by Umi Sinha
‘But Baljit… I’ve got to find him. I remember now… he was wounded… bleeding. Is he here too?’
I thought of the jacket. ‘I don’t know, but I’ll ask.’
‘There was so much of it… I couldn’t stop it… It just kept coming…’ His lips began to tremble.
‘Just rest now. I’ll try to find out.’
As I stood up, he reached out and grabbed my wrist. His grip was surprisingly strong. ‘If something’s happened to him, I’ll never forgive myself. He signed up because of me. If he’s… If…’
‘Sssshh. Stop it. He might be all right. I’ll go and ask now.’
He lay back and closed his eyes. Tears squeezed out between his lids.
I bent and kissed him on the forehead. ‘I’ll have to go. I promise I’ll ask about Baljit.’
But there was no record of a Baljit Singh being admitted. ‘It’s possible he was taken elsewhere,’ Barbara said. ‘But if that was his blood on your friend’s uniform, it doesn’t seem likely that he survived.’
Jagjit’s wounds healed well and, apart from a few scars and the tinnitus, there was no lasting damage, but I could tell he was suffering. A few days later he received official notification of his brother’s death together with a tobacco tin containing one of Baljit’s little fingers, wrapped in a cloth. He told me that when bodies could not be recovered the other sepoys took a finger so that some part of their friend could be cremated.
A few weeks later, when he was stronger, we were taken by bus to a place on the Downs, just north of Brighton, where there was a cremation site for Hindus and Sikhs who had died at the hospital. All the soldiers well enough to walk came to pay their respects, and Barbara arranged with Matron that I should accompany them. We stood on the Downs on a glorious clear morning with the shadowy blue Isle of Wight visible in the distance, and the fields yellow with buttercups, and the larks singing above us, and listened to a Brahmin read the sacred rites while the bodies were fed to the flames. Jagjit went forward and placed Baljit’s finger on a pyre and stood back. Then flowers, fruit and sandalwood were thrown into the fire and, as the breeze carried the smell of burning flesh to our nostrils, I watched the ashes rise into the clear blue sky and pictured them flying upwards, to be caught by the trade winds and carried round the world until they came at last to rest in the lap of Mother Ganges.
Jagjit’s body grew stronger but his depression did not lift. He dreamt of Baljit often and woke shouting or crying. The Beauchamps came to visit him, and in May, when Simon was given a fortnight’s leave, they asked if Jagjit could complete his recuperation at their house. It was an unusual request but because the boys had been at school together it was permitted. Things were quieter at the hospital by then and I managed to take some leave too.
Simon looked even thinner and paler; his nerves seemed shot to pieces and his hands trembled constantly. I had told him in my last letter that Jagjit had been wounded but received no reply and I was hoping that their quarrel, whatever it was, had been forgotten. I expected that their experiences in the trenches would have brought them closer, but Simon was withdrawn and Jagjit seemed too preoccupied to notice. At mealtimes Mr. and Mrs. Beauchamp did their best to keep up the conversation but I have never been much of a conversationalist, and Simon and Jagjit barely spoke.
Mrs. Beauchamp invited Aunt Mina to lunch on the second day and to my surprise she made an effort to speak to Jagjit as well as Simon, asking after his family and expressing regrets for the death of his brother. He replied politely but the conversation soon lapsed and she left as soon as lunch was finished.
I followed her outside and apologised. ‘I’m sure he didn’t mean to be rude… it’s just – ’
‘There’s no need to apologise, Lila. I can see they’re both exhausted. How could I feel anything but grateful when they’re fighting to defend us?’
It was only after she’d gone that I realised she had called me Lila.
Time seemed to drag and yet the days flew past. The three of us rose late, dawdled over breakfast, went for long walks in the woods or on the Downs. By mutual consent we retired to the playroom in the evenings, where we sat and read or gazed into the fire. I could see this was what they both needed – quiet and time to heal – but to me it felt like time wasted, time when I could have been alone with Jagjit.
