The Towers Of Silence (The Raj quartet) (39 page)

Again it had become necessary to subject Sarah to scrutiny. There seemed to be something wrong with the girl, something complex which was not going to be put right by a simple antidote like the safe return of her father or getting her married off to the right sort of officer, or allowing her to abandon her family responsibilities in Pankot to do a more exciting or exacting job of soldiering closer to those areas where the shooting was. Neither did that hint of little Mrs Smalley’s at the time when Teddie Bingham transferred his affections to young Susan – that Sarah was perhaps just a little unsound in her views – really seem justifed. All that could be said was that her behaviour was a degree less than admirable because it lacked either enthusiasm or spontaneity.

‘She thinks too much,’ Nicky Paynton said. ‘And say what you will men don’t like it when it shows. She should learn to hide the fact which shouldn’t be too difficult because she already knows how to keep her thoughts to herself.’

But that was before the crisis brought on by Mabel’s death and Susan’s premature labour, both of which events Sarah missed by going to Calcutta. The journey back to Pankot must have been tense and exhausting. She had been fond of her aunt and tireless in her efforts to jolly Susan along after the blow of Teddie’s death. Fate had deprived her of the opportunity to help at a time when her help was most needed, but she was at Susan’s bedside within an hour of reaching home on the night train from Ranpur. Both her sister and her mother were asleep but she stayed in Susan’s room and nodded off in a chair beside the bed, with one hand on the counterpane where Susan could reach it when she woke.

Travers, who found the sisters like this, was touched, and related how the relief that Sarah must have felt at finding her sister well and the baby safely born, had caused her to smile as she slept. The same look of happiness was on her face on the occasion she held the baby and persuaded Susan to accept it, and it occurred to Nicky Paynton who was present that at last something like an enthusiasm could have entered Sarah’s life, even if it were second-hand: an enthusiasm for her sister’s child. The important thing, Mrs Paynton thought, was that the soil should be tilled. Sarah, she thought, had spent long enough unconsciously making up to her father for not being a boy. At that moment the situation became clear to Mrs Paynton and so did the future which ceased to be worrying. The solution to Sarah was simple after all. What had been repressed was nothing other than a highly developed maternal instinct.

‘Sarah, did you manage to see Captain Merrick?’ she asked – remembering on the way out of Susan’s room what Sarah had gone to Calcutta to do.

‘Yes, I saw him the afternoon of the day I arrived.’

‘How was he?’

‘Waiting for an operation.’

‘Anything very serious?’

‘I suppose in medical or surgical terms it was quite straightforward. They were going to cut off his left arm above the elbow. Excuse me a second.’

Sarah went to Sister Page’s desk and spoke to the girl who was sitting there. Clara Fosdick and Nicky Paynton waited near the liftgate and looked at one another. When Sarah rejoined them Mrs Paynton said, ‘How very upsetting.’

‘What?’

‘About Captain Merrick. Does Susan know?’

‘Yes, Captain Travers thought it better to say straight out because she had an idea he might have no arms at all. The letter he wrote us from hospital in Comilla was dictated.’

The lift came. Inside, the cramped conditions discouraged conversation but enabled Nicky Paynton and Clara Fosdick to study Sarah’s face and agree later when they were alone that there was an uncharacteristic hardness and decisiveness in its expression, a look of impatience which made the tenderness shown for her sister and her sister’s child more noticeable.

Coming out of the lift into the reception foyer Mrs Fosdick added, ‘Did he agree to be godfather?’

‘No. He was grateful for the suggestion but didn’t think he’d make a good one.’

‘Because of his arm?’

‘I expect that came into it.’

‘What happened to him? Did he say?’

‘He pulled Teddie and a driver out of a burning jeep and got them under cover. He got bullet wounds and third degree burns. He saved the driver but was too late for Teddie. He’ll be getting a medal.’

‘I should think so too.’

‘The police’s loss was obviously the army’s gain,’ Nicky Paynton said. ‘But I’m sorry Captain Merrick’s said no. He’d have been a godfather for any boy to be proud of.’

‘Later on, perhaps,’ Sarah said. ‘When the boy was old enough not to be frightened. His face was burnt too.’

‘Oh, dear. Badly?’

‘I couldn’t tell. There wasn’t much you could see through the bandages except his eyes and the mouth. But Sister Prior said his hair would grow again and he might even look human.’

