I got back to Meerut at the beginning of July when the monsoon season had just started. Warm rain beat down incessantly, soaking through our uniforms when we were on the parade ground and dripping through the holes in the roofs of our barracks. For some, it brought a welcome relief from the exhaustingly dry heat of the months leading up to it, but the humidity sapped the strength of those not used to it. I was one of those for the first few weeks and suffered quite a bit until I got back in the swing of things.
My mate Lewis Wilton welcomed me back. It had been nearly two years since we’d seen each other, because he’d stayed behind on the plains when I was seconded to the Frontier force. In my absence he too had been made up to sergeant and proudly showed off his stripes. How he’d achieved the rank I don’t know, for he was as keen as ever on the drink and unless restrained by more cautious pals, he would look for a fight as enthusiastically as before.
I asked the Colonel if I was to be sent back to the Frontier. I wanted that posting; the call of the mountains was very strong and I longed for the clean cold air. But I was to be disappointed.
“No, Wilde,” the Colonel said, “it’s pretty quiet up there, at the moment. It’s here that we have trouble.”
I knew about the Freedom Movement, of course. We had been pretty ruthless, I think, in putting it down over the last few years and it should have petered out by rights. But we had reckoned without Mr Gandhi who had such determination and bravery. His Non-Cooperation movement kept us constantly on the hop. It didn’t matter how many we imprisoned or even executed, there were always more to take up the banner of independence. I know now that we were fighting a losing battle and that it was one we deserved to lose, but attitudes were different then and we thought we were doing the right thing. After all, many Indians who agreed with us, but they were the rich ones, the merchants and some of the Westernised Rajahs. Our leaders listened too much to them.
I hated this form of soldiering, pushing people around and escorting well-educated men to prison. Once, I had to take three men to the prison on the Andaman Islands. What a trip that was. There was me, three privates and our officer to accompany the prisoners. We went first by train to Calcutta and then boarded a ship for the three day sail to the islands. I played chess with one of the prisoners, a doctor he was, on the train. He had the set in his suitcase along with a selection of books. I took to him immediately, partly because he seemed to be such a good and gentle man. He had studied in England and except for his looks, you would have thought he was the same as one of us. We talked about books, he loved Dickens and Hardy too and he introduced me to the works of E.M Forster.
The officer, Captain Parker, didn’t like this chat about books. He was always a bastard, poorly educated but moneyed and a show off. I knew no-one who respected him, certainly not the Colonel, although he went to great lengths to hide his contempt and I think had sent him on this mission to get him away from the company for a few weeks.
“Wilde,” he said, “haven’t you got something better to do than hang around this prisoner?”
I dared to be obstructive. “I don’t think it does any harm, sir, we’re just passing the time.”
No orders existed about how to treat these prisoners and I was within my rights. But he didn’t like fraternisation and had to think up some excuse to get me away.
“Go and relieve the men so they can get their meal,” he said and marched back to his compartment.
“It doesn’t matter,” said the prisoner, “we can talk later, if you like.”
On board ship we talked a lot. One day we stood by the rail watching the huge wash of scrambled water leaving a white trail in the flat blue sea. He asked me if I was married.
“No,” I said.
“Have you not found a suitable young lady yet?”
I thought of Elizabeth and sighed. “I have, Doctor,” I said, “but she is already married.”
“Oh dear.” He shook his head and patted my arm. “There will be someone else, maybe.”
“I don’t think so.”
He looked so sorry for me and quizzical at the same time that I found myself telling him about Elizabeth and my brother. Why I should have done so, when I never talked about my home circumstances to anybody, I don’t know. Perhaps it was because I knew I would never see him again.
“So you see,” I said, when I had finished my tale of unrequited love, “she won’t leave the farm, no matter how unhappy she is.”
For a while he said nothing, simply stared out to sea where flying fish had now appeared to accompany the boat. They leapt in and out of the waves, droplets from their jagged fins glistening like diamonds in the bright sunlight, as all the time they kept in line with the passage of the ship.
“I think you and she have done the honourable thing,” he said finally. “Keeping the family from shame is more important than personal happiness.”
