The Day of the Scorpion

by Paul Scott

  ‘Did you?’ Sarah asked. ‘Did you feel that too, Ronald?’

  ‘No. To me Baksh was merely a source of information. I had no feelings about the man himself. He’d made a choice. It hadn’t worked out well. The law says he should be punished. Well, it happens all the time. You choose, you act, you pay or get paid. That’s how I see it. Do you disapprove?’

  ‘I can’t, can I?’ she said, then added, ‘It’s true after all. You pay or get paid. Although perhaps there are situations in which it’s better for you to pay, more satisfying.’ She thought: To the soul, whatever that is, more satisfying to the soul, if you know the choice was wrong. But what do I mean, wrong?

  ‘Most people prefer to be paid. We’re always looking for rewards. And Baksh got his. So did Teddie. It was a ridiculous scene in its way. It seemed to me to have nothing to do with the reality of what was actually happening. He knelt down and put his head on Teddie’s boots, and that didn’t embarrass Teddie either. I think it moved him. Very deeply. As if something he’d always believed in and put his trust in had been proved. He pulled Baksh to his feet, quite gently, and then they stared at each other. Measuring up. To each other, and to some standard of, well, what worked, what was possible about conduct. And Baksh gradually reassumed that old soldier look of not looking except into a middle-distance he wasn’t even seeing. And Teddie nodded and said, “I remember Hostein Sahib, in Muzzafirabad. My name is Bingham, Bingham. Remember my name.” It was a promise that didn’t need explaining in so many words. They both understood that Teddie intended to do his best for him. The man felt he belonged again. You could see that. He might be court-martialled and shot, or imprisoned, but even in front of a firing-squad he would belong to the system that was executing him. I suppose it was months since he’d felt he belonged anywhere. It’s extraordinary the lengths people will go to to convince themselves that they belong.’

  He turned his head slightly and watched her, then said:

  ‘Just then we heard firing on the hill. The Indians were going to clear that pocket of Japanese, with the company from the British battalion in support. The IO looked at his watch and asked me to question Baksh about the kind of arms this Jiff unit had and whether he thought it possible after all that they’d gone down into the valley and holed out there. The answer was that they had a mortar, a couple of machine guns. The rest carried rifles. They hadn’t much spare ammunition. He looked back in the direction of the firing and then in the direction of the valley. I think we all got the same idea at once, that the Jiffs had gone into the valley and that they should have opposed the advance of the British battalion during the night or were supposed to harry the battalion once it was seen to have occupied the road junction. The firing on the hill might be their signal to attack. But a unit of only half-company strength was an absurdly small force. If Baksh hadn’t lied about the strength, the Jiffs might have gone into the valley to join a Japanese force already holed out there. The IO said he’d better go and have a word with the old man, but before he’d gone more than a yard or so we heard the old man calling to him. I asked Baksh if he’d lied about the strength of the Jiff force. I suggested he’d lied from start to finish. He wouldn’t answer me, but just looked dumbly at Teddie. Teddie said, “Leave the poor devil alone.” But he asked a question himself. He asked the names of Baksh’s two ex-Muzzy Guide companions from the listening post.’ A pause. ‘Aziz Khan and Fariqua Khan.’ A pause. ‘I expect I’ll always remember them. The names. Not the men. We never saw the men.

