VII In Situ

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    WESTBURY, ENGLAND, KIRPAL SINGH STOOD where the bbr>藏书网</abbr>horse’s saddle would have lain across its back. At first he simply stood on the back of the horse, paused and waved to those he could not see but who he knew would be watg. Lord Suffolk watched him through binoculars, saw the young man wave, both arms up and swaying.

    Then he desded, down into the giant white chalk horse of Westbury, into the whiteness of the horse, carved into the hill.

    Now he was a black figure, the background radicalizing the darkness of his skin and his khaki uniform. If the focus on the binoculars was exact, Lord Suffolk would see the thin line of crimson lanyard on Singh’s shoulder that signalled his sapper unit. To them it would look like he was striding doer map cut out in the shape of an animal. But Singh was scious only of his boots scuffing the rough white chalk as he moved down the slope.

    Miss Morden, behind him, was also ing slowly down the hill, a satchel over her shoulder, aiding herself with a rolled umbrella. She stopped te above the horse, unfurled the umbrella and sat within its shade. Then she opened up her notebooks.

    “ 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 into the distand, 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 bee in a barracks at Woolwich. In his three months there he had met only other Indians and English officers. A woman would reply to a question in the NAAFI teen, but versations with women lasted only two or three sentences.

    He was the sed son. The oldest son would go into the army, the  brother would be a doctor, a brother after that would bee a businessman. An old tradition in his family. But all that had ged with the war. He joined a Sikh regiment andwas shipped to England. After the first months in London he had volunteered himself into a unit of engihat had bee up to deal with delayed-a and unex-ploded bombs. The word from on high in  was naive: “Unexploded bombs are sidered the responsibility of the Home Office, whreed that they should be collected by A.R.P. wardens and polid delivered to ve dumps, where members of the armed forces will in due course detohem.” It was not until  that the War Office took over responsibility for bomb disposal, and then, in turn, ha over to the Royal Engineers. Twenty-five bomb disposal units were set up. They lacked teical equipment and had in their possession only hammers, chisels and road-mending tools. There were no specialists.

    A bomb is a bination of the following parts:

    A tainer or bomb case.

    . Afuze.

    . An initiating charge, aine.

    . A main charge of high explosive.

    . Superstrualfittings—fins, lifting lugs, ks, etc.

    Eighty pert of bombs dropped by airplanes over Britaihin-walled, general-purpose bombs. They usually ranged from a hundred pounds to a thousand. A ,ooo-pound bomb was called a “Hermann” or an “Esau.” A ,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, he ehe maze of a der alongside the picric acid and the gaine and the densers until he reached the fuze deep within the main body. Then he was suddenly awake.

    When a 藏书网bomb hit a target, the resistance caused a trembler to activate and ighe flash pellet in the fuze. The minute explosion would leap into the gaine, causing the penthrite wax to detohis set off the picric acid, whi turn caused the main filling of TNT, amatol and aluminized powder, to explode. The journey from trembler to explosion lasted a microsed.

    The most dangerous bombs were those dropped from low altitudes, which were not activated until they had lahese unexploded bombs buried themselves in cities and fields and remained dormant until their trembler tacts were disturbed—by a farmer’s stick, a car wheel’s he bounce of a tennis ball against the g—and then they would explode.

    Singh was moved by lorry with the other voluo the research department in Woolwich. This was a time when the casualty rate in bomb disposal units allingly high, sidering how few unexploded bombs there were. In , 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 , unexploded bombs to be dealt with.

    Roads were closed, factories deserted. By September the number of live bombs had reached ,. One hundred new bomb squads were set up, but there was still no uanding of how the bombs worked. Life expe these units was ten weeks.

    “This was a Heroic Age of bomb disposal, a period of individual prowess, when urgend a lack of knowledge and equipmeo the taking of fantastic risks.... It was, however, a Heroic Age whose protagonists remained obscure, siheir as were kept from the public for reasons of security. It was obviously undesirable to publish reports that might help the eo estimate the ability to deal with ons.”  In the car, driving down to Westbury, Singh had sat in front with Mr. Harts while Miss Morden rode in the back with Lord Suffolk. The khaki-painted Humber was famous. The mudguards were painted bright signal red—as all bomb disposal travel units were—and at night there was a blue filter over the left sidelight. Two days earlier a man walkihe famous chalk horse on the Downs had been blown up. When engineers arrived at the site they discovered that another bomb had landed in the middle of the historic location— iomach of the giant white horse of Westbury carved into the rolling chalk hills in

    Shortly after this event, all the chalk horses on the Downs—there were seven—had camouflage s pegged dowhem, not to protect them so much as stop them being obvious landmarks for bombing raids land.

