ELEPHANT MOON (7 page)

A road sign, to Mandalay: thirty miles. Eyes locking on to the sign, staring down the length of the bus and out of the back windows, Grace saw, advancing on them, from behind, fast, a superior cloud of dust. Soon she could pick out four motor-cycle outriders and behind them a gleaming black Rolls Royce, its radiator so highly polished it mirrored the sun.

An Indian refugee, gaunt, stick-limbed, saw the motorcade coming towards them too, and stepped out into the middle of the road, carrying a bundle containing a dirty white object in his coal-black hands, aloft.

The motorcade kept pace but angled towards the far side of the road, kicking up dust, sweeping past the refugee with his bundle high in the air. The object, Grace realised, was a baby, long dead.

The Rolls overtook the school bus and Grace recognised the wife of the Governor of Burma cupping her hands, her attention taken by a uniformed aide-de-camp sitting by her side lighting her cigarette. The far side wheels of the Rolls left the asphalt and bit into the rough ground at the edge of the road, and the grand party experienced a gentle bump, delaying the lighting of the cigarette for a second or two, and they turned a corner and were gone.

How many dying refugees had Grace seen on the road? Thousands. She stood up in her seat to look back at the refugee with the bundle, but the bend in the road shut off her view. Collapsing in her seat with a jolt, she wondered, could a God of mercy order man’s affairs in this way? No, He could not.

For her, at that precise moment, her faith in God and her belief, long drummed into her, that the British had an especial right to rule over other people, died.

Mandalay, when Hants & Dorset lumbered through the city gates, was a paradise, the old citadel of the Burmese kings still full of colour and life and market-sellers, unscarred by war. They were billeted in the eerie grandeur – stained-glass windows, mysterious compass and arch designs – of a Masonic Hall high up on a conical hill, overlooking the roofs of the city.

One evening, just before lights out, Grace discovered the two boys in the cellar of the hall, trying on strange hats and aprons. Half-laughing, she scolded the boys for their cheek
and told them not to play with the Masonic stuff again. They left good-humouredly, but Grace suspected that they were hiding something from her.

They grew too comfortable in the Masonic hall.

On Good Friday, 1942, the school held a simple service, Grace going through the motions of prayer, her mind elsewhere. When the service was over, she caught up with Miss Furroughs in the garden overlooking the gilded palace of Mandalay.

‘We need to leave here, Miss.’

‘Oh, no, not that again. Can’t you…’

‘We need to leave Mandalay. The Japanese are on the march, again.’

‘No. It’s not necessary. We’ll stay…we’ll leave when there is an order. But…so…there’s nothing we can…’ Half-finished thoughts, barked out, the headmistress aggressively indecisive.

‘The monsoon will be here in May, then getting to India will be all but impossible. We’ve got to leave now,’ Grace insisted.

‘How do you suggest?’

‘The bus as far as it can go. Then walk…’

‘The bus is old, it won’t get very far. And the children cannot walk.’

‘I know the bus is old. But it hasn’t let us down so far.’

‘We could fly. People are heading for Myitkyina.’ She was referring to the last aerodrome in British hands in Burma, to the east, close to the border with China.

‘Miss, have you forgotten what happened at Rangoon docks? No room for half-castes. Will sixty-two half-caste orphans really get seats on an aeroplane? I don’t think so. It’s better that we drive as far as we can, west, and walk out of Burma.’

 ‘Miss Collins, these matters are not, are not…–’ The maddening half-sentence, ending in thin air.

The Japanese suffered no such indecision.

At noon on Good Friday, without warning, without benefit of air-raid sirens, the bombs started to fall on Mandalay, a city built of wood, of shacks and glorious gilt pagodas and royal palaces. The hall stood half-way up a hill, several hundred yards out of the city, giving them a hawk’s eye view of the destruction.

They saw too much.