  ‘Presently I left Teddie to it and went to find the CO. There was the question of the valley, and who might be in it. If he intended to have a closer look I thought it worth staying for another half-hour. Not more. I’d done the job I came to do, so had Teddie. I knew we ought to be getting back to division and taking Baksh with us. I found the CO at the junction. Up along the road men were coming out of the jungle on either side. He told me he’d been ordered back about a mile and to leave a road block at the junction until the battalion from the reserve Brigade sent a company forward to man it. The little skirmish on the hill was nearly over and he was to move on through the hills, south-east. That was in line with the revised picture we’d had from division. I asked what he thought about the possibility of there being Jiffs or Japanese in the valley. He said the company manning the road block could deal with them, if there were any. Then he said I’d better get moving. He meant we were in the way. We were. Well, you can imagine, a battalion suddenly on the move. I went back to the mule-lines to get Teddie and Baksh. But they weren’t there. The mules were being loaded and led out and I couldn’t tell which of the men had been on guard, but the one I spoke to said the IO and the Jiff and the other staff officer had gone down by what he called the short cut. I went back to where we’d left the jeep. It wasn’t there either. Neither was the driver. It took me a couple of minutes to find the IO. He seemed surprised to see me. He said he thought I’d gone with Captain Bingham and the Jiff-type to see if the other two Jiffs were anywhere around. When we saw I’d no idea what he was talking about he told me how when he went back to the mule-lines, by the short cut, he found Teddie alone with Baksh. Teddie told him Baksh thought the other two ex-Muzzy Guides were in the valley and would be looking for an opportunity to give themselves up, especially to a Muzzy Guide officer. The IO had said, Well, we’re pulling out, take a look if you must, it’s all yours. When he asked where I was Teddie said I’d gone down to the road and that he’d pick me up there. Perhaps he intended to. I don’t know. At the time I could only think he’d gone off his head and I’m afraid I said as much to the IO. I’m sorry. I think it counted against Teddie afterwards. The IO asked me if I thought the Jiff was trying something on. I said I didn’t know, but I wanted him back.

  ‘Sometimes, you know, I lie here and realize I’d probably be all in one piece still if that young IO had been pigheaded or scared of his CO, if he’d said, “Well, it’s your funeral,” and gone about his own business. But he was the eager-beaver type. He took me to a jeep parked off the road and told me to jump in, he’d take me down the track. The jeep belonged to the CO but he wouldn’t be needing it, not where the battalion was going. He meant for the march into the hills. What transport the battalion had apart from the mules would go back to the Brigade pool. He called out to a sergeant to tell the CO there might be something going on down in the valley and he was going to take a look and in any case check that the company in the woods between the road and the track were pulling out in good order. Then we set off and turned into the track. Men were coming out on to it from the jungle and marching up it in single file. When we got round the first bend we saw Teddie about half a mile ahead. He was in the driver’s seat, going quite slowly, and Baksh was in the back with the driver beside him. You couldn’t tell at that distance how alert the driver was, or if he had Baksh well covered with his Sten gun. There was a shallow ravine on our right, with a ridge beyond it, but Teddie was at a point where the ravine came to an end and there was a neck of flattish ground between the track and the ridge, most of it jungle, but making a fairly easy connection between the ridge and the track. Farther on the ground obviously fell away quite steeply into the valley. When we saw Teddie stop the IO said, “I think he’s only taking a quick look-see. He won’t find them there, we’ve patrolled all that.” All the same Teddie stopped and a second or so later we heard him, quite clearly. Calling to them. Aziz Khan. Fariqua Khan. Aziz Khan, Fariqua Khan. It was as if Teddie himself gave the signal. There was a single rifle shot and not more than a second or two later an explosion in the woods on our left and then another one bang on the track between us and Teddie’s jeep, and then more or less continuously, one after the other in the wood. The company that had been located there and were still in there, moving out section by section, were being mortared from the ridge over on the right and there was more than one mortar, which meant Baksh had lied or there were some Japanese there too.

