The Towers Of Silence (The Raj quartet)

by Paul Scott

  There (she thought) went the raj, supported by the unassailable criteria of necessity, devoutness, even of self-sacrifice because Mildred had snatched half-an-hour from her vigil to see the coffin into the hole she had ordered dug. Presently she would return to the hospital where Susan was still in labour. But what was being perpetrated was an act of callousness: the sin of collectively not caring a damn about a desire or an expectation or the fulfilment of a promise so long as personal dignity was preserved and at a cost that could be borne without too great an effort.

  And so it will be (Barbie thought) so it will be in regard to our experience here. And when we are gone let them colour the sky how they will. We shall not care. It has never truly been our desire or intention to colour it permanently but only to make it as cloudless for ourselves as we can. So that my life here has indeed been wasted because I have lived it as a transferred appendage, as a parlour-maid, the first in line for morning prayers while the mistress of the house hastily covers herself with her wrap and kneels like myself in piety for a purpose. But we have no purpose that God would recognize as such, dress it up as we may by hastily closing our wrap to hide our nakedness and convey a dignity and a distinction as Mildred did and still attempts. She has a kind of nobility. It does not seem to me to matter very much whether she appears half-dressed in front of Kevin Coley. But I think it matters to God and to the world that she rode with him into the valley and offered matriarchal wisdom to women older and as wise or wiser than she. For that was an arrogance, the kind which Mabel always set her face against, because Mabel knew she brought no consolation even to a rose let alone to a life. She brought none to me in the final count, but what distinguished her was her pre-knowledge that this was anyway impossible. So she probably forgives me about the grave and closes her eyes. It was not everyone who saw that they were open.

  *

  ‘Those are for her, aren’t they?’

  It was Edgar Maybrick’s voice. He gathered the bunch of flowers from where it lay on the pew at her side.

  ‘They’ve all gone now,’ he said. ‘Is that your case?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and rose, letting him reach down and pick the suitcase up as well. He led her out. When they reached the place – a blur of fresh-piled flowers – she took the bunch from him and standing well away from the shape of the dark hole that should never have been dug cast it in.

  She returned to Rose Cottage alone. As the tonga pulled up at the porch she saw the figure of an old man come from the side of the house and stand waiting. She got out and paid the fare. The front door was open, as were the windows of her room. She and the old man watched each other for a while and then she called to him, ‘Will you come and help me, Aziz? I’m very tired and should like a cup of tea.’ She went up the steps and entered the hall. Behind her she heard the clunk of his sandals as he cast them off on the verandah before following her in.

  fn1 It is not for you to say, Gaffur,

  That the rose is one of God’s creations,

  Although its scent is doubtless that of heaven.

  In time rose and poet will both die.

  Who then shall come to this decision?

  (Trans. Edwin Tippitt (Major. I. A. Retd))

  You oughtn’t to say, Gaffur,

  That God created roses,

  No matter how heavenly they smell.

  You have to think of the time when you’re both dead and smell nasty

  And people are only interested in your successors.

  (Trans. Dmitri Bronowsky).

  Part Four

  THE HONOUR OF THE REGIMENT

  I

  Susan was delivered of a healthy male child, that looked absurdly like poor Teddie, at five o’clock in the morning of June the eighth, three hours before Sarah, hurriedly summoned home from Calcutta, arrived in Pankot on the night train from Ranpur and thirty-three hours after Susan had cried out ‘But it can’t be! The baby isn’t finished yet.’

  For a while Susan did not look at the child. She averted her head no matter what her mother said or Travers said and the nursing staff said. It began to look like a classic case of rejection. It was not until Sarah took the child in her arms and impressed on Susan that there was nothing wrong with it, that it was as lively as you liked, in fact pretty obstreperous and not in the least pleased by anything or anyone it had seen so far, that Susan turned her head and looked at Sarah and then at the child and said nothing but let Sarah put the screaming bundle where she could get a view of its purple face and groping miniature hands.

