The sight of Emily walking towards him was, something to savour for the rest of his days. Muscle and mind, see?
It hadn’t taken him long to find somewhere – a fissure in the rock, a good two hundred yards from the camp, well out of the way, protected, leading down to a drop in the jungle floor, covered with a spongy moss that wasn’t so bad to lie on. He’d cut some ferns to make it nice and comfy. No one would find them.
She was a real looker all right, the sweetness of her face shining through the muck, as she came towards him, keeping to the edge of the little clearing the elephant men had managed to hack out of the jungle. A whisper, ‘Emily,’ and she took a step into the greenery and she was in his arms, trembling. Soothing her, he ran his index finger down the side of an arm, saying: ‘Don’t worry, darling, I’m not going to hurt you. Just want a little natter, that’s all,’ and he took her hand and led the way to his new hiding place.
Once inside, they both had to kneel. He put a finger to her lips and said, ‘I’ve got a little treat for you, Emily,’ and produced from his knapsack half a bar of chocolate, stolen from the one of the boxes carried by the pack elephants. Chocolate was as precious as gold, reserved for the sick. To steal it, a crime. Unwrapping the silver foil for her, he placed the chocolate just in front of her mouth, steadying himself by resting a hand lightly on the side of her ribcage, his fingers brushing her left breast. She’d had no proper meal since leaving Rangoon. The bar smelt delicious. Tilting forward, she bit into the chocolate and nibbled.
‘Nice?’
‘Mmmm.’
He suppressed a grimace.
‘Are you all right?’
‘It’s nothing.’ He pulled out a cheroot from the packet in his shorts, lit it with a match, sucked in the smoke and exhaled.
Dying sunlight slashed through the trees, falling on her face.
‘It’s hard work keeping clean.’ He started to speak.
‘If you don’t mind my asking.’ But so did she.
Laughing, he invited her to go ahead.
‘The bandage. How did you…?’
‘Someone hit me with a frying pan.’
‘No!’
He paused for perhaps a beat too long, then started to laugh. ‘No, I’m pulling your leg. It was the Japanese.’
‘Tell me what happened.’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘There’s not much competition, is there? I mean, I can hardly go to the movies tonight, can I?’
‘Fair enough.’
His mind went back to what had happened before the ferry left. Better not tell Toots here about that.
‘We’d been shot up pretty badly by the Japanese. The captain, God bless him, had bought it, a bullet in the face. With him dead, that meant I was in charge. We found the ferry crossing, but we had to dump the guns, and our dead. We did our best, saying prayers and marking their graves, but we couldn’t hang about for long. Then we hopped on the ferry. Half-way across, along came the Zeroes. The first strafing run shot up two men.’
The others were fussing over the injured, uselessly, panicking, but he wasn’t going to nurse dead meat. Gregory ignored the commotion and had his ears wide open, staring downriver, his eyes trained on where the Zeroes had gone to, and where they would come back from.
‘I was patching up the injured best as I could manage, when the Zeroes returned.’
No relaxing of the muscle or the mind – the Leader was spot on about that. He’d realised what those Zeroes were up to, the military logic was clear. Knocking out one of the last ferries left working on the Chindwin was a must for the Japs. If they missed the ferry first time, they’d be back to finish the job.
The chop-axe of aero-engines came towards them, fast.
‘I didn’t give it much thought. Just heard the engines and dived in and swam for it. I don’t want to sound boastful, but I’ve always been a good swimmer. For a bet, once, I swam the Thames just below the Tower. Have you been to London?’
‘No,’ said Emily. ‘But I’ve read all about it. “I will fill my pockets with change for a sovereign in half-pence and drown myself in the Thames… I will become a damned, damp, moist, unpleasant body!’
‘Come again?’
‘Nicholas Nickleby. Dickens. It’s a book.’
‘Books, eh? Haven’t read that much, myself. I was only a kid when I did it. The tide was on the way out and moving fast so I got worried I’d end up half the way to France. But I got stuck in and swam like I’d never swum before and I managed to stagger ashore at Shadwell. Bloody cold, excuse me, Emily. Still, I won the fiver. Luck of the devil, see?’
