Belonging (17 page)

I do not know what day it is. We have been here two or three days, prisoners of Nana Saheb. I do not know how to write the terrible news. Freddie, James, Louisa, Sophie and the baby are all dead. Arthur is missing after going out on a raid outside the entrenchment. Ram Buksh saw him cut down and went back to recover his body but it was not there.

The sights I have seen are imprinted on my mind and I cannot get them out. I see them when I close my eyes and when I sleep I dream them. At night I am woken by my own or other women’s or children’s screams. Scenes from the entrenchment roll over and over in my mind – little Mabel Tremayne dying of shock when the first bombardment started; Freddie shot through the head by a sniper’s bullet, dying in his father’s arms; James with his insides spilling out and Louisa trying to push them back in; the screams of the wounded when the hospital burned down; Luxmibai with both her legs blown off while trying to fetch water for the children; Louisa, crazed with grief, dying of fever and the baby fading like a flower in a few hours. Towards the end we no longer cared whether we lived or died; children ran out
among the bullets and no one tried to stop them. Poor Arthur saw his whole family killed, except Sophie and me.

After he was gone Ram Buksh did everything for me – he cared for poor Sophie, who was dumb from shock and would not eat. Even after he was wounded, he brought us food and water from the well at the risk of his life.

General Wheeler surrendered on the 25th, and we left the entrenchment on the 27th, after a delay because there were not enough palanquins for the sick and wounded. But as soon as we were outside they dragged the servants away and our luggage was all left behind. We knew then we were betrayed, but it was too late. We were filthy and dressed in rags and the natives jeered and taunted us as we made our way to the river. I saw Colonel Ewart’s own sowars drag him from his palanquin by his wounded arm while he screamed in pain. They mocked him and demanded to know why his shoes were not polished, then they cut him to pieces in front of his wife. They told her she could go but when she turned they cut her down too. Ram Buksh tried to shield me from the sight, but when we got near the river they dragged him away, shouting that he was a traitor, and put him in irons. He fought them to stay with me but they beat him with their rifle butts until I screamed at him to go with them. I am so ashamed now that when we agreed to surrender no one thought to ask if safe passage applied to the native officers who had risked their lives for us.

They were waiting for us at the river, lining the ghats, their rifles loaded and ready. We managed to scramble aboard the boats but the water was low and they stuck fast in the mud. Capt. Moore was shot through the heart and Gen. Wheeler cut down in the water by a sowar on horseback. I pushed Sophie down on to the floor but before I could get down
beside her a sepoy grabbed me and pulled me from the boat. It was one of Arthur’s men and he was shouting something to me about Arthur, but I did not listen, for I was fighting to get back to Sophie. At last he let me go, but when I reached the river again I could not find the boat. They were all on fire – everyone in them burnt alive. Women and children jumping into the water were speared like fish. I cannot write any more.

We are being held captive in a building in the garden of a larger house. After the river we were taken to another place by Nana Saheb’s soldiers, who taunted us and threw grain on the floor for the children to scrabble for, and called us vermin. Yesterday we were brought here, where we are guarded by mutineer sepoys. It is dark and hot and there are so many of us that we cannot lie down together but have to take turns. But our guards are not unkind; they allow us to draw water from the well and wash our clothes and some of the women have cut off all their hair to be rid of the lice. The natives climb on to the walls to watch us and mock at us but we are beyond caring. The things I have seen go round and round in my head.

Some of the ladies pray to keep themselves calm, or read aloud from the Bible, but I cannot. I do not understand how God could allow such terrible things.

Today General Wheeler’s servant brought my bag, which he had been carrying for me, and handed it back through the window. He asked after the family and wept to learn that they
are dead, unless any escaped in the boat that got away. Other servants came to the barred windows to ask after their masters and to bring us food or possessions they have salvaged. Mrs. Anderson gave them some notes to carry to the rescue force, which they say has reached Allahabad, asking them to make haste.

