Glorious Boy, page 14
Leyo meets her eyes, and nods.
If only she could take Ty somewhere else to wait for his father. Somewhere the fire didn’t stink of pig fat and there was no midden with moldering garbage to attract whatever creatures rustle and roll there all night long. Where they could eat rice and roti and dhal like normal people, instead of the boiled meat of animals she can’t even name. Some place, too, where her own voice would make sense.
It is this that surprises her most of all. The gibberish of the clan sounds nothing like the phrases that Mem and Leyo used to practice. To communicate even the simplest question, she must rely on sign language. She and Ty now have this in common.
PART TWO
V
March 22, 1942
A single salvo across the black harbor. No return fire. Silence.
Alone in the empty house, Shep lies sweating through seconds, then minutes, peering into darkness. Finally, he rises from bed and fumbles for the blackout cord, nearly persuades himself the shots were products of a fishermen’s tiff, a drunken brawl at the Hopetown landing, his own frayed synapses—
North Point erupts.
He lifts the blinds as the midnight sky flashes orange and crimson, sulphuric yellow. Tom Lutty. Dynamite. The wireless station. A pyrotechnic code for Time’s up.
He stares until his eyes burn, then drops the blinds and slowly, painstakingly dresses. By the time he stands up from tying his boots, the night is holding its breath again. He packs his medical kit, folds his lab coat, carries these insignia up through the empty house to the breezeway . . . and there, stalls in the moonlight.
In his kit he’s hidden the map that Leyo drew for him, the overland path to the Biya. More contingency plans. He pulls out the sketch now and squints, the dark stillness a drug.
The route forms a vertical Big Dipper. In 1859 the Great Andamanese followed more or less this same path when they stole through the jungle to attack the fledgling colony. Had it not been for an escaped convict who’d joined the tribals but had a change of heart—a double agent, in effect, who warned the British—“The Battle of Aberdeen” might have terminated the colony, altering history for all of them. Whenever Claire spoke of that battle, her voice thickened with contempt. That stupid, stupid man.
He lowers himself onto the loveseat where she used to lie mouthing the impossible syllables of a language already dead. The cushions still hold her scent. Geranium oil. That warm floral darkness. He presses it to his face and retraces the angles of her hipbones, the hollow at the base of her throat, one hand gliding through her brown hair as she presses the other into his chest. The timbre of her voice as she dares him.
He saved her by knocking her out, his intentions desperate as a boy on the end of a bayonet. But at least he saved her.
Saved her and lost her with one clean jab. Would she forgive him now?
Never. Of that he’s certain. Before she lost consciousness, she knew even less than he did how dire their circumstances truly were, but even if it meant certain death, she’d never agree to leave Ty to face this without her.
Shep hopes for her sake that she is railing against him. That would mean the worst for her is still an abstraction.
An abstraction. His mind staggers, uncertainty and indecision crippling him. Ty could be dead—of fear, of venom, of a fall or fever. He could have been killed with Leyo’s people by Japanese advance scouts or by an enemy tribe.
But not—Shep rallies himself. Not as far as he knows. Not as he wills himself to believe. His son’s circumstances are now as unfathomable to Shep as his own are to Claire, and for this reason, and perhaps this reason alone, he can still retain his faith that Ty and Naila will survive.
Naila—
He stops himself. What purpose will blame serve now? It was the selfish, mindless act of a child. For which she is paying more than she ever could have bargained for . . .
And suddenly Shep is back with Ty in his arms, the sticky smell of sea spray, the catch of his son’s breath as Shep carried him through the surf. Magic, he promised his son.
Magic. What in the name of God was he thinking?
He should be running. No matter how futile. Even if it gets him killed. But first he has to think. Which way? Spotters will have the coast and waters around the port covered, and this forest route requires a tracker—an impossibility now.
Gunboats in the moonlight. Shep puts the pillow down.
He’s responsible for all of this. The thought paralyzes him.