The fact was that I hadn’t told him the whole story. In my version, Elizabeth and I loved each other from a distance; it sounded more romantic that way. And after that I didn’t mention my home life again because I felt guilty pretending to be honourable.
When he and I weren’t talking, he spent his time with the other two prisoners, both younger than he and one of whom, a lad of about eighteen, was frightened of what was in store. I watched one afternoon from a distance as the doctor spoke quietly and encouragingly to them, patting the youngest man on the arm and pointing towards me and smiling. Later I had an opportunity to ask what he had been saying.
“I was telling them not to too alarmed. I said, ‘Look, here is an English soldier, he is an educated man and not a bully. There will be others like him.’”
I doubted that. From what I understood, the government generally chose the firmest sort of men to run the prisons. I couldn’t imagine many literary discussions taking place between prisoners and guards in the Cellular Jail. But it would be an unkindness to tell him that so I merely nodded.
“I’m not an educated man, as such,” I said, “just a farm boy who has read a lot. You have been to university and mixed with clever people. That is what I would call educated.”
Dr Rai considered this slowly as he did nearly everything I said. I could imagine him with his patients. They would come into his surgery and tell him their problem and he would sit back in his chair and think for at least a minute. I wondered if their illnesses would make them impatient, anxious for an instant answer with relief of symptoms, or whether they knew what they must expect when they consulted this man. Probably the latter. What is a minute in a lifetime.
“The word education has many interpretations,” he said. “Your interest in the world of literature allows me to think of you as an educated man. And following that, I am sure that many other facets of life pass through your mind and make you think.”
I looked quickly across the deck of the ship to where Captain Parker was sitting back on a chair with a glass of whisky in his hand. He had stopped trying to tell me not to fraternise, but I knew that he would put it in his report and that would be handed to the Colonel on our return.
I lowered my voice. “There is one thing I have been thinking about more and more.” I swallowed, wondering how to put it, not wanting to cause offence. “I don’t fully understand your struggle.” The words came out haltingly and I was nervous. Discussing what was tantamount to treason was probably treason of itself and if the Captain took it into his head, he could have me slapped in irons.
Silence again as the doctor thought. He was a small man, with a round face and round spectacles and even though we were both sitting cross-legged on the scrubbed sun-bleached deck, I towered above him. I watched a bird flying above us and realised that we must be nearing land. I could smell it anyway. Not the heavy spice-laden air that I remember from my approach to Bombay, but a green smell, a sweaty dark odour of rotting vegetation. I could imagine lush jungle and I was right, because these islands just over the horizon were off the coast of Burma and I went there a few years later.
Dr Rai suddenly spoke and I tore my gaze away from the seabirds streaking across the hot blue sky.
“Imagine, Mr Wilde,” he said, “that Britain had been conquered by France two hundred years ago. The French had brought their laws, their customs, their language even. You Britons had become a subject race, not allowed any more to do things in the old way. Now, the French could argue that you were not badly treated, that they had indeed, civilised you. That their laws were more modern than yours and that their way of conducting commerce, medicine, education and all aspects of life were better. What would you do?”
I laughed. The French could never conquer us, it was an impossible picture, but at the same time I could see what he meant and the laugh began to die. I suppose that is what we had done and even if we had brought some good and made some sense of a hugely diverse continent, had it been ours to do?
“It isn’t exactly like that,” I said, “is it?”
He didn’t reply, but sat still with his hands casually folded on his lap and let me work it out for myself.
“But you won’t succeed,” I whispered, now conscious that Captain Parker had turned his head and was watching us, “we have the army.”
Dr Rai permitted himself a small smile. “So you have, Mr Wilde. But not only do we have right on our side, you must know that we have many millions of people.” He looked back to his two friends who were sitting a little way off. “You are taking us three to jail, but twenty will take our place, then one hundred more will take their place, and a thousand after that. In the long run, can you win?”
After that we didn’t talk about the struggle again. He had done his job and sown a seed in my mind and I didn’t need it reinforced. And as the islands grew larger on the horizon, he spent the remaining time with his companions. I was concerned for the lad for he looked ill and I was pretty sure that he wouldn’t get proper treatment in the prison. I wondered if Dr Rai would be given access to medicines and allowed to care for his fellow captives.
