Complete Works of Nevil Shute, page 277
He relapsed into silence, sitting cross-legged on the floor in the corner of the room, dressed in his coarse yellow robe, his bald, shaven head bowed in meditation. Morgan turned and went on bathing Turner’s face. In the house there was silence, but for his slight movements. Gradually the heavy breathing of the man upon the bed grew easier, and presently he stirred as if in sleep, and rolled over a little.
At last he woke, and stirred, and sat up on the charpoy. He saw Morgan standing with a sponge and basin by his side, and a queer old Burmese monk beside him. He said: “I fell down.”
“That’s right,” said Morgan. “You’ve been unconscious for three hours.”
“Christ,” said Mr Turner. “That’s a bloody sight longer than what it was before.” He relapsed into a depressed silence.
“Better lie down a bit and take it easy,” the pilot said. “I couldn’t get a doctor. Is there anything you ought to have done?”
“I’ll be all right,” Mr Turner said heavily. “I got one of these turns before.” He paused, and then he said: “I didn’t want to make myself a bloody nuisance.”
“Don’t bother about that,” said Morgan. “I got the Sayah here to come and have a look at you; he knows more doctoring than I do. Like to tell him one or two things?”
“Sure,” said Turner heavily. “What does he want to know?”
Morgan exchanged a few words in Burmese with the old man. “He wants to know when you were born, what day and at what time, if you know that.”
“June the 16th, 1908,” said Mr Turner. “Must have been about seven or eight in the evening. I know Ma was took bad at tea.”
“And the place?”
“No 17 Victoria Grove, Willesden Green.”
Morgan transmitted this information to the Sayah, who gathered his robe about him to depart. “That all he wants to know?” Mr Turner asked in surprise.
“That’s all.”
“Bloody funny kind of doctor.”
Morgan took the Sayah back to his kyaung in the jeep, and returned to the house. He found that Nay Htohn had ordered the patient to stay in bed; they kept him there for the whole of that day. He told them a little about his attack, sufficient to make them understand that it was connected with the great wound on his forehead, but he was reticent about it and told them no more than he need. When Morgan went up in the evening he found the white cat sitting on his bed. Mr Turner got real pleasure from the presence of the cat, and from the feeling that he was favoured specially.
Dawn came at about six o’clock in the morning; when Morgan came down shortly after that in the cool of the day, he found the Sayah squatting on the veranda waiting for him. The old man produced a large sheet of paper from the folds of his garment, written all over with numerals arranged in columns under the days of the week and months of the year, the whole being roughly rectangular in form. He said: “I have drawn the zadah of the Englishman.”
Morgan knew a Burmese horoscope when he saw it. Nay Htohn had one somewhat similar to this but more carefully made out, which she affected to think little of and treasured very carefully under lock and key. He said: “Will you interpret it for me, Payah?”
The old man squatted down on the veranda and spread the paper out upon the ground before him; Morgan drew up a chair beside him and leaned down to see the figures that his finger indicated. A faint rustle from the room behind them told him that Nay Htohn had crept up within hearing.
The Sayah said: “I will not trouble you with that which is not important.” He laid his finger on the chart. “When he was twenty-six years old he passed into the House of Saturn to abide there for the ten years that all must abide. That is a bad age at which to enter the house of danger, and he did many foolish things. In the eighth year he offended against the laws of his country. In the ninth year he received the wound that you now see upon his forehead.” The old man laid his finger on a numeral. “Beside that wound, this symbol shows yourself. I do not know what that may mean; perhaps you do.”
The pilot said quietly: “I think I do. What year was that in, Payah?”
The old man studied the chart. “1943,” he said. “In the following year, the last year of his sojourn in the House of Saturn, the man went to prison.”
The pilot said quietly: “I wondered about that.”
“Passing from the evil influence,” the old man said, “he entered the House of Jupiter and lived there for three years, doing little good and little evil. From there, and early in this very year, he fell into Yahu under the Tuskless Elephant, here, where he received foreknowledge of his death.”
