voice was loud but full of doubt, like a man who shouts and does not know whether he will be heard. ‘I’ve been here since I buried her. I meant to come, walk into the sea, keep on walking. I wouldn’t have lasted a minute. Look at the tide, look at the sea! ... I couldn’t do it. I was lonely.’
She took his hand. ‘I’ll go with you,’ she said. She had taken his life, she would give him hers in return. She felt so weak she could hardly stand. For her, it would last less than a minute because she could not struggle even if she wanted to, and she did not want to. She had killed any hope of his love far more effectively than Sumitra had done. Without him, there was nothing. She knew now inside herself exactly what he had felt during those long months: nothing, absolutely nothing.
She walked into the sea and he followed. The sea tugged greedily at her ankles. Another step and it fondled her knees. The hand was restraining her, pulling her back.
‘Wait,’ he said. She stopped, head down, unfeeling. ‘You didn’t give me time to tell you. A few minutes ago before you came, I found that though I didn’t have the guts to die I could find the guts to live. What I saw and did tonight turned from an ending into a beginning ... from a final, terrible experience into a command for the future. Look, my hands are strong, my eyes steady. I can learn.’
‘What?’ she asked dully.
‘To be a surgeon.’
She turned and stared at him. ‘You? A surgeon? It takes a long time ... Yes. You could be a surgeon. You have the nerve ... Let me go.’
‘No. I need a housekeeper. Someone who will earn a living for me, too, while I learn.’
‘Is that all you want?’
There was no answer, and after a time she raised her head again and looked at him. He was smiling. At the sight of her the smile, shining white in his dark, filthy, weary face, turned into a low, long laugh.
She said, ‘But... but you said you’d never laugh again!’
His face returned to its seriousness, but without any trace of sadness or bitterness. ‘My baby’s dead, yet I can laugh. It’s like a funeral in the army. We march to the grave in slow time, with arms reversed and the pipes playing a lament. We come back in quick time, the bugles blowing and our heads up. You know, all those things that you did for me, all that you have been, and are - I didn’t feel them at the time, but I did see them. They have been stored away, like film - waiting to be developed. I’ve been doing a lot of developing, standing here on the brink ... Well, will you take me on - for life instead of death?’
The hand pulled her steadily out of the sea and along the sand. The small waves lapped at her feet and the spray tingled in her eyes, but the wind lessened as they turned the corner of the point and reached the lee of the peninsula.
John Masters
John Masters, who was born in Calcutta in 1914, was of the fifth generation of his family to have served in India. Educated at Wellington and Sandhurst, he returned to India in 1934 to join the 4th Prince of Wales’s Own Gurkha Rifles. He saw active service in Wazirirstan in 1937 and, after the outbreak of war, in Iraq, Syria and Persia. In 1944 he commanded a brigade of General Wingate’s Chindits in Burma, and later fought with the 19th Indian Division at the capture of Mandalay and on the Mawchi Road.
Masters retired from the Army in 1948 as a lieutenant-colonel with the DSO and OBE. He went to America and turned to writing. Several short stories were succeeded by Night-Runners of Bengal, the first of an outstanding series of novels set in British India. It was followed by The Deceivers, The Lotus And The Wind, Bhowani Junction, Coromandel!, Far, Far The Mountain Peak, The Venus Of Konpara and To The Coral Strand,
Three other novels were not set in India: Fandango Rock, Trial At Monomoy and The Breaking Strain.
He also published a biography, Casanova; an epic, The Rock; a history of the Great War, Fourteen Eighteen; and three volumes of autobiography: Bugles And A Tiger, The Road Past Mandalay and Pilgrim Son.
He died in 1983.
Table of Contents
To the Coral Strand
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
John Masters
