A Back Passage in India

Miss Quested likewise had abandoned the underpinnings of respectable womanhood, leaving her unrespectable womanhood every ways free. Bending at the waist and grasping the rocky pillar in front of her, she whispered, "have you got the bloody thing ready yet?"

"Patience, my dear, patience. Here it is," and she carefully rubbed the shaft with the petrolatum they used to combat the chafing of undergarments that led to prickly heat. If ever it came to anyone's attention that their buttocks were stained with petrolatum, there was an innocent explanation ready to hand (or anything else).

"Now think pretty thoughts," whispered Mrs Moore, and thrust home.

Miss Quested's gasp raised an echo, but Mrs Moore was so bent on achieving their mutual ecstasy that she barely heard the muffled "boom" from another turning of the caves.

Together they climaxed, but Mrs Moore, eager to prove her surname and desiring more, continued rodding away at Miss Quested, who now was rubbing her vagina and clitoris frantically and murmuring obscenities.

Mrs Moore reached around, drove the dildo with redoubled force into Miss Quested's colonial premises, and, slapping the younger woman's hand away from her privities, pinched, squeezed and abused her clitoris, until Miss Quested convulsed and collapsed, unconscious from an overwhelming orgasm.

Mrs Moore, herself satiated, heard a drumroll, or perhaps a burst of musketry, from the same source beyond the embrasure wherein she and Miss Quested had sheltered. Bloody can't be, Mrs Moore thought. No, friggin' impossible.

Miss Quested had collapsed onto a ledge, quite insensible. Must get help, can't shift her myself, thought Mrs Moore. She'll be safe enough where she lays, methinks.

As Mrs Moore hastened back whence she and the now-unconscious Miss Quested had come, Professor Godbowel, his young troop encamped well beyond at another entrance to the caves, went exploring with torch.

"Goodness gracious me!" he exclaimed, as he came upon the recumbent form of Miss Quested, her naked buttocks and engorged cleft illuminated obscenely by his torch.

Unbuttoning his flies, he took advantage of the moment, masturbating rapidly to a fiery expulsion.

As he was buttoning himself back to civilisation, Ronnie Heaslop, Mrs Moore and their servants came upon him.

"Godbowel? What the devil does this mean? Lay hold of him, you men! I'll have this wretched darky laid by the heels and his filthy donger and bollocks hanging in the maidan by sunrise! Raping a white woman, you soor!" Heaslop was near collapse with rage.

His fury increased in fervor and violence as his torch shown on the column next Miss Quested's half-naked form. "The bloody nigger bastard's filthy ejaculate is all over the frigging wall!" he screamed. "If any has touched her sacred body, I'll geld this nigger myself with my bare hands!" Only Mrs Moore could restrain him, large as she was.

"Now Ronald, Professor Godbowel can explain, I'm sure."

"Yes, he can explain after I've cut out his tongue and burnt him alive!"

They dragged the Professor to their barouche. Mrs Moore sent one of the servants to tell his troop to return at once to town, and to march with them.

Miss Quested, now conscious, tried to explain that Professor Godbowel had nothing to do with her, but was howled into silence by her fiancé.

A medical examination was in order, but who was to do it? Dr Odwallah, M.D., was qualified, but the Resident Magistrate said no filthy nigger would touch a hair on dear Miss Quested's head, let alone on...on her...on her...well, you know.

Doctor MacArthur, summoned by wire, came down next day from Tubludibad, some twenty miles farther upcountry. After some tea, well spiked with Glenfarclas, and accompanied by Mrs Moore to see fair play, he examined Miss Quested, who blushed prettily and shot sultry glances at Mrs Moore.

He reported to the Resident Magistrate. "The lassie's virgo intacta, if ye get mah meanin'. Nae bruisin', save what mought be explained be whar she fell tae the groond. Some petrolatum in ano, but they all dae theyselfs thar fer the prickly heat, sae they do. None of that snivel aboot the lassie of the kind that man releases when he...ye knaw a' aboot that reet weel, Ah rickon. She says nae yin used her improperly, d'ye ken, but she cannae tell hoo long she was unco, what? Ah cannae testeefy that she was interfered wid, based upon all th'evidence."

"Indeed," said the Resident Magistrate. A fuck of a lot of good you are, y'old Scotch fart, he thought. Your 'testeemony' wouldn't convince me to piss if I had a full bladder.

"Must have a trial," he said, thoughtfully. "You can go."

