The Avram Davidson Treasury (32 page)

“Hello, Gaffer,” the people greeted him. “Hello, Ma.”

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to come fetch him when it’s his going-home time,” she said.

“I can manage meself, Missus,” the old man said querulously.

“If I don’t turn up, some of you give him a hand and see he has all his buttons buttoned. One gin and two ales, Alfred—no more, mind!” And with a brisk, keen look all around she was off.

She seemed the younger of the two, but it may not have been a matter of years. Thin, she was, white-haired and wrinkled; but there was no pink or gray softness about her. Her black eyes snapped as she looked around. Her back was straight. There was something not quite local in the accents of her speech—a certain lilting quality.

The old man was given a seat at a table near me and the fellow who had first announced the old man’s entrance now said, “Got your pension today, eh, Gaffer? Stand us a drink, there’s a good fellow.”

The old man stared at a palmful of change, then stirred it with a twisted finger. “My missus hasn’t given me but enough for the gin and the two ales,” he said.

“Ah, Tom’s only having his games with you, Gaffer,” someone said. “He does with everyone. Pay no mind.” And they resumed their conversation where they’d left off, the chief topic of the night being that the English wife of an American serviceman stationed in the county had given birth to triplets. “Ah, those Yanks,” they said indulgently.

“‘Ah, those Yanks,’” Tom mimicked. His spectacles were mended on the bridge with tape. “They get roaring drunk on the best whiskey that you and me can’t find and couldn’t afford to buy it if we could; they smash up cars like they cost nothing—you and me couldn’t buy them if we saved forever. Curse and brawl like proper savages, they do.”

There was an embarrassed silence. Someone said, “Now, Tom—” Someone looked at me, and away, quickly. And someone muttered, rather weakly, about there being “good and bad in all nations.” I said nothing, telling myself that there was no point in getting into a quarrel with a middle-aged man whose grievances doubtless would be as great if all Americans, civil and military, vanished overnight from the United Kingdom.

To my surprise, and to everyone else’s, it was the Gaffer who spoke up against the charge.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, laddie-boy,” he said to Tom, who must have been fifty, at least. “’Tisn’t that they’re Yanks at all. ’Tis that they’re soldiers, and in a strange land. That’s a wicked life for a man. I’ve seen it meself. I could tell you a story—”

“Sweet Fanny Adams, no, don’t!” Tom said loudly—an outburst which did nothing to increase his popularity. “I heard ’em all, millions of times. The old garrison at Lahore and the Pay-thans and the Af-gains and the Tarradiddles, mountain guns and mules, and, oh, the whole bloody parade. Give us a rest, Gaffer!”

He could have killed the old man with a slap of his hand, I suppose, the Gaffer looked that feeble. But he couldn’t shut the old man up, now he’d had his sip of gin.

“No, you don’t want to hear naught about it, but I’ll tell it anyway. Me, that was fighting for the flag before you was born.” For a moment his faded blue eyes seemed puzzled. “Oh, but I have seen terrible things,” he said in a voice altogether different from his vigorously annoyed tone of a second before. “And the most terrible thing of all—to see my friend die before my eyes, and he died hard, and not to be able to do aught to help him.” His words died off with a slow quiver.

Tom wasn’t giving up that easily. “What’s the football news?” he asked at large. No one answered.

“And not just the fighting in the Hills,” the Gaffer went on. “What was that all for? India? They’re giving India away now. No—other things… My
best
friend.”

“How about a game of darts?” Tom urged, gesturing toward the back room, through the open door of which we could see the darts board and a frieze of old pictures which dated back six reigns or more. I’d often meant to examine them with attention, but never had.

“…and it’s all true, for I’ve got cuttin’s to prove it. Young chap from newspaper was there and saw it and wrote it all up. Oh, it was terrible!” Tears welled to the reddened edges of his eyes. “But it had to be.”

“Anyone for
darts?
”

Someone said, “Shut up, Tom. Go on, Gaffer.”

And this was many years ago.

As you went along the Mall in Lahore (which was the local section of the Grand Trunk Road from Calcutta to Peshawur), you passed the museum and the cathedral and the Gardens and Government House and the Punjab Club. And you kept on passing, because you were an enlisted man and the Club was for officers and civilians of high rank. And then for three dusty miles there was nothing to speak of (natives hardly counted), and then there was the Cantonment, and in the Cantonment was the garrison.

