by John Masters
Peter nodded thoughtfully. ‘You’re right. I’ll call a conference tomorrow. The D.S.P. can give us the latest reports. You can send a man to it, and I’ll have Mughrib representing the shopkeepers, and all the District Board members that I can get hold of, of course.’
Adam said carefully: ‘That’s a good idea, Peter, but tomorrow may be too late. The warnings ought to go out now--immediately.’ ‘That would mean closing a lot of the go-downs along River Street,’ Peter said, ‘and moving the people out of some of the houses, too.’
‘Yes,’ Adam said, ‘it would.’
Peter said: ‘That’s going to cause a lot of disruption. I think we can leave it to the conference tomorrow to decide what should be done.’
Adam said: ‘But---‘ With a superhuman effort he held down his impatience. ‘Very well, Peter. Make it early, won’t you? And you’ll send that telegram right away?’
‘I have it ready,’ Emily broke in. ‘Sign it here, will you, Peter.’ He signed absently, and she called the chuprassi and told him to take the message to the telegraph office at once. She felt Adam Khan’s eyes on her all the time.
Adam stood up. ‘I must go, Peter. What about half-past eight?’
‘For the conference?’
‘Yes.’
She said: ‘I’ll see that everyone’s notified.’
Adam had opened the door, and she followed him out, calling over her shoulder: ‘I’ll see Adam out, Peter.’
Then Adam closed the door gently and they walked down the passage side by side.
He said: ‘I’m going to send out flood warnings right away, on behalf of the Congress Committee. Harnarayan’s due back from Lahore this evening, but I don’t know whether we dare wait even that long.’
They had stopped under the porte cochère. It was a heavy, dull evening, and behind her she could hear ayah singing to the children, and the splashings in the bathtub. Adam said: ‘I think Harnarayan is going to come back with a new policy, not to co-operate with you at all--but I am afraid that nine-tenths of the people won’t believe us if we issue a flood warning on our own. They’ll think it’s some trick of politics. And of course we have no power to make them do anything. All the same, I’m afraid I’ll have to do it.’
She said: ‘Peter’s going to retire early next year.’
He said nothing for a time, and when he spoke it was only to say: ‘Gerry would have died twice rather than that this should happen.’ They were silent together, standing on the top step.
Adam said in a different tone of voice: ‘I hear Baber came to see you this afternoon. It was about his young lady, I suppose? She is an excellent girl. What did you advise?’
She said: ‘Nothing. I felt I couldn’t.’
‘That was wise of you. But you have always been wise. The poor boy is in such a turmoil that he is coming to see me tomorrow. I think, even, that he will take my advice.’
‘What are you going to tell him?’
‘After the Amritsar massacre, what can I say?’ Adam said sadly. ‘I will do all I can to prevent him joining your army. Perhaps he will come to us in the party yet. Good night.’
‘Good night, Adam,’ she said. ‘I’ll make sure everything’s seen to right away.’
A tonga bell jangled cheerfully at the entrance to the drive, and she saw the tonga lights swing into view. Adam’s face began to tilt sideways, and the sound of the tonga wheels on the gravel grew louder and louder. She was on her knees, her hands supporting her. Adam was rolling down the steps head over heels the lights swayed, swayed swung, a sound of rushing tearing grinding increased, a wind coming, from nowhere shrieked up and up in pitch till her eardrums would break I am dying, she thought I have had a heart attack, I am dying. Oh! The children’s faces sprang into form, and she began, to crawl, towards them, calling, ‘Peter! Darling!’ But a huge formless weight pressed her into the gravel and Adam was there bleeding from a long cut, his trousers torn, and Peggy’s voice rose in a shrill low sound like the howling of a dog--’Harry! Harry! What’s happened?’ The wind! Ah, the wind had gone as suddenly as it came. She stood, up, unsteadily, climbing, the steps to, get to Peter.
The side of the porte cochère had collapsed. The tonga lights had gone out, and the lights in the bungalow, and in the city. It was absolutely silent and there was glass under her feet. The bungalow still stood, but slowly chunks of noise roared like avalanches through the silence as a distant house fell, a block of plaster fell, a tower in the city fell. Then, rising like the wind that had accompanied the earthquake, she heard the slowly gathering sigh of men and women and children crying under the ruins.