One morning, towards the end of the first week, after the Beauchamps had left the breakfast table, Simon asked Jagjit if he could speak to him in private. I watched them leave the room together and walk off down the garden. When they came back Simon’s face was closed and set. The next morning he announced he was going to spend the rest of his leave at the flat his father used when he was up in London. His parents naturally wanted to go with him, but were concerned about leaving Jagjit and me alone together.
‘Your aunt wouldn’t like it,’ Mrs. Beauchamp said, ‘and I understand her concern. There would be talk. And Jagjit can’t stay here alone with only the servants to care for him.’
As luck would have it, Barbara was due some leave and agreed to come and stay. As an older person – she was twenty-seven – and a qualified nurse, she could chaperone us and also be responsible for Jagjit’s welfare.
As always, her presence brought things to life. She refused to humour Jagjit’s moods and insisted on keeping us busy every moment of the day: we went riding, picnicked in the bluebell woods, strolled along the barbed-wire-covered promenade at Brighton and went to the Grand for tea. In the evenings she insisted we dress for dinner and kept us laughing with tales of the scrapes she had got into during her nursing training. She even managed to get Jagjit to join in the conversation, something I was unable to do. On the fourth day she was there she withdrew to her room after dinner, saying she needed to write some letters. That afternoon she’d handed me a small package, telling me to open it when I was alone. Wrapped in a paper bag inscribed with the words ‘Carpe Diem!’ was a packet of French letters.
After she retired to her room that evening, Jagjit and I sat in silence at the table, at a loss what to do. It was he who eventually suggested retiring to the playroom. It was familiar, a place in which we felt safe, except that suddenly we didn’t. In hospital I had been able to assume the mantle of ‘nurse’, but here I felt like a child in the presence of a grown and brooding man. I understood his need to grieve – who better? – but once again I experienced how painful it was to be shut out.
Jagjit sat down on one end of the sofa. I wasn’t sure if he wanted me to sit beside him so I took the armchair by the window. We sat in silence, staring into the fire. Even though it was May, we had a fire every evening because he was cold; he was always cold these days, he said.
‘I wish I could do something to help,’ I said, hearing, even as they left my lips, the pathetic inadequacy of those words, remembering Simon’s comments about inane talk from civilians who didn’t know the first thing about what the war was really like.
The light began to fade outside and the fire filled the room with moving shadows. The silence lengthened until I could no longer bear it. I looked across at him. He seemed to have forgotten I was there. Tears came to my eyes and I was about to leave the room when he spoke to the fire.
‘No one can help, Lila. It’s indescribable out there. But for me the horror and the discomfort aren’t the worst thing… because that’s the same for everyone. We’re all in it together. It’s the little things that get to you… the inequalities and injustices that rankle… Of course, I knew racial prejudice existed, but… I’d never experienced it myself, not really. Everyone has always behaved well to me. But on the ship to France we were sharing a hold with some Tommies… it was horribly hot and crowded so everyone was irritable, but they were so appallingly rude – both to and about us – that we had to be moved. They complained that we stank… they didn’t like the fact that the men ate with their fingers instead of a knife and fork… if we met them on the gangways or in the corridors they swore at us and told us to get out of their way. I reminded one of
them of his manners once and was hauled over the coals by the C.O. – told I would have to learn to behave myself once we got to Europe. They even cancelled the meetings where we could express our grievances to the C.O. They were a special concession for Indian troops, to prevent resentment building up, but they don’t want to hear it now… And the men do feel resentful… about the fact that our victories are never reported and that they’re the only troops barred from using the brothels. Even the North Africans are allowed to, but then the French don’t share the British horror of miscegenation.’
He looked across at me and grimaced.
‘I’m sorry, Lila. Sometimes I forget who I’m speaking to.’
Had he forgotten, I wondered, glad that the fire was camouflaging my blush, or was this part of the new hostility I sensed in him?