‘You’re not a devil. You saved me from that snake.’
‘I’m no angel, sweet.’
‘Go on. I love hearing your stories.’
‘You’re making me feel like an old war hero, now. Anyway, as the Zeroes came in, they hit the explosives we had on board, and the ferry blew up. I’d held my breath and dived deep, until my lungs were fit to burst and my ears were popping. And still I stayed down, until I could no longer bear it. When I came up, gasping for air, the water was blood-red. I’d got a nasty nick in the back of the head somehow. That was scary because I didn’t know what kind of creatures were in the river, crocodiles or snakes or whatever. But the cold of the water kept me conscious and I carried on swimming and my feet touched bottom on a sandbank, some five hundred yards, maybe more, from the west bank, from safety.’
Muscle and mind. Yes, that was the true test of a man. The mind to survive, the mind to win. It would have been the easiest thing in the world just to have given up the ghost, lain down on that sandbank and gone to sleep. God knows, there hadn’t been enough of that. He hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since they had been on that old rust bucket troopship chugging across the Indian Ocean.
‘But I fought the temptation to have a kip, and I crawled across the sandbank – it was blazing hot and I burnt my hands and feet - and I forced myself to get back into the water. I swam to the far bank and climbed out onto a bit of grass, and only then did I allow myself to close my eyes. And the next thing I knew, I was being woken up by the elephant men. Bloody marvellous, it was.’
‘Emily! Emily!’ She could hear Ruby’s voice, calling out for her.
‘I’d better go,’ she said. ‘I’m just so pleased you managed to survive. So that you saved me from the snake.’
‘Stay.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Stay.’ He needed her badly.
‘No. I’ve got…’
‘Go and tell her you’ve got the shits, and that you want to steer clear of the others, lest it’s catching, and you will be back shortly. Then come back here.’
She hurried off, and he didn’t really know whether she’d come back. He hadn’t had a tart for a very long time. Not that Emily was like the other women he’d slept with.
The sun had dropped below a ridge to the west, but a rock face above them was still lit a brilliant ochre. He puffed on the last of his cheroot, thinking back to that day. The la-de-dah captain had been asking for it. If he hadn’t dealt with him, well… And that cheeky black bastard by the ferry? He had had no choice but to shoot him. Military necessity. They had no time to wait and besides, there were plenty more from where he’d come from. Blacks don’t tell whites what to do. He had it coming.
Come to think of it, it was a good job none of his mates had survived the attack on the ferry. That fat bastard gunner, he smelt a rat when Gregory told them all that their officer had been shot in the face. The cheeky sod had turned the officer’s body over with his boot and checked out the back of his head and, blow me, the hole was tiny, the size of a bullet going in, like it was the true entry hole, like he’d been shot from behind, not by the Japanese. Fatty hadn’t said anything, but he’d looked at the tiny hole in the back of the head and the great gob-stopper mess where the officer’s mouth and nose had been and he looked up at Gregory and he knew Fatty was trouble too. And they’d seen what had happened to the Indian, the Jemadar. Fatty would have sung, had he had the chance. Some of the others too. Dead men can’t sing.
But that teacher, she knew what he’d done all right. She’d warned the girls against him, said Emily. The way Teacher had looked at him when he caught her bathing, the deadness in her voice when she said: ‘You shot the Jemadar.’ Not much doubt about it, there was real hatred in her. He wasn’t scared of much – not after what he’d been through – but he knew he could never rest easy with her around.
Still, that was a problem that could easily be fixed.
The ferns parted and there she stood, a dark silhouette.
‘We’ve got to move at four tomorrow. The Japanese are getting closer. I’d better go now.’
He winced, feigning pain.
‘Are you all right?’ Her voice was soft.
‘When I got shot up by the Japanese, I hurt my back somehow.’
‘Let me see.’