But that night word had gotten to Calcutta, as one of Professor Godbowel's young stalwarts had told his parents, who had told the telegraphist (a Portugee in the pay of the Congress Party, who got out of bed and sent the wire by torchlight), and so Congress Party headquarters was sending down their premier batsman to defend the hapless Professor.

Ramjamit Viswanathan, Q.C., a barrel-chested, black-visaged individual who looked more like a Pathan budmash than the adroit pleader he was, arrived two days later, after Mr Ram Dass, likewise tipped off by electricity, was able to convince the Resident Magistrate that he should not hear the case, lest questions be raised in Parliament by Labour MPs. Whilst a successor was being selected and dispatched to Agashiwallah, the trial was put over.

"Allo allo allo, don't get yer Mother Hubbards in a twist, gi'e us a wee glass of somethin', and vote Congress!" shouted Ramjamit Viswanathan, Q.C., as he alighted from the Rockaway that had borne him from the Marbar Junction railhead.

Seizing his carpetbag and silk hat, he bowed theatrically in all directions, and was led away by Mr Ram Dass. They drank heavily and spoke softly, late into the night. The next day, after more liquor, Ramjamit Viswanathan, Q.C., visited Mrs Moore and spoke briefly to Professor Godbowel, now in close tack at the gaol. The Resident Magistrate had denied the eleven hundred pounds sterling in bail proffered by the merchant Mahumid Ramitin.

"It went near to bankrupt me to raise that much quid pro quo supernaculum," the merchant Mahumid Ramitin complained, after bail was denied.

"My deah Mahumid Ramitin," said Dr Odwallah, M.D., "surely your generosity towards our deah friend Professor Godbowel shall not fail of reward."

"When will that be, when the friggin' pink-skinned, pig-eating devils hang the poor bastard?"

"I trust and pray devoutly that such a horrid fate will not befall deah Professor Godbowel, especially as Congress has sent Ramjamit Viswanathan, Q.C., to defend him."

"And who, savin' yer reverence, might this Ramjam fellahin be?"

"My deah Mahumid Ramitin, prithee do not be frivolous. Ramjamit Viswanathan, Q.C., is the possessor of the premier legal mind in India."

"Well, he'd better have. The pinks have their knives out for poor Professor Godbowel."

++++++++++++++++++++++++

There arrived from New Delhi, in sweat-soaked white duck, Mr. St. John Schraederling, Q.C., to serve as prosecuting counsel. Schraederling ("Schrady" to his friends, both of them) was a tall, florid man who hated India and Indians, and whose sole desire was to extract as much loot from the place and people as his means would allow, before pissing off to partibus incognitus. No other lawyer standing in well with the Governor-General (as Schrady took great pains to do) would travel to so remote a venue save under direst compulsion. Schraederling needed none thereof.

"Give me the brief, old fellah, and hie thyself off, like a good lad," he told the Resident Magistrate. "Have no fear, they'll be hanging your dark Danny Deever in the morning."

He took a stout bumper of Heaslop's prized Glenlivet in one hand and the brief in the other, and proceeded to consume both, with loud gurgling swallows.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

The courtroom was giving Dante's ninth circle a good run for its rupees, at least as to thermometricity. Sir Delafell Austinn, Chief Magistrate of Bazoukiland, who happened to be in New Delhi visiting his sister Lady Scaffold whilst on leave from his African labours, was drafted abruptly by the Gov-Gen'l as a wholly neutral party with vast judicial experience. He was used to heat, native grumblings, and the use of force to quell ill-considered local attempts at independence, freedom of speech and similar bolshevistic tendencies.

Jury selection consumed the day. Schrady challenged any native who could read and write, Viswanathan objecting sharply thereto, causing numerous delays whilst counsel wrangled in chambers. Viswanathan challenged any anyone, native, English or otherwise, who knew the first verse of "God Save the King", to an extreme reaction from Schrady, counsel nearly coming to blows.

Finally, the last dozen resident persons who could be considered by the least possible chance as veniremen, dripping with sweat and frightened that whatever verdict they might render would subject them to flogging either from pink or black, were seated in the foul-smelling jurybox, accompanied by as many fleas as might fight their way in.

Sir Delafell, wearied nearly to exhaustion and cursing in terms he had not used since the Mons Retreat in '14, declared that trial would begin the next morning at 6 sharp, "before the sun bakes us all to death, Christ be merciful unto us." He made the Sign of the Cross, and staggered to his Brougham, to be driven to the dâk-bungalow reserved for guests of the Government and to be given the last glass of iced Château Kirwan '67 ("a most diabolical vintage, rained like bloody Noah was about to set sail. Thank God we're finally rid of it", said the captain of the local militia) in the place.