‘The one good thing about getting in trouble… it made the men trust me. They’d been uncertain about my loyalties. They knew that I’d lived in England… thought I might be carrying tales to the officers. It was difficult for Baljit too… they weren’t sure about him either. But after that they started to ask me things. Most of them had never even seen the sea… everything was new to them: how to use a European toilet, how to eat with a knife and fork. I gave the quartermasters French lessons too, so they could haggle for food and supplies.’
I noticed that his speech, like Simon’s, was more hesitant than it had been before the war, and that he held his hands locked together to control the tremors.
He fell silent and I watched him staring into the fire, his face sombre, heavy, with new lines around his eyes and mouth. He yawned suddenly like a cat, his teeth white in the firelight, then looked at me as though he’d woken from a sleep. ‘I’m sorry, Lila. I’m being a whining bore.’
‘No, I want to hear about it.’
He smiled.
‘You’re just being polite. It’s nice of you not to say I told you so. You were right, of course… about me being a fool to sign up, I mean. I wanted to play my part but I realised… in training… the officers feel uneasy around me. I’m not quite one of them but… all that guff they spew about izzat – honour – and all that rubbish. And the regiment being our father and mother. They even issued all the Sikhs and Hindus with a copy of the Bhagavad Gita… to persuade us this is a holy war.’
‘You’re bitter.’
‘Yes, but I have no right to be, do I? I was stupid, acting out a schoolboy fantasy. And I don’t mind paying the price for my own stupidity, but Baljit…’ He looked down, his throat working. ‘He trusted me, you see. I was his burra bhai, who knew what we were getting into… I was supposed to look after him. He’d only been married a few months. His wife is expecting a child. ’
‘How did it happen?’
For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to answer, then he said, ‘We were advancing. We’d been reminded that we had to walk slowly and hold the line. Baljit and I were next to each other. He must have seen or heard something I didn’t, because he shoved me… knocked me into a crater and jumped in beside me… and a second later a shell landed right where we’d been. I don’t know how he knew… sometimes you just have an instinct.
‘Of course at first you’re disorientated by the shock and the noise. I remember the sudden silence… and then… this… this tremendous feeling of calm. Just lying there and watching all the debris – the earth and… bits of shrapnel and clothing and other bits and pieces – flying through the air above us, silhouetted against the sky. It was really quite beautiful. I didn’t know till later that I’d been wounded. Baljit was lying on top of me… his face was on my chest… he was shaking. I thought he was just shocked. I pushed him off and then I saw the blood… I got out a field dressing but it wouldn’t stop; it just kept coming…’ He paused. ‘And then the strangest thing happened. It was as if I was floating, looking down at myself trying to staunch Baljit’s wound, and then I was even higher, right above the battlefield, and I could see it all… had all the time in the world to explore every detail… the scarred fields and the barbed wire and the wounded and dying men. I could even see the layout of the German trenches, so much straighter and better made than our own, and I felt nothing – no grief, or hatred or enmity – just a sense of wonder and calm, as though none of it mattered… none of it meant anything. And the next moment I was back in the mud and the filth, scrabbling to stop the blood, panicking… knowing it was hopeless and that I was losing him…’
He closed his eyes; he was trembling.
I heard a buzzing in my head and saw a red fountain spraying up the wall and the god dancing in the moving shadows. I stood up and went to him and he put his arms around me. His shoulders heaved and shook as I held him, feeling his hot tears soaking through my blouse.
The next day I suggested a visit to Shaves Wood to see the bluebells. Barbara begged off, saying she had some shopping to do in Brighton, so we went alone. I took him, I think, in a bid to reawaken his memories of the happy times we had spent there – those warm sunny days when I had gathered flowers to make crowns and bracelets for us all. But this time the day was overcast and still. It had been a wet spring, and the soldiers in the trenches were floundering deep in mud. In the wood, the mostly untrodden paths were firm underfoot, but the smell of damp humus lingered in the air. The air felt muggy and the sharp bursts of birdsong sounded faintly threatening, like warnings in the silence.
