Small Island (40 page)

The NCO, blood-vessel red, swallowed hard. ‘Are you disobeying an order?’

His answer was delivered military style. Loud. Decisive. ‘Yes, Sergeant.’

‘Right. You’re on a charge. Both of you,’ the NCO said.

Pierpoint shrugged. His hapless accomplice was astonished.

‘Take those guns off them. Tie their hands. You’re both on a charge for refusing an order.’

Pierpoint looked relieved. He sat down where he’d stood on the truck floor, his silly friend now joining him with a defiant swagger. There was nothing to tie their hands with, but both obliged their chums by pressing their wrists together in a phantom bind.

Everyone knew what was coming next. Every gaze dropped to the floor to avoid the sergeant’s eyes. I felt him pointing to me and Maxi through the top of my head.

‘Come on, you two. Pick it up on the double.’

Maxi threw me a look. Is it worth it? Should we do it? he wanted to know. He knew my answer. We could be going home soon. And an order is an order.

‘Hindu or Muslim?’ some joker shouted from the truck. How are we supposed to tell the difference? How those coolies recognised one another as an enemy was a mystery to all. After two years in India, they still all looked the same to me. Apart from those Sikhs, that is, with their headscarves.

The body was warm. It gave Maxi a fright. ‘Is he still alive?’ he whispered. The throat was slit. Neck open in a scabby second grin. Stiff as an ironing-board. Stench thick enough to chew. The truck had cracked its arm into zigzagging pieces. An ear was dangling. Came off in my hand. I held it in my palm. Flimsy as a flap of leather from a shoe. ‘Just chuck it, Pop,’ Maxi shouted.

I turned away from the truck. Had to vomit.

‘You all right?’ Maxi said. I waved him away. Didn’t need to be seen.

Maxi started covering the body. Tucking the sacking under like bedtime. Ready to lift. Suddenly there was gunfire. ‘Come on, you two,’ the NCO shouted.

Maxi lifted his end. Couldn’t get mine. Wretched
dhoti
on the corpse was still caught under the wheels. ‘It’s stuck,’ I shouted. Maxi dropped his end, which landed on the ground with an almighty thump.

‘Leave it,’ the NCO said. ‘Get back on, now.’The truck started lurching off. Pulled up by the others, we climbed back just in time. Silly, but in the end the body was left where it had fallen.

They came running down the street. Gushing towards us like a flash flood. This horde of men. Jumping out from shabby windows and doorways. Down the alleys between the flimsy buildings that looked to be made of cardboard. Turned over a rickshaw. Tipped up a stall. Spilled the fruit. Pulverised it underfoot. All brandished something – a fist, a stick, the blink of a blade. Loud as a football crowd. Unstoppable. Rushing our lone truck. The NCO yelled for us all to ‘Stay calm! Stay calm!’ I hadn’t fixed my bayonet yet. Hands quivering, I dropped it. Scrabbling round. Maxi found it and handed it to me. I dropped it again. Hundreds of scruffy black-eyed coolies – maybe thousands – coming for us. We started lunging out with our bayonets. All yelling something. Get back. Fuck off. The NCO shouted, ‘Hold your line. Stay calm.’ My mechanic’s fingers – used to tinkering with kites – were trembling. Pulling on the trigger of the rifle. But no ammunition. Not a bullet between us.

‘Bang, bang,’ a young chap shouted. Desperate but not forlorn.

They surrounded us like water. Bobbing black faces at every side. But, strangely, once they were upon us they quietened. Crowding round the truck as if not knowing what to do. ‘Look fierce,’ the NCO whispered loudly. A chap fainted. Unsteadied several as he fell; he was left where he landed. There was a standoff – us looking at them, them looking at us. Seemed like hours. But it could only have been seconds. Slowly the truck began to rock. We started to lose our footing, grabbing the sides of the truck and each other.

Maxi’s hand was squeezing my shoulder. I clutched a bunch of someone’s shirt. Everyone splayed their legs ready to stand firm. Jabbing bayonets out of the side of the truck. The NCO shouted, ‘Hold on. Grab something.’

Maxi yelled, ‘It’s a hundred to one here. What do we do, Sarge?’ Everyone knew that if the truck went over we’d be spilled under the feet of this rabble and pounded to paste for the vultures. The NCO was banging the side of the truck with his rifle butt, aiming for the black hands and fingers that rocked us. Everyone joined in. Even Pierpoint was on his feet, hanging over the side, lashing out with his fists. His hapless friend was holding his legs. But we were being tossed around like a boat in a storm.

Suddenly there was gunfire. A police truck came round the corner and fired several rounds of bullets into the air. Our truck steadied in a cloud of dust. The rabble scattered like rodents, scurrying off down side-streets. Back through the windows and the doors. Chased by the ping of real gunfire. One dropped over here, another couple over there, tripping, grabbing at a wound, while some of the fallen were hurriedly pulled away. Chaps cheered, watching them go down. Slapping to the ground like a duck shoot at a fair.

‘Wait a minute. Were they Hindu or Muslim?’ one joker asked.

Breathing relief, quite a few yelled back, ‘Who the bloody hell cares?’

Thirty-nine

Bernard

Thousands were killed in Calcutta. Men, women, children, even suckling babies, it didn’t matter who. They called it a riot. Those of us who’d been there in the thick of battle with these blood-thirsty little men knew it was more than that. Muslims butchering Hindus. Hindus massacring Muslims. And who knows what side the Sikhs were on? Rumour said the wounded were too many to be counted, the dead too many to be buried. They were fighting for who should have power when a new independent India comes. Made me smile to think of that ragged bunch of illiterates wanting to run their own country. The British out of India? Only British troops could keep those coolies under control. A job well jobbed – all agreed. For our RSU it was back to the airfield. All present if not all correct. Left it to other Indians (and the vultures) to clear the streets of the tragic litter.

But everyone was riled after that turn of duty in Calcutta. Some more than others. Mutterings. Huddles of men. The talk? The stifling hot journey. The train rushing us through to get there but spending the trek back idling away in sidings. The heat. The overcrowding. Too many erks bunked up together in the museum for four days. Only let out in official convoys with no ammo. The endless parades through the streets. The orders to look fierce. The rumours that the fish we were offered to eat came from the Hooghly river, where many of the rancid rotting bodies of the dead were found. The days of nothing to eat but boiled eggs. (Not easily forgotten, the sulphurous burps of hundreds of BORs.) Then there was Pierpoint and his chum, taken off to await court-martial for disobeying that hasty order.

There was to be a meeting in our
basha
after
khanna
. Maxi and a couple of others had suggested it. Wanted to discuss the business of Pierpoint and the charge. I couldn’t understand why Maxi wanted to get involved. He was usually more sensible than most. He’d be going home soon, back to Brighton to order a pint in a pub. Pierpoint and his antics would be a bad memory.

‘We can’t see them on a charge for what happened in Calcutta,’ he told me.

‘Why, in heaven’s name, not? An order is an order, surely.’

‘Jesus, don’t get on your high horse, Pop. Just stay away if you want.’

There was no love lost between me and Pierpoint. Spike to his friends, Johnny to his mother. We’d shared a
basha
once. Made my life very difficult. I was older, you see, than most of the men. Tried to keep my head down. Had a job to do. Just quietly get on with it. Considered myself a civilising influence. But it was hard when all around me were young men like Johnny Pierpoint. He was a lanky chap. Arms as long as an ape’s and an eye that winked (without warning) every so often.

‘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.