Despite the careful preparation, the diligence of learned counsel and the stern, nay imperious, hand of Sir Delafell Austinn, the trial was a nightmare, a travesty---well, well, you shall see for yourself.

Called to the witness stand, the Resident Magistrate waxed discursive about the picnic to the Malabar Caves, his desire that his intended should experience this famous local attraction in his company, and of course that of his mother, lest tongues should be set wagging by this excursion.

All was well, until Miss Quested and Mrs Moore wandered off to explore the famous Echoing Chamber, where the merest whisper could be heard at the farthest reaches thereof, due to some acoustical anomaly that confounded the pundits.

Then stumbled back Mrs Moore, gasping for assistance. Racing with his accompanying domestics and placemen to the place whence she had come, he discovered Miss Quested lying half-naked upon the floor, and the accused, the black villain, standing over her, grinning like a Fiend from the Pit, having done who knew what atrocity on the alabaster form that lay, like a martyr on the altar of the very Devil, before him.

Even worse, the damned criminal had shot his filthy dirty ejaculate all over the wall, adjacent to the spot. There was even a wet spot on his black schoolmaster's gown

He laid the dastard by the heels, and frog-marched him nihil obstat to the gaol. Bail, though proffered, was of course denied; one might as well take up a collection for Judas Iscariot.

Schraederling turned to Viswanathan. With a look upon which one might slice year-old cheese, he asked, "Does my learned friend wish to cross-examine?"

"Just two questions, Your Worship, if it please you."

"Proceed."

"Mr Resident Magistrate Heaslop, did you actually see, with your own eyes, any physical contact between Miss Quested and the accused?"

"No, but that black bugger was too quick, like the ape he is..."

"May I respectfully request that the record reflect only that the answer given was in the negative, and that Your Worship caution the jury to disregard the balance of Mr. Resident Magistrate Heaslop's reply?"

"Under advisement. You have leave to renew at time of my charge to the jury."

"With deepest thanks, Your Worship."

"Mr Resident Magistrate Heaslop, was any medical examination of Miss Quested carried out at your direction or behest?"

"If you can call it that. Poor Miss Quested was pawed by that Scotchie quack MacArthur from Tubludibad. But he couldn't diagnose his own diarrhea if he shit himself to death."

"Again I must ask Your Worship, with the deepest respect, to order and adjudge that the record reflect only that Mr Resident Magistrate Heaslop answered in the affirmative, that Doctor MacArthur, M.D., of Tubludibad, did so examine Miss Quested; and that there be stricken from the record, and the jury cautioned to disregard, any and all references to Mr Resident Magistrate Heaslop's opinion of said examination or of the qualifications of said Doctor MacArthur, M.D."

"Again, Mr Viswanathan, under advisement with leave to renew as aforesaid."

"I thank Your Worship. No further questions of this witness. Would my learned friend care to redirect?"

"I think not."

Miss Quested turned white as she was called to the witness stand. Fucking hell, she thought, Heaslop's the dumbest white man for fifty kilometres, and he has thrown me into this fanfarronade. If I tell the truth it's back to blighty to starve or play whore to a worse arsehole than he, and it's perjury if I lie.

She babbled out "so help me God," without having heard what the clerk had said.

Schraederling was playing his "let me be your father" role. He wasn't bad.

"Miss Quested, tell us in your own words, and be in no haste to do so, your account of the day in question."

"Well, I arose early, as we wished to reach the Malabar Caves, a place I cannot recall without a shudder (I'll say, she thought, I came like Victoria fucking Falls when the old lady grabbed my clit). I breakfasted lightly, the climate not agreeing with me and a hamper having been prepared by my dear Heaslop, whom I did not wish to disappoint by my lack of appetite.

"We walked about the exterior and examined the nearer passage. It was quite thrilling, the narrow chambers, the dank earth illumined by our torches. We emerged, and Professor Godbowel..."

"You mean the accused?"

"Yes, he. He led a troop of boys past us, shouting some military jargon I could not well understand."

"Insults and threats, no doubt?"

"I could not say, as I did not well understand them. At any rate, my dear Heaslop responded in a cheerful manner, so I cannot say he was insulted."

"And then what happened?"

"My dear Heaslop told them to leave. They stamped their feet in what I take it was a military manner, but it left us covered with the dust they kicked up in doing so..."

"Aha, dumb insolence and mutinous behavior, wasn't it?"

"Well, it was unpleasant, and rather spoilt the Protestant pudding I had intended for my dessert..."

"Aha, an attack on the Christian religion! Did you not see it so?"

