by John Masters
‘Brother-in-law,’ Fred said flatly. ‘And he was only Bill Hoggin till January 1st.’
‘Good enough for the girls of Rawalpindi,’ Mitchell said. ‘Since the war began the best they’ve had is solicitors not yet articled, shoe salesmen, bank clerks, all dressed up as officers …’
He turned off the cart track, slipped through a gap in the prickly pear, and said, ‘There we are.’ In front, a hundred yards away, a body of water perhaps three hundred yards long by a hundred wide glistened ghostly pale in the starlight. Darkness woven into the shimmer at the edges showed reed beds ten to twenty feet thick. A distant quack broke the silence and Mitchell muttered, ‘They’re beginning to wake up … Here.’ He led on fast along the right side of the jheel until they reached a low mud wall, semi-circular in shape – ‘The blind … we built it last November at the beginning of the season.’ He moved into the semi-circle and sat down, his eyes now level with the top of the wall. He whispered, ‘They always get up just before the sun rises, then make two or three circuits of the jheel before flying off to their grazing grounds. So don’t hurry your first shots – they’ll be back … There may not be many. It’s late and a lot have already started for Tibet and Sinkiang – that’s where they breed.’
They waited, side by side, the shotguns broken and cartridges laid out on top of the mud wall – No. 4 for the hard-breasted mallard. Fred wondered what he would see when the light came, beyond the pond, or jheel as they called it here … houses, cottages, trees? Or just the reaching flat plain, broken up into so many small fields, here and there little hovels seemingly made of straw? … He wouldn’t shoot at a female if he could help it. She might be carrying eggs already, if it was so late in the season. Mallard drakes were distinct enough with that brilliant colouring he remembered from England … but would they be the same here?
He turned to ask Mitchell, but Mitchell spoke first – ‘They’re getting ready. Load!’
The light was spreading from the east, behind them, as they looked down the long axis of the jheel. A stunted, twisted thorn tree guarded the far end of the lake like an ancient gnarled sentinel. To the right there was a field, green beginning to show along the ground. A tendril of mist was creeping out from the water across the field, nearly two hundred yards away. The water shone more brightly every moment … small dark objects were floating on it … over his shoulder a dull orange fire was burning below the horizon, three palm trees silhouetted against it. A clattering and quacking suddenly erupted and Mitchell breathed – ‘There they go!’
Dark lumps separated from the water, rose into the air, broke up into individual elements and began to whizz round the jheel, twenty feet up. They were coming straight over … Fred had his gun ready, loaded, safety catch off, the barrel swinging ahead of the lead mallard. Both men fired together, and then again, the second barrels. One duck hurtled into the water, ‘Mine!’ Mitchell cried. ‘Watch it, Sligo!’
They waited, tense, as the flight circled the jheel and came again. Again Fred aimed carefully at the leading mallard drake, its plumage now brilliant green and black in the glowing light of dawn … both barrels … both missed. Another bird crashed down, this time hitting the ground ten feet behind them with a hard thud. Once more the flight wheeled over the sun, and came back, now nearly a hundred feet up. Fred swung more easily, gave his chosen bird a bigger lead, and, slanting his finger across the triggers, fired both barrels at once. The mallard wavered, half-turned as feathers flew out of its breast, then slowly curved down to earth, the angle of its fall increasing as its wings folded in death. To the right, Mitchell had killed another, a female. They waited, but the sun was breaking the rim of the horizon, and the flight of mallards, now reduced to a dozen, was winging fast across the plain towards the south.
Mitchell broke his gun and took out the cartridges with which he had immediately reloaded as soon as he had fired. ‘They won’t come back till the evening,’ he said – ‘The evening flight … Short but sharp, wasn’t it? … Rather like going over the top, I suppose?’
‘Not much,’ Fred said.
‘Well, let’s walk up the fields on the off chance of putting up some snipe. There are two or three small jheels along here and the ground between’s apt to be marshy, which snipe like … roast snipe for breakfast, yum yum!’
‘Then what? It’s only half-past six and we can’t spend more than a couple of hours after snipe, I suppose.’
‘We go back to the dak bungalow, and do some Chinese PT – that is, sleep … or drink a few bottles of Murree beer, of which I brought two cases, as you saw … eat tiffin, which will be curried chicken – it always is, in every dak bungalow and inspection bungalow in India.’
‘What about a girl?’
