Meet Me in Bombay

by Jenny Ashcroft

  Luke lay on his bunk to open Maddy’s letter. Above him, the ceiling dripped soil from the shellfire they exchanged each day with the Boche (just to remind everyone, as though they could forget, why they were all there). In the corner of the earthen room, a group of naiks, his own batman included, played a game of dice. At the table, Peter and a couple of other NCOs dealt a hand of rummy and argued over whether rat racing would or would not be a morale-boosting sport to introduce to the troops.

  “The fact that you’re arguing about this at all,” said Luke, slicing through the envelope, “tells me we’ve been here too long.”

  He pulled out the contents of the envelope, his fingers touching the paper hers had touched, and took her photograph in his cracked, mud-crusted hands. Papa’s bought a Brownie box camera, she’d written, so we’ll send pictures of the baby, just as soon as he or she is born. Your parents have requested ones, too, and Edie can’t wait either. He stared at her picture, his eyes blurring with the effort of absorbing every last detail. She wore a pale dress, no hat. Her hair was all curls, several loose, touching the smooth skin of her neck. She looked directly at the camera, smiling, right at him. He saw the neat curve of her stomach, and felt his jaw clench with the pain, the unbearable pain, of not being where she was. On the table next to her was a half-drunk glass of water, a plate of sliced fruit. He imagined her swallowing the drink, setting the glass down. He heard her voice. All right, go on, I’m ready. No, wait.… Should I smile? Is that allowed in photographs?

  Thank you, he wrote back. I can’t tell you what it’s meant, getting this.

  One of you now, please, she replied.

  And he sent her a picture his batman took of him and Peter, with a camera borrowed from the local tobacconist when they were out on a week’s rest leave in a nearby hamlet, both standing in the cobbled street, wearing the sheepskins they’d bought from a local farmer over their khaki.

  Very stylish, she wrote, you wear them well. In case it helps, I’m also sending socks and gloves. The children in my class helped knit them (very excited at the break from arithmetic). A few of them have older brothers and papas at the front, too, so we do it for an hour every day now. An industrious classroom. We’re all busy. Has Peter told you Della’s no longer at the canteen, but volunteering at Guy’s old hospital instead? She’s met a rather sweet dental surgeon there, actually, Jeffrey, but assures me that’s not the only reason she goes. Everyone’s short on staff these days, and neither of us can stand sitting and waiting at home. I keep thinking about how this time last year I was about to see you for the first time at the Yacht Club. I haven’t been since you left. I can’t. They’re not holding a party this New Year. It wouldn’t feel right, and the last thing anyone wants is to dance. Not that I could dance. Thanks to Cook (who’s assured us there’ll be no turkey curry for Christmas), this baby’s most definitely a bonny one.…

  I’d dance with you, he wrote back. If I were there, I’d take you back to our beach, and dance with you on the sand.…

  Now isn’t that a nice thought, she said.

  In the middle of December, new troops arrived to replenish those they’d lost, some much-needed Urdu-speaking officers among them. Fraser Keaton, fresh from Bombay, was in their number. Keep an eye on him, will you? Richard wrote to Luke. He simply wouldn’t hear of staying, and seems far too young to have gone. Ernest Aldyce came as well.

  “Oh Christ,” said Peter, burning lice from the seams of his shirt, “it really can always get worse.”

  He was a quieter Ernest, though. Depleted. He’d been at Ypres, too, with the BEF, since he was on leave in England when they were mobilized, and one of the few of his company to come through. If you could call it coming through. Physically, everything about him had thinned: his hair, his body; even his waxy skin hung, wafer-like, on the ill-defined lines of his face. He no longer held his head straight, but at an angle, chin to his bony shoulder, eyes darting constantly, as though afraid to settle in any one place. Such a different man from the assured Indian officer who’d worn Luke out with his endless talk and questions in Bombay. Had Luke not seen his papers, he wasn’t sure he’d have recognized him.

  “He didn’t want to come,” Luke reminded Peter. “Do you remember, how adamant he was he should be left in Bombay?”

  “Smarter than I gave him credit for,” said Peter, not unsympathetically this time. They were all shaken by the change in Ernest. Afraid, too, not that anyone admitted it; that unutterable terror that what had fallen on him might come for them next.

