by Paul Scott
‘From Meerut he moved to Ambala, and then to somewhere near Lahore. In his first letter he said that on the map Meerut didn’t look too far away from Mayapore. In his second he said he wondered if he would ever be close enough to make a meeting possible. In his third he did not mention the possibility of a meeting at all. And then I guessed that it had happened, in just three months. He had seen what he would only be able to call my India. And had been horrified. Even afraid. How could he know that I had been also horrified, also afraid? How could he know that for three years I had hoped, longed to be rescued, and had confused the idea of rescue with the idea of my Englishness and with the idea of my friendship with an Englishman? How could he know any of this? In one respect I was more English than he. As an Englishman he could admit his horror if not his fear. As an Anglicised Indian, the last thing I ever dared to do in my letters to him was admit either, for fear of being labelled “hysterical”. And so I saw the awful thing that had happened – that looking at what he would have to call my India, the suspicion that I had returned to my natural element had been confirmed.
‘Well, I say I saw it, then; but did I? Didn’t I still make excuses for Colin and excuses for myself? When there was no letter from Lahore, didn’t I say, “It’s all right, he’s not a civilian who has nothing to do but wake up, eat, go to work and come back home to see what the postman has brought.” And then when the war came close, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, invaded Siam and Malaya and Burma and even fluttered the English dovecots in Mayapore, didn’t I say to myself, “Well, poor old Colin is in the thick of it again?” And even suffer pangs of conscience that I hadn’t been man enough to stand by something that was sure at least, my English upbringing, and join the army, fight for the people I had once felt kinship to, even if out here they obviously didn’t feel kin to me? And didn’t I see what a damned useless mess I’d made of my life since 1938, sulking as badly as those poor clerks I despised, making no new friends, repaying Aunt Shalini’s kindness and affection with nothing that she would understand as love or even thanks?
‘And then I saw them. English soldiers in the cantonment, with that familiar regimental name on their shoulder tabs. In the January of 1942. Familiar from the letters from Colin, first from Meerut, and then Ambala, and then from near Lahore. Captain C. Lindsey, then the name and number of the unit, followed by the address, and ending with the words India Command.’
*
‘It was,’ Sister Ludmila said, ‘the second occasion I saw him drunk that he talked so, about Colin. I told you there had been such an occasion. After he had been to the temple, with her, with the girl. This is when he told me these things. He had never told her. I said to her, that time she came to the Sanctuary to say goodbye, “Do you know of the man Lindsey?” and she thought for a while and then said, “No, tell me.”
‘But I said, “It’s not important.” It wasn’t important by then. To you perhaps it is important. So long after. “I saw him,” young Kumar told me, “or at least I thought I saw him, coming out of the Imperial Bank, getting into an army truck that had the same insignia on its tailboard that those British soldiers wore on their sleeves.” But he was not sure. And even then made excuses for him. Already at this time, you see, with the war suddenly brought to our doorstep by the Japanese, India had changed. There was this air of military rush and secrecy – and on the day he thought he saw Colin he went home expecting a letter saying, “Look, I’m stationed near Mayapore and sometimes come into the cantonment. Where can we meet?” But there was never such a letter. So as the days went by he thought, “No, the man I saw was not Colin. Colin could not come near Mayapore and send me no word at all. India could not have done that to him. Not that. How could India do that to anybody, let alone to Colin?”