We disembarked at Port Blair and were taken by lorry to the prison. Despite the awful use it was put to, I was impressed by the building. It was built of red sandstone and its seven towers soared over the surrounding buildings, which were mostly poor housing and shops. Everything else that I saw of the island was most primitive as though the indigenous islanders had tried to carry on their own life of fishing and animal husbandry and ignored the fact of prisoners being transported into their midst.
I learnt, however, that despite this impressive exterior, the inside was hellish and some of the things that went on in there didn’t bear thinking about. So, saying farewell to my prisoners was made doubly difficult by this knowledge and it took an effort on my part to try to impart an encouraging word.
“Good luck, Doctor,” I said to my friend as the prison guard marched forward to take command of our three men. The youngster was ghastly pale and I could see him trembling. The other man was holding him by the arm.
“Here,” I growled to the guard, he was a corporal and had to listen to me, “take care with that man. Can’t you see he’s sick?”
The corporal sniggered and jerked his head back towards the prison gate. “He’ll be in good company then. All the bastards in there are sick. Or say they are.”
Dr Rai stepped forward and held out his hand. “Goodbye, Mr Wilde,” he said, “thank you for your graciousness.”
I took his hand and lowering my voice said, “Keep your chin up, sir, it won’t be for ever,” and he smiled and turned towards the arched and studded door. Captain Parker bestowed a hard look on me, but I didn’t care, I watched as the prisoners were marched away. I learned later that the doctor had died in prison.
When we got back to camp I had letters from home. Nothing from Elizabeth but two from Mother. The first was written a couple of weeks after I had left, saying that they had enjoyed my visit and that all was well. Billy had bought a new filly and called her Beauty. Elizabeth had been working at the Gate House and had cleaned it up lovely and improved the garden. Billy was coming round to the idea of having a tenant.
The second letter was considerably more worrying. I had been back in India now for eight months and this letter had been written six weeks previously. “I must tell you,” wrote Mother, “that we are to expect a happy event. Elizabeth is expecting a child and we are all very excited. It will be born in the early spring.” She went on then to talk about Marian and Albert having a holiday in Biarritz and that old Aunt Fanny had been taken into hospital with pneumonia.
I could barely take any of this last in. All that concerned me was the expected baby. I was frightened. What had I done? What further shame and peril had I heaped on Elizabeth? I wrung my hands in despair, crumpling the letter up into a tight little ball, so sick was I with how dangerously foolish I’d been. And then after a while, another thought struck me and I carefully undid the letter and smoothed it out. As I re-read the words that Mother had written, “we are all very excited,” it occurred that she’d not written of danger here, only happiness and anticipation.
Now I was in a quandary. Maybe this child wasn’t mine. I had thought that Elizabeth and Billy seemed better friends in the couple of weeks before I left, so maybe they had now resolved their differences and gone back to sleeping together.
I hated that thought. I couldn’t bear to think of my brother’s stubby, dirt-encrusted fingers on her smooth white body and as for more than that, well my heart and stomach lurched and I felt suddenly sick. It would have been she, I knew it, who would have made the first approach. She’d now got a taste for it.
It was that night that I went out of the camp and down to the brothel by the market. I was angry, so angry that I wanted to wipe all thought of Elizabeth out of my head and in a fever of confusion and rage, I searched for my pal Lewis and dragged him out with me.
“This isn’t like you, mate,” he said, but he was game for anything and happily joined in with the debauchery until we had used up all our rupees. This next day I was disgusted with myself and in the days following, even sorrier as I had to be treated for a dose of the pox. But it did take Elizabeth from the front of my mind and I was able to get on with my life in India without having one foot constantly back at the farm.
I heard some months later that Elizabeth had been delivered of a boy, John Edward, a fine strong child who was causing havoc in the previously quiet household. “Elizabeth did suffer quite badly,” Mother wrote, “and the doctor said that there must be no more children. So we must cherish this little boy. William is very proud of him and has named you as godfather. We had the baptism last Sunday and Fred Darlington stood as proxy for you. I’m enclosing a photograph.”
