The Avram Davidson Treasury

by Avram Davidson

  Tom wasn’t giving up that easily. “What’s the football news?” he asked at large. No one answered.

  “And not just the fighting in the Hills,” the Gaffer went on. “What was that all for? India? They’re giving India away now. No—other things… My best friend.”

  “How about a game of darts?” Tom urged, gesturing toward the back room, through the open door of which we could see the darts board and a frieze of old pictures which dated back six reigns or more. I’d often meant to examine them with attention, but never had.

  “…and it’s all true, for I’ve got cuttin’s to prove it. Young chap from newspaper was there and saw it and wrote it all up. Oh, it was terrible!” Tears welled to the reddened edges of his eyes. “But it had to be.”

  “Anyone for darts?”

  Someone said, “Shut up, Tom. Go on, Gaffer.”

  And this was many years ago.

  As you went along the Mall in Lahore (which was the local section of the Grand Trunk Road from Calcutta to Peshawur), you passed the museum and the cathedral and the Gardens and Government House and the Punjab Club. And you kept on passing, because you were an enlisted man and the Club was for officers and civilians of high rank. And then for three dusty miles there was nothing to speak of (natives hardly counted), and then there was the Cantonment, and in the Cantonment was the garrison.

  “Head-bloody-quarters of the Third bloody Division of the Northern bloody Army,” said the Docker. He spat into the dust. “And you can ’ave it all for one bloody yard of the Commercial Road of a Saturday night,” he said. “Or any bloody night, for that matter!”

  But his friend, the Mouse, knew nothing of the glories of the Commercial Road. He had taken the Queen’s shilling in the market town that all his life he had regarded as if it were London, Baghdad, and Babylon. Lahore? He would have ‘listed to go serve in Kamtchatka, if it had only got him away from his brute of a father, a drunken farm-laborer in a dirty smock. How, he often wondered, had he got the courage to take the step at all?

  “It frightens me sometimes, Docker,” he confessed. “It’s all so strange and different.”

  The Docker gave him a look on which his habitual sneer was half overcome by affection. “Don’t you ’ave no bloody fear while I’m wiv you!” And he touched him, very lightly, on the shoulder. The Docker was tall and strong, with straight black hair and sallow skin and a mouth that was quick to anger and quick to foul words even without anger, and a mind that was quick to take offense and slow—very slow—to forgive.

  Sergeant-Major had shouted, “I’ll teach you to look at me!” and had kicked him hard. That night in the lanes on the other side of the little bazaar, past the tank and the place where the hafiz taught, someone hit Sergeant-Major with a piece of iron, thrown with main force. Split his scalp open. Who? No one ever knew. When Sergeant-Major came off sick-list and went round telling about it, spreading his hair with his thick fingers to show the long and ugly wound with its black scab, the Docker passed by, walking proper slow. And Sergeant-Major looked up, suddenly, as if he recognized the footfalls, and there was a look passed between them that had murder in it. But nothing was said, nothing at all.

  And no one kicked the Docker after that, and when it became known that he was the pal of the little private everyone called the Mouse, because of his coloring and his timid ways, why, no one kicked the Mouse either, after that.

  “See that blackie there, Docker?” the Mouse demanded. “See that white bit of string round his waist and over? He’s what they call a braymin. Like our parson back ’ome—only, fancy a parson with not more clothes on than that!”

  A mild interest stirred the big soldier’s face. “Knew a parson give me sixpence once, when I was a nipper,” he said. “Only I ‘ad to come to church and let ’im christen me, like, afore ’e’d leave me ’ave it. Nice old chap. Bit dotty.”

  The crowd was thick on the road, but somehow there was always space where the soldiers walked. They passed a blind Jew from Peshawur, with a gray lambskin cap on his head, playing music on the harmonium. It wasn’t like any music the Mouse had ever heard, but it stirred him all the same. The Docker grandly threw a few pice in the cup and his little friend admired the gesture.

  “That lane there—” the mouse drew close, dropped his voice—“they say there’s women there. They say some of’m won’t look at sojers. But they say that some of’m will.”

