by John Masters
But perhaps Peter would not have destroyed the plate at all. Perhaps he would have taken Harry at once into some even more appalling situation and had him photographed in the act of rescue. She could only be sure that, if Peter had been there, things would not be the same.
There had been a good result too, though. Peter had slept little during these nights since the earthquake. Because he had been absent at the moment of the disaster, and had not been able to influence the immediately succeeding events, she knew that he had brooded over what was and what might .have been. Somewhere in those silent hours, while he chastised himself for the sullen despair that now weighed on the spirit of a brave man and mountaineer and friend, the awakening current of his emotions had spread from the particular of Harry Walsh to the general of his relation to herself, his children, his work, and the world they lived in. Every morning she saw him more drawn and tired, the lines cut deeper into his forehead and the skin tinged more deeply blue around his eyes; and every morning the tide of his interest flowed deeper and more wide across the stricken city.
He said: ‘The Lieutenant-Governor’s promised to get passage for all of you on the Hoshiarpur. She’s sailing on the twenty-fifth.’
‘And today’s the nineteenth,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to leave here on the twenty-third. It will be a rush.’
‘I’m afraid so,’ he said.
Peggy came in. ‘I hear we’re being sent home on the Hoshiarpur,’ she said loudly. ‘Harry’s just told me.’
Peter said: ‘I told him yesterday that we wouldn’t have much chance of getting passages at such short notice unless we got H.E. to help. He agreed.’
‘Well, I don’t,’ Peggy said, still loud, but flashing a large, hard smile. ‘I’ve told him he ought to go on with the expedition to Meru. There hasn’t been an earthquake up there. If we turn tail people will say he’s running away from that too.’
Peter said: ‘That’s impossible, Peggy, and Harry knows it. For one thing all your stores were taken by Adam Khan to feed his refugees.’
‘Who gave him authority to do that?’ Peggy said. ‘Anyway, we can get more. They’ve got enough food here to feed London, and more coming in on every train--’
‘It’s out of the question,’ Peter said patiently. ‘H.E. withdrew the expedition’s permission to go into the Northern Tehsils.’
‘Why?’ Peggy said. ‘Oh, I know. You’ll go next year, now that you’re a hero again. A hero at Harry’s expense.’
Peter said: ‘The Chakdi bridge at Harkamu is down, and so are half a dozen others. Besides, there are no men for you up there. Most of them are working on the road.’
Harry had entered silently. He said: ‘Of course we can’t go, Peggy.’ He sat down, his hands stiff at his sides.
Peter said: ‘I got H.E. to promise that you would get permission for another expedition next year.’
Harry said flatly: ‘Now it’s you who are being stupid, Peter. You know the Joint Committee aren’t going to choose me to join any more expeditions even if anyone would go with me. I’m in the same boat as you were after nineteen-thirteen--only different--and you always had Gerry. It’s a pity he’s not alive.’
Emily said sharply: ‘Don’t talk like that, Harry.’
But Peter said: ‘Gerry would have liked to come with us.’
‘Us?’ Harry said, anger suddenly flaring up in his taut face. ‘Don’t you remember what I said to you in ‘thirteen, at Camp Two on Meru?’
Peter said: ‘I remember, but I think it’s time we forgot.’ Peggy’s brittle loudness was dissolving into a kind of blotchy, shapeless rage. Since the disaster this had happened whenever she tried to talk to one person for more than a few minutes on end. Looking at her, Emily thought she had been drinking. Now she whipped a small square of folded paper out of the pocket of her dress and waved it in Peter’s face.
‘How the hell are we going to forget this?’ she screamed. Emily didn’t have to look at the paper. There was the building, toppling over against the bright light of the sky, and a single brick seemingly suspended in mid-air as it fell away in front, a forerunner of the leaning mass behind and above; in front, dark, but as vividly realized as a knife held to the face in the night, the girl, her face to the camera, on one knee, her arms out; closer, Harry, running straight at you, a shaft of light frozen in the sweaty sheen of fear on his face.
