The Storm

by Arif Anwar

  “We’ll never hold our heads up in this country again,” Selwyn mutters. He is gaunt but athletic. With his thin trim mustache, he would be considered handsome if not for the mouth below, which is always on the edge of a sneer.

  “Who is the CO in Chittagong?” asks Teddie in an apparent attempt to change the subject.

  “Some odious little Irishman. We served together in Kirkuk.”

  “Explain.”

  “Oh, you know, typical state school specimen. You’ll know him when you see him. He’s scrubbed his accent, but can’t do much about the red hair and freckles.”

  “Right,” Teddie says awkwardly. But for the current CO being Irish, Selwyn may well have described Claire, whose look of contempt he misses.

  He taps ashes out of the window, grinning. “The only thing I’m looking forward to in that backwater is his reaction when he finds out that he’s to be under my command. He’ll have kittens!”

  “About that,” Teddie says. “I’ll be in Imphal the first few months, under Slim. I do hope you’ll keep an eye on Claire in my absence.”

  Selwyn smiles. “After our little incident on the platform, I might keep two.”

  Claire rises. “Excuse me.”

  She walks to the back of the train, goes through the end-door and out into the veranda, where the brakeman and a brace of waiters stand, smoking, all Burmese. Her sudden appearance puts them into wide-eyed shock that further deepens when she asks for a cigarette. The brakeman lights it for her and steps inside with the others. A few minutes later, she hears the door open. Teddie leans on the railing beside her.

  Minutes pass in which they say nothing, only observe the darkened Burmese plains fall away from them.

  “How’d you know I’d be here?” she asks eventually.

  “It’s a train, Claire. There are but two ways to go. Unless you’d jumped out the window and were running back to Rangoon.”

  “How could you say that to Selwyn? Asking that rude twit to keep an eye on me as though I’m some child who needs minding?”

  Teddie sighs. “Like it or not, he’s to be CO while we’re there. It’s best to have him as an ally. Besides, every time he’s said something daft in the past you’ve hit him for a six. I don’t imagine that tradition changing.”

  She weighs her response. Teddie means well, and in him she rarely detects the disdain with which other officers speak of the colonies and their native inhabitants. But when he accepted his assignment in Burma, she noted the eagerness with which he wore his new mantle of authority. It did not change him, but brought to the fore an easy arrogance that had not been apparent in the first years of their marriage.

  Perhaps that should not have surprised her. The blood in his veins ran from purple to blue if one went back a few generations. The portrait gallery in his family home in Hampshire is an endless array of admirals, sea lords, marquises and earls, until arriving at their roots in the morganatic branches of the House of Hesse-Darmstadt.

  She is of humbler stock, her father the owner of a construction company that profited off the wave of demolitions that befell the manor homes in England at the turn of the century. A man who, even after becoming quietly wealthy, insisted on preserving the memories of his childhood by passing them on to his four daughters, of whom Claire is the third. They never bought a car, nor moved out of the small Yorkshire farmhouse where Claire was born. Following her entrance to King’s College, she was told to survive on four shillings a week and to utilize luxuries such as cabs for only the direst emergencies.

  It was one such emergency that facilitated her first meeting with Teddie. Having taken a hackney cab to St. Pancras to catch her train home for Easter Holiday, Claire realized with horror that she had left her wallet at home. With the train about to leave in minutes, Teddie, alighting from a nearby cab, approached to pay on her behalf, and afterward lent a hand with her luggage. He refused her offer to repay him when she returned, and countered with the request for a stroll along the Thames and a coffee. She was reluctant to take things further once she learned of his social status, but his easy charm and persistence made her lower her guard. When they announced their betrothal a few months later, neither family was thrilled, but each acquiesced to the enthusiasm of the couple. Her father, of sufficient means given his thriving business, and unwilling to be shown up by his toff in-laws-to-be, was willing to spare no expense. However, the wedding was a restrained one at Claire’s request; she felt mortified by the attention the young and eligible Theodore’s marriage was generating from a bored press.