Ramjamit Viswanathan rose, and in an obsequious but nevertheless offensive drawl, objected. "I really think that my learned friend prefers making speeches and prompting his witness, to asking relevant and material questions of her."

"Mr Schraederling, the Court admires zealous advocacy and proper prosecutorial spirit, but you go a little far, not that that is a fault, mind you. Prithee bowl straight, as we cricketers say."

"Thank you, Your Worship," with a venomous slantendicular glance at Viswanathan, as if measuring him for a coffin.

"Then what happened, Miss Quested?" he asked, quietly.

"We, Mrs Moore and I, decided to go to the Echoing Chamber, to observe and perhaps discover its mysterious qualities. Would I had never seen the place!"

"Yes, pray continue."

"We went to that ghastly place. We spoke (and then we poked, she thought. Got to get to it soon. Hope to Christ it works!) and I walked to the farthest end, to try the echo. I was overcome by something, I know not what, and fell senseless. I had not recovered my senses for some little time, but how long I know not."

"And while you were thus helpless, incapable of word or act, what did the accused do to you, to slake his filthy lust and gratify his hatred for the English?"

Now, she thought, the bastard's given me an empty net. Before the defense nigger can speak.

"Oh, I cannot!" she shrieked. "It is too dreadful, this badgering, this unending bludgeoning of a poor, helpless, defenseless woman, a stranger to this country, alone, without friend or companion, with no mother to guide her or sister to assist her. Must I needs be defiled in front of these people, when my innocence and my sex should be my shield and my buckler? It is too bad! Is there no gentleman, no man, who can protect a helpless woman from this infamous inquisition?"

She buried her head in her arms and sank into the witness' chair. Her shoulders quivered, her whole body shook. Fucking Hell, Hull, and Halifax, she thought, what price Sarah Bernhardt now? If I don't stop laughing I'll fucking piss myself.

Heaslop sprang to her side. "That's enough, confound it! Can't you see she's at the end of her tether, you chaps?"

"I think a brief recess is now in order," said Sir Delafell, striking his gavel on the block.

"All rise," bawled the clerk.

Heaslop, holding her by the shoulder, conveyed her to Mrs Moore.

"I'll watch the dear child," said Mrs Moore. Swate Jayzus, thought Mrs Moore, what a great daughter-in-law! She fucks like a demented stoat and acts like Ellen Terry! This'll be more fun than a gangbang with Radclyffe Hall and the Glyndebourne Ladies' Choir!

Cradled on Mrs. Moore's shoulder and covered by a light veil, Miss Quested pinched Mrs Moore's nipple and whispered "Wasn't that splendid, belle-mère? You should lick my pussy for an hour after that performance."

"I never thought you'd ask, dear girl. For that you get the eight-inch Napoleon tonight."

"Send it down, David," she replied.

The recess ended, Doctor MacArthur was called.

"Your name, sir."

"Dundee MacArthur, Doctor of Medicine."

"Those are both your name and title. I asked for your name."

"Weel, ye cannae have me name, as Ah need it mesel', doncherknow?"

"With deepest respect, would Your Worship be pleased to caution the witness against giving frivolous answers?"

"Doctor MacArthur, this is a Court of Law, not a public house. Kindly save your jests for the latter forum."

"Verra weel, Yer Worship."

"By whom are you employed?"

"Be the Burra o' Tubludibad, as general surgeon and sanitary officer."

"How long had you held that post?"

"Too long. Eight year this September comin'."

"And how came you to Agashiwallah?"

"They sent a barouche fer me, whan the Resident Magistrate Cuchullain O'Shanahan, blast his bog Irish heart, ordered me to examine the alleged victim Miss Quested."

"And did you?"

"Weel, if Ah hadnae, ye wouldnae want me fer a witness noo, would ye?"

As Schraederling's scowl grew deeper, Sir Delafell interrupted.

"Doctor MacArthur, I shall not further caution you. The penalty for contempt of this Court is a fine of not less than one pound sterling, and not more than ten pounds sterling, for the first offense, and ten blows of the rattan for the second. As you value your wallet and as you value the place where you keep it, have a care sir, have a care!"

"What did you observe when you examined Miss Quested?"

"Ah was informed of the natur' of the offense for which th'accused was tae stand trial, so naturally I gave most attention to those members where t'offense would be located. Ah observed a young woman, perhaps twenty years of age, weel-nourished, generally weel-formed. A digital examination revealed she was virgo intacta. I dae hoope ye weel let me keep tae the Latin and no' require me tae translate."