Unbuttoning his shirt, he lifted it above his head and rolled on to his stomach. Fingers kneaded his shoulder muscles, knotted and tense, the pressure easing as the feather-light pads of her fingertips trickled down his spine, a caress of astonishing gentleness. A lifting, a pause, then it started again, down by his ankles, her fingers idly stroking, inching towards his thighs, whirling patterns on skin.
He rolled over onto his back and she knelt between his legs and pulled her frock over her head. Inside the hide the light was a deep green, becoming gloomier by the minute, as she bent down and kissed his tummy button with her lips and her fingers undid his fly, button by button by button.
‘I’ve never done this before,’ she whispered, blushing.
‘Makes it all the sweeter for me, love…’
Sated with pleasure, he lay on his back and lit a cheroot. No one would ever see the smoke, and besides, he no longer cared whether they found him or not.
Kneeling beside him, her fingers stroked his hair, soothing him.
‘This lump on your head? How did you get it?’
‘Someone tried to kill me.’
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it. I was framed for a murder I didn’t commit, and went to prison.’
‘No!’
‘I’m innocent, love. But no one believed me.’
She half-reared, cupping his head with her hands and arcing her back so that her left breast brushed against his face, his lips finding the nipple.
‘You’re in trouble. I’ve heard Miss complain about you to Colonel Sam, that you’re a killer. Is that true?’
His eyes widened. ‘I’m no killer.’
Emily was a whole woman now. She’d made love to a man and that emboldened her to tell her secret.
‘Listen…’
She began with the story of the school’s exodus from Rangoon, the naked lunatic, the disappearance of the old headmistress, ‘a lovely woman, worn out by war’ is how she described Miss Furroughs, and the arrival of the Jemadar, their saviour.
Blushing, she told him of her unrequited love for the Jemadar and her growing resentment for her rival. That night, when the Jem and Grace had thought the whole party was fast asleep, she had followed them, hiding in the bushes when they almost fell on top of her, writhing, coupling a few feet from the undiscovered listener. She had laid down, closed her eyes and listened to every judder of lust, every gasp of pleasure and every word that they exchanged.
‘Quite the little spy, aren’t you, Emily? Eh?’ teased Gregory.
She smacked his hand with a mockery of force. But her mind was lost in that time, the night before they crossed the Chindwin, when the Jem’s voice had lost its natural gentleness and the schoolgirl consumed with jealousy listened to the man she adored spit out his secret to his lover…
‘What if I became a Jiff not because I was a traitor but because I had been jailed by the British, jailed for trying to do my job, jailed for fighting for the very Empire that has imprisoned my grandfather? In Malaya, before the fall of Singapore, an officer, British, gave the order to retreat, yet again. I challenged him, saying that we should stay and fight, at least to protect the wounded. If we fell back, our wounded would end up in Japanese hands. He hit me. I hit him back. For this, I was sent back to Singapore under arrest and locked up in Changi prison, pending my court martial. I protested my innocence, banged on the cell door. No one came. We could see nothing, only a shaft of light coming through a high window. But we could hear, hear the drone of the bombers coming, high in the sky. We could hear the whistle of the bombs as they fell, the explosions, the screams, the barking of dogs. It was hard to bear.’
He fell silent for a time. Then: ‘My first visitor? The cell door opened and I was looking at a Japanese captain. He spoke beautiful English, he’d read my Special Branch file, he was solicitous, clever. The Japanese gave me back my liberty. So what kind of traitor am I? How can I be a traitor if I never surrendered? It was the British who surrendered me.’
‘Is that all of it?’
‘No.’
‘Go on, Jiff, the whole story.’
‘I was disgusted by the surrender at Singapore, at the disdain of the British towards their loyal Indian officers like me, the patronising contempt. But there is something more.’
‘Ouch, you’re hurting me, Jiff. Please, let me go…’
The Jem released Grace, and the silent listener heard her gasp with relief as he released his grip on her arm.
‘If I don’t carry out my task, they will kill me. If I do, I would rather be dead. So it is no trivial question. Can I trust you, Grace? Can I tell you the truth, and you promise to me that you will never reveal it to a living soul?’