They told us that the native officers are still alive but Nana Saheb intends to try them for treason and make an example of them by cutting off their hands. I cannot bear to think of it. I realise that I no longer think of Ram Buksh as different from us. He is closer to me than anyone else on earth, closer than Arthur, or Mama or Papa, or even Mina, for he and I have shared something that no one else could ever understand.

Nana Saheb has sent us meat, beer and wine and a native doctor to care for the sick. The sepoys say that when he saw the conditions in which we are held he was shocked. I no longer know what to think. Perhaps what was done at the river was not by his orders and he does not intend to kill us after all? The doctor is a Bengalee and seems a kind man. He said my baby will come soon and that all will be well.

Two of the servants carrying notes to Allahabad have been caught, and to punish us Nana Saheb has sent us a woman to be our jailer. We are to call her the Begum. We hoped a woman would be kinder but she is not and even the sepoys dislike her. To humiliate us, she has ordered that our
food is to be served by the men whose job it is to clean away the night soil. She makes us grind our own corn too, but we do not mind, for any activity is a relief.

Fourteen died of cholera today and were dragged out to be thrown in the river.

Today we heard the guns. They are here at last! We all cheered but the Begum told us not to be too happy, for Nana Saheb’s army has gone out to meet them and will wipe them off the face of the earth.

My baby is born. A boy. He was delivered at dawn by Mrs. Moore with the help of the native doctor. I asked him what date it was so I would know my son’s birthday. He lies beside me now, sleeping so trustingly that I know I would do anything to save him – that if we all perish, he must live. It is the last thing I can do for Arthur, to leave a son who will carry on his name now that he and James are dead.

We were woken by the guns this morning. After breakfast Nana Saheb’s soldiers came and took out the men and boys from the Futtehgurh party, who were kept in a different room, and shot them. They took the doctor away too, though he pleaded to stay, saying he was needed. This afternoon they shot him too, along with the servants who were caught carrying messages.

The Begum told Mrs. Anderson that Nana Saheb has ordered our execution. When Mrs. Anderson begged for the children’s lives she said that when one cleans out a serpent’s nest one does not leave the eggs. I do not understand why she hates us so much. She said every sepoy would give his life willingly to rid their country of every white-faced serpent, but this afternoon she ordered the guards to shoot us and they refused. They say they will kill any number of men but not a single woman or child. Then she called for Nana Saheb’s general, who ordered them to shoot us through the windows, but they fired into the ceiling and the plaster fell down on us. The Begum screamed at them that they were cowards and she would find some real men who are not afraid to do a man’s work. She has been gone for an hour now. Mrs. Anderson and Mrs. Moore have ripped up their dresses and tied the door handles together.

I have placed the baby in my bag with my lucky Sussex stone around his neck in the hope that it will preserve him. The others are all praying. I tried to pray with them but I could not, for I find that I no longer believe in God. Strangely, I am no longer afraid.

‘You really are a dark horse,’ Barbara said when the rush was over and everything had calmed down. ‘A Sikh boyfriend and you never mentioned it.’

I was sitting by Jagjit’s bed, waiting for him to come round, and still recovering from the shock of finding the pebble. Barbara had said that an orderly had come running to tell her I had fainted. She had revived me with smelling salts and made me sit with my head between my knees. ‘You were white as a sheet. I thought you’d just overdone it until you started crying and calling his name. Of course we didn’t know who he was then.’

I had no recollection of any of that, nor of what I did while I waited for her to bring me news of him. I could not believe he was alive, even after she told me that the blood on the front of the jacket was not his. I realised then that I had never expected him to come back.

The surgeon had removed pieces of shrapnel from his shoulder and back.

‘He’s a lucky chap,’ he told me, when Barbara took me to ask what he’d found. ‘This –’ he held up a jagged piece of shrapnel ‘ – was stopped by his scapular, but he still has some fragments in his skull. I can’t operate without shaving some of
his hair and we need his permission to do that; we don’t want another mutiny on our hands.’

