The House of Blue Mangoes (53 page)

The Pulimed planters were as anxious as every other white man in the country. No aeroplanes overflew the tranquil hills. Life went on much as before. But there was a hysterical edge to their actions as the battle grew closer. Planters would pull rifles and shotguns from cupboards and closets, keeping them close at hand, almost as if they expected screaming Japanese hordes to erupt out of the tea.

One of the fiercest battles for Kohima took place in the garden of the District Commissioner’s Bungalow. Once an elegant residence, the bungalow, which overlooked the strategic Kohima crossroads, was now a blackened ruin. The two opposing armies were dug into bunkers on either side of the tennis court at the bottom of the DC’s garden. Hurricane and Vengeance fighters wheeled and darted overhead, tanks churned their way up the dirt tracks leading to the scene of battle, but in the District Commissioner’s garden the fighting was hand to hand. Neither side would give in, as the possession of the bungalow and the tennis court had acquired a symbolic significance. On the night of 29 April, the Japanese launched a desperate attack to clear the scene of British forces. Joe Wilson, a platoon commander (of 6 Brigade in the 2
^nd
British Division), had just lobbed a grenade at the advancing Japanese when a bullet caught him in the chest. He was removed to a makeshift field hospital where he died three hours later.

85

The memorial service for Joe Wilson at the Pulimed church was packed. The Reverend Ayrton, more focused than anyone had ever seen him, reached outside the Bible for the central idea of his sermon, Petrarch’s observation that a good death does honour to a whole life. He spoke of the love and esteem the brave young man was held in, he talked of the loss to the community, and he spoke of how Joe had brought glory to Pulimed. In one of the front pews Mrs Stevenson’s shoulders shook silently as she wept.

After the service, the congregation wandered out into the spacious grounds. The ladies of the church committee had organized tea and biscuits, served under the shade of a venerable cypress tree. The morning was clear and bright. It was a day that should have witnessed the sound of laughter and song, celebrated the beauty and vitality of life, but the mood among the congregation was disconsolate.

Kannan collected tea for Helen and himself and walked across to the small group of people she was with: the Frasers, Driscoll and a planter who had driven over from Peermade for the service. They stood in the shade of a late-flowering spathodea, its purple flowers littering the ground. The conversation was desultory; there wasn’t much that anyone seemed to want to say. All they wanted was to be left alone with their memories of Joe Wilson. Kannan thought he would have liked to have known the man. He must have been quite special to have affected so many people. Belinda blew her nose in her handkerchief, her eyes red-rimmed. Joe had been her bridge partner and a close friend. The noise seemed to release them from their silence.

‘He promised me a Jap bayonet as a souvenir,’ Driscoll said.

‘Oh, Joe was irrepressible. He promised one to every planter in Travancore and he would have done it too,’ the planter from Peermade said.

‘Where’s Freddie? They were close, weren’t they?’

‘Yep,’ Michael replied, ‘poor chap’s down with malaria. I can’t imagine what he must be going through.’

‘Remember that time Joe went and distributed medicine in the coolie lines during the cholera epidemic? He shamed us into going and helping,’ Belinda said. It was the first time she had spoken since they had come out of the church.

‘Yes, he was the whitest Englishman this district has ever seen,’ her husband said sombrely.

Helen was silent, and Kannan wondered what she was thinking of. Ever since Lily’s visit her unhappiness had escalated. Her squabble with his mother was only a part of the problem though, and as time passed, an increasingly minor one. With incredible speed but completely wordlessly, the message had reached every corner of Pulimed and the surrounding estates of the way in which Mrs Stevenson had ordained she was to be treated. On the only occasion they’d been to the club in the recent past, Helen was cold-shouldered and ignored by all the women, except Belinda, and she’d wept when they got home, from the sheer humiliation and hopelessness of it all. Kannan had never seen her cry before. From then on, she found some excuse not to accompany him to the club and to parties at the other planters’ homes. It wasn’t good for his own career, he knew; the planter and his wife were expected to participate jointly, and enthusiastically, in the community’s social life. But he understood her pain and tried to cover up for her. Others tried to help, Freddie, the Frasers, and slowly they achieved a precarious equilibrium. Helen even began venturing out occasionally. He hoped she wouldn’t feel too out of place in this gathering.