A long pause. When she spoke, her voice was very quiet, barely audible. ‘Yes. Even though I have no idea who you really are. You can trust me.’
‘My satchel…’
‘Yes, I’ve wondered why you hold on to it all the time.’
‘I am carrying secret messages from the Netaji to his men in India, the signal for a new mutiny.’
‘From Bose? Hitler’s Indian?’
‘Yes, Bose himself. If these men do the Netaji’s bidding, at his command there will be an uprising across all India. The Raj will be finished, and Hitler’s soldiers and the Japanese will be shaking hands in Delhi or Baghdad.’
‘That is treason.’
‘Not treason, not to me. If these letters are delivered to the right people, the Axis may win the war. So this is no small thing.’
‘But why are you telling me this?’
‘What if I was jailed by the British, come from a family of Jiffs, or at least people who want the British out of India, but then see with my own eyes what the new conquerors are truly like? Exactly how our liberators from Nippon deal with people once they have fallen into their hands. What if I was a Jiff who started to have doubts about the Japanese? And then I fell in love with an Englishwoman, as proud and arrogant as she was beautiful? What then? If I don’t carry on with my mission I betray my fellow Indians and, what’s more, my father, who expects me to do my duty to the Netaji. But if I do, I betray the trust of the woman I love. So, what to do?’
‘Who are you? I have no idea of who you really are.’
‘First, I am exactly who I said I was. I did not lie to you but I did not tell you the whole story. My name really is Ahmed Rehman. I am the grandson of a Maharajah, the Lord of Swat. We are Pathans, Muslims who live in a beautiful valley, close to the line in the map the British drew, dividing Afghanistan and India. It snows where we live from November through to April, May. This place,’ he eyed the sweltering jungle with disgust, ‘is so far from what my home is like.
‘So, we have money, land, peacocks. At the age of three I had my own butler. At seven, my own Rolls, even though I was too small to sit in the driving seat, let alone drive it. At ten, my own little zoo. Monkeys, a snake, but the best were the wallabies. They used to hop in the snow… it was the most amazing sight, better than the butler or the Rolls by a million times. We are wealthy but my family is a madhouse. Throughout India, my grandfather is famous, the rebel Maharajah, a prince on the side of the paupers, a lord for Congress. He is a very old man now, but still dangerous to the British. They have locked him up in prison, without trial, under their wartime emergency powers. They do not realise the mistake they are making. He is their true friend. Throughout his life he has been a great supporter of the Mahatma, and, also of the rule of law. In ’31 he accompanied Gandhi to London, to listen to the British terms for the transfer of power. But it proved to be an empty trick, the British still playing games, playing divide and rule against us. India was insulted.’
The Jiff sighed. ‘On the long series of hops flying home, Gandhi and my grandfather stopped off at Rome and, to play the British at their own game, it was decided that they would meet the Duce. My grandfather described Mussolini’s office, an enormous gilded ballroom, empty of people, apart from this strutting ninny sitting at the very far end behind a very large desk. My grandfather was unimpressed with the Duce. His talk, he said, was full of violence, “blood, smoke, lava, destruction, and battles of all sorts, battles for the lira, battles for wheat, battles for births, battles against sparrows, battles against mice, battles for or against houseflies, he forgot which”. After ten minutes of the Duce, the old man said, he longed to be back with the British, their tea, cakes and hypocrisy. My grandfather knows the British put him in jail from time to time, but if Mussolini ruled India, then he suspects he might have been shot. Hitler? Worse. And what did the Mahatma ask of the Great Duce? He called very meekly for a glass of castor oil.’
At the memory of this, the Jem smiled, explaining: ‘The fascists make their enemies drink castor oil so they soil themselves, a bespoke humiliation. My grandfather said the translator didn’t dare translate the request. When they brought tea instead, the Mahatma looked at the cup quizzically. He’d made his point. Mussolini understood it well enough. So Congress is wary of the men who march in step, fascists and Communists both.
