To The Coral Strand

by John Masters

  ‘You’ve got to come here,’ Rodney snarled.

  ‘I cannot,’ the doctor said. ‘Put Mrs Wood on the line.’ His voice was loud and emphatic in her ear: ‘Mrs Wood, the storm has produced a rush of cases, prematures, frightened women who weren’t going to have a doctor and now want one, miscarriages ... They’re snowed under at every hospital in Bombay. Find the Rani and take her to the nearest hospital. Then ring me. Good luck.’ The phone went silent.

  Rodney glowered at her, his eyes shining in the lightning with a luminous glow.

  She said, ‘What about the police?’

  ‘Not a hope. They’ll be even busier than the doctors ... We’ll go to Janaki’s. Someone there might know where she’d go. Come on.’

  ‘Wait!’ She dragged out the midwife’s case, and he snatched it from her. They ran down the stairs and into the street. ‘No taxis now,’ Rodney yelled. His hand pressed hard on her shoulder, forcing her forward into the lashing rain and wind.

  ‘This is a hurricane,’ he shouted. They struggled to run against the wind along the esplanade, but could only make the slow and painful progress of mountain climbers against a blizzard. On the left the sea battered against the stone retaining wall. Every few seconds, with a heavy shudder that shook the stone under their feet, a wave smashed over the top and poured in dirty yellow froth across the roadway. A few street lights still shone, though most had their glasses smashed and one lay twisted like spaghetti in the middle of the road. Once a fire engine passed, its bell clanging, but it was going in the opposite direction.

  After half an hour they reached Douglas Road. There the tall concrete apartments sheltered the road from the wind, and it was easier to breathe. They leaned against a wall and rested. The water poured from Rodney’s hair and clothes as though he had just climbed out of a swimming pool. His eyes burned dully behind the curtain of drops falling from his eyebrows. He said, ‘Is this case waterproof?’

  ‘Not very,’ she shouted back, ‘I never expected I would have to take it out in anything like this.’

  ‘Come on.’ He lifted the case, grabbed her hand, and pulled her on down the road, now at a run. Fronds and boughs of coconut palms littered the street, and a small car stood in the middle of the sidewalk.

  At Janaki’s house they had to pull four times on the old- fashioned bell and shout and hammer for a minute on the locked and bolted front door. Then the door burst open, held feebly by three struggling women and two children against the force of the wind. They shot in like projectiles, followed by a shout of the wind and a gunshot spray of palm fronds, mud, and water. Rodney put down the suitcase and applied his shoulder to the door. Slowly they forced it shut and slammed the bolts into place.

  Janaki’s mother stood near, wringing her hands and crying out in Hindi, ‘Ah, Margaret! What misery! What is the matter?’

  Rodney turned to her. ‘It is Sumitra, ma-ji, the Rani Sahiba. She has gone … ‘

  Margaret interposed. ‘She doesn’t know.’

  Rodney said, ‘She is going to have a baby.’

  ‘Aiih! In this night?’

  ‘We don’t know. She has run away from the flat where she was hiding. Do you know where she could have gone?’

  The old woman waved her hands. ‘I don’t know. I have only met her two or three times, in the old days. If Janaki were here ... She is not far, in Panvel ... If only we could telephone ... Bring towels, children, bring hot tea. Bring your aunt’s whisky. My poor friends …’

  ‘We cannot stay, ma-ji,’ Rodney said, ‘you have no idea where she can have gone?’

  A dozen women and children and two or three servants were crowded in the hall round the two soaked English. They all stood in a widening pool of water, the sound of the hurricane increasing outside.

  ‘Wait!’ Margaret cried. ‘When she first came to our house, and I asked her where she would have the baby she said, “at the flat or” ... somewhere, a beach hut ...’

  ‘Juhu?’

  ‘No, I would have known that. Oh, I can’t remember the name.’ A thin old voice cut in. ‘Of whom do you speak?’

  The dense crowd parted. Janaki’s grandmother stood on the stairs, all in white, her thin white hair drawn tightly back from her forehead, her sari looped lightly over it, for she was in the presence of a man of her own class. She made a short namasti to him, then her head went up. Rodney knelt quickly, and touched his hand to her emaciated foot. He rose. ‘You are Janaki’s grandmother, bari-ma?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I am Rodney Savage.’