‘What an extraordinary thing to say.’

‘She said it to relieve her feelings. She didn’t care for my Lady Bountiful act. She’s the sort of nursing sister we describe as a bit off, the sort who wouldn’t be an officer at home but is because she joined the QAs and came out here. I think she blames people like us for the fact that there’s a war on at all. She thought it was scandalous giving badly wounded men medals. She thought money would be more to the point. But she’s on the wrong tack there with Ronald Merrick. He’s not interested in that kind of payment or in the kind of people who’d suggest it.’

‘I should think not.’

‘He says he blames himself for Teddie being killed. Dicky Beauvais promised to be back with the staff car. Can we give you a lift? I’m going to the daftar so it’s on the way.’

‘That would be nice,’ Nicky Paynton said.

‘I’ll see if he’s here.’

Sarah went into the forecourt and presently returned and reported the car coming up the drive. While Captain Beauvais took a rupee from Mrs Fosdick to pay off their waiting tonga-wallah the three women got into the back of the car.

‘Why does Captain Merrick blame himself?’ Mrs Paynton asked when they were settled.

‘I don’t think he does really. It’s his way of putting things. He’d gone forward to collect a special prisoner and Teddie went with him, although there was no need. I think Teddie was interfering, I mean not trusting Ronald Merrick to deal with a situation in the way he thought it should be handled. After they’d talked to the prisoner Teddie took the jeep when he shouldn’t have and went further forward still, and took the prisoner with him because the man said he had two friends in the jungle who wanted to give themselves up too. Ronald didn’t know he’d gone and when he found out he had to go after him.’

‘That’s okay,’ Dicky Beauvais said, getting in the front. He signalled the driver to start and sat with his arm over the back of the front bench to take part more comfortably in whatever conversation was in progress.

‘Sarah’s telling us about Captain Merrick and poor Teddie.’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘But isn’t it very unusual,’ Mrs Paynton said, ‘for Japanese soldiers to give themselves up?’

‘Oh, they weren’t Japanese.’

‘What then?’

‘Indian soldiers from Teddie’s old regiment.’

The car slowed at the end of the drive and then moved smoothly and comfortably, well sprung and upholstered, out on to the road that led to area headquarters.

‘Muzzys,’ Sarah went on. ‘Not Teddie’s lot. From the other battalion that was captured in Malaya. Now fighting with the Japanese against us. They belonged to the
INA
we hear about but aren’t supposed to take seriously. Captain Merrick says there are far more of them than is allowed to be supposed but that they’re badly led and armed and half-starved because the Japanese don’t think much of them, especially not of their officers. Anyway he followed Teddie in another jeep and then they found themselves being mortared and shot at by the Japs
and
the
INA.
The man driving the jeep Ronald was in turned it round to get back where he belonged, so Ronald jumped out and went the rest of the way on foot. When he got to Teddie’s jeep it was burning and the prisoner had gone, so he pulled Teddie and the driver out and dragged them under cover, which is when he got shot up himself as well as burned. I haven’t told Susan all this because although Ronald Merrick didn’t actually say so I think everyone felt Teddie had been wrong and silly. I don’t suppose he could bear the thought of leaving two old Muzzy Guides hiding in the jungle, waiting to be recaptured. I gather the divisional commander was rather brassed off, losing two staff-officers and a jeep as a result. But of course the
regiment
would be pleased by what Teddie tried to do, wouldn’t it? Don’t you think so, Dicky?’

Dicky nodded, but glanced at the driver and then warningly at Sarah.

‘After all,’ Sarah said, apparently not noticing, he was doing it
for
the regiment. Ronald says that when they were talking to the prisoner and the prisoner realized Teddie was a Muzzy officer the poor man broke down and knelt and touched Teddie’s feet. So it makes you wonder how many of the men have joined the
INA
without knowing what they were doing. It’s different in the case of the officers. Ronald said Teddie thought
INA
officers completely beyond the pale. I gather the same thing nearly happened in Germany, but on a much smaller scale. Isn’t that so, Dicky?’

Dicky said nothing.

Again Sarah seemed not to notice his reluctance to discuss the subject in front of a lance-naik driver, but her next comment might have been taken as an oblique criticism of this attitude. She said, ‘I can’t think why there’s so much secrecy about it. It makes it look as if we’re afraid of it spreading, but Ronald Merrick said it was difficult in Imphal to stop our own sepoys shooting
INA
men on sight even if they were trying to give themselves up.’

