KIRPAL SINGH STOOD where the horse’s saddle would have lain across its back. At first he simply stood onthe back of the horse, paused and waved to those he could not see but who he knew would be watching. LordSuffolk watched him through binoculars, saw the young man wave, both arms up and swaying.
Then he descended, down into the giant white chalk horse of Westbury, into the whiteness of the horse, carvedinto the hill. Now he was a black figure, the background radicalizing the darkness of his skin and his khakiuniform. If the focus on the binoculars was exact, Lord Suffolk would see the thin line of crimson lanyard onSingh’s shoulder that signalled his sapper unit. To them it would look like he was striding down a paper map cutout in the shape of an animal. But Singh was conscious only of his boots scuffing the rough white chalk as hemoved down the slope.
Miss Morden, behind him, was also coming slowly down the hill, a satchel over her shoulder, aiding herself witha rolled umbrella. She stopped ten feet above the horse, un.furled the umbrella and sat within its shade. Then sheopened up her notebooks.
“Can you hear me?” he asked.
“Yes, it’s fine.” She rubbed the chalk off her hands onto her skirt and adjusted her glasses. She looked up intothe distance and, as Singh had done, waved to those she could not see.
Singh liked her. She was in effect the first Englishwoman he had really spoken with since he arrived in England.
Most of his time had been spent in a barracks at Woolwich. In his three months there he had met only otherIndians and English officers. A woman would reply to a question in the NAAFI canteen, but conversations withwomen lasted only two or three sentences.
He was the second son. The oldest son would go into the army, the next brother would be a doctor, a brotherafter that would become a businessman. An old tradition in his family. But all that had changed with the war. Hejoined a Sikh regiment and was shipped to England. After the first months in London he had volunteered himselfinto a unit of engineers that had been set up to deal with delayed-action and unex-ploded bombs. The word fromon high in 1939 was naive: “Unexploded bombs are considered the responsibility of the Home Office, who areagreed that they should be collected by A.R.P. wardens and police and delivered to convenient dumps, wheremem.bers of the armed forces will in due course detonate them.”
It was not until 1940 that the War Office took over respon.sibility for bomb disposal, and then, in turn, handed itover to the Royal Engineers. Twenty-five bomb disposal units were set up. They lacked technical equipment andhad in their possession only hammers, chisels and road-mending tools. There were no specialists.
A bomb is a combination of the following parts:
1. A container or bomb case.
2. Afuze.
3. An initiating charge, or gaine.
4. A main charge of high explosive.
5. Superstructionalfittings—fins, lifting lugs, kopfrings, etc.
Eighty percent of bombs dropped by airplanes over Britain were thin-walled, general-purpose bombs. Theyusually ranged from a hundred pounds to a thousand. A 2,ooo-pound bomb was called a “Hermann” or an“Esau.” A 4,ooo-pound bomb was called a “Satan.”
Singh, after long days of training, would fall asleep with diagrams and charts still in his hands. Half dreaming, heentered the maze of a cylinder alongside the picric acid and the gaine and the condensers until he reached thefuze deep within the main body. Then he was suddenly awake.
When a bomb hit a target, the resistance caused a trembler to activate and ignite the flash pellet in the fuze. Theminute explosion would leap into the gaine, causing the penthrite wax to detonate. This set off the picric acid,which in turn caused the main filling of TNT, amatol and aluminized powder, to explode. The journey fromtrembler to explosion lasted a microsecond.
The most dangerous bombs were those dropped from low altitudes, which were not activated until they hadlanded. These unexploded bombs buried themselves in cities and fields and remained dormant until theirtrembler contacts were disturbed—by a farmer’s stick, a car wheel’s nudge, the bounce of a tennis ball againstthe casing—and then they would explode.
Singh was moved by lorry with the other volunteers to the research department in Woolwich. This was a timewhen the casualty rate in bomb disposal units was appallingly high, con.sidering how few unexploded bombsthere were. In 1940, after France had fallen and Britain was in a state of siege, it got worse.
By August the blitz had begun, and in one month there were suddenly 2,500 unexploded bombs to be dealt with.
Roads were closed, factories deserted. By September the num.ber of live bombs had reached 3,700. Onehundred new bomb squads were set up, but there was still no understanding of how the bombs worked. Lifeexpectancy in these units was ten weeks.
“This was a Heroic Age of bomb disposal, a period of individual prowess, when urgency and a lack ofknowledge and equipment led to the taking of fantastic risks.... It was, however, a Heroic Age whoseprotagonists remained obscure, since their actions were kept from the public for reasons of security. It wasobviously undesirable to publish reports that might help the enemy to estimate the ability to deal with weapons.”
In the car, driving down to Westbury, Singh had sat in front with Mr. Harts while Miss Morden rode in the backwith Lord Suffolk. The khaki-painted Humber was famous. The mudguards were painted bright signal red—asall bomb disposal travel units were—and at night there was a blue filter over the left sidelight. Two days earlier aman walking near the famous chalk horse on the Downs had been blown up. When engineers arrived at the sitethey discovered that an.other bomb had landed in the middle of the historic location— in the stomach of thegiant white horse of Westbury carved into the rolling chalk hills in 1778. Shortly after this event, all the chalkhorses on the Downs—there were seven—had cam.ouflage nets pegged down over them, not to protect them somuch as stop them being obvious landmarks for bombing raids over England.
From the backseat Lord Suffolk chatted about the migration of robins from the war zones of Europe, the historyof bomb disposal, Devon cream. He was introducing the customs of England to the young Sikh as if it was arecently discovered culture. In spite of being Lord Suffolk he lived in Devon, and until war broke out his passionwas the study of Lorna Doone and how authentic the novel was historically and geographi.cally. Most wintershe spent puttering around the villages of Brandon and Porlock, and he had convinced authorities that Exmoorwas an ideal location for bomb-disposal training. There were twelve men under his command—made up oftalents from various units, sappers and engineers, and Singh was one of them. They were based for most of theweek at Richmond Park in London, being briefed on new methods or working on unexploded bombs whilefallow deer drifted around them. But on weekends they would go down to Ex-moor, where they would continuetraining during the day and afterwards be driven by Lord Suffolk to the church where Lorna Doone was shotduring her wedding ceremony. “Either from this window or from that back door... shot right down the aisle—intoher shoulder. Splendid shot, actually, though of course reprehensible. The villain was chased onto the moors andhad his muscles ripped from his body.” To Singh it sounded like a familiar Indian fable.
Lord Suffolk’s closest friend in the area was a female aviator who hated society but loved Lord Suffolk. Theywent shooting together. She lived in a small cottage in Countisbury on a cliff that overlooked the BristolChannel. Each village they passed in the Humber had its exotica described by Lord Suffolk. “This is the verybest place to buy blackthorn walking sticks.” As if Singh were thinking of stepping into the Tudor corner store inhis uniform and turban to chat casually with the owners about canes. Lord Suffolk was the best of the English, helater told Hana. If there had been no war he would never have roused himself from Countisbury and his retreat,called Home Farm, where he mulled along with the wine, with the flies in the old back laundry, fifty years old,married but essentially bachelor in character, walking thp cliffs each day to visit his aviator friend. He liked tofix things—old laundry tubs and plumbing generators and cooking spits run by a waterwheel. He had beenhelping Miss Swift, the aviator, collect information on the habits of badgers.
The drive to the chalk horse at Westbury was therefore busy with anecdote and information. Even in wartime heknew the best place to stop for tea. He swept into Pamela’s Tea Room, his arm in a sling from an accident withguncotton, and shepherded in his clan—secretary, chauffeur and sapper —as if they were his children. How LordSuffolk had per.suaded the LJXB Committee to allow him to set up his experi.mental bomb disposal outfit noone was sure, but with his background in inventions he probably had more qualifications than most. He was anautodidact, and he believed his mind could read the motives and spirit behind any invention. He had immediatelyinvented the pocket shirt, which allowed fuzes and gadgets to be stored easily by a working sapper.
They drank tea and waited for scones, discussing the in situ defusing of bombs.
“I trust you, Mr. Singh, you know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.” Singh adored him. As far as he was concerned, Lord Suffolk was the first real gentleman he had metin England.