A steady breeze from the west, from the Irrawaddy, cascaded sparks, then fires, igniting market stalls, knots of trees, houses, temples, churches, schools. First whole streets – and every living thing in them – and acre after acre of Mandalay were roaring an angry, raging orange. People washing their pots stood up, heard a whoosh of moving heat, and their lungs caught fire. Shopkeepers dithered, not knowing down which corridor of fire they had to run, and, in seconds, turned to ash and fat. Eucalyptus trees exploded before the rip-tide of heat, spitting out leaping tongues of flaming sap. Fur on fire, monkeys leapt from tree to tree, spreading the heat above the roof tops. At street level buffalo bellowed, stampeding, crushing a confusion of people running the wrong way, towards the flames. Survivors manhandled victims with fried skin to the hospital, only to discover that it was an inferno. A stick of bombs fell on the railway station goods yard, igniting the wagons of a fuel train, and the fire storm consumed the city.

The children watched the city burn, listless, mute. There was nothing they could do. Grace fussed over the two boys, cuddling Joseph, who at the first sound of the bombs began grinding his teeth. Soon, even he stopped and stared at the horrors unfolding below them.

It was around three o’clock when the alarm was sounded. One of the girls had seen a tiny figure making her way down the last of the steps carved into the hillside, which led from the Masonic Hall to the heart of Mandalay. Most of the path was hidden from them, zigzagging down the far side of the hill, but the last stretch was in plain view of the whole
school. Grace called out to her, as loud as her lungs would allow: ‘Miss Furroughs, Miss Furroughs come back!’

Her shouting was lost in the cacophony of a city burning.

The headmistress moved slowly, deliberately, taking one step at a time. She did not turn back. She paid no heed as the sky grew dark, a pre-natural sunset. Miss Furroughs was three hundred, maybe four hundred yards down the hill. All Grace had to do was to get to her feet and run down and stop her. She was a much fitter woman and she could well have caught up with her. But for some reason Grace found it impossible to move. She stared and stared, immobile, mouthing: ‘no, Miss, no,’ again and again. The old lady was still in view, now five hundred yards from the hall, her path less steep, beginning to level out on to the plain where the city lay when the saw-teeth of engines sounded high in the sky, bombers coming in low for a fresh attack. The children ran for the safety of the Hall’s basement, half buried into the side of the hill. Grace shooed them in, and looked back, once.  The last Grace saw of the headmistress was her white blouse and black skirt being swallowed up by the smoke.

Towards dusk, the air acrid from the still burning city, Molly spotted him first. ‘An Indian soldier, Miss, on a motor-bicycle. Asking for someone in charge.’

An officer of some kind, face strikingly pale, tall, painfully slim, eyes of light green, a beaked nose. Hanging from his shoulder a leather satchel – a despatch rider? Taking Grace to one side he started to describe what he had witnessed: ‘A refined lady, middle aged, very correctly dressed, white blouse, dark skirt, short, with white hair. Miss…’

‘She’s…’ The urge to panic was animal and strong, but the quickest of glances told her that Emily and Ruby were staring at them. Grace tilted her face closer to his ear: ‘…dead. Isn’t she?’

The officer nodded. ‘I am most terribly sorry, Miss.’

‘She meant to kill herself, didn’t she?’

‘I do not know. We saw her go out onto King’s Street, just after four, in the middle of a bombing raid, when the flames were at their strongest. And then she was killed. But it was Queen Elizabeth who said: “I would not open windows into men’s souls.” We don’t know what was in her soul. I am very sorry for your trouble, Miss.’

He spoke Oxford English, exquisitely.

‘I would not open windows into men’s souls. Yes, that is right.’

The most powerful emotion for Grace was one she was ashamed to admit to anyone, and certainly not to the young Indian officer. Relief that she no longer had to beg Miss Furroughs to make decisions, relief that, with the headmistress gone, they could press on to India as fast as possible, relief that she had a better chance of saving the children on her own. Had the old lady realised that she was slowing them down, that her indecision and
helplessness at the thought of leaving Burma was becoming a danger to the children? Was that why she had walked into fire?

