All day that had seemed like a grim prospect. Now, returning head down through the temporary Calcutta streets with the ornamental dagger chafing brutally at his ankle, the duty seemed like a piece of luck. All at once, the escape seemed harmlessly to fall into place. Masson knew, now, how he would go. Exactly how.
‘Going to piss,’ Hastings muttered. It was some way past midnight. The garrison was silent; outside, the city had quietened down to its muttering minimum. Inexplicable small noises, a general murmur, and occasionally, from the distant noise and hum, a clearer sound emerged; a lowing cow, a dog singing across the rooftops and being answered, nearer at hand, a cooking pot being upset in the dark street outside and cries of lamentation following. In the garrison everything was silent. The body had gone to bed, and everything was dark, except the swinging lantern at the guardhouse.
Hastings and Masson had said nothing to each other from the moment they had reported for duty. Hastings would not even meet Masson’s level gaze. It was another hot night, and the air was freighted with water; the rain would burst again soon. When Hastings passed within the little circle of the lantern’s light, his frightened face was masked with sweat, and flushed red. Masson would not lower his face. He wanted to see, one last time, what fear and wrong in the face were like.
‘Don’t be long,’ Masson said coolly.
Hastings looked at him, amazed; the Masson of yesterday would have said nothing, let him go as he chose. He passed out of the circle of light where the black-blooded flecks of insect life danced in the hot air, and was swallowed up by the garrison’s dark. Masson, too, moved back away from the light, into the furthest corner of the guardhouse, into the heaviest shadows. Now the gate looked abandoned. He got out his pipe, and put it in his mouth without lighting it. The company slept, unguarded; Florentia Sale in her ramrod bed, by her ramrod Colonel. McVitie slept, and dreamt his iniquities, his hard white body wet with sweat, never realizing what Masson was dreaming for him, what he was going to leave for him, out here in the guardhouse. Masson bit heavily on the stem of his pipe, and thought on, dreaming up the dreaming garrison. Suggs, now, slept fitfully, his narrow mind turning through its narrow knowledge, from one musket part to another, knowing nothing else, not caring what lives he had set free with his narrow knowledge. They all slept, except Masson and the hateful Hastings; and his turn would come, and then they would none of them exist, none of them breathe. Only in the occasional memory of the long-gone escaped hero of the platoon; they would only exist when Masson chose to think of them. And he would not.
There was a noise beyond the swinging lamp; a heavy crack somewhere above, and another, and then another. It was the return of the rain. The rain which now would fall unceasing for months. And then there was another noise, there in the dark which was the yard of the building; a hissing shuffle, Hastings coming back. Masson drew back into the deepest shade of the lodge. He was quite invisible. Hastings’s worried face loomed into the light, and looked around, his eyes big and frightened.
‘Masson?’ he said, tentatively. ‘Where are you, Masson?’
Masson said nothing. Hastings looked about him, wildly, and reached up to unhook the lantern. Masson reached for his flint, and struck it in the darkness. Hastings stopped dead, and stared at the single flame, licking at Masson’s face.
‘Christ, you scared me,’ Hastings said. ‘What are you doing back down there, then?’
Masson said nothing, sucking at the flame through his pipe.
‘I thought you’d gone, I thought you’d done a bunk,’ Hastings said, giggling nervously. ‘I thought you’d run for it.’
Masson took a deep inhalation. He let himself go giddy for a moment, and the weighty scent rising from the new wet earth and the noise of the rain, like the roar in the forest, pushed him from all sides. He opened his eyes, and there was Hastings, the coward, the fresh wet face filled with fear in the lamplight, black with flies.
‘Where are you from, Hastings?’ Masson said, finally, calmly.
Hastings stared. ‘I’m from Lincolnshire. My people are shopkeepers. Why—’
‘Why are you here, Hastings?’
‘I ran away. Give a fellow a chance, now, Masson, and—’
‘You got what you wanted, then, Hastings?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Hastings said. He turned away, made a pathetic half-stride to attention, and stared out into the yard and the dark. The rain was falling like applause.