  The Docker set his cap acock on his head. “Let’s ’ave a look, then, kiddy,” he said. “And see which ones will.” But they never did—at least, not that day. Because they met Lance-Corporal Owen going to the bazaar and with him were three young ladies, with ruffles and fancy hats and parasols. They were going to the bazaar to help Lance-Corporal Owen buy gifts to send home to his mother and sisters. And this was quite a coincidence, because when the Docker heard it he at once explained that he and the Mouse were bound on the same errand.

  “Only they say the best prices are at the places where they don’t speak English. And Alf, ’ere, and me, we don’t know none of this Punjabee-talk, y’see.”

  And because the young ladies—two of whom were named Cruceiro and one De Silva, and they were cousins—said that they knew a few words and would be pleased to help Lance-Corporal Owen’s friends, and because Owen was very decent about it all—and why not, seeing that he had three of them?—they all walked off, three pairs of them. The Mouse had the youngest Miss Cruceiro on his arm, and the Docker had Miss De Silva. Perhaps Owen wasn’t quite so pleased with this arrangement, but he smiled.

  That was how it began, many years ago.

  Harry Owen was a proper figure of a man: broad shoulders, narrow waist, chestnut-colored hair, eyes as bright blue as could be. Always smiling and showing his good, white teeth. Not many men had teeth that good. Even the wives of the officers didn’t feel themselves too proud to say, “Good morning, Owen.” It was as if there was a sun inside of him, shining all the time.

  The three of them became friends. The six of them. The Docker and Leah De Silva, Harry and Margaret Cruceiro, and the Mouse and Lucy Cruceiro. To be sure, Lucy was rather dim and didn’t say much, but that suited her escort well enough: he had little to say to her. But he would have felt all sorts of things bubbling up inside of him—if he had been walking with Miss De Silva.

  But that, he knew, was impossible. Miss De Silva was so clever, so handsome, so self-assured; he would have been tongued-tied beside her. Besides, she walked with the Docker. And so, for all that she was pleasant to the Mouse, he was too shy to do much more than nod.

  Later on he was to think that if the Docker had known that Leah De Silva was not really English, and that she and her cousins and all the others of their class were not regarded by the soldiery as…well …

  But he did not know. Chasteness was not a highly prized attribute in Cat’s-meat Court where the Docker’s wild, slum-arab childhood had been largely spent—indeed, it was a quality almost completely unknown. He had no experience of respectable girls, neither half-caste nor quarter-caste nor simon-pure English. The daughters of the officers lived in a world sealed off from him, and the few daughters of NCOs almost as much so.

  To men like Lance-Corporal Owen, Eurasian girls may have seemed to lack that certain quality which spelled Rude Hands Off, which the English girls at home had had. But the Docker knew nothing of afternoon teas and tiny sandwiches, of strict papas and watchful mamas, of prim and chaperoned walks in country towns. For him the Victorian Age had never existed, raised as he had been in a world little changed from the fierce and savage Eighteenth Century.

  But this did not bring him to take liberties now. On the contrary. To the Docker a railroad telegrapher (for such was Mr. De Silva, burly and black-mustached) was a member of a learned profession. He little noticed that the ever-blooming Mrs. De Silva wore no corsets and let her younger children run about the house naked. And little cared. He knew that there were girls to be had for a thrupney-bit and there were girls who were not. All the latter we
re respectable. No cottage in Kensington could have been more respectable, in the Docker’s eyes, than the old house where the De Silvas lived, three or four generations of them, in dark and not always orderly rooms smelling of incense and odd sorts of cooking. That the girls were not exactly bleached-white in complexion was nothing to him; the Docker was dark himself. When Mr. and Mrs. De Silva boasted of their ancestry—of Portuguese generals and high-ranking officials of the old East India Company—the Docker felt no desire to doubt. He felt humble.

  Miss Leah De Silva was quiet and ladylike enough when talking to the Docker. But she could be fierce and sudden when someone in her family did anything she thought not right. Perhaps her parents had been something less than keen as mustard about the Docker. He was only a corporal. Did they feel that their daughter should look higher? A sentence like a shower of swords from Leah, in a language which had once been Portuguese, silenced them.