‘The best thing for them,’ Nicky Paynton said. ‘It’ll save rope later.’

‘Did you hear the news on the wireless this morning?’ Sarah asked, as if changing the subject.

‘You mean what Dickie Mountbatten says about carrying on operations through the monsoon? I thoroughly agree. Bunny said ages ago that downing tools directly the monsoon set in was military suicide if you were fighting the Japanese, but perhaps now that Mountbatten’s said it we can press on and push the little horrors right back across the Chindwin and not sit on our bottoms for three months waiting for the rains to let up.’

‘I didn’t mean that. I meant the news about ex-chief minister Mohammed Ali Kasim being released from jail and taken to Mirat.’

‘Oh, that,’ Clara Fosdick said. ‘Well the poor old man’s ill and there never seemed much point in locking
him
up. My brother-in-law Billy Spendlove always had a high regard for him. In fact he expected him to tell the Congress to take a running jump when there was all that nonsense about ministers having to resign in ‘Thirty-nine. Billy said that in ‘Forty-two the Governor gave Mr Kasim an opportunity to disown Congress policies because he knew he’d disagree with practically everything Congress did from ‘Thirty-nine onwards but the old boy refused and said he preferred to go to jail. And it’s not a pukka release, is it? He’s obviously got to stay in Mirat in the Nawab’s custody. At least until he gets better. It’s so embarrassing when they start getting ill because the people automatically think a political prisoner’s ill-health is due to bad treatment.’

‘But,’ Sarah said, ‘someone said at the daftar this morning it’s mostly eyewash about him being ill. The real reason is because the elder son who was an officer in the Army and was a prisoner in Malaya has just been captured in Imphal, fighting with the
INA
. The government thinks Mr Kasim’s the kind of man who won’t try to make excuses for his son turning coat, and that by being nice to him now he’ll be very helpful to us after the war if other Indian politicians start calling
INA
men heroes and patriots. Which they’re bound to.’

‘Why bound to?’

‘Because of there being so many. If there were only a few isolated cases of Indian officers and other ranks going over to the Japanese then they wouldn’t be worth bothering about and we could court-martial them without anybody either noticing or caring.’

Nicky Paynton cut in. ‘It seems to me that what’s good for one is good for as many as there are.’

‘But that’s looking at the thing from the point of view of the principle that’s involved. We shan’t really be able to afford to do that.’

‘We should damn’ well try.’

‘Then we’d make fools of ourselves, wouldn’t we, Dicky?’

Dicky smiled bleakly. He gave the driver instructions to turn in at the next compound.

*

After the staff car had left Mrs Paynton and Mrs Fosdick at their bungalow, Nicky said, ‘Do you know, Clara, Sarah hasn’t once said anything to me about her Aunt Mabel’s death, has she to you?’

‘She said thank you when I told her how upset we all were.’

‘That’s all she said to me, too. I thought she was probably too cut up to say anything else but now I’m not sure. I think Mildred’s going to have trouble with that girl. Perhaps Lucy Smalley was right. She seemed to want to provoke Dicky Beauvais just now.’

‘How, provoke?’

‘Well, Clara, let’s face it. Dicky’s an awfully nice chap but he’s not particularly intelligent is he? I got the impression she was trying to provoke him to come out with the kind of remark she could have a private little laugh at. In fact she was provoking us too. It makes one wonder–’

‘Wonder what?’

‘Well, put it this way. She’s always had guts. Suddenly she has nerve. It makes one wonder what happened to her in Calcutta.’

‘Perhaps it’s just the wrong time of the month.’

‘No. You can usually tell when she’s having one of her bad periods because she goes quieter than ever. She wasn’t quiet this morning. In fact Dicky Beauvais was dying to tell her to shut up because the driver was listening. That’s why I took the line I did, about shooting them now saving rope later. But I expect she’s right. If we ever do win this bloody war we might hang Bose and one or two of the bigwigs but the rest will just have to be cashiered or dismissed with ignominy. Only by then we’ll probably be on our way out in any case and the bloody Indians will have to deal with them in their own bloody way, and they’ll probably bloody well make heroes out of them.’