Mitchell stopped and looked at him in mock horror, his thick eyebrows raised, the curved full lips making a moue of shock. ‘A woman? Out here barely five miles from Mandra Junction? My dear Fred Stratton, there are a couple of brothels in ’Pindi, which officers patronise – one even has a white girl in it – Rumanian, I believe … but apart from that, unless you can get any of the fishing fleet to part their legs for less than a wedding ring, you will have to be a virtuous celibate while serving in the Brightest Jewel of the British Crown. You must set an example to the natives. You must show that you are impervious to the petty lusts which make them what they are … unreliable, idle, ignorant, subservient … and dark-skinned. This way. We’ll begin on this line.’
A thin Indian peasant appeared from a mud hut at the edge of the field, wearing nothing but a turban and a loin cloth, his hands clasped together in silent supplication or obeisance. Mitchell said, ‘No, we are not going to tread on your crops … chale jao!’
It was near ten o’clock at night, and a fire burned in the grate in the dak bungalow’s central room, used for dining, drinking, and reading the old copies of Blackwood’s. They had taken the evening flight, killed one duck – the flight was only six birds, all very wild – and then a mist had settled on the jheel, and they had returned damp and chilly to the bungalow. Now, dinner eaten – roast duck from the morning’s bag – and the bearers gone to their places in the servants’ quarters, Sligo curled up on the dhurrie under the open window, the two men talked. Whiffs of charcoal smoke, mixed with the acrid tang of a bidi, drifted in from outside, to be instantly drowned by Mitchell’s pipe.
‘Not a bad day,’ Mitchell said. ‘Six duck, four snipe … and a peacock.’
‘Why were you so upset when I shot it?’
‘They’re sacred to some Indians. The natives become restive if you shoot them. They even forget who’s master.’
‘I don’t understand how we can rule India,’ Fred said. ‘I was forty-eight hours in the train coming up from Bombay. I didn’t see a white face except some of the other passengers. I thought there’d be British troops on guard everywhere. Why, there are more Indian soldiers here than ours.’
‘There are … but no Indian artillery, except mountain guns. If anyone’s going to dish out whiffs of grape, it’ll be us … Look, there’s always been an Indian intellectual class. And now a middle class is coming into existence. They want to take over, and now they can say – every Indian can say when this war’s over – that they’ve earned the right. They’ve fought everywhere at our side, and they’re all volunteers, every man jack … in France, Gallipoli, Egypt, Palestine, Mespot, Persia … everywhere. They’ve had heavy casualties – especially from here, the Punjab. They’re saying, “Look, I’m grown up. Give me the keys.”’
‘What are we going to do?’ Fred said, ‘just walk out?’ He felt indignant. Brown-skinned people were inferior to white-skinned. The Old Sweats in the regiment when he joined had told him the only way to treat niggers was to kick them in the arse … and India belonged to England.
Mitchell said, ‘I don’t know. I only know there’ll be trouble … which means work for British soldiers – Aid to the Civil Power, Fred. Out in the streets shooting rioters. And it’s always in some stinking city, i
n the middle of the hot weather. It’s worse than the Frontier, which is fine, as we’ve just been told we’re due up there in November. Just as it’s ready to blow up too, if you ask me.’
‘What’s their grievance?’
‘They – the tribesmen who live along the North-West Frontier – object to us telling them whom they can shoot and plunder and whom they can’t. They’re fanatical Muslims, and we are infidels, so fighting us becomes a little jehad, a Holy War. And at the moment, where is the army that used to give them a real fight?’
Fred frowned, then said, ‘Oh, you mean it’s in France.’
Mitchell nodded – ‘Or dead. You haven’t seen much of the 8th Wealds yet, but what do you think of us, compared with the 1st Battalion?’
Fred said, ‘They aren’t a patch on us – them. There’s no snap … pride … toughness of body and mind, I suppose.’
‘Why should there be? What have we done to learn those things? Parade for Governors and Viceroys … shoot rioters armed with bricks … bash our charpoys from Calcutta to Rawalpindi … No, the tribesmen can see perfectly clearly what’s happened – the old army, British and Indian, has been sent off to fight a war somewhere else. The second-rate, the dregs, are left to guard the Frontier, so … let’s have a bash. We’d better tighten up before we go up there, to the Frontier’ – he jerked his head to the west – ‘because now we aren’t fit for it … Another peg?’
