ELEPHANT MOON Read online

  ‘Madness,’ said Grace.

  ‘The morale of the British troops was rock bottom but with the Indian soldiers, it was worse, a lot of talk of how they should follow Gandhi, that the British should “Quit India”.’

  Mary’s voice lowered to a whisper: ‘There’s been nothing about this on the BBC but my chaps say that after the surrender, thousands of the Indian troops went over to the Japs. The Japs have promised to free India. They call themselves the Indian National Army, the INA, but my chaps call ’em Jiffs, Japanese Indian Fighting Forces. They say there are thousands of these Jiffs.’

  Grace fell silent. If the Indian troops abandoned the British it would be a catastrophe.

  ‘What are your plans, Grace?’

  ‘The whole school should go to India. We need to go now but getting it organised is difficult. And you, Mary?’

  ‘The day after tomorrow they’re flying out all the European nurses and the injured they’re happy to move,’ she paused delicately, but Grace caught the inflection, which implied there were other patients who weren’t going anywhere, whom they had pretty much given up on, ‘but that will leave the hospital horribly understaffed. There will be about two hundred patients and only seven nurses.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’ve decided to stay on, to look after my chaps.’

  ‘That’s very brave of you, Mary.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Anyway, must dash. Got to get back to my boys, do some bedtime reading, keep them from getting into trouble.’

  Trouble? Grace had visited Mary’s burns ward: a long line of beds, crowded together, gauze bandages over blackened skin, whimpers of pain, softly muted.

  ‘Good luck, Mary,’ and her friend disappeared into the night. A half-caste, Mary would not have been welcome if she had turned up at the posher clubs in Rangoon. And when the Japanese arrived at the hospital, and found Mary and her boys, what then?

  Still no word of when they were going to leave Rangoon. That night, after school dinner – a miserable affair of rice and beans, somehow both undercooked but yet burnt to a cinder by Grace – she was determined to raise the subject of leaving yet again. The second she opened her mouth, Miss Furroughs skittered along the school corridor and slammed the door of her study behind her.

  The air raids grew more frequent. One night the untouchables who had emptied out the thunder-boxes of the British sahibs and memsahibs, the Indian money-lenders and the Chinese merchants, taking away the night soil of the town for generations, vanished. The imperial city was rotting from within.

  One lunchtime in late February Grace abandoned her class and went to Government House. A manservant in a maroon sarong showed her straight past Sikh sentries, up a brick staircase, into a vast, empty hall, boasting oil paintings of past Governors on one side and a panoramic view of the city and the river curling in a great bend beyond. Clouds of black smoke were rising from the refinery.

  ‘Hello, darling, how the devil are you?’

  To say that Mr Peach was pleased to see her was something of an understatement.

  ‘What about a kiss?’

  Mr Peach, she realised, was drunk.

  ‘Mr Peach, that is no way to talk to a guest.’

  ‘Sorry, love, sorry. Only we’re all going to hell. Bloody army blew up a bridge on the bloody Sittang River, leaving two thirds of a bloody division on the Jap side. Indian soldiers can’t bloody swim. The British ones can swim but they’d like to have a general who knows how to fight. The one in charge has a hole in his arse, an anal fistula is how I have to explain it to Whitehall. Top secret, but he pongs, literally, so no one can go near him without throwing up. No wonder we’re losing. And leaving.’

  His gulping stammer had gone.

  ‘Leaving?’

  ‘Top Secret. Sssh.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sssh. You are lovely, you know. Give us a kiss…’

  ‘Mr Peach…’

  ‘Here. Watch this.’ He lobbed a red billiard ball at an oil of a grand old Victorian gentleman. It gouged a hole the shape of an egg in the canvas, the frame falling to the floor with a tinkle of broken glass.

  ‘Know who he bloody was? Bloody Sir Augustus Rivers Thompson. Chief Commissioner or Lord High Everything Else. Can’t leave this lot for the Japanese to smash up. So let’s do it instead.’ He offered her the pink.

  ‘Come on, darling, you have a go…’

  ‘Mr Peach, I demand that you sober up. I have come on behalf of Bishop Strachan’s school. We need to know what is going on.’

