A Division Of The Spoils (Raj Quartet 4) (40 page)

*

Thus, lulled, Pinky rode for his fall. Several nights a week he went to the Chinese restaurant. Twice he thought he would have made it if he’d had the final ounce of courage it seemed to need to convey to a table companion that more than chat was on offer. After eating he often lingered in the bazaar, venturing beyond the area of light into the shadows and walking home, anticipating that longed-for voice calling out, Hey, soldier. And in the bazaar, during these patrols of his from shop to shop, he no longer shooed away the small urchins who pimped for their so-called sisters offering jig-a-jig, but grinned at them, shaking his head, listening for the miraculous change of tune from You want Girl, to You want Boy? Once, he heard it, but coward-like ignored it. It wasn’t a boy he wanted, anyway, but someone of his own age.

*

Between Merrick’s interview with Richardson and Pinky’s next sight of him, several weeks passed, weeks which Pinky spent in the way I’ve described but which now culminated in what, had the consequences not been so terrible, he would probably have remembered ever afterwards as his unforgettable night. For a day or two before this memorable occasion, wandering in the bazaar he had been aware of the possibility that a young Indian lad was as interested in him as he – because this possibility was there – had become interested in the lad. He had never seen him in Pankot before but now they seemed to keep passing each other. The Indian was dressed western-style. He looked clean. He also looked vigorous: a dark-skinned version of the athletic kind of young Englishman Pinky was attracted to. On one occasion Pinky and the Indian were both looking at the window display in Gulab Singh’s, the chemist, which was opposite the Chinese restaurant. The display was of clocks and watches. The next night Pinky stood outside the shop again. Again, as if from nowhere, the Indian turned up. They did not speak. Pinky wanted to but his mouth was too dry. When the Indian left Pinky stayed a moment longer and then left too. As he stepped into the road between a couple of parked tongas a man touched his arm and said, ‘Sahib, you want woman?’ Pinky shook his head. The man bent closer. ‘Sahib, you want boy? That boy looking at watches? That boy very good boy. Like English soldier very much. He like you. He is telling me. Sahib wait here. Boy come.’

The man went – a turbanned whiteclothed figure, wearing an embroidered waistcoat and baggy trousers, walking quickly up the road openly and jauntily, stopping only once to make sure Pinky was waiting. Pinky began to tremble with excitement. To Pinky, this man looked manly and virile. East of Suez no shame attached to wanting boys. The man understood and casually accepted Pinky’s need.

Pinky moved away from the tongas and went back to the arcaded pavement and strolled slowly along looking at the shop windows. When he came to an alley he stopped and looked back. The boy was coming, walking briskly. As he went past Pinky he smiled and walked up the alley. The alley was dark. For a few seconds Pinky was afraid. Sometimes
alleys like this were patrolled by the military police and the west side of the bazaar, to which the alley led, was out of bounds to other ranks. Well, if the
MPS
stopped him and asked why he was following a boy he would say the boy had offered to introduce him to a college girl. Then he’d get off with a warning and an approving laugh. The blood began to pound in his chest. Pinky marched on.

*

‘What was it like, love?’ Sophie quite naturally had thought to ask Pinky, when he got to this part of his story. No go, apparently. He’d been over-excited. One gathers there was an encounter of some kind, prolonged but obstinately unsatisfactory. The Indian had explained his own failure by saying it made him unhappy to see Pinky so nervous. Then he had said it would be all right next time. He said, ‘Come back tomorrow. Meet me outside Gulab Singh’s at half-past nine and we will come to my room again.’ When they were dressed the Indian became miserable and said he didn’t think Pinky would come back. Pinky said nothing would stop him. ‘Leave me a token then,’ the Indian said. ‘Lend me your wristwatch. Then I’ll know that you like and trust me.’ Pinky gave him the watch and told him to keep it. The Indian had already refused money. He refused to accept the watch except as a token of Pinky’s intention to return the next evening. He took Pinky back down the rickety stairs into the alley and went with him until the light from the bazaar lit Pinky’s way.

