‘Hot water,’ he said, with a pouring gesture. ‘One pinch. Drink three time each day until all gone.’
‘That’s all?’
‘Yes. Drink it. You bleed later.’
When he saw that she understood, he accepted the payment of ten rupees and then bowed deeply and saw her out. He had asked no questions and appeared completely uninterested in who she was or in excuses for her predicament.
Kate took the bag home and followed the instructions. It tasted much like herbal tea and was not unpleasant. She finished the herbs and waited anxiously for two more days. When the blood came on the third day, thick and vivid, she cried with relief in the bathroom at the Secretariat. Then she went back to work.
It all seemed a long time ago, and she could barely remember what it was like to go to bed with a man. That was part of the old life, when she had been a person with physical desires. Now her entire existence was taken up with survival. Eating, sleeping, and walking took all her body’s energy, and every day she detached from it a little more.
In the pool her eyes looked dark and sunken and she could have wept for the plump, healthy girl she had once been. She imagined going home to England like this, seeing the shock on her mother’s face.
No, she would not go back like this. If she got to Calcutta – when she got to Calcutta – she would write to her mother at once, telling her she was still alive, and then . . . then what?
She thought of going home. The pale sun of autumn would be saturating the corn fields, and the leaves on the trees burnished copper. She thought of walking over the common and stopping to sit on her father’s bench to look at the view, the heart of England laid out before her.
*
One day they emerged from dense jungle, panting after ascending a steep trail, into a small clearing. Fred, who was in the lead, stopped abruptly, holding an arm out to one side to halt the others.
In the centre of the clearing stood a Naga tribesman. He wore a black loincloth and a heavy beaded necklace. He made no immediate attempt to communicate, simply studied them carefully, his gaze moving from Kate and Fred to the children, who stared back at him with equal interest.
He was a young man, only twenty or so, but there was something so wise in his expression that Kate trusted him at once. Even the realisation that he carried in one hand a spear, and in the other a rifle, did not alarm her. He was slight and his ribs were visible, but his arms and legs were noticeably muscular.
Fred, beside her, laid his revolver carefully on the ground. The tribesman inclined his head slightly and placed his rifle on the ground before laying his hand flat to his chest.
‘What language do they speak?’ murmured Christopher.
‘None that we’ll understand,’ said Fred softly. ‘There are dozens of Naga languages.’
The man cocked his head slightly, listening to them.
‘I don’t suppose you speak any English, do you?’ said Fred, stepping forward a little way.
The man said nothing but picked up his gun. ‘Oh dear,’ said Fred, but he paused, watching what the tribesman was doing. He was holding the gun out before him, as if for inspection.
‘May I?’ said Fred. Approaching slowly, he did not touch the weapon but examined it from all angles. Then he stepped back and bowed his head, smiling at the tribesman. ‘Lee-Enfield. English!’ he said.
The man inclined his head in return. He recognised the word and understood what it signified. If he knew any more of the language he was not inclined to let on.
He took a few steps to the right, holding out the gun before him, and then stopped to gauge their reactions. He pointed again with the gun.
‘I think he wants us to follow him,’ said Fred.
‘Is it safe?’ whispered Christopher. ‘Aren’t they headhunters?’
‘He doesn’t look as if he wants to harm us,’ said Kate. ‘He seems rather sweet.’
‘I’m not sure sweet is the word,’ said Fred, looking around, ‘but we’re on their land. If they wanted to hurt us they’d have done it by now, one night when we were all asleep.’
Twenty minutes’ walk took them to the edge of a village, where wooden houses thatched with palm leaves were arranged closely together. At the centre was a larger building, with a curved gable like the prow of a ship, and a roof that sloped steeply almost to the ground.
A small group of tribesmen stood waiting for them, and in the distance Kate saw several women peering out from the doorway of a hut. They talked quietly among themselves, but no one made any effort to talk to the strangers and somehow it seemed natural to sit down on a bamboo mat in silence, exchanging smiles now and again with the bolder women.
