‘Miss! Excuse me, miss?’
‘Why are you not listening? I am talking to you, please.’
At last they grew bored and stopped, throwing a few parting shots after her as she mounted her bicycle. ‘Why don’t you go home?’ called the younger man, sounding frustrated.
Why indeed, she thought, as she pedalled away.
52
Calcutta, September 1945
‘So who is he, this Edwin chap?’ Pamela had asked, not long after her arrival in 1943. She had appeared at the digs one day clutching a huge suitcase and an absurd hat, slightly wilted after six weeks on a troop ship. ‘Must be someone special for you to spend this much time on him.’
‘He’s just a friend,’ said Kate shortly, wincing as she pulled off her shoes and sat down heavily on her narrow bed. She flexed her toes and looked critically at her swollen feet. She had done a full shift at the hospital before going to the government offices to make enquiries and felt exhausted.
‘Oh, come on,’ said Pamela, peering sardonically over her magazine. ‘This isn’t finishing school. You don’t have to be coy.’
‘There’s nothing to tell.’
‘You mean you didn’t . . . you know.’
‘No! It is possible to be just friends with a man, you know,’ said Kate primly, feeling hypocritical.
‘Don’t be silly.’ Pamela looked disappointed. ‘Didn’t you ever want to?’
‘Not really,’ said Kate, thinking back. ‘It wasn’t like that. He was kind and fun to be with, but in looks he wasn’t my type at all. He was just sort of brotherly.’
‘I bet he wanted to, though. They all do.’
Kate shrugged. ‘I’m not sure he did. He’d been widowed and was grieving for his wife. And there was something . . .’ She paused, trying to remember that sense she had had once or twice, something odd and confusing, something to do with the way he behaved with women and with men. But Pamela was looking eagerly at her, keen for gossip, and she found that she didn’t want to share whatever it was.
‘He was a good friend,’ she said, rather lamely. ‘I’d like to know where he is.’
Pamela had come straight out from England, and even though there were only a few years between them, Kate felt ancient by comparison. Pamela had worked as a typist at the BBC before the war and the wounded men who now passed through her care seemed to leave her untroubled.
I was once like her, thought Kate, as she waved Pamela off to a party, or, coming back from a night shift, saw her returning in the morning, the scent of cigar smoke and a man’s cologne lingering in her hair. We would have been great friends.
In the early days in Calcutta she had made the effort, had gone to a few parties, had tried to behave like the old Kate. But the men who she would have flirted with once now bored her immeasurably, and the women were frivolous and dull.
Once a soldier just off active duty was present, and she spent the evening monopolising him in the hope that he might have a snippet of useful information. At the end of the evening he looked rather surprised when she turned down his offer to walk her home, and she felt a pang of regret. A few years ago she would have gone to bed with him just out of politeness; now she felt nothing.
Priya and Asanti, the other nurses who shared her room, were good Hindu girls, with little interest in parties, and occasionally she went to the pictures with them or shared a meal in the tiny kitchen. But the scheduling of their shifts meant that none of them had much time to spend together, and for this she was grateful. They were kind to her, but she had no energy for real friendship.
She preferred to work night shifts and sleep during the day, for the nightmares came less frequently when the sun was shining into the room. When this wasn’t possible she drank late into the night, sipping whisky furtively as the others slept, and read a book until her head began to nod.
*
Kate woke with a shout, clapping a hand over her mouth at once, and looked around guiltily in the darkness, feeling thick sweat on her upper lip. She had been back in Shinbwiyang, with crowds of the dead pressing towards her, their mute faces accusing.
‘What is it?’ Priya’s voice came sleepily from the other side of the room.
‘Sorry,’ whispered Kate, putting her hands by her sides, feeling her breathing begin to slow. In the darkness she could see occasional splinters of light reflecting off the ceiling fan. ‘It’s nothing.’ She could hear the chirping of insects and the distant sound of traffic in the distance.