  Something imploring in Grace’s voice got down through the great well of alcohol to his brain– that, and some innate sense of decency.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He collapsed into a leather armchair and said in a different, much quieter voice, ‘I’m sorry. The order for the final evacuation of all government staff in Rangoon was made this morning at six, effective immediately. To be promulgated tomorrow morning at six, by me. I’m the last man in. And out. Governor’s gone, Government’s gone. We’ve burnt the code books, burnt the files, bar one, opened the prisons, the leper colonies and even the bloody loony bins. Last passenger ship leaves tonight.’

  Oh, no, no, no, thought Grace. She felt a sickening realisation that her very worst fears were about to come true. The school had left it far, far too late. Miss Furroughs had been so weak, so horribly indecisive. Trapped in Rangoon, the children would suffer far worse than men spitting at them.

  ‘Rangoon is finished,’ Mr Peach continued. ‘The Japanese may be here tomorrow. Or next week. But soon. Get out now. If you can go by sea, do it. The road is good to Mandalay, then it’s just a track, then there isn’t a road, at all. After that, it’s a bloody long walk.’

  She made ready to go.

  ‘Before the war,’ Mr Peach interrupted himself with a long, noxious belch, ‘we didn’t build a bloody road between Burma and India lest all the bloody Indians came teeming in. So there isn’t one. Oops! We’ve spent the last hundred years fretting about the bloody Russians threatening the north-west frontier through Afghanistan into India, never thinking that the bloody Japs might walk through the north-east frontier from Burma. How unintelligent is that, eh?’

  In the distance, the muffled bark of an explosion. Grace’s ears were attuned to the sound of bombs by now, but this was different, in a lower register. Artillery?

  ‘And do you know what is really scaring the pants off the red-hats? Sssh,’ he pressed a finger to his lips. ‘How many Indian troops were bagged at Singapore?’

  ‘I’m afraid…’

  ‘…forty thousand. And how many of our loyal Indian soldiers have become Jiffs?’

  Silence.

  ‘Thirty thousand.’

  She stared at him.

  ‘Three quarters. Where is the leader of the Jiffs, the so-called Indian National Army, one Subhas Chandra Bose? They call him the Netaji, that’s Hindi for Fuhrer. Where’s Hitler’s Indian, eh? We don’t bloody know. Special Branch lost him. Bloody useless.’

  Eyes closed, he started to sway like a tall tree in a great storm. Grace thought he might pass out. Suddenly, his eyes opened wide.

  ‘Another top secret, for you. Some of the Jiffs have found out that Japs aren’t such nice chaps, after all. They ran away from the Japs, landed up here, and Colonel Handscombe had them tortured, beaten on the soles of their feet because “I’m teaching these bloody traitors a lesson they won’t forget.” I told him to stop it. He carried on. I told him I knew an American newspaper correspondent who’d print his name as a torturer unless he stopped it, and then he stopped it. So I got to talk to the chaps, sepoys - Indian soldiers – ordered to surrender at Singapore, who turned Jiff and then ran away from the Japs. Forty-four of them, so that makes me something of an expert. I’ve interviewed more ex-Jiffs than any other official in the British Empire. These chaps aren’t traitors. They want the British out of India. But with the Japs they smelt a rat. One Jiff told me that a Jap general said to them all: “Let the J
apanese be the father. Indians, Burmese and Chinese will live like a family. However, if the Indian child is thin and needs more milk, we will give him more milk.” Bugger that, thought my chap, and he was off. So I wrote a report on what the runaway Jiffs have to say. My report says we’ve lost Burma. And if we don’t do something about the Jiffs, we’re going to lose India too, and then the Japs and Jerry will join up in Delhi and we’re all goners. The solution? Announce pretty damn quick that we will be handing India over to its people as soon as the war is over and make the point, loud and strong, that neither Hitler nor Hirohito have shown much respect for any other nation apart from their own, so if anyone thinks that the Nazis or the Japs are serious about independence,’ he hiccoughed again, ‘they’re talking out of their arse.’

  He picked up a thin buff folder and waved it at her.

  ‘And the response from on high? Nothing. Zero, if you’ll pardon the pun.’

  An enormous blast rattled the windows as a dust cloud rose a quarter of a mile away, over what used to be the army’s central barracks. They were leaving nothing behind.

