Cruelty Read online

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Hours,’ he whispered. ‘Hours and bloody hours and hours. I can’t keep still much longer. I’ve been wanting to cough.’

  There was not much doubt about the truth of Harry’s story. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t a surprising thing for a krait to do. They hang around people’s houses and they go for the warm places. The surprising thing was that Harry hadn’t been bitten. The bite is quite deadly, except sometimes when you catch it at once and they kill a fair number of people each year in Bengal, mostly in the villages.

  ‘All right, Harry,’ I said, and now I was whispering too. ‘Don’t move and don’t talk any more unless you have to. You know it won’t bite unless it’s frightened. We’ll fix it in no time.’

  I went softly out of the room in my stocking feet and fetched a small sharp knife from the kitchen. I put it in my trouser pocket ready to use instantly in case something went wrong while we were still thinking out a plan. If Harry coughed or moved or did something to frighten the krait and got bitten, I was going to be ready to cut the bitten place and try to suck the venom out. I came back to the bedroom and Harry was still lying there very quiet and sweating all over his face. His eyes followed me as I moved across the room to his bed and I could see he was wondering what I’d been up to. I stood beside him, trying to think of the best thing to do.

  ‘Harry,’ I said, and now when I spoke I put my mouth almost on his ear so I wouldn’t have to raise my voice above the softest whisper, ‘I think the best thing to do is for me to draw the sheet back very, very gently. Then we could have a look first. I think I could do that without disturbing it.’

  ‘Don’t be a damn fool.’ There was no expression in his voice. He spoke each word too slowly, too carefully, and too softly for that. The expression was in the eyes and around the corners of the mouth.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The light would frighten him. It’s dark under there now.’

  ‘Then how about whipping the sheet back quick and brushing it off before it has time to strike?’

  ‘Why don’t you get a doctor?’ Harry said. The way he looked at me told me I should have thought of that myself in the first place.

  ‘A doctor. Of course. That’s it. I’ll get Ganderbai.’

  I tiptoed out to the hall, looked up Ganderbai’s number in the book, lifted the phone and told the operator to hurry.

  ‘Dr Ganderbai,’ I said. ‘This is Timber Woods.’

  ‘Hello, Mr Woods. You not in bed yet?’

  ‘Look, could you come round at once? And bring serum – for a krait bite.’

  ‘Who’s been bitten?’ The question came so sharply it was like a small explosion in my ear.

  ‘No one. No one yet. But Harry Pope’s in bed and he’s got one lying on his stomach – asleep under the sheet on his stomach.’

  For about three seconds there was silence on the line. Then speaking slowly, not like an explosion now but slowly, precisely, Ganderbai said, ‘Tell him to keep quite still. He is not to move or to talk. Do you understand?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’ll come at once!’ He rang off and I went back to the bedroom. Harry’s eyes watched me as I walked across to his bed.

  ‘Ganderbai’s coming. He said for you to lie still.’

  ‘What in God’s name does he think I’m doing!’

  ‘Look, Harry, he said no talking. Absolutely no talking. Either of us.’

  ‘Why don’t you shut up then?’ When he said this, one side of his mouth started twitching with rapid little downward movements that continued for a while after he finished speaking. I took out my handkerchief and very gently I wiped the sweat off his face and neck, and I could feel the slight twitching of the muscle – the one he used for smiling – as my fingers passed over it with the handkerchief.

  I slipped out to the kitchen, got some ice from the icebox, rolled it up in a napkin, and began to crush it small. That business of the mouth, I didn’t like that. Or the way he talked, either. I carried the ice pack back to the bedroom and laid it across Harry’s forehead.

  ‘Keep you cool.’

  He screwed up his eyes and drew breath sharply through his teeth. ‘Take it away,’ he whispered. ‘Make me cough.’ His smiling-muscle began to twitch again.

  The beam of a headlamp shone through the window as Ganderbai’s car swung around to the front of the bungalow. I went out to meet him, holding the ice pack with both hands.

  ‘How is it?’ Ganderbai asked, but he didn’t stop to talk, he walked on past me across the balcony and through the screen doors into the hall. ‘Where is he? Which room?’

  He put his bag down on a chair in the hall and followed me into Harry’s room. He was wearing soft-soled bedroom slippers and he walked across the floor noiselessly, delicately, like a careful cat. Harry watched him out of the sides of his eyes. When Ganderbai reached the bed he looked down at Harry and smiled, confident and reassuring, nodding his head to tell Harry it was a simple matter and he was not to worry but just to leave it to Dr Ganderbai. Then he turned and went back to the hall and I followed him.

  ‘First thing is to try to get some serum into him,’ he said, and he opened his bag and started to make preparations. ‘Intravenously. But I must do it neatly. Don’t want to make him flinch.’

  We went into the kitchen and he sterilized a needle. He had a hypodermic syringe in one hand and a small bottle in the other and he stuck the needle through the rubber top of the bottle and began drawing a pale yellow liquid up into the syringe by pulling out the plunger. Then he handed the syringe to me.

  ‘Hold that till I ask for it.’

  He picked up the bag and together we returned to the room. Harry’s eyes were bright now and wide open. Ganderbai bent over Harry and, very cautiously, like a man handling sixteenth-century lace, he rolled up the pyjama sleeve to the elbow without moving the arm. I noticed he stood well away from the bed.

  He whispered, ‘I’m going to give you an injection. Serum. Just a prick but try not to move. Don’t tighten your stomach muscles. Let them go limp.’

  Harry looked at the syringe.

  Ganderbai took a piece of red rubber tubing from his bag and slid one end under and up and around Harry’s biceps; then he tied the tubing tight with a knot. He sponged a small area of the bare forearm with alcohol, handed the swab to me and took the syringe from my hand. He held it up to the light, squinting at the calibrations, squinting out some of the yellow fluid. I stood still beside him, watching. Harry was watching too and sweating all over his face so it shone like it was smeared thick with face cream melting on his skin and running down on to the pillow.

  I could see the blue vein on the inside of Harry’s forearm, swollen now because of the tourniquet, and then I saw the needle above the vein, Ganderbai holding the syringe almost flat against the arm, sliding the needle in sideways through the skin into the blue vein, sliding it slowly but so firmly it went in smooth as into cheese. Harry looked at the ceiling and closed his eyes and opened them again, but he didn’t move.

  When it was finished Ganderbai leaned forward, putting his mouth close to Harry’s ear. ‘Now you’ll be all right even if you are bitten. But don’t move. Please don’t move. I’ll be back in a moment.’

  He picked up his bag and went out to the hall and I followed.

  ‘Is he safe now?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘How safe is he?’

  The little Indian doctor stood there in the hall rubbing his lower lip.

  ‘It must give some protection, mustn’t it?’ I asked.

  He turned away and walked to the screen doors that led on to the veranda. I thought he was going through them, but he stopped this side of the doors and stood looking out into the night.

  ‘Isn’t the serum very good?’ I asked.

  ‘Unfortunately not,’ he answered, without turning round. ‘It might save him. It might not. I am trying to think of something else to do.’

  ‘Shall we dr