The Repercussions

by Catherine Hall

  The other side of it, though, was that if one behaved in a way that damaged one’s izzat, through desertion, or cowardice, or disloyalty, it brought terrible disgrace. He had simply pointed out to Mohan Ram that his fear of surgery would do just that, and so Mohan Ram had changed his mind, because to be seen to lose izzat in the eyes of someone else is already to have lost it, and Mr Mitra just thinking that he had done so was enough.

  I would have liked to have asked Mr Mitra more about it, but we had arrived at the operating theatre. I decided to go in to observe.

  Major Williams shook his head when the bandages came off.

  “I thought the Boer War was bad enough,” he said quietly. “These multiple wounds are dreadful. This shelling is a whole new way of causing damage, and I don’t like it – I don’t like it at all.”

  I looked at the patient, lying on the operating table, and the surgical instruments, laid out neatly on a cloth, and I had a terrible vision of the theatre when it was the Pavilion kitchen: of whole pigs lying on the table ready to be roasted on the spit, or joints of beef waiting to be carved up. I swallowed hard to steady myself and waited for the first incision.

  Major Williams cleaned out the wounds, which had gone horribly septic. We covered them with some of the new dressings made of sphagnum. It seemed such an odd combination: an Indian patient lying in the kitchen of an English king, wounded in France and stuffed with Scottish moss. Suddenly the world seemed very small.

  Seven

  I’m all messed up, Suze. Not like Elizabeth’s patients – I’m not missing limbs, or suffering from gangrene – but in my head. I’m trying not to let it take hold. I can’t let myself get lost in things that happened in Kabul: I know that’s a slippery slope. I don’t like being unable to function, it’s not me.

  Last night I realized I hadn’t spoken to anyone since I got here, apart from the man in the deli. Not good. I decided to look for a bar and have a drink and find someone to chat to.

  There were plenty of places to choose from. Brighton’s not like the cities I usually end up in, where you pick out your bags from a pile on the ground at the airport and take your own padlock for the hotel bedroom door. It’s packed with everything you need for a happy holiday. In the daytime, the seafront’s crammed with people down for the day from London, walking on the beach, playing on the pier. Couples of every sort smile and kiss, taking snaps of themselves with their phones. Late afternoon there’s a lull, when the dirty weekenders go back to their hotels and the Londoners catch the train home. Later at night it comes alive all over again.

  I made a bit of an effort before I went out, used the last of Edith’s sandalwood oil in the bath, shaved my legs, did my hair. Not for anyone else’s benefit, just mine. It had been a long time since I’d bothered, and it was nice to make the effort. Smelling of the bath oil, I felt pretty good as I wandered through Kemptown, a million times better than on my crazy stumble to the supermarket. As I walked I looked into windows, at people eating dinner, watching television, getting ready to go out. I spied a naked chest in an attic room, a man throwing poses in front of a mirror. It was a still night, with no wind, and sash windows were thrown open in the tall Georgian terraces, music blasting, voices spilling, excited at the thought of the night to come. The tang of sea air mingled with the sweet whiff of spliffs escaping from balconies.

  Brighton was revving up for Friday night – hen nights, stag dos, groups of lads in pressed shirts and tidy hair eyeing up girls in heels and tiny dresses next to students in jeans. Gay boys packed the terraces of the seafront bars, even now, in the autumn chill, smoking, flirting, on the pull.

  I decided to avoid the bars on the seafront. I wanted somewhere quieter, where the flashiest cocktail was a gin-and-tonic, not something pink and fizzy with a sparkler sticking out the side. In the end I chose a place I heard about years ago, on the Old Steine, where once upon a time fishermen spread out their nets to dry, now the main road into town.

  The Marlborough Pub – a townhouse with bay-fronted windows – looked nice from the outside. There were two doors to choose from, and for a moment I hesitated, feeling that little surge of nerves and possibility that I still get when I go to a gay bar on my own. But then I told myself not to be silly and picked the one to the right.