‘Yes, please … make it a bara this time.’
‘Ah, you’re catching on.’
Fred was having tea with Miss Broadhurst-Smythe, and her father. The colonel was able to join them as it was Thursday, which, Fred had discovered, was always a whole holiday in India. The bearer, in spotless white with the yellow achkan and black cummerbund of Skinner’s Horse, and the regimental crest on his starched turban, had served tea, and left. Fred held his cup warily, his little finger extended, like Daphne’s.
The colonel was eating fruit cake and speaking angrily through it, as he was not in a good temper – ‘The natives need teaching a lesson,’ he said. ‘Damned fellow didn’t stand up when I went into his shop before tiffin … Karam Chand, the cloth merchant. When I first came out to this country Indians had to lower their umbrellas or parasols if they passed you on the pavement … never saw one in a first-class compartment in a train either … They’ll start ogling our women next.’
Daphne said, ‘The war’s upset them. They’ve been to Europe and killed white men, even if they were Germans.’
‘You think we’ll be all right?’ Fred asked cautiously. ‘I mean, that we’ll stay in India for a long time?’
‘For ever,’ the colonel said vigorously. ‘These people can never govern themselves, quite incapable of it. Look at the native States – corruption, inefficiency, nepotism, debauchery … Why, in …’ He cut himself short.
Daphne said eagerly, ‘What, Daddy?’
‘I can’t tell you. Not even if you were married. Things go on in the States that no decent Englishwoman should hear – or would understand. And that’s what the whole of India would be like if they were ever given self-government here … And as for the Frontier, why, the tribes would be on them before you could say knife … and knife would be the right word. In a month there wouldn’t be a rupee or a virgin between the Indus and Delhi … Have a piece of cake, Stratton.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Fred took a slice off the proffered plate.
Daphne said, ‘What’s Walstone Park like, Captain Stratton? May I call you Fred? I seem to have known you for so long.’
‘Please do, Miss Broadhurst-Smythe.’
‘Please call me Daphne.’
‘Thank you, Daphne … well, Walstone Park’s a very big house, a mansion, and it’s also the estate, the park … about a thousand acres, I think, and …’
Daily Telegraph, Thursday, March 7, 1918
ROUMANIA SIGNS PEACE
According to a Bucharest telegram received via Vienna at Amsterdam yesterday, and forwarded by Reuter’s correspondent, the preliminary peace between Roumania and the enemy Powers was signed at Buftea on Tuesday evening. The text of this treaty is as follows:
Animated by a common wish to terminate the state of war and restore peace between Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey on the one part, and Roumania on the other part the signatories … after an examination of their full powers, have agreed … that … a fourteen-day truce is to run from midnight March 5, 1918, with a period of three days for its denunciation. Complete agreement exists between the signatories that a final peace is to be concluded within this period on the basis of the following agreement:
I. Roumania secedes to the Allied Powers the Dobrudja as far as the Danube.
II. The Power of the Quadruple Alliance shall provide for the maintenance of a trade route for Roumania via Constanza to the Black Sea.
III. The frontier rectifications demanded by Austria-Hungary on the Austro-Hungarian-Roumanian frontier are accepted in principle by Roumania.
IV. The economic measures corresponding to the situation are likewise conceded in principle.
V. The Roumanian Government undertakes to demobilize immediately at least eight divisions of the Roumanian Army …
This treaty has, of course, been forced on Roumania by the course of events, over which she had no control … The terms propose to ignore the principles of nationality and do violence to Germany’s own declarations against annexation …
Cate sat back, drinking his coffee. What all that boiled down to was that Roumania had been knocked out of the war: which would free the enemy to move more troops to the Western Front, and against Italy. It was another chill warning that when the expected German assault came, it would be no light matter. Whom would they attack? The British line seemed to be the favourite, in the rumours and speculations; but surely it would be better, from the German point of view, to attack the French? Everyone knew by now how close the French had been to collapse last spring and summer. Their morale could not be high … and it was such a short distance, in a straight line, from Verdun to Paris … and so to the Atlantic ports where the Americans were pouring in.