“You know I trust you to do as well as I. Miss Morden will be with you to take notes. Mr. Harts will be fartherback. If you need more equipment or more strength, blow on the police whistle and he will join you. He doesn’tadvise but he under.stands perfectly. If he won’t do something it means he dis.agrees with you, and I’d take hisadvice. But you have total authority on the site. Here is my pistol. The fuzes are probably more sophisticatednow, but you never know, you might be in luck.”
Lord Suffolk was alluding to an incident that had made him famous. He had discovered a method for inhibiting adelayed-action fuze by pulling out his army revolver and firing a bullet through the fuze head, so arresting themovement of the clock body. The method was abandoned when the Germans intro.duced a new fuze in whichthe percussion cap and not the clock was uppermost.
Kirpal Singh had been befriended, and he would never for.get it. So far, half of his time during the war hadtaken place in the slipstream of this lord who had never stepped out of England and planned never to step out ofCountisbury once the war ended. Singh had arrived in England knowing no one, distanced from his family in thePunjab. He was twenty-one years old. He had met no one but soldiers. So that when he read the notice asking forvolunteers with an experimental bomb squad, even though he heard other sappers speak of Lord Suffolk as amadman, he had already decided that in a war you have to take control, and there was a greater chance of choiceand life alongside a personality or an individual.
He was the only Indian among the applicants, and Lord Suffolk was late. Fifteen of them were led into a libraryand asked by the secretary to wait. She remained at the desk, copying out names, while the soldiers joked aboutthe inter.view and the test. He knew no one. He walked over to a wall and stared at a barometer, was about totouch it but pulled back, just putting his face close to it. Very Dry to Fair to Stormy. He muttered the words tohimself with his new Eng.lish pronunciation. “Wery dry. Very dry.” He looked back at the others, peered aroundthe room and caught the gaze of the middle-aged secretary. She watched him sternly. An Indian boy. He smiledand walked towards the bookshelves. Again he touched nothing. At one point he put his nose close to a volumecalled Raymond, or Life and Death by Sir Oliver Hodge.
He found another, similar title. Pierre, or the Ambiguities. He turned and caught the woman’s eyes on him again.
He felt as guilty as if he had put the book in his pocket. She had prob.ably never seen a turban before. TheEnglish! They expect you to fight for them but won’t talk to you. Singh. And the ambiguities.
They met a very hearty Lord Suffolk during lunch, who poured wine for anyone who wanted it, and laughedloudly at every attempt at a joke by the recruits. In the afternoon they were all given a strange exam in which apiece of machinery had to be put back together without any prior information of what it was used for. They wereallowed two hours but could leave as soon as the problem was solved. Singh finished the exam quickly and spentthe rest of the time inventing other objects that could be made from the various components. He sensed he wouldbe admitted easily if it were not for his race. He had come from a country where mathematics and mechan.icswere natural traits. Cars were never destroyed. Parts of them were carried across a village and readapted into asewing machine or water pump. The backseat of a Ford was reuphol-stered and became a sofa. Most people inhis village were more likely to carry a spanner or screwdriver than a pencil. A car’s irrelevant parts thus entereda grandfather clock or irrigation pulley or the spinning mechanism of an office chair. Antidotes to mechanizeddisaster were easily found. One cooled an over.heating car engine not with new rubber hoses but by scooping upcow shit and patting it around the condenser. What he saw in England was a surfeit of parts that would keep theconti.nent of India going for two hundred years.
He was one of three applicants selected by Lord Suffolk. This man who had not even spoken to him (and had notlaughed with him, simply because he had not joked) walked across the room and put his arm around his shoulder.
The severe secretary turned out to be Miss Morden, and she bus.tled in with a tray that held two large glasses ofsherry, handed one to Lord Suffolk and, saying, “I know you don’t drink,” took the other one for herself andraised her glass to him. “Congratulations, your exam was splendid. Though I was sure you would be chosen,even before you took it.”
“Miss Morden is a splendid judge of character. She has a nose for brilliance and character.”
“Character, sir?”
“Yes. It is not really necessary, of course, but we are going to be working together. We are very much a familyhere. Even before lunch Miss Morden had selected you.”
“I found it quite a strain being unable to wink at you, Mr. Singh.”
Lord Suffolk had his arm around Singh again and was walk.ing him to the window.
“I thought, as we do not have to begin till the middle of next week, I’d have some of the unit come down toHome Farm. We can pool our knowledge in Devon and get to know each other. You can drive down with us inthe Humber.”
So he had won passage, free of the chaotic machinery of the war. He stepped into a family, after a year abroad, asif he were the prodigal returned, offered a chair at the table, em.braced with conversations.
It was almost dark when they crossed the border from Som.erset into Devon on the coastal road overlooking theBristol Channel. Mr. Harts turned down the narrow path bordered with heather and rhododendrons, a dark bloodcolour in this last light. The driveway was three miles long.
Apart from the trinity of Suffolk, Morden and Harts, there were six sappers who made up the unit. They walkedthe moors around the stone cottage over the weekend. Miss Morden and Lord Suffolk and his wife were joinedby the aviatrix for the Saturday-night dinner. Miss Swift told Singh she had always wished to fly overland toIndia. Removed from his bar.racks, Singh had no idea of his location. There was a map on a roller high up onthe ceiling. Alone one morning he pulled the roller down until it touched the floor. Countisbury and Area.
Mapped by R. Fones. Drawn by desire of Mr. James Halliday.
“Drawn by desire ...” He was beginning to love the English.
He is with Hana in the night tent when he tells her about the explosion in Erith. A 250-kilogram bomb eruptingas Lord Suffolk attempted to dismantle it. It also killed Mr. Fred Harts and Miss Morden and four sappers LordSuffolk was training. May 1941. Singh had been with Suffolk’s unit for a year. He was working in London thatday with Lieutenant Blackler, clearing the Elephant and Castle area of a Satan bomb. They had worked togetherat defusing the 4,ooo-pound bomb and were exhausted. He remembered halfway through he looked up and saw acouple of bomb disposal officers pointing in his direction and wondered what that was about. It probably meantthey had found another bomb. It was after ten at night and he was dangerously tired. There was another onewaiting for him. He turned back to work.
When they had finished with the Satan he decided to save time and walked over to one of the officers, who hadat first half turned away as if wanting to leave.
“Yes. Where is it?”
The man took his right hand, and he knew something was wrong. Lieutenant Blackler was behind him and theofficer told them what had happened, and Lieutenant Blackler put his hands on Singh’s shoulders and grippedhim.
He drove to Erith. He had guessed what the officer was hesitating about asking him. He knew the man would nothave come there just to tell him of the deaths. They were in a war, after all. It meant there was a second bombsomewhere in the vicinity, probably the same design, and this was the only chance to find out what had gonewrong.
He wanted to do this alone. Lieutenant Blackler would stay in London. They were the last two left of the unit,and it would have been foolish to risk both. If Lord Suffolk had failed, it meant there was something new. Hewanted to do this alone, in any case. When two men worked together there had to be a base of logic. You had toshare and compromise decisions.
He kept everything back from the surface of his emotions during the night drive. To keep his mind clear, theystill had to be alive. Miss Morden drinking one large and stiff whisky before she got to the sherry. In this wayshe would be able to drink more slowly, appear more ladylike for the rest of the evening. “You don’t drink, Mr.
Singh, but if you did, you’d do what I do. One full whisky and then you can sip away like a good courtier.” Thiswas followed by her lazy, gravelly laugh. She was the only woman he was to meet in his life who carried twosilver flasks with her. So she was still drinking, and Lord Suffolk was still nibbling at his Kipling cakes.
The other bomb had fallen half a mile away. Another SC-25okg. It looked like the familiar kind. They haddefused hundreds of them, most by rote. This was the way the war progressed. Every six months or so the enemyaltered some.thing. You learned the trick, the whim, the little descant, and taught it to the rest of the units. Theywere at a new stage now.
He took no one with him. He would just have to remember each step. The sergeant who drove him was a mannamedHardy, and he was to remain by the jeep. It was suggested he wait till the next morning, but he knew they wouldprefer him to do it now. The 250-kilogram SC was too common. If there was an alteration they had to knowquickly. He made them telephone ahead for lights. He didn’t mind working tired, but he wanted proper lights,not just the beams of two jeeps.