‘You have nightmares,’ said Priya quietly. ‘I’ve heard you before.’
‘Just bad dreams.’
‘I used to have nightmares as a child,’ said Priya, propping herself up on one elbow. ‘I thought there were monsters in the dark.’
‘Did you stop them?’
‘Yes. I never get them now.’
‘How?’
‘It was a very poor village. There were no electric lights at all. One night my mother and father heard me crying and instead of bringing a lamp they took me outside, into the darkness. We walked for a long time and I was very scared, until we stood on a hillside above the village.’
‘What did you see?’
‘The stars,’ said Priya, and Kate heard the longing in her voice. ‘A million stars all gleaming high above me. We tried to count them and my father named some of them, and he said that if I was ever afraid I should think of the stars. No monster, he said, could live beneath such a sky.’
‘And that was it?’
‘That was it. No more nightmares.’
Kate was quiet, thinking of the sky. ‘You can’t see many stars in Calcutta,’ she said at last.
‘No. But I know they are there. I imagine them and think of my parents, my home.’
Kate pulled the thin cotton sheet back over her legs and breathed deeply, trying to calm her tense body.
‘What are your nightmares?’ asked Priya. ‘What do you see?’
‘The dead,’ said Kate. She rolled over, pretending that she was drifting off to sleep, her eyes staring unblinking into the darkness. Eventually she slept and the dead came as always, making their passage through her dreams. But now above them shone a sheet of silver stars, and she recognised at once the beloved constellations that filled the night sky over Burma.
53
Calcutta, October 1945
As the hospital grew quieter, the nurses were given an extra day off each fortnight. It was a strange feeling, having time to oneself. Kate knew that staying busy was the only way to avoid succumbing to the worry and fear that dogged her footsteps. India was preparing for life after the war, and change was in the air, but she felt stuck; unable to consider the future when so much in her past lay unresolved.
She went one day to the great temple, walking there in the cool of the early morning as the city woke up around her. There were boys already sweeping the pavements and carts full of sacks of rice rumbling by. At the side of the road people were still lying in rows, wrapped in thin blankets against the cold pavements.
The poverty of Calcutta no longer shocked her. During the great famine of 1943 she had seen bodies being eaten by dogs on the riverbank and skeletal men fighting over scraps from a rubbish heap, their nails torn and their eyes desperate. Women had approached her in the street and tried to sell her their children for a few rupees. She gave them what she could and stumbled away.
The temple was still closed, so she sat at a stall outside the main gates and sipped a cup of sweet tea, lingering over it to make it last. The boy who ran the stall served her and then lay down again on the floor behind the barrow and went back to sleep.
When the temple gates opened at last, she went in and took off her sandals at the request of the elderly woman who was sweeping the steps. The woman was tiny and shrunken, her orange sari tucked up at her waist. Each time she leaned over to sweep, there was a flash of wrinkled brown midriff.
Kate wandered through the courtyard, feeling the cool stone under her feet. On all sides, archw
ays led off to various chambers. She followed one of the passages and came out beside a huge statue of a goddess. Four-armed, three-eyed and wearing a necklace of skulls, she sat in a niche, her skin painted a dark blue-black.
Fascinated, Kate stared up at the statue, noting the corpse that she seemed to be standing on, a bone held in one hand and a weapon in the other. She was every inch the vengeful goddess, terrifying and powerful. Around her neck hung garlands of real flowers.
There was a sound behind her and Kate looked around to see an elderly priest closing a door nearby. He wore a white robe and his forehead was adorned with a dark red thumb print. He saw her and bowed low.
‘Good morning, memsahib.’
She felt awkward, as though she was in the wrong place, although he looked kind. ‘Is it – is it all right for me to be here?’
‘Yes, yes,’ he said, waving a hand. ‘In there is for Hindus only, you understand? But here is welcome for visitors. You are Christian?’