‘Can you imagine this? The feeling every day of Kumar’s that if the post did not bring a letter then there would be a chance encounter somewhere in that area north of the river? Every day he cycled from the Chillianwallah Bagh to the office of the Mayapore Gazette, and on some days left the office and cycled to an event that he was required to report on. And this was another thing, another thing he told me. How even as a reporter he was invisible to white people. He would go to this event, that event. The gymkhana, the flower show, the Guides display, the Higher School Sports, the Technical College graduation, the Technical College cricket, the hospital fête. He knew nearly every important English civilian by sight and name and every distinguished Indian by sight and name, but they did not know him, for there was at these functions, you understand, what you call press officer or steward, and he, only, would be available to young Kumar, and sometimes not even him, because at an important function Mr Laxminarayan would also be in attendance. On this occasion, I mean the second occasion of his drunkenness he said,” – oh, there was a time when I thought I would make a name for myself. People would read the Gazette and say, What good English! How splendid! Who is this young Kumar? But they do not even know my name. At most I am ‘the Gazette boy’. My name is never printed. No one really knows that I exist. I am a vaguely familiar face. But – I had it coming. He uses me. Laxminarayan. Sometimes he keeps me chained to the desk turning babu English into decent English. Sometimes he sends me out. But he keeps me as an anonymous cog in his anonymous machine. Once I heard an Englishman say to him, ‘I say, Laxminarayan, what’s happening to the Gazette?. Apart from Topics by ‘Stroller’ it isn’t funny any more.’ My editor only laughed. He did not explain why it isn’t funny. He punishes me, you see, for Vidyasagar, for everything, for his own shortcomings.’”
*
‘It was at such a function,’ Sister Ludmila said, ‘that he saw this Lindsey for the second time. Saw and knew, beyond a doubt, standing not far away, close enough not to mistake the features, the expression, the mannerisms, the way of holding the body – whatever it was that had impressed itself indelibly on Kumar’s mind as authentic Lindsey. What occasion? I forget. But remember it was February, the end of February. And that he mentioned the maidan. I have even still, this recollection, not my own but Kumar’s. From Kumar I have inherited it. And feel almost as if I had been there. Am there. Towards evening. In Kumar’s body. A dark face in the crowd. Has it been cricket? This I would not know. Cricket I do not understand. But I understand how towards evening on the maidan the races came uncertainly together in a brief intermingling pattern which from above, to God you understand, looked less informal than it looked from the ground because from above you would be able to see the white current and the dark current; as from a cliff, the sea, separating itself stream from stream and drift from drift, but amounting in God’s Eyes to no more than total water.
‘And he sees Lindsey. Ah well, as boys, what secrets of mind and body did they share? He told me of autumn in England. This too I see and feel. And am aware of young Kumar and young Lindsey as boys, running home across chill fields to come and toast their hands at a warm grate, just as I remember the blessing of gloves in a cold winter, and the way the breath could transform a window and fill the heart with a different kind of warmth. Ah, such safety. Such microcosmic power. To translate, to reduce, to cause to vanish with the breath alone the sugary fruits in their nest of lace-edged paper. To know that they are there, and yet not there. This is a magic of the soul. But it was a magic Kumar could not conjure, on the maidan, that hot evening, to make Lindsey disappear. Lindsey looked at him, and then away, without recognition, not understanding that in those babu clothes, under the bazaar topee, there was one black face he ought to have seen as being different from the rest.’
*
I am invisible, Kumar said, not only to white people because they are white and I am black but invisible to my white friend because he can no longer distinguish me in a crowd. He thinks – yes, this is what Lindsey thinks: ‘They all look alike.’ He makes me disappear. I am nothing. It is not his fault. He is right. I am nothing, nothing, nothing. I am the son of my father whose own father left home with a begging-bowl in his hand and a cloth r
ound his loins, having blessed his children and committed their mother to their care. For a while she followed him and then sat by the roadside and returned home to live out her days in her private fantasy.
So I go from the maidan, in my bazaar trousers, my bazaar shirt, my Anglo-Indian topee, knowing that I am unrecognisable because I am nothing and would not be welcome if I were recognised. And meet, also coming away, Vidyasagar. He also is nothing. I do not remember the rest. There was clarity up to a point. Drinking cheap liquor in an airless room in a house in a back street on our own side of the river. And Vidyasagar laughing and telling the others that soon I would become a good Indian because the liquor was bootleg and we drank it at Government’s expense. The others were young men like Vidya, dressed as Vidya was dressed, in shirts and trousers, like mine. But I remember helping them to destroy my topee because it was the badge of all government toadies. I remember too that they kept refilling my glass. They wanted me to be drunk. Partly it was malice, partly fun. In that poky little room there was desperation as well as fervour.
