A Soldier Erect: or Further Adventures of the Hand-Reared Boy

‘Stop talking shit and come and have a shafti at this stall,’ Wally called. Mention of any god annoyed him; he was a fervent atheist. Wally came from Dagenham, where he was a car-worker like his father, and we gathered that if God ever had the cheek to enter the factory, every manjack would have downed tools at once and walked out on strike.

‘Why don’t you pack in ordering us about, Wally?’ I asked, but Geordie was already on the move, in his submissive way.

Geordie and I made our way over a plank bridge spanning an open sewer to see what Wally was up to. He was standing in front of a wooden stall decked with magazines and pictures, mostly sugary ones of Indian film stars. Behind the little counter sat the owner, dressed in white and nodding and smiling at us, indicating his stock with a graciously inclined hand.

‘Hello, young masters, come to see what you are liking just now to buy very much! Yevery thing all at very cheapest prices, young masters, for suit the pocket. If you are looking pretty magazines with photographs of young ladies in the Yinglish language, I have very plenty what is to your likings.’

Ignoring him, Wally pointed to some pictures hanging from the beams of the stall. Each picture portrayed one fantastic personage. Their bright colours suggested that they were posters.

‘What a bunch of fucking savages!’ Wally said. ‘You were talking about their gods – well, there they are, and a right old bunch they look! You notice this cove don’t have no pictures of Winston Churchill here!’

‘You like the pictures, sahib? I hold light for you to make the close observation. Yeach and yevery one a Hindu god and lady-god!’

As we stared, Wally pointed with particular venom at one of the posters. ‘Look at this bastard here! What do you make of him, pulling his own guts out by the fucking yard! Wyhyrr, makes you want to spew up!’

He was stabbing his finger at a splendid and terrifying green figure with the face of a monkey. The monkey wore a crown and the elaborate and stiff golden garments of a prince. The garments were undone. The monkey was ripping his body apart from throat to pelvis, revealing a generalized mass of pink and red entrails. His face was distorted by something between pain and ecstasy.

‘Christ-on-fucking-crutches!’ exclaimed Geordie. ‘Them blaspheming bastards! I mean to say, anyroad, it’s bloody cruel, like, even in a fucking picture.’

‘Yes, yes, very terrible scene,’ agreed the stall-keeper, smiling from one to the other of us. ‘This is a depiction of Hanuman, young gentlemen, who fought for Rama and also Rama’s beautiful wife, the lady Siva. He is also called the Monkey God.’

‘He’s marvellous in a revolting way,’ I said. ‘What did he do?’

‘Sahib, Hanuman is fighting for the lady Siva when she is keeping by Ravana.’ He performed a little sword-play with his hands.

‘Who’s Ravana when he’s at home?’

‘Ravana is the King of the Rakshasas.’ His smile suggested he did not mind stating the obvious for us.

Geordie burst into laughter. ‘Ask a daft question, Stubby, get a daft bloody answer!’

But I was fascinated by the monkey god. I knew how he felt. Wally was furious that I was taking the matter seriously.

‘What do you fucking care what this monster did? The bloke who painted that ought to be put away for keeps!’ He thumped an adjacent picture, which showed an impossibly pink and rounded young lady with curly nostrils, busily balancing on one foot on a green leaf in a bright blue pool. ‘Who’s the pusher, Johnny?’

‘Yes, yes, this lady is Lakshmi, sahib, the lady-god of fortune and also the pleasure of the god Vishnu, according to our religion of Hinduism, sahib. If you like buy one or two picture very cheap?’

‘I don’t want to buy the bloody things, do I? I’ve got no time for all that rubbish. It’s a load of fucking junk, if you ask me.’

‘The pictures demonstrate items in our religion, sahib.’

‘Well then, that’s your look-out, mate, ain’t it? Just don’t try to convert me to the bloody nonsense, that’s all!’

Ganesh, the elephant god, hung there too, with diamonds in his trunk. Wally knocked him and sent him swinging, to show what he felt about Hinduism.