When he arrived in Erith the bomb zone was already lit. In daylight, on an innocent day, it would have been afield. Hedges, perhaps a pond. Now it was an arena. Cold, he bor.rowed Hardy’s sweater and put it on top of his.
The lights would keep him warm, anyway. When he walked over to the bomb they were still alive in his mind.
Exam.
With the bright light, the porousness of the metal jumped into precise focus. Now he forgot everything exceptdistrust. Lord Suffolk had said you can have a brilliant chess player at seventeen, even thirteen, who might beat agrand master. But you can never have a brilliant bridge player at that age. Bridge depends on character. Yourcharacter and the character of your opponents. You must consider the character of your enemy. This is true ofbomb disposal. It is two-handed bridge. You have one enemy. You have no partner. Sometimes for my exam Imake them play bridge. People think a bomb is a me.chanical object, a mechanical enemy. But you have toconsider that somebody made it.
The wall of the bomb had been torn open in its fall to earth, and Singh could see the explosive material inside.
He felt he was being watched, and refused to decide whether it was by Suffolk or the inventor of this contraption.
The freshness of the artificial light had revived him. He walked around the bomb, peering at it from every angle.
To remove the fuze, he would have to open the main chamber and get past the explo.sive. He unbuttoned hissatchel and, with a universal key, carefully twisted off the plate at the back of the bomb case. Looking inside hesaw that the fuze pocket had been knocked free of the case. This was good luck—or bad luck; he couldn’t tellyet. The problem was that he didn’t know if the mecha.nism was already at work, if it had already beentriggered. He was on his knees, leaning over it, glad he was alone, back in the world of straightforward choice.
Turn left or turn right. Cut this or cut that. But he was tired, and there was still anger in him.
He didn’t know how long he had. There was more danger in waiting too long. Holding the nose of the cylinderfirm with his boots, he reached in and ripped out the fuze pocket, and lifted it away from the bomb. As soon ashe did this he began to shake. He had got it out. The bomb was essentially harmless now. He put the fuze with itstangled fringe of wires down on the grass; they were clear and brilliant in this light.
He started to drag the main case towards the truck, fifty yards away, where the men could empty it of the rawexplo.sive. As he pulled it along, a third bomb exploded a quarter of a mile away and the sky lit up, makingeven the arc lights seem subtle and human.
An officer gave him a mug of Horlicks, which had some kind of alcohol in it, and he returned alone to the fuzepocket. He inhaled the fumes from the drink.
There was no longer serious danger. If he were wrong, the small explosion would take off his hand. But unless itwas clutched to his heart at the moment of impact he wouldn’t die. The problem was now simply the problem.
The fuze. The new “joke” in the bomb.
He would have to reestablish the maze of wires into its original pattern. He walked back to the officer and askedhim for the rest of the Thermos of the hot drink. Then he returned and sat down again with the fuze. It was aboutone-thirty in the morning. He guessed, he wasn’t wearing a watch. For half an hour he just looked at it with amagnified circle of glass, a sort of monocle that hung off his buttonhole. He bent over and peered at the brass forany hint of other scratches that a clamp might have made. Nothing.
Later he would need distractions. Later, when there was a whole personal history of events and moments in hismind, he would need something equivalent to white sound to burn or bury everything while he thought of theproblems in front of him. The radio or crystal set and its loud band music would come later, a tarpaulin to holdthe rain of real life away from him.
But now he was aware of something in the far distance, like some reflection of lightning on a cloud. Harts andMorden and Suffolk were dead, suddenly just names. His eyes focused back onto the fuze box.
He began to turn the fuze upside down in his mind, con.sidering the logical possibilities. Then turned ithorizontal again. He unscrewed the gaine, bending over, his ear next to it so the scrape of brass was against him.
No little clicks. It came apart in silence. Tenderly he separated the clockwork sections from the fuze and set themdown. He picked up the fuze-pocket tube and peered down into it again. He saw noth.ing. He was about to lay iton the grass when he hesitated and brought it back up to the light. He wouldn’t have noticed anything wrongexcept for the weight. And he would never have thought about the weight if he wasn’t looking for the joke. Allthey did, usually, was listen or look. He tilted the tube carefully, and the weight slipped down toward theopen.ing. It was a second gaine—a whole separate device—to foil any attempt at defusing.
He eased the device out towards him and unscrewed the gaine. There was a white-green flash and the sound of awhip from the device. The second detonator had gone off. He pulled it out and set it beside the other parts on thegrass. He went back to the jeep.
“There was a second gaine,” he muttered. “I was very lucky, being able to pull out those wires. Put a call in toheadquarters and find out if there are other bombs.”
He cleared the soldiers away from the jeep, set up a loose bench there and asked for the arc lights to be trained onit. He bent down and picked up the three components and placed them each a foot apart along the makeshiftbench. He was cold now, and he breathed out a feather of his warmer body air. He looked up. In the distancesome soldiers were still empty.ing out the main explosive. Quickly he wrote down a few notes and handed thesolution for the new bomb to an officer. He didn’t fully understand it, of course, but they would have thisinformation.
When sunlight enters a room where there is a fire, the fire will go out. He had loved Lord Suffolk and his strangebits of information. But his absence here, in the sense that every.thing now depended on Singh, meant Singh’sawareness swelled to all bombs of this variety across the city of London. He had suddenly a map ofresponsibility, something, he real.ized, that Lord Suffolk carried within his character at all times. It was thisawareness that later created the need in him to block so much out when he was working on a bomb. He was oneof those never interested in the choreography of power. He felt uncomfortable in the ferrying back and forth ofplans and solutions. He felt capable only of reconnaissance, of locat.ing a solution. When the reality of the deathof Lord Suffolk came to him, he concluded the work he was assigned to and reenlisted into the anonymousmachine of the army. He was on the troopship Macdonald, which carried a hundred other sappers towards theItalian campaign. Here they were used not just for bombs but for building bridges, clearing debris, setting uptracks for armoured rail vehicles. He hid there for the rest of the war. Few remembered the Sikh who had beenwith Suffolk’s unit. In a year the whole unit was disbanded and forgotten, Lieutenant Blackler being the only oneto rise in the ranks with his talent.
But that night as Singh drove past Lewisham and Black-heath towards Erith, he knew he contained, more thanany other sapper, the knowledge of Lord Suffolk. He was expected to be the replacing vision.
He was still standing at the truck when he heard the whistle that meant they were turning off the arc lights.
Within thirty seconds metallic light had been replaced with sulphur flares in the back of the truck. Another bombraid. These lesser lights could be doused when they heard the planes. He sat down on the empty petrol can facingthe three components he had removed from the SC-25okg, the hisses from the flares around him loud after thesilence of the arc lights.
He sat watching and listening, waiting for them to click. The other men silent, fifty yards away. He knew he wasfor now a king, a puppet master, could order anything, a bucket of sand, a fruit pie for his needs, and those menwho would not cross an uncrowded bar to speak with him when they were off duty would do what he desired. Itwas strange to him. As if he had been handed a large suit of clothes that he could roll around in and whosesleeves would drag behind him. But he knew he did not like it. He was accustomed to his invisibility. In Englandhe was ignored in the various barracks, and he came to prefer that. The self-sufficiency and privacy Hana saw inhim later were caused not just by his being a sapper in the Italian campaign. It was as much a result of being theanonymous member of another race, a part of the invisible world. He had built up defences of character againstall that, trusting only those who befriended him. But that night in Erith he knew he was capable of having wiresattached to him that influenced all around him who did not have his specific talent.
A few months later he had escaped to Italy, had packed the shadow of his teacher into a knapsack, the way hehad seen the green-clothed boy at the Hippodrome do it on his first leave during Christmas. Lord Suffolk andMiss Morden had offered to take him to an English play. He had selected Peter Pan, and they, wordless,acquiesced and went with him to a screaming child-full show. There were such shadows of memory with himwhen he lay in his tent with Hana in the small hill town in Italy.
Revealing his past or qualities of his character would have been too loud a gesture. Just as he could never turnand in.quire of her what deepest motive caused this relationship. He held her with the same strength of love hefelt for those three strange English people, eating at the same table with them, who had watched his delight andlaughter and wonder when the green boy raised his arms and flew into the darkness high above the stage,returning to teach the young girl in the earth-bound family such wonders too.
