‘So it seems,’ he said.
A soldier gave him a mock salute from where he sat.
‘Enough of that,’ said the corporal,
‘Yes, Corporal.’
‘Administration,’ said James. Ten-pushing.’
‘Better than square bashing.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said James.
‘And how was it at your Colonel’s?’
One of the men in the hut had been among the ten, and now James said, ‘Ask Ted, he’ll tell you.’
‘Fucking awful,’ said Ted, ‘And she’s …’ he screwed his forefinger at his forehead.
‘Suited me,’ said James, annoyed at the ingratitude. ‘I needed a bit of quiet after that voyage.’
‘Quiet,’ said Ted. ‘I’d like a bit of action.’
‘Perhaps they’ll move us on,’ said someone.
‘And perhaps not,’ said James. And he told them what Colonel Grant had said: some regiments were to be kept in India in case of a Jap invasion.
Groans and curses,
‘Roll on the bloody peace.’
In the night, the monsoon arrived and rain battered so loud on their roof that few slept. In the morning the dust of yesterday was in deep chocolate pools where foam scudded as the wind blew.
The men got to breakfast wet and hot. They went to Medical -hot and wet.
‘Hows that knee?’
‘Better,’ said James. It was a lean healthy knee again.
‘I see you play cricket. I’ll get your name put down.”
The doctor prodded James here and there, and said, ‘And now your feet.’
James took off his boots. Liberal applications of a strong-smelling liquid.
‘And your sore throat?
James had mentioned his sore throat to no one hut the Colonel.
‘It’s not too good.’
‘Let’s take a look … yes, I see. It’s the dust. But now the rains have come, it’ll clear up.’
And how did he know? All the personnel, from the Colonel down, were new to India. All were dismayed by it. ‘You’ll acclimatise,’ said this young man, who had read in his textbooks that one did.
The rain stopped. A clean and well-sponged sun appeared.
Hundreds of young men marched and drilled, drilled and marched, the sweat running under the khaki while the sergeants shouted at them that they had gone soft and useless, but don’t worry, we’ll see to that.
James was sent that day to Supplies to get a Second Lieutenant’s uniform, spent time on new boots, and then was in a hut with one other Second Lieutenant, Jack Reeves, who was fitting books into a shelf when he arrived - so, that boded well.
James now said to his new comrade that he had no idea how to behave as an officer.
‘Don’t fret,’ said Jack Reeves. ‘I told the corporal the same and he said, “Just repose on the bosom of your sergeant-major and he’ll see you right”.’
‘Some bosom,’ the rejoinder had to be.
And now both young men were in Administration, with fifteen others, under a Captain Hargreaves who in peacetime had been trying to beat the Slump with a chicken farm in Somerset. The war had saved him from bankruptcy. He was a rather loud, blustering sort of fellow, but competent enough. Every morning he arrived in Administration, took salutes, saluted, and then allotted tasks like someone dealing cards. They dealt with supplies of food, of uniforms, of medical supplies; with the movement of men and with transport. Admin knew everything about the camp and its dispositions, and there was in this an agreeable feeling of power, if James’s temperament had permitted. But his real life, his secret energies, went into waiting for a letter from Daphne. Almost the last thing he had said to her was, ‘You will write, won’t you? Promise.’
But had he actually given her his number? Even his full name? Had she ever called him anything but James?
The measure of his disassociation from reality was that it had taken him weeks to realise that he didn’t have her full name, and certainly not her address. He could not write to her, but she would somehow find out where he was and write. He trusted her to find a way. It had taken the ship three weeks to get from Cape Town to Bombay. Allow a week - well then, two weeks - for delays; he could expect a letter any day now.
No letter. Nothing.
So he had to write to her. But all he remembered of that four days of paradise was stumbling off the ship into Daphne’s arms -that is how it had seemed; a radiance of bliss. A wonderful spreading house on a hillside in a street of such houses, and a garden. A little verandah from where you looked down at the sea, the murdering sea, and where he had danced with her, all night, cheek to cheek. Then that little house in the bushes that smelled of salt,