On the wicker table his pipe lies in a pottery bowl beside a tin of Latakia and a box of safety matches. The blackout blinds are up, but he doesn’t bother lowering them. He takes a stick from the box and ignites it, then holds the map with his escape route to its bluing flame.
March 23, 1942
As soon as she reaches the top of the stairs, she knows. Their voices ricochet up from the lobby. The bloody fucks . . . We’re next, y’know . . . Gave it up without a shot . . . Trust them Nips to creep in like thieves in the night . . . Nothin’ but water between us ’n them now.
And then, What do we say to—?
In the mirror on the landing a pair of bespectacled eyes turns up and collides with Claire’s own shattered gaze, but the stairwell is going white. She clutches the balustrade, slides to the floor. Her blood pounds so loud in her ears that she can no longer hear the soldiers.
When they climb to her aid, she motions them away. The lobby is spinning, Ty’s and Shep’s faces popping like flash bulbs, but she makes herself stand and somehow descends. The foyer falls dead. They make her sit down. And then, it’s all for nothing.
She’s heard everything there is to know. A single bulletin on the radio. The Andaman Islands, taken. Sneak attack. The British authorities in Port Blair surrendered without defense.
Shep and Ty. Shep and Ty. Shep and Ty. Their names repeat like a mantra, filling her simultaneously with longing and with terror.
The phone on the front desk erupts, and a receiver is thrust into her hands. Roger on the other end: “I’m t-trying to find out everything I can. Hold tight. Vivian will be there in a minute . . .”
He hears her silence. “Claire,” he says, “the Japanese are bound by the Geneva Convention to protect civilians and keep children with their families and—”
She hangs up without speaking. Her surroundings have straightened, but the masks of concern and speculation on the faces of her fellow boarders make her feel as if she’s disintegrating. Shep and Ty.
She walks through the door and across the garden, out the forecourt to Sudder Street, then Free School, and keeps going. No hat, no parasol, no purse, no idea where or why, only that she must move.
Outside the hotel, men and women and children go about their mornings, the fate of her family nothing to them. And yet . . . every small Indian boy appears a dead ringer for Ty, every attentive big sister, Naila. Every tall bony Englishman, Shep. They trudge past shops. Pull hand carts. Squat beside sidewalk charpoys. They wear khaki, white, and pale blue uniforms, carry buckets, scream at each other. Weep.
Claire holds herself very still as the hallucinations well, permitting only her legs to move. Now the spectres stand in the sleeve of a terrace or the frame of a doorway, off in the distance waving, but always, all of them present their backs to her.
“Madam?” A bearded man in a maroon turban and white jacket approaches. “May I help?”
Please. Her arms ache. Her eyes throb. She can’t breathe.
The Samaritan takes her elbow to steady her, and his touch halts the falling sensation. She looks around.
College Street. A campus gate. Indian students smile up at her, laughing.
These are not all students, though. Patients also lie on the grass, an outdoor waiting room filled with deathly still infants, keening mothers, hollow-eyed men and rickety boys. Faces ravaged by pain and madness and loss.
The young Sikh waits. “Are you a doctor?” she asks him.
“Not yet, Madam. Only an intern. Are you ill?”
She ignores the question. “But you help them.” She starts to gesture at the patients, then, without knowing why, redirects her question. “The doctors.”
“I assist.” A look of bewilderment clouds his concern.
“Yes. Yes, that’s it. You assist. And that makes it easier to bear—” She glances back at the people waiting.
The man—clear, dark eyes, neatly rolled and tucked beard, a whiff of cardamom and clove—nods uncertainly. “One does what one can.”
“One does what one can,” she repeats.
Then she lifts her face and salaams. “Thank you, Doctor. Thank you.”
“The thing is,” she tells Roger and Viv when she finds them back at the hotel, “I have to do something. And I must know. Can you tell me?”
Roger looks at his hands.
To Vivian: “Can you?”