In the flare-lit darkness of Erith he would stop whenever planes were heard, and one by one the sulphur torcheswere sunk into buckets of sand. He would sit in the droning dark.ness, moving the seat so he could lean forwardand place his ear close to the ticking mechanisms, still timing the clicks, trying to hear them under the throb ofthe German bombers above him.
Then what he had been waiting for happened. After exactly one hour, the timer tripped and the percussion capexploded. Removing the main gaine had released an unseen striker that activated the second, hidden gaine. It hadbeen set to explode sixty minutes later—long after a sapper would normally have assumed the bomb was safelydefused.
This new device would change the whole direction of Allied bomb disposal. From now on, every delayed-actionbomb would carry the threat of a second gaine. It would no longer be possible for sappers to deactivate a bombby simply removing the fuze. Bombs would have to be neutralized with the fuze intact. Somehow, earlier on,surrounded by arc lights, and in his fury, he had withdrawn the sheared second fuze out of the booby trap. In thesulphureous darkness under the bombing raid he witnessed the white-green flash the size of his hand. One hourlate. He had survived only with luck. He walked back to the officer and said, “I need another fuze to make sure.”
They lit the flares around him again. Once more light poured into his circle of darkness. He kept testing the newfuzes for two more hours that night. The sixty-minute delay proved to be consistent.
He was in Erith most of that night. In the morning he woke up to find himself back in London. He could notremember being driven back. He woke up, went to a table and began to sketch the profile of the bomb, thegaines, the detonators, the whole ZUS-40 problem, from the fuze up to the locking rings. Then he covered thebasic drawing with all the possible lines of attack to defuse it. Every arrow drawn exactly, the text written outclear the way he had been taught.
What he had discovered the night before held true. He had survived only through luck. There was no possibleway to defuse such a bomb in situ without just blowing it up. He drew and wrote out everything he knew on thelarge blueprint sheet. At the bottom he wrote: Drawn by desire of Lord Suffolk, by his student Lieutenant KirpalSingh, 10 May 1941.
He worked flat-out, crazily, after Suffolk’s death. Bombs were altering fast, with new techniques and devices. Hewas barracked in Regent’s Park with Lieutenant Blackler and three other specialists, working on solutions,blueprinting each new bomb as it came in.
In twelve days, working at the Directorate of Scientific Re.search, they came up with the answer. Ignore thefuze en.tirely. Ignore the first principle, which until then was “de.fuse the bomb.” It was brilliant. They were alllaughing and applauding and hugging each other in the officers’ mess. They didn’t have a clue what thealternative was, but they knew in the abstract they were right. The problem would not be solved by embracing it.
That was Lieutenant Blackler’s line. “If you are in a room with a problem don’t talk to it.” An offhand remark.
Singh came towards him and held the statement from another angle. “Then we don’t touch the fuze at all.”
Once they came up with that, someone worked out the solution in a week. A steam sterilizer. One could cut ahole into the main case of a bomb, and then the main explosive could be emulsified by an injection of steam anddrained away. That solved that for the time being. But by then he was on a ship to Italy.
“There is always yellow chalk scribbled on the side of bombs. Have you noticed that? Just as there was yellowchalk scrib.bled onto our bodies when we lined up in the Lahore court.yard.
“There was a line of us shuffling forward slowly from the street into the medical building and out into thecourtyard as we enlisted. We were signing up. A doctor cleared or rejected our bodies with his instruments,explored our necks with his hands. The tongs slid out of Dettol and picked up parts of our skin.
“Those accepted filled up the courtyard. The coded results written onto our skin with yellow chalk. Later, in thelineup, after a brief interview, an Indian officer chalked more yellow onto the slates tied around our necks. Ourweight, age, dis.trict, standard of education, dental condition and what unit we were best suited for.
“I did not feel insulted by this. I am sure my brother would have been, would have walked in fury over to thewell, hauled up the bucket, and washed the chalk markings away. I was not like him. Though I loved him.
Admired him. I had this side to my nature which saw reason in all things. I was the one who had an earnest andserious air at school, which he would imitate and mock. You understand, of course, I was far less serious than hewas, it was just that I hated confrontation. It didn’t stop me doing whatever I wished or doing things the way Iwanted to. Quite early on I had discovered the over.looked space open to those of us with a silent life. I didn’targue with the policeman who said I couldn’t cycle over a certain bridge or through a specific gate in the fort—Ijust stood there, still, until I was invisible, and then I went through. Like a cricket. Like a hidden cup of water.
You understand? That is what my brother’s public battles taught me.
“But to me my brother was always the hero in the family. I was in the slipstream of his status as firebrand. Iwitnessed his exhaustion that came after each protest, his body gearing up to respond to this insult or that law.
He broke the tradition of our family and refused, in spite of being the oldest brother, to join the army. He refusedto agree to any situation where the English had power. So they dragged him into their jails.
In the Lahore Central Prison. Later the Jatnagar jail. Lying back on his cot at night, his arm raised within plaster,broken by his friends to protect him, to stop him trying to escape. In jail he became serene and devious. Morelike me. He was not insulted when he heard I had signed up to replace him in the enlistment, no longer to be adoctor, he just laughed and sent a message through our father for me to be careful. He would never go to waragainst me or what I did. He was confident that I had the trick of survival, of being able to hide in silent places.”
He is sitting on the counter in the kitchen talking with Hana. Caravaggio breezes through it on his way out,heavy ropes swathed over his shoulders, which are his own personal business, as he says when anyone asks him.
He drags them behind him and as he goes out the door says, “The English patient wants to see you, boyo.”
“Okay, boyo.” The sapper hops off the counter, his Indian accent slipping over into the false Welsh ofCaravaggio.
“My father had a bird, a small swift I think, that he kept beside him, as essential to his comfort as a pair ofspectacles or a glass of water during a meal. In the house, even if he just was entering his bedroom he carried itwith him. When he went to work the small cage hung off the bicycle’s handlebars.”
“Is your father still alive?”
“Oh, yes. I think. I’ve not had letters for some time. And it is likely that my brother is still in jail.”
He keeps remembering one thing. He is in the white horse. He feels hot on the chalk hill, the white dust of itswirling up all around him. He works on the contraption, which is quite straightforward, but for the first time heis working alone. Miss Morden sits twenty yards above him, higher up the slope, taking notes on what he isdoing. He knows that down and across the valley Lord Suffolk is watching through the glasses.
He works slowly. The chalk dust lifts, then settles on every.thing, his hands, the contraption, so he has to blow itoff the fuze caps and wires continually to see the details. It is hot in the tunic. He keeps putting his sweatingwrists behind himself to wipe them on the back of his shirt. All the loose and re.moved parts fill the variouspockets across his chest. He is tired, checking things repetitively. He hears Miss Morden’s voice. “Kip?” “Yes.”
“Stop what you’re doing for a while, I’m coming down.” “You’d better not, Miss Morden.” “Of course I can.”
He does up the buttons on his various vest pockets and lays a cloth over the bomb; she clambers down into thewhite horse awkwardly and then sits next to him and opens up her satchel. She douses a lace handkerchief withthe contents of a small bottle of eau de cologne and passes it to him. “Wipe your face with this. Lord Suffolkuses it to refresh himself.” He takes it tentatively and at her suggestion dabs his forehead and neck and wrists.
She unscrews the Thermos and pours each of them some tea. She unwraps oil paper and brings out strips ofKipling cake.
She seems to be in no hurry to go back up the slope, back to safety. And it would seem rude to remind her thatshe should return. She simply talks about the wretched heat and the fact that at least they have booked rooms intown with baths at.tached, which they can all look forward to. She begins a ram.bling story about how she metLord Suffolk. Not a word about the bomb beside them. He had been slowing down, the way one, half asleep,continually rereads the same paragraph, trying to find a connection between sentences. She has pulled him out ofthe vortex of the problem. She packs up her satchel carefully, lays a hand on his right shoulder and returns to herposition on the blanket above the Westbury horse. She leaves him some sunglasses, but he cannot see clearlyenough through them so he lays them aside. Then he goes back to work. The scent of eau de cologne. Heremembers he had smelled it once as a child. He had a fever and someone had brushed it onto his body.
