She accepted Sarah’s letter without question, then studied the envelope for Edward. Isabel had written: Captain Edward Johnston, POW, Singapore.
She lifted her eyes. ‘Camp name? Prisoner number?’
Isabel felt herself flush. ‘I don’t know.’
The woman narrowed her eyes. ‘Didn’t you get a letter?’
Isabel shook her head.
‘How do you know he’s a POW, then?’ She peered at Isabel. ‘What is he, husband? Brother?’
Sarah leant forward. ‘Family friend.’
The woman frowned. ‘We’re not the General Post Office.’
Sarah put in quickly: ‘Send it to the same camp as my husband, can’t you?’ She pointed to her letter to Tom. ‘We heard he’s there.’
The woman sighed, copied the details and threw both letters into a brimming cardboard box to one side.
‘It will find him.’ Sarah took Isabel’s arm and led her away. ‘Have faith.’
Now, alone in the dark sitting room, Isabel raised her head. Voices at the gate. The clank of metal bolts being drawn. The engine of her father’s car sounded on the drive. The car door slammed and her father’s footsteps crossed the gravel to the front door. He paused in the hall, reading the quietness.
She called from the drawing room: ‘Have you eaten?’
He appeared in the doorway. My poor, dear father, she thought, seeing him there. He had the silhouette of an old man, his shoulders stooped and his eyes, fading now, peered forward into the gloom.
‘Georgina?’
‘Isabel, Father.’ She got to her feet, padded across to kiss his cheek. It bristled with white stubble. ‘Everything alright?’
He sighed. She guided him to his armchair and crossed to the night drinks tray to fix him a Scotch. While he drank it, she put her hands on his shoulders and tried to rub a little tension from them. He was all angles, all bone.
He didn’t speak for some time. The house was heavy with the day’s heat and it weighed down on them both.
Finally he said: ‘They’ve arrested the lot of them.’
She went quietly to sit on the end of the settee, close to his chair and waited.
‘Mr Gandhi. Mr Nehru. The whole pack. Rounded up and jailed.’
She shook her head. ‘For sedition?’
He shrugged. ‘Probably. Something of that sort.’ He lifted his hand, raked through his thin, whitening hair. ‘What did they expect? I mean, how much more did they expect us to take?’
She thought of the Japanese, so close now, in Burma, eager for allies, looking to invade.
‘What will happen?’
Her father lifted the glass to his lips. His hand trembled.
‘Riots, maybe. Bloodshed. Worse than anything we’ve seen.’
She sat very still in her chair. Her father had never spoken like this before. He seemed mired in despair.
‘Hindu against Mohammedan. Brown man against white. When I imagine the future, I fear for this country.’
She tried to steady her voice. ‘There’ve been arrests before, haven’t there?’ She paused, afraid of the answer. ‘Need things be so much worse?’
‘Isabel.’ He leant forward to pat her hand. His palm was warm on her fingers. ‘You love India as much as I do, don’t you?’ He smiled with such sad fondness that the breath caught in her throat as he added: ‘My poor, dear girl. What have we done?’
Chapter Forty-Five
Asha
A boy came to her classroom with a chit from the principal.
‘Your good brother is coming,’ it read. ‘Please be attending most urgently.’
Her brother? She had no brother. She crumpled the chit in her hand, told the children to copy the poem on the blackboard and walked down the shabby corridor to the principal’s office.
She looked through the cracked window as she approached and knew at once that it was Anil. From the back, Asha made out his broad shoulders, smart shirt, neatly combed hair. He sat at ease in the visitor’s chair.
‘You were never telling about your brother!’ The principal seemed charmed.
Asha tried to smile. He took such trouble to trick his way into seeing her. She was flattered but also afraid. He knew everything now: her home, her work. Nowhere left to hide.
‘Little sister!’ He rose to his feet, all performance, stretched out his arms in greeting. ‘Don’t be angry with me, now! So sorry to interrupt but our cousin is sick and calling for you. Can you come at once?’
She hesitated. Did he really expect her to leave her class and rush away, just because he wished it? She thought of the spaces on the wooden benches where the Mohammedan children had been.