  The hooded old eyes opened with a sudden flash. ‘Ah! Of you, she spoke, to me, once. To me, alone.’

  ‘Bari-ma, we talk of Sumitra, Rani of Kishanpur. Do you know where she or her family have a beach hut?’

  The white head nodded slowly. ‘Certainly. At Pabal.’

  ‘Where is that, bari-ma?’

  ‘It is near Alkhuti. The road turns off at Khed. It is twenty-five miles from here.’

  ‘I know it,’ a tall girl of about sixteen broke in, blushing furiously. ‘It is a sort of little peninsula, an island at high tide and in the rains. There are four huts on it. I have been there, but did not know that one of the huts belonged to the Rani Sahiba.’ Rodney said, ‘Bari-ma, is there a car here we can borrow? We must get out there at once.’

  The mother cried, ‘In this? It is madness, children! Wait till tomorrow. Get ...’

  The old matriarch raised a wrinkled, spotted claw of a hand. ‘There is my son-in-law’s car. Take that. You, you - see that it is filled with petrol.’

  Rodney knelt again, and again touched the old woman’s foot. She put her hand lightly on the top of his head, and then he stood up. He picked up the suitcase, and turned to Margaret. ‘Come on.’

  She said, ‘Wait!’ She turned to the young girl. ‘Do they have electric light out there?’

  ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘Fresh water?’

  The girl went pale. ‘I think so ... Not out of a tap.’

  Rodney said, ‘We’ll have a long way to walk. We can’t carry water. We’ll just have to hope. There’ll be kerosene oil and lamps, or Sumitra wouldn’t have gone there. We have a torch... Come on.’

  They fought their way out the door and along the front of the house to the little garage. Inside, one of the servants poured fuel from a two-gallon can into the tank of the pre-war Austin, then Rodney slipped into the driver’s seat, pushed the case over into the back, and started the engine. Margaret got in.

  ‘Hurry, hurry,’ she said, ‘I have an awful feeling that we’re late already.’

  ‘Got to wait till the engine’s warm, tonight,’ he said. He switched on the headlamps, while the servants stood ready by the double doors. Minutes later he called out, ‘Darwaze kolna!’

  The servants struggled with the bolts. She muttered, ‘Rodney, I’m frightened.’

  He turned his head and for a moment she thought he was going to curse her for a cowardly slut. Instead, his hand went out and rested on her knee. ‘No, you’re not,’ he said gently, ‘you’ve never been afraid when you’re with me.’

  The doors flung open and they drove out into the storm. Almost before they had left the shelter of the garage something struck the window beside Margaret’s head with a heavy crash. She ducked, crying out. Rodney’s smile was cheerful in the thin light from the dash. ‘Coconut,’ he said, ‘it hasn’t broken the glass, has it?’

  Trembling with relief, she looked at the pane, and saw that it was starred from its centre, but not broken. In the road Rodney turned north, the windshield wipers hurrying across the streaming glass and the lights boring a short, enclosed tunnel into the rain. The road lay inches deep in water and debris, and their wheels threw up angry waves on either side. For a time they drove without hindrance through factory and suburb, but the speed never rose above fifteen miles an hour.

  ‘Get that road map out of the pocket,’ he told her. ‘And the torch out of your case ... Note the mileage. We started at 3419. How many, on t
he map, to Khed?--Then look for the turning from 3438 on. That’s about the only way we’ll recognise it tonight ... Have we got everything the baby will need after she’s born - blankets, clothes, food?’

  ‘Yes ... Why should she run away suddenly? And how could she get there in this?’

  ‘Why? - God knows. Perhaps she’d decided she couldn’t let you have the baby, after all. How?--At five the streets were probably full of taxis still. She’d have just about reached Pabal before it got really bad ... How long will it be before we can take the baby away? One week? Two weeks?’

  ’It depends - look out!’ The car was already stopping under the hard pressure of the brakes, throwing her forward on to the dash. A blue flash lit up the wet road, flailing trees and a line of hovels to the right. Another flash followed, and another, each one lighting up the inside of the car with a livid glow. Dimly seen, giant snakes coiled in the road ahead.

