Small Island by Andrea Levy
‘You’re a married man, then, Pop? I thought about getting married but I didn’t like the hours.’ I suppose it became a bit of a sport trying to get me to join in with his antics. Thought he could make me blush (never). Spike found it hilarious that my only girl was my wife.
‘Pop, what have you been doing with your gentleman’s friend all these years?’
Spike bragged about what he’d done with women. How many had let him and what they had let him do. ‘Two together – twin sisters. I swear as God is my witness.’ He got everyone going. It became like a contest, comparing positions (wishful thinking mostly). ‘Have you ever done it from behind, Pop? Doggy fashion?’ I told him that that was my business and I would not discuss it with him. ‘I’ll take that as a no, then,’ he said, ‘but try it next time.’ Obligingly got on the floor of the basha to demonstrate the position. (Of course, Queenie would have been appalled at the suggestion. She’d have put on her dressing-gown, thick as an overcoat with buttons like padlocks, and made me sleep in another room.)
‘You can be ridden like a horse, you know, Pop,’ Spike kept telling me. Standing – her legs round his waist – was another of Spike’s favourites. Some were obviously ridiculous. The one he called sixty-nine made me laugh. (A minor victory, which made some of the other chaps cheer.) I praised him for his imagination. But he insisted he’d done it many times. There was nothing he could not do with his tongue, he told me.
The basha was blacked out, just like in the meetings during that other bother. Same form too. Too many erks sweating in a tiny space. Same rotten smell like a fishmonger’s slab. A hand grabbed my shirt, pulled me in and blocked the door. ‘Squeeze in there, Pop,’ he said.
‘No names,’ someone shouted, but I knew it was Curly. His basha too. Black as the back of an eyelid inside. Men were everywhere. Sitting over the floor, on the charpoys, standing round the walls. Couldn’t see anyone but could sense it was a crowd by the deadened shuffling and the lack of breathable air. Feeling my way in, I realised I was fondling a face. My hand was flicked off pronto. I felt some fingers spread under my foot as I stepped on. ‘Oi, watch it. Christ!’ I sat down as best I could. Chaps on either side were clammy as hot baked potatoes. The person speaking was attempting to disguise his voice with a pencil in his mouth. Old trick. But it sounded like he was bubbling up from under water. I couldn’t understand a word. Soon realised it was Maxi, once everyone shouted for the silly pencil to be removed.
‘I say, we make a delegation to the CO. Explain the circumstance – it was a stupid order, the sergeant wasn’t thinking. Ask him to get the charge on Spike dropped.’ Some mumbling went off round the room. Bloke beside me shot his hand into the air. His elbow banged my head as it went. The room was pitch black, no one could see it. Fool.
‘What if he don’t wanna know?’ someone asked.
Then a chap by my side shouted, ‘Strike!’ right in my ear. Moved my head away sharpish. Cracked my skull on the knobbly shoulder of the fellow beside me. The chap said it again, ‘We have to strike.’ Felt the splatter of his spittle this time. Everyone groaned. I tried to rub my head but my arm was jammed to my side. I could hear the tap of a pipe against teeth. Knew it was Maxi – he did it when he was nervous. Hadn’t been using a pipe for long but already his teeth were wearing to accommodate the wood.
‘We’re being used now,’ someone at my side said. ‘Prop up the British Empire.’ His face was so close I could smell his breath, sweet with gentian violets. One of Uncle Joe Stalin’s friends buzzing at my ear. So near I knew he was unshaven. ‘The military are just using us now,’ he went on. His sweet breath was obscene in the stifling heat. Intimate in my ear, he wanted to know if we’d lost our lives in Calcutta would that be ‘killed on active duty’ even though the war most had signed up to had been over for a year? He sat up straighter and I had to shift with him, our shoulders sticking together in the crush. ‘Some mother,’ he spouted, ‘would have lost a son, some wife a husband for that. Piggy in the middle of squabbling Hindus and Muslims.’The silly room had quietened down to listen to him. One of Uncle Joe’s boys! I was having none of his nonsense.
