The Ravi Lancers (48 page)

The dafadar instructor barked, ‘Gun stops, one ... Hand flat on the cocking hammer, check its position ... No, owl, flat, like this ... Position one! ‘

The four men sitting behind the four Vickers guns wrenched open the top cover of the breech, revealing the lock.

‘Lock, position two, unfired round in the top, round in the bottom,’ the dafadar cried. The four sowars shouted together, ‘Misfire!’ They pushed the lock back into place, slapped the covers down, jerked the cocking hammer twice, bent down to look through the sights, sat up, and pressed the thumbpieces.

‘Sit up, sit up!’ the dafadar yelled. ‘Observe the strike! Gun firing all right ... Gun stops, two ... Hand flat on the cocking hammer--flat, flat, you idiot ... Cocking hammer, position three! ‘

Diana’s boat would sail from Southampton. She would be coming via Le Havre as there was no civilian traffic through Boulogne or Calais. Allow eight hours for the crossing, she would be leaving Woolwich ... in the next hour. If he ran off the practice ground here behind the trenches, ran to brigade headquarters, told the brigade major he had a most immediate message for the CO ... he might be able to get a telephone connection through to London in time.

‘Round jammed in breech!’

Back and forward, back and forward flew the cocking hammers with clack of steel on steel.

‘Round won’t extract! ‘

‘Broken extractor claw! ‘ the men behind the guns shouted. The men lying beside them searched frantically in the metal boxes for the replacement parts and handed them up. ‘Slow!’ the dafadar yelled. ‘The Germans would have reached Bombay by now.’ The men replaced the claws. ‘Change!’ the instructor yelled. The men who had been sitting behind the guns struggled to their feet and ran to the rear. The men who had been lying beside the guns took their places at the triggers, four more men doubled up from the row awaiting in rear to take the places of the No. 2s.

‘Check guns!‘ the instructor shouted.

‘Carry on, dafadar-ji,’ Krishna said, walking away with his swagger cane touched to the peak of his cap.

He must, he must!

At the CO’s office he sent for the intelligence reports. Still no threat of enemy movement. The British offensive preparing, but slowly. All quiet on the Western Front, as the London newspapers said. At least on this part of it. Some trouble in the Argonne, in the French sector. And in Italy on the Isonzo. But locally--nothing. Rumours that the 88th Bavarians had been replaced by the 179th Prussians, but no prisoner confirmation. Aircraft report that a heavy battery was gone from the position it had occupied for seven weeks behind Perouges.

The stalemate was complete. The opposing armies were locked like wrestlers trying to find a decisive hold ... but there was none.

He looked at the pile of reports on the table. Petty thefts in all squadrons. That was bad, worse in some ways than the rape-murder charge against a lance-dafadar in B. Government equipment deliberately damaged in C; inordinate waste--could that too have been deliberate?--in A. It was hard to credit such reports in an Indian regiment, where it was in the men’s bones to treat their clothing and equipment, and everything belonging to the Sirkar, with a real reverence. Could he leave the regiment even for an hour when it was in this state? He had still nearly two weeks left as CO in which he could try to restore some of the qualities Warren had been steadily ironing out in his demands for military efficiency at all costs.

Flaherty appeared at the door. ‘The quartermaster would like to see you, sir.’

He showed Captain Sohan Singh in, then retired, leaving the door open. Captain Sohan Singh waddled in, gave Krishna his version of a military salute and in the same motion managed to close the door behind him without appearing to do so.

‘Rations, lord,’ he said. ‘I am thinking that the men need less
ghi
than they are getting, in this hot weather, but...’ He launched into a long and tedious explanation, his voice droning. Krishna thought, he expects Flaherty to be listening at the door and is boring him off. Sohan Singh droned without a change of tone into saying, ‘And, lord, I think you had better start out now if you are to reach the city at the time you hoped.’

‘I can’t go,’ Krishna said miserably.

The quartermaster said, ‘Oh, lord, all is arranged. Here I have the money for your stay.’

‘I tell you, I can’t,’ Krishna said. He stood up and stalked up and down the confined space.

The quartermaster’s voice was still a soft drone: ‘Nothing will happen here, lord, I know it.’

‘The brigadier general...’

‘... will not make an inspection. He inspected us last week.’

‘He might come round, to see how I’m doing,’ Krishna said.

