Glorious Boy, page 11
Leyo smiled, lifting one palm high above Kuli’s phantom head and lowering the other to his own knees. “Kuli can hear Biliku dance more than one hour before the ground will shake.” As compared to his own few-seconds alert.
Sixth sense, Claire wrote in her field book. Magnetic fields? Natural attunement (magic!) Some deep vibration.
“So the others depend on Kuli to warn them?”
“All except Artam,” Leyo said. “But she is learning.”
“How?”
Leyo explained that Kuli had instructed his people to move to higher ground and into the open. Artam, ever mischievous, decided that the climb was too arduous, and she felt sleepy, so she snuck away from the group and marched back home. Claire could just see the little imp trudging through the forest. So stubborn. So independent. She had these qualities, at least, in common with Ty.
Leyo continued, “You ask if anyone injured. Only the little one. She will not follow Kuli out. So! House beam is fall on her.”
“No!”
Leyo grinned at Claire’s alarm and made a slicing movement with his hand across one shoulder, spread a wide gap between forefingers and thumb.
Claire couldn’t understand his glee at what sounded like a serious wound. “It might have killed her!”
Leyo straightened on his haunches. His expression grew sober. “If then, God must be angry.”
Weeks passed. Months. Still, as far as Naila was concerned, nothing made any sense. How many times had she ridden the ferry back and forth between Aberdeen and Ross Island? The boats might look identical to others, but she could tell the Sapphire from the Benbow from the Dundee with her eyes closed. She knew the Benbow’s roll, the growl of the Dundee’s engine, the stink of rancid ghee from a spill that had seeped into the Sapphire’s splintered deck. Ranjit, the old pilot of the Benbow, kept torn chappatis in his pocket to throw for the fish, and he loved to tell about spearing barracuda when he was growing up in Haddo. Akash, one of the crewmen on the Sapphire, sketched passengers in his drawing pad, and his likenesses were as accurate as they were fast. In the back of his pad he had pictures of some Jarawa that he’d encountered when his group was set upon during a trek to Mount Koyob. They looked a little like Leyo, but the Jarawa carried white and black spears, and Akash said they wore only red breechcloths and bracelets. He’d shyly covered the naked breasts in one drawing as he told Naila that their attackers took some metal things—camping cups and pans—then vanished back into the forest as suddenly as they’d appeared. Like a living dream.
How could he and her parents be gone? Where had they gone? She was living a nightmare.
Aside from Ty Babu, only Leyo now had the power to lift her mood. Before, Leyo had come and gone, but now he lived at the white house and was always sweeping and scrubbing and helping Mem or tending to the plants he’d brought from Ross Island for Doctor saab. He seemed to think his duties also included playing with her and Ty Babu. They’d take Ty’s hands and dance him in circles. Or when Doctor Shep was home sometimes he’d yell to Leyo, “Want a coconut?” and the two of them would toss Ty back and forth until he melted in giggles. Leyo would ride Ty on his shoulders and trumpet his arm like an elephant’s trunk, waving for her to join in until she heard herself hooting and tooting. Sometimes Ty Babu sneaked up behind him and pretended to be a snake or spider biting his leg, and the crazy way Leyo hopped around the garden actually made Naila laugh.
Once he caught her looking out over the harbor while Ty was chasing a lizard down the steps, and he took her hand between both of his and blew on her fingertips as if to warm them. Instead the sensation cooled and calmed her, and when he raised his eyes she was startled by his tears and by the strange sense that he was crying for her—as if to lighten the burden of tears that she herself needed to shed. But she didn’t ask or even want him to take these tears from her.
Though she could no longer picture their homecoming, she still told herself that tears could be shed for joy, so she should stopper these feelings—all feelings—until she found her parents. She mustn’t even be angry with Leyo, for that was a feeling, too.
She withdrew her hand, tucked it under her arm, and turned away.
On the last morning in November, a swarm of military police vehicles descended on Aberdeen Market. Shep was passing the clock tower when he saw the commotion below, and the arrests were conducted so swiftly that, by the time he reached the bottom of the hill, the Kobayashis’ photo shop had been barricaded and the Japanese couple already were being marched, manacled, onto the jetty where tenders were waiting to take them, along with the port’s other Japanese resident, a dentist, out to a troop ship bound for Calcutta.
Shep approached Wilkerson’s parked yellow and black Standard, where the Commissioner sat monitoring the roundup. “What’s this all about?”
“Spies,” came the terse reply.
Shep suppressed a laugh. The Japanese had been an innocuous presence in Port Blair long before he or Wilkerson ever set foot on these islands. The notion of them as war criminals was farcical.
By the time he was describing the scene to Claire that evening, however, he’d begun to rethink his initial reaction. Due to enemy submarine threats, the formerly semi-monthly sailings of the SS Maharaja had become increasingly erratic. Many vital earthquake repairs were on permanent hold for lack of supplies. There were shortages in dry goods, rice, and tinned foods. All over town, merchants complained. Administrators missed their bangers and mash, and transport drivers jury-rigged their vehicles for lack of parts. Those deliveries of mainland and foreign papers that did get through carried worsening news from Europe and Africa, and though months old by the time they arrived, the Times’s photographs of the Blitz had brought the plight of Britain into chilling focus. Then, in September, Japan, Italy, and Germany had signed the Tripartite Pact.