‘A little difficult, brother,’ she said. ‘Perhaps after class—’
‘What are you saying? Your brother takes time from his work to come all this way to fetch you and you stand there, gawping. Of course you must go.’ The principal clapped her hands. ‘Jaldee!’
The principal had already taken his side. He had won her over with his good looks, his false smile, his flattery. She looked again at the stout middle-aged woman, her waist rolling to fat beneath her sari blouse, her fingers thick with rings. Always, for so many years, she respected her superior. Now she did not.
His manner changed as soon as they left. He pushed her into the back of a rickshaw, climbed up beside her and ordered the rickshaw-wallah to take them to the far end of the slum and to keep his eyes forward and mind his business.
Once they were moving, the rickshaw swaying to the horse’s feeble trot, he turned to her and pulled out his knife. The blade gleamed in the sunlight and he twisted it this way and that. She squinted, tried to turn away.
‘Your good friend,’ he said. ‘The derzi.’
Rahul, of course. Anil had seen them together at the underground meeting. She shrugged. ‘Rahul Chaudhary?’
He caught her chin in his free hand and held it hard in the pincer of his thumb and forefinger, letting the light pierce her eyes. ‘How well are you knowing him?’
She squirmed. ‘We were children together, that’s all. So many years ago.’
‘I don’t like him.’
She closed her eyes and waited and, after some time, he loosened his grip and pushed away her face. He looked different. The bright sun showed the hardness in his face. His eyes, on hers, were suspicious.
‘He’s making trouble.’
‘Trouble?’
‘About the Mohammedans. He needs to stop.’
She bit her lip. ‘He’s a good Hindu,’ she said. ‘A good man.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Is he loyal to his own people?’
She nodded. She thought of Sangeeta, nursing the new baby, of Abhishek playing in the dirt with Sushil. ‘You have my word.’
‘Mujhe asha hai.’ His eyes bored into hers. ‘I hope so.’
Finally he turned to face forwards and cleaned his fingernails with the tip of his knife. She waited, watchful, trying to force her breathing to settle back to the same plodding rhythm as the horse’s hooves.
The slum grew around them, its fetid smells of bodies, of smoky cooking fires, of waste, reached for them through the air. The rickshaw-wallah pulled at the nose of his bony horse to slow him to a walk and pointed towards the rubbish dump.
‘I have a job for Rahul Chaudhary. Listen.’
Anil reached across to whisper orders in her ear. His breath was hot on her neck. When he pulled away from her and called to the rickshaw-wallah to pull up and stop, he tapped the tip of her nose with his knife.
‘Make sure he does as I say,’ he said. ‘You know what I do to traitors.’
He gestured to her to climb down and pointed across the filthy open ground where crows circled round the dark mounds of the dump. Heavy overnight rain had loosened the stink within it and the air was saturated with the sweet-sour stench of rot. She lifted her scarf to her face and lowered herself to the side of the track. Almost at once, the rickshaw-wallah whipped up his tired horse and moved on, leaving her
alone.
Ahead, a knot of men and boys stood to one side, watching something. As she approached, they nudged each other and shuffled apart to let her pass. The mountains of debris had collapsed into a noxious pulpy mulch. Rivulets of black water ran off on the sides and shone in threads at her feet. Contaminated water seeped into her sandals and made dark stripes along the ridges of her toenails.
A grating, scraping sound ahead. She walked on, skirting the first mound. Rahul was there, his back bare in the sun, shovelling beside two strangers. She crossed to him.
‘What are you doing?’ She pulled at his arm. ‘Stop that.’
The other men, curious, stopped to stare.
She lowered her voice. ‘Come away, Rahul. Please.’
His face was solemn. He didn’t answer, just pointed to the ground before him, where the shovels were slowly, painfully shifting the dirt. She stared. Feet. A pair of bare, discoloured feet. The short, slim toes of a young girl pointed to the sky. She craned forward to see more clearly. This corpse was still half-submerged but three others lay beyond it, which were already unearthed and lying silently in the waste. The figures of a man and two more children. They lay on their backs, arms straight by their sides, legs extended. Hellish mud creatures, pasted from head to foot in black slick. Hair plastered wetly against their heads. A low cloud of flies played over them, sometimes hovering, sometimes settling.
