by Paul Scott
*
What Merrick had done was unforgivable. I had the story from Potter whose curiosity about my relationship with Merrick had been aroused by watching me deal violently with Merrick’s servant. Ten minutes later he came to my room with my bar chits and the change from the ten rupees. By this time I was dressed and packed and I’d sent the bearer down to the gates to get a tonga. The Red Shadow had gone; where, I neither knew nor cared. Potter asked what it had all been about so I told him. I bore Potter no ill-will because I was convinced that the NCOS’ sudden change in attitude to me was entirely due to having seen me with a man they’d met before and had cause to dislike. But what cause? I wanted to know. Finding I was still friendly, Potter began to open up.
He said, ‘Will that fellow make trouble for you with Colonel Merrick?’
I said it wouldn’t bother me, but that as Merrick had gone to Ceylon and as I expected to be repatriated almost any day I’d probably be back in England before Merrick knew what had hit him or rather what had hit Suleiman. But I didn’t refer to them as Merrick or Suleiman. I called them Count Dracula and Miss Khyber Pass. Potter blushed. He said, ‘Look, I’m sorry. We thought he’d had the nerve to plant you on us.’
Potter didn’t take much more persuasion to spill the beans.
*
It concerned a medical NCO. Potter didn’t give me his name, but let’s call him Lance-Corporal Pinker, Pinky for short, and let us imagine him as a reserved, studious and hard-working young man who had lived an institutional life with other men in uniform without ever seriously arousing the suspicion that he was what is called abnormal. Even Sophie Dixon wasn’t absolutely clear on this score, or particularly interested. He liked Pinky because Pinky was harmless and friendly, quite intelligent and very conscientious. He had never served in the field, always at base hospitals. He had been in India for a few months and in Pankot for most of them. He was already in Pankot when Corporal Dixon and Sergeant Potter returned from Burma and were posted to the hospital’s military wing.
At that time Pinky was working on the wards. His transfer to the office of Captain Richardson, the psychiatrist, came later. Pinky and Sophie were on the same officers’ ward when Colonel Merrick (then Major) used to turn up for treatment and adjustment of his artificial hand and arm. He did this whenever he visited Pankot and on one occasion was admitted for two or three days because the chafing of the harness had set up inflammation and there was some question of infection.
It was now that Potter filled me in on Sophie Dixon’s record in the field. His compassion for sick or wounded men sprang from the feminine side of his nature and he never left anyone in doubt about his physical preferences, but these were made entirely acceptable to the men he tended because it was his compassion and care – his dignified ministration to a sick man’s needs that they were made to feel, never the other thing. They knew the other thing was there, they had only to listen to him camping it up in the casualty station tent or basha – but (as Potter put it) ‘when he touched a man you could see that nothing was being conveyed except clinical reassurance’. In Potter’s mind there was even an idea that Sophie’s overt posture was a form of sublimation and that in fact he lived like a monk, on and off duty.
According to Sophie, the officer with the burnt face and artificial arm ‘must have been quite a dish’. This was the irony; originally Sophie had liked Merrick, so had Pinky. Whenever he came for treatment, Sophie mothered him. He thought the wounded hero brave, patient and well-disposed. Merrick never seemed at all put out when Sophie put on his act. ‘Sometimes I wonder about the Major,’ Potter remembered Sophie saying. ‘When I give him the bedpan this morning he looked at me ever so thoughtful. I nearly come out in one of me hot flushes. Watch it, Dixon, I says to meself. Hands off the tiller and leave it to the Navy.’
It would have repaid him to have listened to his own advice or rather to have watched not ‘it’ but Pinky. If he had watched Pinky closer he might have seen when the time came that Pinky was in trouble or heading for it. But by then Pinky was off the wards and in the psychiatrist’s office. When Merrick next turned up for treatment he said to Sophie, ‘I see your old colleague’s working for Captain Richardson. Isn’t that a waste of nursing skill?’