‘Peggy!’
Emily snatched at the photograph, but Peggy jerked it back and put it away. ‘It’s n-no good trying to pretend it didn’t happen,’ she stammered hysterically. ‘That’s what you want, isn’t it? So that we’ll try to go on just as if it hadn’t, and then face year after year of being rebuffed, of people sneering and looking the other way.’
Emily snapped: ‘It won’t happen like that--and even if it does, do you have to harp on it more than Harry’s worst enemy would? You’re not helping him or anyone else.’
‘Oh, yes, I am,’ Peggy said. ‘I’m making sure that we don’t fall into your trap and come to believe it isn’t important.’ Emily turned her back wearily. Peggy must have lost her sanity that day she lost Peter under the Matterhorn, for hatred like hers was surely a form of madness. These ghastly scenes were the natural outcome of fourteen years of festering bitterness, but none the more bearable for that. Peter worried about Harry, but Peggy needed help just as much--and who could give it?
She heard Peter speaking. ‘You underestimate people, Peggy. They will be willing to forget soon enough, if you are. You overestimate them, too--their memories. In a year or two not many people will remember, even if they try to. After Harry has led an expedition to Meru, no one will remember the other thing at all. People don’t like keeping memories like that in their minds. I ran away from the Somme, and I don’t suppose there are a dozen people in the world who remember it now. Also, a lot of people have had experience of shell shock and know it isn’t the same as cowardice.’
Harry sat there as though the conversation had nothing to do with him; but his face, over which he usually kept tight control, had perceptibly closed and hardened. Now he spoke harshly. ‘I don’t want your sympathy, Peter, and I don’t believe in shell shock. I know it isn’t the same as cowardice, but I saw too many men use it as an excuse for cowardice ... It turns out I’ve got a yellow streak. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen that picture. That’s why we keep it... I’ve got five copies, to remind myself. Oh, I’ve been afraid, on mountains, in the war, but I used to think I had control over myself--not like you. You didn’t know what fear was, that was why you didn’t have any control. And don’t talk nonsense about your running away from the Somme. I know and everyone knows that you were running away from it because you found it too easy.
‘Look, everything’s finished, like the world, like France, like the two thousand men of my own battalion I saw killed between Neuve Chapelle and the armistice. . . . We all had such high hopes in our own ways, and now we’re all broken. You aren’t going to be Viceroy of India, because Gerry broke you. And you broke Gerry. And the earthquake found me out.’ He rose stiffly to his feet. ‘What we’ve got to do now is get back in our shells and tell the rest of the world to go to hell and leave us alone. I’m a stockbroker, and you’re a colonial administrator. You keep your memories of Gerry, and I’ll keep that piece of newspaper.’
He walked out quickly. Peggy followed him with a last bitter stare at Emily.
Peter lit a fresh cigar. When it was drawing well he said: ‘I’m not going to stand for that. Nor’s Harry. Well, if it’s hurting as much as that we needn’t feel too badly yet. Come on, let’s have tiffin. After that I’ll give you a hand with the packing--but I’ll have to go at four. I’m meeting Harnarayan and the rest of the District Board.’
‘All right, darling,’ she said. He put down his hand to pull her to her feet, and she swung up and in the same motion into the crook of his arm. He kissed her on the tip of the nose, and the half-smile came back to her lips. It should have been an unhappy house, but she co
uld not feel unhappy, or even doubtful, for long.
Chapter 37
The day of the twenty-third crept early upon her, with the sun not yet up, and already the sounds of men dragging heavy boxes along the veranda, and the squeak and grind of ox-cart wheels on the gravel, and Peter not beside her in the wide bed.
‘Peter!’ she called quietly; but he was not in the bathroom. She pushed aside the mosquito net, wrapped her dressing-gown about her, and went to the children’s room. They were jumping up and down on their beds, ayah trying to dress Elizabeth, the bearer helping by making a face of appalling severity at Rodney.
‘Sahib kiddar hai?’ she asked.