Near at hand heavily shod feet pounded towards her--crash, crash, crash. Harry Walsh’s voice was yelling: ‘Steady! Steady!’ He was beside her, his face a foot from hers. ‘Are you hurt?’ he said curtly. ‘Good. Get the children, everyone, out of the building. It’ll come again.’ His voice was harsh, and she saw that he was trembling and shaking and visibly fighting to quiet the shrieking of his nerves. His eyes were never still and snapped from her to the dark garden, to Adam, to Peggy coming slowly forward behind him, to the sky. ‘It’s come again,’ Harry said. ‘It’s just like the war--everything ruined, everything, everything everyone had made.’ His voice rose in a yell. ‘Look! Look!’ He pointed at the city, where there was nothing to see and to hear, only the rising moan.
Peter came out, nursing his arm. ‘No one is seriously hurt here,’ he said. ‘Now--what’s the first thing to be done?’
Chapter 34
By nine o’clock the sense of a visitation from forces more powerful than any on earth had left her, slowly submerged under the lesser, because understood, realization of an appalling natural calamity--a violent earthquake. From eastern dark to western trees the night sky flared with the licking tongues of fires. Her children and household were safe. The bungalow had suffered no major damage though one end of the veranda had caved in, a beam fallen across Peter’s study, and most of the glass shattered. There was no rain, though clouds hid the stars. A wind had been growing gradually for the past hour and a half as the heat of the fires in the city sucked in the cold air from the Maghra Valley. Occasionally the rumble of stone and brick, sounding like a train in a tunnel, came through the whipping curtains into the drawing-room.
Much had happened. Officials and private citizens had come, and gone or stayed. A dozen families had come to the compound, carrying a few bundles, their children clutched in their arms or running silent and frightened at their knees, and now squatted in huddled groups under the wall or along the veranda.
She herself had just gone with the bhisti to make sure that the well was in working order, for the town mains had burst and there was no water in the taps.
Six people were gathered in the drawing-room--Peter; Adam Khan; his son Baber; Smythe, the District Superintendent of Police; Harry; and Peggy. It was not a formal conference, since these and others had been coming and going since the shock. All were filthy, and the carpet was stained and splotched with ash and cinders and powdered brick. Smythe’s tunic was smeared with blood, but no one had time or interest to ask him whose blood it was.
Baber stood with legs apart and nostrils flared, tensed for action, and his young Arab stallion champed at its head-rope in the garden. ‘I will bring in all the men from the villages to the west,’ he said, ‘with mattocks and spades. They will need crowbars too, sir. Can you provide them?’
Peter said: ‘I think so. . . . Yes. . . . Emily, make a note to get Yar Khan back here. . . . But, Baber, perhaps the villages have suffered as much as the city.’
‘No, sir,’ Baber cried energetically. ‘I told you when I came in, there was little damage. The houses are not heavy. Can I go now?’
Peter said: ‘Very well. ... I think that’s best.’
Baber strode to the open french windows. ‘I’ll bring them to the octroi post on the Lahore road. The first ones should be in by midnight.’ A moment later she heard the stallion’s neigh, and then the crunch
and gallop of its hoofs fading down the drive.
‘Looting’s going to be a problem later,’ Smythe said. He was a short man with a cropped ginger moustache and ginger hair. ‘My chaps have so much else to do. I’d like three or four hundred Gurkhas from Manali to help with street cordons and the rest of it--more, if we can get them.’
‘Have you been able to make any guess at the number of casualties yet?’ Adam Khan asked. He was more composed than his son but there was the same excited sense of crisis there, softened in him by sadness at the human effects of the calamity.
‘About ten thousand dead,’ Smythe said bluntly, ‘mostly in the Gujarabad sector. Everyone who can is running away from it now, but in the morning they’ll start coming back to rescue
Granny and dig up the gold mohurs from under the floor. We’ll have to cordon the whole sector off while we search the ruins. We ought to ask for those soldiers at once, Peter. The telegraph’s open to Manali. They know we’ve had a ‘quake.’
‘We’re not through to Lahore, though?’ Peter said.
‘No,’ Smythe said, impatiently brushing his hand up under his moustache. ‘But we don’t need to ask H.E.’s permission to call on the Army now. I’ll sign the message if you like.’ His look was openly contemptuous. Emily told herself that she hated him for his insensitiveness, his coarse skin and manner, and his taking advantage of Peter. But it was not true. She sympathized with him.
‘Well, can I?’ he repeated harshly.