Eyes smarting, she pushed past the officer, out of the cellar. Below stood the burnt city, mile after mile of charred black, here and there wisps of smoke rising from still smouldering fires, and she wept in shame that she had done nothing to save her friend.

The officer had come to her side.

‘I am sorry for your loss, Miss.’

‘Sir…’

‘Jemadar Ahmed Rehman, at your service.’

Grace told him her name.

‘Miss Collins–’

‘Call me Grace, please.’

‘–Miss Grace, the children cannot stay here,’ he said flatly. ‘The Japanese will be here in days.’ The Jemadar started to speak, soldier’s stuff, talking for talking’s sake, giving her time to adjust. She wiped her eyes with the edge of her sleeve and listened.

 ‘The bombers will return. Mandalay is on the Burma Road – it’s the main, no, probably the only supply route for the Allies to get arms and ammunition through to China. If the Japs cut the Burma Road, they weaken the ability of China to fight, and that will free more Japanese soldiers, so they can conquer India. They will keep on bombing Mandalay until everything is burnt. And soon, the Japanese army will come here, too. The front is one hundred miles away, but the Japanese keep on overtaking us. They did so at Moulmein, Rangoon, the oil fields at Yenangyaung. Mandalay will be next. It may take them a month or they could be here in two days. But no one is safe in Mandalay.’

‘We must go to India as quickly as possible,’ Grace said firmly. That simple statement of the obvious, without having to defer to Miss Furroughs, without qualification, without
anxious introspection, carried with it its own pleasure – and instantly stirred her guilt again, that she had not stopped the old lady from walking into the flames.

‘Tomorrow, Miss Grace. There is no time to lose.’

‘Tomorrow, yes. But the route, east or west…’

‘Drive west, as far as we can. Then walk to India.’

‘East? The aerodrome at Myitkyina?’

 ‘When they get round to it, the Japanese will bomb it to smithereens.’

‘West, then. We’ll need petrol, food, water. Can you help?’

‘I shall try.’

The Jemadar vanished but, shortly after dusk, a lorry rumbled up the track that passed the rear of the Masonic temple. In the back of the lorry were crates of tinned food, boxes of biscuits and jars of jam, jerrycans of petrol for the bus and water. By the light of a kerosene lamp she spied an enormous strawberry sponge cake, resting on a crystal glass cake-stand.

‘Where did you get that?’

‘Miss, it was baked for Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his wife by the best pastry chef in the whole of Burma. But it has been decided that it is to be diverted for refugee use.’

‘Did you steal it?’

‘It has been decided that it is to be diverted for refugee use.’

‘Did you steal it?’

‘You have no idea how much trouble I had to go to get it.’

She could not help herself from giggling.

‘Do you want me to take it back?’

‘No, Jemadar, I don’t. We shall have it for dessert.’

He bowed, comically low, and set out about transferring the provisions.

Unaware of the cake, the children tucked into the rations provided by the Jemadar, tins of bully beef, sardines, jam, condensed milk.

She popped outside and caught the two boys, Michael and Joseph, playing on the steps of the Masonic Hall with a revolver.

‘Bang-bang, you’re dead, Miss,’ said Michael.

‘Where in heaven’s name did you get that? Give it to me, Michael. Give it to me right now.’

‘It’s the Jem’s, Miss. He gave it to us to play with.’

‘Well he should have done no such thing and he is clearly out of his mind.’ Horrified, she confiscated the weapon and marched out to the back of the hall, where she found him taking boxes from the back of the lorry and stowing them in Hants & Dorset.

‘Does this object belong to you, Jemadar?’ She held the revolver by the bottom of the handle, with evident disgust.

‘Ah, yes, that’s mine, Miss Grace. Thank you for finding it. I knew I’d left it somewhere.’