“So I suppose we ought to be surprised it took this long,” Shep said. “If there were any German or Italian nationals here, they’d be carted off too.”
Below them in the garden, fireflies had begun to blink. Naila and Ty were competing with Leyo to catch them. Ty’s laughter burst like hiccups.
“Thinking about your parents?” Claire asked.
“Not much point, is there?”
“If mine were in England, I’d be worried sick.”
“I know it’s difficult for you to understand, Claire, but my parents despise me, and over time the feeling’s become mutual.”
“They’re still your parents.”
“I don’t wish them dead.”
“Well, bully for you!” She started to lean away from him, then found his hand and squeezed. “Those poor people in London and France.”
“And Poland and Holland and Belgium. Not to mention China. I know.”
“Focus on the currents, and you’ll be swept away.”
“What’s that?”
“Something my father taught me out in the woods to get me across a deep stream. He said, before I stepped onto each boulder, to focus on it as if it were the whole world, but on no account to let my fear pull my thoughts into the water around it.”
Shep kissed her. “Don’t you want to be swept away?”
December 1941
They were having drinks at the club when a late-breaking bulletin filled with static came over the radio. Everyone leaned in as Baird labored the knob until the announcer came clear:
“Early yesterday morning, local time, Japan launched a surprise air attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and declared war on Britain and the United States. The US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, has mobilised all his forces and is poised to declare war on Japan.”
Wilkerson let out a strangled cough. Everyone else froze in charged silence as the radio continued to pulse shock waves of details across the room, but Shep had stalled on a single word: yesterday. Even this galvanizing news had the faded quality, in Port Blair, of a print left too long in the sun.
He touched Claire’s elbow. She was staring at the recently installed blackout drapes.
“I’m so sorry,” Alfred Baird said, coming over.
“Part of me thinks it must be a hoax,” she said.
“And the other part?”
She sighed almost apologetically and raised her glass in a toast. “That part thinks, now America’s in, it’ll soon be over.”
Across the room Commissioner Wilkerson stopped tugging his mustache. He lifted those glacial blue eyes and said with alarmingly uncharacteristic humility, “From your lips to God’s ears, my dear.”
March 1942
Notices were posted on March 7, the day Rangoon fell. Civilians and civil officials were to leave Port Blair as soon as the SS Norilla could get there to collect them. A second ship would follow for military personnel.
No local-borns or natives.
And so, at last Shep and Claire were forced to confront the reality they’d been avoiding ever since the war started. In peacetime, they agreed, they surely would have gone on as they were, perhaps for years. Now it was out of their hands. They had all they could do to secure berths for themselves, and no one could say what would happen once they reached Calcutta. It was a brutal situation for Naila, but they had no choice.
That afternoon, while Claire kept the children busy downstairs, Shep summoned Abraham, Narinder, and Leyo to the breezeway. Since they’d have to spring for the ship as soon as it dropped anchor, and no one could be certain when it might arrive, he wanted to settle up now.
Narinder said he would stay on until the doctor and his family left, but Abraham quit on the spot. He said he needed to go to his village, though he’d never before mentioned having ties outside the port.
Shep wasn’t sorry to see the cook’s back. A few days of foraging for themselves in the kitchen was a small price to pay for one less worry at this point. So, he paid and thanked both men for their service.
Leyo stood back, still as a hat rack until the other two had gone out. “So,” Shep said. “You tell me, Leyo. What shall we do?”
Leyo told him then, and after agreeing, Shep went directly to Claire’s study. From the window he watched Leyo lead Naila and Ty down to the greenhouse. They would spend the next hour crating and labeling his most valuable specimens.
As he explained the plan, Claire pressed her fists together. When her knuckles turned white, he attempted a joke. “Fortunately, Leyo’s gaga over the girl. And at least the dowry’s within our means.”
“She’s thirteen,” she snapped. “You didn’t—”
“No, Claire.” He patted the air for her to calm down. He wasn’t lying. Leyo’s offer to stay with Naila and, if necessary, to take her into the forest for safety seemed purely protective. Then again, Shep couldn’t speak for the boy’s desires and, by local custom, both he and Naila were plenty old enough to marry. Claire herself had told him the Biya traditionally married around fifteen, and child brides were common throughout Asia—not that he’d wish that on Naila.
“I’m just trying to make the best of a bad situation,” he said.
“Your best isn’t making a dent.”
Neither they nor Leyo breathed a word of the plan to Naila. It would be best for her and for Ty, they agreed, if both thought she was coming with them. Claire gave her a suitcase and a rucksack to fill with her belongings. Together they packed boxes with the same possessions that, just eight months ago, Naila and Leyo had retrieved from the wreckage of Ross Island. Anything they couldn’t take now, Claire stressed, would be sent on the second sailing. “Or we can just put it into storage until we come back.”