‘This is not India’s way,’ the Jemadar had continued. ‘But as the thirties wore on, the British still would not leave. People became frustrated, frustrated with the British hanging on, frustrated, too, with the non-violence of the Mahatma. My father was one of them. He fell out with my grandfather, and became attracted to Bose, who said: “If someone strikes you, strike him back, twice”.’
‘That’s why you ended up in Changi.’
‘I am a soldier, not a pacifist. The independence movement in India had always been democratic, but Bose models himself on Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito, dreaming of a strong, authoritarian state by the Ganges, directed by himself, the Leader, the Netaji. Bose came to Swat many times, a funny man, clever, educated – at least, they must do something at Cambridge - cynical, aware of what the Big Men he admires are capable of, but so enthused with the lust for power he didn’t care. My father supports Bose, believes in him as India’s only hope. When the war started, the British arrested my grandfather, not my father. They took the wrong man.
‘Partly to get away from the madhouse, I joined up. It is a strange thing to be told that you are fighting for democracy, knowing that your grandfather, who because he is fighting for that very thing in his own country, is in jail. But, also that your father has become so frustrated by the denial of democracy, he ends up in league with its enemies. I tell you Grace, sometimes our family arguments made my head spin. But throughout all of it, I remembered what my grandfather told me about taking tea with Mussolini– that the Axis are far, far worse than the British.
‘My time in the British Indian army made me question my grandfather’s wisdom. It is an army of so-called equals. That, I am afraid to say, is a lie. The Indian Other Ranks must salute a British officer, but the British enlisted men do not have to salute an Indian officer. Soldiers are proud men. It is degrading. We are paid half the rate of the British officers, too. But that is less shaming than not being treated equally. In the first two years of the war I fought in North Africa, against the Italians. They ran away, they surrendered, they hardly ever fought. The Japanese are the opposite. But when you spoke to the Italian prisoners, you could understand why. They didn’t believe in Mussolini, they didn’t believe in his war for an Italian Empire in Africa and the British tried to deal with their prisoners correctly. We would make jokes about the Italians, but as prisoners they were respected. Again, the Japanese are the opposite.
‘During the battle of Sidi Barani my platoon took control of a very large sand dune. We didn’t know at the time but on the other side were thousands and thousands of Italians. They surrendered to me, a lowly Indian officer. The British gave me a medal, hurrah! But much better, the whole regiment was posted back to India and I was given leave – the British know how to treat the grandson of a Maharajah – and I spent some time at home in Swat. In the very middle of the night, there was a commotion, a visitor.
‘I had been fast asleep but my mother woke me up so that I could be presented to the mystery visitor. I threw on my uniform, sleep-walked down the stairs and shook hands with the guest before I realised what I was doing, who he was. Bose, on the run from the British. He’d turned up at our house, having slipped out from house arrest while the Special Branch were snoozing. Had my grandfather been at home, he would have asked him to leave but my father was the man of the house, and Bose was an honoured guest, and we Pathans have a tradition of hospitality.’
‘I remember Mr Peach…’
‘Oh yes, the tall one, your lover.’
‘He’s not my lover.’
‘The one who just happens to delay blowing up the biggest bridge in Burma, just for your ladyship’s convenience…’
Grace interrupted him: ‘He was as drunk as a lord, on that terrible day we evacuated from Rangoon. He told me that the British had lost track of Bose, that they had no idea where he was.’
‘Well, he was in our house. I shook his hand and all I said was: “good luck, old man”. Bose laughed like a drain, the idea of a British Indian officer, in uniform, wishing him well. He remembered it, and I think he mistook my courtesy in the middle of the night – the man was a guest, after all – for a sign that I was a devotee, that I would be happy to become his willing emissary. By rights, as an officer in the army, I should have reported Bose’s presence straightaway, but that would have meant them arresting my father and taking him away too. My mother would not have liked that. So I said nothing to anyone and when I returned to my regiment, we were posted to Singapore.