‘I got what I wanted, last night,’ Masson said gently. He stooped, while Hastings was facing in the other direction; stooped with his left hand and loosened his left boot to reach for what was there. ‘But you knew that. Or you wouldn’t have done what you did. You wouldn’t have stood and watched what you watched, and done nothing to stop it. And your friend – what is his name, now? – McVitie – yes, I’ve always wanted him to do what he did. And he always wanted, didn’t he, to do what he did. So he was happy and, you know, I wouldn’t have minded telling him, if he had stayed to ask, that I was happy too. I wish he’d stayed to ask. It would have been polite. But I worry about you, Hastings. I worry about you. What did you want? Did you get what you wanted? Did you enjoy watching what you watched? Did you want to be me, or did you want to be him, and were you happy when you watched? Were you?’
Masson spoke quietly, calmly, and all the time walking up slowly behind Hastings. Hastings was trembling, as if with rage, and he would not turn, but stared into the court. Masson advanced, a careful game of grandmother’s footsteps, and he gripped what he had in his hand.
‘He didn’t mean it,’ Hastings said, finally. ‘He didn’t mean it. He gets like that. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He doesn’t. He’ll say sorry, and it’ll be all right again. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.’
‘But you, Hastings,’ Masson said. ‘Do you know what you were doing? Do you?’ And then he let his voice change, let all the fury he had in him flow into it, and with a great black hiss, he leapt on Hastings’s head, tearing his hair back, baring the stretched gargling throat, and from behind he brought his ceremonial knife with his left hand, and drew it quickly across the throat. For a moment it seemed to him that he had done nothing, and in a fury of panic he brought the knife down again, and hacked twice, three times more, as the black blood spurted, and Hastings made the noise of a drowning man, a strangled cry no one could have heard, and his watery eyes popped out of his head. Masson would not hold him while he died; he dropped him in the dust, there, in the dark corner of the lodge, and leant to wipe the knife on the now useless uniform, ignoring the rattle of the tongue’s root in the throat, the bloating bubbles where no break had been. He half-opened the gate, and walked swiftly next door, to the stables. There, in one of the stalls, he had hidden his panniers, and now quickly loaded them onto the Colonel’s horse. That was a foolish risk; he did not care, knowing he would not be caught. The horse was woken easily, and saddled. Everything was silent now; only the rain, thundering, and Masson wrapped himself in a cloak and mounted. The horse submitted to be ridden. It walked gracefully out of the stable; it stepped gracefully, unseeingly, over what lay rigid inside the gate of the garrison. Masson pushed, and rode out onto the deserted swamp of the street.
He did not quite know how to navigate his way out of the city. There were no landmarks, no hills. The English buildings were familiar, but they seemed like islands in the middle of a constantly-shifting mire of native dwellings, thrown up overnight and torn down as easily by rain. He turned his back on the English steeple, and went into the half-defined streets of the poor native quarter. Here, he felt as if his panic and fear were leading him astray, and the horse picked its uncertain way through the ruts and pits, watched warily, incuriously by the squatting early inhabitants. The rain had stopped, and the sun was up now in the clear air, the immediate heat sending birds up from the sodden earth into the cooler sky. The horse trod on through the mass of bodies and bivouacs, its head lowered as if already exhausted; Masson felt like a general
passing through the disastrous aftermath of a battle.
He came, in time, to the river; the informal settlement ran all the way to the bank, and already at this early hour, there were washerwomen, pounding shirts between rocks. It was not a sacred river. The flow was slow and slippery and brown with the overnight rain, a polished surface with its own turbulence, and over it the heavy white birds flew, ungainly as chairs, draped with cloths. Masson paused for a moment. The dawn was rich and pink and noisy now. He should be going, he knew that. But there was no fear or panic in him, no terror of discovery. He knew he was safe now, and he watched the river for a moment. It was empty of boats, but as he watched, a strange thing approached; a table, upturned, floating down. And in the table stood a man with a long pole. A small man, perhaps a boy – with the sun in his eyes, Masson could not tell. How his vessel stayed afloat, Masson could not see; the table drifted along, pushed by the current. The man in his makeshift boat stirred confidently, ineffectively at the river like a cook at his gigantic soup, and the river drove him onwards. Masson stopped and watched him go his cheerful way, and as the strange craft passed, the man shielded his eyes, looked directly in Masson’s direction and gave a huge benevolent wave before turning back to his rudder. He was going the way of the river. Masson watched until he was out of sight, and then pulled at the horse’s reins. He turned his back on the city; all that fucking filth. The horse lifted its head from the grass it had been peaceably cropping, and, with a nudge of the knees, set off.