Morgan glanced at the old man. “He knows when he will die?”
“He will die next year in April,” the Sayah said. “He knows that, almost to the very month. This symbol is for knowledge, this one is for death, and this one is for April. It is very certain that he knows about his death.”
Morgan was silent for a minute. A crow flew into the veranda, picked up a crumb, and flew away. “I know very little about him, Payah,” he said at last. “What kind of man is he?”
The old man studied the chart and said: “He is a good man, and will climb up to the Six Blissful Seats. He has known sin and trouble and it has not made him bitter; he has known sorrow and it has not made him sad. In these last months that have been granted to him he is trying to do good, not to avoid damnation for he has no such beliefs, but for sheer love of good. Such a man will go on up the Ladder of Existence; he will not fall back.” He laid his finger on the last numerals of the chart. “Here is the symbol for a generous impulse, and here a great journey, and here beside it is again the symbol for yourself. I do not know what that means. Here is this illness under the gyoh of the North which means a swift recovery.” He laid the paper down. “I cannot tell you any more.”
He got up to his feet, offered to leave the horoscope with Morgan, and was evidently pleased when the pilot told him to take it back to the monastery. In careful, polite Burmese Morgan thanked him at some length, and the old man shambled away down the road to his own place. Morgan stood thoughtful, looking after him; Nay Htohn came out and stood beside him.
“You heard all that about Turner?” he asked her in Burmese.
“I heard,” she said. “We are honoured to have such a good man with us.”
They stood for a minute in silence watching the retreating figure in the yellow robe. “We must send something,” Morgan said at last. “What had we better send?”
The girl said: “Give them a bell. They can always use another bell.” They turned and went into the house.
They went up together to see Turner, and found him awake. They persuaded him to stay in bed for breakfast; he stayed in bed until he wearied of it in the heat of the forenoon, and came down at about eleven o’clock to sit on the veranda in his long chair. Morgan was out; Nay Htohn was watching for him, and made him comfortable in his chair with a cheroot and a long drink of iced lime squash. He sat there at ease, watching the traffic on the river.
He felt that he must leave as soon as possible, and go back to England. The fit that he had suffered had been a sharp warning to him that his time was getting short. His journey to Burma, he felt, had been a complete fiasco. He had come out from England to locate a beachcomber and set him on his feet if that were possible; instead, he had found him a man of means, happily married and holding a considerable position for a man of his age in the country of his choice. He had enjoyed every minute of the journey; he would have liked to stay and see more of the lovely country that he had come to, but there was no time for that. His time was very short; he would not waste it. If Morgan did not need his help there would be all the more for Duggie Brent, or for the Negro if he ever got in touch with him. He must get back to Watford and begin again.
He rested all day on the veranda. Morgan came back at about teatime and sat smoking with him, and Mr Turner told him something of what was in his mind. “Them steamers down the river to Rangoon,” he said. “I got to be thinking about getting back. The firm wouldn’t half play hell if they knew I was sitting here like this with a nice drink ‘n a cigar, ‘n not doing a bloody thing.”
Morgan said: “Stay a few days more, and get yourself quite right. The firm would give you sick leave.”
Turner said: “I don’t think I’d better. I’ve not got much time. I better be getting back to Rangoon.”
“There’s a boat down the river tomorrow, if you really feel you’ve got to go.”
“I better take it. I can’t afford to hang around.”
Morgan glanced at him. “Did you see anyone in England about these fits you get? A doctor?”
Mr Turner said: “Oh yes. I got examined by a specialist after the last time.”
“What did he say about it?”
Mr Turner was silent for a minute. Then he said: “It wasn’t so good.”
“Is it very bad?”
“All be the same in a hundred years,” said Mr Turner quietly. “That’s the way I look at it.”
The pilot said: “It’s kind of — fatal, is it?”
Mr Turner stared at him in admiration. “You’re a pretty sharp one,” he said. “I never told you anything o’ that, did I?”