Then he descended, down into the giant white chalk horse of Westbury, into the whiteness of the horse, carvedinto the hill. Now he was a black figure, the background radicalizing the darkness of his skin and his khakiuniform. If the focus on the binoculars was exact, Lord Suffolk would see the thin line of crimson lanyard onSingh’s shoulder that signalled his sapper unit. To them it would look like he was striding down a paper map cutout in the shape of an animal. But Singh was conscious only of his boots scuffing the rough white chalk as hemoved down the slope.
Miss Morden, behind him, was also coming slowly down the hill, a satchel over her shoulder, aiding herself witha rolled umbrella. She stopped ten feet above the horse, un.furled the umbrella and sat within its shade. Then sheopened up her notebooks.
“Can you hear me?” he asked.
“Yes, it’s fine.” She rubbed the chalk off her hands onto her skirt and adjusted her glasses. She looked up intothe distance and, as Singh had done, waved to those she could not see.
Singh liked her. She was in effect the first Englishwoman he had really spoken with since he arrived in England.
Most of his time had been spent in a barracks at Woolwich. In his three months there he had met only otherIndians and English officers. A woman would reply to a question in the NAAFI canteen, but conversations withwomen lasted only two or three sentences.
He was the second son. The oldest son would go into the army, the next brother would be a doctor, a brotherafter that would become a businessman. An old tradition in his family. But all that had changed with the war. Hejoined a Sikh regiment and was shipped to England. After the first months in London he had volunteered himselfinto a unit of engineers that had been set up to deal with delayed-action and unex-ploded bombs. The word fromon high in 1939 was naive: “Unexploded bombs are considered the responsibility of the Home Office, who areagreed that they should be collected by A.R.P. wardens and police and delivered to convenient dumps, wheremem.bers of the armed forces will in due course detonate them.”
It was not until 1940 that the War Office took over respon.sibility for bomb disposal, and then, in turn, handed itover to the Royal Engineers. Twenty-five bomb disposal units were set up. They lacked technical equipment andhad in their possession only hammers, chisels and road-mending tools. There were no specialists.
A bomb is a combination of the following parts:
1. A container or bomb case.
2. Afuze.
3. An initiating charge, or gaine.
4. A main charge of high explosive.
5. Superstructionalfittings—fins, lifting lugs, kopfrings, etc.
Eighty percent of bombs dropped by airplanes over Britain were thin-walled, general-purpose bombs. Theyusually ranged from a hundred pounds to a thousand. A 2,ooo-pound bomb was called a “Hermann” or an“Esau.” A 4,ooo-pound bomb was called a “Satan.”
Singh, after long days of training, would fall asleep with diagrams and charts still in his hands. Half dreaming, heentered the maze of a cylinder alongside the picric acid and the gaine and the condensers until he reached thefuze deep within the main body. Then he was suddenly awake.
When a bomb hit a target, the resistance caused a trembler to activate and ignite the flash pellet in the fuze. Theminute explosion would leap into the gaine, causing the penthrite wax to detonate. This set off the picric acid,which in turn caused the main filling of TNT, amatol and aluminized powder, to explode. The journey fromtrembler to explosion lasted a microsecond.
The most dangerous bombs were those dropped from low altitudes, which were not activated until they hadlanded. These unexploded bombs buried themselves in cities and fields and remained dormant until theirtrembler contacts were disturbed—by a farmer’s stick, a car wheel’s nudge, the bounce of a tennis ball againstthe casing—and then they would explode.
Singh was moved by lorry with the other volunteers to the research department in Woolwich. This was a timewhen the casualty rate in bomb disposal units was appallingly high, con.sidering how few unexploded bombsthere were. In 1940, after France had fallen and Britain was in a state of siege, it got worse.
By August the blitz had begun, and in one month there were suddenly 2,500 unexploded bombs to be dealt with.
Roads were closed, factories deserted. By September the num.ber of live bombs had reached 3,700. Onehundred new bomb squads were set up, but there was still no understanding of how the bombs worked. Lifeexpectancy in these units was ten weeks.
“This was a Heroic Age of bomb disposal, a period of individual prowess, when urgency and a lack ofknowledge and equipment led to the taking of fantastic risks.... It was, however, a Heroic Age whoseprotagonists remained obscure, since their actions were kept from the public for reasons of security. It wasobviously undesirable to publish reports that might help the enemy to estimate the ability to deal with weapons.”
In the car, driving down to Westbury, Singh had sat in front with Mr. Harts while Miss Morden rode in the backwith Lord Suffolk. The khaki-painted Humber was famous. The mudguards were painted bright signal red—asall bomb disposal travel units were—and at night there was a blue filter over the left sidelight. Two days earlier aman walking near the famous chalk horse on the Downs had been blown up. When engineers arrived at the sitethey discovered that an.other bomb had landed in the middle of the historic location— in the stomach of thegiant white horse of Westbury carved into the rolling chalk hills in 1778. Shortly after this event, all the chalkhorses on the Downs—there were seven—had cam.ouflage nets pegged down over them, not to protect them somuch as stop them being obvious landmarks for bombing raids over England.
From the backseat Lord Suffolk chatted about the migration of robins from the war zones of Europe, the historyof bomb disposal, Devon cream. He was introducing the customs of England to the young Sikh as if it was arecently discovered culture. In spite of being Lord Suffolk he lived in Devon, and until war broke out his passionwas the study of Lorna Doone and how authentic the novel was historically and geographi.cally. Most wintershe spent puttering around the villages of Brandon and Porlock, and he had convinced authorities that Exmoorwas an ideal location for bomb-disposal training. There were twelve men under his command—made up oftalents from various units, sappers and engineers, and Singh was one of them. They were based for most of theweek at Richmond Park in London, being briefed on new methods or working on unexploded bombs whilefallow deer drifted around them. But on weekends they would go down to Ex-moor, where they would continuetraining during the day and afterwards be driven by Lord Suffolk to the church where Lorna Doone was shotduring her wedding ceremony. “Either from this window or from that back door... shot right down the aisle—intoher shoulder. Splendid shot, actually, though of course reprehensible. The villain was chased onto the moors andhad his muscles ripped from his body.” To Singh it sounded like a familiar Indian fable.
Lord Suffolk’s closest friend in the area was a female aviator who hated society but loved Lord Suffolk. Theywent shooting together. She lived in a small cottage in Countisbury on a cliff that overlooked the BristolChannel. Each village they passed in the Humber had its exotica described by Lord Suffolk. “This is the verybest place to buy blackthorn walking sticks.” As if Singh were thinking of stepping into the Tudor corner store inhis uniform and turban to chat casually with the owners about canes. Lord Suffolk was the best of the English, helater told Hana. If there had been no war he would never have roused himself from Countisbury and his retreat,called Home Farm, where he mulled along with the wine, with the flies in the old back laundry, fifty years old,married but essentially bachelor in character, walking thp cliffs each day to visit his aviator friend. He liked tofix things—old laundry tubs and plumbing generators and cooking spits run by a waterwheel. He had beenhelping Miss Swift, the aviator, collect information on the habits of badgers.
The drive to the chalk horse at Westbury was therefore busy with anecdote and information. Even in wartime heknew the best place to stop for tea. He swept into Pamela’s Tea Room, his arm in a sling from an accident withguncotton, and shepherded in his clan—secretary, chauffeur and sapper —as if they were his children. How LordSuffolk had per.suaded the LJXB Committee to allow him to set up his experi.mental bomb disposal outfit noone was sure, but with his background in inventions he probably had more qualifications than most. He was anautodidact, and he believed his mind could read the motives and spirit behind any invention. He had immediatelyinvented the pocket shirt, which allowed fuzes and gadgets to be stored easily by a working sapper.
They drank tea and waited for scones, discussing the in situ defusing of bombs.
“I trust you, Mr. Singh, you know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.” Singh adored him. As far as he was concerned, Lord Suffolk was the first real gentleman he had metin England.