‘Lord, if he does, the doctor-sahib will say you are sick with a mysterious Indian fever. It is like rabies, and lasts four days, and is very infectious during those days. There will be a man wrapped up in bed in a dark room.’

‘But...’

‘Major Bholanath-sahib will give any necessary orders. All will obey them.’

Krishna Ram stifled a groan. Betrayal of trust ... Diana on her way ... Warren in Shrewford Pennel, confident that the regiment was in good hands. Or was he? Who or what did he have confidence in, really? Was Flaherty listening at the door?

He made up his mind, and said abruptly, ‘Very well, I shall go sick--now.’

‘Very good, lord,’ the quartermaster said. ‘Here is five thousand francs. A ration lorry will be waiting in our transport lines at 9 p.m. It will reach Amiens at midnight. Major Bholanath will tell the adjutant tomorrow morning at dawn that you have gone sick and cannot be seen. My clerk will make out your pass and warrants as soon as the adjutant leaves the office.’

‘Who will know, who will be in this ... thing?’ Krishna asked. ‘Myself. The doctor-sahib. Major Bholanath. Hanuman. My clerk. That is all, prince.’

Krishna grinned suddenly and said in Hindi, ‘Aii, what a jest if the general should insist on seeing the sick man.’

‘A jest indeed,’ Sohan Singh said, ‘but alas, such jests are beyond him.’

He bowed himself out. Captain Flaherty came in at once, frowning slightly. ‘I have that report on the gas training that you asked for, sir...’

Krishna Ram shook his head and stood up, one hand to his forehead. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I’m feeling a little off colour. I think I’ll go and lie down.’

‘Very well, sir,’ Flaherty said, standing aside. He looked disapproving, Krishna thought. British COs didn’t go sick until they were practically dead, the look seemed to say. British COs carried on until they dropped.

He went to his dugout, told Hanuman that no one was to disturb him until half past seven, and tried to get to sleep. But sleep would not come, as thoughts of Diana filled his mind. She was in the train to London ... in the tube to Waterloo to catch the train to Southampton, walking the gangplank on to the cross-channel steamer, in the train to Paris, arriving ... the train was steaming into the Gare St. Lazare, he saw her in the carriage, the doors opened, she came out... shyly or running into his arms? ... then a taxi to the hotel, a bellboy to carry her bag, probably snickering behind his pert face, up to the room, and then...

The bellboy pocketed his tip and gently closed the white and gold door. Krishna Ram turned the key in the lock and faced her. She was wearing a dove grey suit and coat, grey silk stockings and black patent-leather shoes with low, splayed-out heels, and a toque hat with a thin veil. She lifted the veil and he took her in his arms. Her head sank back and her eyes closed. Her face was smooth ... a little tired under the eyes, the teeth big in the wide mouth, a few freckles on her cheek. He kissed her. She smelled of eau-de-cologne and soap and soot. Her lips were opening wide, her tongue slipping into his mouth. He felt no spasm of lust for her. It would come, at night when the light glowed in her creamy skin. Her lips were becoming more insistent, her mouth sucking his tongue from his own mouth into hers, her breath coming deeper in little gasps. She pulled her mouth away from his a moment and muttered, ‘Take me ... take me! ‘

He held her a moment, a few inches away. He had not thought it would be quite like this. He had imagined night, her waiting, a certain fearfulness. But, broad daylight, and the woman demanding? He felt his desire rising, his penis stiffening. She pulled away from him, carefully but quickly laid her hat on the ormolu dressing-table, her coat over the back of a Louis XV chair. He began to undress. She said, her mouth full of hair pins, ‘That bellboy didn’t believe we were married. I don’t care.’

Krishna watched her slip the garters off her thighs and unroll her stockings. She was big, strong, open. She stood, naked but for a petticoat, and held out a little package she had got out of her bag. ‘Here, Krishna. One of the girls gave them to me.’

‘What are they?’ he asked.

‘The girls at the factory call them French Letters--FLs,’ she said. ‘You ... well, you put one on. It prevents the girl getting in the family way.’

He saw the packet contained a dozen rubber tubes rolled into rings. By unrolling them down his penis they would make sheaths to prevent him impregnating her. He said, ‘I don’t think...’

