Complete Works of Nevil Shute

by Nevil Shute

  The old man said: “It would be very profitable if we could get one or two of those boats running. There is no transport on the Irrawaddy now. All the river steamers have been sunk.”

  Nay Htohn said: “I will see that it is done. I will make Moung Bah Too go down the river, and see every boat. I will go myself and see that it is done. Every boat shall be pulled up out of the water and the engine shall be dried and greased, and then when you come back we will go and see them, and you can decide on each boat which parts we can use.”

  Morgan thought for a moment. “If you find any boat mechanics, or men who have run Diesel engines at any time, get hold of them.”

  Utt Nee said: “There are not many of those in Burma. But our people are good with machinery; they only need to be shown how.”

  Moung Shway Than said: “I will take over every boat, and I will pay whatever costs may be necessary. I think it will be a very good business.”

  Two hours later, Morgan was with Nay Htohn upon the river bank. “This is not goodbye,” he said, holding her hand. “You need not be afraid; I shall come back. This is a happy place, and I shall be back here as soon as ever I can make it.”

  She said, with brimming eyes: “I have no fear, but make it very soon.”

  He went out to the leading ML in a dugout paddled by a little boy, and climbed on board her. An RNR lieutenant commander met him on the deck.

  “I was in Rangoon jail,” the pilot said. “We’ve got the railway running half way to Bassein, if that’s any good to you.”

  CHAPTER 7

  THE FIRST RAIN drops of the storm plashed on the path below the veranda; a cool breeze drifted around Mr Turner as he sat with Morgan in the darkness. The latter stirred. “Be time for supper in a minute,” he said. “I told Nay Htohn we’d have an English meal.”

  Mr Turner said: “You come back here pretty soon, then?”

  “Lord, yes. I shot back to England and out here again like a scalded cat.” He smiled. “I had an advantage, of course, because I knew everybody in Transport Command. I saw the AVM in Calcutta and told him I wanted to take my discharge in Burma, and about the landing craft and everything. I got flown to England in a Liberator and back to Calcutta again in a York, as part of the aircrew. I was only seventeen days in England.”

  “Fixed up your divorce, then?”

  “Yes. There wasn’t much difficulty about that. I got the solicitor cracking on it before I left England. It wasn’t legal for about two years, but we didn’t wait for that. I got back to Henzada in seven weeks, seven weeks to the day from the time I left, and we got married right away. Our first kid was nearly a year old before we could get married properly, but we did it then.”

  Mr Turner grinned; it was all very deplorable, but in the circles that he moved in in England he had heard of similar doings. “What about the boats?” he asked.

  Morgan said: “That turned out pretty well. Nay Htohn had seen to that.” He turned to Turner. “You know, Burmese girls are very good business women, better than the men. There’s no flies on any of them. Nay Htohn had got all the boats pulled up out of the water, seven of them, some of them pretty badly shot up. Moung Shway Than gave them to us as a wedding present. One down by Zalun was practically undamaged and I got that going in a week. I got another going a month later, and the third sometime after that. That’s all we salvaged, just the three of them.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “I ran them for two years,” the pilot said. “We ran a regular service from Rangoon right up to Prome, and made a packet of money out of it. You see, the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company was short of vessels and it was some time before there was much competition; we got in on the ground floor.” He mused for a moment. “God, they’ve done some work, those boats.”

  “Are you still running them, then?”

  “No, I sold out last year. They’re still running — you’ll see one of them go down tomorrow about midday. But I sold out.” He turned to Turner. “I’m in the civil service now. I stayed out for some time, because I thought an Englishman wouldn’t be very welcome — Burma for the Burmans, and all that, you know. But I got mixed up in a lot of local things. Then last year Shway Than’s brother, Moung Nga Myah, had a long talk with me and persuaded me to take this job — he’s in the Government, you know — Minister for Education. He said they wanted me, so I said I’d give it a crack. I think it may pan out all right.”