  As she stares at him, Teddie takes her hand. “This day hasn’t caught us at our best. But I know that better days will come.”

  He retrieves an object from his jacket pocket that gleams silver in the starlight. “I’d hoped to give you this under more pleasant circumstances. I didn’t forget, you know.”

  “It’s lovely. Thank you.” She turns the flask over in her hands. It is small, concave on one side. Even in the dark, she can appreciate the exquisite craftsmanship.

  “Turn it over,” he says, and she does. In the dim light, she can discern engraved letters—her initials surrounded by a wreath of leaves. She traces them with a finger.

  “Happy anniversary, Claire Louise Drake.”

  “Happy anniversary.”

  “Is this as good as it gets, Theodore?” she asks after they kiss and embrace. Teddie’s back is to the railing, and over his shoulders she can no longer see the flash and fire of bombs, a faint carpet of lights dwindling in the distance the only evidence of the city she has called home for the last three years.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is this as good as we can be here in the colonies? Taking the best of it and then running when things get hard? What was it that Forster said about us? That we’re cold and odd, moving like ice-streams through these lands? I’m beginning to think he was right.”

  “If there were anything I could do to get Myint on this train, I’d have done it, but we did the next best thing. Waugh and Geary are two of my best men. They’ll make sure she’s part of that evac. Myint will make it north to safety. I’m sure of it.”

  A CABLE from Waugh and Geary awaits them in Chittagong, confirming that they did put Myint on the staff evac, but despite urgent telegrams to their remaining contacts in Burma, no further news about the men and women on that convoy arrives as the Japanese sweep into the country and erect a wall of silence across the border.

  Claire and Teddie are put up in a bungalow called The Hermitage at the city’s western edge. It overlooks the Bay of Bengal and is set atop a hill at the end of a gravel path. The house is staffed with a bearer, two maids, a dorji for clothes she might wish tailored, a chaprasi to ferry messages from Teddie’s office to home, a khidmatgar to wait tables at dinner, and a chef who can cook both Western and Indian dishes. A gleaming ’37 Hispano-Suiza is provided for transportation, along with a driver.

  But over the course of the first week, she arranges for alternative employment for most of their staff, retaining only the services of the bearer and the maid. Teddie protests, but only mildly. He will be little impacted by these decisions, stationed as he is in Imphal, coordinating the Burma Theatre as generals Slim and Wingate plot how to recapture the country. He would work in Chittagong no more than two weeks out of every twelve. In his absence, she explains to him, she does not wish to live in a house full of strangers. But they both know the truth, that the fewer people she is surrounded by at her house, the less the chance that she will become close to one as she did with Myint, the less chance that she will leave someone behind should they once again be forced to flee.

  She reports for duty the same week. Unlike Rangoon, the garrison hospital in Chittagong is small—a casualty clearing station that provides post-operative care to patients already treated at the field dressing stations and advanced surgical units. Including Claire, there are four duty doctors, a staff of twelve nurses and a handful of orderlies who assist them day to day.

  The
war continues in the east. Day after day, soldiers wounded or dead, and refugees arrive after epic treks through the Arakan jungles, emaciated and swaying with hunger, their eyes yellow from typhoid and cholera. Once they recover, she gently inquires of them if they have been in Kalay recently, if they know of the convoys that made it out of Rangoon on the eve of the invasion. She describes Myint, hoping that someone has seen her, heard of something, anything.

  Teddie leaves, and while he is away, the officers’ club offers her some respite from the war. But other than the occasional pink gin by the bar, she takes little advantage of the club’s facilities: she misses the film nights, declines invitations to the all-ranks dances with officers and sergeants from Chittagong and those furloughed from Burma with injuries that vanish during conga sessions by the bar, the men dancing until they strip off their uniforms to reveal undershirts dark with sweat, the women until their finger-waved hair wilts and hangs on their cheeks, the war forgotten. Later, under the blue haze of cigar smoke and above the detritus of broken glass, they slump against each other, swaying to “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” forging rambling off-key choruses to “The White Cliffs of Dover.”