  One afternoon, when the barracks were almost deserted, the Docker summoned Owen and the Mouse to consult with. He produced a bottle and offered it.

  “And risk my stripe? Thanks, my boy, but no thanks,” said Owen. The Mouse took a small sip. The Docker’s manner was very odd, he thought. He was proud and he was abashed; he was happy and he was uneasy.

  “’Ere’s the thing,” he said. “I mean to marry Miss De Silva.” And he gave them a challenging look.

  “Good!” said the Mouse.

  “I know she’ll ’ave me,” the Docker went on. “But…well…there’s Susanna.”

  “Oh, ah,” agreed Owen. “There’s Susanna.”

  Susanna was a girl who had a little house of her own, often visited by soldiers, one of whom had been the Docker. Her mother was a woman of some tribe so very deep in the Hills that they were neither Hindu nor Moslem. Heaven only knew how she had come to Lahore, or where she had gone after leaving it—for leave it she did, after her baby was born; and Heaven, presumably, knew who the father had been.

  Susanna had been raised and educated by the Scottish Mission and had once been employed in the tracts department of its Printing Establishment. The officials of the Mission had been willing to forgive Susanna once, then twice— they had even been willing to forgive Susanna a third time—but not to retain her in the Printing Establishment. Whereupon Susanna had renounced the Church of Scotland and all its works, and had gone altogether to the bad.

  “I’m going to break off wiv ’er,” said the Docker determinedly. “I shan’t give ’er no present, neither—no money, I mean. I know it’s the custom, but if I’m going to be married I shall need all the money I’ve got.”

  “That’s rather hard on Susanna,” said Owen.

  “Can’t be ’elped,” said the Docker briefly. “Now I’m going to write ’er a letter.” He wanted assistance, but he also was strong for his own style. The letter, in its third and least-smudged version, was brief.

  Dear Friend,

  It’s been a great lark but now it’s all over, for I am getting married to someone else. Best not to see each other again. Keep merry and bright.

  Respectfully,

  “That’ll do it,” the Docker said, with satisfaction. “Here’s two annas—give ’em to a bearer, one of you, and send the letter off directly. I’m going to start tidying up meself and me kit, as I mean to speak to Mr. De Silva tonight.”

  But he never spoke to Mr. De Silva that night. Sergeant-Major came striding in, big as Kachen-junga, and swollen with violent satisfaction, and found the bottle in with the Docker’s gear. The Docker drew three weeks, and was lucky not to lose his stripes.

  There was a note waiting for him when he came out.

  Dear Docker,

  I hope you will take it in good part but Miss De Silva and I are going to be married Sunday next. Perhaps it was not quite the thing for me to do—to speak during your absence—but Love knows no laws as the poet says and we do both hope you will be our friend,

  Sincerely,

  Harry Owen

  For a long time the Docker just sat and stared. Then he said to the Mouse, “Well, if it must be. I should ’ave known a girl of ’er quality wouldn’t ever marry a brute like me.”

  “Ah, but Docker,” the Mouse said. Then in a rush of words: “It isn’t that at all! Don’t you see what it was? The note you meant for Susanna—Owen sent it off to Miss De Silva instead! And then went and proposed ’imself! And it must’ve been ’im who peached that you ’ad the bottle.”

  The Docker’s face went dark, but his voice kept soft. “Oh,” he said, “that was how it was.” And said nothing more. That night he got drunk, wildly, savagely drunk, wrecked twenty stalls in the little bazaar, half killed two Sikhs who tried to stop him, and coming into the sleeping barracks as silently as the dust, took and loaded his rifle and shot Harry Owen through the head …

  “Yarn, yarn, yarn!” said Tom. “I don’t believe you was ever in India in your life!”

  The Gaffer, who had been sipping his beer silently, fired up.

  “Ho, don’t you! One of you fetch that pict’re—the one directly under the old king’s—”

  He gestured toward the rear room. In very short time someone was back and handed over an old cardboard-backed photograph. It was badly faded, but it showed plainly enough three soldiers posed in front of a painted backdrop. They wore ornate and tight-fitting uniforms and had funny, jaunty little caps perched to one side of their heads.