“You know I trust you to do as well as I. Miss Morden will be with you to take notes. Mr. Harts will be fartherback. If you need more equipment or more strength, blow on the police whistle and he will join you. He doesn’tadvise but he under.stands perfectly. If he won’t do something it means he dis.agrees with you, and I’d take hisadvice. But you have total authority on the site. Here is my pistol. The fuzes are probably more sophisticatednow, but you never know, you might be in luck.”
Lord Suffolk was alluding to an incident that had made him famous. He had discovered a method for inhibiting adelayed-action fuze by pulling out his army revolver and firing a bullet through the fuze head, so arresting themovement of the clock body. The method was abandoned when the Germans intro.duced a new fuze in whichthe percussion cap and not the clock was uppermost.
Kirpal Singh had been befriended, and he would never for.get it. So far, half of his time during the war hadtaken place in the slipstream of this lord who had never stepped out of England and planned never to step out ofCountisbury once the war ended. Singh had arrived in England knowing no one, distanced from his family in thePunjab. He was twenty-one years old. He had met no one but soldiers. So that when he read the notice asking forvolunteers with an experimental bomb squad, even though he heard other sappers speak of Lord Suffolk as amadman, he had already decided that in a war you have to take control, and there was a greater chance of choiceand life alongside a personality or an individual.
He was the only Indian among the applicants, and Lord Suffolk was late. Fifteen of them were led into a libraryand asked by the secretary to wait. She remained at the desk, copying out names, while the soldiers joked aboutthe inter.view and the test. He knew no one. He walked over to a wall and stared at a barometer, was about totouch it but pulled back, just putting his face close to it. Very Dry to Fair to Stormy. He muttered the words tohimself with his new Eng.lish pronunciation. “Wery dry. Very dry.” He looked back at the others, peered aroundthe room and caught the gaze of the middle-aged secretary. She watched him sternly. An Indian boy. He smiledand walked towards the bookshelves. Again he touched nothing. At one point he put his nose close to a volumecalled Raymond, or Life and Death by Sir Oliver Hodge.
He found another, similar title. Pierre, or the Ambiguities. He turned and caught the woman’s eyes on him again.
He felt as guilty as if he had put the book in his pocket. She had prob.ably never seen a turban before. TheEnglish! They expect you to fight for them but won’t talk to you. Singh. And the ambiguities.
They met a very hearty Lord Suffolk during lunch, who poured wine for anyone who wanted it, and laughedloudly at every attempt at a joke by the recruits. In the afternoon they were all given a strange exam in which apiece of machinery had to be put back together without any prior information of what it was used for. They wereallowed two hours but could leave as soon as the problem was solved. Singh finished the exam quickly and spentthe rest of the time inventing other objects that could be made from the various components. He sensed he wouldbe admitted easily if it were not for his race. He had come from a country where mathematics and mechan.icswere natural traits. Cars were never destroyed. Parts of them were carried across a village and readapted into asewing machine or water pump. The backseat of a Ford was reuphol-stered and became a sofa. Most people inhis village were more likely to carry a spanner or screwdriver than a pencil. A car’s irrelevant parts thus entereda grandfather clock or irrigation pulley or the spinning mechanism of an office chair. Antidotes to mechanizeddisaster were easily found. One cooled an over.heating car engine not with new rubber hoses but by scooping upcow shit and patting it around the condenser. What he saw in England was a surfeit of parts that would keep theconti.nent of India going for two hundred years.
He was one of three applicants selected by Lord Suffolk. This man who had not even spoken to him (and had notlaughed with him, simply because he had not joked) walked across the room and put his arm around his shoulder.
The severe secretary turned out to be Miss Morden, and she bus.tled in with a tray that held two large glasses ofsherry, handed one to Lord Suffolk and, saying, “I know you don’t drink,” took the other one for herself andraised her glass to him. “Congratulations, your exam was splendid. Though I was sure you would be chosen,even before you took it.”
“Miss Morden is a splendid judge of character. She has a nose for brilliance and character.”
“Character, sir?”
“Yes. It is not really necessary, of course, but we are going to be working together. We are very much a familyhere. Even before lunch Miss Morden had selected you.”
“I found it quite a strain being unable to wink at you, Mr. Singh.”
Lord Suffolk had his arm around Singh again and was walk.ing him to the window.
“I thought, as we do not have to begin till the middle of next week, I’d have some of the unit come down toHome Farm. We can pool our knowledge in Devon and get to know each other. You can drive down with us inthe Humber.”
So he had won passage, free of the chaotic machinery of the war. He stepped into a family, after a year abroad, asif he were the prodigal returned, offered a chair at the table, em.braced with conversations.
It was almost dark when they crossed the border from Som.erset into Devon on the coastal road overlooking theBristol Channel. Mr. Harts turned down the narrow path bordered with heather and rhododendrons, a dark bloodcolour in this last light. The driveway was three miles long.
Apart from the trinity of Suffolk, Morden and Harts, there were six sappers who made up the unit. They walkedthe moors around the stone cottage over the weekend. Miss Morden and Lord Suffolk and his wife were joinedby the aviatrix for the Saturday-night dinner. Miss Swift told Singh she had always wished to fly overland toIndia. Removed from his bar.racks, Singh had no idea of his location. There was a map on a roller high up onthe ceiling. Alone one morning he pulled the roller down until it touched the floor. Countisbury and Area.
Mapped by R. Fones. Drawn by desire of Mr. James Halliday.
“Drawn by desire ...” He was beginning to love the English.
He is with Hana in the night tent when he tells her about the explosion in Erith. A 250-kilogram bomb eruptingas Lord Suffolk attempted to dismantle it. It also killed Mr. Fred Harts and Miss Morden and four sappers LordSuffolk was training. May 1941. Singh had been with Suffolk’s unit for a year. He was working in London thatday with Lieutenant Blackler, clearing the Elephant and Castle area of a Satan bomb. They had worked togetherat defusing the 4,ooo-pound bomb and were exhausted. He remembered halfway through he looked up and saw acouple of bomb disposal officers pointing in his direction and wondered what that was about. It probably meantthey had found another bomb. It was after ten at night and he was dangerously tired. There was another onewaiting for him. He turned back to work.
When they had finished with the Satan he decided to save time and walked over to one of the officers, who hadat first half turned away as if wanting to leave.
“Yes. Where is it?”
The man took his right hand, and he knew something was wrong. Lieutenant Blackler was behind him and theofficer told them what had happened, and Lieutenant Blackler put his hands on Singh’s shoulders and grippedhim.
He drove to Erith. He had guessed what the officer was hesitating about asking him. He knew the man would nothave come there just to tell him of the deaths. They were in a war, after all. It meant there was a second bombsomewhere in the vicinity, probably the same design, and this was the only chance to find out what had gonewrong.
He wanted to do this alone. Lieutenant Blackler would stay in London. They were the last two left of the unit,and it would have been foolish to risk both. If Lord Suffolk had failed, it meant there was something new. Hewanted to do this alone, in any case. When two men worked together there had to be a base of logic. You had toshare and compromise decisions.
He kept everything back from the surface of his emotions during the night drive. To keep his mind clear, theystill had to be alive. Miss Morden drinking one large and stiff whisky before she got to the sherry. In this wayshe would be able to drink more slowly, appear more ladylike for the rest of the evening. “You don’t drink, Mr.
Singh, but if you did, you’d do what I do. One full whisky and then you can sip away like a good courtier.” Thiswas followed by her lazy, gravelly laugh. She was the only woman he was to meet in his life who carried twosilver flasks with her. So she was still drinking, and Lord Suffolk was still nibbling at his Kipling cakes.
The other bomb had fallen half a mile away. Another SC-25okg. It looked like the familiar kind. They haddefused hundreds of them, most by rote. This was the way the war progressed. Every six months or so the enemyaltered some.thing. You learned the trick, the whim, the little descant, and taught it to the rest of the units. Theywere at a new stage now.
He took no one with him. He would just have to remember each step. The sergeant who drove him was a mannamedHardy, and he was to remain by the jeep. It was suggested he wait till the next morning, but he knew they wouldprefer him to do it now. The 250-kilogram SC was too common. If there was an alteration they had to knowquickly. He made them telephone ahead for lights. He didn’t mind working tired, but he wanted proper lights,not just the beams of two jeeps.