  ‘No reply,’ continued Mr Peach. ‘Why not? Got me thinking. I’d burnt all the other bloody files. And the code books. When I’d burnt everything, well almost everything, I started on the cellar. First, the bubbly. Then the white wine. Then the red. Bit tiddley, tiddly-pom-tiddly-pom. Where was I? Ah, yes, sssh, top secret, just before I popped the Peach report on Jiffs into the boiler I thought I would have a look at it. I’m in charge, after all. And why hadn’t anyone replied to it? After all, it had called for us to quit India. That should have caused an almighty palaver, Winston screaming bloody murder, etc, etc. Instead, nothing. Why was that, eh?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Grace said.

  ‘Colonel Handscombe decided not to send it up, that’s why. He made a note in the file that Peach’s report was “too defeatist”. And now all lines are down to the outside world. So I’ve written a report no one’s read and, in the meantime, the danger is that more and more chaps will join the Jiffs, and we’ll end up not only losing Burma and India but the whole bloody world. And is anyone listening? No. Has anyone in London got an idea of how dangerous the Jiffs are to the Allies? No. Or that they could be turned round, if we promised them independence? No. And where is Colonel Handscombe, that noble last-ditcher?’

  Like a clockwork soldier, Peach rotated three hundred and sixty degrees, his eyes scanning the horizon. Of the colonel, no sign.

  ‘So, may I summarise? Total balls-up. Eh, gorgeous?’

  A red ball took out another mutton-chopped nabob. ‘Are you sure you don’t want a go? How about High Commissioner Charles Umpherton Aitchinson? Come on, darling.’ He belched again, a revolting noise. Grace had had enough.

  ‘I love you,’ Mr Peach shouted, beseeching, swaying. ‘Do you love me?’

  ‘Mr Peach, you’re a damned fool.’

  Grace started to back out. Hearing a crash, she turned and saw that he’d fallen plumb down and was now slumped over a leather chaise longue, dead to the world. The manservant who first had led her to Mr Peach started to walk slowly towards him.

  She ran down the echoing steps of the seat of British rule in Burma, dashed past the guards and was out on the street. A white-bellied rat scuttled down the steps, passed her and the last she saw of it was its long reptilian tail vanishing into a drain. Even the rats were giving up on the British Empire.

  A cycle rickshaw took her past the front of a mansion owned by a wealthy Chinese merchant, a Catholic, famous in Rangoon for his gleaming Rolls Royce. The house was being ransacked, with Burmese looters running out with upholstered chairs and mahogany side tables balanced on their heads. The front gate was open and she could see the main hallway, barren apart from a picture of the Sacred Heart. None of the looters had fancied it.

  Back at the school, Grace ordered everyone to go to the dormitories and pack for India. She pounded on the door of Miss Furroughs’ study and told her about the order for evacuation. The headmistress was a picture of wretchedness, her eyes bloodshot.

  ‘What is it, Miss Furroughs?’

  ‘I went to the Club, to hear what Colonel Handscombe was planning to do. They told me that he had flown to Calcutta three days ago. Along with Mrs Peckham.’ The headmistress snuffled. ‘They are engaged to be married, and her husband not dead a month.’

  Grace cut through the self-absorption of the older woman. ‘Colonel Handscombe is a pig. Good riddance to him. The school must leave Rangoon immediately. Now.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Collins, I am sorry. I fear I have been a complete fool.’

  ‘But, we are leaving–?’

  Grace was interrupted by the harsh growling of an engine.

  ‘Yes. I’ve asked Allu–’

  An antique green single-decker bus chuntered into the school yard, Allu behind the wheel, Hants & Dorset Motor Bus Company still clearly visible on its sides where it had been ineffectually over-painted. The bus had spent the prime of its life in the New Forest, running between Lymington and Southampton, before being shipped out to Burma, a gift to Anglicans in the colony from the Bishop of Winchester. The exhaust snorted a cloud of half-burnt oil and the engine uttered a metallic death rattle. His Grace, clearly, hadn’t been much of a mechanic.

  Grace stepped outside. ‘Will this wreck get us to the docks, Allu?’

  ‘Well, Miss, it might. Three miles. But not much further.’

