The Ravi Lancers

by John Masters

  He called thickly, ‘Hanuman! ‘

  ‘Huzoor?’

  ‘Tell the Captain Sohan Singh to bring me a woman here. At once. And more brandy.’

  ‘Jee-han, huzoor.’

  The orderly withdrew and Krishna leaned back against the wall at the head of the bed and closed his eyes, waiting, thinking.

  He thought he must have been asleep when the knock came on the door. He half heard it, then waited, dozing, refusing to open his eyes until it came again. When it did he raised his head off the pillow and saw that the door was open, a woman standing in the opening, Hanuman’s face visible over her shoulder. It was Hanuman’s hand knocking at the door.

  ‘Ane do. Darwaza band karo,’ he said thickly. Hanuman pushed the woman into the room and closed the door behind her. The key had long since disappeared, but Krishna knew his orderly would be squatted down outside, blocking all entrance.

  The woman was short and sturdy, with an open face lined by work in the fields and browned by the sun. Her eyes were blue and set wide apart, her hair thick, brown, and straight. She must be about thirty or perhaps thirty-five, he thought. She waited against the door, her hands folded in front of her plain dark blue skirt. She wore a thick grey cotton blouse, with a wool kerchief thrown over her shoulders, cotton stockings and bedroom slippers. All the local people wore bedroom slippers, and then slipped their feet into wooden clogs to work in the fields, or to go down the street if it was muddy.

  She said timidly, ‘You sending me, monsieur?’

  He said, ‘Yes ... Take off your clothes.’

  ‘Ees ten shillin’,’ she said, ‘for visit. Five shillin’ my ‘ouse but ten shillin’ visit.’

  He swung his legs off the bed, felt in the pocket of his tunic, found his wallet and held out a ten-shilling note to her. She took it with a murmured ‘Merci, monsieur,’ and tucked it away into a pocket hidden in her skirt.

  Then she began to slip out of the white cotton drawers that extended to just above her knees. The drawers off and neatly folded over the back of the chair by the fire, she sat down on the bed and made to lift her legs up on to it. Krishna Ram said, ‘All clothes off! ‘

  She opened her mouth to speak but he was already holding out another ten-shilling note. After she had tucked that away with the first she began to undress fully. Krishna sat on the edge of the bed, watching, his lust slowly fading. She had thick tufts of brown hair, darker than the hair of her head, sticking out under her armpits. Indian women shaved or plucked such hair. He wondered suddenly if Diana Bateman shaved or plucked, and if not, what colour the hair would be. He thrust the thought from him.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he said.

  ‘Marthe, monsieur,’ she said, when her head emerged from the blouse she had been pulling over her head. Her breasts were full, round, and heavy. The nipples stood up dark and strong out of big dark areolas. Then she stepped out of her petticoat and stood a moment, naked but for the stockings and bedroom slippers, looking at him. Her belly was well rounded, curving down to a big strong bush of curly brown hair set between the round white thighs. Again, Indian women pluck that off, he thought. It must be very insanitary in hot weather ... but of course they didn’t have hot weather in Europe. But it must be insanitary at any time, really, since they poured urine and sweat into that crotch where the hair would retain it. It would not be so odd if Europeans were not always lifting their noses at the insanitariness of Indians ... they, who bathed in still water, so that they wallowed in their own dirt, and allowed women to enter public swimming baths on every day of the month!

  His flagging penis stiffened convulsively as she crossed her legs and began to unroll the stockings. The tuft of her bush stuck out dense and rough from under her crossed thighs. He began to undo his fly buttons. When he had got his trousers off she was not quite ready and he took a swig of the brandy, direct from the bottle.

  At last she gave him a half smile, lay back on the bed, and held out her arms with a little gesture--’Come.’

