The Ravi Lancers (41 page)

‘Major Krishna Ram,’ he got out before an attack of retching overcame him.

‘It will go soon, unless you had a big dose.’ Then there were words in German and a soft wet cloth was carefully wiped across Krishna’s eyes.

The voice said, ‘Ravi Lancers, I see. We were told that is a second-line regiment, not regulars. But you have been fighting very well. Allow me to congratulate you ... Now if you will just rest there, I will evacuate you to the rear as soon as I can spare an escort ... and as soon as the British stop shelling our support line. Our trenches here are very simple, or do not exist at all, because of the rapidity of our advance.’

Krishna staggered off, and vomited. Then he sat with his back to a wall, and waited. His eyes gradually cleared but he still had a pain every time he breathed. The sun climbed past the zenith and began to sink. German soldiers brought him water and food and he began to take an interest in them and what he was experiencing. The Germans looked and smelled like British troops, and the French people he had seen in the villages ... mostly a little more blue of eye, but not enough to counteract the effect of the similarities--the way they moved, ate, handled their weapons, stood or crouched together to talk. It seemed to be the headquarters of an infantry company that he had been brought to. The commander’s name, a soldier told him, was Hauptmann von Gerhard. The hauptmann was tall, not very good looking, with a wide intelligent forehead and a ready smile for his men, though he was obviously very tired and had been wounded in his left hand.

Near two in the afternoon he came to Krishna and said, ‘I regret to say our attack failed again. It was your machine guns that did it, even though I saw the clouds of gas go right into their position ... I do not know how they survived to fire their guns, but they did.’

Krishna thought, Warren’s union with the gods of this war was very close; the German masks had got to their destination just in time.

The hauptmann said, ‘We are going to retreat at dusk, as this position is dangerously isolated. The British could easily cut us off if they attacked quickly ... but they will not.’

‘How do you know?’ Krishna asked.

The hauptmann sat down beside him, fitted a cigarette into a long silver holder, and offered Krishna another. He shook his head with a murmured, ‘No, thanks.’

The hauptmann said, ‘Because when the British propose to attack, they start with a barrage of one, six, or more hours’ duration. That enables us to know what is coming and make the necessary preparations. Then the heavies lift to the rear and the communication trenches and the fire on our front is only from 13- or 18-pounders and 4.5 inch howitzers, which as you know are useless against entrenched troops. So, then our men get up on the firestep once more, with their machine guns, and when the field artillery fire lifts, we know we shall see the infantry advancing in straight lines--admirably straight lines--with bayonets fixed, and rifles like this.’ He imitated the position.

‘The high port,’ Krishna said. What the hauptmann said was quite true. That was war, British style.

The hauptmann said, ‘I don’t understand why you are fighting for the English. What cause do you have to love them?’

Krishna suppressed another pang of queasiness and said, ‘The king is Emperor of India.’

’You want to support him in that role? Perpetuate the yoke?’

‘It will be either his ... or yours,’ Krishna said.

The hauptmann shrugged. ‘That is true. So why lose thousands of your best men to change from one yoke to another? And ours might be lighter ... This is a European war, major. We Germans are fighting because we are surrounded by enemies. The French mean to destroy us utterly, in revenge for our victory in 1870. They have been planning this war ever since. Waiting for
La Revanche
, as they call it. England is jealous because Germany has surpassed her in industrial power and population. So, when we asked for just a little strength at sea, they made up their minds to strangle us ... But we shall win, major! Whatever it costs, for we have our heritage to protect. We shall spill every last drop of our blood if necessary.’

Krishna said, ‘Then what will be left?’

‘Germany,’ the hauptmann said with a little impatient bark. ‘Deutschland! Our culture ... but you are a Hindu, how can you understand? That is why I repeat, this is not your war. Europe is not your country. Our gods...’

‘The gods you share with the French and British,’ Krishna said.

‘... are not your gods. Go home, major. You should have stayed there. You and all your men. But it is too late now--for you, at least. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must write some messages.’

The hauptmann turned away with a salute and a click of his jack-booted heels. Krishna Ram noticed that he wore a sword hanging from a wide belt outside his grey frock coat. The number on the front of his cloth-covered spiked helmet was ‘143’. Then he heard a shot and a cry in German from close to his right. The hauptmann swung round, his hand dropping to the automatic in its holster at his right side. A storm of firing swept up from behind the wall. The hauptmann’s Mauser jerked out of his hand as a bullet hit it. He drew his sword and ran forward shouting,
‘Mit mir! Vorwarts!’

