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.

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.