  Mr Turner wrinkled his forehead. “I don’t get that. I thought they wasn’t taking English people now.”

  “It was a kind of compliment,” the pilot said. “They’ve spent the last two years getting rid of all the pukka sahibs from the civil service as quick as they could, and then they came along and wanted me to join it. They sort of count me as a Burman now, I think.”

  “Funny sort of setup,” said Mr Turner in wonder.

  The pilot got up from his chair, and collected the glasses. “I’ve got my roots deep in this country,” he said. “Wife and kids and work and friends. I’d never want to go back and live in England again, after this. When this country gets Dominion status, I’ll probably take out naturalization papers. Make a job of it.”

  They went into the house to dinner, a meal served by candlelight with silver on the table, a meal of soup and casseroled chicken and a savoury. Morgan and Ma Nay Htohn were genuinely glad to have a visitor from England; in the friendship of their interest Mr Turner expanded, and talked fairly lucidly to them about conditions in London. He talked so much that he became very tired, and was glad to sit quietly after the meal with a cheroot in a long chair. The white cat, Moung Payah, walked in as soon as he sat down and jumped up on his lap, kneaded a place for himself, and settled down to purr.

  Nay Htohn looked at it in wonder, and spoke again to Morgan in a low tone in Burmese.

  He laughed. “My wife can’t make out about that cat,” he said. “He never does that with anyone. He won’t sit with her, or with me either.”

  Mr Turner was pleased, and rubbed the cat’s ear; it pressed its head against his hand in pleasure. “Took a fancy to me all right he has,” he said. “What was that you said you call him?”

  “Moung Payah,” said Nay Htohn. “In our language that means Mr Holiness.”

  “Why d’you call him that?” He asked the question with sincerity.

  The girl hesitated, and then laughed shyly. “My people have a superstition,” she said. “Just like in your country, if you spill salt you throw it over your shoulder to avert bad luck. You do not really believe it, but you do it. Well — like that, the country people here say that a white animal, any white animal, is a very beautiful soul upon its path up the Ladder of Existence, so fine a soul that it will one day be the Buddha.” She smiled. “It is not part of our religion, that one — you will not find it in our holy books. It is just what the country people say. My nurse told me, when I was a little child.”

  Mr Turner grinned. “That’s why you call him Mr Holiness?”

  She laughed softly. “It’s a kind of joke.”

  He stroked the cat’s ear. “We think black cats are lucky in England,” he said. “Just the opposite.”

  He was desperately tired. The strange scene, and all the talking he had done seemed to have exhausted him; he was confused by all the new impressions he had taken in, and the great wound in his head was throbbing painfully. A heavy weight seemed to be pressing on the nape of his neck. He made an excuse as soon as his cheroot was finished and Morgan showed him to his bedroom, a pleasant spacious room with a fan and a mosquito net. Outside the rain was pouring down in sheets; Mr Turner threw off his clothes and fell upon the bed in heavy sleep.

  He woke next morning unrefreshed, and feeling slack and tired and with a headache. He took an aspirin and lay for some time watching the glory of the dawn over the river; the air was fresh and cool after the rain, and the sky cloudless. He got up presently and went down to breakfast.

  He found, rather to his surprise, that quite a heavy meal of curry
and rice had been provided; his previous breakfasts in the country had been light affairs. He said: “I see you stick to the old English custom of eating hearty in the morning.”

  Morgan said: “Me? I don’t usually have more than one cup of coffee and a little fruit.” And then he said: “Oh, I see what you mean. Nay Htohn — it’s her duty day. She always eats a big meal in the morning.”

  Mr Turner said: “What’s a duty day?”

  The girl smiled at him. “One day in each week all good Buddhists keep a duty day; it is like your Sunday. On that day we must not eat after midday, so I eat plenty for breakfast.” She laughed.

  Turner said: “Do you go to church?”