Fred sat beside her, his legs crossed with more ease than most British men of his generation. She was aware of his stillness, sensing the strong muscles in his back completely relax for once. He had encountered the Nagas before, she realised, and knew that he trusted them.
‘Look, there are more rifles,’ said Christopher, pointing at the men, several of whom carried identical Lee-Enfields. ‘Perhaps they took the heads of the Englishmen who carried them.’
‘It’s possible,’ said Fred, ‘I don’t think so, though. They’re not anti-British as long as they get left to live independently.’
A meal was brought out for them: freshly steamed rice and long strips of dried meat, tough but indescribably delicious, tasting strongly of woodsmoke.
The Nagas watched them eat. When the leaves on which the food had been served had been taken away, two men appeared from inside the main building, carefully carrying a wooden box. They placed it down on the mat, and from inside one of them lifted out a familiar object.
‘What is it?’ asked Mi Khin.
‘A Gladstone bag,’ said Fred, sounding astonished. They laid it down before him and gestured at him to open it.
‘What’s inside?’ said Christopher, peering over Fred’s shoulder.
Fred lifted out a sheaf of papers, followed by a little book, written in English, a collection of children’s stories.
Kate took this and opened the cover. An inscription inside read, in a quavering hand, ‘To Darling Nicholas on your 7th birthday, with love from Grandma. Lashio, 1940.’
She stared at the page, mulling the implications of the careful inscription. Nicholas, whoever he was – just a little boy – had evidently made it this far, but no further. Was he with his parents, she wondered? Which of them had succumbed first?
Wordlessly she pushed the book to Fred and looked at the pile of papers. On the top was an unused air ticket from Lashio to Calcutta. Underneath was what looked like the deed for a house, and a number of financial documents that she hadn’t the heart to examine. Then there were a few carefully folded items of clothing and a pair of shoes.
‘Look,’ said Fred, and showed her a British passport, the cover blotched with white specks of mould. Inside the pages were blurred by water, but the photograph was still visible: a man in his forties, dark-haired, bespectacled.
‘Herbert Jones,’ read Christopher. ‘Who’s he?’
‘Nicholas’s father, I expect,’ said Fred. He looked up at the tribesmen who stood nearby, watching the unpacking, and pointed at the passport and then at the huts.
Their leader observed him closely for a moment, then beckoned. Kate stood up with him.
‘Stay here,’ said Fred to Christopher. ‘Look after Mi Khin.’
‘But—’
‘We’ll just be a minute.’
Kate and Fred followed the man in silence as he led them between two of the largest huts and out into a patch of jungle on the other side. They came to a clearing in the trees. The Naga pointed and Kate saw two branches bound tightly together to form what was unmistakably a cross, leaning slightly, in the middle of the clearing.
‘Look,’ said Fred, and below it she saw the graves, four recently dug earth mounds.
‘Adults?’ said Fred, gesturing with his hand to his own height. And then, nodding back to where Christophe
r and Mi Khin sat in the village, ‘Children?’
The man laid his spear carefully on the ground and then pointed one by one at Kate and Fred, his hand raised just above his head, and then pointed again, this time lowering his hand to a little below shoulder height.
‘A man and a woman,’ said Kate heavily. ‘And two children. A boy and a girl. I suppose Grandma must have died on the way here, or perhaps she never left Lashio.’
‘The Jones family.’
‘What do you think happened?’
‘The usual,’ said Fred. ‘Malaria. Dysentery. Despair.’ He sounded more hopeless than Kate had ever heard him. ‘What a damned waste.’
‘There are other crosses,’ she said, looking around the clearing. Much older graves were visible, although they had faded into the grass. ‘Can they possibly be Christians?’
‘Christian,’ said the Naga, and pointed to the crosses, then to himself. He recited something in his own language, and then said, unmistakably, ‘Ourfatherwhichartinheaven.’