When he arrived in Erith the bomb zone was already lit. In daylight, on an innocent day, it would have been afield. Hedges, perhaps a pond. Now it was an arena. Cold, he bor.rowed Hardy’s sweater and put it on top of his.
The lights would keep him warm, anyway. When he walked over to the bomb they were still alive in his mind.
Exam.
With the bright light, the porousness of the metal jumped into precise focus. Now he forgot everything exceptdistrust. Lord Suffolk had said you can have a brilliant chess player at seventeen, even thirteen, who might beat agrand master. But you can never have a brilliant bridge player at that age. Bridge depends on character. Yourcharacter and the character of your opponents. You must consider the character of your enemy. This is true ofbomb disposal. It is two-handed bridge. You have one enemy. You have no partner. Sometimes for my exam Imake them play bridge. People think a bomb is a me.chanical object, a mechanical enemy. But you have toconsider that somebody made it.
The wall of the bomb had been torn open in its fall to earth, and Singh could see the explosive material inside.
He felt he was being watched, and refused to decide whether it was by Suffolk or the inventor of this contraption.
The freshness of the artificial light had revived him. He walked around the bomb, peering at it from every angle.
To remove the fuze, he would have to open the main chamber and get past the explo.sive. He unbuttoned hissatchel and, with a universal key, carefully twisted off the plate at the back of the bomb case. Looking inside hesaw that the fuze pocket had been knocked free of the case. This was good luck—or bad luck; he couldn’t tellyet. The problem was that he didn’t know if the mecha.nism was already at work, if it had already beentriggered. He was on his knees, leaning over it, glad he was alone, back in the world of straightforward choice.
Turn left or turn right. Cut this or cut that. But he was tired, and there was still anger in him.
He didn’t know how long he had. There was more danger in waiting too long. Holding the nose of the cylinderfirm with his boots, he reached in and ripped out the fuze pocket, and lifted it away from the bomb. As soon ashe did this he began to shake. He had got it out. The bomb was essentially harmless now. He put the fuze with itstangled fringe of wires down on the grass; they were clear and brilliant in this light.
He started to drag the main case towards the truck, fifty yards away, where the men could empty it of the rawexplo.sive. As he pulled it along, a third bomb exploded a quarter of a mile away and the sky lit up, makingeven the arc lights seem subtle and human.
An officer gave him a mug of Horlicks, which had some kind of alcohol in it, and he returned alone to the fuzepocket. He inhaled the fumes from the drink.
There was no longer serious danger. If he were wrong, the small explosion would take off his hand. But unless itwas clutched to his heart at the moment of impact he wouldn’t die. The problem was now simply the problem.
The fuze. The new “joke” in the bomb.
He would have to reestablish the maze of wires into its original pattern. He walked back to the officer and askedhim for the rest of the Thermos of the hot drink. Then he returned and sat down again with the fuze. It was aboutone-thirty in the morning. He guessed, he wasn’t wearing a watch. For half an hour he just looked at it with amagnified circle of glass, a sort of monocle that hung off his buttonhole. He bent over and peered at the brass forany hint of other scratches that a clamp might have made. Nothing.
Later he would need distractions. Later, when there was a whole personal history of events and moments in hismind, he would need something equivalent to white sound to burn or bury everything while he thought of theproblems in front of him. The radio or crystal set and its loud band music would come later, a tarpaulin to holdthe rain of real life away from him.
But now he was aware of something in the far distance, like some reflection of lightning on a cloud. Harts andMorden and Suffolk were dead, suddenly just names. His eyes focused back onto the fuze box.
He began to turn the fuze upside down in his mind, con.sidering the logical possibilities. Then turned ithorizontal again. He unscrewed the gaine, bending over, his ear next to it so the scrape of brass was against him.
No little clicks. It came apart in silence. Tenderly he separated the clockwork sections from the fuze and set themdown. He picked up the fuze-pocket tube and peered down into it again. He saw noth.ing. He was about to lay iton the grass when he hesitated and brought it back up to the light. He wouldn’t have noticed anything wrongexcept for the weight. And he would never have thought about the weight if he wasn’t looking for the joke. Allthey did, usually, was listen or look. He tilted the tube carefully, and the weight slipped down toward theopen.ing. It was a second gaine—a whole separate device—to foil any attempt at defusing.
He eased the device out towards him and unscrewed the gaine. There was a white-green flash and the sound of awhip from the device. The second detonator had gone off. He pulled it out and set it beside the other parts on thegrass. He went back to the jeep.
“There was a second gaine,” he muttered. “I was very lucky, being able to pull out those wires. Put a call in toheadquarters and find out if there are other bombs.”
He cleared the soldiers away from the jeep, set up a loose bench there and asked for the arc lights to be trained onit. He bent down and picked up the three components and placed them each a foot apart along the makeshiftbench. He was cold now, and he breathed out a feather of his warmer body air. He looked up. In the distancesome soldiers were still empty.ing out the main explosive. Quickly he wrote down a few notes and handed thesolution for the new bomb to an officer. He didn’t fully understand it, of course, but they would have thisinformation.
When sunlight enters a room where there is a fire, the fire will go out. He had loved Lord Suffolk and his strangebits of information. But his absence here, in the sense that every.thing now depended on Singh, meant Singh’sawareness swelled to all bombs of this variety across the city of London. He had suddenly a map ofresponsibility, something, he real.ized, that Lord Suffolk carried within his character at all times. It was thisawareness that later created the need in him to block so much out when he was working on a bomb. He was oneof those never interested in the choreography of power. He felt uncomfortable in the ferrying back and forth ofplans and solutions. He felt capable only of reconnaissance, of locat.ing a solution. When the reality of the deathof Lord Suffolk came to him, he concluded the work he was assigned to and reenlisted into the anonymousmachine of the army. He was on the troopship Macdonald, which carried a hundred other sappers towards theItalian campaign. Here they were used not just for bombs but for building bridges, clearing debris, setting uptracks for armoured rail vehicles. He hid there for the rest of the war. Few remembered the Sikh who had beenwith Suffolk’s unit. In a year the whole unit was disbanded and forgotten, Lieutenant Blackler being the only oneto rise in the ranks with his talent.
But that night as Singh drove past Lewisham and Black-heath towards Erith, he knew he contained, more thanany other sapper, the knowledge of Lord Suffolk. He was expected to be the replacing vision.
He was still standing at the truck when he heard the whistle that meant they were turning off the arc lights.
Within thirty seconds metallic light had been replaced with sulphur flares in the back of the truck. Another bombraid. These lesser lights could be doused when they heard the planes. He sat down on the empty petrol can facingthe three components he had removed from the SC-25okg, the hisses from the flares around him loud after thesilence of the arc lights.
He sat watching and listening, waiting for them to click. The other men silent, fifty yards away. He knew he wasfor now a king, a puppet master, could order anything, a bucket of sand, a fruit pie for his needs, and those menwho would not cross an uncrowded bar to speak with him when they were off duty would do what he desired. Itwas strange to him. As if he had been handed a large suit of clothes that he could roll around in and whosesleeves would drag behind him. But he knew he did not like it. He was accustomed to his invisibility. In Englandhe was ignored in the various barracks, and he came to prefer that. The self-sufficiency and privacy Hana saw inhim later were caused not just by his being a sapper in the Italian campaign. It was as much a result of being theanonymous member of another race, a part of the invisible world. He had built up defences of character againstall that, trusting only those who befriended him. But that night in Erith he knew he was capable of having wiresattached to him that influenced all around him who did not have his specific talent.
A few months later he had escaped to Italy, had packed the shadow of his teacher into a knapsack, the way hehad seen the green-clothed boy at the Hippodrome do it on his first leave during Christmas. Lord Suffolk andMiss Morden had offered to take him to an English play. He had selected Peter Pan, and they, wordless,acquiesced and went with him to a screaming child-full show. There were such shadows of memory with himwhen he lay in his tent with Hana in the small hill town in Italy.
Revealing his past or qualities of his character would have been too loud a gesture. Just as he could never turnand in.quire of her what deepest motive caused this relationship. He held her with the same strength of love hefelt for those three strange English people, eating at the same table with them, who had watched his delight andlaughter and wonder when the green boy raised his arms and flew into the darkness high above the stage,returning to teach the young girl in the earth-bound family such wonders too.