‘Jemadar, what on earth do you think you are doing? The boys told me you gave it to them.’

‘Oh, did they?’ He replaced the revolver in his holster, bent down and shoved a wooden box full of tins of strawberry jam into the belly of Hants & Dorset.

‘Why on earth let them play with a deadly weapon?’

 Standing up, his sea-green eyes mocked her. ‘Ah, that was because they were playing with this…’

Tucked into his officer’s belt was a Masonic dagger, decorated with an arch and compass emblazoned in ivory on its onyx handle, which he pulled out and waved in the air, its blade flashing murderously in the reddening light.

‘So, Miss Grace, the same question. Why let them play with a deadly weapon?’

‘I had no idea.’

‘On a technical note, a dagger is dangerous at all times, but a revolver, when you have taken all the bullets out, is not. I gave them my revolver, minus the bullets, to distract from the loss of the knife, which I took from them. I explained they could only play with my gun for half an hour and they had to give it back to me in exactly the same condition – I stressed the word
exactly
– I had given it to them. Is the knife yours?’

Blushing, she shook her head. ‘Of course not. It must belong to the Freemasons. I don’t want the damned thing, you silly man.’

‘You are very kind.’ He replaced the knife in his belt and walked past to the lorry and took out a box of sardines, marked
Made in Japan
, in his arms. In the distance she caught sight of Emily, staring towards them. The moment Emily realised that Grace was looking at her, she turned her back and walked away.

Amongst the children, the boys’ nickname for their hero, The Jem, stuck.

‘Girls and boys,’ Grace called the attention of the whole school, ‘Miss Furroughs has gone ahead to the border to help organise things. But she has sent us this cake to send us on our way.’ Cheers and claps as the Jemadar brought in the cake.

‘You’d better take your dagger to divide up the cake.’ The Jemadar offered her the knife.

‘Once and for all, it’s
not
my dagger.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh, you’re impossible.’

‘Cut the cake and keep it. It might come in handy.’ The children didn’t get more than a sliver each, but it tasted like angel food. When no one was looking, Grace wiped the dagger clean on her dress, wrapped it up in a dishcloth and slipped it into her handbag.

The Jem disappeared, to return the lorry, but came back on his motorbike an hour later.

‘It has been decided that I am to be diverted for refugee use,’ he said.

‘How did you do that?’

‘Piece of cake,’ he said, and unrolled his hammock, tied it to two columns of the Masonic Hall, climbed in and feigned sleep.

They almost didn’t make it out of Mandalay.

They started off late, the children irascible and mewing about having to get up so early. Joseph wanted to play with the Jemadar’s pistol and Grace snapped at him to behave, which made him cry.

Long after dawn, with the early morning mists gone, the bus pulled up at the eastern end of the Ava Bridge. Red iron girders hurdled across a mile of the Irrawaddy, the greatest river in all Burma. A military policeman, nervous, edgy, barred their way, blowing his whistle, gesturing at the bus to turn round, yelling: ‘Go back, go back.’ The Jem ignored the policeman and gunned his BSA motor-bicycle around the road-block. More British troops, green hackles on their berets, emerged from the shade, rifles at the ready, blocking his path.  Allu pulled the bus up in front of a wooden barrier.

 The tallest of the soldiers marched swiftly up to the bus and leapt on board, angling his neck so that it didn’t bash against the roof of the bus.

‘What the bloody hell is going on? We’re blowing this bridge in three minutes and you must go back.’

 ‘Mr Peach!’

‘Oh, Miss Collins, it’s you!’

 ‘Mr Peach, you escaped Rangoon.’

‘Yes, just. It’s Lieutenant Peach, actually. Emergency commission in the field. But, but, but… you must go back. We’re going to dynamite the bridge any second.’

 ‘Mr Peach – sorry, Lieutenant Peach – we’re terribly sorry but this is our only chance.’ The children watched, fascinated, at how in the presence of Miss Collins the warrior bearing of the astonishingly tall officer began to melt.

