“Morning,” she said.
“Hello.”
She leant over to kiss me and I kissed her back, the pillows collapsing under our combined weight.
“I can do this,” I thought. “I can be all right.”
Just then, a foot shot out and kicked me from inside. The bug was awake too.
Florence giggled. “She’s jealous!”
The bug kept kicking, churning in my belly. Florence rolled back to her side of the bed and stood up.
“I’ll make coffee.”
She walked, naked, to the doorway. “By the way,” she said. “Do you always sleep with your passport by the bed?”
I blushed. You remember the drill: passport, wallet, phone – all together on the bedside table so I can stretch out an arm to grab them and run.
“Yes,” I said. “You never know.”
Fifty-Two
ELIZABETH WILLOUGHBY’S DIARY
14th July 1915
Hari was sent to the Front on the hospital train with some of the men that he had helped to heal. I knew that Robert would be watching me in case I tried to slip to the station, and so I had met him the day before. Neither of us had known what to say.
“Will you write?” I asked.
“There’s not much point. Robert would intercept any letters, if the censor didn’t get me before.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, knowing my words were not enough.
“I know.”
I kissed Hari on the cheek, and he raised his hand to where my lips had been. As I hurried away, hot tears trickled down my face.
Our miserable little marriage took place last week, in St Matthew’s, where I was christened. It was a beautiful summer’s day, just as I had always imagined it, and I wore Mamma’s veil and her wedding dress, cut down and let out. All the time, as I walked down the aisle on Papa’s arm, as I stood next to Robert listening to Reverend Waters, who had held me over the font as a baby, I was thinking that this didn’t have to happen, that I could stop it there and then, but when the vicar asked if anyone knew of any just impediment, Robert looked at me, and I swallowed and kept quiet, hating both of us, and said a little prayer for Hari.
Afterwards we went for lunch in a hotel, and no one seemed to notice anything odd about Robert. Later, when it was time for bed, he climbed on top of me, and I lay there thinking of India and wondering if things would be any different there.
India was the reason we gave for getting married now. I don’t know how Robert managed to arrange it, just as I don’t know how he got Hari sent away. Perhaps his superiors can see that he is erratic and not quite to be trusted, and think he would be less trouble there. Or perhaps they don’t see that at all, and think he will be an asset. Who knows, whatever the reason, we are on our way.
I have got what I always dreamt of: a July wedding to Robert, a trunk full of trousseaux, the prospect of a family and an Indian adventure. It is almost comic how dreadful it makes me feel.
Our marriage was reported, just as I hoped all those months ago, in the Gazette, in “Military Weddings”. Apparently I was “charmingly attired in white with veil to match, in keeping with the beautifully decorated sanctuary”. The presents “were numerous and useful, including, from the Misses Jenmans and Puttick, a silver butter dish, and from Mrs Meaton silver fish knives and forks”.
It’s all packed up in trunks now. I am writing this in our cabin, somewhere near the Horn of Africa. Robert has gone to smoke on deck: the smell of cigarettes makes me feel even worse than the motion of the boat. I cherish my moments without him; I will never forgive him for what he has done. If Hari is killed, Robert will be as responsible for his death as the man who fires the bullet.
I will always remember Hari, the man who brought India alive for me. In Calcutta I will seek out the places he talked of: College Street, the Maidan, the Botanical Gardens, the Oxford Book and Stationery Company. I will venture outside the European parts of town onto the Chitpur Road, and explore the alleys of Bow Bazaar. I will listen out for the monkey wallah’s drum and gobble down white balls of roshogolla. When the Durga Puja comes, I will go and pay homage to the goddess, even if the other Europeans disapprove.
I feel such a fool to have believed what I read at the beginning of the war, those stories about the Germans’ cruelty, those newspaper columns about Good versus Evil. What I have learnt since is that anyone is capable of evil, and no one is completely good.
I have one of Mr Fry’s postcards, the one of Hari and me in the operating theatre, slipped between the pages of this book. From time to time I take it out and look at it, and wonder how things could have been so very different.
Fifty-Three
This morning I took a bus up past the university, then walked through muddy fields in drizzling rain. Set into the side of a hill were three granite slabs and steps leading to a white dome held up by elegant columns. The Chattri Memorial, built on the spot where they cremated the Sikh and Hindu soldiers, odd in the same way as the Pavilion is odd, a piece of what Edith would have called the Orient in the most English of settings. It was deserted, silent, apart from birdsong and a couple of sheep munching grass.
On the memorial was an inscription:
To the memory of all Indian soldiers who gave their lives for their King-Emperor in the Great War, this monument, erected on the site of the funeral pyre where the Hindus and Sikhs who died in hospital at Brighton passed through the fire, is in grateful admiration and brotherly affection dedicated.