Rahul’s voice was quiet. ‘They called me uncle.’
She steadied herself. ‘It’s too late for them. But your own children, think of them.’
His eyes seemed glazed as he looked over the mulch. ‘They need a better grave than this.’
The shovels sucked and scraped as the three men resumed their work. The faces of the dead were stiff. Their eyes were closed, their features masked with drying dirt.
‘Please.’ She pulled again at his arm. ‘You don’t understand.’
Anil had spies. She looked around. Those men and boys, perhaps, who stood still and silent on the line of the rise and watched them all.
The fear in her voice seemed to reach him and he turned finally.
‘Don’t cry, little sister.’ His voice softened. ‘It’s too late for tears.’
She wiped her eyes with her dupatta and let out a long breath. ‘I’m not crying for them,’ she said. ‘I’m crying for you.’
He refused to leave but she managed at last to draw him away to one side and they stood there, their feet in the wet, warm dirt, while she tried to explain why Anil had sent her.
‘Tonight. They plan to attack your friends, the Britishers.’
He looked startled. ‘Isabel Madam?’ He paused, reading the answer in her face. ‘Why?’
Asha tutted. ‘Why? Her father is Burra Sahib, nah? Our enemy. Haven’t you heard what they are doing? So many of freedom fighters are thrown into jail.’
He frowned. ‘He is not my enemy. So why are you telling me?’
She leant in closer. ‘You must help Anil. Tonight. Wait, Rahul. Listen to me. Please.’ She paused, reached again for his arm. ‘You know the house, the garden. Go with them. Show them how to get inside. Show them hiding places. Help them.’
He shook her off. ‘It’s a very wrong thing to kill. Did your baba teach you nothing? I remember him. He would be ashamed that you ask such a thing.’
She closed her eyes. Her baba was there. His face a little faded now in her memory. There was the kind, gentle baba she remembered when she was a girl. She slept at night curled in the hollow of his body, his arm heavy across her. Then that other baba, the bitter, broken old man who quarrelled for no reason and killed a man and was hanged for it. They had done that to him, the Britishers. Maybe Anil was right. Violence knew only violence. The blade of Anil’s knife glinted in the sunlight. She opened her eyes again.
‘You must set aside what you think, Rahul, and help him tonight. You must.’
‘I won’t.’
She put her face close to his. ‘Listen. He is testing you. If you fail him, he will kill you. You and Sangeeta. Your children also.’ She hesitated. ‘Perhaps me.’
He blinked. ‘My children? What kind of man is this?’
She pointed across the waste heap. The two men had resumed their slow, steady work, scratching through the dirt. One crouched now behind the body of the unearthed girl and made to lift her head and shoulders. She rose with a dull suck. Her matted hair swam with mud.
The second man bent to grasp her feet, her legs. They swung her through the air and laid her beside the dark figures of her father, her sisters. The men wiped off their blackened hands on rags, picked up their shovels and began again to search for the disappeared.
‘What kind of man?’ she said. ‘That kind.’
Chapter Forty-Six
Rahul met them late at night at the entrance to the slum, as Anil demanded.
‘So brother, not a traitor after all?’ Anil slapped him on the back.
Rahul didn’t smile. He looked down at his feet. His chappals were split and mended with string.
‘Have you forgotten what they did, bhai?’ Anil said. ‘Hanged our good friend, Sanjay Krishna-ji, and his uncle also and so many brave men besides. And now, when we call again for freedom, they start again. Do you know how many they’ve thrown into jail now? Nehru-ji and Gandhi-ji both. So many are there.’
He paused. Some of the men gathered round him murmured agreement. Only Rahul kept his eyes low and did not speak.
‘Let’s teach them a lesson tonight.’ Anil turned to Asha. His eyes were hard and his gaze direct. ‘You too, little sister. Come with us and see what we do.’