  She said: “I go to the pagoda in the morning. It is just like the Christian Sunday, but I think our duty day is rather more strict than yours. I may not use any cosmetics on my face or fingernails.” He glanced at her, and noticed that she had no makeup on. “We do not play the gramophone, or have any music, and I must not touch gold or silver.” She raised her hand, and Mr Turner noticed that she was eating with a wooden spoon.

  Morgan laughed mischievously. “She used to sleep on the floor, too, before we were married, but I struck at that.”

  The girl laughed with him shyly. “If you keep the duty day properly you should sleep on the floor,” she said. “That is for humility. But I do not think that that is meant for married women, who have husbands to look after.”

  Mr Turner said to Morgan: “Are you a Buddhist?”

  “I’m not anything,” the pilot said. “Just a heretic, or an agnostic, or what-have-you.” He paused, and then he said: “If I was to be anything, I guess I’d be a Buddhist.”

  “I suppose so,” Mr Turner said. “Religion of the country and all that. Like what you were saying last night, about making your life in Burma.”

  “In a way,” said Morgan. “But I wouldn’t bother about that angle to it. A good many English people out here turn Buddhist when they get to know the ins and outs of it. It’s a very pure form of religion.”

  “Well, I dunno,” said Mr Turner. “The one I was brought up to’s good enough for me.”

  Nay Htohn said: “There is very little difference, for ordinary people like ourselves.”

  Mr Turner did not eat much at breakfast; the feeling of oppression was still heavy at the nape of his neck. Nay Htohn vanished into the back quarters from which came the occasional sounds of children. Morgan excused himself. “Do you mind looking after yourself till lunchtime?” he said. “I’ve got my court sitting this morning. After lunch I’ve got to go out to a village in the country; you might like to come with me, in the jeep.”

  “I’ll be all right,” said Mr Turner. “I’m feeling a bit washed out today. I’ll just sit here for a bit. Be all right if I take a walk down in the village later on?”

  “Of course,” said Morgan. “They’ll be glad to see you. Take off your shoes if you go into the pagoda.”

  “I know about that,” Mr Turner said, “I saw the Shwe Dagon last week.”

  He sat for an hour in the long chair, smoking and looking at the sampan traffic on the river. A brown girl came out of the house and set up a playpen in the shade and then went back and fetched a yellow little boy in a short pair of pants and put him in it, and sat sewing by him on the grass. Mr Turner got up and walked over and spoke to them; the girl stood up and smiled, but as she could speak no English and Mr Turner could speak no Burmese, and the little boy was too young to speak much of anything, they didn’t get very far.

  Being upon his feet, he went and fetched his sun hat and strolled out towards the village. It was only half a mile along the river bank; he took it slowly, and found the walk pleasant. He spent some time in the village, looking into the shops and smiling at the people, and he found three men building a sampan upon the bank, which interested him very much. He was interested too, in the samples of rice and millet in the shops.

  He passed the pagoda, but did not go in. He paused at the gate and looked in; before the calm statue of the Buddha there were many flowers arranged in vases. On the paving before the image there were two or three rows of women kneeling in prayer; he looked at them curiously, and saw Nay Htohn. She was kneeling devoutly with a long spray of gladiolus held between her hands, salmon pink and fresh and beautiful; her lips moved in prayer; she was utterly absorbed.

  Mr Turner walked on, rather thoughtfully.

  He found the walk back trying. The sun was higher and it was very hot; the road along the river bank seemed very long before he reached the shade of the trees by the house, and the pressure on the nape of his neck grew unbearable. He reached the steps leading up to the veranda and walked half way up them towards his chair; then everything went red before his eyes, and he staggered, and grasped at the balustrade beside him, and missed it, and fell heavily, and rolled down the steps that he had mounted on to the path in the sun. The nurse saw him fall from where she sat beside the playpen on the lawn, and called the bearer, and came running.

  They found Mr Turner quite unconscious, and with some difficulty, with the cook to help them, they carried him upstairs and laid him on the bed. The bearer fetched cold water and began to bathe his face, and the nurse went running to call Nay Htohn from the pagoda.