9.
‘… and I travelled seven times seven months, over the plains and the lakes and the mountains of the world, and then I left the Empire of the English where the servants of Engelstan pursued me night and day, whose eyes can pierce a cloak and a new-grown beard and see the soul within, whose horses run like the wind to hunt the virtuous and the bandit alike, and in seven times seven months I came over the mountains to the Empire of the Afghans, and the rest you know.’
The four bazaar-boys sitting at Masson’s feet squealed in outrage. They did not know, they did not, and the story was not there, not finished yet. Masson sighed; the little courtyard where they sat was ankle deep in cherry stones after the long afternoon. The boys had sat and listened, entranced, to the whole story, their eyes bright with the evil witch Sale and the demon McVitie, the demon in human form (how they hissed at his entrances). No, they did not know the rest, they wanted to know everything, the tale of the seven times seven months, and how Masson came to the holy city of Kabul, and, above all, how he met each of them, since, like children, more than anything they loved to hear the tale of their own selves, their own story.
There was a noise outside, the noise of the door of the widow’s house being pushed open gently. Masson stood to look inside, to see who it was. It was too dark to see; only a white shape, a brilliant white shape, moving in the house like a spectre. Masson called a greeting, and the shape tensed, was still for a moment and then emerged. It was a boy. He stood at the entrance to the courtyard and looked at Masson. For some reason, the four boys squatting cheerfully on the floor fell quite silent, and scrambled quickly to their feet, their heads lowered. For all the world it was as if they were schoolboys discovered in riot by their master. The boy himself looked bewildered at this tribute he had not asked for. He hardly glanced at the others, only at Masson. It was Masson he looked at. Masson saw only one thing: he had very brilliant deep blue eyes.
‘My name is Hasan,’ the boy said, simply, regally. Masson’s mouth moved, but it would make no sound. He looked at Hasan and realized that he was in the presence of an angel. And then, of course, he understood fully what he had never known before; why he had been sent to Kabul.
SEVEN
1.
‘SHE HAS GONE, has she not?’ Castleford inquired.
‘Who?’ another member of the Club said.
‘Gone where?’ a third supplied.
Castleford shrugged. ‘Miss Garraway,’ he said eventually, after taking a deep draft of claret. ‘It must be a year or more since I set eyes on her. Did she marry?’
‘No doubt,’ a voice supplied, not greatly interested in the question. ‘Stokes can satisfy your curiosity, when he comes, I dare say.’
‘Where is Stokes?’
‘Lying low, I dare say,’ Castleford said. ‘I heard Franklin is out for his blood.’
‘Franklin?’
Castleford sighed. ‘Where are our beefsteaks? There was an essay on a life of Milton, I believe, so very misguided, in Stokes’s journal, and Franklin wrote a reply, and Stokes was heard impugning the gentleman in the wildest terms. And now Franklin has declared that his honour is in question.’
‘Why was Stokes so very interested?’
‘Ah …’
The Club was the place, if any existed, where literary men would gather, and comment on comments which had been made on other comments; those comments in turn made on comments on some ancient and unread work of literature. It had been in existence for some ten years at the time of which we speak. At its foundation, it had had a name less unspecifying, and had, at its first meeting, been termed the Hatters’ Society, for reasons beyond even its oldest members’ recall. A name so whimsical, however much it suited the humour of the initial meeting of the society, could not be expected to last many days beyond it, and for the entire existence of the society, less an initial two weeks, it had been universally referred to by all connected with it merely as The Club. Its members fancied that from their embarrassment sprang a peculiar authority. Boodles was only Boodles, and it was more than the dinners at the Beefsteak, which were forever tethered to the ground by its label, but only the former Society of Hatters was The Club. In goodwill, we cordially overlook the curious fact that in London and its environs at this time, there were seventy-three gatherings to which miscellaneously employed gentlemen and near-gentlemen resorted, from rural Streatham to bucolic Hampstead, every one of which formerly had a name of some attempted whimsy, but which now was referred to by its members, in fancied distinction, as The Club.