  “I’m beginning to think I should have stayed in Bombay after all,” said Fraser, wincing at the vibrations of distant shellfire during his first night in the trenches.

  “That’s only just occurred to you?” said Luke with a sigh.

  He kept both men close to him, placing Fraser directly under his own command, and Ernest in the length of trench between himself and Peter. It gave him ample opportunity to see how much time Ernest spent just sitting on the floor of the trench, staring up at the pyrotechnics in the sky, wringing his hands. His sepoys saw it, too. They came to Luke asking to be reassigned.

  “I could take them,” said Peter. “Happily. They’re good men.…”

  They were. Luke wished he could move them under Peter. But, “I can’t,” he said wearily. “I’d have to report it if I did.” He knew too well what would happen to Ernest then. They’d all heard the stories. Given Ernest had no outward injuries, he’d be court-martialed for cowardice, probably shot.

  Luke resolved to do his best for Ernest himself, build him back up by taking him out on some minor operations, help him salvage some resilience before asking him to fight in a more serious engagement. There was a raid planned for December 30, the last of 1914. Just a small affair to knock out a series of observation points in the opposite German position. It wouldn’t even make dispatches. He’d take him on that.

  “Let’s bring Keaton, too,” said Peter. “It’s terrifying me, how green he is.…”

  They went early, long before the sun was up. Luke, who’d led countless such expeditions, barely broke a sweat of adrenaline as he crawled up the jumping-off ladder, waving at the others to follow. He wasn’t expecting any trouble. They’d had a cease-fire of sorts over Christmas—nothing as amicable as the football matches he’d heard talk of in other sectors, no singing of “Silent Night” across the wastes of no-man’s-land, but a stilling of the guns, enough peace for all of them to sleep a bit, write more letters home, and Luke to stare at the wintry sky, pray to a God who seemed to have taken leave of his senses that this would be the last Christmas he’d spend in France. (“That’s the wrong bloody prayer,” Peter had said, punching him. “You could end up somewhere worse.” “Where’s worse?” Luke had asked. “I’m sure 1915 has something up its sleeve,” said Peter.) They’d all lived and let live, and the Boche wouldn’t be anticipating a fight that morning. It was pitch-dark; as long as they all kept low, no duty sentry would spot them coming. All being well, they’d throw their mortars, disable the observation posts, and get the hell away without any casualties.

  There were fifteen of them in total. Four officers—himself, Peter, Ernest, and Fraser—then a handful of battle-hardened engineers, and several naiks who’d survived Ypres and all knew what they were doing. Luke didn’t need to tell them to keep silent as they crawled across the icy, pitted ground, toward the Boches’ trench. It didn’t even occur to him that he’d have to warn Ernest, who was always so silent anyway, to hold his tongue.

  But as they drew closer to their target, close enough to smell German coffee brewing, the sizzle of bacon fat, Ernest started making a strange sound, something between a bleat and a wail, interspersed with breathless sobs.

  Aghast, Luke hissed at him to be quiet. The other men did the same.

  “For God’s sake,” said Fraser, voice shaking with fear, “can someone shut him up?”

  “Aldyce,” said Luke, starting to panic now himself, “you have to stop.”

 
He didn’t stop. He started weeping, and buried his face in the cold earth, maybe in shame, maybe just to muffle himself. It was horrendous to see. If Luke could have, he’d have picked him up then, carried him back to the trench, shot him in the hand if he had to, any excuse to get him to safety, home.

  But to stand would be suicide. So he shuffled backward, alongside him, gripping his heaving shoulder. “Aldyce,” he said. “Come on.”

  “I can’t,” Ernest said to the ground. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…”

  He was getting louder.

  “Let’s move,” Peter said, “drown him out with the mortars, then you get him back.”

  But before Luke could agree, Ernest threw him off, with a strength that surprised him, and stood, in the middle of no-man’s-land, screaming. The rest of them stared, horror-struck, for what felt like forever, but was in reality probably only seconds, and then the Boche opened fire with a machine gun, and they were all standing, Luke yelling at everyone to go wide, run. One of the engineers ignored him, with a bravery that would get him a Distinguished Service Medal, and carried on, up to the line to throw the mortars, taking out the gunner. In the same instant, Luke grabbed Ernest, throwing him on his shoulder, not noticing how flaccid his body had become, and ran in the wake of his men, lungs bursting, back to the safety of the trench.