  “That ’un’s me,” said the Gaffer, pointing his twisted old finger. The faces all looked alike, but the one in the middle was that of the shorrest.

  When it was passed to me I turned it over. The back was ornately printed with the studio’s name and sure enough, it was in Lahore—a fact I pointed out, not directly to Tom, but in his general direction; and in one corner, somehow bare of curlicues, was written in faded ink a date in the late ’80s, and three names: Lance-Corporal Harry Owen, Corporal Daniel Devore, Private Alfred Graham.

  “…young chap from newspaper was talking about it to the Padre Sahib,” the Gaffer was saying. “Earnest young fellow, ‘ad spectacles, young’s ’e was. ‘But a thing like that, sir,’ says ’e, ’so unlike a British soldier—what could’ve made him do a thing like that?’ And the Chaplain looks at ’im and sighs and says, ‘Single men in barracks don’t turn into plaster saints.’ The writing-wallah thought this over a bit, then, ‘No,’ ’c says, ‘I suppose not,’ and wrote it down in ’is notebook.”

  “Well,” Tom said grudgingly, “so you’ve been to India. But that doesn’t prove the rest of the story.”

  “It’s true, I tell you. I’ve got cuttin’s to prove it. Civil And Military Gazette of Lahore.”

  Tom began singing:

  “All this happened in Darby

  (I never was known to lie.)

  And if you’d’a’ been there in Darby

  You’d’u’ seen it, the same as I.”

  Someone laughed. Tears started in the old man’s weak blue eyes, and threatened to overflow the reddened rims. “I’ve got cuttin’s.”

  Tom said, “Yes, you’ve always got cuttin’s. But nobody does see ’em but you.”

  “You come ’ome with me,” the Gaffer said, pushing his nobby old hands against the table top and making to rise. “You come ’ome with me. The cuttin’s are in my old trunk and you ask my missus—for she keeps the keys—you just ask my missus.”

  “What!” cried Tom. “Me ask your missus for anything? Why, I’d as soon ask a lion or a tiger at Whipsnade Zoo for a bit o’ their meat, as ask your missus for anything. She’s a Tartar, she is!”

  The Gaffer’s mind had evidently dropped the burden of the conversation. He began to nod and smile as if Tom had paid him a very acceptable compliment. But he seemed to recall the object of Tom’s remarks, rather than their tone.

  “Oh, she was a lovely creature,” he said softly. “Most beautiful girl you ever saw. And it was me that she married, after all, y’see. Not either of them two others, but me, that they called the Mouse!” And he chuckled
. It was not a nice chuckle, and as I looked up, sharply, I caught his eye, and there was something sly and very ugly in it.

  I went cold. In one second I was all but certain of two things. “Gaffer,” I said, trying to sound casual. “What was your wife’s maiden name?”

  The Gaffer seemed deep in thought, but he answered, as casually as I’d asked, “Her name? Her name was Leah De Silva. Part British, part Portugee, and part—but who cares about that? Not I. I married her in church, I did.”

  “And how,” I asked, “do you pronounce D-e-v-o-r-e?”

  The dim eyes wavered. “Worked in the West India Docks, was why we called him the Docker,” said the old man. “But his Christian name, it was Dan’l Deever.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Of course it was. And it wasn’t Harry Owen who peached about the whiskey bottle in Dan’l’s gear, so as to get him in the guardhouse—and it wasn’t Harry Owen who sent the note to the wrong young lady—was it? It was someone who knew what Harry would do if he had the chance. Someone who knew that the Docker would certainly kill Harry, if told the right set of lies. And he did, didn’t he? And then the way was all clear and open for you, wasn’t it?”

  For just a second there was fear in Gaffer Graham’s face. And there was defiance, too. And triumph. Then, swiftly, all were gone, and only the muddled memories of old age were left.

  “It was cold,” he whimpered. “It was bitter cold when they hanged Danny Deever in the morning. There was that young chap from the newspaper, that wrote about it. Funny name ’e ’ad—somethin’ like Kipling—Ruddy Kipling, ’twas.”

  “Yes,” I said, “something like that.”