  Accepting the child in her own arms her reluctance to examine it closely was obvious. She said, ‘Is it whole? Is it?’ and took some time to comprehend the evidence, revealed detail by detail by Sister Page, that there was no doubt of this. The effort exhausted her and she cried a bit but smiled and touched the baby’s cheek; and slept and woke; and when the moment came applied herself to the primitive task of giving suck with a frown of spartan concentration which gradually eased and left upon her brow a radiance that was too old, too heavy for her face. But no one noticed that.

  Presently her milk failed which Mildred said was just as well because one ought not to become so physically involved. It was bad for the child and the mother, unhygienic and potentially a bloody nuisance for everyone concerned. She had advised against it and had been surprised by Susan’s insistence that at least she should try. Well, not surprised. The poor girl had done her damndest to do everything right. She’d been a brick.

  ‘After all,’ Mildred said, ‘one can’t imagine more trying circumstances.’ She gave up the room next door to the one auspiciously numbered seven, took herself back to the grace and favour but still spent most of the day with Susan. Isobel Rankin saw to it that a telegram was sent to Colonel Layton through the Red Cross. Letters were written. The slight unease felt about the welfare of prisoners of war in Germany now that Europe had been invaded was not openly admitted; instead it was suggested to Susan that her father might be home for Christmas.

  ‘How lovely if he were,’ Susan said. ‘For us anyway. But it seems a bit unfair, doesn’t it? All he’ll want is peace and quiet and looking after and what he’ll get is a screaming baby that gets all the attention.’ She smiled and added, ‘But I don’t suppose he’ll mind because it’s a grandson,’ and then closed her eyes so that the visitors lowered their voices for a while and thought of the need there would presently be for Susan seriously to consider getting married again to give the boy a father; preferably to Dicky Beauvais who was attentive and in every known respect an excellent choice.

  Like other young men in the past Captain Beauvais had originally seemed interested in Sarah; but in his case it would have been impossible to show interest in Susan because when he arrived in Pankot she was a married woman and then a pregnant married woman. He had assumed a brotherly role and it was only since the news of Teddie Bingham’s death that the brotherliness had begun to wear thin which it did in a way that suggested to some people that it had never been more than a disguise for the warmer feelings he had always had but tried to reserve and express for Sarah only.

  Again it had become necessary to subject Sarah to scrutiny. There seemed to be something wrong with the girl, something complex which was not going to be put right by a simple antidote like the safe return of her father or getting her married off to the right sort of officer, or allowing her to abandon her family responsibilities in Pankot to do a more exciting or exacting job of soldiering closer to those areas where the shooting was. Neither did that hint of little Mrs Smalley’s at the time when Teddie Bingham transferred his affections to young Susan – that Sarah was perhaps just a little unsound in her views – really seem justifed. All that could be said was that her behaviour was a degree less than admirable because it lacked either enthusiasm or spontaneity.

  ‘She thinks too much,’ Nicky Paynton said. ‘And say what you will men don’t like it when it shows. She should learn to hide the fact which shouldn’t be too difficult because she already kn
ows how to keep her thoughts to herself.’

  But that was before the crisis brought on by Mabel’s death and Susan’s premature labour, both of which events Sarah missed by going to Calcutta. The journey back to Pankot must have been tense and exhausting. She had been fond of her aunt and tireless in her efforts to jolly Susan along after the blow of Teddie’s death. Fate had deprived her of the opportunity to help at a time when her help was most needed, but she was at Susan’s bedside within an hour of reaching home on the night train from Ranpur. Both her sister and her mother were asleep but she stayed in Susan’s room and nodded off in a chair beside the bed, with one hand on the counterpane where Susan could reach it when she woke.

  Travers, who found the sisters like this, was touched, and related how the relief that Sarah must have felt at finding her sister well and the baby safely born, had caused her to smile as she slept. The same look of happiness was on her face on the occasion she held the baby and persuaded Susan to accept it, and it occurred to Nicky Paynton who was present that at last something like an enthusiasm could have entered Sarah’s life, even if it were second-hand: an enthusiasm for her sister’s child. The important thing, Mrs Paynton thought, was that the soil should be tilled. Sarah, she thought, had spent long enough unconsciously making up to her father for not being a boy. At that moment the situation became clear to Mrs Paynton and so did the future which ceased to be worrying. The solution to Sarah was simple after all. What had been repressed was nothing other than a highly developed maternal instinct.