  Grace could have sworn she smelt alcohol – the local hooch – on Allu’s breath, but what to do about it? Nothing, for the moment. When everyone had boarded and their bags stowed, Miss Furroughs was missing. Fully engaged with removing excess baggage from the bus, Grace sent Emily, the headmistress’s favourite, who found her in the school chapel, kneeling in a pew, lost in prayer. The schoolgirl coughed, to alert the old lady to her presence.

  ‘Please, Miss,’ said Emily, ‘Miss Collins says the bus is ready and we must go. Please, Miss.’

  Eyes closed, fingers steepled in prayer, the headmistress made no move. Emily turned and walked down the aisle, down the steps and onto the bus. ‘Please Miss Collins, Miss Furroughs won’t come. I told her the bus is ready to go, but she didn’t hear me.’

  ‘Damn!’ She snapped at one girl who had smuggled the school’s umbrella stand on the bus – ‘no, we’re not taking that, you clot!’ – and ran off to the chapel. Grace opened the thick wooden door, dipped her hand in the water stoop out of habit and crossed herself, quickly. Sunlight poured through the stained-glass windows, bathing the headmistress in blood and gold. As Grace walked up the aisle, the deep bass of artillery rattled the windows. That was the loudest she’d heard, ever. The war was getting closer. She knelt down, beside the headmistress, two pews down from the altar. Another series of booms from the big guns, disturbing the motes of dust spiralling in the sunlight. Grace said a prayer for a safe journey for the children, then spoke, her voice harsh in the quiet of the chapel: ‘Miss Furroughs, we must leave. We need to secure places on the ship. It’s our last chance.’

  ‘Go without me.’

  The young teacher shook her head. ‘I can’t do that. I can’t look after sixty children on my own. For their sake, you’ve got to come, Miss Furroughs.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Collins, I’m so sorry,’ the headmistress wept and unsteadily rose to her feet. Grace felt an overwhelming sense of pity for the older woman. She had lived a good life, taught and educated two, three generations of children at Bishop Strachan’s, but now her entire world was collapsing. All the simple certainties of the British Empire, of everyday life in Rangoon, of everything that Bishop Strachan’s stood for were dying. Grace placed her arms around the headmistress’s shoulders and led her towards the bus.

  Allu revved the engine, put it into gear, let slip the clutch and ‘Hants & Dorset’ slouched through the school gates.

  As they drove towards the docks, the headmistress leaned close to Grace, gesturing at Allu. ‘You don’t think he’s one of those Jiffs, do you?’
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br />   Grace said no, she did not, and stared out of the window at a city emptying of people.

  Chapter Two

  Half a mile from the port gates, the smell of disaster lay everywhere. Dock cranes hung like gibbets against a darkening sky. Blankets of smoke, thick, coal-black, billowed from a dozen burning oil tanks. The bus drew on towards the docks, the children silent. Allu pulled Hants & Dorset to a halt and the children poured out, adding to a vast, swirling crowd. The atmosphere was vile, people punching wildly so that they could get a yard nearer the dock gates.

  A black Rolls Royce edged through the crowd, turned and reversed down a wooden jetty a few feet from its end. The Rolls stopped and a uniformed chauffeur emerged and opened the passenger door. A fat white man in a claret suit, white-bearded, ruddy-faced, an out-of-season Santa Claus, got out and walked back towards land as the chauffeur pushed the Rolls over the edge of the jetty into the muddy brown slop of the Rangoon river.

  The fat man didn’t look back but placed himself in the middle of a small army of servants carrying suitcases on their heads. As they barged through the crowd, splitting the party from Bishop Strachan’s into two, he shouted: ‘Get these black bitches out of my way.’

  Pushing through the mob, Miss Furroughs caught up with him and slapped him hard on the cheek.

  ‘How dare you insult my children. We are not savages, sir, and I’ll ask you to remember that.’ He touched his face, glared at her, and then pushed on towards the ship. The girls, for the first time since they’d left the school, smiled amongst themselves.

  Grace ran to a ticket booth, its grille closed, and darted round the back. Sitting on a chair, smoking a cheroot, was a Burman. She told her story – ten-a-penny on that day – but the shipping clerk took pity on Grace and promised to see what he could do. While they waited, Grace overheard Ruby entertaining the other children with a sotto voce impression of Miss Furroughs: ‘You horrible little man. We are not savages, sir.’ In the ordinary way, she might have given detention to Ruby for mocking the headmistress. Not that day.