“Claire,” Viv says, “I’m a reporter. I’m going to try—”
“And so am I! That’s exactly my point. I’ve got to do what I can. Look, you’ve got your press briefings and investigative know-how. Roger’s got his Government channels. But neither of you is privy to Military Intelligence. If I go up to Barrackpore, I could be. At least I’d stand a chance of hearing if anything came across.”
They both look at her as if she were raving. Less than three hours have passed since Calcutta learned of the invasion. All of them are in shock.
But their shock is no good to Shep and Ty, and the longer it takes to find out what’s actually happening in Port Blair, the greater the chance that her husband and son will be taken away, moved to an internment camp, or—
“You can help me, Roger. You know who to talk to up at the Signal Centre. Tell them I know the Andamans. I know Morse. I know the terrain and the local tribes. They’ll need all that for reconnaissance.”
Roger frowns, but Claire persists. “Unless the Japanese are stopped in the Andamans, they’ll be in Calcutta next. And if I can help stop them, then maybe—”
But the force of her own determination rolls back on her like an undertow. A gust of laughter rises from the hotel bar, and she pictures Ty being ripped from Shep’s arms at gunpoint.
“You are British, Dr. Durant.” In Lieutenant Shimura’s mouth, Shep’s surname breaks like glass.
“Born in Shanghai.”
“Ah. Missionary parents.” Every question a statement.
“My father was a doctor.”
The edge of a smile. “Family business.”
“Something like that.”
“You are surgeon.” Shimura, beads of moisture across his brow, makes a show of surveying the titles in the Browning Club library, which the occupying force is using as an interrogation room for European and Eurasian prisoners. He turns on his captive, who sits on a cane chair beside the library globe.
Shep was just shy of Corbyn’s Cove when they caught him, at sunrise, and he surrendered without protest. The gambit had been little more than a gesture toward escape. Even if he’d managed to reach the skiff, the chances of getting up the coast undetected were virtually nil and only fractionally less suicidal than attempting to go it alone overland. The gesture allowed him to deny his own paralysis, but it changed nothing.
“Civil Surgeon is a misleading title,” Shep says. He considers how best to position his status and opts to aim low. “I’m really just a public health officer.”
“You have wife and son.”
He blanches. This is all a charade, then. Wilkerson warned them that, thanks to the Kobayashis, the Japanese would likely have dossiers on everyone in Port Blair. Yet the warning failed to prepare him for this jab. “They—”
Shimura, a tall, slender figure in tropical kit, rolls one immaculate hand in the air.
“My wife was evacuated to Calcutta on March 13.”
“And son.”
The vise tightens around his rib cage. “Yes.”
“Yes?” This, at last, is the question. “Answer.”
“My son disappeared.”
“You find him.”
“No.”
“Doctor, we intercept. You telegram to your wife.”
“That was a lie.” He pushes the breath from his lungs. “So she wouldn’t worry.”
Shimura shakes his head as if disappointed in a promising student.
“You can ask; I’ve searched everywhere. No one has seen them.”
“Them.”
“His ayah also disappeared. She was young, and very jealous.” He squeezes his eyes against a spasm of nausea. “I think she would rather die and take the boy with her than surrender him—even to me.”
“That is sad story,” the lieutenant says without a trace of emotion. “If we find this ayah, we must punish her.”
Following interrogation, Shep and Major Baird and the Commissioner are fed a meal of hardtack and weak tea, then marched to Aberdeen Jetty and shoved aboard the ferry Benbow under armed escort. Old Ranjit drops his eyes as he casts off, then hurries up to the wheelhouse to pilot them across the harbor. It’s the first time Shep has made this trip in the eight months since the earthquake. They’re being placed under house arrest while their captors decide what use they can put them to. Hostages. Forced labor. Prisoner of war trading pawns. For the time being, it’s easier to secure them in a house on an abandoned island than in the restless port.
Heat and humidity glaze the surface of the water. Japanese cruisers roll at anchor, and the traffic of military patrol boats produces more activity than the harbor has seen in weeks.