We were silent too. There was a distance, a heaviness between us, as though we both knew something needed to be said or done, but neither had the energy to initiate it. I could tell he was depressed and I myself was close to tears. Too much had happened, in us and in the world. I wondered if it would be possible for us ever to be happy again.
We walked quietly one behind the other until at last I said, ‘Shall we sit?’
He shrugged and followed me into a clearing. The bluebells had withered already, as had the anemones. The undergrowth was scratchy and unfriendly and nettles bloomed everywhere, encouraged by the rain.
I found a log, which smelt of fungus, and perched on one end. He sat down, leaving a gap between us. I looked sideways at him as he squatted, hunched over, long hands hanging between his knees, staring at the ground. Anger flared in me at his depression, his withdrawal, and yet I knew he could not help it. I felt for a moment as though I were in one of those fairytales where the prince is transformed into an animal and the princess has to undertake a dangerous journey to prove her love. But it was he who would be going on the dangerous journey while I waited, helpless, at home. I berated myself for my disappointment. What mattered was not my romantic dreams but the reality of his suffering. And yet I could not help resenting it. I had hoped that I could comfort him, but once again I was not enough. He needed rest, boredom, normality; not emotion, not more intensity.
I stood up and walked away, over towards a pond I remembered, and leant against a tree looking at it. It was stagnant now, the water still and unmoving, and there was not a sound. Even the birds had stopped. I heard twigs crack as he came up behind me. He was standing so close that I could feel his breath on the top of my head. I leant back until I was resting against his body and he slid his arm around my waist and pulled me into him, burying his face in my hair.
We stood like that for a long time, and then I turned in his arms and looked up at him.
‘Lila,’ he said, in the way only he could say it, with that lilt in the middle. Then he bent his head and kissed me. When he started to draw back I put my hands on either side of his face and held his mouth with mine. He made a small sound and then I felt his body relax and he began to kiss me back, pulling me close into him until I could feel the whole hard, trembling length of his body against mine. One of his hands moved up to my throat, stroking the skin, and then slipped down on to my breast. I felt myself slide into that world of sensation; everything faded away except the sweetness of his mouth on mine, the warmth of his hand. I shivered and then, without warning, he pulled away so suddenly that for a moment I lost my balance an
d had to steady myself against him. I looked up at him, shocked by the precipitancy of his withdrawal. His face was grey.
‘What is it?’
He shook his head. ‘We’d better get back.’ He turned and began to make his way through the wood. His strides were so long that he was out of it before I caught up with him. He had slowed and was walking with his head hanging.
I felt a flare of anger. ‘What is it, Jagjit? Tell me.’
He said dully, avoiding my eyes, ‘I think it’s better if we call the whole thing off. You should try to forget me. Things were different then… before. I was different. I thought then we could make a life together – be happy… but now it’s all…’
‘All…?’
He shook his head. ‘Better to forget it… just be friends. I should go back tomorrow.’ He forced a smile.
‘But why?’ I wanted to say, should have said; I should have forced him to explain, but the old familiar misery rose up and choked me. I wasn’t wanted. I couldn’t give him what he needed. I wasn’t enough, just as I hadn’t been for Father. I would never be enough.
We walked back to the house in silence.
The next day he returned to the hospital and three weeks later he was passed fit for duty and given compassionate leave to visit his family in India before being transferred to a new area of operations.
Henry
14th July 1882
It has taken me a fortnight to be able to write down the story as Father told it to me, and as far as possible I have tried to do it in his own words. Today is my twenty-fifth birthday. It has rained all day and Father has stayed in his room. It has brought back to me the many birthdays I spent alone as a child, feeling guilty because I believed myself responsible for my mother’s death, while he was drowning his depression with drink. Despite the pity I feel for him, I cannot help resenting him for never thinking to reassure me.