  Thanks to the engineer and his mortars, none of them were killed. Fraser received a bullet graze to the cheek that at least got him out of the line for a spell. The engineer with the mortars took several more bullets in his shoulder. He wrote to Luke from the Indian Convalescent Hospital in Brighton, telling him he was being sent home to his wife and children in Lahore, and thanking him, actually thanking him, for being his lieutenant colonel.

  You’d have had more cause to thank me if you hadn’t been shot, Luke said.

  Even you cannot be controlling the bullets, sahib, he replied. We would not have been having anyone but you.

  Ernest would have been having someone, Luke was certain. If it hadn’t been for him, he’d never have been out there in no-man’s-land, standing, screaming, until that shrapnel had blown off half his face. Luke hadn’t even realized he’d been injured, not until he’d seen the blood pouring from him when they’d got back to the trench, and finally registered Ernest’s limpness. “No,” he’d said, reaching down, pressing his hand to what was left of his jaw, “no, no, no…”

  The stretcher-bearers had taken him to a dressing station, from there to one of the many casualty clearing stations flanking the line, on to London, a facial-reconstruction unit, and, finally, a mind hospital in Surrey, the King’s Fifth. Luke wrote to them, desperate to know he was all right. One of the sisters wrote back—Sister Lytton, she was called—kindly telling him that Ernest wasn’t all right at all; he had no memory left, not of his past, or even each day, but please know that we’re looking after him as best we can. He loves his cups of cocoa, and the weekends especially when his mama visits. Luke felt sick when he read that letter. He clenched it in his fist, creasing the paper, shame coursing through him at what he’d done to Ernest. To be left breathing, functioning, trapped in your body like that with no face, no life, no memory … Peter was right, there was something worse than France after all. Worse, almost, than death.

  “It wasn’t your fault.” Peter said it to him time and again.

  Maddy wrote it, too. You must know that, she said. If you want to blame anyone, blame the gunner. Or Ypres. Blame Ypres, the generals, this whole hideous war. Please don’t blame yourself.

  But he couldn’t help it. February turned to March, and the days lengthened but grew no warmer, just damper, flooding the trenches, leaving the men tortured by swollen, blackened feet as well as frostbite. He did his best to cheer them up with promises of spring leave that he only hoped would be granted, all the while replaying his decision to take Ernest out that December dawn, the way he himself had just lain there when Ernest had stood, not moving fast enough to drag him back down.

  In the second week of March, Fraser Keaton returned from hospital, hundreds more troops poured into their part of the line, extra munitions and heavy barrage shells arrived, and they were all ordered over the top for the long-rumored offensive to retake the town of Neuve-Chapelle. It was another bloodbath, for both sides, with casualties in the tens of thousands—men and boys mown down, left to lie several deep on the battlefields until the shell and machine-gun fire subsided, and those of them that were left could run out, give them water, attempt to drag them back to safety—but dispatches lauded it a success. Neuve-Chapelle back in British hands, and the line now forward by more than half a mile.

  “Half a mile,” said Peter, when they finally stood down, and marched into the demolished town to bunk in whatever building was still standing for a six-day rest. “Half. A. Mile. How many casualties would that be per yard?”

  “A hundred,” said Fraser, who had mercifully come through the carnage, and had apparently already done the grim calculation.

  “A hundred,” echoed Luke. He let his gritty eyes move over the snaking line of those still standing, their turbans and uniforms spattered with mud and blood, awed, as always, by how they carried themselves so straight, despite their trench feet, the cold and lack of sleep, the men they’d buried and shot and seen shot. How long would they be able to keep going like this, keep falling in with the relentless orders? Some of their letters had grown angrier lately, laced with a fury that he understood, and would never report. Could their days of subservience be numbered? He decided probably yes, and then, because Ernest was never far from his thoughts, wondered what he would make of it all, if he still had his right mind. And would he still be here, too, on the other side of the three days they’d just endured, if he, Luke, had only allowed him more time to mend?

  I should have found a way to get him home, he wrote to Maddy, just before the battalion moved again, back, to his horror, toward Ypres, where another battle for the Channel ports was rumored. I can’t stop thinking of him in that hospital.