It didn’t surprise Dixon that Merrick had visited the psychiatrist. Considering the nature of his wounds a chat with the psychiatrist would not have been in the least remarkable. Six weeks later Merrick was again in Pankot. He visited the hospital. This time he was accompanied by the Red Shadow. Sophie saw them together and at once nicknamed Suleiman Miss Khyber Pass of 1935. A few days after Merrick had gone back to Delhi, taking the Red Shadow with him, Sophie found Pinky crying and packing his kit. It took Sophie some time to find out why.
*
Working in Richardson’s office Pinky (so it would seem) had had his eyes opened for the first time in his young life to the fact that his inclinations were not nearly as uncommon as he had supposed. His was a typical case. Over-protected as a boy he had preferred the company of girls until he reached the age of puberty. After that he found himself attracted, mysteriously, to his own sex. He felt unique. Later he learned that to be like this was wrong, and later that it was not so unique as to have escaped being a criminal offence. As he grew older still he also discovered that it made ordinary men laugh. He knew he couldn’t help being what he was and he didn’t hate himself, but he couldn’t have borne to be found out. He told Sophie that when he came to Pankot at the age of twenty he had had no sexual experience with anyone except himself.
His job in Richardson’s office was clerical and highly confidential. It wasn’t a hard job because the number of cases in the hospital needing serious psychiatric treatment was never high. There were a few disturbed men in one ward and, now and again, in another, an officer or two whose ‘equilibrium’ had been upset. Psychiatry was still a bit of a joke in Pankot but it had become vaguely fashionable in the army. Just as potential officer-cadets in England had a routine chat with a psychiatrist at the war-office selection boards so, now, in Pankot’s military wing, convalescent men had chats with Richardson. It was almost a branch of welfare.
Richardson had a lot of time on his hands and Pinky discovered that he made use of it by keeping separate sets of private and confidential files for personal reference in his future civilian career. As Richardson’s confidence in Pinky grew so did Pinky’s opportunity to satisfy his curiosity about the contents of these private files. Richardson told him that psychiatry was a very inexact science and that there were judgments it was wiser not to record officially because the army simply didn’t understand the complexity of a man’s emotional life and it was grossly unfair to penalize someone by recording an informed professional but far from conclusive opinion that might be interpreted subsequently in the naïvest manner and block a man’s promotion. When Richardson found that Pinky was genuinely interested in psychiatric method he sometimes lent him ‘closed files’ of men who had been discharged and, during slack times, even discussed them with him. He never showed him files on men which were still ‘open’ and all the files, both the official and the separate private files, were kept under lock and key. If Pinky was lent a file he had to return it to Richardson before Richardson left the office.
What fascinated Pinky was the revelation that in Richardson’s view (and who was Pinky to argue?) ‘repressed homosexual tendencies’ were not infrequently the cause or one of several causes of what – up there in the wards – might look simply like depression or apathy or a temporary inability to cope. He became intensely curious about the notes Richardson had made or was making about the men currently undergoing treatment – in particular one man around whom Pinky had been spinning private fantasies: a tough, good-looking corporal who had been in Burma with Wingate’s expedition.
A timid boy, his obsession gave him courage. He stole Richardson’s key – easy enough because the key was kept in a drawer of the desk which Richardson did not always remember to lock. What took nerve
was getting a copy of it made in the bazaar and putting the original key back. Thereafter, night after night, he sat at his desk with one of the current confidential files, risking discovery but taking the risk because what he read absorbed him. The files changed his whole attitude to himself. The man in the ward, for instance, the one whom Pinky fancied, had admitted to Richardson that he had ‘mucked about’ with a fellow Chindit, still preferred women but wasn’t ashamed of the mucking about because he thought of it as something that had ‘just happened quite natural’, just ‘part of the business of being stuck in the jungle and being shot at’ and if he were back there he’d probably do it again. What amazed Pinky was Richardson’s diagnosis that this man was ‘intelligent and well-balanced’ with a ‘healthy attitude towards sex’, and that his depression was almost certainly due to a combination of the physical after-effects of the dysentery for which he had already been treated and an understandable but by him unacknowledged conviction that he’d had enough of combat. The note on the official file, which mentioned nothing about ‘mucking about’ closed with the comment, ‘Fit for active duty from the point of view of this department but recommend further analysis of faeces’.
