Amitav Ghosh - The Glass Palace

‘I see.’ The hollow sound of her voice indicated that she’d read this as a rebuff. ‘Well, I’ll go then.’

‘No,’ he said quickly, ‘please stay. . but then, if you’re going to be here, could I take a few pictures of you. .?’

She was quick to deal out a rebuff of her own. ‘No. I’m not really in the right frame of mind to become a part of your — your work.’ She turned on her heel and headed down the path, towards the stream.

Dinu knew himself to be stranded unwittingly in a quarrel.

‘Alison. . I didn’t mean. .’ He hurried after her, but she was walking fast and his leg put him at a disadvantage. ‘Alison. . please stay.’ He caught up with her at the edge of the stream. ‘Alison. . I was just telling you what it’s like. . when I make a picture. . I didn’t mean to put you off. . won’t you stay?’

‘Not now,’ she glanced at her watch. ‘Not today.’

‘Then you’ll come back?’

She’d already started across the ford. In mid-stream, without turning round, she raised a hand to wave.

Just before the battalion’s departure from Saharanpur, new war equipment tables arrived. This meant that Arjun and Hardy had to stay up all night, revising their carefully prepared Unit Mobilisation Scheme. But in the end all was well: the CO was pleased and the battalion was able to go ahead with its entrainment as planned. The train left for Bombay on schedule.

At Ajmer there was a slight delay. The 1/1 Jats were shunted aside so that a trainload of Italian prisoners of war could pass by. The Italians and Indians stared at each other in silence across the platform, through the barred windows of their respective carriages. This was their first glimpse of the enemy.

Next morning, they arrived at Bombay’s Victoria terminus. They were told that their troop ship, the H.M.T. Nuwara Eliya , was waiting at the harbour. They drove to the Sassoon docks to find that their embarkation orders had already been issued.

The docks proved to be unexpectedly congested. It turned out that a British battalion was boarding another ship at exactly the same time. Soon the two battalions’ baggage and equipment were hopelessly entangled with each other. NCOs began to shout, spreading panic among the dockworkers. Hardy was thrown into the midst of the confusion: he was the baggage officer for the 1/1 Jats and it fell on him to try and restore order.

Looking in Hardy’s roster, Arjun learnt that he had been allotted a cabin to himself. He had never been on a ship before and was barely able to contain his excitement. He went hurrying up the gangplank to look for his cabin, with Kishan Singh following close behind, carrying his luggage.

They were the first to board and the ship was empty, but for its crew. Everything seemed new and startling: the white gunwales and narrow catwalks, the yawning hatches and the rounded frames of the portholes.

As they were stepping on to the upper deck, Kishan Singh happened to glance over the side. ‘Sah’b — look!’ He pointed, drawing Arjun’s attention to an altercation on the docks below. Arjun saw that Hardy had got himself into a shouting match with a hulking British sergeant. They were standing toe to toe, with Hardy shaking a sheaf of papers under the sergeant’s nose.

‘Stay here.’

Arjun went racing down the way he had come. He arrived on the scene just a moment too late. Another officer from their battalion had got there before him — Captain Pearson, the adjutant, a bluff, stocky Englishman, with a booming voice and a quick temper.

Watching from a few paces away, Arjun saw Hardy turning to Captain Pearson. It was clear that Hardy was relieved to see the adjutant, fully confident that his senior would back him up — out of loyalty to a fellow-member of the battalion, if nothing else. But Captain Pearson had never made a secret of his belief that Hardy was ‘difficult’ and ‘overly sensitive’. Instead of supporting him, he let his annoyance show: ‘Lieutenant, have you got yourself into a row again. .?’

Arjun saw the look on Hardy’s face change from relief to seething outrage. It was painful to stand there as a silent witness to his friend’s humiliation. He turned and slipped away.

Later that day, Hardy came to his cabin.

‘We’ve got to teach that bastard Pearson a lesson,’ he said. ‘That bloody sergeant called me a stinking nigger in front of the men. Pearson let him get away with it. Yaar, would you believe it, the bugger blamed me! The only way we can stop this kind of thing is by sticking together.’

‘What exactly do you mean?’

‘I think we should boycott him.’

‘He’s the adjutant, Hardy,’ Arjun said. ‘How can we boycott him? Be reasonable.’

‘There are ways of getting a message across,’ Hardy said angrily. ‘But that can happen only when you know which side you’re on.’ Rising abruptly to his feet, he left Arjun’s cabin.

For two days the Nuwara Eliya waited offshore, while nine other ships assembled in the harbour. There was a rumour that a German submarine was lurking nearby and the ships were assigned an escort of two destroyers, an armed merchantman and a light cruiser. When the convoy finally departed, it was in a westerly direction, heading towards the setting sun. Their destination was still unknown; they had no idea whether they were to go east or west.

In Bombay, the CO had been handed a sealed envelope that was to be opened exactly twenty-four hours after their departure. When the time came, Arjun and the other officers gathered in a dining room on the Nuwara Eliya ’s upper deck. The CO opened the envelope in his usual deliberate way, prising the seal off the paper with a knife. The officers waited in expectant silence. Arjun could feel a clammy dampness welling up in the palms of his hands.

Then at last, the CO looked up with a thin smile. He held the sheet of paper in front of him and read out aloud: ‘This ship is headed for Singapore.’

Arjun stepped out on deck and found Hardy already there, leaning over the gunwale, humming softly under his breath. Behind them the white ribbon of the ship’s wake had already begun to describe a curve as the convoy slowly changed direction.

Manju had never been happier than she was in the first months of her pregnancy. She relished every reminder of her changing condition: the often imaginary twitches and movements; the pangs of hunger that could never be properly satisfied; even the nausea that woke her every morning and the acid tingling of her teeth.

The Kemendine house had changed greatly in the two years she’d been in Rangoon. Dinu was gone of course, and his apartment upstairs lay empty. Neel and Rajkumar were often away, arranging for the disposal of the family’s properties or buying new stocks of teak. For much of the time Manju and Dolly had the house to themselves. The compound had grown unkempt; where there had once been a lawn the grass now stood knee-high. Many rooms and outhouses were locked up; much of the furniture had been sold. The dozens of employees who had once populated the place were gone — the servants, watchmen, gardeners and their families. Even U Ba Kyaw, the chauffeur, had gone back to his village. The Packard was one of the few disposable possessions that Rajkumar had retained, but it was now driven mainly by Neel.

Neither Manju nor Dolly regretted the emptying of the house. On the contrary, it was as though an enormous accumulation of cobwebs had been swept away, allowing them new and unaccustomed freedoms. In the past Dolly had often seemed remote and unapproachable to Manju, but now they became allies, colleagues, team-mates, working together for the family’s renewal. Between the two of them they had little difficulty in managing the house.