‘The British and the Indians fighting together in North Africa against the Italians were magnificent. In Singapore, a disgrace. The difference? I don’t know. The generals, perhaps. Or in Africa we were fighting against the fascists. In Singapore we were fighting for the British Empire. Then came my little disagreement. The officer was planning to abandon the wounded when our position could still be defended. I challenged him and ended up in prison.’
‘What was prison like for the grandson of a Maharajah?’ Mischief edged her question.
‘The champagne was rather flat.’ He laughed without mirth. ‘I am a soldier. You get used to everything. But this was a bad time to be locked behind bars. During the bombing, the prison wardens ran away. When a bomb falls, you cannot hide, you cannot run. You listen to the whistle as it falls and you pray. Allah looked over me.’
‘Are you religious?’
‘No. But more than I thought. The other prisoners… screams, weeping, fists pounding against the bars. So helpless. It frays the nerves. The wardens ran away for good. Two days and nights. No food, no water.
‘And then the door of my cell swung open. As I said, I was freed by the Japs, an unusual experience for an officer of the King.’
‘So you became a Jiff.’
‘Yes. We, they, they call it the Indian National Army, the INA. The Japanese became, how shall I put this? Excited when they realised who I was, who my father and grandfather were. They had me march at the very front of the Jiffs, which is when that mechanic must have recognised me. How he escaped and ended up here in Upper Burma, I do not know. The Jiff high command trusted me because of my family name, without me saying a word. And I was sick of the British. I had been fighting their wars for them, and they had locked me up. So I was happy, at first, to turn a blind eye to what the Japanese were getting up to.’
The Jiff looked Grace in the eyes.
‘You must understand, once the Jiff officers and the Japanese realised my family connection, that I’d actually met Bose, shook his hand, wished him “Good luck, old man” I was treated like a lord. Six of us Jiffs were invited to dinner at Raffles with the Kempeitai, their SS. Champagne, oysters, women smiling at us – most Chinese, a few Russian Jewesses - sitting on chairs in the background, but we knew they were, available, while our old colonial masters were shuffling around in the very prison I had been locked up in. One of us Jiffs told the Kempeitai general that we did not want to become a puppet army. Their general said: “We do not want you to be puppets. But if we do, what is the harm in being puppets? Why is puppet bad?”
‘They drank whiskey until it came out of their ears, singing victory songs. My friend who spoke Japanese whispered the words the Japs were singing: “my grandfather catching fish in the Ganges…”
‘After dinner, we left Raffles and went on to an officers’ club the Japanese had taken over from the British. ‘Then, while we ate and drank, they brought in…’
Suddenly, he was crying. Shocking for Grace, the sound of this man, utterly calm, sobbing.
She tried to soothe him with kisses.
‘Nothing, there was nothing I could do. Just watch in silence.’
‘What? They did what? What happened?’
‘The Kempeitai brought in a British officer from some dungeon. We never found out his name. He had taunted them somehow, sworn at them. They had heard him say “Jesus”. So, for them, a big joke,’ he laughed, again joylessly, ‘so childish and so brutal. In the club, surrounded by oil paintings and stuffed heads and golf trophies, while we drank fine wines served by waiters in immaculate turbans and cummerbunds, and the comfort women poured champagne over their breasts and invited us to lick their blouses, they brought in this poor chap and they nailed him to two wooden planks, gave him a crown of barbed wire. Drink, sing, fuck – they were fucking the comfort women – and, over there, just on the wall, a human being, nailed to a cross, in agony, eyes squirming, beseeching us, blood trickling down his face, holes in his hands and feet. What was this? Entertainment?
‘They grew bored with him, screaming. They stuffed his mouth with a towel soaked in whisky. He would not shut up. He was a very, very brave man, and even through the gag you could hear him call them names. “Fuck, fuck you,” something like this. A while later, the pain become too much for him, and he started to moan softly. A terrible sound. Finally, a good Japanese, a young officer, daring, stood up, bowed at the Englishman, and shot him dead through the eyes. A mercy. After the shot, silence. This banquet, I will never forget.’
The red moon vanished behind a wall of cloud.