Then Rissaldar-Major Baldev Singh dropped over the wall almost on to Krishna Ram’s feet and ran at the hauptmann with his sabre raised. He feinted once, parried the hauptmann’s blow with the heavy blade and then leaped in, the sabre whistling. The hauptmann’s head sprang off and fell to the ground ten feet back, to roll away under the apple blossom. More sowars were coming over the wall, firing rifles from the hip as they came. Krishna recognized the two men who had originally been his bodyguards, and a dafadar from A Squadron, and a sowar who had been his orderly before Hanuman. All wore, tied round their right wrists, the tied kerchief announcing a man committed to marriage or death ... marriage to death.

The bodyguards, huge men, were raising him with murmurs: ‘Lord! Prince! Are you all right?’ One lifted him over the wall, the other caught him. Then they started back, the three of them, back towards Beaumont’s crumpled steeple.

‘Stop!’ Krishna cried. ‘Wait for the rissaldar-major-sahib, and the others.’

‘They will return when you are safe,’ the bodyguards said, ‘not before.’ Shells began to shriek overhead to burst on the German position where he had just been. He turned, in spite of the tugging of the bodyguards, and watched, kneeling by a shell-shattered pear tree, its broken branches in full bloom. Men were running out of the smoke of the orchard which had been the hauptmann’s headquarters. He saw the rissaldar-major, his sabre waving, men to right and left of him...

‘Twelve ... thirteen,’ the bodyguards counted. ‘We have lost only four.’

‘To rescue me?’ Krishna said. ‘It was wrong.’

‘It was our honour, lord!’ one of the bodyguards said. ‘The colonel-sahib wanted to give us artillery preparation but the rissaldar-major-sahib said it was better that we should just go, in the old way, for we were all committed to take death as a bride if we did not bring you back.’ He touched the handkerchief.

‘Volunteers, all?’ Krishna Ram asked. He was up again, walking the last few feet to the front line trench outside Beaumont. He could see Puran Lall kneeling on the parapet, beckoning him to hurry.

‘No,’ the bodyguard said. ‘The rissaldar-major-sahib said we were all shamed until you were recovered. He named who would have the honour of wearing the yellow cord ... for of course, lord, as you know, that is what we should be wearing, but there are none except what the quartermaster has, far to the rear, so we wore these handkerchiefs instead.’

Krishna Ram dropped wearily into the trench. The rissaldar-major followed, knelt at his feet, and said, ‘Prince, forgive us...’

‘For what?’

‘That we permitted the Son of the Sun to fall into the hands of the enemy.’

‘Of course ... Thank you, sahib. Thank everyone, from me.’

He began to retch again and sank back against the trench wall. From an immense distance he heard Puran Lall saying, ‘Yes, sir ... They got him. Safe. No, sir ... But I think he’s been gassed ... I’ll send him back with the bodyguards and a stretcher crew. He shouldn’t walk. He looks very ill...’

He slipped slowly into cold, pain, and darkness.

Krishna Ram began again on his run, flung up his left arm, and bowled. The batsman came a step out of his crease and killed it neatly. He tapped the ball back up the net. Richardson, at Krishna’s side, growled, ‘Keep a length, now, that’s all--just keep a length.’

Krishna stepped off his run. That last ball had been about three inches over length. If he had been at the crease he’d have taken an extra half step down the pitch and driven it straight. Still, it was wonderful to be playing cricket again, the smell of linseed oil heavy on the summer air ... and at the Oval, after Lord’s the most famous cricket ground in the world.

He bowled again, exactly of a length. ‘That’s reet,’ Richardson muttered, and to the batsman, ‘Get tha’ head reet over t’ ball, lad!’

Krishna walked back, ball in hand. Glancing up, he could see his room in the little convalescent home. From that window, as soon as he came here a month ago, at first sitting, then leaning on the sill, he had watched the daily net practice of the Surrey team. He had recognized the classic style of Jack Hobbs even though the nets were too far away for him to recognize his features: there was only one man in the world who stepped down the pitch with that flowing grace, whose bat flashed as decisively off the front foot as off the back. He had bought a pair of binoculars so that he could watch more closely, and as soon as he was allowed out he had gone to the club house and asked if he could help in any way with the practice. Now, after three weeks of throwing at the slip cradle, picking up balls at the back of the nets, hitting balls to the deep for fielders, or throwing them back for bowlers in the nets, occasionally donning pads and gloves and keeping wicket for a bowler being tutored by Richardson, he was sometimes being allowed to take a turn at bat himself.