*

When I left for the summer residence guest house we got the tonga-wallah to drive through the hospital grounds along a path that led past Richardson’s office. By we, I mean myself and Potter. He pointed the office out and then got off and walked back. After studying the place I gave the driver orders to move on.

The office was in a low building isolated from other blocks. It had the usual steep-pitched roof, the overhang supported by
pillars to form a verandah. A small signboard outside announced Richardson’s name. One entered by a door at one end. This led to a passage. A window to one side of the door lit what had been Pinky’s office. A window beyond lit Richardson’s. The hut was presumably isolated to encourage patients to feel that anything they said to the psychiatrist went no further than here. Both Pinky and Richardson had had keys to the main door. The last to leave locked up. Outside the door, on the verandah, was a bench, a fire bucket and a cycle rack.

At about 6 p.m. on the evening of the day following Pinky’s meeting with the Indian lad, he was alone in the office reading Richardson’s private notes on the case of an ordnance officer who had collapsed under the strain of ‘feeding the guns’. He kept looking at his watch and, because thrillingly it wasn’t there, having to judge by the fall of the light outside how much longer he could afford to spend on this fascinating stuff before locking up, going to his billet to shower and shave and set out on his journey to bliss. He had just decided to call it a day and was closing the file when the door opened and Merrick walked in.

Pinky gave him a cheerful good-evening. Merrick asked if Captain Richardson was in. Pinky told him he had gone for the day but would be in the office tomorrow as usual and that if Major Merrick wanted an appointment he would be glad to look at the diary and write one in.

Merrick said that would be good of him. Pinky went into Richardson’s office and came back with the diary. Merrick was now sitting. An hour was agreed and written in. Pinky took the diary back and put it on Richardson’s desk. When he returned Merrick had the green folder and was examining the cover. For an instant Pinky was alert but Merrick didn’t open the file and when Pinky was back at his desk he put the folder down. Then, smiling in a friendly way, he adjusted his artificial arm, as if it needed easing. The black-gloved artefact was held out, closed. He prised the fingers open. In the palm of the glove lay Pinky’s watch.

He said, ‘I think this is yours.’

Pinky did not remember with any clarity what happened next. On the whole he thought he just stared at the watch while Merrick sat waiting for him to react. The next thing
Pinky was fully conscious of was Merrick standing with the watch in the artificial hand and the green file in the other saying: ‘My understanding from Captain Richardson was that these files were always kept under lock and key and were available to no one when he was not in the office himself.’

And then:

‘I take it you have managed to obtain a key. You were at the filing cabinet the last time I came at this time of evening. If you have such a key you would be well advised to hand it over now.’

Pinky did so.

‘Is this the only file you have removed tonight?’

Pinky nodded.

‘Does this telephone go through to the hospital or the civil exchange?’

Pinky mumbled through dehydrated lips that it went through to the hospital exchange but that the hospital exchange could get any number.

‘Right,’ Merrick said. ‘Wait outside. You will be wise to wait and do nothing foolish.’

Pinky stumbled into the passage. Merrick closed the door behind him. He found himself out on the verandah without knowing how he got there. Shock had affected his ability to co-ordinate what he did and saw with any sort of understanding of it. For instance he was aware of a figure leaning against a pillar, gazing at him, but the figure to him was simply a deformation of the pillar. When he realized it
was
a figure he assumed he must be hallucinating because it was a copy of the figure of the man who had procured the Indian for him the night before.

After a period of time, borrowed from and never repaid to him, he heard Merrick closing the door of the office. He got unsteadily to his feet, knowing the real shame began
now
, waiting somewhere for the military police, whom Merrick had obviously been phoning, to come and escort him to a guard-room.

But what happened was quite different. Without even a glance in Pinky’s direction Merrick walked away up the path, followed by the procurer – or, let’s give him his proper name, the Red Shadow. When they were out of sight Pinky began
running. Then, wondering where he was running he ran back where it was safe. But it wasn’t safe. So he was sick. After he had been sick he ran off again. Again he ran back and covered the vomit with sand. After he had done that he felt like a visitor, a stranger to the scene. Lights were coming on in windows of other huts that he could see through the trees. The evening was real.
He
wasn’t real, but the evening was, and this unreal self had to lock Captain Richardson’s office up. Before that he had to close Captain Richardson’s office windows.