Wilkerson sits across from Shep, erect and gray and closed. Baird turns his face to the crossing’s false breeze. All three surrendered without protest, but being forced to trample the Union Jack drained something vital from the Commissioner, while Baird wears the situation with surprising serenity. As for himself, Shep studies his companions to stop his gaze from straying to the forest.
Dusk is falling when the ferry docks, as it was when he and Claire first set foot here an eternity ago. But the parade ground now is overgrown. Much of Ross bazaar has fallen into ruin, and the spire of the Anglican Church lies in pieces. Coconuts litter the island like cannonballs. Nothing is the same.
Ranjit’s boy scurries to secure the boat. He eyes the Japanese with fascination, but they elbow him aside and prod Wilkerson out first. Shep has a fleeting notion that they might be left here alone. Why not? The island is deserted. The surrounding waters seethe with sharks. The prisoners have no boat, but even if they did, the coast will be crawling with spotters for miles in every direction.
And—he reminds himself—to be caught while making for Behalla now could destroy Ty’s only chance for survival.
The men push through the debris up the crosswalk to the Assistant Commissioner’s residence. The tats have fallen off the front veranda, and the steps leading up to the portico are wrenched sideways. One gable has collapsed. When the soldiers gesture for them to enter, Wilkerson stiffens, coming to his rank.
“The Commissioner’s residence is there.” He points up the hill.
The young warrant officer leading the escort looks momentarily confused. “You here.”
The Commissioner persists, still pointing. “My house is not broken.”
The officer pulls a sheet from his pocket, studies it briefly, and barks an order. The man closest to Wilkerson raises his bayonet.
“You here,” the officer repeats, even as a soldier from the rear trots off in the direction the Commissioner indicated.
Baird leads the way into his old quarters, which have been stripped of all but skeletal furnishings. The guards remain outside. As Shep and Baird move toward the interior, a rat streaks across the floor. Shep joins Wilkerson in the front room and watches through the filthy window as the scout returns from his mission up the hill and reports to the warrant officer. Then the two hurry down to the jetty, shadows in the gloaming.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got any lights.”
Wilkerson addresses them rhetorically. The island’s generator died in the earthquake, but Baird manages to find a couple of candle stubs and matches in a dining room drawer. When he strikes a flame, however, a palm slams against the window and a face appears like a Noh mask through the pane.
Baird quickly extinguishes the candle before the square-headed guard, who seems to be in charge, enters and seizes the matches and stubs.
“No blackout drapes,” Shep says.
Wilkerson, wordless now, moves through the darkening vestibule to the bottom of the stairs.
“Take the master, Sir,” Baird offers. “Directly at the top. If the charpoy’s still there, it’s passably comfortable.”
They hear slow steps and the shut of a door overhead.
“Dunno about you,” Baird says in a conspiratorial whisper, “but if I don’t do something, I think I’ll go off.”
“What d’you have in mind?”
“A run around the island would be nice.” His shadow opens a closet beneath the staircase. More skittering, and Shep feels something bump against his mosquito boot. “But cleaning up will have to do.”
Shep’s hand closes around an outstretched pole, and he finds himself holding a short grass broom of the sort that the lowest caste of servants use to tidy the households of India. Baird slaps a second broom against his own palm.
“Follow me.” He leads Shep upstairs to a bedroom at the back of the house, well away from the Commissioner. “If nothing else, it gets rid of the cobwebs and puts the rats on notice.”
The two men lower themselves and begin to sweep.
That night the sky explodes. Shep watches with dread and exhilaration through the open window as Allied bombers make the clouds dance. Flares of yellow, red, and orange burst above the port. Sirens wail and Japanese antiaircraft sputter in reply. Boots thud outside the house and across the veranda.
Shep expects to be dragged out and accused of signaling the planes, but the guards never enter. The attack sounds like a prayer and is no more effective than one.
At least the Brits aren’t bombing to the north. Behalla will escape, for the moment.