‘If you think you’ll need them . . . Yes,’ Peter said.
‘Good. I’m going down to the kutcherry now. You’ll find me there if you want me.’ He walked out, swinging his swagger cane. At the window a constable handed him a shotgun. He put it over his shoulder and disappeared. The two pairs of boots faded, crunch-crunch, down the drive.
Emily could not bear to look at Peter sitting there alone in the middle of the big sofa, and stole a glance at Harry and Peggy. Harry’s face was without expression; only his eyes moved restlessly, like a bird’s, fastening on to the face of each person who spoke and, when there was silence, turning to Peggy or looking out of the windows to catch something in the heaving sky. Peggy was beautiful, calm, smooth and rounded and lovely. Smythe had hardly taken his eyes off her; and Peggy had not taken her eyes off Peter. She sat on a high chair in sensuous, drowsy satisfaction, a woman fulfilled.
Now she spoke. ‘Peter, why don’t you get Harry to put each member of the Meru expedition in charge of a gang of volunteers and set them to rescue work? Most of them were officers in the war and have some sort of experience that would be useful.’
Peter nodded. ‘That’s a good idea, Peggy. What do you say, Harry?’
‘Yes,’ Harry said, the word tight and bitten off. ‘I’ve been over there once. They’re all working on a house that fell down right next to the dak bungalow. Where shall I bring them?’ Peter appeared to be thinking. Emily said: ‘The kutcherry would be best, Peter. It’s on the edge of the Gujarabad sector.’
‘And that young man, Baber, Adam’s son, can be told to bring his men there, can’t he?’ Peggy said.
Peter said: ‘All right. As soon as you can, Harry. Smythe will find something for you to do until the volunteers arrive.’ Harry and Peggy rose to their feet. Peggy came over to Emily. ‘Can’t we start a tea and soup kitchen or something, Emily, at the kutcherry? For the people who are working, I mean. We can’t possibly feed the victims.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Speak to my cook, and get the khansamah down from the dak bungalow with all the stores he has. There’s a shop close to the kutcherry which we can raid, and get tea and sugar at least. I’ll be down in an hour.’ She knew she ought to go at once, not in an hour, but she dared not leave Peter; and Peggy, lazily competent, knew that.
Adam Khan said: ‘We can help there, Peter. As Peggy said, we can’t feed all the victims, but we can get an organization to do so started. I’ve sent messengers to get hold of the committee, telling them to meet at that shop Emily was talking about, next to the kutcherry. About an hour and a half from now I can get, say, two hundred people together to run a camp for refugees. You designate a place and give us authority to get supplies wherever we can find them.’
‘I thought Harnarayan was away,’ Peter said.
‘He is,’ Adam said impatiently. ‘He was due back by bus this evening from Lahore, but we don’t need to wait for him. I can vouch for the committee and the party. We’ll do all we can now, and argue later. This is no time for politics.’
Peter said: ‘I agree. Where do you suggest would be a good place for your camp?’
Adam said: ‘We’re going to need plenty of room--water--but not far out, because a lot of people aren’t going to be able to walk very far.’
‘The fields outside the River Gate?’ Peter said enquiringly. Adam shook his head. ‘No. Don’t forget the flood. Have you had any report on the river? That’s still rising, as far as we know.’
Peter said: ‘I suppose it is. Emily, we’ll have to get Yar Khan to keep an eye on that too.’
‘The old cavalry maidan and the fields beyond are the best area,’ Adam said. ‘I’ll tell them that’s the place.’
‘All right,’ Peter said. ‘I don’t think there’s anything else we can do just now... I’ll be going down to the kutcherry as soon as I’ve had something to eat.’
Now, at the heels of a distant rumble, Emily heard sandalled feet slapping down the veranda towards the windows. The three of them turned as a thin, tall man with an ascetic face entered the room. His eyes were black and luminous and his hair thick, luxuriant, and black above the tall, narrow forehead. ‘Harnarayan!’ Adam said. ‘Thank heaven you got here.’
‘We were only five miles out when the shock came,’ the man said. ‘The driver refused to go on, so I walked. Good evening, Mr Savage. Good evening, ma’am.’
‘Can I give you something to eat?’ Emily said. ‘Some tea?’ He looked tired and taut.
‘No, thank you, ma’am, I came only to find Adam. I was told he was here. Will you come along now, Adam? We have something urgent to discuss.’