‘If we can’t cross the river by the bridge,’ Grace continued, ‘we will have to abandon the bus and walk and that will be a disaster, especially for the young ones.’ She looked around her, and the girls shrunk, goggle eyed, helpless.

‘But I’ve got to dynamite the bridge in three minutes.’

 ‘Couldn’t you just have a word with your commanding officer. Just to let us through, and then blow the bridge? Could I speak to the commanding officer, Mr Peach?’

The gangly lieutenant shook his head. He gazed at the children – sixty-odd, nearly all girls apart from two little boys, and one of them a little backward at that. Scowling at them all, he glared at Miss Collins, said: ‘Bugger this,’ more to himself than anyone else, backed down the steps of the bus, turned to his men, and lifted up a flat palm and roared his command.

 ‘Hold! Hold the firing sequence. Hold the demolition.’

At once, cries of ‘Hold!’ echoed and re-echoed down the line of troops to the solitary Royal Engineer, poised to fire the detonators. A red flag came down and a yellow flag snapped high in the air by the command post, a second yellow some way down the bridge, a third by the engineer hovering over his fuses, a fourth three quarters towards the far bank, and finally a fifth on the far, western bank a mile away. Almost instantly a field phone jangled in
the command post in the shade of a banyan tree.  Lieutenant Peach scurried to answer the call.

Silence as everyone – soldiers, orphans, Allu, Miss Collins and the Jem – strained to listen in to the lieutenant’s side of the conversation.

‘Sorry, sir, but we’ve got to hold… Yes, sir, on my authority, sir, that we hold and let them pass…  No, sir, you cannot order me to proceed. I am the senior officer here… Yes, sir, I know you are a brigadier… but with respect, sir, you are on the west bank of the river and I am the officer in charge of the east bank… I’m giving the order that we hold the demolition until these VIPs have passed. They are the daughter of an earl, yes, and the party includes relatives of the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava.’

Ruby looked at Emily, an enormous ‘What?’ written on their faces.

‘They can speed across the bridge in ten minutes, maybe less. Yes, their vehicle will make it, sir…’

Peach turned to squint at Hants & Dorset, its ancient engine wheezing in the heat. ‘…virtually brand new… Yes, sir, the moment they’ve crossed the bridge, sir, we’ll blow it sky high. On my head be it, sir.’

He put down the field phone and walked towards the bus. ‘Go. Go now. And if that museum piece of a bus breaks down on the bridge, I will be shot.
Go
.’

Grace got up from her seat, hurried down the steps, lifted her hands around Lieutenant Peach’s neck, dragged his mouth down towards her height and stood on tip-toe and kissed him on the lips. Wolf-whistles from the other British soldiers as the lieutenant’s face turned salmon-pink, then post-box red. The sergeant-major, a squat barrel of a man, roared for the troops to stand to attention ‘for the VIPs’, and thirty men snapped into brigade ground salutes.

‘Good luck, Lieutenant Peach,’ said Grace and she ran back to the bus and Allu did his best to coax some life out of old Hants & Dorset. Grumbling into motion, belching smoke, it lurched off towards the bridge, with the Jem, after a crisp salute for Lieutenant Peach, following on behind. Ruby began ‘We’ll Meet Again…’ which the children took up, all the while frantically waving goodbye to the soldiers, who were sternly saluting and grinning their heads off at the same time.

Sergeant-major Eric Barr came over and stood next to the officer.

‘That old fuss-pot is going to have me shot when he sees our VIPs,’ said Lieutenant Peach.

‘Well, sir, he can fook off, sir.’

The sergeant-major was King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, from Barnsley.

‘The brig won’t send ’em back over the bridge again, sir. Any road, we may be losing every bloody battle and on our way out of Burma, but we’ve got standards, sir. If we’re not going to help the likes of ’em poor bastards, sir, what are we doing here?’