*
Sister Ludmila said: ‘He found out later that they took him back to the Chillianwallah Bagh, right to the gates of his house, so that he would not be robbed, or picked up by the police, and then left him, thinking he went inside, but he wandered out on to the road again, going back towards the river and into the waste ground. And must have stumbled and fallen down into the ditch and there become unconscious and had his wallet stolen by someone who had seen him and followed him.
‘“Who is it?” I asked Mr de Souza. “I don’t know,” he said, and turned him over to see if there were wounds on his back, and then turned him again, shining the torch on his face. And this is what I remember, of Bibighar beginning. The eyes shut, the black hair curling over the forehead. Ah! Such darkness! Such determination to reject.
‘We got him on to the stretcher then, and carried him here to the Sanctuary. “This one is drunk, sister,” Mr de Souza said. “We have carried home only a drunken man.” “To be so drunk and so young,” I said, “he must also be unhappy. Let him lie.” And so he lay. And before I went to sleep I prayed for him.’
Part Six
CIVIL AND MILITARY
I
Military
Edited Extracts from the unpublished memoirs of Brigadier A. V. Reid, DSO, MC: ‘A Simple Life.’
Late in the March of 1942 when we were still in Rawalpindi and hard on the heels of the news that our only son Alan was missing in Burma, I received orders to go to Mayapore and assume command of the infantry brigade then still in process of formation in that area. The news of this appointment was given to me on the phone by ‘General Tubby’ Carter. I was to leave at once and Tubby knew I should want a little time to break the news to Meg who was still unfit and would be unable to accompany me. I did not welcome the idea of leaving her on her own at a moment when we were heavy of heart hoping for further news of Alan and yet dreading what that news might be. After talking to Tubby I went straight round to the nursing home and told Meg of the task that had been entrusted to me.
She knew that in ordinary circumstances I would welcome the opportunity of getting back to a real job of soldiering. It had begun to look as if I would spend the rest of the war with my feet under a desk, and with our son also in uniform I suppose we had almost come to terms with this prospect and had accepted the fact that age and experience must eventually make way for youthful eagerness. But now, with Alan’s fate uncertain, it seemed as if some understanding deity had stepped in to redress the balance and had called on me to play a part which – if the news of Alan was the worst there could be when it came – would at least give me the satisfaction of knowing I might strike an active blow at the enemy in return.
Meg reacted to the news as she had always done at times of crisis and difficulty – with no sign of any thought for herself. Seeing how ill and pale she looked I wished that it had been in my power to call Alan into the room, fit and well, his usual cheery self, and so bring the roses back to her cheeks. I am thankful that she was spared the news that he died working on the infamous Burma-Siam railway, news which for me darkened the days of our Victory, but I am grateful that she lived long enough to share with me the hope that was revived when we first heard that he was a prisoner-of-war and not dead, as we had feared. When I said goodbye to her on the eve of my departure for Mayapore there was also the burden of realising that these were dark days for our country. There was a tough job ahead.
I arrived in Mayapore on April 3rd (1942) and immediately set about the first phase of my task, that of welding the (—th) Indian Infantry Brigade into a well-trained fighting machine which I could lead confidently into the field to play its part in a theatre of war where the Jap had temporarily proved himself master. The task was not going to be an easy one. The majority of the troops were green, and the surrounding countryside, suitable enough for run-of-the-mill training, very dissimilar from the ground we should eventually be required to contest.
