Sabina Murray - The Caprices

“I’ll follow you as soon as I finish this,” said Harry, raising his cigarette, “in the moonlight.”

Mrs. Berystede nodded pleasantly, then plowed inside, passing Tunsdale in the doorway.

“Well, she’s got good strong legs, a full set of big, white teeth, and a nicely shaped head,” said Tunsdale under his breath. “She’d make a fine horse.”

Harry closed his eyes. “They’re not going to make me a member.”

“If they do, wonderful. If they don’t, to be honest, in your position I’d have more fun bicycling through a minefield.”

Harry smiled. Tunsdale was right. Not only did Harry not belong in the club, but he also felt no sadness at being the outsider. He tossed his cigarette off the veranda and watched it burn briefly before it was extinguished. One day this club would be nothing but a queer memory. Now it was no more than a laughable reality.

Harry went inside to find the major and indulge in some safe horse talk. The members were gathered in clusters, rattling ice, sweeping smoke in exaggerated gestures as if involved in an elaborate ritual to ward off the passage of time. The major was nowhere to be seen and Harry accidentally made eye contact with the dark-haired, chain-smoking niece. Harry suspected she’d been sent to India as a last-ditch effort to get her married.

“Lieutenant Gillen,” she said, “I’d love to hear about the real India.”

Harry steeled himself for a discussion of elephants. He sat down on a two-seater couch a comfortable distance from the girl’s chair. She put the cigarette between her thin lips and exhaled in angry, staccato puffs.

“I was on a hunt last week and fell into a creek. Can you imagine?” She seemed disgusted by this, but somehow expected Harry to be charmed. “My whole right side is sore and I’ve got a terrible gash on my shin.”

Harry was trying to decide whether it was courteous or indecent to look at the girl’s shin, when Mrs. Berystede showed up unexpectedly and sank down onto the couch next to him. Her knee bumped his and her drink spilled in a dark purple patch on the front of her lavender dress.

“My fault,” said Harry quickly. He pulled out his handkerchief and handed it to her.

“Thank you,” she said. She dabbed at herself in a casual way and her body relaxed against Harry’s. Harry edged himself onto the perimeter of the couch so that the majority of his weight was balanced on the balls of his feet. He had to turn to look at her at a pivot, over his shoulder. She looked in her glass and rattled the ice. “This evening has the smell of death,” she said, “or maybe I’m just mortally bored.”

Harry laughed and allowed himself to look at her. Mrs. Berystede was not pretty, not even handsome. Her nose was too big and her chin just a dimple in her jaw on the way to her neck, but she had lovely eyes, large and expressive and somehow, despite her wit, sad.

“Do you have a family, Harry?” she asked.

“Not of my own. I have two brothers and one sister.”

“What do they do?”

“My older brother is in the railways. My younger brother is in training for the Civil Service. And my sister is mad about archery and jazz. She does the books for the family business.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful.” Mrs. Berystede’s hand went to Harry’s shoulder. “I want a family,” she said. “Edgar tells me that I am mother to all of India. Why do I need a baby when I am mother to six hundred million people?” Mrs. Berystede began to tear up and the handkerchief strayed to her eyes. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Of course Edgar tells everyone that it’s me, but I’ve been to the doctor. I just get so angry.” The tears began to spill, but she managed a smile. “I want to shoot everything in sight.”

Harry nodded, then raised his glass to Mrs. Berystede and drained it. He wished he could put his arm around her. “I can tell you are a good woman,” he said, “and I’m sure that you would be a wonderful mother. I am sorry.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Berystede, sitting suddenly straight, “you are so kind.”

There was a silence in the room. Harry looked up and an informal assembly was watching him. He was not surprised. In the front row was a shocked Major Berystede. Behind him and to the left was Tunsdale, who was smiling with support and sympathy. Harry knew he had just been unanimously blackballed.

Tunsdale and Harry rode back to the cantonment together. “What an outright disaster,” said Tunsdale. “I haven’t had that much fun at the club since I joined. What was the old bag telling you, anyway?”

“Nothing of interest,” said Harry. “She was just a bit lonely.”

“And wanted the company of the handsome, swarthy lieutenant.”

“She’s right to be crazy here,” said Harry. “It shows the presence of—”

“Of what?”

“Of a soul,” said Harry and they laughed.

The next morning Harry awoke to both the sting and blur of a headache. The walls were spinning around the room and his attendant, although studiously solemn, had a merry twinkle in his eyes.

“I feel terrible,” Harry confided. “Give me some water.” Harry sipped cautiously from the edge of his glass. His stomach was very delicate.

“Sir,” said his servant. He gestured around the bridge of his nose and Harry hazarded to touch the cheekbone beneath his left eye, which was throbbing. The flesh around his eye was swollen and tender.

“Is it bruised?” asked Harry.

“Quite black,” said his servant. “It looks very painful.”

“Wonderful,” said Harry.

With some effort and a good deal of help from his servant, Harry managed to get dressed and shaved. His mind kept flashing images at him — Tunsdale handing him his flask, the ensuing argument, Tunsdale and Harry at the army brothel (Harry fortified into feeling one hundred percent European), and the one knuckle-up punch from the unidentified fist, which had sent him flying right back into the arms of Mother India. Tunsdale had tried to pass Harry off as Welsh, despite the fact that all the men frequenting “the rag” knew him. In fact, Harry had been laughing when the punch hit him and even though his head was reeling and he had more pains than one, he chuckled to himself as he crossed the swept dirt of the garden and made the steps of the mess.

He didn’t even notice Berystede smoking on the veranda.

“Lieutenant,” said the major.

“Sir,” said Harry.

“What on earth happened to your eye?”

“This, sir?” Harry shook his head. “The lesser part of honor.” Which was indiscretion.

Berystede stiffened. “You should put some ice on it,” he said.

Harry nodded and continued inside.

How was Harry to know that at the same time Tunsdale was insisting that he was Welsh, Berystede and his wife had finished off a monumental, tight-lipped row. When Harry was struggling back onto his horse, Mrs. Berystede too was mounting hers, taking off for an angry moonlight ride across the fields. While Harry was passed out in bed with his servant easing off his boots, Mrs. Berystede had just pitched off her horse while flying over a ditch. When she finally returned home she was cut, muddied, and humiliated. She refused to offer an explanation. Berystede had not slept that night and the sight of Harry, smelling distilled, handsome despite his obvious lack of sleep, strong, young, and vital, had stirred his deepest insecurities.

And Harry’s explanation for the state of his eye had planted the seeds of suspicion.

Tenko , Japanese reveille, came at the end of the night. Changi was run on Japanese time, even though Singapore was an hour and a half behind. Harry was dreaming of some mountain-edge horse game where the players leaped one after another, gleefully, spiraling downward and never hitting bottom. He rolled to his feet out the side of the cot as Sergeant Itsumi plowed down the row of the sleeping men, pounding their shins with his flashlight. Today was a lucky day because all the men managed to get to their feet. All had survived the night. Outside, the sky was just starting to glow with the coolest, most distant light. Bango started and the men counted off dutifully in Japanese: ichi, ni, san, shi, go . .