‘Maxi . . .’ I said, to get his attention. I knew what direction he was but could only imagine him there.
‘No names,’ everyone shouted.
The whole meeting was ridiculous. I could feel the rise of a man’s chest on the back of my head. His knees digging my kidneys. ‘Mr Speaker,’ Maxi said from a long way off, ‘just call me, Mr Speaker.’
Nothing for it. ‘Mr Speaker,’ I said, ‘what is the point of this meeting? To run down our country?’ I could hear breathing behind me. A chap clearing his throat, sniffing up the phlegm. ‘I, for one, am proud to be part of the British Empire. Proud to represent decency.’
Everyone started to jeer.
‘Trust you, Pop,’ someone from over Maxi’s side called.
‘No names,’ Maxi said. ‘I don’t want anyone put on a charge for having this meeting.’
‘So, why are you having it, then?’ I asked. A finger poked hard into my ribs. I brushed it off. ‘We’ll all be going home soon. We don’t need this trouble for someone like Johnny Pierpoint.’
‘Why don’t you just belt up?’ was whispered to me, so close it sounded like a thought.
The man beside me landed a knee on my fingers. ‘You’re on my hand,’ I said. But he didn’t move. I pulled away, accidentally cuffing someone who was too droopy to yell. I could hear Maxi muttering something. Soon the whole room was at it like a classroom with the teacher gone.
No sense was going to be talked in this cauldron. I could see two cigarette tips, waving round like sparklers. Shapes, shadows, but nothing else. My fingers hurt like hell. There was no air to breathe – only foetid breath wafting about.
‘Put a sock in it, Pop,’ I heard, accompanied by a whiff of gentian violets, ‘or fuck off.’ A knee kicked into my back winding me. The culprit said sorry. But I soon realised I’d sat in the red corner among the Communists. I would have known to avoid them if I’d seen their faces.
There was no point in me staying. ‘Excuse me, I want to leave.’
Several men around me jeered. I pushed and shoved to get to my feet. And I was jostled roughly back. One of them grabbed my ankle with a ‘Watch where you’re bloody stepping.’ I made my way like a blind man to the door. Squeezing against clammy torsos and slimy bulks. Grabbing what I could to steady myself. I wished Maxi was coming with me. Away from this rabble.
I felt some fingers again, back under my foot. ‘Fuck off,’ the chap screamed. Curly had trouble getting the door open. Pushing at it nearly brought the walls down. But the sticky night air soon had me – hitting me fresh as a mountain breeze.
Forty
Bernard
I had a stint of guard duty that night so I would’ve had to leave the meeting anyway. A three-hour patrol on a hangar out near the edge of the field, guarding gliders that were still stacked up in their crates. Funny thing was, during the war, filters, magnetos, even simple washers you could get new for neither wish nor prayer. Had to scavenge everything from somewhere else. An undamaged wing off one kite put on to another. Use the butchered one for spares. Most of the mechanical training we had back home had been pointless. Stripping engines down to the last nut and bolt. Endless tests and VVs. Out here if it didn’t work, take it out and replace it. Engines, props, wheels, anything. We had to ransack a Japanese Oscar 2 after it landed intact. Maxi (disgruntled) said we should have been trained by thieves. Said any loose wallah could have taught us the skills we needed – how to dismantle and carry away in the fastest possible time. Absurd, I know, but he had a point. We even patched up a kite’s cloth bodywork with a chap’s shirt and then doped it with rice wine – never taught that in Blackpool. Yanks had had it all, of course. All their bent kites tinkered and fussed over in their well-equipped workshops.
But even though the war was over – the Japs having long surrendered – supplies still kept coming out. Stuff we’d d
Those loose wallahs could lift anything. Took a man’s wallet, more than once, from under his sleeping head. Didn’t know a thing about it until the morning. Every piece of Perspex was stripped from a hangar full of kites, while the two armed guards outside pooped off their rifles at shadows. The booty was then carried off into the jungle leaving His Majesty’s Forces scratching their heads. A priest lost his entire church: the bell tent that housed it, the altar, the seats. One night there, the next morning an unholy gap. Chaps jeered that not even God had seen that one coming.