    From the backseat Lord Suffolk chatted about the migration of robins from the war zones of Europe, the history of bomb disposal, Devon cream. He was introdug the s of England to the young Sikh as if it was a retly discovered culture. In spite of being Lord Suffolk he lived in Devon, and until war broke out his passion was the study of Lorna Doone and how authentic the novel was historically and geographically. Most winters he spent puttering around the villages of Brandon and Porlock, and he had vinced authorities that Exmoor was an ideal location for bomb-disposal training. There were twelve men under his and—made up of talents from various units, sappers and engineers, and Singh was one of them. They were based for most of the week at Rid Park in London, being briefed on new methods or w on unexploded bombs while fallow deer drifted around them. But on weekends they would go down to Ex-moor, where they would tiraining during the day and afterwards be driven by Lord Suffolk to the church where Lorna Doone was shot during her wedding ceremony. “Either from this window or from that back door... shht down the aisle—into her shoulder.

    Splendid shot, actually, though of course reprehensible. The villain was chased onto the moors and had 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. They went shooting together. She lived in a small cottage in tisbury on a cliff that overlooked the Bristol el. Each village they passed in the Humber had its exotica described by Lord Suffolk. “This is the very best place to buy blackthorn walking sticks.” As if Singh were thinking of stepping into the Tudor er store in his uniform and turban to chat casually with the owners about es. Lord Suffolk was the best of the English, he later told Hana. If there had been no war he would never have roused himself from tisbury 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 to fix things—old laundry tubs and plumbing geors and cooking spits run by a waterwheel. He had beenhelping Miss Swift, the aviator, colleformation on the habits of badgers.

    The drive to the chalk horse at Westbury was therefore busy with ae and information. Even in wartime he khe best place to stop for tea. He swept into Pamela’s Tea Room, his arm in a sling from an act with guncotton, and shepherded in his —secretary, chauffeur and sapper —as if they were his children. How Lord Suffolk had persuaded the LJXB ittee to allow him to set up his experimental bomb disposal outfit no one was sure, but with his background in iions he probably had more qualifications than most. He was an autodidact, and he believed his mind could read the motives and spirit behind any iion. He had immediately ied the pocket shirt, which allowed fuzes and gadgets to be stored easily by a w sapper.

    They drank tea and waited for ses, 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 ed, Lord Suffolk was the first real gentleman he had met in 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 farther back. If you need more equipment or more strength, blow on the police whistle and he will join you. He doesn’t advise but he uands perfectly. If he won’t do something it means he disagrees with you, and I’d take his advice. But you have total authority oe. Here is my pistol. The fuzes are probably more sophisticated now, but you never know, you might be in luck.” Lord Suffolk was alluding to an ihat had made him famous. He had discovered a method for inhibiting a delayed-a fuze by pulling out his army revolver and firing a bullet through the fuze head, so arresting the movement of the clock body. The method was abandoned when the Germans introduced a new fuze in which the percussion cap and not the clock permost.

    Kirpal Singh had been befriended, and he would never fet it. So far, half of his time during the war had taken pla the slipstream of this lord who had epped out of England and planned o step out of tisbury ohe war ended.

    Singh had arrived in England knowing no one, distanced from his family in the Punjab. He was twenty-one years old. He had met no o soldiers. So that when he read the notice asking for volunteers with an experimental bomb squad, even though he heard other sappers speak of Lord Suffolk as a madman, he had already decided that in a war you have to take trol, and there was a greater ce of choid life alongside a personality or an individual.

    He was the only Indian among the applits, and Lord Suffolk was late. Fifteen of them were led into a library and asked by the secretary to wait. She remai the desk, copying out names, while the soldiers joked about the interview and the test.