  ‘Power cables,’ Rodney said, ‘two, three ... Take the wheel. Give me the torch. Follow the light.’

  ‘Rodney, we can’t!’

  ‘Yes, we can. Just follow me, put the right wheel where I shine the torch.’

  He got out and the door slammed. In the interval when the door was open another flash lit the car and she heard the crackling snap of the short circuit. For a moment blue fire ran along the seething gutter. She slid behind the wheel.

  The thin beam of the flashlight shone down. Clear in the headlights she saw a looping coil of high-tension cable lash down and across the road, curled like a whip by the wind. Rodney stepped back without ducking, and shone the flashlight upward. The cable had looped into a tree, its end pouring out smoke. The other cables lay across the road. Rodney turned and signalled her on with the flashlight. She slipped the car into gear and crawled forward. He was standing close beside the cables and she saw that there, where the light shone, they lay flat in the water, hissing and sparkling. To the left they rose in waving coils. He jerked the light and she drove over the cables. The lights flickered and came on again, and her hands tingled on the wheel, then it passed, the door beside her opened, he was pushing her across the seat. The car moved again, faster now.

  The car lurched steadily on down the empty road. Three times Rodney and she had to get out and pull tree limbs out of the way. 3431. 3432.

  The headlights shone on a heavy truck drawn across the road. A wildly swinging red lantern hung from its side. Rodney got out, the door slamming behind him. She saw him walk past the truck, return, go to a hut beside the road, bang on the door. Eventually the door opened and he disappeared. Five minutes later he returned.

  ‘Bridge gone,’ he said; ‘it’s not much more than a culvert, but it’s gone. They say we might be able to cross on the railway bridge.’

  He turned the car and they went back the way they had come. After a mile a cart track branched off on the left. He changed down and turned on to the flooded cart track at an even pace. Side-slipping, skidding, but always moving, they came after a mile to the railway. Rodney turned on to the tracks, and began a slow bump bump bump northward along them, the catenary wires of the electrified line arrowing down the upper blackness, the lights glinting along their undersurfaces.

  ‘Here it is,’ he said. He took the torch and jumped out. She saw him walk across the bridge, the torch flashing to right and left. When he got back into the driver’s seat she said, ‘Is it all right? Can we get over?’

  He said, ‘It’s two bridges, one for each track, so we can’t go on down the middle, like this. Damn narrow. Guard rails inside the running rails, so there’s no room for the car wheels. I’ll have to put one wheel on the outside. Get out. Take the torch and the case. Walk over. If I don’t make it, get back to the main road and bribe someone to take you on.’

  ‘I’m not going without you!’ she cried. ‘We can’t go on if it’s as dangerous as that.’

  He pushed her forcibly out into the wind. She started across the bridge. Her head swam, for though it was a short span it had no railings and no side path. An inch below the concrete lip black water ran towards the sea with a sullen roar.

  At the far side she turned and waited. By then Rodney had forced the car up on to the rails. The headlights crept towards her, heavily tilted to the right where one pair of wheels rode on the narrow band of ballast outside the rail. If he slipped off that, he must lurch into the flood. The lights came on, bigger and brighter.

  They reached her. She pulled the door open and sank into her seat, shuddering and weeping. ‘Rodney,’ she moaned, ‘it’s not worth it, nothing’s worth it... We don’t even know whether she’s there, whether she needs me, whether I can do anything!’

  The car bumped over the ties, and again his hand fell on her knee. He said, ‘None of us can do more than his best. That much we must do.’

  Soon they reached a grade crossing and, turning sharply on to another waterlogged track, regained the main road.

  ‘What’s the mileage now?’ he asked.

  She peered at the speedometer: ‘3437 - five to Khed, allowing for that diversion over the bridge.’ The car ploughed on.

  Houses loomed up in the slashed blackness, all lights extinguished, and the street covered with bricks, slates, tiles, and balks of timber. At a crossroads in the centre of the town the lights shone on a black arrow pointing left, and the message: Alkuthi - 5.

  ‘Across the Salsette Marsh,’ Rodney said, ‘the wind will now blow - for a change.’