He smiled, looking shy, and then turned to lead them away. As they returned to the clearing, Fred tried to find out where the English rifles had come from, but the answer was opaque. The man pointed at Kate, and then made a gesture as though aiming a rifle.
‘English,’ he said.
‘I think he’s saying he got the guns from a woman,’ said Fred. ‘A white woman. Sounds as though someone’s been arming the Nagas. Perhaps they are joining the war against the Japanese.’
They found Christopher and Mi Khin hooting with laughter as they tried to talk with a group of curious young Nagas, who seemed equally amused by these strange visitors. The youngsters all had scraps of English that they had picked up, perhaps from whoever had converted them or armed them.
The graveyard in the jungle was on Kate’s mind as they left the Naga village. Fred had stowed the passport and the other papers in his pack and Kate slipped the story book into hers. They also took the bag and its contents, at the urging of the men in the village.
‘We’ll ditch it somewhere later,’ Fred said quietly. ‘They obviously want it off their hands.’
The Nagas seemed relieved to have acquitted themselves of this responsibility. Kate wondered how long the Jones family had stayed with them and knew they had done all they could. These people lived remote lives, far from the war rooms of London and Berlin and Tokyo, and deserved to be left alone. Instead, the war had come to them.
42
Nagaland, September 1942
Late one night Kate was woken by a rustling. She looked blearily at the spot a few yards away where Fred had made his bed, but he was nowhere to be seen. She could see the shapes of Christopher and Mi Khin nearby, silent bundles wrapped up on the jungle floor under a crude roof.
Perhaps Fred had just gone to answer the call of nature. But the sound came again, this time on the other side of the camp. There were people in the trees, she was sure of it.
Kate stood up as quietly as possible and looked around. It was too dark to see much; a crescent moon was dimly visible behind a layer of cloud but its light did not penetrate to the jungle floor.
Fred’s kukri lay in its sheath on the ground by his bed; quickly she picked it up, drawing the blade and measuring its weight in her hands. She took a few steps away from the camp, straining to see in the darkness.
She thought she could hear whispering some distance away and tiptoed towards the sound, her heart hammering as she went further from the camp. In a gap between the trees she could see a figure standing motionless.
‘Fred?’ she called softly, then someone leapt out of the undergrowth to her right and crashed into her, pushing her painfully to the ground and clutching her wrists tightly as she flailed. He was taller and stronger than she was and in a moment she had dropped the kukri and lay helpless, her eyes welling with fear and anger.
‘Quiet!’ the attacker exclaimed, his voice hoarse.
She could not see the man above her, as he had her pinned on her side with his knee, but she could feel the rough cloth of his sleeves against her skin, and smelled his sour breath somewhere above her head. It took all she had not to cry for help, but she could feel the cold barrel of a gun pressed against her neck.
Over the pounding in her ears she became aware that someone else was now standing nearby and they spoke together in words she could not understand. The other man crouched down beside her and she was startled to hear that he was English.
‘So sorry for the inconvenience, madam,’ he said sardonically, and she would have spat in his face if she’d been facing the right way. ‘Don’t mind Li Wei here.’
His voice was familiar and she realised with a jolt that it was Fielding, the English aristocrat who had walked with them a few days earlier. He sounded more serious now and his accent was less refined than it had been.
‘You! What do you want?’
‘Money. Food. Guns. And whatever else you’ve got.’
‘We haven’t got anything.’
‘Liar. I saw the old fellow had a pouch stuffed with rupees, not to mention a Smith & Wesson. Then there’s that pretty little girl with the silver bracelet – it, and she, might fetch a good price. And what about you?’ He ran a hand over her backside and laughed quietly. ‘Maybe I’ll keep you.’
A gunshot rang through the night, somewhere over their heads. Kate tried to turn over but could see nothing, until suddenly the man pinning her down stood up and she rolled away from him. Looking back she saw Fred advancing across the clearing, his revolver pointed steadily at Fielding, who just as steadily aimed back. The man above her, she now saw, was Chinese, and wore an army uniform.