    He knew no one. He walked over to a wall and stared at a barometer, was about to touch it but pulled back, just putting his face close to it. Very Dry to Fair to Stormy. He muttered the words to himself with his new English pronunciation. “Wery dry. Very dry.” He looked back at the others, peered around the room and caught the gaze of the middle-aged secretary. She watched him sternly. An Indian boy. He smiled and walked towards the bookshelves. Agaiouched nothing. At one poi his nose close to a volume called Raymond, or Life ah 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 probably never seen a turban before. The English! 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 wa, and laughed loudly at every attempt at a joke by the recruits. Iernoon they were all given a strange exam in which a pieaery had to be put back together without any prior information of what it was used for. They were allowed two hours but could leave as soon as the problem was solved. Singh fihe exam quickly and spent the rest of the time iing other objects that could be made from the various pos. He sensed he would be admitted easily if it were not for his race. He had e from a try where mathematid meics were natural traits. Cars were never destroyed. Parts of them were carried across a village and readapted into a sewing mae or water pump. The backseat of a Ford was reuphol-stered and became a sofa.

    Most people in his village were more likely to carry a spanner or screwdriver than a pencil. A car’s irrelevant parts thus entered a grandfather clock ation pulley or the spinning meism of an office chair. Antidotes to meized disaster were easily found. One cooled an overheating car e with new rubber hoses but by scooping up cow shit and patting it around the denser. What he saw in England was a surfeit of parts that would keep the ti of India going for two hundred years.

    He was one of three applits selected by Lord Suffolk. This man who had not even spoken to him (and had not laughed 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 bustled in with a tray that held twlasses of sherry, handed oo Lord Suffolk and, saying, “I know you don’t drink,” took the other one for herself and raised her glass to him. “gratulations, your exam lendid. 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 brilliand character.” “Character, sir?” “Yes. It is not really necessary, of course, but we are going to be w together. We are very much a family here. Even before lunch Miss Morden had selected you.” “I found it quite a strain being uo wink at you, Mr. Singh.” Lord Suffolk had his arm around Singh again and was walking him to the window.

    “I thought, as we do not have to begin till the middle of  week, I’d have some of the unit e down to Home Farm. ool our knowledge in Devon ao know each other. You  drive down with us in the Humber.”  So he had won passage, free of the chaotic maery of the war. He stepped into a family, after a year abroad, as if he were the prodigal returned, offered a chair at the table, embraced with versations.

    It was almost dark when they crossed the border from Somerset into Devon on the coastal road overlooking the Bristol el. Mr. Harts turned down the narrow path bordered with heather and rhododendrons, a dark blood colour 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 walked the moors around the stotage over the weekend. Miss Morden and Lord Suffolk and his wife were joined by the aviatrix for the Saturday-night dinner. Miss Swift told Singh she had always wished to fly overland to India. Removed from his barracks, Singh had no idea of his location. There  on a rh up on the ceiling. Alone one m he pulled the roller down until it touched the floor. tisbury 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 wheells her about the explosion ih. A -kilogram bomb erupting as Lord Suffolk attempted to disma. It also killed Mr. Fred Harts and Miss Morden and four sappers Lord Suffolk was training.

    May

    Singh had been with Suffolk’s unit for a year. He was w in London that day with Lieutenant Blackler, clearing the Elephant and Castle area of a Satan bomb. They had worked together at defusing the ,ooo-pound bomb and were exhausted. He remembered halfway through he looked up and saw a couple of bomb disposal officers pointing in his dire and wondered what that was about. It probably meant they had found another bomb. It was after ten at night and he was dangerously tired. There was another one waiting 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 had at 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 the officer told them what had happened, and Lieutenant Blackler put his hands on Singh’s shoulders and gripped him.

    He drove to Erith. He had guessed what the officer was hesitating about asking him. He khe man would not have e there just to tell him of the deaths. They were in a war, after all. It meant there was a sed bomb somewhere in the viity, probably the same design, and this was the only ce to find out what had gone wrong.

    He wao 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. He wao do this alone, in any case. When two men worked together there had to be a base of logic. You had to share and promise decisions.

    He kept everything back from the surface of his emotions during the night drive. To keep his mind clear, they still had to be alive. Miss Morden drinking one large and stiff whisky before she got to the sherry. In this way she 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  sip away like a good courtier.” This was followed by her lazy, gravelly laugh. She was the only woman he was to meet in his life who carried two silver 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-okg. It looked like the familiar kind. They had defused hundreds of them, most by rote. This was the way the rogressed. Every six months or so the enemy altered something. You learhe trick, the whim, the little dest, and taught it to the rest of the units. They were at a age now.

    He took no oh him. He would just have to remember each step. The sergeant who drove him was a man named Hardy, and he was to remain by the jeep. It was suggested he wait till the  m, but he khey would prefer him to do it now. The -kilogram SC was too on. If there was an alteration they had to know quickly. He made them telephone ahead fhts. He didn’t mind w tired, but he wanted prhts, not just the beams of two jeeps.