  It was busy inside, hot and loud from voices competing with the music from the DJ booth in the window. Most of the girls were young, dressed in an unofficial uniform of jeans and sleeveless vests. They crowded at the bar, around the pool table, drinking pints of lager, slamming tequila shots.

  One of the pool players had an elaborate tattoo that spread over her shoulders and down her arms. Do you remember how you used to joke that I was the only lesbian in London without one? I could never do it. I loved those little swallows flying in formation over your back, but they were the exception. To me, tattoos mean troops: snarling dogs, bullets and bombs, rifles, naked women, Bible passages, skulls and crossbones, the Grim Reaper, crucifixes, women’s names. Infidel scrawled across the young chest of a British soldier in Afghanistan.

  Did you know that Islam forbids tattoos? When I was in Iraq with a platoon of marines, young blokes in their early twenties, there was a running battle between them and their superiors, who were trying to get them to limit their tattoos to places where they couldn’t be seen. They failed, of course: those guys didn’t care, they flaunted them, trying to provoke a reaction, like the teenagers they almost still were.

  I didn’t want to think about soldiers. Spotting a door at the end of the bar, I pushed my way to it and stepped through into the other room.

  It couldn’t have been more different – quiet, no music, with just a few couples sitting in cosy booths. There was carpet on the floor, a cheese plant in the corner and a fish tank behind the bar. Not what you’d call cool, perhaps, but I liked it.

  I ordered a gin-and-tonic and perched on a stool at the bar. The barmaid was friendly, flirty even, but when I took out a cigarette she shook her head and said:

  “Mm-mm, not in here.”

  I’d forgotten about the smoking ban. I’m used to drinking in places where the air’s thick with smoke, the kind of places where a ban like that would never be tolerated. Neither would a bar full of women, come to think of it – not this sort, anyway. I remembered a hotel bar in Kigali, Rwanda. The ceiling fans were broken, the tables sticky with beer. Cats prowled, looking for scraps to eat. We’d been out all day, staring at the bodies and the devastation, and we were tired and drinking to forget. The bar was filled with the usual suspects: arms dealers, aid workers, mercenaries, journalists. A very drunk man came up and put his hand on my bum. His breath smelt of whisky, his skin flushed and eyes bloodshot from drink and years of looking into the African sun.

  “How much?” His accent was hard to place: South African perhaps, Belgian, Dutch.

  “What?”

  “You know,” he said, touching my bum again.

  I kept my voice steady. “I’m not a whore.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Then why are you here?”

  “I’m a photographer, a journalist.”

  He laughed, a high, mad cackle.

  “Worse, girlie, worse.”

  I’ve spent so many nights in places like that: hotel bars with no windows, so you don’t know what time it is; bars next to swimming pools emptied by drought or war; bars in bad parts of town, where you hear the rumbles of disturbance coming closer; bars behind iron grilles, where only foreigners or the elite can get away with drinking alcohol. It was good to sit with my gin-and-tonic and be sure no man was going to try his luck. I drank it quickly, liking the head rush that came with it. I was ordering another when a girl came through the door. She sat on the barstool next to mine, looked at me and smiled.

  “Wow, it’s busy in there,” she said, nodding to the other side of the bar.

  She was tall, like you, with dark hair, shiny and long. I put my hand up to the back of my neck, feeling the uneven line. Do you remember when I called you fr
om Congo to tell you I’d cut off all my hair? I’d been to a hospital where I’d spent the whole day taking photographs of little girls as young as six who’d been raped with bottles, old ladies assaulted by a dozen militia and left for dead. All of them looking back at my camera with empty eyes. Back in my hotel room, I took my nail scissors and chopped my hair off in clumps, not bothering to look in the mirror. Afterwards I picked it all up and put it in one of those airport bags for toiletries, suddenly scared of witchcraft. That was the effect that Congo had on me: it screwed me up for months.

  My hair’s still short. It’s easier that way. Better not to look good in a war zone. But when that woman began to talk to me, my hand went up to my hair, almost without me realizing. It’s been so long since I’ve been chatted up that I didn’t even know if that was what she was doing, or if she was just being friendly.