  She was all that he had read or been told or imagined of the European peasant of the middle ages, something that had once existed here, but had never been seen in India. She was plump and round and strong. The hands still held up to him were rough and chapped, the soles of her feet thickened and split, her skin dead white to her neck, brown and red above that. She opened her legs and pink lips gaped in the depths of the brown thicket. His penis again lost its errant stiffness and he threw himself on top of her with an exclamation of anger. She wrapped her arms about his neck, murmured in French, raised her legs and locked her feet over his back. But his erection was going faster than he could thrust it at the slippery gulf felt and seen in the depths of the bush. For a moment he pushed despairingly at her, but it was no good ... it was gone ... gone ... He stood up, tense as a bowstring about to snap. Her white skin mocked the wrinkled brown of his penis, of the malehood which a minute before had stood like a staff ready to enter the fleshy arch in triumph. She was murmuring, ‘ ‘Ees all righ’, ‘ees all righ’,’ and trying to pull him down on her again. She reached out her hand and began to fondle his limpness.

  He seized his swagger stick and struck out at her. ‘Wait!’ she cried, and turned over, thrusting her big buttocks up into the air. He struck out, again and again, slashing the cane across and across. She groaned and moaned and shrieked, but not loudly. Red weals began to spring up across the white flesh, and as they appeared the power returned to Krishna Ram’s penis. It rose in jerks and spasms and in a minute thrust up proud, the knob dark and bulging. He dropped the swagger stick, seized the woman by the waist where she half lay, half knelt on the bed and pushed his phallus between her thighs into the depths of the protruding bush. The hairs parted and before he could begin to thrust, he was into her. She was whimpering, ‘You ‘urt too much...’ but he pulled her buttocks viciously back against his belly and rammed harder into the wet depths below. In a few seconds he felt the ecstasy rising, and screamed aloud, ‘Bitch, white English bitch! ‘ Then he was coming, squirting, sobbing, doubled over her bare back, his head on her shoulders, his face in her streaming hair.

  After a time he let her go, and sank on to the bed.

  ‘‘Urting too much,’ she said reproachfully, sitting on the bed beside him. ‘Aussi, ‘ees ten shillin’ more for beat.’

  He motioned to his wallet on the table. ‘Take what you want ... I am sorry.’

  She took out a note, held it up for him to see, and put it away in her skirt over the chair. Then she sat down again and said, ‘Ees all right. Many mans no come up wizout beat.’

  ‘Not me,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why it was ... this time. I’ve been drinking.’

  She said, ‘Too moch whisky make soft cock, eh? But I teenk no one beat drunk unless ‘ee want beat sober, no?’ The blue eyes on him were shrewd and, as Krishna realized for the first time, sympathetic. ‘

  ‘Ees first time fucking white woman?’

  He nodded.

  ‘And you major? But servant of English ... no?’

  ‘Yes. No,’ he said. ‘I am heir to the Rajah of Ravi.’ He saw the puzzled look on her face and said, ‘I am a prince of India.’

  ‘Ah ... but still servant of English? Thees my ‘ouse once ... my ‘usband killed first week of war. Now I living weeth sister, we both ‘ores ... Was good fuck?’

  He nodded. ‘Very good.’ He wanted to tell her to get her clothes on, covering the tufts under her armpits and the now wet bush gleaming between her parted thighs. But she said, ‘I understand ... you like beat me again? ‘Ere!’ She took the swagger stick and gave it to him and knelt on the bed. ‘Go on ... I no charging no more money.’

  The criss-crossed welts stood up scarlet now, and already beginning to tinge dark blue at the ends. Krishna Ram felt another stirring of desire, the stick twitched involuntarily in his hands and his penis jerked half upright. But suddenly it was not Marthe the French whore but her ... her buttocks, her bush sticking out between the thighs, her parted lips h
alf hiding, half beckoning. Would he want to slash at her? For the same reasons? He threw the cane down and said, ‘Get dressed. No more.’

  She dressed methodically. When she was ready she said formally, ‘Merci, monsieur ... When you wanting, sending servant, yes?’

  ‘No,’ Krishna cried. ‘No! Go now. Please! ‘

  He threw himself back on the bed and tried to shut out the visions streaming steadily through his mind, like pictures across the screen of a bioscope, but they came steadily on, an endless succession of views of her, from in front, from behind, from the side, as she washed, stood, brushed her hair, urinated, ran, ate, petted her dog. She was always naked, white, and marked with those three thick stigmata of hair, one under each arm and one in the crotch.

  A week later he sent Hanuman with a message to Captain Ramaswami, asking him to come over. When the black captain arrived, with an ungainly salute, Krishna Ram said, ‘I think I’ve got VD.’

