His men, flanking him, raised a cheer but the echo from the assembled crowd was feeble. A pause. Outside in the alley, two men argued as they passed the open windows and fragments of their anger drifted in.
‘A dharna? You call that taking action?’
The crowd shifted. Anil stepped forward and faced them all. His eyes were calm. His voice was defiant. Asha’s stomach tightened.
‘Your day has passed, old man.’ He shook his head at Baba Satya. ‘No more talking. No more dharnas and rallies. What have they brought? Nothing. They laugh at us, the Britishers.’ He cupped his hand to his ear and made a show of listening. ‘Can’t you hear?’
The faces in the crowd were fixed on Anil. He knows, she thought. He knows these people and what they need. He has them.
Baba Satya lifted his hands. ‘I understand your impatience.’ He had the air of a weary teacher. ‘But listen to me when—’
Anil’s hand was still at his ear. ‘Is someone talking?’ He looked round, his face mocking. ‘Such a thin old voice, I can’t hear it. It is drowned out by the noise of the Britishers, laughing, cursing us all.’
The boorish young men who came with Anil started to heckle Baba Satya.
‘Go home, old man.’
‘Tell us, Anil. What to do?’
Their faces were shining with heat, perhaps with toddy also. Their fists punched the air. The small room seemed to rock with rising anger. The women shrank closer together.
Baba Satya opened his mouth to reply but his words were drowned by the growing commotion. A second later, he flinched and wiped off his cheek with the corner of his robe. A woman near Asha gasped. Someone had thrown a rotten apple. The insult to such a guru was unthinkable. The room seemed to hold its breath.
A moment later, a second missile streaked through the air. Then a third. Asha’s breathing quickened. They came ready for this, she thought. Anil watched now with a curious half-smile on his face.
The crowd frothed and shifted. Some men ducked their heads, whispered to each other. They seemed embarrassed to see the guru shamed. Others caught the rising mood of rebellion.
Anil’s men raised slogans.
‘Home Rule!’
‘Jai Hind!’
A forest of fists rose to beat the air.
Baba Satya’s men gathered round him, forming a shield and ushering him sideways towards the door to safety. The debris rained down on their heads like arrows. Still Baba himself twisted back, even as they propelled him out through the doorway, trying to reason with the men. News of this humiliation will spread rapidly, she thought. He is damaged by it, finished even. From this moment, he is yesterday’s man.
Once they had gone, Anil stepped to the front. He stood where, moments later, Baba Satya had been. The floor around his feet was littered with cabbage leaves, smears of apple pulp and broken tomatoes.
‘Will we fight?’
The room rocked.
‘Let’s teach our enemies a lesson, nah? Not words, not protests, but fists and sticks, guns and knives. Fight for our rights like real men.’
The men were agitated now, whipped up with alcohol and heat and the thrill of witnessing the father of the slum overthrown by an angry young warrior.
‘They don’t think we have the balls. Do we?’
The crowd roared. The woman beside Asha put her hands to her ears and lowered her head. The throb of the shouting shuddered through the fabric of the room. The wooden stools trembled under them.
Anil’s face was a mask of quiet control and yet his voice reached every corner of the room.
‘What are we waiting for? What do we have to lose?’
A scuffle broke out. A punch was thrown, a man staggered and the crowd bunched as it made space around him.
‘Save yourself for our real enemies.’ Anil smiled. ‘You know who they are. Not Britishers only but Mohammedans also, those brown-skinned traitors who hide amongst us and work with the British for themselves.’
He looked across the men, reading faces. Some looked uncertain.
‘Bhai, perhaps you know them? A butcher, a tanner, a labourer? Do not be deceived. These people are enemies in our own neighbourhoods.’
‘Curse them!’ A shout from Anil’s men. They jostled and strained.
Anil continued in the same commanding tone. ‘Why do you think these talks achieve nothing? Why? Because the Mohammedans plot against Hindustan. They work in league with the British devils.’
‘Kill them!’
‘Traitors!’