“No. But it’s right, is it?”
“Aye, it’s right enough,” said Mr Turner. “I got bits of shrapnel going bad inside my napper, ‘n they can’t do nothing about it. I got seven or eight months to go, not more. But I didn’t want anyone to know.”
“I’m very sorry.” Morgan was silent for a minute, and then said: “Why did you come out here, really?”
“I told you. I got business in Rangoon.”
“I know. Was it because you got a very bad account of me from my mother, by any chance?”
Mr Turner shifted uneasily in his chair. “I thought if I was out here I might look you up,” he said evasively.
The pilot got up and walked over to the veranda rail, and stood looking out over the river. He turned presently and came back to the table by their chairs, and took another cheroot. “When you see my mother,” he said, “try and make her understand the way I live out here. Try and make her understand that Nay Htohn isn’t a naked savage, holding me with Oriental wiles. Tell her I’m doing work I can do well. Tell her I’m prosperous and happy. Try and make her understand.”
Mr Turner said: “I’ll go and see her when I get back home next week, ‘n I’ll do what I can. But things look kind of different back in Notting Hill Gate, you know.”
“I know.” There was a pause. “You’re going back home at once?”
Mr Turner nodded. “Soon as I can get a seat upon a plane.”
Morgan turned, and walked slowly to the end of the veranda, smoking and thoughtful. When he came back he said: “It’s been very, very nice seeing you here, Turner. I’ve had it on my mind for some time that I should have tried to find out something of what happened to you — and the other two in that ward at Penzance. I know a bit about the nigger, but I never heard a thing about you or Corporal Brent.” He stood looking down at Turner in the chair. “I felt a bit of a squirt about that,” he said quietly. “I’ve got on so well myself that I ought to have been able to spare time to poke around a bit and see if you and Brent were getting on all right. We were all in it together then. We ought to have kept up.”
“Well, that’s what I thought,” Mr Turner said. “I mean, I got a nice house at Watford ‘n a bit of money saved, in spite of everything and going through a bad patch and that. And then, when the chap in Harley Street said what he did, I kind of thought I ought to get and find out, case any of you hadn’t been so lucky as me.”
“That’s why you came to Burma, really, isn’t it?” said Morgan.
Mr Turner said defensively: “I got business to do in Rangoon as well.”
They smoked in silence for a few minutes; then he said: “It’s been nice of you ‘n Mrs Morgan — I mean, your wife, to have me,” he said. “I didn’t know you’d be well off and settled like this, or maybe I wouldn’t have come. I thought . . . well, things ‘ld be different to what they are.” He hesitated, and then said: “I got in prison ten months after leaving hospital; maybe you know about that. Over them trucks of sugar. I wouldn’t have come if I’d known you were a proper magistrate, and that.”
Morgan grinned. “That’s all right,” he said. “You didn’t get away with it?”
Mr Turner shook his head. “They give me a year,” he said, “but I got two months off for good conduct. I went a bit too far that time.”
The pilot said: “You needed money very badly?”
“ ’Course I did. I got kind of worried.” He turned to Morgan. “I don’t know how anybody gets along these days without they do a deal now and then to get something put by for when they can’t work any longer.” He paused, and then he said: “Time was, in the old days, a chap could save for his old age, or being ill, or that, out of what he earned on a salary. But now with income tax and purchase tax ‘n every other bloody sort of tax, unless you do a deal now ‘n again you can’t get to be safe at all. Straight, you can’t.”
Morgan said thoughtfully: “It’s like that in England now, is it?”
“ ’Course it is. Chaps working on the bench, they got security of a sort. Chaps working for the Government, they got a bloody great pension to look forward to. But chaps working on their own, like shopkeepers, or chaps working in offices like me, they ain’t got nothing to speak of. You got to keep your eyes wide open for a deal all the time, and some of them deals can be pretty slippery.”
Morgan grinned. “Like the sugar?”