The black and white snap showed Elizabeth holding a bundle wrapped in a white shawl. I could make out a baby’s face but the features were indistinct and Mother hadn’t said who he favoured. Elizabeth looked solemn, her face hidden under a Sunday hat, but it was the only photograph I had of her, so it went in my wallet and stayed there. I have it still.
The funny thing was that these people had become almost strangers to me after my great disappointment in what I perceived of Elizabeth’s unfaithfulness. I read Mother’s letters, which came every couple months, with interest and noted the growth and progress of the child and the comings and goings of life on the farm. But my life was in India and my family seemed far away.
Those years that followed were happy ones for me, in many ways. I enjoyed military life and was given more and more responsibility. At one point I was offered the chance of a commission and I thought long and hard about it. I wasn’t worried about my ability to mix comfortably with the other younger officers; I knew that if not as well bred as some of them, I was certainly as well read and after all these years, I had plenty of experience. But I liked my life as a senior sergeant and felt satisfied with my lot, so I declined.
“I think you’ve done the right thing,” said the Colonel when I went to him with my decision. “It can be awkward.”
I smiled inwardly. He had been the one who had put me up for it, but I think that had been simply to keep me contented. The Colonel was always conscious of the happiness of his men.
“Hang on a minute, sergeant,” he said, as I saluted and prepared to about turn. He shuffled some papers on his desk. “I’ve got an order here for you. Came up this morning. Now,” he put on his spectacles and read from an army telegraphic message, “Colonel Barnes has requested some men. He mentions you particularly. Are you up for another tour of duty on the Frontier?”
Was I? By God, I whooped with delight once I’d left his office and got back to my room in the barracks. This was what I been longing for.
I took twenty men with me to Peshawar, including Lewis Wilton who wanted a change from the oppressive heat of Meerut. We had kitted ourselves out at the quartermaster’s stores and I was able to let the men know what they would need for the entirely different conditions. Like I had, when I was first posted to the mountains, they found it hard to imagine that they would need thick jackets and padded sleeping bags.
“Bloody hell,” said Lewis, when he staggered from the stores with a great bundle of equipment, “I’m beginning to be sorry I volunteered.”
I learned that more trouble had occurred on the Frontier. Not the tribesmen this time, but supporters of Mr Gandhi who had started a similar non-cooperation movement. They were led by a charismatic local man who had been called the Frontier Gandhi. What was really concerning was the attitude of our native regiments. They were not prepared to fire on their fellow countrymen.
Our trip north took nearly a week as the trains had to be guarded against insurgents and we missed a normally easy connection. But when we finally got into Peshawar and breathed the sharp cold air, all those difficulties were forgotten and I was happy.
“Bloody Nora,” Lewis grumbled, pulling his jacket closely round his chest and looking around him in amazement. “Brass monkey weather, here.”
I laughed. “You’ve been too long in the same place,” I said, “Time for a change.”
He looked up at the mountains rising abruptly from brief foot hills. On this September morning they were clear against a brilliant blue sky and seemed close enough to touch.
“I hope you’re not going to tell me that we patrol up them hills,” he said and the other men, who had volunteered looked at me with concern in their faces.
“You’ll love it,” I said and did a little show of callisthenics. “Just as soon as you get fit.” I ignored their looks of dismay and hurried them into the lorry that was to take us to our camp. For me, it was like coming home and as soon as I’d found my billet and brushed the dust of travelling off my uniform, I went to report our arrival.
“Well,” said Colonel Barnes when I was shown into his office. “Young Wilde, as I live and breathe.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied, saluting smartly. “I’m very pleased to back here and to see you, sir.”
“And me you,” he said kindly and shook my hand.
He looked older, tired and drawn as though he hadn’t the enthusiasm for the struggle that he had before. As I searched for further conversation my eye lit upon the photograph of his wife on his desk.
“I trust that Mrs Barnes and the boys are well, sir.”
Here his face darkened and he turned away to look out of the window at the magnificent scene of snow covered peaks. “I’m afraid Mrs Barnes has passed away,” he said, his voice faltering.
I was shocked. I thought of that lovely woman who had reminded me so much of Elizabeth and had been kind to me on the journey home. No wonder the Colonel looked so awful.
