There was something awesome about the force of the melt-water powering down from the Himalayas, surging like great Atlantic breakers crashing against boulders as big as a house; something awesome about the finality of what it meant to the raggle-taggle army of last-ditchers.
The end of hope.
The men slumped against mossy-green rocks, enjoying the relief of the spray, cooling after the heat of the forced march. They had clattered down from the plateau above and were now at the very bottom of the ravine. The waters were hellishly strong.
‘Cross that?’ The sergeant-major gestured with the slightest twitch of his head. ‘Fat chance.’
One man, tall, gaunt, paddled into the shallows, squinted across to the west bank, fuzzy in the cloud of mist.
‘We’ve got to move.’ Desperation in his voice.
‘The lads need a break, sir. You’re killing them at this pace. Besides, there’s not a man among us who could cross that and live. That goes for you too. We can’t swim that. We’re fooked this time, sir.’
It was not much more than 100 yards to the far bank. In the old days, at school, he could have run that distance handsomely in a twinkling of an eye. Now, the force of the water would knock him flying in the first five feet and he would certainly drown– and he was probably the fittest, or, rather, the least poorly man, out of the nine of them. Some of the chaps could barely hobble.
He was angered by the sergeant-major’s realism. They had been following the river downstream for hours and they had not seen a single place where they could get across. They had been moving fast, every one of them knowing that the Japanese had time on their side. If they could not ford the torrent, they were trapped and they knew that sooner or later, the Japs would hunt them down. Only nine of them were left, haggard, pitifully thin, all of them beyond exhaustion. Only the officer’s mad insistence that they must catch up with the others, must at all costs reach them, drove them on. Had it not been for Peach, they would have dawdled to a halt hours ago.
‘Sergeant-major, may I remind you that I am the officer in charge,’ said Peach.
The sergeant-major was a good eighteen inches shorter than Peach, but his eyes flashed with contempt.
‘Aye, and it’s my job to tell you that the lads cannot keep this pace up. They fooking want to kill you, which would be a black spot on your career, wouldn’t it, Lieutenant? Being dead and all?’
‘Are you threatening me?’ The two men stared at each other.
‘No, sir, I’m not threatening you. I’m telling you that killing your men on some wild-goose chase to rescue some silly totty is conduct unbecoming of an officer. Sit down, lads – we’re having a break.’
Peach almost hit him. His frustration, and fear, that Gregory was a real danger to Grace, was boiling up inside him. After a moment, he stormed off, running downstream a further two hundred yards, wading up to an islet in the torrent, thick with bamboo. The water was running fast even here, and he had to fight the current to find what he was looking for. On the west corner of the islet, impossible to see from the bank, was a sandy bluff, standing proud of the water. The bamboo – higher than a lamppost – shielded observation from the south, too. It was the perfect hiding place. He hurried back to the men, resting against the mossy rocks.
‘We’re moving, and that’s an order.’
The sergeant-major stayed where he was; the others took their cue from him.
‘This is a bad place to stop, Eric,’ Peach said. ‘The Japs will be able to see us from miles off. I’ve found a better resting place a few yards downstream. We’ve got to move. It’s not far.’
The waters thundered on; the spray from the wet mist soaking everything.
‘Fook off, you love-sick bastard.’
‘Eric!’ Peach was appalled.
‘Only joking, sir. Attention!’ The sergeant-major pulled himself up and motioned with his head for the men to move. With infinite weariness, five stood up and pulled up their packs onto their backs. But two men, furthest from the sergeant and the officer, refused to stir. Barr walked towards them. He kicked one in the leg, and bent over the other and whispered into his ear. Both men struggled up and began to walk.
Peach led the way, downstream, and stood in the water, waist–deep, ensuring that none of them lost their footing as they fought through the current to the safety of the islet.
With all of them safe and out of sight of the Japanese above, Peach allowed himself to collapse flat on his back on the sand.
‘What did you say to him?’
‘I threatened to stick a cricket bat up his arse, sir. He’s a Methodist and doesn’t like that sort of talk.’