This was the policy with Sikhs, whose religion forbids the cutting of hair. There was an elderly Sikh jemadar on the ward with a fractured skull who, for this reason, was refusing an operation that might have relieved his paralysis. And despite my pleas that I knew Jagjit, and was willing to take responsibility, the surgeon would not budge.

‘He really is a dish,’ Barbara said admiringly. ‘He looks completely at home here…’ She gestured up at the great painted dome. ‘With any luck he’ll come round soon. Shall I pull the screens round and leave you two lovebirds alone? I’ll keep an eye out for Matron.’

‘He’s just a friend. I’ve known him since I was thirteen.’

‘I believe you; thousands wouldn’t. Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.’ She winked at me, pulled the screens round us and went away.

Jagjit was lying still, his head bandaged and his skin yellow-grey against the white pillows. I stared at him, feeling a mixture of relief and anger. Why had he not listened to me? Why had he insisted on signing up for a war that had nothing to do with him? Why did men have to play at heroics without thinking of the consequences, not just for themselves but those they left behind?

A wave of exhaustion overcame me. I leant back and closed my eyes, and when I opened them it took me a few moments to register that he was looking at me.

‘Lila? What…?’ His eyes left mine and travelled round the room, pausing on the chandeliers and palm tree pillars. ‘Where the hell…?’ He tried to sit up and sank back with a grimace.

‘You mustn’t move. You’ve had an operation.’

‘An operation? But why? What is this place?’

‘It’s a hospital. In Brighton.’ I steadied my voice, not to alarm him.

‘Hospital? What kind of hospital? And what are those bells?’

‘I can’t hear any bells; you may have tinnitus. You’re in the Indian Hospital in the old Pavilion… where I work. I wrote to you about it.’

He blinked and raised a hand to his bandaged head. ‘What happened?’

‘A shell, we think. You’ve lost some blood so you’ll feel weak for a bit. Are you in pain?’

‘Er…’ He shifted a bit and winced.

‘Try not to move. You don’t want to start bleeding again. There are still bits of shrapnel in your head. They need your permission to shave your hair so they can operate. You will give it?’

‘Of course.’ He looked round again and then back at me. ‘Don’t look so worried.’

‘I should let them know you’re conscious. And Matron won’t like me being alone with you with the screen closed.’

‘Come here.’

He held his hand out and I took it, feeling the weight of it in mine, the warm skin under my fingers. A feeling of unreality came over me. What if he was dead and this was a dream, like the one about Father being alive again? I remembered the jacket and shivered.

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing. Just a goose walking over my grave.’

‘You looked so cross a moment ago… Are you angry?’

‘Of course not. Just tired. And worried.’

He pulled me towards him. ‘Come closer.’

I leant over.

‘Kiss me.’

‘If Matron sees us I’ll be out on my ear.’

‘Damn Matron.’

I bent over him, careful not to jog his shoulder, and touched his lips with mine. A tear dripped on to his forehead and I straightened up quickly, wiping it away. ‘I think you’ve got a temperature. How do you feel? Can you remember anything? What happened or how you got here… anything at all?’

He frowned. ‘We were advancing… I think it was raining. Baljit…’ his voice sharpened ‘… Baljit was next to me.’ He began to struggle up.

I pushed him back. ‘Stay still! You can’t get up yet.’

‘But Baljit… I’ve got to find him. I remember now… he was wounded… bleeding. Is he here too?’

I thought of the jacket. ‘I don’t know, but I’ll ask.’

‘There was so much of it… I couldn’t stop it… It just kept coming…’ His lips began to tremble.

‘Just rest now. I’ll try to find out.’

As I stood up, he reached out and grabbed my wrist. His grip was surprisingly strong. ‘If something’s happened to him, I’ll never forgive myself. He signed up because of me. If he’s… If…’

‘Sssshh. Stop it. He might be all right. I’ll go and ask now.’