“I am greatly sorry to hear that, sir,” I said, “Mrs Barnes was a very nice lady. I’m sure she’s a sad loss to both you and the regiment.”
“Thank you, Wilde. Damned decent of you to say that.” He took out a handkerchief and blew his nose. “I won’t deny that it has been a dreadful blow to me. But you have to carry on, don’t you. For the boys’ sake.”
I found out that Mrs Barnes had been thrown from her horse while out hunting at her family home in Ireland, soon after they arrived home on leave. While I’d been experiencing the happiest time of my life, she had been dead and her family in mourning. What a tragedy.
Well we did carry on. Friends, I dared to think, despite the difference in rank. I learned all the best things I knew of soldiering from him and when he went home for good, which he did, a couple of years later, I was sorry.
I met a girl in Peshawar on that second tour of duty. Zahira, I think her name was, a pretty little thing whose father helped with the horses at the camp. He kept inviting me for a meal at their house in the town and one night I took him up on it. I took a bottle of whisky as a gift, but he was Muslim and wouldn’t drink it, but he thanked me anyway. He said he would trade it for something in the bazaar, if I didn’t mind.
His wife and daughters didn’t eat with us but I spotted Zahira almost immediately and smiled at her when she put the dishes of food on the table. We used to meet after that, sometimes, in the town and one day I was bold enough to speak to her. To my relief, she had some English and dared to use it but she was scared that our conversations would be reported back to her father. They were extremely strict, religion wise. But one day, she managed to escape her house and we rendezvoused away from the town, on the road out towards the border. I made love to her in the mountains, under a cold blue sky where buzzards squealed overhead and circled lazily on the thermals. I was guilty about it and careful, for in her religion, the penalty for what she was doing was death by stoning and that would have been a horrible fate for such a lovely girl. After that, I didn’t see her again, by my choice. It was too dangerous. I expect she is long dead by now. Those native women had difficult lives.
I stayed on the Frontier for five years, dealing with the petty squabbles of the tribesmen, which were only petty until one of our soldiers was wounded or even killed. The freedom movement was beginning to cause us far more trouble and was so much more difficult to deal with than the tribal excursions of the Pathans. On the whole, these protesters were peaceable but that didn’t make things easier. If we were rough moving them on, then we were considered cruel and despotic, which in a way, I suppose we were. I didn’t know how else to do it and neither did the officers. We were fighting a losing battle.
One day orders came to return to Meerut. Our regiment was being sent home. What a shock and a disappointment. I was an old India hand now and I had considered whether to buy myself out and transfer permanently to one of the Indian companies. The one I was seconded to would have been fine and I was sorely tempted. In the end, though I stayed with my regiment and went back with them.
This time, my return to England was less exciting. Somehow I felt in no hurry to visit the family and put off my leave for several months. Our Regimental headquarters, where I was stationed was only about fifty miles away from home and I could have easily gone there and back in a day, but I never did. I suppose I was frightened, didn’t want to see our Billy and Elizabeth being loving together and happily bringing up their little boy. Mother, I knew, would be triumphant that her plan had finally worked out and that the brief passion that had flared so hotly between me and Elizabeth had indeed only been that. Brief.
Instead of going home, I joined a climbing club and when I had days or weekends off, I went with my new friends to the Lake District and Snowdonia and indulged in that passion for the mountains which has lived with me since childhood. Up in the clean air, all the murky complications of my life seemed to blow away and I could feel that I was truly happy. When I returned to the garrison after a couple of days climbing, I could be contented for a while, reliving every foothold and grip until thoughts of my Elizabeth and her child began to invade my peace of mind.
But I stayed on in the barracks, getting re-acclimatised to English life and more involved with my new duties as Training Sergeant. At thirty years of age, which does seem so young to me now, I was a hardened veteran of several campaigns and a figure of some importance within our regiment. Those new recruits looked soft to me, mere shadows of the men they could have been. Things in the country weren’t good, the terrible days of mass unemployment were only slowly disappearing and many young men were joining up for the sake of three square meals a day. They weren’t dedicated to soldiering and it was my hard task to make something of them.