    When he arrived ih the bomb zone was already lit. In daylight, on an i day, it would have been a field. Hedges, perhaps a pond. Now it was an arena. Cold, he borrowed 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 fot everything except distrust. Lord Suffolk had said you  have a brilliant chess player at seventeen, even thirteen, who might beat a grand master. But you ever have a brilliant bridge player at that age. Bridge depends on character. Your character and the character of your oppos. You must sider the character of your enemy. This is true of bomb disposal. It is two-handed bridge. You have one enemy. You have no partner. Sometimes for my exam I make them play bridge. People think a bomb is a meical object, a meical enemy. But you have to sider 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 ior of this traption. The freshness of the artificial light had revived him. He walked around the bomb, peering at it from every ao remove the fuze, he would have to open the main chamber a past the explosive. He unbuttoned his satchel and, with a universal key, carefully twisted off the plate at the back of the bomb case. Looking inside he saw that the fuze pocket had been knocked free of the case. This was good luck—or bad luck; he couldn’t tell yet. The problem was that he didn’t know if the meism was already at work, if it had already been triggered. He was on his knees, leaning over it, glad he was alone, ba the world of straightforward choice. Tur 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 der firm with his boots, he reached in and ripped out the fuze pocket, and lifted it away from the bomb. As soon as he did this he began to shake.

    He had got it out. The bomb was essentially harmless now. He put the fuze with its tangled fringe of wires down on the grass; they were clear and brilliant in this light.

    He started t the main case towards the truck, fifty yards away, where the men could empty it of the raw explosive. As he pulled it along, a third bomb exploded a quarter of a mile away and the sky lit up, making even the arc lights seem subtle and human.

    An officer gave him a mug of Horlicks, which had some kind of alcohol in it, aurned aloo the fuze pocket. He ihe fumes from the drink.

    There was no longer serious danger. If he were wrong, the small explosion would take off his hand. But unless it was 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 inal pattern. He walked back to the officer and asked him for the rest of the Thermos of the hot drink. Theurned and sat down again with the fuze. It was about ohirty in the m.

    He guessed, he wasn’t wearing a watch. For half an hour he just looked at it with a magnified circle of glass, a sort of mohat hung off his buttonhole. He bent over and peered at the brass for any hint of other scratches that a clamp might have made.

    Nothing.

    Later he would need distras. Later, when there was a whole personal history of events and moments in his mind, he would need something equivalent to white sound to burn or bury everything while he thought of the problems in front of him.

    The radio or crystal set and its loud band music would e later, a tarpaulin to hold the rain of real life away from him.

    But now he was aware of something in the far distance, like some refle of lightning on a cloud. Harts and Morden and Suffolk were dead, suddenly just names. His eyes focused bato the fuze box.

    He began to turn the fuze upside down in his mind, sidering the logical possibilities. Then tur horizontal again. He unscrewed the gaine, bending over, his ear o it so the scrape of brass was against him. No little clicks. It came apart in sileenderly he separated the clockwork ses from the fuze ahem down. He picked up the fuze-pocket tube and peered down into it again. He saw nothing. He was about to lay it on the grass when he hesitated and brought it back up to the light. He wouldn’t have noticed anything wrong except for the weight. And he would never have thought about the weight if he wasn’t looking for the joke. All they did, usually, was listen or look. He tilted the tube carefully, and the weight slipped down toward the opening. It was a sed gaine—a whole separate device—to foil any attempt at defusing.

    He eased the device out towards him and unscrewed the gaihere was a white-green flash and the sound of a whip from the device. The sed detonator had gone off. He pulled it out a beside the other parts on the grass. He went back to the jeep.

    “There was a sed gaine,” he muttered. “I was very lucky, being able to pull out those wires. Put a call in to headquarters 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 on it. He bent doicked up the three pos and placed them each a foot apart along the makeshift bench. He was cold now, and he breathed out a feather of his warmer body air. He looked up. In the distane soldiers were still emptying out the main explosive. Quickly he wrote down a few notes and hahe solution for the new bomb to an officer. He didn’t fully uand it, of course, but they would have this information.