He lay back and closed his eyes. Tears squeezed out between his lids.

I bent and kissed him on the forehead. ‘I’ll have to go. I promise I’ll ask about Baljit.’

But there was no record of a Baljit Singh being admitted. ‘It’s possible he was taken elsewhere,’ Barbara said. ‘But if
that was his blood on your friend’s uniform, it doesn’t seem likely that he survived.’

Jagjit’s wounds healed well and, apart from a few scars and the tinnitus, there was no lasting damage, but I could tell he was suffering. A few days later he received official notification of his brother’s death together with a tobacco tin containing one of Baljit’s little fingers, wrapped in a cloth. He told me that when bodies could not be recovered the other sepoys took a finger so that some part of their friend could be cremated.

A few weeks later, when he was stronger, we were taken by bus to a place on the Downs, just north of Brighton, where there was a cremation site for Hindus and Sikhs who had died at the hospital. All the soldiers well enough to walk came to pay their respects, and Barbara arranged with Matron that I should accompany them. We stood on the Downs on a glorious clear morning with the shadowy blue Isle of Wight visible in the distance, and the fields yellow with buttercups, and the larks singing above us, and listened to a Brahmin read the sacred rites while the bodies were fed to the flames. Jagjit went forward and placed Baljit’s finger on a pyre and stood back. Then flowers, fruit and sandalwood were thrown into the fire and, as the breeze carried the smell of burning flesh to our nostrils, I watched the ashes rise into the clear blue sky and pictured them flying upwards, to be caught by the trade winds and carried round the world until they came at last to rest in the lap of Mother Ganges.

Jagjit’s body grew stronger but his depression did not lift. He dreamt of Baljit often and woke shouting or crying. The Beauchamps came to visit him, and in May, when Simon was
given a fortnight’s leave, they asked if Jagjit could complete his recuperation at their house. It was an unusual request but because the boys had been at school together it was permitted. Things were quieter at the hospital by then and I managed to take some leave too.

Simon looked even thinner and paler; his nerves seemed shot to pieces and his hands trembled constantly. I had told him in my last letter that Jagjit had been wounded but received no reply and I was hoping that their quarrel, whatever it was, had been forgotten. I expected that their experiences in the trenches would have brought them closer, but Simon was withdrawn and Jagjit seemed too preoccupied to notice. At mealtimes Mr. and Mrs. Beauchamp did their best to keep up the conversation but I have never been much of a conversationalist, and Simon and Jagjit barely spoke.

Mrs. Beauchamp invited Aunt Mina to lunch on the second day and to my surprise she made an effort to speak to Jagjit as well as Simon, asking after his family and expressing regrets for the death of his brother. He replied politely but the conversation soon lapsed and she left as soon as lunch was finished.

I followed her outside and apologised. ‘I’m sure he didn’t mean to be rude… it’s just – ’

‘There’s no need to apologise, Lila. I can see they’re both exhausted. How could I feel anything but grateful when they’re fighting to defend us?’

It was only after she’d gone that I realised she had called me Lila.

Time seemed to drag and yet the days flew past. The three of us rose late, dawdled over breakfast, went for long walks in the woods or on the Downs. By mutual consent we retired to the
playroom in the evenings, where we sat and read or gazed into the fire. I could see this was what they both needed – quiet and time to heal – but to me it felt like time wasted, time when I could have been alone with Jagjit.

One morning, towards the end of the first week, after the Beauchamps had left the breakfast table, Simon asked Jagjit if he could speak to him in private. I watched them leave the room together and walk off down the garden. When they came back Simon’s face was closed and set. The next morning he announced he was going to spend the rest of his leave at the flat his father used when he was up in London. His parents naturally wanted to go with him, but were concerned about leaving Jagjit and me alone together.

