by John Masters
‘He was not a soldier,’ his mother said, raising her head.
And I sent him, Warren thought. Is that what she means? I killed him? Joan was in the house somewhere. He could see the children through the drawing-room window. Millions of people who were not soldiers had died, and more were going to. Diana had her arm round her mother’s shoulders, and the RM had stepped back.
‘We did all we could for him, didn’t we?’ his mother said, her voice choking.
More than all, Warren thought, especially you, my mother, taking into your house and your heart your husband’s bastard.
His mother said, ‘He was the only one who needed me. Now he’s gone ... What am I to do?’
Warren stood silent. Again, he could not answer, because he did not know.
His mother went into the house on Diana’s shoulder. Now he had to tell Joan. That would be the worst of all.
He found her in the sewing-room, letters before her, the machine idle, cloth scattered on the floor. He squared his shoulders as though going up into No Man’s Land, and said, ‘Ralph’s been killed in action.’
‘I know,’ she said, her fingers touching the letters. ‘One of these is from his platoon commander and the other from a guardsman who’d been his friend in training. I suppose a telegram’s just arrived? It must have been delayed ... Ralph and the guardsman had only been in France two days. The letters were addressed to Mother, but I opened them. I had a feeling...’
‘Do they say how he was killed?’
She laughed, a bitter humourless laugh. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The officer says he was killed instantly, while doing his duty, by a stray German shell. The guardsman says he was hit by shell splinters while he was on the latrine, and died in agony six hours later.’ She laughed again. ‘How would it have been, Warren? You’ve seen it all ... his bowels blown out? His brains running out of his head?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Warren said. She was looking directly at him, the large eyes larger, wider, the pale hair luminous round her face.
‘Not a very noble end,’ she said. ‘One to match his beginnings.’ He had thought she would cry, but there were no tears.
He said, ‘He was doing his duty.’
‘Thanks to you,’ she said. He looked wonderingly at her. What did she mean?
‘We’ve hardly spoken for three months, have we?’ she said.
‘No.’
‘First you were in France, then hospital ... I’ve been thinking. I didn’t love Ralph. I hated the war. But it’s winning. You know, I could go and kill Germans, myself, thinking of Ralph, blown to bits on a latrine ... Krishna’s beaten you, hasn’t he?’
‘The court martial will decide that,’ he said, his voice harsh.
‘Don’t you see,’ she insisted, ‘he will have got his Indians out of Europe, whatever the court does to him? That’s the point, isn’t it? A rejection of all that you have been trying to teach.’
Warren didn’t answer. It was impossible to accept what she said, and face the consequences, without further mental preparation, as though for an assault.
She said, ‘Here, the war’s winning, Warren. Everything flows into it, it flows out into everything, everybody ... Some time ago I had to admit to myself that I didn’t love Ralph. Before that I knew I didn’t love you. So apparently I don’t love anyone, only hate ... What’s to become of me, Warren? Tell me, tell me!’
Her hand was on his, crushing, clawing like a drowning woman’s. He pulled himself free and went out, the memory of her hand burning like a blister on his wrist. His head ached sharply, as it used to before they sent him home the last time. What was to become of them? Diana. Joan. Mother. England. India. Mankind? He could hear only the crushing thunder of artillery, without cease, surrounding him so closely that it was inside him as well as outside; and the universal crackle of machine guns.
The rissaldar-major was in the greenhouse, dis-budding chrysanthemums. He straightened as Warren came in. Warren said, ‘We return to France the day after tomorrow, sahib.’
‘Jee, huzoor.’
‘I heard a pheasant in the wood as we were coming back from our walk. We’ll go shooting. In half an hour.’
‘Jee, huzoor.’
The RM was looking doubtfully at him. Perhaps his eyes were wild, or there was something distraught, undone, about his manner. The RM looked as though he were going to say something, then his mouth closed. He must want to ask how he could retain the trust of the Ravi sowars when he had helped put their godling, their Son of the Sun, into a British gaol ... or against a wall, facing a firing squad of beef-eating British soldiers. There was no answer. No answer to anyone.