‘Are you men? Will you follow me and fight for freedom? Come, then! Come! Now. Tonight.’
Anil raised his hand. Light flashed. A knife. Asha froze. On all sides, the men pressed forward, shouting support. The anger was infectious.
‘Prove yourselves now, to your brothers, to your wives, to your sons!’
He turned to lead the baying crowd out into the night, his hand held high. Through the chaos of the crowd, the shifting bodies and flashing fists, his eyes found hers and his look was deliberate and full of power. See, it said. See what measure of man I am and how I command them and I will command you also.
Then he was again moving and the crowd pressed after him, screaming and pumping the air and the energy seemed to drain from the room as they surged out. Their cries became muffled and returned as echoes, which bounded off the walls of the alley and came back to them through the rusting windows.
A woman cried softly, her face in her scarf. Asha sank to the floor and wrapped her arms round her body and found herself rocking. She was spent, exhausted by a heady, confusing mixture of pride in this man who reached for her, who claimed her as his own, and fear at what he might do.
That night, she lay still on her bedroll inside the shack, straining to hear. The air was thick with heat. Inside, the only sound was the steady pulse of the aunties’ breathing and the low snuffles and dream-moans of the children curled against their sides.
Outside, a faint echo rose, diluted by distance. A clamour of male voices. Screams. Once or twice, the crack and pop of fire. She held her breath, listened. Where were they? She wasn’t sure. Beyond the body of the slum. But what of the Mohammedans? Some twenty or thirty came to the government school, including the pale, solemn children of the weavers from Benares. What of them?
Late in the night, Ramesh and his sons crept into the shack and settled themselves for bed. They smelt of smoke. Asha lay on her back as they stretched on their bedrolls and began to snore. She was too afraid to ask them where they had been, what they had done.
In the morning, the aunties, back from the well with water and crouched over the cooking fire, were hushed. Asha, washing her face and hands, felt the slap of their silence. It was strained and unnatural and it stretched across many households, many shacks. The air was acrid with hanging ash. The children rubbed their eyes and coughed as they woke.
When she set off through the slum, eyes slid away. Faces turned to the ground. Something terrible had happened. Everyone knew it and no one spoke of it.
She found her feet leading her off her usual path to school. No one would hurt a child, she thought. And the weavers, they’re no threat to us. The children who came to school were stunted by too little food, too little sleep. But they had large brown eyes and quick fingers and the smallest girl drew endless pictures of horses in her school book, horses galloping in mid-air with crooked legs and flowing manes and she took pleasure in the drawing, Asha could see it, whatever else she learnt.
She reached the rubbish dump and the stones underfoot became slippery with slime. The ash swirled more thickly, stirred up by her sandals. There was no sign of the scavenging boys who picked their way across the black, sodden rubbish. Only a pair of mangy dogs who sniffed and nosed and paid her no heed. A second smell now, keener than ash. She raised her scarf to cover her nose and mouth and took a moment to place it. Burnt hair. She knew it well. Sometimes the aunties, sitting by the cooking fire, raked through their hair with their fingers and threw the loose st
rands into the embers where they sizzled and gave off a pungent, visceral scent. The memory came back to her now.
She skirted the dump and followed the path down to the far side. She stopped, stared in horror. The single-storey landscape had been levelled. The shacks ahead lay in tatters. Walls had been smashed and contents scattered. A blackened, upturned pot here. There, in the ash, the handle of a ladle, the broken shaft of a spoon. She hurried on. Charred wood cracked and split under her weight.
There was no sign of the weavers nor their children. She picked her way through the debris, which was once their home. Only the brick storeroom was still intact. Its door hung open. Inside, fine ash rose in a cloud, disturbed by her footsteps as she approached. The smells were overpowering. Of singed cloth and burnt fibres but also of kerosene. A dark mound rose against the far wall. She walked across and prodded it with a stick. What had been a pile of silk, the most gorgeous, precious silk, fell into a hundred blackened, sooty fragments. Someone had taken pains to burn it. She let the stick drop.