“Head-bloody-quarters of the Third bloody Division of the Northern bloody Army,” said the Docker. He spat into the dust. “And you can ’ave it all for one bloody yard of the Commercial Road of a Saturday night,” he said. “Or
any
bloody night, for that matter!”

But his friend, the Mouse, knew nothing of the glories of the Commercial Road. He had taken the Queen’s shilling in the market town that all his life he had regarded as if it were London, Baghdad, and Babylon. Lahore? He would have ‘listed to go serve in Kamtchatka, if it had only got him away from his brute of a father, a drunken farm-laborer in a dirty smock. How, he often wondered, had he got the courage to take the step at all?

“It frightens me sometimes, Docker,” he confessed. “It’s all so strange and different.”

The Docker gave him a look on which his habitual sneer was half overcome by affection. “Don’t you ’ave no bloody fear while
I’m
wiv you!” And he touched him, very lightly, on the shoulder. The Docker was tall and strong, with straight black hair and sallow skin and a mouth that was quick to anger and quick to foul words even without anger, and a mind that was quick to take offense and slow—very slow—to forgive.

Sergeant-Major had shouted, “I’ll teach you to look at me!” and had kicked him hard. That night in the lanes on the other side of the little bazaar, past the tank and the place where the hafiz taught, someone hit Sergeant-Major with a piece of iron, thrown with main force. Split his scalp open. Who? No one ever knew. When Sergeant-Major came off sick-list and went round telling about it, spreading his hair with his thick fingers to show the long and ugly wound with its black scab, the Docker passed by, walking proper slow. And Sergeant-Major looked up, suddenly, as if he recognized the footfalls, and there was a look passed between them that had murder in it. But nothing was said, nothing at all.

And no one kicked the Docker after that, and when it became known that he was the pal of the little private everyone called the Mouse, because of his coloring and his timid ways, why, no one kicked the Mouse either, after that.

“See that blackie there, Docker?” the Mouse demanded. “See that white bit of string round his waist and over? He’s what they call a braymin. Like our parson back ’ome—only, fancy a parson with not more clothes on than that!”

A mild interest stirred the big soldier’s face. “Knew a parson give me sixpence once, when I was a nipper,” he said. “Only I ‘ad to come to church and let ’im christen me, like, afore ’e’d leave me ’ave it. Nice old chap. Bit dotty.”

The crowd was thick on the road, but somehow there was always space where the soldiers walked. They passed a blind Jew from Peshawur, with a gray lambskin cap on his head, playing music on the harmonium. It wasn’t like any music the Mouse had ever heard, but it stirred him all the same. The Docker grandly threw a few pice in the cup and his little friend admired the gesture.

“That lane there—” the mouse drew close, dropped his voice—“they say there’s women there. They say some of’m won’t look at sojers. But they say that some of’m will.”

The Docker set his cap acock on his head. “Let’s ’ave a look, then, kiddy,” he said. “And see which ones will.” But they never did—at least, not that day. Because they met Lance-Corporal Owen going to the bazaar and with him were three young ladies, with ruffles and fancy hats and parasols. They were going to the bazaar to help Lance-Corporal Owen buy gifts to send home to his mother and sisters. And this was quite a coincidence, because when the Docker heard it he at once explained that he and the Mouse were bound on the same errand.

“Only they say the best prices are at the places where they don’t speak English. And Alf, ’ere, and me, we don’t know none of this Punjabee-talk, y’see.”

And because the young ladies—two of whom were named Cruceiro and one De Silva, and they were cousins—said that they knew a few words and would be pleased to help Lance-Corporal Owen’s friends, and because Owen was very decent about it all—and why not, seeing that he had three of them?—they all walked off, three pairs of them. The Mouse had the youngest Miss Cruceiro on his arm, and the Docker had Miss De Silva. Perhaps Owen wasn’t quite so pleased with this arrangement, but he smiled.

That was how it began, many years ago.

Harry Owen was a proper figure of a man: broad shoulders, narrow waist, chestnut-colored hair, eyes as bright blue as could be. Always smiling and showing his good, white teeth. Not many men had teeth that good. Even the wives of the officers didn’t feel themselves too proud to say, “Good morning, Owen.” It was as if there was a sun inside of him, shining all the time.