    When sunlight enters a room where there is a fire, the fire will go out. He had loved Lord Suffolk and his stras of information. But his absence here, in the sehat everything now depended on Singh, meant Singh’s awareness swelled to all bombs of this variety across the city of London. He had suddenly a map of responsibility, something, he realized, that Lord Suffolk carried within his character at all times. It was this awarehat later created the need in him to blouch out when he was w on a bomb. He was one of those never ied in the chraphy of power. He felt unfortable in the ferrying bad forth of plans and solutions. He felt capable only of reaissance, of log a solution. When the reality of the death of Lord Suffolk came to him, he cluded the work he was assigo and reenlisted into the anonymous mae of the army. He was oroopship Maald, which carried a huher sappers towards the Italian campaighey were used not just for bombs but for building bridges, clearing debris, setting up tracks for armoured rail vehicles. He hid there for the rest of the war. Few remembered the Sikh who had been with Suffolk’s unit. In a year the whole unit was disbanded and fotten, Lieutenant Blackler being the only oo rise in the ranks with his talent.

    But that night as Singh drove past Lewisham and Black-heath towards Erith, he knew he tained, more than any other sapper, the knowledge of Lord Suffolk. He was expected to be the replag vision.

    He was still standing at the truck when he heard the whistle that meant they were turning off the arc lights. Within thirty seds metallic light had been replaced with sulphur flares in the back of the truck. Another bomb raid. These lesser lights could be doused when they heard the planes. He sat down on the empty petrol  fag the three pos he had removed from the SC-okg, the hisses from the flares around him loud after the silence of the arc lights.

    He sat watg and listening, waiting for them to click. The other men silent, fifty yards away. He knew he was for now a king, a puppet master, could order anything, a bucket of sand, a fruit pie for his needs, and those men who would not cross an uncrowded bar to speak with him when they were off duty would do what he desired. It was strao him. As if he had been handed a large suit of clothes that he could roll around in and whose sleeves would drag behind him. But he knew he did not like it. He was aced to his invisibility. In England he was ignored in the various barracks, and he came to prefer that.

    The self-su<var></var>ffid privacy Hana saw in him later were caused not just by his being a sapper ialian campaign. It was as much a result of being the anonymous member of another race, a part of the invisible world. He had built up defences of character against all that, trusting only those who befriended him. But that night ih he knew he was capable of having wires attached 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 he had seen the green-clothed boy at the Hippodrome do it on his first leave during Christmas. Lord Suffolk and Miss Morden had offered to take him to an English play. He had selected Peter Pan, and they, wordless, acquiesced a with him to a screaming child-full show. There were such shadows of memory with him when 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 urn and inquire of her what deepest motive caused this relationship. He held her with the same strength of love he felt for those three strange English people, eating at the same table with them, who had watched his delight and laughter and wonder when the green boyraised his arms and flew into the darkness high above the stage, returning to teach the young girl in the earth-bound family such wooo.

    In the flare-lit darkness of Erith he would stop whenever planes were heard, and one by ohe sulphur torches were sunk into buckets of sand. He would sit in the droning darkness, moving the seat so he could lean forward and place his ear close to the tig meisms, still timing the clicks, trying to hear them uhe throb of the German bombers above him.

    Then what he had been waiting for happened. After exactly one hour, the timer tripped and the percussion cap exploded.

    Removing the main gaine had released an uriker that activated the sed, hidden gai had beeo explode sixty minutes later—long after a sapper would normally have assumed the bomb was safely defused.

    This new device would ge the whole dire of Allied bomb disposal. From now on, every delayed-a bomb would carry the threat of a sed gai would no longer be possible for sappers to deactivate a bomb by simply removing the fuze. Bombs would have to be ralized with the fuze intact. Somehow, earlier on, surrounded by arc lights, and in his fury, he had withdrawn the sheared sed fuze out of the booby trap. In the sulphureous darkness uhe bombing raid he withe white-green flash the size of his hand. One hour late. 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 new fuzes for two more hours that night. The sixty-minute delay proved to be sistent.

    He was ih most of that night. In the m he woke up to find himself ba London. He could not remember being driven back. He woke up, went to a table and began to sketch the profile of the bomb, the gaihe detonators, the whole ZUS- problem, from the fuze up to the log rings. Then he covered the basic drawing with all the possible lines of attack to defuse it. Every arrow drawly, the text written out clear the way he had been taught.

    What he had discovered the night before held true. He had survived only through luck. There was no possible way to defuse such a bomb in situ without just blowing it up. He drew and wrote out everything he knew on the large blueprint sheet. At the bottom he wrote: Drawn by desire of Lord Suffolk, by his student Lieutenant Kirpal Singh,  May

    He worked flat-out, crazily, after Suffolk’s death. Bombs were altering fast, with eiques and devices. He was barracked i’s Park with Lieutenant Blackler and three other specialists, w on solutions, blueprinting eaew bomb as it came in.