  The road ran at first among the walls and bending trees of small farms and market gardens. The palms danced like madmen in the headlights. Every few yards one or both of them had to leave the car to drag wreckage out of the way. They were both as wet as swimmers, but they had been since leaving Sumitra’s apartment. After two miles the palms and the walls and the spectral huts cowering in their lee vanished. The road became clear.

  They were out on to the open marsh. The untrammelled wind struck the car on the left side. Rodney swung the wheel sharply to present the front to the wind, and at the same time stood on the brakes to avoid running off the road. Margaret’s knees shook so violently together that the bones hurt. If she tried to speak just now she would scream.

  Rodney looked at her in the dim light and said, ‘That was a bad one ... Open the back windows. We’ve got to reduce wind resistance - it’s coming straight from the side, across the marsh. No more trees or other shelter till we reach the coast, probably ... But take the case out of the back and hold it on your lap. There’ll be a lot of water coming in.’

  She did as he ordered. As soon as she began to wind down the windows the wind shrieked through like a crazed animal, and she huddled forward beside Rodney, her body spread over the case.

  He said, ‘Suppose it’s a difficult delivery... and you have to use forceps or anything like that... it won’t affect the baby, will it, I mean, her bones or head or anything?’

  She said, ‘Rodney, you must stop thinking so far ahead, about the baby. We’ve got to get there. We’ve got to find out how Sumitra is. She may still have a month to go … ‘

  He didn’t seem to be listening to her, and she allowed her voice to die away. The little car moved on in a universe of wind and water, the world of human beings drowned or blown away. The lights shone down a straight causeway, shiny-wet with water, the surface mottled by the bursting of the rain drops upon it. To right and left stretched an ocean, also black, also shining, also mottled, but marked too by long wind streaks and, over all, a dense curtain of driving spray. Straining her eyes ahead Margaret could only just tell the difference between the causeway and the flooded marsh, whose waves lapped over the road.

  The car crawled on, lurching over to the right under the rhythmic pulse of the wind, crunching back on its springs, grinding on in low gear.

  The lights went out. The Austin squealed to a stop. Rodney got out and dragged himself forward along the side of the car. When he returned, he beckoned her to the driver’s seat and bawled in her ear: ‘Glass blown in, bulbs smashed, all of t
hem. Follow me.’

  She looked at him, her eyes almost closed against the rain and wind that poured past his bulk. It was impossible to go on, it was madness. She smiled into his eyes. ‘All right.’

  The beam of the flashlight crept forward and she engaged gear. Following at five paces behind him, she saw only his legs moving slowly, one after the other, down the left side of the road. He was leaning so far to the left, against the wind, that his upper part, seen dimly in outline, looked like one of those movie trick shots where a comedian leans over, past the borders of reason, on nothing.

  After ten minutes the light swung in a pendulum arc and then shone its beam left. The road made a full left turn. She inched round, more than ever conscious that she had no guide but the torchlight ahead. Now she could hardly see that. She could detect no difference between the texture of the road and the flood.

  When she finished the turn the torch was almost under the wheels and she jammed on the brakes. Rodney was doing something but she could not make out what - fighting, wrestling ... one leg rose in the air, kicked forward, then shot back. She heard and felt a crash as the wind threw him back against the hood. The light disappeared and she tugged at the door.

  The light came again, low to the ground now, but moving forward. The dim aura above was the shape of a man’s back, a man on his hands and knees. Rodney was crawling into the wind.

  In that instant she knew they would reach the hut. No one else could have done it. Only this man, her man, Rodney Savage, could drive body and will and machine through such opposition as this. The spine of a book appeared before her straining eyes, the moving flashlight in the middle. She saw the title - Meru 1911-1921 - above the author’s name - Peter Savage. Now her father’s face - the light in the middle of his forehead - talking always of mountains from his armchair. Herself, pigtails, twelve, thirteen years old, rainy day - the light jerking on behind the swinging wipers - red binding, heavy book, idly leafing through, rain on the window, liner siren mournful in the Mersey ... pictures, old-fashioned to her eye; reading a few pages until fear came, with dark visions of terror; the fear was not of the blizzards and precipices, it was fear of the man who wrote, his remorseless advance against overwhelming fate. The light crawled on. She had put the book away, never opened it again, never till this moment on the Salsette Marsh recalled it, or associated the name with her own man. He must have been Rodney’s father, who died the day before Independence.