I had been in Mayapore many years before. I remembered it as a delightful station with some lakes out at a place called Banyaganj where there was excellent duck-shooting to be had. The old artillery mess was a fine example of 19th Century Anglo-Indian architecture, with a lovely view on to the maidan. It tended to get uncomfortably warm from March onwards but one could usually get away, down to Mussoorie or up to Darjeeling. It was not too far by train from Calcutta either, so one had plenty of opportunity to relax if one’s duties allowed.
I did not have any illusions about relaxation now. Obviously there was a difference between a station as it once appeared to a young subaltern who had recently met the girl he was seriously thinking of asking to marry him, and the station, the same though it was, to which he returned nearly thirty years later as a senior officer at a moment when his country’s fortunes were at a low ebb, and the country to which he had dedicated his life which represented the very cornerstone of the Empire had achieved considerable measures of self-government and stood virtually on the threshold of independence, an independence that had been postponed, for the moment, in the interests of the free world as a whole.
I went to Mayapore with every confidence in the troops, and with a fervent prayer that I should not personally be found wanting. I had been glad to hear from Tubby that there was a station commander on tap who would relieve the brigade staff of the general military administration of the district, and also to hear that the collector – called in this ‘non-regulation’ province a deputy commissioner – was a youngish fellow who was well thought of by Europeans and Indians alike. As senior military officer in the district, however, I knew I should be responsible in the last resort for the civil peace, and for the well-being of both soldiers and civilians, and the last thing I wanted was to become involved in the kind of situation that would distract me from my main job and give rise to the employment of troops on tasks that might have been avoided with a little forethought.
In view of the increasing unrest in India at this time, one of the first things I did after reaching Mayapore was to see the Deputy Commissioner, whose name was White, in order to listen to what he had to say about the state of his district and to tell him frankly that a lot of time and energy might be saved later if we agreed to show a firm hand at the first sign of trouble. I had already decided to bring the Brigade’s British battalion – the (—th) Berkshires – into Mayapore and to move the 4/5 Pankot Rifles out of Mayapore, where I had found them, to the vicinity of Banyaganj where the Berkshires had been situated. My reasons were twofold. The British troops were newly out from home and I judged from my first inspection of them that they were far from happy in the rather primitive quarters which were all Banyaganj had to offer. There was an airfield in process of construction nearby (which I noted had denuded the lakes of duck), and scarcely a mile separated the far from salubrious coolie encampment from the battalion. More huts were being built but a lot of the men were under canvas and in April that was no joke. Conscious of the problem i
nvolved in appearing to make a distinction I nevertheless felt that Johnny Jawan would be less uncomfortable in Banyaganj than was Tommy Atkins. Also, in moving the Berkshires into the Mayapore barracks there was in my mind the belief that their presence in the cantonment might act as an extra deterrent to civil unrest, which at all costs I wished to avoid. I had, in any case, determined to use British soldiers in the first instance in the event of military aid being requested by the civil power.
In bringing the Berkshires into Mayapore I was also not unaware of the good effect this would have on our own people there – men and women doing difficult jobs at a time of special crisis. It was with this in mind too that I ordered an Army or War Week – complete with a military band – for the end of April, which was held on the maidan and was counted a great success. I feel that without immodesty (because the idea was mine but the fulfilment of it lies to the credit of those who organised or took part in it) I can claim that the excitement and ‘lift’ which the War Week gave to Mayapore distracted attention from the fact that the Cabinet Mission which Sir Winston – then Mr Churchill – had sent to Delhi, to seek an end to the deadlock between the British Government and those Indian politicians who claimed to represent the Indian people and were demanding even further measures of self-government, had failed to come to any kind of reasonable understanding. This was the mission known as the Cripps Mission, after its leader, Sir Stafford Cripps, the socialist minister who eventually became Chancellor of the Exchequer when, after the war, our island race paid its peculiar tribute to the architect of our victory by ousting him from office. It was after the failure of the Cripps Mission in April 1942 that Mr Gandhi launched his famous Quit India campaign, which of course looked to us like an invitation to the Emperor of Japan to walk in and take over the reins of government!