The men carried cans of kerosene and the liquid made a low slosh against the metal as they hurried. The Burra Sahib’s compound was set back from the road and bounded by a high wall. The lines of the bungalow’s roof gleamed through the trees in the moonlight.
Anil pulled at Rahul’s arm. ‘You know the chowkidar? See if he’s awake. If he is, give him a bidi. Keep him talking.’
She shrank back with the others as Rahul walked along to the gate and called softly through the bars to the chowkidar. The guard’s hut was dark. He waited a while, then called again, a little more loudly. Finally, he shrugged and came back to join them under the trees.
‘Sleeping,’ he whispered. ‘He’s an old fellow now and deaf also.’
‘Old and lazy.’ Anil pointed ahead to the wall. ‘So show me. Where should we climb?’
Rahul led them quietly to a secluded spot further along the compound, away from the gates. A plane tree grew against the stone. Anil nodded and gestured to the first man to climb. In a matter of minutes, they were all shinning up the knotty trunk, swinging their bodies over the top of the wall and lowering themselves with a dull thud to the grass beneath. Rahul climbed beside Asha, ready to steady her if she slipped. His face was tight with tension.
They gathered again in the bushes on the other side. Anil lifted his hand to them to be still and they watched and listened. The house stood proudly in the moonlight. It was a grand home with a lengthy verandah, set with wicker chairs. Despite the summer heat, the gardens were lush and neatly kept. The slum stank always of bodily waste and sweat and rotting vegetables. This world was bathed in the rich perfume of blossoming trees and blooms in terracotta pots.
Asha strained through the branches to see. This was my home too, she thought. My baba brought me here and found himself disgraced and that was the start of everything. She hoped to feel some dim memory of early childhood stir as she looked out over the trees and bushes and lawns towards the veiled windows of the house but none did.
All was silent. Anil lifted his hand and motioned them forward. Within minutes, the men, silent and bent double, had poured thin trails of kerosene along the verandah and down the side of the house. Its oily stink polluted the air.
Anil gestured for the men to throw down their cans and flee back to the bushes. He struck a match and threw it onto the verandah. Then another and a third. The kerosene flew at once i
nto life, popping with flames which ran like mad creatures along the edge of the house and rose greedily to the woodwork.
Anil ran back to join them. They watched, mesmerised, as the fire rushed and spread through the dry wood. An explosion, then a crash as the first window shattered and fell. No movement inside the darkened house. Still the chowkidar slept.
Rahul’s eyes were wide and filled with horror. He whispered: ‘They’ll burn alive.’
Already the blazing fire was unstoppable. Anil turned to Asha. His eyes shone red, dancing with flames.
‘See!’ He laughed and his look was feral. ‘See how the British palace burns and the Britishers with it. This is just the beginning, little sister. Oh, the fun to come!’
He opened his arms as if to embrace the burning house and kicked up his feet. The men around him joined in with the same mad joy. One drew out a flask of toddy and they passed it from mouth to mouth.
Asha stood stock-still. My baba, she thought. Is this revenge for him? She looked back at the house, shimmering now with flames. Sparks flew like firecrackers into the night sky. My baba was a good man, she thought. A kind man. She shook her head as, around her, the men frolicked and danced and drank. He would take no pleasure in burning a family to death.
‘Where is he?’ Anil stopped dead, scowled. The men, wary, watched as Anil took a step towards her. His face was menacing. ‘Where’s he gone?’
Asha looked round, bewildered. Rahul had vanished. She found herself stammering. ‘Please, brother. Maybe—’
Anil gave her a sharp push backwards and she stumbled. He set off, moving quickly round the side of the house towards the back, creeping from one clump of trees and bushes to the next. The men followed. Asha, winded, trailed behind.
For a moment, she saw nothing. The back of the house, not yet licked by flame, was veiled and dark. A sudden movement caught her eye. A swish of curtain. Then a figure, clear against the open window, climbed out of the room onto the sill and dropped to the ground. It was Rahul. He ran to the trees and started to make his way in a broad loop back to the front of the house. Anil and his men crept silently behind him. As Rahul made to swing himself up into the low branches of a tree, close to the compound wall, Anil jumped on his back.
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