  The conversation didn’t last long, because I soon began to feel sick again, like at the supermarket. I held on to the bar, gulping, trying to swallow it down. My heart was thumping, and not because of her.

  “I’m Florence,” said the girl.

  “I’m Jo,” I said, and then jumped off my barstool and ran outside, because I knew I was going to throw up. Pushing past the group of girls smoking outside, I puked onto the pavement.

  I wondered what was happening, how I’d lost control for the second time in a week. When I felt the hand on my shoulder I flinched.

  “It’s me,” said Florence. “Are you OK?”

  I knew how it looked, as if I couldn’t hold my drink.

  “Yes,” I said, then got to my feet and stumbled off in the direction of the seafront.

  She called something after me, but I kept going, past the Pavilion, all lit up by moonlight, past the chippy on the corner, belting out rancid fumes, past the clubs, the karaoke bars, the drunks, the bus shelter, right along the promenade until I made it home.

  Eight

  ELIZABETH WILLOUGHBY’S DIARY

  25th December 1914

  Today was Christmas Day, but I had volunteered to work: there didn’t seem much cause for celebration, not with Robert so far away and in such danger. On my way to the Pavilion, I stood for a moment on the seafront. It was a clear day, very cold and very still, with no trace of wind and, thankfully, no sound of guns. The tide pushed little ruffles of foam up onto the deserted beach. I thought of families sitting down to breakfast, opening stockings, the smiles on children’s faces, and I looked out over the sea and said a prayer that Robert would come back safe and well, and that one day we would have a family of our own.

  Christmas means little to our patients, of course, but they seemed delighted with their royal gifts. Queen Mary had sent a little tin of sweetmeats, postcards and cigarettes to each of them, which were closely examined and exclaimed over with great pleasure, then put carefully with their other belongings in the pack store: trophies from the Front, horrid things like German helmets or fragments of shells.

  Nurse Clarkson had brought in some mince pies, and we had a jolly time, sharing them over afternoon tea. Someone had the idea of singing to the patients, and we formed an impromptu choir, performing a carol to each ward. We were decidedly amateur, but the men seemed to like it, some of them even tapping out time on the side of their beds.

  All in all, it was a pleasant day, a welcome lull, apart from one upsetting episode involving a Gurkha from Nepal. Lal Bahadur Thapa is a very small man, a boy, even, who looks no older than fourteen. His features are different to the other men: they are almost Chinese, as if he had stepped down from the paintings on the panels of the music room and slid between the starched sheets of his bed.

  We have kept a special eye on him ever since he arrived last week in a terrible state, his legs shattered by shellfire. His notes say that he was blown over by the blast, then half buried by debris, and not rescued for hours. In France he had a double amputation. His wounds had become gangrenous, and he had been terribly nervous and couldn’t bear the thought of being moved. Apparently the orderlies spoke to him in his own language, trying to calm him down, but he went on screaming all the way into theatre. When he came to us, his legs bandaged, cut off at the thigh, he looked like a tortured child, tiny and shocked.

  Usually he lies hunched in his bed, his body barely disturbing the bedclothes, simply staring into the distance, hardly seeming to blink. His hands are the only parts of him to move, twitching all the time. But this afternoon, just after the carols, his twitching quickened, until it was something like a flutter, his hands and arms flapping, slow at first, then faster, like a bird trying to take flight. He began to make strange, strangled noises, as if he wanted to speak but could not.

  The other patients were showing signs of upset, too, shifting in their beds. Some of them covered their heads with their pillows to block out the noise. Others began to twitch as well, shouting for help.

  Suddenly, Lal Bahadur let out a wild, terrible shriek, like an animal in pain. Calling to an orderly to fetch Colonel MacLeod, I ran to him and held his shoulders, talking to him gently, trying to break the spell, but by the time the Colonel had arrived he was convulsing, his little body jerking and twisting about. He was surprisingly strong: it took three orderlies to hold him down while they gave him a sedative, then he went limp, flopping back against the pillows.