Our Billy would have been amazed if he could have seen me then, yelling and screaming at young fellows in an attempt to teach them the proper army way. “He’s a right bastard,” I heard one man say to his mate as I took them through the physical exercises that we had set up. And I suppose I was, but it was necessary. I think being able to run fast is equally worthwhile in a battle situation as is having the guts to stand and fight. I came to know that even more when I was fighting through Burma later on. By God, I made a good many hasty retreats.
One late autumn afternoon I was on the parade ground with my latest batch of recruits when a corporal came to tell me that I was wanted in the office. New orders from the War Office, was my first thought. We were always getting conflicting instructions, because two points of view were abroad in the land. One lot said that war was imminent and that we should be ready for action at any minute. The other thought that peace would last for ever. Diplomacy was the key.
“Sir!” I said, arriving in the office and saluting to the young Captain who was sitting at a desk reading a newspaper.
He put his head round the paper and I saw that a cigarette was hanging from the corner of his mouth. My God, if he’d been one of mine, I’d have seen to it that he was less of a shambles. He wasn’t a bad officer, later on when it mattered, but he was wounded in our first foray into enemy territory and invalided out. He was glad to go, but then, we all were.
But now he couldn’t be bothered to put his paper down. “I believe there’s a visitor for you, Mr Wilde. The corporal let them in when I was in the mess arranging the Colonel’s little dinner.” Our Colonel was entertaining the city dignitaries this evening. Fortunately, I was off duty and wouldn’t have to attend the welcome party in any capacity. He nodded towards the inner office. “In there.”
I was perplexed. Who could come to see me? The family knew I was home; I’d written to Mother and promised to visit when duties allowed, but no-one had ever come to see me before. My first thought was illness or, God forbid, a death, in the family. My heart lurched. ‘Please God,’ I whispered to myself, ‘not her.’
So it was a reluctant hand that turned the door handle and entered the room. This was the office that the Colonel used when he was on the camp. But as I said, he was busy today, getting ready for his party.
At first I couldn’t see anyone. It was a large room with windows all along one wall and the afternoon sun was shining straight in, casting a brilliant glow that made objects difficult to make out. Then I noticed movement on the far wall beside the stack of filing cabinets and figure that I knew almost better than myself, swam into my view.
“Elizabeth?” I asked, my breath short and difficult to produce from what felt like collapsing lungs
“Hello, Richard.”
She was there, in the flesh and as lovely as ever. I should have run over to her and taken her in my arms but I couldn’t. She wasn’t mine now. All I did was to walk to her side and drop a brotherly kiss on her cheek.
“This is a surprise,” I said coolly, regaining my composure and behaving as though I’d seen her only a few days ago and five years hadn’t passed. “There’s nothing wrong at home, I hope?”
If she was disappointed by my lack of enthusiasm for seeing her, she didn’t show it. She had changed again in the intervening years and now looked more mature, even matronly. Not that she had put on weight, Elizabeth was slim till the day she died, but she seemed less girlish. Her clothes were smart, a maroon coat with a fur collar and a fur hat that bore a gold brooch in the shape of a panther. And for the first time, I saw her in make-up. It suited her, for it was skilfully applied but somehow it made her even more remote from the girl I had loved.
“No,” she smiled and the room became even more brilliant. My Elizabeth had grown into a beautiful woman. “No nothing like that.” She leaned against the Colonel’s desk. “It’s just that you haven’t been to see us since your return and,” here for the first time her voice faltered slightly and a glimpse of the old Elizabeth peeped out from this newly sophisticated person. “And I couldn’t wait any longer.”
Couldn’t wait any longer? This was the woman I had loved to distraction, who the moment my back was turned had gone back to her husband in the most intimate way possible. I swallowed, confused and wondering what to say. Surely she wasn’t expecting us to re-kindle the old relationship.
I struggled for the correct words and then settled on the obvious question. “What couldn’t you wait for?”
“Why, to introduce you to my son,” and she gave me a long steady look. I stood there gaping in that sunny uncomfortably furnished office, as she turned her head and putting out her hand, gently withdrew a small boy from where he had been hiding, behind a wooden filing cabinet.
“Say hello to John,” she smiled and I looked down to see a bright little face topped with a thick tumble of carroty red hair, grinning up at me. There could be no doubt. He was mine.