Outside she stood for some time in the remains of the courtyard. The charred frame of the charpoy lay on its side, its rope lattice tattered and hanging in shreds. That was where the young girl sat, the child whose thin fingers drew galloping horses.
She wrapped her arms round her stomach and closed her eyes. The sun fell hot on her face. A bird cawed and flapped and the sound of its wings faded to quietness. She started to shake, lowered herself finally onto her haunches and crouched there, trying to breathe and waiting for the trembling to pass.
He had done this, Anil. She gripped her body tightly. Violence meant nothing to him. She had seen it with her own eyes, the day he knifed a man to death in front of her, daring her to be afraid. But to burn out families, with small children? Bile rose in her throat and she bent double as she retched.
When she recovered, she wiped off her mouth with her scarf and opened her eyes. She started. A girl, barely three, stood in the wreckage, staring at her. A strange child. Her salwar kameez was grey with overwashing and sagged at her neck. A jagged piece of salvaged wood hung from her hand. Her eyes were deadened.
‘Come, child.’ She held out her hand. ‘Where do you live?’
The child simply stared.
‘Where’s your good mother?’
Finally Asha took a step towards her, hand outstretched as if she were coaxing a wild dog. The girl, startled out of her trance, turned and scrambled away through the shafts of broken wood, raising clouds of ash with her small feet.
The Mohammedan children didn’t arrive for school. The remaining pupils spread themselves more liberally along the benches and filled the empty spaces. By lunchtime, it seemed as if they had never been.
After school, she went in search of Rahul. He sat at the back of his stall. He seemed to be sewing but when she sat beside him, she saw that his hands, always so busy, lay empty in his lap. His cheeks shone pale in the half-light and his eyes were sunken.
She bought chai from the boy at the stall and they sat together.
Finally she said: ‘You’ve heard?’
‘Those poor girls.’ His voice was broken. ‘They called me uncle.’
She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. The stall was cramped and airless. Motes of dust from the cloth danced in the weak shafts of light falling around them.
‘I am ruined.’ He was unnaturally calm. ‘I borrowed so much to buy silk yarn for them to weave into cloth. It was my dream, to make money for Sangeeta and the children. Was that a wrong thing?’
He seemed dazed. He lifted his chai-glass to his mouth but seemed to forget to drink. A cart rumbled past along the path.
‘Who did that? Do you know?’ He sounded suddenly fierce. ‘They were just children.’
She shuffled on her seat, buried her face in the rising milky steam from her glass.
‘Maybe they went back to Benares.’
He gave her a pitying look. ‘We talk about freedom and all we do is kill one another. They preach madness, these hotheads and goons. And no one has the courage to stop them.’
‘Hush.’ Asha put her hand on his arm and looked warily towards the street. ‘Do you want to be next?’
He shook her off. ‘So still I must be afraid to speak truth? Then they’re no better than the Britishers.’
She thought of Anil and the look he gave her as he led the men out into the slum to take revenge on their enemies.
‘Think of Sangeeta and the children. They need a husband, a father.’ She paused, turned to face him in the cramped space. ‘Listen to me, Rahul. No one must know about your business with the weavers. You hear me? These are dangerous times.’
His face was sullen but she felt his attention and went on.
‘You don’t understand these men. You are one of two things to them: a friend or an enemy. Don’t be a fool. Never speak of those children. We must carry on as if we know nothing.’
He blew out his cheeks. ‘What sort of world am I giving my daughter? Tell me.’
She shook her head. ‘Please, Rahul. For your family’s sake, be careful what you say.’
Chapter Forty-Four
Isabel
Isabel was sitting over a late breakfast with her mother when the commotion sounded on the drive. The frantic ringing of a bicycle bell. A woman’s voice, shrill, calling her name.
Her mother set down her cup and frowned.
‘Don’t get up, Mother.’ Isabel set aside her napkin and rose to her feet. ‘I’ll go and see.’
Sarah, red-faced and breathless, skidded to a halt in front of the bungalow. She rapped on the dining-room window with her bare knuckles, still astride her bicycle.