‘Darling, until we’re married--please.’ She was blushing, now holding her arms crossed over her bosom, as though he could see the breasts through the white linen of the petticoat. He looked down at himself and thought, you have to be stiff to be able to put one of those on, and, in a minute I won’t be. Slowly, with naturally lascivious movements she pulled the petticoat over her head. A small brown bush appeared, and a flat belly, then a pair of small high breasts, the areolas large, the nipples small in the centres of them, her face, flushed, large-eyed.

She fell back on the bed, pulled him down beside her and began to kiss and caress him. He took an FL but she put it aside, whispering, ‘Later ... oh darling, I
am
frightened ... but then I’m not ...

I don’t want to be anywhere else in the world, or doing anything else ... Do you know how long a girl dreams of this? I’m thirty ... thirty-one in December.’

‘I didn’t think that ladies like you were supposed to think about such things.’

‘Oh Krishna,’ she said, ‘I am a woman ... I live in the country. I can’t help seeing things, dogs, the bull, our cats ... And wondering, when will it be me, what will it feel like.’

‘Not who?’ he asked. She had taken his hand and slipped it between her legs. In the cradle of her thighs, deep in the thicket, she bared wet lips that became slippery to his fingers.

‘No,’ she said seriously. ‘How can one think of a person when you don’t know who it will be?’

She was a virgin, he realized. A virgin of thirty. There was something indecent about that, as horrible in its way as the monkey-men in gas masks. She had become a woman fifteen or sixteen years ago, and passed all those years waiting--for what? To be deflowered in a Paris hotel by a brown man. How could they allow women to waste, and wait, like that?

Not a brown man but a prince, a Son of the Sun. For a moment he felt a desire to whip her as he had whipped the French whore; but that passed, for his penis rode proud and noble. For her sake he’d stifle its pride in this ill-smelling device. He knelt over her, rolled on the FL and said to her in Hindi, ‘Open for your lord. Clasp me! ‘

She could not have understood what he said, but her thighs opened wide and she raised her pubis. The pink lips parted invitingly and the curly hairs, now wet and glistening, sprang back. He plunged slowly and steadily into her. She cried out sharply as her maidenhead broke with an audible crack, then sighed again, ‘Take me, take me! ‘

The Son of the Sun mounted fully upon her, and made love until his sweat dripped on to her tear-stained, working face. She moaned continuously in an indissoluble mixture of pain and ecstasy.

When he finally rolled off her, and her breathing had returned almost to normal, she said in a low voice, ‘I’m sorry I made such a noise. I didn’t know it would feel like that.’

‘How could you?’ he said. His arm was under her neck, her head heavy on his upper arm, her breasts pressing into him. ‘Besides, I liked it.’

She said obstinately, ‘Yes, but I ought to be able to control myself.’

‘Why?’ he said, but she leaned up on her elbow, kissed him on the forehead, and said, ‘Thank you, darling. It hurt a bit, but not as much as I was expecting.’ She slipped out from under the sheet and ran to the bathroom. Her buttocks were a little heavy, he noticed, and they did not wiggle as other women’s he had known did, for there was not much fat on them; they moved like a man’s. She disappeared into the bathroom, and the door closed, but the vision of the buttocks remained. How strong they were, and how white. Through the door he heard the sound of running water, and sighed and turned over to lie on his back. She had smelled of sex for a little while then, and sweat, and the sweetness of his seed, but soon she’d come back smelling of soap and water, and everything would be English and proper again. He thought he’d go and watch her washing, and got up. He realized that the obscene FL was still wrinkled and full on his penis. He took it off and went into the bathroom. She gave a little cry: ‘Oh! ... Krishna! I’m...’

She was sitting on the lavatory and he heard a tinkling below her. He said, ‘I had to get rid of this.’ He looked around and was about to drop it into the waste basket but she said, ‘Here, give it to me.’ She dropped it between her thighs into the toilet bowl. She said reproachfully, ‘You shouldn’t come in here when I’m doing this.’

‘Why not?’ he said. He bent and kissed her where she sat and cupped her breasts in his hand. ‘Sex doesn’t stop after we have made love--it begins.’

She was dabbing herself with paper. She said, ‘What’s that thing for? Another lavatory?’

Krishna looked and laughed, and said, ‘I didn’t know, either, when we first came to France. It’s called a bidet, and it’s for cleaning your behind--and this.’ He cupped her vulva in his hand, pressing a finger gently between her wet lips.

‘But how?’ she said, at first making as though to push his hand away and then spreading her legs to give him deeper access.