‘Come on, Wally, like – I don’t think you ought to take the piss out of the poor sad!’ Geordie said. ‘He’s got his living to earn.’

‘How much? Kitna pice ek picture?’ I asked the stall-keeper.

‘Gods and lady-gods all one low price, sahib, only five rupee yevery painting. Very lovely things to look upon, in the day or even night-time. Five rupee. No, sir, you young gentlemen now from the barracks, I know – four rupee! For you, four rupee!’

Wilkinson was trying to move Page on, arguing in his vague way. He now tried to move me on as well – not that I had any intention of paying four or five rupees. Seeing us about to move away, across the plank over his well-flavoured ditch, the stall-holder called that he would accept three rupees.

‘Tell him to fuck off,’ Page said. ‘All that sort of thing gives me a pain in the arse. It’s downright sinful! Let’s go and get something to drink!’

‘Yes, let’s go and get something to drink,’ Geordie said.

‘I’ll have a drink when I feel like it, and not before. You two piss off if you’re so bloody thirsty! Give you one rupee for the monkey god, Johnny!’

The stall-holder came to the plank and bowed his head, regarding me at the same time under his brows. ‘You very hard man, sahib, me very poor man with wife to keep and many many chikos to give food, and mother also very sick, all about her body. This is real good Indian painting, sir, for to take home to your lady in England.’

‘I’m not going home. I’m here to stay. I’ll give you one rupee.’

‘Come on, Stubbs, fuck it – you can buy three beers for one rupee!’

‘Aye, tell him to stuff it up his jumper!’

I gave up and yielded to my friends’ gentle advice. As I moved across the plank, the stall-keeper followed, one hand out.

‘All right, sahib, I take one rupee. Come, come, you give!’

Page clouted himself on the head several times. ‘You don’t want that fucking thing, Stubbs! You cunt, come and have a drink! I ain’t buying you a beer if you waste your money on that load of old rubbish!’

But I went back across the ditch and waited patiently while Hanuman was rolled up inside a sheet of frail pink paper.

As I came away with it, Wally and Geordie made pantomimes of staggering about in disgust, clutching their throats and vomiting into the ditch.

‘Don’t bring that horrible thing near me, Stubbs!’ Wally said. ‘You must have more bollocks than brains! We haven’t been out here five minutes and you’re going fucking native already. Isn’t he, Geordie?’

‘Besides, if he’d hung on, he could have got the thing for half a rupee,’ Geordie said. ‘It’s really a terrible country – you have to say it!’

‘Git your loin cloth on, Stubbs, you jungley wallah!’

‘I’ll fling you into the fucking ditch, Page, along with the other turds, if you don’t shut your arse! Let’s go and get a bloody beer!’

After a bloody beer, we went to the cinema. Being a garrison town, Kanchapur boasted three cinemas. One, which showed only native films, was Out of Bounds. The other two, the Vaudette and the Luxor, were in bounds and changed their programme every Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday. Wally, Geordie, and I went to the Luxor, sitting among the peanut shells in the front row but one, to wallow in The Girl He Left Behind in which – have I remembered aright after all these years? – Alice Faye sang A Journey to a Star and No Love, No Nothin’.

Later, back in the aimless main street, night hung like Technicolor in the trees. The promptings of lust were on every side. Kanchapur’s street lights, infrequent and yellow, were besieged by a confetti of insects. Every shop was open. Soldiers apart, there were not so many people about, yet the impression was of bustle. A man in a dhoti spat a great gob of betel-juice at our feet as we passed.

‘Dirty bastards!’ Wally said automatically.

We made our way to a restaurant and sat out on the verandah bellowing for a waiter with plenty of fine deep-throated ‘Jhaldi jaos’. We ordered five eggs-and-chips and beer three times. It felt good to be sitting there, chatting idly about the film as we ate, occasionally waving to a friend in the street, and slapping the odd mosquito that settled on our fists.

Geordie set his knife and fork down and leaned back in the wicker chair.

‘Aye, well, that was almost as good as getting stuck up Alice Faye.’

‘I’d rather have Ida Lupino.’