‘How did they meet?’ asks Neena, trying to lift the cloud that has somehow descended on their picnic. ‘I mean Mr Jones and Samad Miah.’

Alsana throws her head back, a dismissive gesture. ‘Oh, in the war. Off killing some poor bastards who didn’t deserve it, no doubt. And what did they get for their trouble? A broken hand for Samad Miah and for the other one a funny leg. Some use, some use, all this.’

‘Archie’s right leg,’ says Clara quietly, pointing to a place in her own thigh. ‘A piece of metal, I tink. But he don’ really tell me nuttin’.’

‘Oh, who cares!’ Alsana bursts out. ‘I’d trust Vishnu the many-handed pick-pocket before I believed a word those men say.’

But Clara holds dear the image of the young soldier Archie, particularly when the old, flabby Direct Mail Archie is on top of her. ‘Oh, come now… we don’ know what-’

Alsana spits quite frankly on the grass. ‘Shitty lies! If they are heroes, where are their hero things? Where are the hero bits and bobs? Heroes – they have things. They have hero stuff. You can spot them ten miles away. I’ve never seen a medal… and not so much as a photograph.’ Alsana makes an unpleasant noise at the back of her throat, her signal for disbelief. ‘So look at it – no, dearie, it must be done – look at it close up. Look at what is left. Samad has one hand; says he wants to find God but the fact is God’s given him the slip; and he has been in that curry house for two years already, serving up stringy goat to the whiteys who don’t know any better, and Archibald – well, look at the thing close up…’

Alsana stops to check with Clara if she could speak her mind further without causing offence or unnecessary pain, but Clara’s eyes are closed and she is already looking at the thing close up; a young girl looking at an old man close up; finishing Alsana’s sentence with the beginning of a smile spreading across her face,

‘… folds paper for a living, dear Jesus.’

5 The Root Canals of Alfred Archibald Jones and Samad Miah Iqbal

A propos: it’s all very well, this instruction of Alsana’s to look at the thing close up; to look at it dead-straight between the eyes; an unflinching and honest stare, a meticulous inspection that would go beyond the heart of the matter to its marrow, beyond the marrow to the root – but the question is how far back do you want? How far will do? The old American question: what do you want – blood? Most probably more than blood is required: whispered asides; lost conversations; medals and photographs; lists and certificates, yellowing paper bearing the faint imprint of brown dates. Back, back, back. Well, all right, then. Back to Archie spit-clean, pink-faced and polished, looking just old enough at seventeen to fool the men from the medical board with their pencils and their measuring tape. Back to Samad, two years older and the warm colour of baked bread. Back to the day when they were first assigned to each other, Samad Miah Iqbal (row 2, Over here now, soldier!) and Alfred Archibald Jones (Move it, move it, move it), the day Archie involuntarily forgot that most fundamental principle of English manners. He stared. They were standing side by side on a stretch of black dirt-track Russian ground, dressed identically in little triangular caps perched on their heads like paper sailing-boats, wearing the same itchy standard uniform, their ice-pinched toes resting in the same black boots scattered with the same dust. But Archie couldn’t help but stare. And Samad put up with it, waited and waited for it to pass, until after a week of being cramped in their tank, hot and suffocated by the airless machine and subjected to Archie’s relentless gaze, he had putted-up-with as much as his hot-head ever could put up with anything.

‘My friend, what is it you find so darned mysterious about me that it has you in such constant revelries?’

‘You what?’ said Archie, flustered, for he was not one to have private conversations on army time. ‘Nobody, I mean, nothing – I mean, well, what do you mean?’

They both spoke under their breath, for the conversation was not private in the other sense, there being two other privates and a captain in their five-man Churchill rolling through Athens on its way to Thessaloníki. It was 1 April 1945. Archie Jones was the driver of the tank, Samad was the wireless operator, Roy Mackintosh was the co-driver, Will Johnson was crunched on a bin as the gunner, and Thomas Dickinson-Smith was sitting on the slightly elevated chair, which, even though it squashed his head against the ceiling, his newly granted captaincy would not permit his pride to relinquish. None of them had seen anyone else but each other for three weeks.

‘I mean merely that it is likely we have another two years stuck in this thing.’

A voice crackled through the wireless, and Samad, not wishing to be seen neglecting his duties, answered it speedily and efficiently.

‘And?’ asked Archie, after Samad had given their coordinates.

‘And there is only so much of that eyeballing that a man can countenance. Is it that you are doing some research into wireless operators or are you just in a passion over my arse?’

Their captain, Dickinson-Smith, who was in a passion over Samad’s arse (but not only that; also his mind; also two slender muscular arms that could only make sense wrapped around a lover; also those luscious light green/brown eyes) silenced the conversation immediately.

‘Ick-Ball! Jones! Get on with it. Do you see anyone else here chewing the fat?’

‘I was just making an objection, sir. It is hard, sir, for a man to concentrate on his Foxtrot F’s and his Zebra Z’s and then his dots and his dashes when he has a pug-dog fellow who follows his every move with his pug-dog eyes, sir. In Bengal one would assume such eyes belonged to a man filled with-’

‘Shut it, Sultan, you poof,’ said Roy, who hated Samad and his poncey-radio-operator-ways.

‘Mackintosh,’ said Dickinson-Smith, ‘come now, let’s not stop the Sultan. Continue, Sultan.’

To avoid the possible suggestion that he was partial to Samad, Captain Dickinson-Smith made a practice of picking on him and encouraging his hateful Sultan nickname, but he never did it in the right way; it was always too soft, too similar to Samad’s own luxurious language and only resulted in Roy and the other eighty Roys under his direct command hating Dickinson-Smith, ridiculing him, openly displaying their disrespect; by April 1945 they were utterly filled with contempt for him and sickened by his poncey-commander-queer-boy-ways. Archie, new to the First Assault Regiment R. E., was just learning this.

‘I just told him to shut it, and he’ll shut it if he knows what’s good for him, the Indian Sultan bastard. No disrespect to you, sir, ’course,’ added Roy, as a polite gesture.

Dickinson-Smith knew in other regiments, in other tanks, it simply was not the case that people spoke back to their superiors or even spoke at all. Even Roy’s Polite Gesture was a sign of Dickinson-Smith’s failure. In those other tanks, in the Shermans, Churchills and Matildas dotted over the waste of Europe like resilient cockroaches, there was no question of respect or disrespect. Only Obey, Disobey, Punish.

‘Sultan… Sultan…’ Samad mused. ‘Do you know, I wouldn’t mind the epithet, Mr Mackintosh, if it were at least accurate. It’s not historically accurate, you know. It is not, even geographically speaking, accurate. I am sure I have explained to you that I am from Bengal. The word “Sultan” refers to certain men of the Arab lands – many hundreds of miles west of Bengal. To call me Sultan is about as accurate, in terms of the mileage, you understand, as if I referred to you as a Jerry-Hun fat bastard.’