‘The next day, I was called in to the Kempeitai offices. I tell you Grace, I am no coward, but when I walked through that door, I was shaking inside. All smiles for the Indian officer who’d actually met the Netaji. “Here, take this satchel, a special mission for the Netaji. Take it to India. In this satchel are letters to the most important Jiffs in India, all officials or soldiers, all keeping their true sympathies from the British. Take these letters to them, hand-deliver each one, and soon India will fall.”
‘Crossing through to the British lines, just one more Indian officer on a motorbike, was pitifully easy. A few checkpoints, nothing. But things had changed. Or maybe I had. The British Army before it had been defeated at Singapore, was arrogant and rigid. In retreat, running for their lives, they showed some grace, some humanity, more than I had ever witnessed in Singapore. Now that I was a traitor to the British, I saw individual acts of bravery from British soldiers, doing their best to save the lives of others, Burmese, Chinese, Indian, too. One corporal told me: “If it was down to me, lad, if it was between keeping the British Empire or me being back home, I’d rather be watching Tranmere.” He said it with a smile, but I knew it to be true. It made me suspect that the old soldiers of the British Army, the one I had my fight with over the fate of the wounded, were dinosaurs, from another time, and that there was a new Britain in the making, something different. Well, maybe I am wrong.
‘And then in Mandalay I saw your headmistress walk down the hill and into the flames. Mad, but also extraordinarily brave. To be honest with you, Grace, helping Bishop Strachan’s, leading the children out of Burma, was perfect cover. No one would suspect a Jiff spy escorting a busload of orphans. But about this, I became more and more ashamed – ashamed too, when I saw how the ordinary soldiers, British and African and Indian too, did their best to help the children. Were the men who held up the demolition of the last great bridge in Burma, saluting a bus full of half-castes, our racial masters? Your lover, the tall, silly one, Mr Daddy-long-legs.’
She shook her head, denying it.
‘Is he an oppressor? Or just a man, trying to be decent in the worst of times? I watched how the soldiers at the bridge saluted the children. I remembered what the Japanese had done to that poor wretch of a British officer on his cross…’
Passing his satchel to her, he said: ‘This needs safekeeping. Guard it with your life. When you get to India, give it to someone in British Intelligence. But, first, tell them this.’ He whispered the secret of where Bose had gone to.
‘But Jem, the Netaji’s men, if they find out you have betrayed them…’
‘…they will kill me. So. If they do, it’s just one life. But knowing this changes everything,’ he said. ‘It changes the balance of the argument between the British who want to keep India at all costs and those who know that if they give up India, they might just be able to win the war. Tell them I told you, but tell them I was an Indian patriot, that I would like it very much if the British would please leave India as soon as the war is over.’
‘Why are you telling me this? Why risk your life?’
‘I have already made my decision, Grace. I made it when I rode back to the bus. It should have been easy for me to forget you all, you, the girls, the two boys. I could have slipped in to India – to hide in the chaos of war - but there is something about this bloody singing bus that never quite dies, that keeps on bringing me back. The children, too. And, then, to cap it all, you. I fell in love with you. And you call me a traitor? Yes, Grace, I am a traitor, twice over, once to the British, once to the Netaji and his men. But I will not betray the children. And I will not betray you. I have had enough of betrayal.’
Gregory listened with intense pleasure. The Jemadar, all holier-than-thou, had been a sodding Jiff. Surrendered at Singapore and the bloody Japs had recruited him, hadn’t they?
‘Em, what was this big secret that the Jem knew, about the big important Jiff geezer, about knowing where he is, whoever he is?’
‘I couldn’t hear everything. I don’t know…’
Pleased as punch, was old Eddie-boy. He’d never get strung up for killing a sodding Jiff. There’d be witnesses, too, other Indians who’d seen the Jemadar go over to the Nips back in Singapore.
‘So he was a traitor, the Jem.’
‘No, that’s not like it was,’ said Emily. ‘He’d gone over to the Japanese, but the way they treated the British prisoner repulsed him.’
‘Once a Jiff, always a Jiff.’