But the worst by far were the dacoits. These men were murderers, not sneak thieves. Thugs. Thought nothing of stabbing, shooting, bludgeoning a guard to get their booty. Professionals of a sort. Everyone complained. ‘Now the war’s over,’ they said ‘we’re fighting these wretched bandits.’ Dacoits everywhere. Hell bent on using our ammo against us to tear up the British Empire. Everyone was jumpy. Worse than the Japanese, we all agreed, because we couldn’t tell them apart from the coolies.
And there were camp followers everywhere. Nothing those dark little Indians wouldn’t do for the precious baksheesh. Char-wallahs wherever you turned (‘Ek piala cha, sahib’) with their urns of foul tea. Dobie-wallahs washing clothes like women. Throw a few coins at a nappi wallah, get a shave, they’ll even do it while you sleep. And all around us a plague of untouchables – happy to clean out the toilet cans with bare hands. Miserable creatures. Even other Indians hated them. Several chaps had seen Indian women squirting their own breast milk for a thrown rupee. Shocked even the most worldly.
That night my guard duty was with an Indian. Army wallah. Conscripted, not a bearer. I’d worked with this one many times before. Spent several months with him taking tyres off bent kites and putting them on others. He was keen to learn. Eager to know what to do. Took orders well. Black eyes always watching me quizzically. Put him straight on the proper way of quite a few things. Arun was the name he went by. Last name rather queer (tongue-twister). He tried writing it down for me once, slowly with great concentration, but it was just a jumble of letters in no apparent order. Little chap, but muscly for an Indian. And happy. Not miserable like most of them. I noticed him straight away. He was outside my basha where the meeting was being held. A little way off but watching. One chap walked up to him, asked him what he was doing there.
‘Please, I am hanging about,’ he said. His English was hopeless. I had to jump in quick in case the chap gave him a thump for his cheek. Another Indian had been assigned to our watch. Ashok was his name. New to the camp. Been up in Cawnpur and Cox’s Bazar. Guards on duty always walked to their patrol together. Collected their rifles, then out to relieve the last watch. On your own you’d be picked off by dacoits. Murdered – or, worse, found wandering the jungle in your underwear.
Usually I spent a watch with Arun very quietly. A need to be vigilant (of course), but the truth of it was, there was not much to chat about with a native Bengali. Not so with this Ashok. No sooner had we three settled down than he started: ‘Tell me, Mr Bernard, how do you like India?’
These people could never get the hang of our names. But I let it go. ‘Hot,’ I said. ‘Too many mosquitoes. You don’t get that sort of thing in Earls Court.’
‘Earls Court?’
‘In London, where I live.’
‘You miss London?’
‘Of course. Who wouldn’t, so far from home?’
‘All Englishmen say this. I wonder why you stay in India if your Blighty is so missed?’
‘Well, I’m afraid I don’t have much choice in that matter.’
‘Of course. Forgive me. Are you wanting to get home?’
‘We all want to go home.’
‘But like the other men – the ones who strike for their demob.’
Strange thing for this little Indian to say. ‘What do you know about that?’ I asked him.
‘Oh, nothing. Just that many men – like Johnny Pierpoint and others, are they not browned off? They want to get home do they not? To Blighty. The white cliffs, Vera Lynn, a jolly good cuppa.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It is that I am hearing that men are tired of India now the war is over.’
‘Everyone wants to get home, of course. See their loved ones.’
‘Exactly. Loved ones.’
‘What do you know about all this?’ I had the feeling he was being a cheeky fellow.
‘I know nothing, Mr Bernard, please forgive me. My English is not good. Not pukka.’
‘You speak good English,’ I told him.
‘You are surprised?’
I knew lots of them had been educated. ‘Taught by missionaries, was it?’
‘No.’
‘Where did you learn? In the army?’