‘Yes, sort of,’ said Kate, feeling cowardly. That was a conversation for another time.
‘This our Goddess Kali. Beautiful, yes?’
‘She is,’ said Kate. ‘I didn’t know she was worshipped like this. Isn’t she the goddess of death?’
The priest smiled, now gently dusting the statue’s face with a small bunch of feathers. ‘Death, yes, but also life. Kali is the mother,’ and here he pressed his hand to his chest, ‘the mother of us all. She is giving us life and taking away.’
Later, as she left the temple, Kate had that odd feeling of being watched again and scanned the street, hoping to see a familiar face. The crowd that swarmed on all sides was the usual microcosm of Calcutta’s varied population: the small Bengali man in his white dhoti, carrying a plank on his head; the taxi driven by an aged Sikh in a turban; the veiled Muslim women who moved like black shadows; the low-caste sweeping girls who nevertheless were dressed in bright saris and whose arms were laden with bangles.
But no – she knew none of them, although she felt that she had come to know the people of this city well, had even begun, on occasion, to think herself one of them. They were all busy, filled with purpose, even the maimed beggar who sat patiently outside the temple gates. As she handed him a few coins to stave off her own guilt, she almost envied his serenity.
*
She walked along Chowringhee Road, where small, colourful stalls lined the street.
‘For your children, madam?’ asked a young man with floppy dark hair as he shovelled bonbons into a paper bag. ‘They are how old, please?’
‘She’s almost nine,’ said Kate. ‘She’s not mine, actually. Could I have a few of those humbugs, too? Three or four ounces, please.’
‘Of course.’ He weighed the sweets and then threw a handful more in. ‘For the little one. I am having one girl same age. Oldest child.’
‘How many do you have?’
‘Five,’ said the man with a smile. ‘I am blessed. My wife is saying one more, that’s it, absolute limit.’ He wagged his finger, chuckling.
After accepting her coins and dispensing change, he wrapped the sweets up in a sheet of newspaper and handed them over. Kate breathed in the sweet, rich smell of the stall again.
‘Thank you very much. I’ll be back, I’m sure. My regards to your family.’
He waved and began topping up the jars that stood on his stall, pouring out bonbons and boiled sweets in a dozen bright colours with an ancient iron scoop.
Nearby she saw a mother and daughter and for a moment she could have sworn that it was Nabanita and Shreya, who she had last seen at Shinbwiyang. She almost called out, but they came closer and she knew they were strangers. Where is Nabanita now, she wondered. Did they ever make it out of the jungle? The hardest part was the realisation that she would probably never know.
*
‘For your little friend?’ said Pamela, who sat writing a letter at the low table. ‘What did you get this time?’
‘Lots of sweets – of course. A couple of shiny bangles to wear on her wrists. A bolt of pretty cloth. And this rather peculiar clockwork turtle.’ Kate laughed. ‘I suppose puzzling over it will keep her occupied.’
‘No sign of her father?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘Why don’t you go and see her?’ asked Pamela, blotting the letter in front of her. ‘Take a few days off?’
‘Oh, I couldn’t.’
‘Couldn’t – or don’t want to?’ said Pamela shrewdly. ‘You know the hospital would let you have the time off now that things are so much quieter.’
‘I’m not sure she’d want to see me,’ said Kate. ‘It’s been so long. She probably feels I’ve abandoned her.’
‘You should go anyway.’
Kate felt irritable and knew it was because Pamela was right. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said firmly.
That night she dreamed of Fred for the first time in a long time. He was on a ship, helping his brother to save people from drowning. It’s not too late, he kept saying, it’s not too late.
Kate awoke abruptly and stared at the dark ceiling. What would Fred do now, she wondered? She knew that he would go and see Mi Khin – would probably never have left her in the first place. I had no choice, she thought weakly, but it was a poor excuse. She had sent Mi Khin away out of necessity, but as time went by the harder it seemed to see her again.