I stood, looking out at the soft curves of the South Downs, thinking of the soldiers who were burnt on these ghats, so far away from home. I thought of Elizabeth too, crossing the Black Water, the Kala Pani, pregnant with the baby who would become Edith, off to a life in India with a husband she could never love. I thought of damaged Robert and his vicious revenge. I understand him better than I’d like, but it’s Hari I feel worst for.
Complicated lives, Suze – and mine’s not that much simpler. Will I stay in Brighton? Can I really ignore the thrill I felt on the train to London, that feeling of excitement at being there? What about Florence, who refuses to listen to why I’m such a bad bet? She doesn’t seem to care that it might not work out. Perhaps I should learn from Elizabeth’s words – happiness cannot be counted on: it’s fleeting and must be grabbed and held on to.
And so, my love, I’m not going to write any more. I’m finally going to do what they all said I should – let go and move on.
The call came late on New Year’s Day. I was still shut up in our flat, on the sofa, staring into space, working my way down a bottle of whisky. I’d spoken to no one since you’d left, ignored all the New Year’s texts, but when the phone rang and it was Charlie, I picked up.
You were hit by a car that was going too fast, the wrong way up the street, the driver still drunk from the night before. Death on impact, the coroner said later. Three short words. Such a horribly efficient way to describe the end of a life.
I raged for months. I raged at God and fate and all those things that I’ve never believed in, at the sheer, bloody unfairness of it all. I was the one who took the risks. It should have been me who ended up dead, not you. I raged at myself, too, for pushing you away, for not doing enough to keep you. Afterwards, I put myself in stupid situations because I didn’t care any more if I lived or died, because if you hadn’t left that night, you wouldn’t have been on that street, Lara’s street: you would have been with me.
That’s all over now. I guess I’m becoming the person you always wanted. I’m just sorry not to be doing it with you.
Please know that I always loved you. I promise I’ll always remember.
Goodnight, Susie, my love, goodnight.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to everyone who took the time to talk to me about Afghanistan: Sarah Chayes, Geoffrey Cordell, Rena Effendi, Sam French, Jenny Kleeman, Clementine Malpas, Jenny Matthews, Avrina Montgomery and Sara Petersson. This book could not have been written without their insights. A
ny inaccuracies are of course my own. In particular, thank you to Francesca Recchia for being my eyes and ears on the Kabul streets.
Thank you to everyone who helped with all the other bits I didn’t know about: Rajni Aldridge on medicine, David Beveridge on military matters, Alex Bray on the East India Club, Paul Crake on Queen Victoria, Beth Crosland on photography, Nina Gurung on Gurkhas, Emer O’Brien on photographic exhibitions, David Shelton on St John’s Ambulances, Claire Winchester on Brighton, Jo Wisdom on St Paul’s Cathedral, Martin Bewick, Ishrat Kanga, Annalisa Picciolo, David Roberts and Hannah Williams on art, Catherine Bellsham-Revell, Simon Flacks and Harriet Short on legal matters, Flavia Krause-Jackson, Heidi Ober, Lauren Pett and Jill Roberts on recommendations for research.
Thank you to the Imperial War Museum for its series of lectures and exhibitions on war photographers, the Frontline Club for its talks on Afghanistan, war and photography, the British Library for its in-depth information on Indian soldiers and the Brighton History Centre for its wealth of material on Brighton.
Thank you to Laura Barber, Chloë Campbell and Simon Savidge for their inspired and sensitive reading of early drafts and for their invaluable comments and suggestions. Special thanks to Simon Savidge for steering me away from unsuitable titles.
Thank you to my indomitable agent Caroline Wood for never, ever giving up and to everyone at Alma Books, especially my editor Alessandro Gallenzi and Elisabetta Minervini.
Thank you to the River Street clan – Alberto Masetti-Zannini for carrying on with our strange and wonderful adventure, Tom Hale for understated but much appreciated support, Nicolò for sleeping while I worked and Emiliano for not being born until the book was done.
Thank you to David Baker, Ali Jay, Paul Lawrence and Molly Webb for looking after the babies so I could write. Thanks especially to Leng Montgomery – the most patient and empathetic manny a child could ever hope for, and the possessor of most excellent shoulders for a mother to cry on.
Thank you to Graham Broadbent for his generosity, to my parents, Ian and Jennifer Hall for helping as they always do, to Sandra Lovell for the weekly analysis of it all and to Sally Fielding, Diana King, Jessica Lovell and Ceri Smith for always listening.
Thank you to Sandra Davenport for coming up with the idea of Jo, for trudging through pouring rain in the name of research, for all your patience. Thank you for lasting as long as you did.
Thank you to Sam Brookes – first reader, prodigious rememberist, dear friend – for lasting even longer.
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