He bowled another couple of overs, then the familiar slight figure with the long sharp nose came out of the pavilion and walked over to the nets. He stood a while, his hands in the pockets of his blazer, the Surrey cap set straight on his head. Then he walked up and down behind the nets, now and then throwing a word to the batsmen in them.

Richardson said, ‘All reet, sir, that’s enough bowling. Put on the pads. I’ll send down a few to ‘ee.’

Krishna knelt quickly to put on the pads and gloves of the out-coming batsman, ducking his head to hide his embarrassed delight. To be bowled at by Richardson with Jack Hobbs watching! He took middle and leg, adjusted his batting gloves, and faced the bowler.

Richardson was still the fastest man in England when he chose, but he started off bowling a little over half pace, the length immaculate. Krishna took five balls dead centre on his bat, leaning far over to smother the bounce. The sixth, the same speed, came six inches long, and he took a quick half step and drove it scorching the grass past Richardson’s foot. From behind he heard a quiet, ‘Good shot, sir,’ from Hobbs.

Richardson stepped up his pace a good two yards. Krishna blocked three balls, late-cut a rising short one, and was comprehensively yorked by the next. ‘Ah, got thee!’ Richardson crowed. ‘Keep tha’ eye on t’ ruddy ball, man, all the time! ‘

Krishna thought, I haven’t really had enough practice ... well, the only way to overcome that was concentration, absolute and unwavering. He stared at the ball as though it were a bomb about to blow up, and thought of nothing else. Richardson’s speed had been a little knot of anxiety in the back of his mind at first. A man could get badly hurt by one of those blinding inswingers, particularly if Richardson got angry and bumped one; but now Krishna forgot the danger, forgot that the greatest batsman in the world was watching from six feet behind him, forgot the window of his room, forgot everything except the ball ... yorkers, flashing outswingers an inch outside his off stump, inviting him to nick them, inswingers whipping at his legs from a perfect length, a couple of balls that stood up and begged, two bumpers at his head, even a leg-cutter bowled with no variation of Richardson’s action and only a little off his speed. He was clean bowled once more, and would have been caught once if there had been any fielders, because he had changed his mind at the last moment and snicked one into the slips, as Richardson shouted, ‘Going fishing, lad? Hit, or doan’t hit, but doan’t hang t’ ruddy bat out to dry! ‘

‘That’s enough,’ Richardson said at last, and, as Krishna took off his pads, ‘Tha’ has some bonny strokes, lad.’ He called down the net, ‘What do ‘ee think, Jack?’

Hobbs said, ‘Very good, Tom. Well worth a try.’

Richardson said, ‘Like to play for us next Saturday, lad? It’s A Surrey XI--not t’ County, y’know--against London District?’

‘I know. I was going to watch,’ Krishna said.

‘Well, what about playing? Mr. Wilkinson’s t’ captain, and Jack’s playing.’

Krishna Ram said, ‘You mean it? Why, I’d love to ... Oh, I suppose I’ll have to ask the doctor, but I am sure he’ll let me. I don’t know how to thank you.’

He said thank you again, and thank you to Hobbs, picked up his coat and ran back to the convalescent home. So deeply and happily had the cricket absorbed him that it was not until midnight that he remembered he must sooner or later go back to France, and Warren Bateman. Most days that thought never left him for more than a half an hour at a time.

That was a Monday. The next day he had promised to take Diana Bateman out to dinner. She was working in a factory in Woolwich now, and he was to meet her at the factory gate at five o’clock. Woolwich was ten miles away, and he decided to walk, for it was a beautiful day of mid-June, only a few days short of midsummer. He set out at two, wearing uniform with khaki slacks and walking shoes. He bore two gold wound stripes on his sleeve above the embroidered crown, and on his left breast, ahead of the Order of the Sun, the white-purple-white ribbon of the Military Cross, which he had at last been awarded for his part in the Battle of St. Rambert Ridge. He stepped out with a will, swinging his swagger cane, for the sun shone, his lungs did not hurt any more and the specialist had said he could play in the match, though warning him he would feel tired at the end of it, especially if he had to spend a long time in the field. The specialist, a visitor from the London Chest and Lung Hospital, who had treated him while he was there, told him there was some permanent damage to the left lung, but very slight. The rest had healed. Unless he took up mountaineering, or long-distance swimming he should not suffer any more. ‘But,’ the specialist had ended, wagging a plump forefinger, ‘don’t get caught in any more gas attacks.’