“Like that bloody sugar. I knew it was a bad ‘un, but what’s a man to do?” He turned to Morgan. “I was kind of worried,” he said simply. “I mean, I’d just got married, and I thought the wife was going to have a baby. She never, but I thought she was. And I hadn’t got a bean saved, fifty or sixty pounds, maybe, not more. And I got to worrying over what would happen if I got killed or badly hurt, ‘n where she would be then? I mean, a chap’s got to do something.”
“I suppose so.”
There was a pause. “Well, that’s all over and done with now,” said Mr Turner. “I got three thousand pounds saved up, ‘n a nice house, and furniture, and all. I wouldn’t like the wife to know the way some of it come, but it’s better’n leaving her stuck with nothing at all next year. And then,” he said, “I got to kind of thinking about us four in that room in hospital. And I thought, the wife doesn’t know how much I’ve got so she won’t miss a little bit of it ‘n I could pop around before I go and see if you was all all right.”
“I was thinking on the same lines,” said Morgan slowly. “I was thinking I ought to try and find out something about you three. I don’t know anything about Corporal Brent. But I do know a little about the nigger.” He glanced at Mr Turner. “There was the hell of a row about that nigger,” he said thoughtfully. “Like to hear about it?”
CHAPTER 8
NAY HTOHN CAME out of the house on to the veranda with her sewing in a flat rush basket. The men got to their feet. “I was just starting in to tell Turner about that nigger at Penzance,” the pilot said.
She smiled. “I like that story. I wish we could find out what happened to him in the end.” They sat down again, and Nay Htohn knelt down by her husband’s chair, and began sewing.
Morgan said: “I must try and get this straight — it’s rather a long time ago. But I was interested at the time, of course — and it was damn funny, because when I was at Exeter after Penzance we shared a mess with some Americans, and we used to pull their legs about it.”
He paused, looking out over the wide river. Over the Pegu Yoma in the far distance the great thunderheads of the monsoon were massing for another storm; a little wind blew past them on the veranda, cool and refreshing. Jungle rats scampered up and down the trunk of the banyan tree, their tails held high; on the river beneath them sampans drifted by.
“There was an American lieutenant in the Army Air Corps who’d been stationed at this place, Trenarth,” the pilot said at last. “He came in one day in a B25, and at lunch I heard him telling the other Goddams all about it. I guessed it was our nigger when I heard him telling them.”
Mr Turner asked: “What did he say?”
* * *
The American had said: “Say, Colonel McCulloch sure has got himself a mess of nigger trouble down at Trenarth. It’s gotten so the boys down there don’t just know who they’re to take orders from, the colonel or the landlord of the pub.”
It had been just before closing time when Sergeant Burton blew his whistle as he raced around the corner of the White Hart in pursuit of Private Dave Lesurier. In the bar Mr Frobisher had already said: “Time, gentlemen, please,” to a room full of Negroes, beaming at them as he did so. He used the words that he had used for twenty-seven years each evening to warn his patrons at five minutes to ten that they must drink up and go, at the conclusion of his licensed hours. He beamed, because he was well aware by now of the simple pleasure that the Negroes got from the words which were his common use; they would grin back at him, and drink up, and go quietly on the stroke of ten o’clock. The bar of the White Hart was therefore reeking with Anglo-American goodwill when Sergeant Burton blew his whistle, and the jeep came screaming to a standstill in the street outside, and the fun started.
The Negroes went tumbling out into the street to see what was going on, and because they had to go anyway. After the last had left Mr Frobisher walked slowly round the bar, wiping it down with a rag. Then he walked to the front door to bolt it for the night, and stood for a minute looking out into the street.
In the moonlight the street was full of American soldiers, white and black. There was whistling and the arrival of more cars with military police; somebody was standing up in the back of a command car and ordering the troops back to their camps. There was a good deal of confusion, but the doings of the military did not interest Mr Frobisher very much. He bolted the door and retired into his parlour, and put on the wireless, and lit his pipe, and sat down for a quiet smoke before bed.