‘No, that’s not right. That’s why he gave the letters to Grace. If he was a traitor, he wouldn’t have done that.’
‘Letters?’ Something about the edge to Gregory’s voice frightened her, made her regret what she had just said.
‘Nothing. I don’t know.’
He struck her hard, brutally. Stung – she’d never been beaten by a man in her entire life – she held her hand to her face, not quite believing that this was happening to her.
‘What letters?’ He made to raise his hand again.
‘I…I think…’
He hit her again. She gasped, more in astonishment than pain, and the words tumbled out.
‘It was hard to tell. They were whispering, and everything, but I think he gave her something. I think they were letters, letters to people in India who are against the British.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘I… don’t hit me. Please. In the basket, on Mother’s back, there’s a wooden box for precious stuff. She’s got something locked away in it. Every time she opens it, she puts her body in front of it, so we can’t see.’
‘Nick ’em.’
‘No, I can’t.’
‘Look kid, this isn’t a stupid game. This is for real. This is proof that could save me from swinging.’
‘What?’ She had a look on her that he didn’t like one bit.
‘Nick ’em. And bring them to me. Do it. Do it tomorrow.’
Stunned by the abrupt change that had come over Gregory, Emily drew her knees up to her chin, at a loss to fathom what was going on behind those angelic eyes.
‘You’d better go. Don’t want to get you into trouble.’
She tried to argue, but he’d had enough of her. That was always the way with women. Too clingy, they needed too much of you.
He relit his cheroot as the shadows swallowed her up.
Getting his hands on these letters, proof that the Jem had been a Jiff, would be perfect. Point is, even if he didn’t, he now knew enough to throw sand in their eyes. Sammy-boy, stuck-up elephant ponce that he was, wouldn’t do anything to him once he knew he’d shot a Jiff. But he had to watch it. Grace was the real danger.
If that poisonous bitch got out, all the way to India and started blabbing and pointing the bloody finger and saying he killed the Indian bastard in cold blood, then it wouldn’t take the Old Bill, thick as they were, too long to connect Sergeant Gregory, suspected of murdering an Indian Jemadar, Jiff or no Jiff, with Edgar Gregory, released on parole to serve in His Majesty’s armed forces. If the Military Police made the connection between the teacher’s story and his previous spot of bother…
Murder was murder, even if he got nicked at the tender age of fifteen. If he didn’t watch his back, he might even end up swinging for the Indian bastard.
So there was only one witness left, between him and the prison cell, perhaps even the rope itself.
Well, here they were, surrounded by jungle, hundreds of miles from bleeding civilisation, surrounded by tigers and snakes and crazy elephants, the Japs breathing down their necks.
All sorts of terrible things could happen to a teacher and no one would ever know different. But it wasn’t going to be easy. No bloody way. He’d have to play it careful, play it slow. Get to know the oozies better, keep thick with them, become their friend. Make himself useful, like he did with the Black Shirts. And the army. Help out where he could. And then, when he’d been accepted…
Real shame, wasn’t it. The teacher was bloody gorgeous, a real beauty with a body like a pin-up, like Bette bloody Davis. He’d have his pleasure and then a quick slice of the old knife across the throat. He’d dump her in the jungle and no one would ever know. She’d just be one of the thousands who never made it out of Burma, missing, presumed dead. There was no other way round it. The same thing with the Yid’s tart. Had he taken his moment and sorted out the Jewess, then he would never have been in this trouble in the first place. He’d made the mistake of being soft when it came to dealing with a woman. But once bitten, twice shy.
If the schoolmarm went missing, they would have to give him the benefit of the doubt. There’d be no evidence of anything untoward. No body, see? Just a lot of weeping kids wondering where the hell she’d got to. He’d even volunteer to lead the search-party for her. Lost in the jungle – what a terrible way to die.
Ooh, Miss Goody Two-Shoes Grace wouldn’t be blabbing to any policeman all right – he’d make damn sure of that.
After he’d had his pleasure, mind. What was he going to do with her before the end? Well, that was something to think about.
And he began to whistle, ‘Oranges and Lemons…’