Warren went to the gunroom, took his favourite twelve-bore in its case, and a box of cartridges, and walked out of the back door and across the little bricked yard to the stables. He went into the room where he had watched Ralph making love to Joan, sat on the bed, and took the gun out of its case. He wiped the gun clean with a slightly oily rag, then loaded both barrels with No. 5 shot. Was that Krishna peering in through the little window? The door was not barred. How could he let Krishna get away with it? How could the young Indian, believing he was reliving the Mahabharata, have been right, and he himself wrong?
He heard the sound of boots outside. The RM was coming, looking for him. The black mouths of the twin barrels were Krishna’s dark eyes, understanding.
November 1915
Krishna stood at the graveside, head bowed, sleet falling from a grey sky. He could not see the coffin very clearly for his eyes were dim and swollen.
For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday, when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
Joan Bateman stood at the foot of the open grave, opposite the vicar intoning the service. Old Mrs. Bateman was at her right, and Diana at her left. All three women were in black, heavily veiled. Krishna could not see whether they were weeping or no but he thought not.
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills; from whence cometh my help?
Beside him the rissaldar-major’s Sam Browne belt gleamed with an unearthly luminosity, and the hilt of his sabre glittered in the crook of his left elbow. Sir Tristram and Lady Pennel were there, and Old Marsh and a dozen villagers, some of whose faces Krishna recognized from the cricket match of his first visit.
Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord; Lord hear my voice.
Mr. Fleming was there, in the uniform of a private of the Royal Engineers, standing at the back of the little crowd, looking at no one.
Unto Almighty God we commend the soul of our brother departed and we commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust...
Sprinkling of earth, patter of the wet earth on the coffin, becoming white from the falling sleet.
Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits of those who depart hence in the Lord, and with whom the souls of the faithful, after they are delivered from the burden of the flesh, are in joy and felicity; We give Thee hearty thanks for the good examples of all those Thy servants, who having finished their course in faith, do now rest from their labours.
The drifting sleet thickened the air so that, beyond the bare arms of the elms outside the churchyard there was no vale, no Plain, no distance. Nothing existed outside the group round the open grave, and the curved arm of the churchyard wall protecting them.
Amen.
The service was over. Warren’s mother was kneeling in the mud beside the grave, Diana and Joan standing beside her. The rest were drifting away. Mr. Fleming passed close at Krishna’s side and he said, ‘Mr. Fleming ... sir...’
The tutor walked on, his head averted. Krishna’s hand dropped. He ought to have expected it. He turned again, to look down at the coffin. He joined his palms in namasti, and recited to himself, in the Sanskrit in which he had been taught the epic.
Woe to us! Our eldest brother we have in the battle slain,
And our nearest dearest elder fell upon the gory plain,
Not the death of Abhimanyu fr
om the fair Subadra torn,
Not the slaughter of the princes by the proud Draupadi borne,
Not the fall of friends and kinsmen and Panchala’s mighty host,
Like thy death afflicts my bosom, noble Kama loved and lost!
The women were leaving the churchyard now, passing under the lych gate and the little wicket on to the Old Vicarage grounds. Slowly Krishna followed, the rissaldar-major a pace behind him.
Mrs. Bateman was sitting in the drawing-room, alone, her veil raised, mud at the knees of her long black skirt. As he had thought, there were no tears in her eyes. She sat very upright beside the small coal fire burning in the grate. Krishna said, ‘Mrs. Bateman ... I loved him, too.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I don’t blame you for ... anything. It is the war. I ... we ... all thought that it would be the Germans but ... there are other enemies.’
Krishna said, ‘Mrs. Bateman, I want to ask Diana if she will marry me.’
Diana came in, her veil off, her eyes red and suffused with tears. She was still dabbing at them with a handkerchief as she closed the door behind her. She saw Krishna and stopped, her face draining. Her mother said, ‘Krishna wants to ask you to marry him.’
Diana’s breathing came heavier, and she clasped her hands before her breasts, the little handkerchief crushed in them. She said, ‘You killed Warrie!’