  She restricts her friendships to women she meets at the club, and over her first month in Chittagong a group emerges with her at the nucleus. All officers’ wives like her, but unlike her, none officers themselves. She forges the closest bond with Rachel, a pale, sad-eyed beauty from Cumbria whose husband, Harold, is also stationed in Imphal.

  The women, all of whom live close to each other, play rummy, bridge and carom at each other’s homes, the last leaving talc on Claire’s drawing room floor each time she dusts the board. They venture out as a group. For a picnic to the beach, Claire packs a basket full of bully beef, cottage loaf from a local bakery run by a Welsh woman, and cabbage salad. They bring swimsuits but never quite gather up the nerve to wear them and splash on the surf; under the watchful, disapproving eyes of the locals, they feel too exposed.

  Instead, they drink gin from their flasks as tiny crabs dance nearby, just feet from the line of the surf. Rachel bursts into tears at one point and admits that she and her husband Harold are having troubles. They console her the best they can, even as she suddenly throws her sandwich into the water and screams “Sod it all!” and laughs.

  The flock of local children watching them crowd in. Claire offers one corned beef on bread, but the child’s mother pulls him away, offended, assuming the meat is pork.

  DECIDING to visit Rachel the next day, she crosses the narrow tree-lined road between their homes. But when she knocks on the door there is no response. She walks in to find her friend in bed, awake, staring at the ceiling.

  “Hullo, dear,” Claire says, concerned.

  Rachel does not speak. The clock says it is half past ten. Seconds pass before Rachel trains her eyes down to Claire and offers a wan smile. In a low husky voice, she says, “You’re a pleasant surprise.”

  Claire takes a seat by her bed. “When did you wake up?”

  “At seven.”

  “And you’ve been in bed the whole time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.” As she has gotten to better know Rachel, Claire has discovered that despite her breezy manner and endearing quirks, her friend has a dark cellar in her, full of broken things. Fearful of encroaching too deep, she has probed Rachel on this only gingerly.

  But this day she does not need to, for Rachel says, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Claire. I feel so black sometimes, like some whirlpool is always pulling me down.”

  Claire takes her hand. “There are doctors who specialize in these things now. I can have a psychiatrist talk to you if you like.”

  Rachel snatches her hand away. “Why? You think I’m a lunatic?”

  “Of course not. We all go through hard times when we’re not at our mental best.”

  “Did you?”

  “At times.”

  “And did you talk to a psychiatrist?”

  “No. My work was busy enough to take my mind off things.”

  “Fine then. All I need is something to do.”

  Claire bites her lower lip, assessing. “Alright. Maybe there’s something we can do about that as well.”

  SHE is completing her morning rounds two weeks later, on a Sunday, when she hears a whisper from behind. “Psst, you there, pretty lass.”

  Rachel looks demure in her white-and-blue Red Cross uniform and hat. Her friend has excelled as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse so far. Amongst the other privileged wives and daughters of the well-to-do and powerful, she has stood out, performing less pleasant duties such as cleaning bedpans without complaint, quickly learning to administer injections (she admitted to having practiced on limes beforehand). In the process she has become someone Claire has begun to rely upon.

  “I thought I made it clear that I’m to be addressed as Captain Drake on hospital grounds,” Claire says with mock sternness.

  Rachel covers her mouth with her fingers and feigns distress. “Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am!”

  She draws closer. “Is your evening sorted out? I was thinking of getting a few drinks at the club tonight.”

  Claire looks out the window. The sun is shining bright, the leaves of the rain trees on the front grounds laved with the subtlest of winds.

  “I’ve a better idea,” she says. “When did you last catch a sunset on the beach?”

  WHEN she walks out to the lawn at the end of the day, Rachel is already waiting, looking smart with coiffed hair and red lips.

  “What’s all this?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, darling. It’s not for you.”

  “That’s a relief. Harold’s back from Imphal, is he?”

  Rachel does not answer.