The green file was still on the desk. Automatically he went with it into Richardson’s office. The cabinet wouldn’t open. He felt for his key. Merrick had it. Or had he? Pinky turned on lights and started hunting for the key. There was no key; only the locked cabinet and the rogue file that couldn’t be put back into it. If he could only get the file back into the cabinet and lock it he might be able to say he hadn’t done it and that Merrick was lying. He knew this was impossible but that’s the way his mind was working. Then he remembered that the key and the file were quite unimportant in comparison with the wrist-watch. Perhaps he could find the watch. If Merrick had left the file lying round perhaps he had left the watch. There wasn’t a watch, though. Merrick had the key and the watch and he, Pinky, had the file. He hid the file in a drawer in his own desk. He shut all the windows and turned off the lights, locked the doors and ran back to his quarters. He went to the latrine. What he evacuated was liquid. He sat in the latrine in the dark with the liquid streaming from him. Then he did a very odd thing. He manipulated himself into a state of excitement and then out of it and leaned back exhausted. Subsequently this puzzled him. He asked Sophie if Sophie could explain why he did a thing like that. Sophie couldn’t but remembered later and told Potter that he’d read somewhere that when a man was being executed by the rope he sometimes suffered an involuntary emission as though that part of him too was saying good-bye.

*

In the morning, unable to face what had to be faced, Pinky
reported sick. The duty
MO
couldn’t find anything wrong with him but he looked so terrible that to be on the safe side the
MO
sent him to the staff sick-bay for observation. There was no one in sick bay except an Indian orderly. Pinky lay on a bed fully clothed. He was given a nimbopani and drank it gratefully but immediately afterwards brought it up. A
QA
sister arrived to chart his temperature and pulse. The temperature was slightly above normal and the pulse was rapid. An hour later he brought up another nimbopani. The duty
MO
came over. Specimens of urine and blood were taken. Pinky was put into hospital pyjamas and bedded down. He lay curled in the embryonic position. He hadn’t slept at all the previous night. Mercifully he slept now, shutting the world out. He slept right through the most traumatic part of the day – the hour of Merrick’s appointment with Richardson. When he woke in the late afternoon Richardson was sitting on his bed.

‘My green file on the ordnance officer, Captain Moberley,’ Richardson said, quite gently. ‘Can you tell me where I might find it? I have an interview with him this evening.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Pinky said. He felt calm now. ‘It’s in the bottom left-hand drawer of my desk.’

‘Thank you, Pinker.’ Richardson stayed on the bed. Pinky could see that he was considering a number of alternative statements. Richardson was not a great talker. He was so used to listening. ‘All things considered, Pinker,’ he said eventually, ‘I think you’d better remain here for a day or two, even though there is nothing physically wrong with you. I don’t mean that you’re malingering. I mean that your illness is psychosomatic. I take it you yourself are in no doubt of that?’

Pinky nodded. There was nothing Richardson could do for him but Pinky felt at least he understood. Richardson’s was the last friendly face he was likely to see until he came out of prison. But he did not think he would ever come out. He would die of terror and humiliation. He hoped so. How could he ever face his parents again if he survived to be sent home? Two years. In an Indian prison. For a crime he hadn’t committed and had never intended to commit. He had only wanted a bit of love.

The next morning he felt not better but somehow purged. The
QA
sister said she was pleased with him. He had expected
that by now everyone would have heard about him and he had steeled himself to bear their contempt. So he guessed that whatever Richardson was doing he was doing as discreetly as he could.

Allowed up, he sat on the sun-verandah of the sick-bay and opened his mind slowly to his ‘case’ – the strange and puzzling aspects of it. The business of the files was of minor importance, surely. What Merrick was after was the nailing of men like him: queers. Probably Merrick had taken one look at him months ago and thought ‘Ah.’ His discovery that Pinky was sneaking looks at confidential files – gloating over them – would simply have reinforced a poor opinion of his character. And yet. And how long had Merrick had him watched and followed? When Pinky thought back to those weeks patrolling the bazaar he went cold.