‘Daftar-men, memsahib.’
She walked quickly to the office and put her head in. Peter was there, standing by the window, and with him Adam Khan. Peter waved to her--he too was in his dressing-gown--and said: ‘I’ll tell you later.’
She went back to the bedroom. The train left at half-past ten. There was no sound from the spare room, but the bearer assured her he had called the Walshes with their chhota hazri.
She was sure Peter had not sent for Adam. Therefore Adam had come with news of importance. It might delay her departure. She would stay another few days with Peter! ... Foolish, foolish hope. It would be something quite different--drains, processions, rates of ‘earthquake pay.’ She could think only of Peter. After four years the man she loved had come to her with a love to match, even surpass, her own. Love flowered inside her and surrounded her like blossoms climbing a wall--and over all, the brilliant sun. His physical presence had sprung up from the well of darkness so that now, as she stooped over a trunk, she saw the light ripple of the long muscles of his thighs. She was a garden, watered again, and the husbandry was a wonder of living, as it had never been even in the beginning; but it filled now an exact and true proportion of the whole love, taking its place between the poetry of the day and the music of the stars. Taking a glass of wine from his hands was a sensual pleasure, the sound of his voice an invitation to ecstasy, not physical but universal. Beyond him, seen only in and through him, life promised the rewards and efforts of a great mountain, but with all the harshness tempered by the new light. She felt that she had been walking for a thousand days without cease on a gravelled plain, her feet sore and her heart numbed, where there was no end, nor ever would be; and then he came, riding, burnished arrows in his hand, and suddenly she knew, as the first arrow pierced her, that the plain of her misery had been a mirage, for now in front the mountains rose from there to there, frost and fire and running water--and the wildflower under the rock.
Now she must leave him. She thought of him in the study and tried to hear the words passing between the two friends who had been enemies and friends, and were now to each other more than either knew. The big house sang to the shouts of the excited children, and a bullock lowed softly, insistently between the shafts.
Peter came in and took off his dressing-gown. ‘Harnarayan has organized a demonstration against Harry,’ he said. ‘At least five hundred people are going to line the road near the station as he goes by. They won’t boo--just stand, silently.’
‘Harnarayan!’ She gasped. ‘Oh, no! He--he isn’t as mean as that.’
Peter took his razor and went into the bathroom. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but he’s not thinking of people. He’s thinking of politics.’ She said: ‘What are you going to do? Go and see him and ask him to call it off? Can’t you forbid it?’
His voice came muffled from the bathroom. ‘I could, under the earthquake emergency powers--but I’m not going to. Adam and I are going to go with Harry, on foot. We’ll take Rodney.’
She hurried to the bathroom door. He was in his pyjama trousers, his face covered with soap. ‘You mustn’t, Peter, not even for Harry’s sake. Rodney will never forget it till the day he dies. You’ll ruin him.’
‘I don’t think so, darling,’ he said. ‘At least he’ll probably remember it, but not for the reason you think. I believe Adam knows the people of Rudwal better than Harnarayan does. I believe I do, too.’
‘You’re going to use their love of children to shelter Harry?’ she asked. A moment ago she had been almost angry with him, for this threat to her child had seemed unnecessary and cruel. But the man there so close to her was not the old Peter. This Peter had strength and gentleness. She must and would trust him.
He answered her: ‘If you want to put it that way--yes. In another way, we’re going to remind them that some people are more vulnerable than others. I’d like you and Peggy to follow in the trap a few minutes after us, so that you don’t reach the station until we’ve got there.’
She took off her gown and nightdress. Suppose he had said that she must go with them, and walk slowly down with them between the contempt. This was how she would feel--naked, vulnerable, trembly at the knees. Oh, dear, this was what touched every moment with gold, that even so she would have to do it, for another’s sake.
The Walshes joined them, unsmiling, at breakfast. At half-past nine Adam Khan returned. Peter put on his white topee, and Harry his big khaki one. They all chatted a moment on the front steps, now bare to the sun where the porte cochère had been demolished and removed. Rodney came out, in khaki shorts and shirt and bare legs and sandals, his small, thin face almost hidden under the huge topee.
