It was the day the monsoon broke. The smell of sodden earth was like perfume to our gritty nostrils. Relief at being rid of dusty heat had all the chaps out. Dripping wet in the rain. Loving it. Frenchie – Claud Winters to his family – told us all of his cure for prickly heat. Lifebuoy and rainwater. Soap yourself up in the monsoon downpour, he prescribed. Got everyone doing it. Stripping off. Lathering up. Passing the soap through many slippery hands. Frenchie was soon nervous – his precious bar of Lifebuoy was getting smaller and smaller. He was yelling for everyone to go easy. ‘Come on,’ the chaps said. ‘Your turn, Pop.’ But I was reluctant. Naked in the rain – that’s something for the young. But an end to the itching was a super thought. And Maxi, more sensible than most, was doing it. It works, he told me. ‘Soap’s nearly gone. Come on, Pop,’ everyone called out. Nothing for it. Stripped off. Wonderful. The cooling rain beating against my bare skin. Tiny stabs of ecstasy. Lathered up, bubbly as a Hollywood bath. I was ready to wash it off when just then the rain stopped. Quickly as it had started. (Monsoon can do that.) Left me standing there naked as Adam in full lather and not a drop of water coming from the sky. The chaps all laughed (of course). It was a comical sight, I suppose. Palms up. Bewildered. Me in the wherewithal frothing like a sponge.

I didn’t realise Arun had seen and had woven it into a tale to tell his friends. This Ashok laughed at the end of the little story, and went out of his way to slap me on the back. ‘Forgive me,’ he started, ‘Please excuse. You do not speak our language, do you? Arun is telling me—’

‘I know what he was telling you,’ I said sharply.

‘You do? It is a funny story.’

‘Monsoon is very unpredictable.’

‘As you say. But . . . Pop, is it, what they are calling you? . . . How is your . . . what is it you British get when you are too far from home? Prickly heat?’

I stood up at this point. Did he think I’d take it sitting down? I was being laughed at by coolies. ‘Come on. On your feet, you two. Someone’s coming. On the double. Come on. Shift yourselves.’

The smoke was getting thicker. Something was going on and I longed to know what. Two men soon appeared through the dark. Running. Guns at the ready. I couldn’t make them out until they got closer.

‘Hold back there,’ I told the coolies.

It was Frenchie and Fido. Puffing like bellows. ‘The basha’s on fire,’ they told me. My basha. The one that had the meeting in it. The darkened one, stuffed with men over the floor, on the charpoys, standing round the walls. The truth is I didn’t even think about it when they shouted, ‘Maxi’s in there. Come on, Pop.’ I just ran.

Forty-one

Bernard

Every inch of the basha raged with flame. The men silhouetted against this blazing dazzle looked to be dwarfs feeding a beast. Throwing on buckets of water, barrels of dust that fizzled useless as spittle on a griddle pan. Everyone was yelling. One chap thrust a bucket into my hand, face contorted with panic, his arms flailing towards the inferno. I ran at the flames. The heat hit me like a wall. Eyelids rasping like barbed wire as I blinked against scorching smoke. Suffocating. Doubled up. Had to stop several feet back along with everyone else. Lob the contents from there. Hopeless. But any closer and the beast would have licked me raw.

We needed order. Obvious to me. Elementary. A line. A chain passing buckets one to the other would soon see the flames quelled, then move in closer.

‘A chain,’ I shout. ‘Into a chain.’ No one hears. All running about pell-mell. Headless. ‘Come on, you clots, into a chain.’ I grab a chap with the intention to hold him, to show him my idea. He drops his bucket on my foot. Water gushes round my boots.

‘What you doing? Fuck off,’ he says.

‘A chain,’ I yell, but he’s gone. Next fellow struggles just the same. Somehow I end up on the ground. Nothing for it, I grab someone round the legs. Bring him down. Got his attention. Eye to eye he looks at me. I’m panting, ‘We need to be sensible and make a—’ He punches me in the face, yells at me to get a grip, while the blazing roof on the basha collapses with the sound of a gruff sigh, its green afterglow dazzling my eyes. Expected anyone still inside to run out now like the little piggies, hide in another house made of straw.