‘Your aunt wouldn’t like it,’ Mrs. Beauchamp said, ‘and I understand her concern. There would be talk. And Jagjit can’t stay here alone with only the servants to care for him.’

As luck would have it, Barbara was due some leave and agreed to come and stay. As an older person – she was twenty-seven – and a qualified nurse, she could chaperone us and also be responsible for Jagjit’s welfare.

As always, her presence brought things to life. She refused to humour Jagjit’s moods and insisted on keeping us busy every moment of the day: we went riding, picnicked in the bluebell woods, strolled along the barbed-wire-covered promenade at Brighton and went to the Grand for tea. In the evenings she insisted we dress for dinner and kept us laughing with tales of the scrapes she had got into during her nursing training. She even managed to get Jagjit to join in the conversation, something I was unable to do. On the fourth day she was there she withdrew to her room after dinner, saying she needed to write some letters. That afternoon she’d handed me a small package, telling me to open it when I
was alone. Wrapped in a paper bag inscribed with the words
‘Carpe Diem!
’ was a packet of French letters.

After she retired to her room that evening, Jagjit and I sat in silence at the table, at a loss what to do. It was he who eventually suggested retiring to the playroom. It was familiar, a place in which we felt safe, except that suddenly we didn’t. In hospital I had been able to assume the mantle of ‘nurse’, but here I felt like a child in the presence of a grown and brooding man. I understood his need to grieve – who better? – but once again I experienced how painful it was to be shut out.

Jagjit sat down on one end of the sofa. I wasn’t sure if he wanted me to sit beside him so I took the armchair by the window. We sat in silence, staring into the fire. Even though it was May, we had a fire every evening because he was cold; he was always cold these days, he said.

‘I wish I could do something to help,’ I said, hearing, even as they left my lips, the pathetic inadequacy of those words, remembering Simon’s comments about inane talk from civilians who didn’t know the first thing about what the war was really like.

The light began to fade outside and the fire filled the room with moving shadows. The silence lengthened until I could no longer bear it. I looked across at him. He seemed to have forgotten I was there. Tears came to my eyes and I was about to leave the room when he spoke to the fire.

‘No one can help, Lila. It’s indescribable out there. But for me the horror and the discomfort aren’t the worst thing… because that’s the same for everyone. We’re all in it together. It’s the little things that get to you… the inequalities and injustices that rankle… Of course, I knew racial prejudice existed, but… I’d never experienced it myself, not really.
Everyone has always behaved well to me. But on the ship to France we were sharing a hold with some Tommies… it was horribly hot and crowded so everyone was irritable, but they were so appallingly rude – both to and about us – that we had to be moved. They complained that we stank… they didn’t like the fact that the men ate with their fingers instead of a knife and fork… if we met them on the gangways or in the corridors they swore at us and told us to get out of their way. I reminded one of them of his manners once and was hauled over the coals by the C.O. – told I would have to learn to behave myself once we got to Europe. They even cancelled the meetings where we could express our grievances to the C.O. They were a special concession for Indian troops, to prevent resentment building up, but they don’t want to hear it now… And the men
do
feel resentful… about the fact that our victories are never reported and that they’re the only troops barred from using the brothels. Even the North Africans are allowed to, but then the French don’t share the British horror of miscegenation.’

He looked across at me and grimaced.

‘I’m sorry, Lila. Sometimes I forget who I’m speaking to.’

Had he forgotten, I wondered, glad that the fire was camouflaging my blush, or was this part of the new hostility I sensed in him?

‘The one good thing about getting in trouble… it made the men trust me. They’d been uncertain about my loyalties. They knew that I’d lived in England… thought I might be carrying tales to the officers. It was difficult for Baljit too… they weren’t sure about him either. But after that they started to ask me things. Most of them had never even seen the sea… everything was new to them: how to use a European toilet, how to eat with a knife and fork. I gave the
quartermasters French lessons too, so they could haggle for food and supplies.’