The Club, however – that is to say, the one with which we are presently concerned – confined its membership to the literary world, and it is as well to confess, in the case that the reader may otherwise entertain inaccurately elevated notions of the distinction of its circle, that Stokes was its most remarkable member. At first, the splendid outlay of taking rooms for the Club had been considered, but it was not long before it became apparent that the back room at Mrs Meagles’s would do quite as well, and an informal arrangement was reached. At present, the other members of the Club were waiting for Stokes’s arrival.
‘The old Colonel lives on, does he not?’
‘The old Colonel?’
‘Who?’
‘Colonel Garraway. Living on poetry and opium,’ Castleford agreed. ‘Stokes was very merry on the subject.’
‘Where is Stokes?’
‘Yes, we want Stokes—’ and, in a moment, the whole table was banging with knives and forks, plates and spoons, and chanting for Stokes. Mrs Meagles appeared at the door and looked, fondly, at her gentlemen; and in a minute, the rumpus died down, and they were left looking rather foolishly at each other.
2.
Stokes, in fact, was still at home. His rooms, or ‘diggings’, as he tended jovially to refer to them, had a habit of surprising his occasional visitors. To begin with, unlike the ubiquitous Stokes himself, they were extremely difficult to find. Stokes often resorted to a joke when describing their location. ‘Not at the Temple,’ he would say musingly, one eye on his audience, ‘but there again, you know, not quite not at the Temple, either.’ Whether anyone succeeded in running Stokes to ground on the basis of this habitual and bewildering witticism was highly doubtful, and, on the whole, if one absolutely had to see the distinguished editor of the Dundee Examiner, one had to dress up in one’s stiffest clothes and brave a rout at the Duchess of Dorset’s, at Lady Woodcourt’s, at the best houses in town.
Nevertheless, like any badger,
Stokes had his hole, his diggings, whence he periodically emerged grumpily clutching his latest growlings against popular opinion. ‘Ah,’ his cronies would call, ‘here is Jove, with a new thunderbolt in his fist.’ And Stokes would waddle, sourly, into the room. In any case, his rooms were – it was confidently asserted – off the Strand. Not exactly in the Temple, but there again … You took an unnoticed turning off, into a malodorous and undistinguished tributary to the great flow of the Strand, and then another, into an enclosed warren of footpaths, packed tight underfoot, where no light came. The last approaches to Stokes’s diggings were so narrow that, he had occasion to remark, he could never have contemplated acquiring a fat mistress. Even the most direct and upright of men found themselves, in these last stages, turning sideways and sidling towards the editor’s rooms as if fearing to be wedged quite stiff between the dank dripping walls of brick. Finally, you turned into an almost unnoticeable doorway, and into a court, dark and gloomy with soot, overlooked by sorrowful, black, unwashed windows, a court whose bottom tilted alarmingly to one corner, attempting to drain away whatever happened to fall, unrequested, on Flat Hand Yard. It struck the infrequent but imaginative visitor as akin to the deck of a sinking ship; an impression only fortified on further acquaintance since, viewed in social terms, a sinking ship was precisely what Flat Hand Yard was. On each side of the court there were doors, each leading to an indistinguishably drab staircase, and on the third floor of the very gloomiest and dullest of these staircases, the illustrious editor of the Dundee Examiner buried himself away and contemplated the world, assured that he would not be disturbed or dislodged. Visiting Stokes was an undertaking of an archaeological ambition. As soon as the casual visitor turned off the Strand, he inevitably felt like a small boy irreverently digging a dignified nocturnal beast out of his hole, and crying garn! The animal might, despite all sorrowful external dignity, at any moment turn savage, and dole out some awful unanswerable punishment; since, whatever subterranean associations were awakened by the experience of visiting Stokes, in his own mind, he inhabited a dwelling so lofty as to be among the clouds.
The Mulberry Empire Page 16