‘Put down the pistol,’ said Fred. ‘And let her go.’
Fielding barked an order in Chinese and Li Wei stepped away from Kate, gesturing at her to stand up. He put the gun down on the ground and stood watching. Fielding moved sideways so that he was standing almost in front of her.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ said Fred.
Fielding laughed. ‘Taking what we can get, old man,’ and for a moment he lapsed back into the aristocratic accent he had had when they first met him. ‘You mustn’t mind old Fielding, he’s an awfully good sort.’
‘I knew you were talking claptrap,’ said Fred, shaking his head. ‘That story about the oilfield. Should have known.’
‘Don’t feel bad,’ said Fielding sardonically. ‘Everyone else I’ve robbed has fallen for it, why not you?’
‘Desperate people. Spinning them a tall tale so you can steal from them. You’re despicable,’ said Fred. Kate heard a rustling in the trees and wondered if there were more accomplices nearby.
Fielding shrugged, looking bored. ‘Perhaps. Who cares?’
‘Was any of it true?’
‘Some of it. I really was born in Hong Kong, but instead of sitting on my arse in a club in Mayfair I’ve spent most of my life travelling and gaining rather more useful skills and interesting acquaintances.’
‘Criminals.’
‘Some of them. Doesn’t matter. Some of the most useful people are criminals. Like Li Wei here – he was a deserter from the Chinese army when I met him and he’s been most helpful.’
‘You’re—’
‘Enough,’ said Fielding, and his voice was suddenly serious. ‘Enough questions. What’s your aim like, old man?’
‘Good enough,’ said Fred. ‘How’s yours? Feeling confident?’
‘No need,’ said Fielding. ‘I’m—’
There was a yell as Christopher leapt out of the trees and onto the back of Li Wei, who staggered and pitched forward, trying to get the boy off him. Kate knelt quickly and picked up the kukri, and stood again, her heart hammering.
At last Li Wei stood up and flung the boy off his back, and suddenly he had the pistol in his hand, pointed at Christopher’s head, and everyone was standing very still.
A shot was fired, and for a moment nothing seemed to happen. Then Li Wei fell and Kate realised that Fred had shot him. She fe
lt the blood roaring in her ears and the cold weight of the blade in her hand.
‘Drop it!’ Fred shouted at Fielding, coming nearer. For a moment Fielding did nothing and then, imperceptibly, she saw him turn towards Christopher, his hand tightening around his pistol.
Kate lifted the kukri with both hands and stabbed Fielding as hard as she could in the lower back, feeling rather than hearing the crunch as the blade went in. He staggered forward and she let go of the knife, staring as though her hands belonged to someone else. Fielding sank to his knees and looked around mutely at her, then collapsed into the dust.
His hand was outstretched and she saw the fingers loosen around the pistol until he lay still. Fred picked up the gun and, in a businesslike way, collected the one that Li Wei had held, placing the weapons on the ground. Quickly he searched the soldier’s body, finding a knife that he threw onto the pile. Finally he put a foot on Fielding’s back and pulled out the kukri, wiping it quickly on the dead man’s shirt.
Blood was soaking into the jungle floor and Kate watched the darkening patch with a distant curiosity, as though she were hovering somewhere overhead.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Christopher, who was suddenly beside her, looking with concern at her trembling hands.
‘I’m fine,’ said Kate, although she did not feel it.
Christopher helped Fred to drag the bodies away and conceal them in the woods, heaping damp leaves and sticks over them. Kate watched, as though from afar, as the gaunt white faces of the dead men disappeared under the leaves. I have seen them in my dreams, she thought.
‘We won’t hear any more of it,’ said Fred, brushing his hands on his trousers. ‘There are plenty of other bodies about.’
Kate nodded numbly. As they neared the camp, she let Christopher go on ahead, putting out a hand to steady herself on a mossy tree. She closed her eyes.
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