54
Calcutta, October 1945
The inquiry at the Bureau had raised her hopes, but as the days went by Kate was forced to conclude that nothing was going to come of it. If Edwin was looking for her, why on earth wouldn’t he have provided his name? Why the mystery?
Work had kept her busy throughout the war and it was still a safe haven. In the early days she had been so tired after a shift that she could hardly make her way home. Her muscles ached and her head throbbed from carefully repeating instructions to herself over and over again. Even the most injured men often wanted to talk, and staying cheerful and light-hearted was exhausting.
She had pushed herself on with the knowledge that it was just until the war was over, whenever that might be. There was no need to make any plans until then. But months had stretched into years and now, suddenly, it was over – and she was no closer to knowing what to do with herself when she was no longer needed.
She wanted desperately to know where Edwin was, to see him strolling towards her with a shy smile, to know that he was safe. Somewhere in this fantasy she had also tracked down Mi Khin’s father and they were well and happy somewhere. Once that’s sorted, she thought forlornly, then I can move on.
But it was not sorted, and she had started to realise that closure might never come. What then, she thought? Should I go home? I have been running away for too long.
‘Nurse!’
Sitting in a dream one day in one of the half-empty wards, Kate heard a call from the corridor and leapt up, afraid of being caught slacking.
‘They’re bringing in a dozen men from the 21st General, nurse,’ said Sister Melchett, hurrying past with a stack of sheets in her arms. ‘Come and help me make the beds, please.’
‘Of course,’ said Kate, stooping to pick up a sheet that had fallen to the floor. ‘I didn’t know we were expecting anyone.’
‘We weren’t,’ said the sister. ‘They’ve had some sort of power failure, apparently – they’re shipping patients out of some wards temporarily.’
Quickly they worked down opposite sides of the ward, Kate tucking and folding the sheets automatically. It was one of the first things she had been taught to do when she began training as a nurse in Calcutta, and she remembered how absurd it had seemed to be taking lessons in how to make a bed when she had spent months as an untrained nurse, assisting with the catastrophic injuries caused by Japanese bombing and the climate of the Hukawng Valley.
‘Has anyone here assisted with an amputation before?’ the instructor had asked. Kate and two other girls put their hands up. The rest of the group looked anxious, knowing what
was to come.
Asanti and Priya had been in her first training group and had offered her a bed in their lodgings. Asanti had gone against the express wishes of her mother and father in coming to Calcutta to become a nurse. For over a year they had sent her stern, disappointed letters, demanding she come home, even sending her brother to fetch her at one point. He had inspected their room, listened to Asanti’s entreaties, given her a lecture about not going out to parties, and had finally kissed her on the forehead and gone back to their parents empty-handed.
‘But aren’t they proud of you?’ asked Kate when he had gone, finding Asanti sitting mournfully in the empty room, plaiting back her long hair in preparation for her shift.
‘I suppose they are, in their way.’ She sighed. ‘But this is a new world for them. It is hard for them to adjust and my father does not believe this is our war to fight.’
Kate had no answer to that. The Indians, like the Burmese, were caught in a war that they should never have been involved in, while their powerful masters fought for supremacy. When the war was over, the subjugated millions would demand their freedom. And who are we, she thought, to deny it?
Asanti’s parents gradually softened their stance, sending food and clothing, even asking after Kate, who her brother had mentioned approvingly – she had been in a spell of numb depression during his visit, which had obviously been mistaken for timidity.
‘Are you finished, nurse?’ said Sister Melchett sharply, and Kate realised that she had been repeatedly tucking and re-tucking the last bedsheet.
‘All done here, sister.’
In half an hour a stream of orderlies arrived. The first four or five patients were in wheelchairs, well enough to sit up and look around with interest at their new surroundings. The rest were brought in on stretchers and slid carefully onto the freshly made beds.
The Long Journey Home Page 24