Mrs. Bateman said gently, ‘Krishna didn’t kill Warren, dear.’
‘He did! ... I never want to see you again.’
She turned and ran out of the room.
‘I’m sorry,’ Krishna said. Mrs. Bateman’s head was bowed and now, he thought, though he could not see, that she was weeping. He said, ‘Good-bye, Mrs. Bateman. May the rissaldar-major come in?’
The bowed head nodded, without words. Krishna went out and nodded at the RM, who was waiting outside. He went forward, and Krishna carefully closed the door behind him.
Joan Bateman was in the dining-room, laying the table, the children Louise and Rodney helping her. She looked up and said brightly, ‘Are you staying for lunch, Krishna?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘the RM and I have to catch a train.’
‘I’ll drive you to the station,’ she said.
‘You’ll miss your lunch ... Can’t Young Marsh do it?’
‘Young Marsh?’ she laughed. ‘He’s volunteered for the Navy. When he heard that Ralph had been killed, he went off, the next day. The war’s getting us all, isn’t it? If it’s not patriotism, it’s vengeance. Not for you, I suppose. For Warren, it was duty. For some, shame. I’m head of the Shrewford Pennel Women’s War Work Association now, you know ... I suppose you won’t be court martialled now.’
‘No. General Glover ordered my release as soon as he heard about the CO--Warren ... Good-bye, Mrs. Bateman.’
‘Good-bye,’ she said. She bent her head and went on putting knives and forks beside the place mats on the polished mahogany table. The grandfather clock in the hall struck twelve.
The train swept silently towards London, the whirling sleet smudging the window and blocking out all sound of their passage through the early dusk. The carriage heating had failed and Krishna sat huddled in his British warm, the rissaldar-major opposite. He wondered whether Diana was pregnant with his son, who should have been the next heir to the Kingdom of Ravi. He would never know now.
The rissaldar-major said, ‘Lord … ‘
‘Yes, sahib?’
‘The regiment is returning to India?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘It is in my mind, if so, that I must request transfer to another regiment, which is staying. I cannot return to my home until this war is won, for the sake of the word I gave Bateman-sahib.’
Krishna Ram looked out of the window, but saw only his reflection in the blurred wet glass. After a while he said, ‘I think, sahib, we will all stay ... I meant all that I said at the panchayat at Fosse-Garde, when we were cut off. But back in India, in the beginning, we gave our word to serve to the end, and now we must keep it--for we can no longer ask Colonel Bateman’s forgiveness and understanding. We can only earn them ... The Indian infantry divisions are leaving France, but the Indian Cavalry Corps is staying, and I shall see that we stay with it ... For the rest, for that which we decided at the panchayat--and for India--there is time.’
John Masters
John Masters, who was born in Calcutta in 1914, was of the fifth generation of his family to have served in India. Educated at Wellington and Sandhurst, he returned to India in 1934 to join the 4th Prince of Wales’s Own Gurkha Rifles. He saw active service in Wazirirstan in 1937 and, after the outbreak of war, in Iraq, Syria and Persia. In 1944 he commanded a brigade of General Wingate’s Chindits in Burma, and later fought with the 19th Indian Division at the capture of Mandalay and on the Mawchi Road.
Masters retired from the Army in 1948 as a lieutenant-colonel with the DSO and OBE. He went to America and turned to writing. Several short stories were succeeded by Night-Runners of Bengal, the first of an outstanding series of novels set in British India. It was followed by The Deceivers, The Lotus And The Wind, Bhowani Junction, Coromandel!, Far, Far The Mountain Peak, The Venus Of Konpara, The Ravi Lancers and To The Coral Strand,
Three other novels were not set in India: Fandango Rock, Trial at Monomoy and The Breaking Strain.
He also published a biography, Casanova; an epic, The Rock; a history of the Great War, Fourteen Eighteen; and three volumes of autobiography: Bugles and A Tiger, The Road Past Mandalay and Pilgrim Son.
In 1983 he died in New Mexico.