Intelligent and well-balanced. A healthy attitude towards sex. Pinky seized on the phrases as if they were lifebuoys. He acquired nerve. When he went down to the canteen or into the bazaar he looked about him, eyes open, newly confident. When he sat in the downstairs room of the Chinese restaurant (the floor reserved for other ranks) he glanced more boldly at men he liked the look of. Any one of them, judging by the files, might be willing to ‘muck about’.
It was during this first extrovert phase that Merrick came back into his life, arriving at the office one evening after Richardson had gone and just at the moment when Pinky was at the filing cabinet selecting his evening’s reading. He hadn’t heard Merrick knock or come in but, looking up, saw him in the open doorway between Richardson’s office and his own. Pinky’s alarm was short-lived. Merrick was not to know that the cabinet was private. When Merrick spoke to him in a friendly manner, remarking on his transfer from the wards, Pinky stopped feeling guilty and asked Merrick what he could do for him. Merrick said he was in Pankot for a day or two and hoped he would be able to have a word with Captain Richardson. Pinky looked at the diary and made an appointment for the following afternoon. ‘Merrick?’ Richardson said next day, ‘Isn’t that the officer with the burnt face and amputated arm?’
When Merrick arrived Pinky sent him straight in. Presently he was called in himself. Richardson handed him the key and asked for a particular file. Without thinking – because he was now so used to handling them – Pinky brought him the official buff file and the private green one. Richardson handed back the latter and Pinky put it away. Merrick was in Richardson’s office for about twenty minutes. When he had gone Pinky went in with some incoming mail and found Richardson studying the private green file. He gave both files back to Pinky. Pinky asked whether he should open a file for Major Merrick. He was told that Merrick wasn’t a client. The files that had been got out in connection with Merrick’s visit were known to Pinky. They weren’t among those that interested him. They concerned a woman. He wondered what Merrick had been asking that caused the files to be got out, but did not inquire. The only other point of interest about this episode was that Pinky learnt for the first time that Merrick’s peacetime job was in the Indian Police. The subject came up because Pinky said he supposed when the war was over the amputated arm would mean an end of Merrick’s military career. Richardson said he’d no doubt go back into the police with a desk job and added, ‘CID I shouldn’t wonder. He’s dealing with these INA cases already.’ Pinky thought perhaps the woman’s file was also connected with the INA business. He wasn’t interested in the INA either.
*
Thus, lulled, Pinky rode for his fall. Several nights a week he went to the Chinese restaurant. Twice he thought he would have made it if he’d had the final ounce of courage it seemed to need to convey to a table companion that more than chat was on offer. After eating he often lingered in the bazaar, venturing beyond the area of light into the shadows and walking home, anticipating that longed-for voice calling out, Hey, soldier. And in the bazaar, during these patrols of his from shop to shop, he no longer shooed away the small urchins who pimped for their so-called sisters offering jig-a-jig, but grinned at them, shaking his head, listening for the miraculous change of tune from You want Girl, to You want Boy? Once, he heard it, but coward-like ignored it. It wasn’t a boy he wanted, anyway, but someone of his own age.
*
Between Merrick’s interview with Richardson and Pinky’s next sight of him, several weeks passed, weeks which Pinky spent in the way I’ve described but which now culminated in what, had the consequences not been so terrible, he would probably have remembered ever afterwards as his unforgettable night. For a day or two before this memorable occasion, wandering in the bazaar he had been aware of the possibility that a young Indian lad was as interested in him as he – because this possibility was there – had become interested in the lad. He had never seen him in Pankot before but now they seemed to keep passing each other. The Indian was dressed western-style. He looked clean. He also looked vigorous: a dark-skinned version of the athletic kind of young Englishman Pinky was attracted to. On one occasion Pinky and the Indian were both looking at the window display in Gulab Singh’s, the chemist, which was opposite the Chinese restaurant. The display was of clocks and watches. The next night Pinky stood outside the shop again. Again, as if from nowhere, the Indian turned up. They did not speak. Pinky wanted to but his mouth was too dry. When the Indian left Pinky stayed a moment longer and then left too. As he stepped into the road between a couple of parked tongas a man touched his arm and said, ‘Sahib, you want woman?’ Pinky shook his head. The man bent closer. ‘Sahib, you want boy? That boy looking at watches? That boy very good boy. Like English soldier very much. He like you. He is telling me. Sahib wait here. Boy come.’