  The doctor said, ‘Take down your trousers. Let’s have a look.’ A minute later: ‘Yes. A dose of gonorrhoea.’

  Krishna began to button himself up again. ‘Sohan Singh got me a woman a week ... exactly seven days ago. It was the whore Marthe. She and her sister practise at the end of the village, she said.’

  He stood, feeling unclean, thinking that the discharge from his penis was visible to all the world, staining his trousers and his body.

  ‘You should have waited till Sohan had had time to get his brothel for our men going. Yes, it’s in operation now. He got two girls from a long way off. They are set up in an old cowshed about half-mile along the road to Boulouris. I inspect them both every other day, but there’s better protection than that--Sohan Singh keeps a guard on them day and night, and no one but our men gets anywhere near them.’

  ‘Have none of our men got VD?’

  The doctor said, ‘Oh, there are a few hereditary syphilitics, and one or two men caught gonorrhoea by slipping into Amiens or Abbeville on short leave, but we know who they are and they’ve all been cured ... Come over to the RAP and I’ll start treating that. The first thing I have to do is stop the inflammation. And then I’ll give you the hockey sticks.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Krishna asked, pulling on his trousers.

  ‘Silver sticks of gradually increasing size, which we have to work down the urethra once a day to make sure that scar tissue from the inflammation that is causing that discharge doesn’t grow on to the opposite wall of the urethra, and so block it. By the way, no more alcohol until you’re cured. It prevents healing of the inflammation.’

  Krishna said, ‘I’m giving it up anyway. What happened that night ... what I was feeling and thinking ... has made me realize that we ... I... have enough problems without drinking.’

  ‘Good,’ the doctor said. ‘You were hitting the bottle much too hard. Whatever they are, you can stand up to them without it.’

  Half an hour later, in the RAP, when Captain Ramaswami had bathed and anointed his penis and he had just finished dressing, the RAP orderly rushed in with a hissed message. ‘Brigadier-general sahib ane wala hail’

  The doctor frowned, ‘What does that idiot want here?’

  Rainbow Rogers burst into the RAP on the heels of the orderly. ‘Ah, there you are, Krishna ... and you, Captain, what’s your name, I keep forgetting?’

  ‘Ramaswami,’ the doctor said briefly.

  ‘Ramaswami, of course ... Well, this is a great day for all of us.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Krishna said. His penis felt sore and again the thought obsessed him that the discharge was staining the front of his breeches. ‘Why, sir?’

  The brigadier-general touched his medal ribbons, glancing down. ‘I have been given an immediate award of the CMG. Here’s the ribbon. See!’ His finger rested on a new blue-red ribbon at the head of all the others on his left breast. ‘It was awarded for the action at St. Rambert Ridge,’ he said. His hand dropped and he raised his head. ‘It was won by all the gallant soldiers of my brigade, and in their names I shall wear it proudly.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Krishna Ram said.

  ‘I have put you in for a decoration, too, Krishna Ram, but as yet we have heard nothing about it. I most sincerely hope you get it... Now I must dash back to my headquarters. The Russian General Podgorov is coming for dinner and I must be there to do the honours. I may be showing him round one of the regiments tomorrow, but the Brigade Major will telephone ahead.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Anything you want? ... Oh, we’ve heard from Division that there’s no hope of getting another British officer for you. Oh, you didn’t know Major Bateman had asked for one? Well, he had ... Do you have any idea when he’s returning to duty?’

  ‘About a month, he thinks, sir,’ Krishna said.

  ‘Good, good. We need him ... though you’re doing very well, yes, very well.’

  He strode out, an almost ethereal light of happiness lighting up his thin face.

  Ramaswami said, ‘Brigadier-general Roland Vernon Rogers, CMG, MVO! What a goal to live for ... I must get back to work.’

  ‘Don’t forget that the big tamasha’s due to start in an hour.’

  ‘I know,’ the doctor said, ‘but I promised myself I’d try to read up on all the gynaecological work that’s been published since I left India. I have a friend at St. Mary’s in London who’s been sending it over to me.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Krishna said. ‘There’s going to be a nautch. We’re going to light big fires, and wear every bit of costume we brought with us, and more that Sohan Singh has had made up somewhere. There won’t be an Englishman there. You’ll think you’re back in India--not a white face to be seen!’