‘Very good, Sergeant-major.’
‘I’m sorry…’
‘No, don’t. I’m sorry, too. I know the men are exhausted.’ Peach shook his head.
They had grown so used to each other’s thinking that speaking out loud was almost unnecessary.
‘Shall we call it a day, Sergeant-major?’
‘Surrender, sir?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Japs don’t take prisoners, sir. They’ll just kill us, and they’ll take their time about doing it.’
‘Yes. That’s my thinking, too. And it seems a shame, having come all this way, just to give in when we’re almost there.’
‘Right.’ Barr glanced uphill, towards the unseen enemy. ‘They can’t see us from up there. As awficers go, you’re not all bad.’
‘Eric?’
‘Sir?’
‘Why did you call me a love-sick bastard?’
‘Oh, come on, sir.’
‘What makes you say that, Sergeant-major?’
‘It’s bleedin’ obvious, sir. Making out them orphans to be the bloody aristocracy. Not blowing up that bridge when you were ordered.’
‘One word from you, and I would have blown the bridge then and there.’
‘So it was all my fault, then, sir?’
‘Yes, Sergeant-major, it was.’
‘Fook off, sir.’
‘If you carry on like that, Sergeant-major, I’ll put you on a charge.’
Barr started to laugh, a high-pitched giggle, almost girlish.
‘There is…’ continued Peach.
‘There is one way, we might get across.’
‘What’s that, sir?’
‘On an elephant.’
‘We haven’t got an elephant, sir.’
‘Yes, I know that, Sergeant-major. I’m suggesting that we borrow one.’
‘From who, sir?’
‘Emperor Hirohito, Sergeant-major.’
‘He might not like that, sir.’
‘But what if we ask him nicely, Sergeant-major?’
‘That should make all the difference, sir.’
‘There’s slightly more to my plan than that, Sergeant-major.’
‘I’m all ears, sir.’
‘I once met a man in a bar, Sergeant-major. He told me all about the training of an elephant, how they pair up a calf elephant with a teenage boy, of around fourteen or so, and with a bit of luck the two of them make a team for life. So not anyone can ride an elephant. Each animal must have its own dedicated oozie, a man he trusts. So, clever as the Japanese are, they’re not that clever. The elephants we’ve seen them with, they must be ridden by Burmese oozies.’
‘So?’
‘Our best shot is that we try and meet one of the oozies working for the Japs at dead of night, and we offer them a fair passage to India, and gold at the other end of the rainbow, if they will run away from the Japs and give us a lift across this river. What about it, Sergeant-major?’
‘You’re the officer. You give the order and we do what you tell us to.’
‘You know damn well it doesn’t work like that, Eric. What do you really think?’
‘You’ve gone crackers, sir.’
Another pause.
‘Ever gone bonkers, sir? Lost your marbles, sir?’
‘No, Sergeant-major. Or, at least, not yet. That time when I was a magistrate and I jailed an officer for crashing into those two Burmese women – that was difficult… War had just broken out and I had applied for a commission. I got a letter back, declining my offer, and someone had scrawled on the envelope, LMF.’
‘Lacking Moral Fibre.’
‘I was pretty cut up by it, back then. Grace was the first European woman to break the spell. She had no idea that I had been boycotted. She didn’t like me very much, but she didn’t like me because of who I was, which is fair enough, not because of what I had done to stand up for the rule of law.’
‘Well, you’re in the army, now, sir.’
‘Very funny, Sergeant-major.’ But Peach was aware that he might have been sounding rather pompous. ‘She ran away from me once. We’d gone to the cinema, to see some damnfool show, Bob Hope and Bill Crosby. One of their road movies. At the end of the show, I tried to kiss her and she started hurdling over the cinema seats. I tried to chase after her but I fell over. I felt absolutely frustrated at the time. Everybody was laughing me. Humiliating. Looking back at it now, damn funny.’
‘What did she look like, jumping across the seats?’
‘Bit like Tipperary Tim winning the Grand National, Sergeant-major. She took those cinema seats like old Tim leaping Becher’s Brook.’