    In twelve days, w at the Directorate of Stific Research, they came up with the answer. Ighe fuze entirely.

    Ighe first principle, whitil then was “defuse the bomb.” It was brilliant. They were all laughing and applauding and hugging each other in the officers’ mess. They didn’t have a clue what the alternative was, but they knew in the abstract they were right. The problem would not be solved by embrag 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 ahe statement from anle. “Then we don’t touch the fuze at all.” Ohey came up with that, someone worked out the solution in a week. A steam sterilizer. One could cut a hole into the main case of a bomb, and then the main explosive could be emulsified by an iion of steam and drained 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 yellow chalk scrib-bled onto our bodies when we lined up in the Lahore courtyard.

    “There was a line of us shuffling forward slowly from the street into the medical building and out into the courtyard 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 the lineup, after a brief interview, an Indian officer chalked more yellow onto the slates tied around our necks. Our weight, age, district, standard of educatioal dition 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 the well, 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 ear and serious air at school, which he would imitate and mock. You uand, of course, I was far less serious than he was, it was just that I hated frontation. It didn’t stop me doing whatever I wished or doing things the way I wao. Quite early on I had discovered the overlooked space open to those of us with a silent life. I didn’t argue with the poli who said I couldn’t cycle over a certain bridge or through a specific gate in the fort—I just stood there, still, until I was invisible, and then I went through. Like a cricket. Like a hidden cup of water. You uand? 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. I witnessed 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 refused to agree to any situatiohe English had power. So they dragged him into their jails.

    In the Lahore tral Prison. Later the Jatnagar jail. Lying ba 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. More like me. He was not insulted when he heard I had signed up to replace him in the enlistment, no loo be a doctor, he just laughed a a message through our father for me to be careful. He would never go tainst me or what I did. He was fident that I had the trick of survival, of being able to hide in silent places.” He is sitting on the ter i 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 ter, his Indian at slipping over into the false Welsh of Caravaggio.

    “My father had a bird, a small swift I think, that he kept beside him, as essential to his fort as a pair of spectacles lass of water during a meal. In the house, even if he just was entering his bedroom he carried it with 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 ohing. He is in the white horse. He feels hot on the chalk hill, the white dust of it swirling up all around him. He works on the traption, which is quite straightforward, but for the first time he is w alone. Miss Morden sits twenty yards above him, higher up the slope, taking notes on what he is doing. He knows that down and across the valley Lord Suffolk is watg through the glasses.

    He works slowly. The chalk dust lifts, theles ohing, his hands, the traption, so he has to blow it off the fuze caps and wires tinually to see the details. It is hot iunic. He keeps putting hi<mark></mark>s sweating wrists behind himself to wipe them on the back of his shirt. All the loose and removed parts fill the various pockets across his chest. He is tired, cheg things repetitively. He hears Miss Morden’s voice. “Kip?” “Yes.” “Stop what you’re doing for a while, I’m ing down.” “You’d better not, Miss Morden.” “Of course I .” He does up the buttons on his various vest pockets and lays a cloth over the bomb; she clambers down into the white horse awkwardly and then sits o him and opens up her satchel. She douses a lace handkerchief with the tents of a small bottle of eau de cologne and passes it to him. “Wipe your face with this. Lord Suffolk uses it to refresh himself.” He takes it tentatively and at her suggestion dabs his forehead and ned wrists. She uhe Thermos and pours each of them some tea. She uns oil paper and brings out strips of Kipling cake.

    She seems to be in no hurry to go back up the slope, back to safety. And it would seem rude to remihat she should return. She simply talks about the wretched heat and the fact that at least they have booked rooms in town with baths attached, which they  all look forward to. She begins a rambling story about how she met Lord Suffolk. Not a word about the bomb beside them. He had been slowing down, the way one, half asleep, tinually rereads the same paragraph, trying to find a e betweeences. She has pulled him out of the vortex of the problem. She packs up her satchel carefully, lays a hand on his right shoulder aurns to her position on the bla above the Westbury horse. She leaves him some sunglasses, but he ot see clearly enough through them so he lays them aside. Then he goes back to work. The st of eau de cologne. He remembers he had smelled it once as a child. He had a fever and someone had brushed it onto his body.

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