The walls tumble next, sending out a firework of sparks almost beautiful in the dark night. Skipping on to the roof of another basha it flames into life. Still slipshod everyone turns their buckets on that. A chain – Maxi would have got everyone into a chain.

The fire engine arrives. Bumping along the ground. Slow as molasses. Rumour is the men in it aren’t the real operators. Those MT firemen got demobbed months ago. Obvious to all, the idiots working it don’t know what they’re doing. I soon jump up to help them with the hose. Show them how it’s done. Seen it used before hundreds of times on pranged kites. Pull the hose off the truck, start rolling it along the ground. There’s a chap shouting, ‘Leave that – not yet.’ I take no notice. ‘What you doing, you fucking stupid erk?’ But the fool wouldn’t let me show him. Pushed me away. Grabs the hose from me and runs at the flames. Should have listened. Dribble of water comes out of the end with as much force as a baby’s spittle. Scratching their heads (I swear) trying to work out what’s what. While the fire in the basha has nearly run out of things to burn.

‘Kink in the pipe,’ I yell at them. Nothing for it – I push my way in. Man on the tap is useless, looking at it confused as if he’d just found it in a Christmas cracker. Won’t budge, though.

I tell him I know what to do, but he just sticks an elbow in my ribs. ‘Get him out of here or I’ll land him one,’ he shouts. Two chaps grab me. Pull me away. One on either side. Won’t listen, just yelling, ‘Leave it, leave it.’

I know what to do, what’s needed. ‘That bit older, you see,’ I tell them. When the water finally starts to pour they point the hose at the wrong basha. Absurd. ‘Not that one,’ I shout. I struggle away from the clots bracing me.

‘Turn it on to the one Maxi’s in.’

‘It’s too late for that one,’ one chap yells.

‘Rubbish,’ I tell him. But the imbecile takes no notice. Language as foul as any drain. Pushes me so hard I fall over. Police around me now. One of them’s got a gun. Get to my feet but he’s telling me to stay back or else. Shoving me. Pushing. Not a care that I’m tripping as he jostles me. ‘Get back,’ he says. No more than a raggle-taggle boy. Shut my trap, he wants me to. ‘Stop yelling,’ he tells me. Can’t get him to listen to a word of sense.

Someone seizes my arm. ‘Come on, Pop. Leave them to it.’ It’s Curly. Curly the doorman at the meeting. Curly from the basha. He was out. He got out. I’m so pleased to see him I hug him. He flinches back. Face wincing with obvious pain. Shows me the burn on the back of his shoulder. I ask about Maxi. Did he get out? ‘Don’t think so,’ he says. Tells me the fire started outside the door. He got out in time by running through the flames along with some others. But it spread all around in the blink of his eye. ‘There were about eight, ten I don’t know. I thought they’d follow but . . .’

‘Perhaps they got out a back way,’ I say.

‘What back way, Pop?’

The fire truck (useless) trains its water on the basha just in time to turn smoking cinders to mud. We weren’t allowed in close. Held back by RAF police. Horror seared into the smutty faces of all the onlookers. Men stripped to the waist. Chests still heaving from exertion. Sweat running down them like shower water. All looking on helpless. Except those coolies. Those camp followers stood jabbering calm as if this was market day. They hadn’t run with buckets. Not one of them. Did anyone see them trying to help? Not me. Some of them were smiling now it was over. One even found something funny enough to make him giggle. ‘What do you know, what do you know?’ I confronted him. This coolie backs away from me like a cringing dog. But I’m after him. I can see it on his face. Guilt. He probably set the fire – thought it was a joke. Grabbed the blighter by his filthy dhoti. Stinking rag comes away in my hand. ‘Who did this? What do you know?’