‘I have called the committee to meet in the room above Gupta’s store,’ Adam said. ‘We’re going to organize a refugee camp on the old cavalry maidan.’
‘I’m afraid that will be impossible,’ Harnarayan said formally.
Adam said: ‘It is not impossible. We can’t do everything, but we can provide a framework. Otherwise there’d be no leaders, and everything would take much longer.’
‘Exactly,’ Harnarayan said harshly. ‘Why should we get the British out of trouble? They suppress us, and then when they need us they think they can call on us and we’ll help them.’
Peter said nothing. Emily blurted: ‘Ten thousand people--Indians--are dead, Mr Harnarayan! More are dying every minute. Besides, isn’t this a chance for you to show that you can organize help as well as resistance?’
Harnarayan said: ‘Possibly, madam, but we prefer to let the people see for themselves how thoroughly bad and helpless your government is, even mechanically. That way they will realize their own strength. We must go, Adam.’
‘Wait!’ Adam said. ‘I can’t believe you mean what you say, Haru. Look!’ He pointed out of the windows, where the sky hung like an embroidered curtain over the city and the low wailing faltered up and down the scale and in the foreground men and women trailed slowly across the lawns. ‘Our people are dying, they’re trapped in the houses! Those who got out have no food, no shelter, no water!’
‘Individually any member of the Congress may do what he wishes,’ Harnarayan said. ‘As a party we will not raise a finger to help the British.’
‘You’re wrong,’ Adam said, and now he spoke as harshly as Harnarayan. ‘You’re wrong, even politically. Don’t you realize that every man and woman we help will know it’s the Congress that’s helping him? We’ll come out of this with the party stronger here than anywhere in India.’
‘No,’ Harnarayan said. ‘There can be n
o compromise. We are not going to co-operate, in anything, at any time, with the British oppressors. This disaster will show a lot of things up in their true colours. All those who have accepted the sops the British throw to them will wait for the British to do something. And they can’t. It’s too big. They need everyone’s help--but everyone’s indifferent. “The English will rescue us,” they say. Well, we’re going to let them.’
Adam Khan turned back from the windows. He said quietly: ‘No, we’re not, Harnarayan. We’re going to help. We have to. I gave my word to Peter, and even if I hadn’t, I would say that we must.’
Emily thought: Peter ought to have Harnarayan arrested at once. That would leave Adam a free hand to persuade his committee to do what they should. She glanced outside, where a chuprassi and a policeman squatted, half dozing against a pillar of the veranda.
Adam saw her look, and must have guessed her thoughts, for he said: ‘It won’t do any good to arrest him--in the long run. This is something we must argue out among ourselves. Come on, Haru.’
‘Very well,’ Harnarayan said. ‘But you will lose. The committee will do what I tell them.’
‘We’ll see,’ Adam said. ‘I’ll meet you at the kutcherry in about an hour, Peter. Don’t forget about the floods.’ He followed Harnarayan out of the room, and she was alone with the man on the sofa, Mr Peter Savage, D.S.O., I.C.S., Deputy Commissioner and District Magistrate of the Rudwal District of the Punjab.
An hour later, with Emily riding at Peter’s side, a groom running at their heels and the policeman and the chuprassi hurrying behind, they reached the kutcherry. It was an ugly quadrangle of buildings containing a small treasury, Peter’s court, and a few offices, including Smythe’s. A high wall surrounded it, and one entered through a tall arch set just back from the busy street. Now the arch had fallen in, and a few of the offices had crumbled, but as a whole the group still stood.
Emily saw at once that Gupta’s shop was undamaged, and that there was a crowd outside it. The only light came from reflections in the low sky and from a house burning a hundred yards away down a side street. Peggy was there already, a tent set like an awning beside the fallen arch, the khansamah from the dak bungalow lighting a fire, and nameless men running hither and thither with pots, pans, sacks, and buckets. Harry stood beside Peggy, staring at the rubble, at the burning house, at the sky. When Emily came close enough she saw that his face was set, emotionless, and deliberately unanxious. That look--she had watched it for an hour in the living-room--had worried her by calling up memories, and now she placed them. Gerry used to look like that when Peter was leading towards some height that Gerry feared he was incapable of surmounting. It was panic, transmuted by a lifetime of training into something that was the opposite of panic--a control so tight that a sudden, unexpected blow would shatter it.