Everywhere murmured voices retailed stories of the young planter – Joe racing his Norton up a steep rain-soaked hillside in pursuit of a wounded boar, exceedingly dangerous when provoked, after he’d collided with it. Joe boldly grabbing the tails of ratsnakes and cobras as they disappeared into their burrows, whirling them around his head and snapping them like a whip so their spines were dislocated. Joe’s silken touch at tennis. Joe’s greatness as a planter. It was as though, by remembering him, they could keep at bay the grim future which the death of their golden boy portended.

‘What a bloody waste this Burma campaign is turning out to be,’ Michael Fraser said deliberately. ‘Thousands of England’s best and brightest sacrificed to a stupid, thankless war.’

‘We don’t want the Japanese to have India, sir,’ Driscoll said.

‘Well, why not, do you think they’ll be any worse than us? And who are we to deny it to them anyway? Didn’t we acquire an Empire for exactly the same reasons that prompted the madman who started this war . . .’

The public anguish of the quiet man, the one who has always minded his own business, is both disquieting and strangely compelling. Belinda put a hand on her husband’s arm.

‘If you think about it, all this started because poor bloody Hitler wanted to be just like us. What the fool didn’t realize is that the age of Empire is over. It galls me that a fine lad like Joe should have died in a hell-hole called Kohima, for an idea that is no longer important.’

He glared at them all as if daring them to challenge him. No one said anything; the outburst had taken them all by surprise. Finally, the planter from Peermade said, ‘But sir, Kohima is simply part of the larger war. Do you mean to say we should have let the Krauts walk all over us?’

‘Not at all, we should certainly have gone to the aid of our neighbours and defended Britain to the last man. It’s this role as the world’s guardian that I object to.’

‘It’s our responsibility, sir. We govern a quarter of the world.’

‘But do they want us to guard them, never mind govern them? Do you think Joe’s sacrifice means anything here, except to people like us? The vast majority of Indians would much rather be free. What difference does it make to them whether the colonial ruler is British, German or Japanese? Sorry, Cannon. I’m just making a general point . . .’

Any further perceptions Michael might have wished to share were drowned by the clatter of teaspoons on saucers and the Reverend Ayrton’s deep baritone. When he had secured their attention, he announced that the annual tennis week that was due to start in four days’ time would henceforth commemorate Joe. The Stevensons had donated two trophies, one for the men and one for the ladies, both of which would be called the Joe Wilson Cup. Details of the tournament would be posted on the noticeboard of the Pulimed Club.

86

Fever shook Freddie Hamilton and he groaned. It had been over two years since he had contracted malaria, but every time he began shivering and shaking with an attack it was as though he was experiencing it for the first time: the chill that burned though to his vitals and sapped his strength, the weakness that made it an ordeal even to visit the bathroom. At such times all he could do was thank God for his butler, Kumaran. The rascal took every opportunity to swindle him out of chakrams and cash, but he cared for him as he would for a baby when he was knocked flat by the fever. Kumaran came into the room just then with a handful of quinine tablets and Freddie indicated to him that he wanted to visit the bathroom. The butler helped him out of bed and supported him across the room. Freddie hung on to the doorjamb of the bathroom, trying not to collapse. ‘Thank you, Kumaran, I’ll call for you when I’m done.’ The butler shuffled off and Freddie somehow made it to the commode. But he should be okay by the evening, he thought. It was astonishing how dramatically you recovered from malaria – once you had taken the medicine. Freddie had often felt the old-time planters were crazy to establish estates in the malarial belt. If he had been a planter here before the advent of quinine, he was sure he’d have sucked on a shotgun a long time ago.