  Afterwards, in his office, Colonel MacLeod demanded an explanation. I began to describe how Lal Bahadur had seemed to go off into another world, but he said that wasn’t what he had meant. Giving me a stern look, he asked why I had gone to him. I knew the rules, he said: I wasn’t there to nurse the patients.

  When I protested that it was impossible to see someone in such pain and not try to help as a matter of common decency, he said that it wasn’t my place, and that if I would not abide by the rules he would be forced to ask me to leave.

  A knock came at the door.

  “Sir.” It was Mr Mitra, who launched into an explanation of what had happened, saying that my help had been “vital”. I have never been called “vital” before. I smiled to myself, feeling rather pleased. Colonel MacLeod asked what it had to do with him.

  “As a doctor, I—”

  A flush of anger had risen up Colonel MacLeod’s neck. I looked at it, thinking how calm Mr Mitra was in comparison, how he showed no reaction as the Colonel reminded him that he was still not qualified.

  “The matter we are discussing is not simply a medical one,” the Colonel said huffily. “It is to do with something else entirely.”

  When another knock came at the door, I thought that the Colonel might lose his temper, his neck growing a deeper shade of crimson.

  A nervous-looking orderly stammered that there was another emergency. As the Colonel rushed out of the room, Mr Mitra and I exchanged glances.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “I don’t think I was much help.”

  “You probably haven’t done yourself much good stepping in for me like that.”

  He shrugged. “You’re probably right: I never do.”

  For a moment I hesitated, thinking of hospital protocol, then decided to ignore it.

  “I think,” I said, “that you should call me Elizabeth.”

  He gave a little bow. “Then I am Hari.”

  There was a pause as I wondered what to say next. Then, remembering that he was still in training, I asked him where he had been studying before the war. When he said Keble College, Oxford, I was delighted and told him that Robert had been at Balliol. When he was back from leave I would introduce them. They have Oxford in common, and Robert was born in India. Perhaps they could be friends.

  “Perhaps,” he said.

  I wanted to keep talking. “And what made you come to England?” I asked.

  He shrugged, and said that when he was a boy he had read Shakespeare and Milton, Thomas Hardy, George Eliot. He had been inspired by those books. He had wanted to come and see for himself.

  Just like me and India, I thought. I had something in common with him too. �
��And is it how you imagined it to be?”

  “Since I’ve been here,” he said, “I’ve realized that England’s not the place I read about in books.”

  I felt oddly disappointed.

  “So why did you come here, to the Pavilion?”

  “Oxford is a strange and wonderful place,” he said, making a little grimace. “But as soon as I arrived there I started to think of India again. When I heard that the Pavilion needed doctors, I felt a strange affiliation to my country. I decided to come to Brighton to help.”

  The more I see of Hari Mitra, the more intrigued I am. He seems like a man who has stories, if I can prise them out of him. I think that I should like to try.

  Nine

  When I first got into this game, I loved the thought of being free, but the flipside of freedom is loneliness. Writing it down for you, trying to describe it in words, was important. I wanted you to know – really know – about the things that happened away from the photos in the papers, the bits I didn’t capture with my camera, the stories behind the shots.

  I loved getting your stories too, especially the emails – much more than the rushed calls on a borrowed satellite phone, the sporadic texts when I had reception – getting to my inbox and finding something from you, a reassurance that there was something else out there, away from the madness, something normal and human and sane.

  That was one of the worst things about the breakup, not having you there while I tried to make sense of it all in my head. That’s what I need to do now, Suze. I need to tell you what’s been going on, like I used to, to explain what happened in Kabul. I’m not expecting an answer, I know it’s too late for that, but you’re still the only one who might get it, the only one who might understand.

  Do you remember my first trip to Afghanistan, back in 2001? It was a few weeks after 9/11, when we’d sat together on the sofa and stared at the television in horror as the Twin Towers collapsed. The Americans were about to start bombing the city, and I was desperate to cover it. I packed my bags, kissed you goodbye and left pretty much straight away.