The man went – a turbanned whiteclothed figure, wearing an embroidered waistcoat and baggy trousers, walking quickly up the road openly and jauntily, stopping only once to make sure Pinky was waiting. Pinky began to tremble with excitement. To Pinky, this man looked manly and virile. East of Suez no shame attached to wanting boys. The man understood and casually accepted Pinky’s need.
Pinky moved away from the tongas and went back to the arcaded pavement and strolled slowly along looking at the shop windows. When he came to an alley he stopped and looked back. The boy was coming, walking briskly. As he went past Pinky he smiled and walked up the alley. The alley was dark. For a few seconds Pinky was afraid. Sometimes alleys like this were patrolled by the military police and the west side of the bazaar, to which the alley led, was out of bounds to other ranks. Well, if the MPS stopped him and asked why he was following a boy he would say the boy had offered to introduce him to a college girl. Then he’d get off with a warning and an approving laugh. The blood began to pound in his chest. Pinky marched on.
*
‘What was it like, love?’ Sophie quite naturally had thought to ask Pinky, when he got to this part of his story. No go, apparently. He’d been over-excited. One gathers there was an encounter of some kind, prolonged but obstinately unsatisfactory. The Indian had explained his own failure by saying it made him unhappy to see Pinky so nervous. Then he had said it would be all right next time. He said, ‘Come back tomorrow. Meet me outside Gulab Singh’s at half-past nine and we will come to my room again.’ When they were dressed the Indian became miserable and said he didn’t think Pinky would come back. Pinky said nothing would stop him. ‘Leave me a token then,’ the Indian said. ‘Lend me your wristwatch. Then I’ll know that you like and trust me.’ Pinky gave him the watch and told him to keep it. The Indian had already refused money. He refused to accept the watch except as a token of Pinky’s intention to return the next evening. He took Pinky back down the rickety stairs into the alley and went with him until the ligh
t from the bazaar lit Pinky’s way.
*
When I left for the summer residence guest house we got the tonga-wallah to drive through the hospital grounds along a path that led past Richardson’s office. By we, I mean myself and Potter. He pointed the office out and then got off and walked back. After studying the place I gave the driver orders to move on.
The office was in a low building isolated from other blocks. It had the usual steep-pitched roof, the overhang supported by pillars to form a verandah. A small signboard outside announced Richardson’s name. One entered by a door at one end. This led to a passage. A window to one side of the door lit what had been Pinky’s office. A window beyond lit Richardson’s. The hut was presumably isolated to encourage patients to feel that anything they said to the psychiatrist went no further than here. Both Pinky and Richardson had had keys to the main door. The last to leave locked up. Outside the door, on the verandah, was a bench, a fire bucket and a cycle rack.
At about 6 p.m. on the evening of the day following Pinky’s meeting with the Indian lad, he was alone in the office reading Richardson’s private notes on the case of an ordnance officer who had collapsed under the strain of ‘feeding the guns’. He kept looking at his watch and, because thrillingly it wasn’t there, having to judge by the fall of the light outside how much longer he could afford to spend on this fascinating stuff before locking up, going to his billet to shower and shave and set out on his journey to bliss. He had just decided to call it a day and was closing the file when the door opened and Merrick walked in.
Pinky gave him a cheerful good-evening. Merrick asked if Captain Richardson was in. Pinky told him he had gone for the day but would be in the office tomorrow as usual and that if Major Merrick wanted an appointment he would be glad to look at the diary and write one in.