The three of them became friends. The six of them. The Docker and Leah De Silva, Harry and Margaret Cruceiro, and the Mouse and Lucy Cruceiro. To be sure, Lucy was rather dim and didn’t say much, but that suited her escort well enough: he had little to say to her. But he would have felt all sorts of things bubbling up inside of him—if he had been walking with Miss De Silva.

But that, he knew, was impossible. Miss De Silva was so clever, so handsome, so self-assured; he would have been tongued-tied beside her. Besides, she walked with the Docker. And so, for all that she was pleasant to the Mouse, he was too shy to do much more than nod.

Later on he was to think that if the Docker had known that Leah De Silva was not really English, and that she and her cousins and all the others of their class were not regarded by the soldiery as…well …

But he did not know. Chasteness was not a highly prized attribute in Cat’s-meat Court where the Docker’s wild, slum-arab childhood had been largely spent—indeed, it was a quality almost completely unknown. He had no experience of respectable girls, neither half-caste nor quarter-caste nor simon-pure English. The daughters of the officers lived in a world sealed off from him, and the few daughters of NCOs almost as much so.

To men like Lance-Corporal Owen, Eurasian girls may have seemed to lack that certain quality which spelled Rude Hands Off, which the English girls at home had had. But the Docker knew nothing of afternoon teas and tiny sandwiches, of strict papas and watchful mamas, of prim and chaperoned walks in country towns. For him the Victorian Age had never existed, raised as he had been in a world little changed from the fierce and savage Eighteenth Century.

But this did not bring him to take liberties now. On the contrary. To the Docker a railroad telegrapher (for such was Mr. De Silva, burly and black-mustached) was a member of a learned profession. He little noticed that the ever-blooming Mrs. De Silva wore no corsets and let her younger children run about the house naked. And little cared. He knew that there were girls to be had for a thrupney-bit and there were girls who were not. All the latter were respectable. No cottage in Kensington could have been more respectable, in the Docker’s eyes, than the old house where the De Silvas lived, three or four generations of them, in dark and not always orderly rooms smelling of incense and odd sorts of cooking. That the girls were not exactly bleached-white in complexion was nothing to him; the Docker was dark himself. When Mr. and Mrs. De Silva boasted of their ancestry—of Portuguese generals and high-ranking officials of the old East India Company—the Docker felt no desire to doubt. He felt humble.

Miss Leah De Silva was quiet and ladylike enough when talking to the Docker. But she could be fierce and sudden when someone in her family did anything she thought not right. Perhaps her parents had been something less than keen as mustard about the Docker. He was only a corporal. Did they feel that their daughter should look higher? A sentence like a shower of swords from Leah, in a language which had once been Portuguese, silenced them.

One afternoon, when the barracks were almost deserted, the Docker summoned Owen and the Mouse to consult with. He produced a bottle and offered it.

“And risk my stripe? Thanks, my boy, but no thanks,” said Owen. The Mouse took a small sip. The Docker’s manner was very odd, he thought. He was proud and he was abashed; he was happy and he was uneasy.

“’Ere’s the thing,” he said. “I mean to marry Miss De Silva.” And he gave them a challenging look.

“Good!” said the Mouse.

“I know she’ll ’ave me,” the Docker went on. “But…well…there’s Susanna.”

“Oh, ah,” agreed Owen. “There’s Susanna.”

Susanna was a girl who had a little house of her own, often visited by soldiers, one of whom had been the Docker. Her mother was a woman of some tribe so very deep in the Hills that they were neither Hindu nor Moslem. Heaven only knew how she had come to Lahore, or where she had gone after leaving it—for leave it she did, after her baby was born; and Heaven, presumably, knew who the father had been.

Susanna had been raised and educated by the Scottish Mission and had once been employed in the tracts department of its Printing Establishment. The officials of the Mission had been willing to forgive Susanna once, then twice— they had even been willing to forgive Susanna a third time—but not to retain her in the Printing Establishment. Whereupon Susanna had renounced the Church of Scotland and all its works, and had gone altogether to the bad.

“I’m going to break off wiv ’er,” said the Docker determinedly. “I shan’t give ’er no present, neither—no money, I mean. I know it’s the custom, but if I’m going to be married I shall need all the money I’ve got.”