“… and it’s all true, for I’ve got cuttin’s to prove it. Young chap from newspaper was there and saw it and wrote it all up. Oh, it was terrible!” Tears welled to the reddened edges of his eyes. “But it had to be.”
“Anyone for darts?”
Someone said, “Shut up, Tom. Go on, Gaffer.”
And this was many years ago.
As you went along the Mall in Lahore (which was the local section of the Grand Trunk Road from Calcutta to Peshawur), you passed the museum and the cathedral and the Gardens and Government House and the Punjab Club. And you kept on passing, because you were an enlisted man and the Club was for officers and civilians of high rank. And then for three dusty miles there was nothing to speak of (natives hardly counted), and then there was the Cantonment, and in the Cantonment was the garrison.
“Head-bloody-quarters of the Third bloody Division of the Northern bloody Army,” said the Docker. He spat into the dust. “And you can ’ave it all for one bloody yard of the Commercial Road of a Saturday night,” he said. “Or any bloody night, for that matter!”
But his friend, the Mouse, knew nothing of the glories of the Commercial Road. He had taken the Queen’s shilling in the market town that all his life he had regarded as if it were London, Baghdad, and Babylon. Lahore? He would have ‘listed to go serve in Kamtchatka, if it had only got him away from his brute of a father, a drunken farm-laborer in a dirty smock. How, he often wondered, had he got the courage to take the step at all?
“It frightens me sometimes, Docker,” he confessed. “It’s all so strange and different.”
The Docker gave him a look on which his habitual sneer was half overcome by affection. “Don’t you ’ave no bloody fear while I’m wiv you!” And he touched him, very lightly, on the shoulder. The Docker was tall and strong, with straight black hair and sallow skin and a mouth that was quick to anger and quick to foul words even without anger, and a mind that was quick to take offense and slow — very slow — to forgive.
Sergeant-Major had shouted, “I’ll teach you to look at me!” and had kicked him hard. That night in the lanes on the other side of the little bazaar, past the tank and the place where the hafiz taught, someone hit Sergeant-Major with a piece of iron, thrown with main force. Split his scalp open. Who? No one ever knew. When Sergeant-Major came off sick-list and went round telling about it, spreading his hair with his thick fingers to show the long and ugly wound with its black scab, the Docker passed by, walking proper slow. And Sergeant-Major looked up, suddenly, as if he recognized the footfalls, and there was a look passed between them that had murder in it. But nothing was said, nothing at all.
And no one kicked the Docker after that, and when it became known that he was the pal of the little private everyone called the Mouse, because of his coloring and his timid ways, why, no one kicked the Mouse either, after that.
“See that blackie there. Docker?” the Mouse demanded. “See that white bit of string round his waist and over? He’s what they call a braymin. Like our parson back ’ome — only, fancy a parson with not more clothes on than that!”
A mild interest stirred the big soldier’s face. “Knew a parson give me sixpence once, when I was a nipper,” he said. “Only I ’ad to come to church and let ’im christen me, like, afore ’c’d leave me ’ave it. Nice old chap. Bit dotty.”
The crowd was thick on the road, but somehow there was always space where the soldiers walked. They passed a blind Jew from Peshawur, with a gray lambskin cap on his head, playing music on the harmonium. It wasn’t like any music the Mouse had ever heard, but it stirred him all the same. The Docker grandly threw a few pice in the cup and his little friend admired the gesture.
“That lane there—” the mouse drew close, dropped his voice — “they say there’s women there. They say some of’m won’t look at sojers. But they say that some of’m will.”
The Docker set his cap acock on his head. “Let’s ’ave a look, then, kiddy,” he said. “And see which ones will.” But they never did — at least, not that day. Because they met Lance-Corporal Owen going to the bazaar and with him were three young ladies, with ruffles and fancy hats and parasols. They were going to the bazaar to help Lance-Corporal Owen buy gifts to send home to his mother and sisters. And this was quite a coincidence, because when the Docker heard it he at once explained that he and the Mouse were bound on the same errand.
“Only they say the best prices are at the places where they don’t speak English. And Alf, ’ere, and me, we don’t know none of this Punjabee-talk, y’see.”
And because the young ladies — two of whom were named Cruceiro and one De Silva, and they were cousins — said that they knew a few words and would be pleased to help Lance-Corporal Owen’s friends, and because Owen was very decent about it all — and why not, seeing that he had three of them? — they all walked off, three pairs of them. The Mouse had the youngest Miss Cruceiro on his arm, and the Docker had Miss De Silva. Perhaps Owen wasn’t quite so pleased with this arrangement, but he smiled.
That was how it began, many years ago.
Harry Owen was a proper figure of a man: broad shoulders, narrow waist, chestnut-colored hair, eyes as bright blue as could be. Always smiling and showing his good, white teeth. Not many men had teeth that good. Even the wives of the officers didn’t feel themselves too proud to say, “Good morning, Owen.” It was as if there was a sun inside of him, shining all the time.
The three of them became friends. The six of them. The Docker and Leah De Silva, Harry and Margaret Cruceiro, and the Mouse and Lucy Cruceiro. To be sure, Lucy was rather dim and didn’t say much, but that suited her escort well enough: he had little to say to her. But he would have felt all sorts of things bubbling up inside of him — if he had been walking with Miss De Silva.
But that, he knew, was impossible. Miss De Silva was so clever, so handsome, so self-assured; he would have been tongued-tied beside her. Besides, she walked with the Docker. And so, for all that she was pleasant to the Mouse, he was too shy to do much more than nod.
Later on he was to think that if the Docker had known that Leah De Silva was not really English, and that she and her cousins and all the others of their class were not regarded by the soldiery as… well…
But he did not know. Chasteness was not a highly prized attribute in Cat’s-meat Court where the Docker’s wild, slumb-arab childhood had been largely spent — indeed, it was a quality almost completely unknown. He had no experience of respectable girls, neither half-caste nor quarter-caste nor simon-pure English. The daughters of the officers lived in a world sealed off from him, and the few daughters of NCOs almost as much so.
To men like Lance-Corporal Owen, Eurasian girls may have seemed to lack that certain quality which spelled Rude Hands Off, which the English girls at home had had. But the Docker knew nothing of afternoon teas and tiny sandwiches, of strict papas and watchful mamas, of prim and chaperoned walks in country towns. For him the Victorian Age had never existed, raised as he had been in a world little changed from the fierce and savage eighteenth Century.
But this did not bring him to take liberties now. On the contrary. To the Docker a railroad telegrapher (for such was Mr. De Silva, burly and black-mustached) was a member of a learned profession. He little noticed that the ever-blooming Mrs. De Silva wore no corsets and let her younger children run about the house naked. And little cared. He knew that there were girls to be had for a thrupney-bit and there were girls who were not. All the latter were respectable. No cottage in Kensington could have been more respectable, in the Docker’s eyes, than the old house where the De Silvas lived, three or four generations of them, in dark and not always orderly rooms smelling of incense and odd sorts of cooking. That the girls were not exactly bleached-white in complexion was nothing to him; the Docker was dark himself. When Mr. and Mrs. De Silva boasted of their ancestry — of Portuguese generals and high-ranking officials of the old East India Company — the Docker felt no desire to doubt. He felt humble.