Listening to herself, she thought she sounded like a nitwit, but the reassuring stream seemed to have its intended impact on the girl, whose diligent attentiveness so resembled Jina’s that it made Claire ache to watch her.
On March 12, the word went out that the Norilla was approaching Landfall Island and would be in port by morning. Evacuees would have until two o’clock to board. No exceptions.
Supper that night consisted of mangoes and curd, some McVitie’s, and the last of their gin and tonic. Then, promising a busy day tomorrow, Claire put Ty to bed early. She read him a chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh in as close to a monotone as she could manage. When she was sure he was asleep, she asked Naila down to her study, where Shep and Leyo were waiting.
The empty shelves glared at them through the faltering lamplight as they sat in a circle on stiff cane chairs surrounded by packing boxes. The curtains were drawn. They’d chosen this room for privacy. Leyo thought it best if not even Narinder knew their plan. But Shep had decided the time had come to tell Naila.
Claire watched the girl as he explained the what and the why and the details. Surprise never visibly registered. Naila sat with her hands clasped between her knees and stared at the pale squares on the wall where pictures had been removed. In the new pink blouse and green skirt that they had given her just last week, her black ringlets circling her face, she looked every bit the schoolgirl she should have been.
Of the four of them only Leyo seemed at ease. He stood to one side, arms akimbo, and Claire felt his gaze wash over each of them in turn. In five years, this young man had never given her a single reason to doubt or distrust him, and over these same years he’d shown unfailing affection for Naila, as he would a younger sister. Still . . .
“We’re not leaving you here.” Claire turned to Naila. “As soon as we get to Calcutta, we’ll see Shep’s friend in the Foreign Office and apply to bring you and Leyo both over on the next ship.” But the impulsiveness of this reassurance immediately deflated it, and Shep’s barely stifled groan warned her not to continue.
The girl shifted in her seat and turned her gaze hard to the window, but the blackout drapes blocked any hint of the world outside.
IV
March 13, 1942
Daylight is fading when they emerge. Naila leads Ty down a shortcut across the gully, but the boy is still yawning from his second nap, and she has to help him from stone to stone. Her movements feel as mechanical and disconnected as the thoughts she is trying to push out of reach.
She didn’t intend to fall asleep herself.
What did she intend?
Just ten minutes, Mem had said. How much time has passed since then?
The ship . . .
Naila gives her head a shake and stretches an arm back for Ty to grab. She meant to show Mem, to make her grateful enough—
But Ty claps his hands and reaches up past her, and when she turns, Leyo is standing above them on the gully’s rim. His coral sarong blazes in the slanting light, and the hard set of his jaw gives his face an unfamiliar severity.
Naila expects him to offer his hand. Instead he jumps down and, with one strong fist cuffs her arm while lifting Ty with the other up onto the grass. She starts to protest, but he stops her with a jerk.
“Mem has gone.” He pushes her up.
Ty laughs when she stumbles into him.
“Gone where?”
“On the ship.” And it is as if he’s fed her a sweet in which she can taste poison.
Then Ty is on Leyo’s shoulders, Naila again in his grip, and they walk up the garden path so quickly, she has to trot to keep from stumbling. “And Doctor saab?”
“He made Mem to go alone.”
“TY!” Doctor Shep’s voice roars ahead of him as he charges down from the terrace, nearly toppling Naila in his haste to seize his son. He hugs the boy as if he means to open his heart and stuff the wriggling child inside, and he only stops when Ty gives a shriek and pushes him away.
Then, for the first time, the doctor looks at Naila. “You stupid, stupid girl.”
That night is ungodly. The two of them, father and son, battle like lifelong enemies. Tears. Fists. Wails. Teeth. Inarticulate screams. Ty refuses to surrender Naila. Shep refuses to let the girl anywhere near him. Rage eviscerates his compassion.
Rage and dread.
There is no way to convey to his son what danger his beloved has visited upon them. He chases the child around the locked room like an animal in a cage, lifting him kicking into his arms, and clasps him against his chest.
Eventually, as the boy’s tantrum winds down, Shep sings to him. “Toot, Toot, Tootsie! (Goo’ Bye!).” “Pennies from Heaven.” “The Way You Look Tonight.” Songs that float back to him from those first weeks with Claire in New York, when he sang to her as they walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, or waited for the train to meet her parents, or stargazed from the top of the Empire State Building. When he saw her as his salvation.
At last Ty sleeps, and Shep lies down beside him, but his own mind refuses. It was worse with Claire. She pled with him. She wailed and beat him with her fists. She screamed. He had to call the MPs to help him restrain her after Wilkerson ordered her onto the ship.
Then Shep drugged his own wife. To get her away from him. To save her? It won’t come to that, he tells himself. It can’t. But if not, will she ever forgive him?
She will, he decides. She must. What else could he do?
Right now, he reminds himself, the more urgent question is Naila. Naila and Ty.
What she had heard of magic she distrusted.
The line is from Kim, the “she” in question the half-caste woman who cared for poor little Kimball O’Hara. After Kim was orphaned, this woman’s distrust of the white man’s magic convinced her that keeping the boy with her was the only way to keep him safe. But there, after Kim was orphaned was the crucial condition.