  As a captain, Claire is permitted the use of a hospital gharry—an open-top jeep—and a driver, a fellow Yorkie lad named Joe. The three drive to the beach, no more than ten minutes passing before the car’s tires are cutting deep grooves into the sand and the salt air is lapping their faces.

  They head east along the sea, which is calm this day—a deep gray and blue. Rachel stands up so that the tail of her yellow-and-black scarf streaks in the air and lets out a cry of joy. Claire bursts out laughing.

  The jeep begins to slow, stopping beside a fishing boat made of light-colored wood. Twenty paces long, its prow—painted a fading red—surges up in a dramatic angle.

  Joe twists around in his seat to face them. “I know the fellow who owns the boat, Captain. On Sundays, he’s happy to take people out for rides on it. Ever been out on one of these?”

  THEY are soon drifting along the glassy shores of the bay, their faces held out to the beat of a kinder sun. Rachel—who managed to produce a flask filled with particularly fine scotch—is asleep at the stern, snoring softly. Claire is in the middle of the boat, looking out to the shore, where Joe and the jeep are tiny scale versions of themselves. Hashim, the boatman standing at the prow, has not spoken a word since they came on board, focusing his energies on rowing. He is stocky and wide, his hair shot with premature gray and brushing his shoulders. A boy of six or seven sits by his feet and looks to Claire and Rachel with wonder in his eyes, his mouth slightly agape.

  Claire smiles at him, attempts a mixture of English and Bangla. “Hullo. Tomar ki nam?”

  The boy gives a shy smile and squirms closer to his father. He is bare-chested, his face thin, hair long and bleached reddish from the sun.

  “His name is Jamir,” says Hashim.

  “Oh. Jolly good to meet you, Jamir.” She searches her purse. The Hershey bar is a bit melted in the heat, some of the chocolate leaking through the corners of the silver foil. She holds it out to him.

  Jamir looks from her to his father, who nods and says something to him in Bangla.

  Jamir reaches out for the sweet, takes it and turns it over in his hands.

  “You should eat it now, or put it under the prow. Or it’ll melt.”

  Hashim translates fo
r his son, and he chooses the latter option.

  “Where did you learn to speak English?” she asks the man.

  “When not fish, take sahibs and memsahibs for boat ride.”

  “Oh,” she flails around for a follow-up. “Your son. Does he go to school?”

  “Yes, memsahib. Class One,” Hashim says with quiet pride.

  “Claire!”

  They all start at Rachel’s shrill tone. “Stop interrogating those poor dears. Let the man get back to rowing.”

  She looks to the sky, and then addresses Hashim in loud, over-enunciated English. “It’s getting late. Can you take us back, please?”

  “Yes, memsahib.” Hashim begins to turn the boat. Claire gives him an apologetic smile and returns to the stern.

  “What were you three yammering about?” Rachel asks.

  “Just chatting to pass the time.”

  Rachel laughs, incredulous. “And what fascinating insights did they have to offer on current events?”

  “I wasn’t asking about current events. I was asking about the man and his son.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Never mind.” She shakes her head, wondering why they were friends.

  THEY return to shore, where Rachel shoves a wad of rupees in the boatman’s hand and heads for the jeep. The sun is setting in a great conflagration across the bay, giving the water a rainbow shimmer. In another part of the sky, lush dark clouds are massing.

  Claire takes the boatman’s rough, calloused hand in both of hers and holds it for a beat. “Thank you, Hashim. That was quite lovely. I do hope to ride in your boat again one day.”

  For the briefest moment, the boatman’s impassive mask slips to show surprise. “Bye, memsahib.”

  She pinches the cheek of Jamir, who still holds the Hershey bar—uneaten—in his hands and is looking at her with fascinated awe. “And you. Keep up with your studies, young man.”

  They drive for no more than five minutes before there is a bang and a hiss. Joe parks by a stand of firs and inspects the damage. It is the left front tire. They have driven over the jagged lip of a rock that protrudes from the sand.