  ‘I hand it to the young IO. The temptation was to get
out of the jeep and dive for cover but he merely swore and started swinging round. The track was narrow, it needed a three-point turn. We were swung round with the wheels an inch or two from the ravine before I realized he meant to drive back up the hill. I remember shouting at him, “What are you doing? Didn’t you see?” I don’t think he had seen. He shouted back for me to hang on, but I jumped out and said I must get him. I don’t think he understood what I was on about. He realized later but at the time he probably thought I didn’t relish running the gauntlet back up the track, and was going to ground in the wood, or perhaps he wasn’t thinking at all, just acting instinctively, getting back himself as quick as he could to where he was supposed to be and would be needed. The men who’d been marching up the track had scattered. I saw a couple of them leaning against the bank holding their faces. It was a sort of pandemonium. I registered it, but not as someone who had to do anything about it. I was thinking primarily of the other jeep and of what I’d seen in the first few seconds, between the rifle shot, the first mortar bomb explosion and the second one that fell slap on the track. I saw three things. I saw Teddie duck, or appear to duck. I saw the driver pitch over on top of him, as if he’d been hit. And I saw Baksh staring at them, then jumping clear and running on to that neck of flat ground. Then I couldn’t see anything because of the explosion on the track itself.

  ‘And I don’t remember anything awfully clearly between jumping out of the IO’s jeep and reaching Teddie’s. I think I ran down the track until I reached the mortar-bomb crater and that the site of it acted as a warning signal. I must have gone up into the wood then and run the rest of the way under cover. I do seem to remember some difficult going, and falling, picking myself up again. I know it was a sudden shock to find the jeep was burning and that the driver was on the ground, not slumped over Teddie any longer, and that Teddie wasn’t slumped forward but sideways. It wasn’t at all how I’d last seen it. I realized another mortar bomb had fallen a few yards in front of the jeep and that the force of the explosion had hurled the driver off Teddie and also flung Teddie to one side. I don’t know about the fire. I think the spare petrol cans had been hit and gone up. I don’t really remember going up to the jeep, only being there, pulling Teddie out, trying to get a hold. I must have been hunched forward, protecting my face, reaching in and getting him by the waist or an arm. I don’t remember being shot at, or know whether it was then, or when I got him out and dragged him into the wood, or when I had to go back and get the driver and drag him in too. I do remember there wasn’t any sign of Baksh. They found him later. Dead of course. The other Jiffs must have shot him. They or the Japanese. It turned out there were Japanese as well.’

  She thought: I don’t know, I don’t know, where that kind of courage comes from or why or what its purpose is, but I know it has a purpose. It’s a kind of madness, a sublime insanity which even Ronald who’s experienced it can’t explain. He wanted to diminish Teddie for me but Teddie isn’t diminished. He began to diminish himself, but now he isn’t diminished either. For a moment they are both larger than life. Teddie calling stupidly for those men, and Ronald stupidly risking death to try and save him. And that’s how I shall remember them. Without understanding why it makes them larger.

  His eyes were shut again, had been for some moments, and that impediment in his throat was troubling him. He swallowed and said:

  ‘I thought at first Teddie was dead too, but I’m afraid he wasn’t, neither was the driver but the driver wasn’t burnt. Teddie was.’

  ‘But he was unconscious?’

  ‘Not all the time.’

  ‘Colonel Selby-Smith wrote that you said Teddie was unconscious and hadn’t suffered.’

  ‘Let Susan go on thinking that.’ A pause. ‘I got them both off the track and as far into the wood as I could manage. The driver’s Sten gun was still in the jeep so I only had my revolver, and Teddie’s of course, but I thought it was probably all up with the three of us anyway, either from another mortar bomb or from the bunch of Jiffs I expected any moment to come down from the ridge. I think it was becoming aware of that possibility that made me notice my left arm was numb, but I couldn’t see any blood or any sign of having been hit. The arm and – other things – made it difficult to do anything about the field-dressings and I couldn’t see where Teddie had been hit either. I had him on his back and didn’t want to turn him over. It’s odd, about – damage to people. I thought the driver was dying, that no one could be such a mess and survive. I thought it would be Teddie who might survive, although I hoped he wouldn’t.’ A pause. ‘He would have been terrifly disfigured.’