‘You’re in love, sir.’
‘I prefer it when you’re saying that I’m bonkers.’
This, from the man he trusted most in the world, came as a shock.
‘Raving, I was. Doo-lally.’
‘Why?’
‘Family stuff.’
‘You’ve got a wife and kids.’
‘Aye. I came out here in thirty-eight. Two kids and the missus, safe at home in Leeds. Then along comes the youngest. Born in 1940. Three kids. But I was out here.’
‘Oh,’ said Peach.
‘Aye. When I calmed down, I wrote to her saying: “When I get back to Yorkshire, I’m going to throttle you with my own bare hands”.’
‘I see. Will you?’
‘No, not now. Seen too many dead. It’s only a bit of slap’n’tickle that went wrong. That’s what she says. Any road, there’s nowt I can do about it out here. He’s a lad, and all. Name of Jake. I’ve only had the daughters before. Nowt wrong with girls, but…’
‘Yes.’
‘Thing is, sir…’
‘Call me Bertie’
‘Silly fooking name, Bertie. I’m calling you sir. Thing is…’ Barr struggled to get the words out. ‘If I fooking die out here, she’ll think I died bitter an’ all, and I’m not. I’m not fooking proud of her, but you can’t go through a bloody war and not learn a thing or two about human weakness and all, so if I get killed…’
‘Which you are absolutely not going to do.’
‘If I do get killed, then will you go and see her, and tell her from me, that she’s a silly whore, but I still love her with all my heart, and I love little Jakey too, and I’m sorry I wrote mean things to her. You’ll do that, won’t you, sir?’
‘You’re not going to die.’
‘But?’
‘Of course. What’s her name?’
‘Agnes.’
‘Do the same for me, Sergeant-major. Tell Grace I forgive her for making me look like a complete idiot.’
‘Aye, I will and all.’
They sat in silence, listening to the river’s roar. After a while it was Peach who broke the spell.
‘But if I have gone bonkers,’ he said, ‘then it’s your duty to relieve me of my command. So if I really am mad, then you’re in charge, Sergeant-major. What shall we do?’
‘Fook that for a game of soldiers.’
‘Well?’
‘Fook it.’ He turned away and raised his voice. ‘Lads, pay attention. The officer says we’re going to borrow an elephant.’
No moon that night. They’d left the rest of the men on the islet. On their return, the password would be ‘Sheffield Wednesday’, making a change from the usual ‘Leeds United’.
In pitch dark, Peach and Barr waded across the shallows to the eastern bank, faces blackened with stinking river mud. Each man carried two grenades and one jungle knife. Their rifles would not be much use in the dark and they had precious little ammunition left between all of them. The whole point of this exercise was to ‘borrow’ an elephant or two without disturbing the Japanese.
The officer and the sergeant-major had had one of their semi-silent discussions about risking both their lives on this foolishness. If the Japanese caught them, the remaining seven last-ditchers would be leaderless. But the soldiers were pretty far gone. If this plan didn’t work, well, that was pretty much it for all of them.
The two men were well accustomed to the sounds of the jungle at night by now: the sudden, unexplained mechanical bangs and crashes, subtle creaks and inhuman gibbering. But some new sound gripped Peach’s attention. What was that…?
He sensed the sergeant-major freeze beside him and he flattened his stomach against the ground as best he could. Ear down, he could just make out a patter of soft footfalls, then silence. The silhouette of the sergeant-major remained immobile. Fighting in the jungle – or just staying alive – was as much a matter of patience as anything else.
The footfalls started again, diminishing with each step. They crawled forward on their bellies, as lightly as they could, until they found what they had been looking for: seven, eight, nine, ten elephants, standing, obelisk-still in a circle, and beyond them they could make out hammocks stretching between trees, a deeper black against the blackness of the night. One of the elephants stirred, shuffling his hobbled legs, uneasy. The beast chirruped, a strange high-pitched sound for such a big animal. Had they been smelt out?
Peach stiffened as he felt the light brush of a blade of grass against the back of his neck. No, he was wrong about that. This blade was made of steel.