‘Goodness.’ Her mother peered. ‘Whatever’s the matter?’
Isabel ran outside. Sarah, bent double over the handlebars, struggled for breath. Isabel took her by the shoulders, helped her off the bicycle and guided Sarah to rest on the window sill.
Sarah opened and closed her mouth, barely able to speak, then pulled a crumpled piece of paper from her pocket and thrust it forward.
‘Tom?’
Sarah nodded.
The paper shook in Isabel’s hands as she unfolded it. It was a short, printed notification from the Red Cross. It took her a moment to understand. Captain Thomas James Winton. A prisoner of war of the Imperial Japanese Army. The name of the camp meant nothing to her but the place did: Singapore.
‘Oh, Sarah.’ She reached for her friend, pulled her close. ‘I thought—’
‘Alive.’ Sarah’s voice was muffled. ‘Thank God.’
Isabel hugged her, then turned to look again at the paper. ‘There’s hope, Sarah.’ She paused, not yet able to believe the printed words. ‘The war won’t last for ever.’
Sarah nodded, drew out her handkerchief. ‘Singapore. It’s so far away.’
‘Come inside.’ Isabel pulled Sarah to her feet. ‘We’re finishing breakfast.’
They walked into the cool of the bungalow. Isabel called to Abdul to set another place and pressed Sarah to eat.
‘Such a blessing.’ Her mother, grand at the head of the table, opened her arms in welcome and embraced the news. ‘We went through this whole business in the Great War.’
Sarah took a seat and the very English business of breakfast closed calmly around them all.
Her mother took the lead, advising how to put together a parcel. How soon the war would be over. How quickly Tom would be home.
Isabel was silent. Her toast sat uneaten on her plate.
When they finished breakfast, her mother got to her feet.
‘Sarah, you must come at once and write to him. Use my writing desk. The Red Cross people will know how to send it.’ She turned to sweep out of the room, calling over her shoulder: ‘Letter first. Then we’ll think of a parcel.’
Sarah looked across at Isabel. ‘You write too, Izzy.’ Sarah hesitated. ‘Write to Edward. Maybe they’re both there.’
Isabel forced a smile. ‘I’m so pleased for you, Sara
h. Really.’
Delhi, August 1942
My dear Edward,
Sarah has word that Tom is a POW in Singapore. She is writing to him now and orders me to write to you too. She holds out hope that the Red Cross may somehow find you there as well, in one camp or another.
It is late morning. We sit indoors with the French windows thrown open. The verandah is simply baking. Outside, the mali is pacing the lawn, sending an arc of spray across the grass from his ancient watering can. The soft patter of falling water and the rich scent of hot, moist earth drift in. The garden is quite ruined. The first monsoon came late this year and the sun is so relentless that all the plants are limp and yellow.
It is so difficult, my darling, not to know where you are. I try to believe you may be alive. I try to believe that, one day, this wretched war will end and we will be together. But there are times when all I feel is darkness and silence and it frightens me. What fools we were, to waste so many years. I was afraid too, Edward. Simply afraid. You seemed happy in Car Nicobar, happy without me.
My father wants me to leave Delhi and see out the war in England. Not in London – the blitz sounds too awful – but with my aunt. I won’t go. For all its troubles, this is my home. I shan’t quit India, whatever Mr Gandhi says.
Mother, of course, won’t leave my father’s side. She was never one to abandon even the leakiest ship. So be assured that when this is over and you come to claim me, as I hope you may, I shall be waiting for you here. I pray with all my heart for that time to come soon.
Isabel
Her father came home late that evening. Her mother had already retired to her room, leaving Isabel to wait up alone in the darkness of the sitting room. Outside, the trees cast long shadows across the moonlit lawn.
She sat in silence, thinking.
She and Sarah had taken their letters to the Red Cross office that afternoon. It was a hot, hectic place, staffed by volunteers.
They waited in a long queue. A middle-aged woman, her hair tied back in a silk scarf, perched on a tall stool and entered details from the envelopes in a ledger.
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