Back in bed, he found himself thinking of Joe Wilson, as he had, over and over again, since Michael Fraser had brought him news of his friend’s death. The fever lent a surreal glow to his imagination as he tried to recreate Joe’s final moments. It must have been hellish, but it would have brought out the best in Joe. Under the neighing and screaming of shells he must have rallied his men. Michael had sketched out the scene of the battle, the darkness, the shattered bungalow, the tennis court, the bunkers, the planes roaring overhead, and his imagination had supplied the rest, the screams and groans of dying men, the heat, the smoke, the harsh chatter of Brens, the great glow of flames, the grunting and cursing of men. A time for heroes. A time for Joe. Indeed, his death was of a piece with his life. Joe had scripted the perfect exit. The image broke and faded under the renewed onslaught of the fever and Freddie drifted into an uneasy sleep.

By afternoon he was better, but he doubted whether he would be well enough for work the next day. He hated this phase of any illness, when you were not sick enough to have lost all interest in everything and not well enough to rejoin the living. Then he heard the faint mutter of a motorcycle and perked up. Michael had said that Kannan would drop in after church. That would be him now.

The English planter valued a house with a view, which is why every bungalow on the estates was perched on an elevation. Freddie’s house was an extreme example, situated on a hill and reached by a steep road that was a nightmare to negotiate during the monsoon. There was a blind corner that turned at almost a right angle just short of the house. There was only one way to get through without mishap – by motoring with infinite slowness up the slope and round the corner. Kannan, like every other young planter, was irritated by the crawl up the hill to Freddie’s house. But he didn’t mind today for he was still preoccupied with Michael’s outburst at church. Michael’s anger had been more than disquieting. It had, in some way, permanently altered the way in which he regarded the white man and his world. For a brief moment he had seen despair, inadequacy, uncertainty, where there had always been strength, composure and authority, and it hadn’t been a pleasant sight.

Kannan was taking a long time to turn up, Freddie thought, and then he realized that he must be driving more slowly than usual because Helen was with him. He was pleased at the prospect of seeing her again. Lucky fellow, Kannan. What a trophy! He wondered what it would be like to be married. For a start it would mean being looked after by someone other than Kumaran when he fell sick. But where was he going to find a bride? The war had stopped the Fishing Fleet and it looked like India would be lost anyway. If not in five years, then in ten. And what Englishwoman would want to live here if she couldn’t queen around like that awful Mrs Stevenson? Christ, he thought with some alarm, what if he ended up with someone like Matilda Stevenson? Maybe all he needed was a woman. The resourceful Kumaran could organize a plucker, as he had always done before. Freddie never asked about his method. He had no idea if the women were married or single. He simply paid the money the butler asked for and took his pleasure. The face of a pretty young plucker he’d had his eye on for some time swam into his mind, as did images of firm breasts, huge black nipples, pretty eyes. Did he prefer black nipples to pink ones? It had been so long since he had slept with a white woman. Christ, what the hell was he thinking? This fever really fixed you; it unstoppered the poisons in your mind.

Kannan walked into his room just then and Freddie managed a smile. He was genuinely pleased to see him and had often wondered if they could develop the sort of friendship Joe and he had shared. Would the colour of their skin and the absence of any shared history be an insurmountable barrier, a retardant that would advance their friendship thus far and no more? He hoped not. He sensed that Mrs Stevenson didn’t approve of their relationship but that didn’t bother him too much. Good planters were thin on the ground, and he doubted that she would be able to prevail upon her husband to get rid of him.

‘You look awful,’ Kannan said, by way of greeting.

‘No worse than you, old chap. And at least I’ll get to look better when this boring fever passes. Christ, what was God thinking of when he created mosquitoes?’

‘Freddie, I’m really sorry about what happened.’

‘Yes, what a waste. We’ll all be the poorer now that Joe’s gone. You never knew him, did you? You would have liked him, he won people over so easily.’

They continued to talk about Joe, or rather Freddie talked and Kannan listened – the laughter, the crazy bachelor stunts, the wild death-defying rides through the tea, hunts for boar and junglefowl, all-night bridge and brandy sessions . . .

‘Joe could light up any room, bring people alive. Yes, he was a good sort, the best. All this, and a hero too. How many heroes do you know, Cannon?’

It was an unexpected question, and he didn’t know how to answer it.

‘What sort of hero do you mean?’

‘Well, you know, people who possess such great gifts that they seem to be able to do things without worrying about their own lives or fortunes, as weedy little people like us do?’