  ‘Sarah, did you manage to see Captain Merrick?’ she asked – remembering on the way out of Susan’s room what Sarah had gone to Calcutta to do.

  ‘Yes, I saw him the afternoon of the day I arrived.’

  ‘How was he?’

  ‘Waiting for an operation.’

  ‘Anything very serious?’

  ‘I suppose in medical or surgical terms it was quite straightforward. They were going to cut off his left arm above the elbow. Excuse me a second.’

  Sarah went to Sister Page’s desk and spoke to the girl who was sitting there. Clara Fosdick and Nicky Paynton waited near the liftgate and looked at one another. When Sarah rejoined them Mrs Paynton said, ‘How very upsetting.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘About Captain Merrick. Does Susan know?’

  ‘Yes, Captain Travers thought it better to say straight out because she had an idea he might have no arms at all. The letter he wrote us from hospital in Comilla was dictated.’

  The lift came. Inside, the cramped conditions discouraged conversation but enabled Nicky Paynton and Clara Fosdick to study Sarah’s face and agree later when they were alone that there was an uncharacteristic hardness and decisiveness in its expression, a look of impatience which made the tenderness shown for her sister and her sister’s child more noticeable.

  Coming out of the lift into the reception foyer Mrs Fosdick added, ‘Did he agree to be godfather?’

  ‘No. He was grateful for the suggestion but didn’t think he’d make a good one.’

  ‘Because of his arm?’

  ‘I expect that came into it.’

  ‘What happened to him? Did he say?’

  ‘He pulled Teddie and a driver out of a burning jeep and got them under cover. He got bullet wounds and third degree burns. He saved the driver but was too late for Teddie. He’ll be getting a medal.’

  ‘I should think so too.’

  ‘The police’s loss was obviously the army’s gain,’ Nicky Paynton said. ‘But I’m sorry Captain Merrick’s said no. He’d have been a godfather for any boy to be proud of.’

  ‘Later on, perhaps,’ Sarah said. ‘When the boy was old enough not to be frightened. His face was burnt too.’

  ‘Oh, dear. Badly?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell. There wasn’t much you could see through the bandages except his eyes and the mouth. But Sister Prior said his hair would grow again and he might even look human.’

  ‘What an extraordinary thing to say.’

  ‘She said it to relieve her feelings. She didn’t care for my Lady Bountiful act. She’s the sort of nursing sister we describe as a bit off, the sort who wouldn’t be an officer at home but is because she joined the QAs and came out here. I think she blames people like us for the fact that there’s a war on at all. She thought it was scandalous giving badly wounded men medals. She thought money would be more to the point. But she’s on the wrong tack there with Ronald Merrick. He’s not interested in that kind of payment or in the kind of people who’d suggest it.’

  ‘I should think not.’

  ‘He says he blames himself for Teddie being killed. Dicky Beauvais promised to be back with the staff car. Can we give you a lift? I’m going to the daftar so it’s on the way.’

  ‘That would be nice,’ Nicky Paynton said.

  ‘I’ll see if he’s here.’

  Sarah went into the forecourt and presently returned and reported the car coming up the drive. While Captain Beauvais took a rupee from Mrs Fosdick to pay off their waiting tonga-wallah the three women got into the back of the car.

  ‘Why does Captain Merrick blame himself?’ Mrs Paynton asked when they were settled.

  ‘I don’t think he does really. It’s his way of putting things. He’d gone forward to collect a special prisoner and Teddie went with him, although there was no need. I think Teddie was interfering, I mean not trusting Ronald Merrick to deal with a situation in the way he thought it should be handled. After they’d talked to the prisoner Teddie took the jeep when he shouldn’t have and went further forward still, and took the prisoner with him because the man said he had two friends in the jungle who wanted to give themselves up too. Ronald didn’t know he’d gone and when he found out he had to go after him.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ Dicky Beauvais said, getting in the front. He signalled the driver to start and sat with his arm over the back of the front bench to take part more comfortably in whatever conversation was in progress.