‘No, I am lucky to learn the language at school. They call me a little brown Englishman there. The British have taught me so many useful things.’
I was glad to hear he was grateful.
‘What would we poor Indians have done without you British? I say this to Arun. “Arun,” I say, “all the things the British are giving us in India.” “The Taj Mahal?” he says,’ Ashok whispered to me, breath foetid with garlic. ‘Arun is a simple man. Not educated.’Then louder, ‘I have to tell him the Taj Mahal was built before the British came. “Who by?” he is asking me. “Indians,” I am telling him. And he is looking surprised. “No,” I am saying, “not that marvel. But let us think – ah, yes, tax and cricket . . .”’
‘Fair play,’ Arun adds, grinning like a simpleton.
‘Fair play, tally ho, let’s play the white man,’ Ashok was shouting. Excitable people.
‘Keep the noise down,’ I told him.
‘Forgive me. I am happy when I talk of the British. Like the King. What a great man. Some say he stutters like a devil is holding back his tongue. But I say no. He is a noble man.’ He looked up humming and thinking, then slapped his head – a comic movement for an Indian. ‘The railways! How am I forgetting? A gift from the British to an ignorant people. Just like your Lancashire cloth. Better than homespun, my mother says. Better.’
I could hear some shouting coming from a way off. I lifted up my gun. ‘Hear that?’ I said.
‘I hear nothing.’
I listened. Told him to be quiet. Our duty was to guard not to chat. But all was still. No sooner had I relaxed than this Ashok was jabbering again: ‘Now what am I saying? Oh, yes. The British. The rule of law – let us not forget the rule of law. Look here – are we not defending quality British goods from thieving Indians? Without your rule of law what are we?’
As he spoke I noticed smoke rising from the vicinity of the camp. Could smell it more pungent than usual on the night air.
Still he went on: ‘I am not one of those people who wish the English out of India. I like you. Are you not protecting us all this time from the filthy Japs with their slitty eyes? Your British bulldog understands that there is nothing worse than foreigners invading your land. Look how you British fight those Germans. No sausages and language of the Kraut for Englishmen. “Go back,” you say. “Leave us or our bulldog will bite.” A dreadful thing to have foreign muddy boots stamping all over your soil. Do you not think?’
The horizon was beginning to glow orange. The sun had set hours ago but looked to have popped up again. Something was going on.
‘You have seen what we Indians are like when we are being left to ourselves. The Hindu hate the Muslim, the Muslim hate the Hindu. T
There was shouting again. This time unmistakable. Something was happening at the camp.
‘But, tell me, are you ever wondering why the British are coming here to India?’
The chaps will take care of it, I thought. The shouting, the smoke, nothing to do with my watch.
‘Mr Bernard?’
This Ashok had obviously asked me something. I wished the blighter would shut up. But it was our duty to get along. ‘Did you ask me something?’
‘I am just musing why the British are here in India.’
‘Are you serious? There was a war on, man!’
‘Mr Bernard is angry, I can see. Please forgive me.’
‘I’m not angry. Can we just be quiet now? There’s some flap going on and I need to . . . No more questions.’
‘Of course, of course. I am hearing this noise too. But I am sure it is nothing more than your British high jinks.’
‘Really, I would prefer it if you did not speak to me.’
‘As you wish,’ Ashok said. He turned to Arun. Shifted, moved his body away from me to talk tête-à-tête to him. Thought I couldn’t understand but I knew what he said in Bengali to Arun: ‘So this is the man you say is your friend?’
Arun shook his head in that snaky way they all have. Looks like a no to the inexperienced – all fresh white-kneed erks confused by it. But it’s a yes. Both of them started jabbering away. I couldn’t understand a word now. But Arun kept glancing my way. Sheepish. Embarrassed. Then I heard the word ‘Lifebuoy’ through the babble. Soon I realised he was saying something about me to Ashok. Arun was stroking his own arm as if washing. His brown fingers were tapping the air to show rain. Ashok, wide-eyed, was listening like story-time at school. The penny soon dropped and I knew what he was telling him.