Americans … John, Stella; he must not call the Commissioner again or they’d write him off as a damned nuisance …
Garrod came in with the mail, for the postman was late today … perhaps the train had been late; and there had been very heavy rains, flooding the Scarrow across some roads. His heart leaped when he saw the handwriting on the top envelope. He opened it with trembling hands:
London, March 6, 1918 … My dearest, darling Christopher – It has taken me for ever to get this letter started. It is to tell you that as soon as Stella is found, and I am sure it can not be long now, I will return home. Being in England, so close to you and yet so far, so impossibly separated, is tearing me apart – just as it did before I left last time. I don’t want anyone else, only you … Isabel.
Cate’s head drooped and a tear fell on the letter in his hand. He hardly heard Garrod’s low murmur – ‘Mrs John Rowland, sir … She said it was urgent.’
Then his sister-in-law was in the room, pulling up a chair, too intent on her own business to notice his state – ‘Christopher, you’ve got to come in with us now. Roumania out of the war … ghastly offensive coming, thousands of dead, wounded, maimed. We must stop the war now, by any and every means available to us … strikes, sabotage, lie on the railway lines, in front of lorries … You’re not listening.’
‘I’m listening, Louise,’ Cate said wearily. ‘But there’s nothing we can do … least of all when it’s the Germans who are just about to mount an offensive.’
‘But we must!’ she cried. ‘It’ll hit our children, our families … Quentin, Laurence, Guy, even Naomi … And, Christopher, you must realise that Laurence simply isn’t fit for the front line. Everyone knows that, but you.’
‘He’s there,’ Cate said. ‘He’ll have to do his duty, like the rest of us.’
Chapter 4
France: mid March
, 1918
Lance-Corporal Naomi Rowland, First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, stood by the front wheel of her ambulance, beating her gauntleted hands together to keep them warm against the bitter cold. The moon was high and full, a round pale yellow disc smiling – leering, surely – down on her, on the poplars lining the Somme canal and its placid waters, the dense reed beds at either side, and the line of motor ambulances, each marked with a big red cross on the canvas sides and roof, waiting at the barge station of St Sauveur. One barge had already been unloaded of its cargo of wounded men – men too severely wounded to be able to withstand the bumping on the pavé all the way from the Casualty Clearing Stations to the base hospitals or ambulance trains; but there was a delay in getting the next barge unloaded, and while the Royal Army Medical Corps orderlies and the convoy medical officer struggled, the FANY drivers waited.
Naomi lifted the steel helmet off her head and rolled up the balaclava cap she had been wearing over her ears. The convoy commander or lieutenant would be shouting orders any moment, and she couldn’t hear very well with the balaclava down … but, oh how the cold bit into her unprotected ears now! She covered them with her gauntlets and walked up and down, stamping on the hard ground of the wharf, muttering to herself, ‘Hurry up, hurry up!’
‘Cars seven, eight, nine, ten … move up!’ the command was clear, in the lieutenant’s high, clear voice. Naomi climbed up quickly into the driver’s seat and waited for No. 8, ahead of her, to move. Her engine was turning over quietly, as they had not switched off. No. 8 began to move and Naomi engaged first gear and crawled along behind … so close to the edge of the wharf, just behind the squat wooden bollards where the barges tied up for the night in peacetime … wheels along the edge … brake carefully – the ground was hard now, but with half an inch of snow or black ice there, you could slide gently between the bollards and over … at the wharf the canal was eight feet deep.
An RAMC orderly came to the side of the ambulance, peering up at her, ‘Ah, it’s Miss Rowland … congrats on the stripe, miss … saw it when we was coming-down but didn’t have time to say anything.’ He ran round the back of the vehicle to open the doors, as other orderlies walked carefully across the planks linking the next barge to the land, carrying stretchers. Naomi saw the first wounded man’s face quite clearly as he passed – clammy white under the full moon, hollow, dark eyes staring up at the moon, a pale stubble on the chin, but young, so young, eighteen, nineteen … and below – there was no substance below his chest, the blanket lying almost flat on the stretcher. What had happened, how could a man live with nothing below the chest? The springs of the ambulance creaked as the orderlies loaded the stretcher into the back … here came the next, this one unable to stare at anything, because his whole head was swathed in bandages, an Egyptian mummy being transported from one four-thousand-year grave to another, for eternity … And another … A whistle shrilled, and Naomi grabbed the snap front flap of her gas mask, slung high on her chest, ready to rip it open and put on the mask. Damn, damn, her balaclava was down again and she couldn’t hear. The orderly ran past, shouting up at her, ‘Air raid, miss! Gothas! Take cover!’