  ‘Sarah’s telling us about Captain Merrick and poor Teddie.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘But isn’t it very unusual,’ Mrs Paynton said, ‘for Japanese soldiers to give themselves up?’

  ‘Oh, they weren’t Japanese.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Indian soldiers from Teddie’s old regiment.’

  The car slowed at the end of the drive and then moved smoothly and comfortably, well sprung and upholstered, out on to the road that led to area headquarters.

  ‘Muzzys,’ Sarah went on. ‘Not Teddie’s lot. From the other battalion that was captured in Malaya. Now fighting with the Japanese against us. They belonged to the INA we hear about but aren’t supposed to take seriously. Captain Merrick says there are far more of them than is allowed to be supposed but that they’re badly led and armed and half-starved because the Japanese don’t think much of them, especially not of their officers. Anyway he followed Teddie in another jeep and then they found themselves being mortared and shot at by the Japs and the INA. The man driving the jeep Ronald was in turned it round to get back where he belonged, so Ronald jumped out and went the rest of the way on foot. When he got to Teddie’s jeep it was burning and the prisoner had gone, so he pulled Teddie and the driver out and dragged them under cover, which is when he got shot up himself as well as burned. I haven’t told Susan all this because although Ronald Merrick didn’t actually say so I think everyone felt Teddie had been wrong and silly. I don’t suppose he could bear the thought of leaving two old Muzzy Guides hiding in the jungle, waiting to be recaptured. I gather the divisional commander was rather brassed off, losing two staff-officers and a jeep as a result. But of course the regiment would be pleased by what Teddie tried to do, wouldn’t it? Don’t you think so, Dicky?’

  Dicky nodded, but glanced at the driver and then warningly at Sarah.

  ‘After all,’ Sarah said, apparently not noticing, he was doing it for the regiment. Ronald says that when they were talking to the prisoner and the prison
er realized Teddie was a Muzzy officer the poor man broke down and knelt and touched Teddie’s feet. So it makes you wonder how many of the men have joined the INA without knowing what they were doing. It’s different in the case of the officers. Ronald said Teddie thought INA officers completely beyond the pale. I gather the same thing nearly happened in Germany, but on a much smaller scale. Isn’t that so, Dicky?’

  Dicky said nothing.

  Again Sarah seemed not to notice his reluctance to discuss the subject in front of a lance-naik driver, but her next comment might have been taken as an oblique criticism of this attitude. She said, ‘I can’t think why there’s so much secrecy about it. It makes it look as if we’re afraid of it spreading, but Ronald Merrick said it was difficult in Imphal to stop our own sepoys shooting INA men on sight even if they were trying to give themselves up.’

  ‘The best thing for them,’ Nicky Paynton said. ‘It’ll save rope later.’

  ‘Did you hear the news on the wireless this morning?’ Sarah asked, as if changing the subject.

  ‘You mean what Dickie Mountbatten says about carrying on operations through the monsoon? I thoroughly agree. Bunny said ages ago that downing tools directly the monsoon set in was military suicide if you were fighting the Japanese, but perhaps now that Mountbatten’s said it we can press on and push the little horrors right back across the Chindwin and not sit on our bottoms for three months waiting for the rains to let up.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant the news about ex-chief minister Mohammed Ali Kasim being released from jail and taken to Mirat.’

  ‘Oh, that,’ Clara Fosdick said. ‘Well the poor old man’s ill and there never seemed much point in locking him up. My brother-in-law Billy Spendlove always had a high regard for him. In fact he expected him to tell the Congress to take a running jump when there was all that nonsense about ministers having to resign in ‘Thirty-nine. Billy said that in ‘Forty-two the Governor gave Mr Kasim an opportunity to disown Congress policies because he knew he’d disagree with practically everything Congress did from ‘Thirty-nine onwards but the old boy refused and said he preferred to go to jail. And it’s not a pukka release, is it? He’s obviously got to stay in Mirat in the Nawab’s custody. At least until he gets better. It’s so embarrassing when they start getting ill because the people automatically think a political prisoner’s ill-health is due to bad treatment.’