  She waited, then said:

  ‘You don’t need to tell me anything you don’t like talking about, Ronald. I’d rather you didn’t because I couldn’t repeat it to Susan, and if I know it she’ll see I’m keeping something back. And then she’ll worry even more.’ She hesitated. ‘And you haven’t told me anything about you, about what’s wrong or what they’ve got to do to you.’

  ‘Oh, nothing wrong they can’t put right. I was burnt a bit. Shot up a bit. But in a few weeks I’ll be back on my feet, which I suppose is something.’

  She remembered the line from his letter: There was Teddie with everything to live for and I – comparatively – with something less than that. It no longer seemed like an affectation but a bare statement of the truth. She would have liked to get him to explain but felt the explanation was there, in front of her, and in her mind – secreted in all the dark corners of her recollections of her brief encounters with him, and with his reputation.

  She said, ‘Was it a long time before you got any help?’

  ‘It seemed long. I think it was an hour. A bit more. But after a while I felt quite safe because I realized the Jiffs wouldn’t expose themselves to our own direct fire by coming on to the track. They might try to cross it, and of course they’d come on to it if they thought they’d got the battalion pinned down, but somehow I assumed they’d do neither. It never struck me there might be larger forces coming up from the valley. There weren’t, but I’m glad I didn’t worry about it. I’m trying to make you see that staying there with Teddie and the driver wasn’t the death-and-glory thing people might make out.’ A pause. ‘It was the snuggest place to be when you think of it. And there’s this other thing. If all this is a confession of some sort, that is what it’s about, what I see about it now, I mean when lying thinking, going back, analysing it. I want you to know. So that you understand the difference, the difference between Teddie and me, and why I say he died an amateur. He went down there for the regiment. I told you there was a touch of old-fashioned gallantry in it. All that paternalist business really meant something to him. Man-bap. I am your father and your mother. It would have been great if he’d gone down there and called as he did and if they’d come out, hanging their heads, and surrendered to him, trusting in the code, the old code. That’s what he wanted. I don’t mean there was anything vain or self-seeking about it. He wasn’t doing it for himself or for them. He did it for the regiment. He risked everything for it, his own life, the driver’s life, Baksh’s life, his job. So much. So much it’s incalculable. Who knows, his going down there might have looked to that bunch of Jiffs and Japs, who’d been clever enough to get so near without being seen, like the beginning of an advance into the valley. It could have triggered the whole thing off. But in any case he was putting the regiment above his job. If it had come off he could have become one of those people a regiment remembers, celebrates, as part of their legend. Teddie Bingham? By jove, yes but that was before your time. There were these poor misguided fellows from a Muzzy Guides battalion that got cut to pieces in Malaya back in ′41–′42 and had gone into the bag and been forced to join a bunch of renegades we called Jiffs. A lot of them came up with the Japs when they crossed into Indian territory early in ′44. Our own chaps shot them out of hand if they had the chance, and there weren’t many prisoners until this Muzzy Guide gave himself up, a chap called Mohammed Baksh. Young Bingha
m was a divisional staff officer at the time, but once a Muzzy always a Muzzy. He’d gone forward with a message from the General to the CO of a battalion that was in danger of being cut off and saw Baksh. Well, directly Baksh saw him the fellow went to pieces, and begged young Bingham to shoot him for his act of treachery, but young Bingham made him stand like a man and talked to him as if he were his own erring son, made him feel he still belonged. “Are there any others with you?” Bingham asked and Baksh said yes, two, both from his old battalion, starved, wretched, hiding out, too afraid to surrender. Well, there was stuff flying but young Bingham never hesitated. “Come on,” he said, “show me where,” and off they went right into the thick of it and when they got near the place where Baksh had left the other two Bingham said, “What are their names?’ Aziz Khan and Fariqua Khan. Brothers I think they were. So what does young Bingham do? He stands up straight where everyone could see him and pick him off and calls out to them, ordering them to return to duty as soldiers of the Muzzy Guides. And, by jove, in a couple of minutes out they came and back he marched them. He didn’t even take their rifles away.’