‘Well, good-bye, Mummy,’ he said. ‘See you at the station. I’m walking there with Daddy and Uncle Harry.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Don’t jump in any puddles.’
They set off down the curving drive, Rodney walking in the middle, at first solemn and long-striding, but after a few moments leaping up and down and skipping ahead, but never turning to wave. They disappeared.
Peggy was beside her. ‘What good is that going to do?’ she said. ‘Do you think Harry doesn’t know he’s being escorted by a hero and a little boy--the Saviour of Rudwal and his eldest son?’
Emily caught Peggy’s hand convulsively, for she was full of fear again. She cried: ‘Haven’t we got enough to worry about without fighting each other, Peggy?’ Peggy tried to pull her hand away but Emily held it tight and went on. ‘I believe Peter wants to show Harry that people aren’t as censorious as he thinks--that they don’t want to be judges.’
Peggy glared at her, frozen-faced, for a long minute; then the familiar breaking-up began, and ugly blotches dappled the fair skin, and the classical lines blurred and smudged. But this time there was something different about the change, for the end point was not a desperately bitter woman but a woman spent, pared down at last to the simple bones. It was this woman, a being Emily had not known even in their childhood, who whispered: ‘Oh my God, Emily, I still love him.’
Emily put her arms around Peggy’s shoulders and gently led her inside and left her in the drawing-room.
She went about the last occasions. Nothing left unpacked in the bedroom. Peter would sleep alone here tonight. The study, to see again where he worked. The three men would be halfway to the station by now. Five minutes more. The drawing-room, so many thousand hours of loneliness, of longing this side of despair, and worse thereby; and all those hours wiped away by a few score since the earthquake.
‘Sab tayyhr hai memsahib,’ the bearer said.
They would be walking down the street now, between the silent people. Peggy joined her on the steps; the horse tossed its head and jingled its bit; the trap was polished like the morning; the syce’s white teeth gleamed in a proud smile.
A thin, high sound came to them from the south-east. The wind lay in that quarter, and the station, and the street where the bitter people waited. Peggy’s new-made face began to tremble. The sound increased.
‘They’re booing,’ Peggy whispered.
Filled with anguish for all their sakes, Emily could not speak; but it was Peggy with her, and Peter had put Peggy in her charge, so she gathered her strength, stepped up into the carriage, and said: ‘Oh, I don’t suppose so. Achcha, Daulat, chalo!’
Near the bungalow the stre
ets were full of police and soldiers, and there were men at work in huge gangs, and grinding bullock carts in close procession, and thunderous Army lorries. Farther on, where the street widened and ran straight towards the baroque turrets of the station, there was another type of crowd--men mostly, here and there the brightness of a working woman’s bodice and skirt, one rich sari, a few policemen. The people were dispersing and most had their backs turned to the street, the clopping horse, and the gleaming carriage. Peggy stared straight ahead, her hands clenched in her lap. Here and there a man turned and glanced indifferently at them. Emily relaxed a little. Surely everyone would be more excited if there had just been a demonstration.
At the station she walked at Peggy’s side on to the platform, Smythe and a foot-constable clearing a path for them through the crowds of prospective travellers. The train was waiting, for this was the terminus of the branch. Peter was there, and Harry, and Rodney, standing with his legs apart and his hands in his pockets, talking importantly to Baber. (Were they all made of stone, to be so unconcerned? Even to be able to hide such a hurt?) Baber was magnificent in his Punjabi clothes, smiling down at Rodney, talking earnestly.
There was the Old Captain, his left hand shaking these days so that he could not hold the sword in it any more, but let it hang in its scabbard at his side; and a manservant supporting him; and Adam Khan, unsmiling, his eyes alight.
Emily took Peggy and led her into the compartment next door to the one reserved for herself and the children. Harry looked dazed. The conductor was there with a big railway watch in his hand. It showed the time for good-byes.