  You must be due home leave soon, she wrote by return. Go to the hospital, see him there.

  I will, he said, I need to.

  The thought of doing it, though, setting foot in that hospital, it terrified him.

  * * *

  If Maddy were in England, she’d go for him. She’d visit that hospital all the time, if it would only help him feel better. She’d be to and from the King’s Fifth, where she’d sit with Ernest, hold his hand and speak to him of all the things that might jog his memory—the Gymkhana Club, polo on dusty grass, gin and tonics at sundown—then write to Luke and reassure him that Ernest had had company that day, he was being cared for. You did the best for him that you could.

  She’d tried to get in touch with Diana, who was still marooned in Dorking. She’d written to her back in January, telling her how sorry she’d been to hear of Ernest’s injuries. Diana hadn’t replied. It was now almost April, and Maddy, propped up on pillows in her bedroom, the shutters open in a futile attempt to invite a breeze into the hot room, had accepted she wasn’t going to. Too upset, perhaps.

  “Too sorry for herself, I’d wager,” said Della, not scrubbing bedpans at the hospital that day, or sharing tiffin with Jeff, but sitting beside Maddy, staring adoringly at the precious little bundle in Maddy’s arms. “Let it be, Maddy. You’ve got other things to think about.”

  Maddy, who had barely lifted her own eyes from the perfect tiny human she was holding, didn’t need to be told. Her and Luke’s daughter had finally arrived the night before, more than a week after Dr. Tully had said they might expect her, coming, like Maddy’s lost brother, the wrong way. Dr. Tully, who’d warned Maddy she was breech, and nodded sympathetically when she’d paled, and Alice had expressed her horror at the news, had given all of them his solemn word that no one was going to be cut open this time; he’d delivered many healthy breech babies in the traditional manner, and wasn’t in the least worried, they weren’t to be either.

 
Maddy had had her moments in the excruciating, sweat-soaked night that had passed. She was sure that her father, who’d paced around the villa, knocking on the door for news every half hour, had, too. She was certain that her wrought mother, and even Della—neither of whom had left her side, but had knelt by the bed, repeating that it was all going to be all right, it was, and they wished Luke were here, too, they did, but she just had to keep going—had had several. Dr. Tully, though, had been as good as his word, never once appearing to panic, calmly telling her to breathe, then push, then relax, then push, and breathe, and push, and on, and on, until there little Iris had been, all glossy black curls and giant dark blue eyes, warm and soft in her shaking arms. “Thank you,” Maddy had said to Dr. Tully, choked with tears of joy and gratitude, silently thanking Guy, too, who’d known just what he was doing when he’d told her to see no one else.

  “She really is the image of Luke,” said Della now. “Other than her eyes, I’m not sure you’ve had a look-in, Maddy.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Maddy, who wanted only for Luke to see her for himself, this beautiful daughter of theirs. Her mother had already gone to the telegraph office to wire him, his parents, too. It had been a mark of Alice’s euphoria (and relief) that she’d also offered to wire Edie.

  “I could do it if you prefer,” Richard had said.

  “No,” Alice had replied, stooping to drop another kiss on Iris’s downy head. “I think I can manage to share this.”

  Maddy wished she knew where Luke would be when he received the wire. Safe, she thought, let it be somewhere safe. He’d sent several of his own in the past fortnight, from somewhere in France or Flanders, never, to her agonizing frustration, able to tell her which part, only that he was thinking of her constantly, waiting for news. PETER ALSO BESIDE HIMSELF WITH IMPATIENCE STOP. She was similarly beside herself, waiting for the news that they’d both been sent to England for leave. Tantalized by the prospect of surprising Luke when he arrived, she’d become increasingly tempted to go, too, despite the U-boats. She’d even offered to pay Ahmed to fetch a schedule from the P&O office. He’d gone, but refused to take her money. “Memsahib,” he’d said, eyes troubled as he’d handed her the paper, “I am not recommending this.” He’d been right. She’d have to tell him that. I’m not going anywhere. She stroked Iris’s soft, pink cheek, pushed the muslin swaddle back from her chin, and was appalled she’d even contemplated putting her in that kind of danger. Just the thought of taking her out on the Bombay roads made her shudder. Impossibly painful as it was, she’d have to wait to be with Luke. They both would.