  Mr Turner remained unconscious for three and a half hours, lying upon his back and breathing with a snoring sound. Morgan got back half an hour after Nay Htohn; beyond loosening all his clothes and bathing his head with cold water they did not know what to do. This illness was like nothing that they had experienced. At that time there was a great shortage of visiting doctors in that part of Burma. There was a hospital at Henzada, thirty-seven miles away, but the jeep track to it was very bad and it did not seem wise to attempt that with the man in his condition. By river in a sampan the journey would take a day; there was no motor vessel going up till the next day.

  After an hour of vain effort to get him round, Nay Htohn said: “We must have help, Phillip; we are doing no good. I think we ought to ask the Sayah to come over.”

  Morgan thought for a moment. He knew the Sayah fairly well, the Father Superior of the local Buddhist monastery. He knew him for an honest old man, but privately he considered him to be a bit simple. Still, there was something in what his wife had said. The Sayah was the nearest approach to a doctor that Mandinaung could provide; moreover, if Turner were to die on their hands it would make matters easier all round if someone else with a position in the community had seen him. He said: “All right. I’ll go and see if he can come along, if that’s what you’d like.”

  She said: “I think he ought to come. Will you go for me?”

  She could not go herself; when the monk arrived she would have to keep hidden out of his sight, and ensure that he saw no female servants. When a man has taken to a life of continence and placed the world behind him, it is both rude and unkind to flaunt young women in his sight.

  Morgan got into the jeep and went to the monastery; he knew the polite routine, and was shown in to the old man, sitting in quiet contemplation on a mat. He explained his business and asked for help; in a few minutes he was in the jeep with the Sayah beside him, holding his coarse yellow robe about him in the wind of their passage.

  The bearer met them at the door and made obeisance; there were no women in sight. The pilot took the Sayah upstairs to the bedroom. Turner was lying as the women had left him a moment before; a bowl of water by his side and a wet cloth on his head showed their most recent ministrations. The old man went up to the bed and laid two fingers on his temples. Then he turned to Morgan, speaking in Burmese.

  “He will recover very soon,” he said. “He will be normal before sunset. I do not think he has very long to go.”

  “Is he dying, then?”

  “Not now. I do not think that he has very many months to come.” The old man glanced at Morgan. “I will draw his horoscope.”

  “All right. What will you want to know, Payah?”

  “The date and hour of his birth, and in
what part of the world. He will recover before long. I will wait till he can tell me.” He retired to a corner of the room and squatted down in meditation.

  Morgan sat bathing Mr Turner’s face and head. He had not expected any more from the Sayah, but his presence was a comfort and an assurance against any trouble. From the door there came a whisper from his wife, and he went out to her. She had been listening from the next room.

  She whispered to him: “Moung Payah. Tell him about Moung Payah.”

  He smiled at her tenderly. He knew her very well. He knew that with her intellect she derided the divinity of the cat; he knew that with that which was still childlike in her, which he loved, she believed in it. It had not been wholly as a joke that she had called the cat Moung Payah. He said: “Would you like me to do that?”

  She said: “Please do.”

  He touched her hand and she smiled up at him, and he went back into the room. “We have a cat,” he said simply to the old man, “a white cat that my wife calls Moung Payah.” The old man nodded his shaven head in understanding, and Morgan went on to tell him of the liking that the cat had shown for Mr Turner.

  The old man sat in meditation for a time. At last he asked: “Is he a Christian?”

  “As much as he is anything,” the pilot said in Burmese. “In the country that he was born in, as I was, there is not much religion in the life of ordinary men. He would have been christened as a child, and confirmed when he was a boy, I suppose.”

  There was another long silence. The Sayah said at last: “Virtue is measured from the knowledge that is given to the soul in the beginning. Even if a man has kept no one of the Five Precepts for the reason that he did not know about them, he may still attain the dwellings of the Dewahs if his progress in this life has been sufficient.”