  ‘That couldn’t be India,’ the doctor said grimly.

  ‘Yes it could--in Basohli.’

  The doctor grinned suddenly, the smile transforming his big harsh face and said, ‘Very well, Rajah sahib. I hear and I obey. Who am I, a mere black man, to counter the prince’s command?’ He made a mock namasti.

  May 1915

  Warren dozed fitfully in a corner seat of a first-class compartment as the leave train bumped slowly towards St. Omer. His leg ached slightly, as it still did when he had to hold it in any one position for too long, but otherwise he was again fit, and fully recovered from his wound. Three days ago he had walked twenty miles with Diana, from the house to Netheravon on the Plain and back, as a final test. They had lunched on bread and cheese at a pub by Stonehenge. It was quite like old times. Diana was a good scout, but even she had changed in some ways. She was not quite so open and transparent, seeming now to hide emotions where before she would show them. But it was Joan who had changed the most. He found himself frowning and tried to keep his face impassive. It was that damned Ralph ... the poor chap couldn’t help his background and birth, but why did that have to turn him into a raving socialist and pacifist? And why did Joan have to swallow the whole thing hook, line, and sinker? Mother still kept trying to get him a job but he wouldn’t go. The two of them were having a bad effect on the children, too, teaching them to sit around in fuggy rooms, painting or drawing when they ought to have been out of doors with a dog and a gun ... well, they were a little small for the gun yet, but that was the right idea.

  The train ground to a stop and the major in the opposite corner of the crowded compartment peered through the window. ‘Arnay-le-Poste,’ he said. ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘About half way, sir,’ a lieutenant in the middle said, stifling a yawn.

  ‘What are we stopped for now?’ someone asked.

  ‘God knows. To get a cow off the line, probably.’

  The station building was tall and silent, lit by a faint lamp over the name inscribed in red tiles high on the side. With a rumble and a hiss-hiss-hiss a train pulled up on the other line. Dimly Warren could make out cattle trucks full of soldiers. Not British, he thought--French, or perhaps Belgian. Where were they going? They were mostly asleep, the doors of the cattle trucks open to the May night air, here and there a man standi
ng in the door or sitting on the step, his legs dangling dangerously. The troop train hissed out of the station and still the leave train waited. Half an hour passed, then another train drew up on the other line, this one coming from behind. It stopped and Warren saw that it was a long goods train loaded with stores--mainly artillery ammunition from the shapes of the objects under the dimly gleaming tarpaulins. He peered at his watch and saw that it was 4.20 a.m.

  The ammunition train pulled out northward and half an hour later the leave train followed. The first light spread a pinkish haze over the flat fields of Artois and Warren felt a momentary shiver of recollection: thus came the dawn the morning of the attack at St. Rambert. He closed his eyes against the memory, and the sight of the captain opposite snoring, his mouth open, stubble dark on his lean jaw.

  Yes, his leg had recovered and the broken bone healed, but now there was a hurt in his mind. It was not only Joan who had changed. England itself wasn’t the same as it used to be, even as it had been when he and Krishna spent a few days there in September last, and played cricket ... Everything was going to the bad. He thought of the girls he had seen in London on his way through. Respectable girls, you would have said--you would have known, once, from their accents. Now they were selling themselves on the Strand and down the Haymarket. Giving themselves away, more accurately, for the money they asked went to war charities, they proclaimed. One had accosted him and she was a lady. That was bad enough, but when he told Joan about it she had actually defended the girl: she had a right to do what she liked with her own body, Joan said. Prostitution was only wrong if it was exploiting women for economic reasons, Joan said. Thank God the children were too young to understand what she was saying, or thinking. He’d have to put a stop to that kind of talk before they grew much older ... And take Ralph and Young Marsh and their talk of social injustice and pacifism! Joan’s arty friends laughed at his standards, but in times of difficulty they were what helped you win through. In hard times you didn’t relax standards, but tightened them. He remembered meeting Fuller in the lane one dusk--Fuller, the man who’d made an indecent advance to a boy three or four years ago. At the time--himself home on furlough--he’d been among those who favoured taking no action, overt or covert. Live and let live, he’d said, and he remembered telling Sir Tristram Pennel that India was full of buggers, and none the worse for it.