In the flare-lit darkness of Erith he would stop whenever planes were heard, and one by one the sulphur torcheswere sunk into buckets of sand. He would sit in the droning dark.ness, moving the seat so he could lean forwardand place his ear close to the ticking mechanisms, still timing the clicks, trying to hear them under the throb ofthe German bombers above him.
Then what he had been waiting for happened. After exactly one hour, the timer tripped and the percussion capexploded. Removing the main gaine had released an unseen striker that activated the second, hidden gaine. It hadbeen set to explode sixty minutes later—long after a sapper would normally have assumed the bomb was safelydefused.
This new device would change the whole direction of Allied bomb disposal. From now on, every delayed-actionbomb would carry the threat of a second gaine. It would no longer be possible for sappers to deactivate a bombby simply removing the fuze. Bombs would have to be neutralized with the fuze intact. Somehow, earlier on,surrounded by arc lights, and in his fury, he had withdrawn the sheared second fuze out of the booby trap. In thesulphureous darkness under the bombing raid he witnessed the white-green flash the size of his hand. One hourlate. He had survived only with luck. He walked back to the officer and said, “I need another fuze to make sure.”
They lit the flares around him again. Once more light poured into his circle of darkness. He kept testing the newfuzes for two more hours that night. The sixty-minute delay proved to be consistent.
He was in Erith most of that night. In the morning he woke up to find himself back in London. He could notremember being driven back. He woke up, went to a table and began to sketch the profile of the bomb, thegaines, the detonators, the whole ZUS-40 problem, from the fuze up to the locking rings. Then he covered thebasic drawing with all the possible lines of attack to defuse it. Every arrow drawn exactly, the text written outclear the way he had been taught.
What he had discovered the night before held true. He had survived only through luck. There was no possibleway to defuse such a bomb in situ without just blowing it up. He drew and wrote out everything he knew on thelarge blueprint sheet. At the bottom he wrote: Drawn by desire of Lord Suffolk, by his student Lieutenant KirpalSingh, 10 May 1941.
He worked flat-out, crazily, after Suffolk’s death. Bombs were altering fast, with new techniques and devices. Hewas barracked in Regent’s Park with Lieutenant Blackler and three other specialists, working on solutions,blueprinting each new bomb as it came in.
In twelve days, working at the Directorate of Scientific Re.search, they came up with the answer. Ignore thefuze en.tirely. Ignore the first principle, which until then was “de.fuse the bomb.” It was brilliant. They were alllaughing and applauding and hugging each other in the officers’ mess. They didn’t have a clue what thealternative was, but they knew in the abstract they were right. The problem would not be solved by embracing it.
That was Lieutenant Blackler’s line. “If you are in a room with a problem don’t talk to it.” An offhand remark.
Singh came towards him and held the statement from another angle. “Then we don’t touch the fuze at all.”
Once they came up with that, someone worked out the solution in a week. A steam sterilizer. One could cut ahole into the main case of a bomb, and then the main explosive could be emulsified by an injection of steam anddrained away. That solved that for the time being. But by then he was on a ship to Italy.
“There is always yellow chalk scribbled on the side of bombs. Have you noticed that? Just as there was yellowchalk scrib.bled onto our bodies when we lined up in the Lahore court.yard.
“There was a line of us shuffling forward slowly from the street into the medical building and out into thecourtyard as we enlisted. We were signing up. A doctor cleared or rejected our bodies with his instruments,explored our necks with his hands. The tongs slid out of Dettol and picked up parts of our skin.
“Those accepted filled up the courtyard. The coded results written onto our skin with yellow chalk. Later, in thelineup, after a brief interview, an Indian officer chalked more yellow onto the slates tied around our necks. Ourweight, age, dis.trict, standard of education, dental condition and what unit we were best suited for.
“I did not feel insulted by this. I am sure my brother would have been, would have walked in fury over to thewell, hauled up the bucket, and washed the chalk markings away. I was not like him. Though I loved him.
Admired him. I had this side to my nature which saw reason in all things. I was the one who had an earnest andserious air at school, which he would imitate and mock. You understand, of course, I was far less serious than hewas, it was just that I hated confrontation. It didn’t stop me doing whatever I wished or doing things the way Iwanted to. Quite early on I had discovered the over.looked space open to those of us with a silent life. I didn’targue with the policeman who said I couldn’t cycle over a certain bridge or through a specific gate in the fort—Ijust stood there, still, until I was invisible, and then I went through. Like a cricket. Like a hidden cup of water.
You understand? That is what my brother’s public battles taught me.
“But to me my brother was always the hero in the family. I was in the slipstream of his status as firebrand. Iwitnessed his exhaustion that came after each protest, his body gearing up to respond to this insult or that law.
He broke the tradition of our family and refused, in spite of being the oldest brother, to join the army. He refusedto agree to any situation where the English had power. So they dragged him into their jails.
In the Lahore Central Prison. Later the Jatnagar jail. Lying back on his cot at night, his arm raised within plaster,broken by his friends to protect him, to stop him trying to escape. In jail he became serene and devious. Morelike me. He was not insulted when he heard I had signed up to replace him in the enlistment, no longer to be adoctor, he just laughed and sent a message through our father for me to be careful. He would never go to waragainst me or what I did. He was confident that I had the trick of survival, of being able to hide in silent places.”
He is sitting on the counter in the kitchen talking with Hana. Caravaggio breezes through it on his way out,heavy ropes swathed over his shoulders, which are his own personal business, as he says when anyone asks him.
He drags them behind him and as he goes out the door says, “The English patient wants to see you, boyo.”
“Okay, boyo.” The sapper hops off the counter, his Indian accent slipping over into the false Welsh ofCaravaggio.
“My father had a bird, a small swift I think, that he kept beside him, as essential to his comfort as a pair ofspectacles or a glass of water during a meal. In the house, even if he just was entering his bedroom he carried itwith him. When he went to work the small cage hung off the bicycle’s handlebars.”
“Is your father still alive?”
“Oh, yes. I think. I’ve not had letters for some time. And it is likely that my brother is still in jail.”
He keeps remembering one thing. He is in the white horse. He feels hot on the chalk hill, the white dust of itswirling up all around him. He works on the contraption, which is quite straightforward, but for the first time heis working alone. Miss Morden sits twenty yards above him, higher up the slope, taking notes on what he isdoing. He knows that down and across the valley Lord Suffolk is watching through the glasses.
He works slowly. The chalk dust lifts, then settles on every.thing, his hands, the contraption, so he has to blow itoff the fuze caps and wires continually to see the details. It is hot in the tunic. He keeps putting his sweatingwrists behind himself to wipe them on the back of his shirt. All the loose and re.moved parts fill the variouspockets across his chest. He is tired, checking things repetitively. He hears Miss Morden’s voice. “Kip?” “Yes.”
“Stop what you’re doing for a while, I’m coming down.” “You’d better not, Miss Morden.” “Of course I can.”
He does up the buttons on his various vest pockets and lays a cloth over the bomb; she clambers down into thewhite horse awkwardly and then sits next to him and opens up her satchel. She douses a lace handkerchief withthe contents of a small bottle of eau de cologne and passes it to him. “Wipe your face with this. Lord Suffolkuses it to refresh himself.” He takes it tentatively and at her suggestion dabs his forehead and neck and wrists.
She unscrews the Thermos and pours each of them some tea. She unwraps oil paper and brings out strips ofKipling cake.
She seems to be in no hurry to go back up the slope, back to safety. And it would seem rude to remind her thatshe should return. She simply talks about the wretched heat and the fact that at least they have booked rooms intown with baths at.tached, which they can all look forward to. She begins a ram.bling story about how she metLord Suffolk. Not a word about the bomb beside them. He had been slowing down, the way one, half asleep,continually rereads the same paragraph, trying to find a connection between sentences. She has pulled him out ofthe vortex of the problem. She packs up her satchel carefully, lays a hand on his right shoulder and returns to herposition on the blanket above the Westbury horse. She leaves him some sunglasses, but he cannot see clearlyenough through them so he lays them aside. Then he goes back to work. The scent of eau de cologne. Heremembers he had smelled it once as a child. He had a fever and someone had brushed it onto his body.