Barbara Cleverly (3 page)

The next body was that of a soldier in British khaki uniform. ‘Le pauvre con!’ muttered Pierre Bernard. He looked with distress at the war medals still attached to his chest. ‘He survives the war to die like this! Head stove in. Take him up.’

A glimpse of red fabric behind a boulder caught his eye. ‘Over here!’ he called and the men followed. They stood looking with a sorrow not diminished by the number of corpses they had already handled at the woman lying like a rag doll at their feet. Her back was broken, her head smashed open by the rock next to which it still lay, the red woollen jacket and black fur trimmings sticky with congealed blood. ‘Take her up,’ said Pierre.

A small sound caught his attention. ‘Chut! Chut! Listen! What’s that?’

Again he heard the faint cry. ‘Help! Help me!’

They hurried towards the sound. A girl in a torn grey dress was struggling to rise to her knees. For a moment Pierre thought, distractedly, that she was kneeling to pick the spring flowers, primroses and cowslips, which studded the grass around her. This fancy vanished the moment she turned towards them. With a gasp of pity and horror he took in the blood-sodden dress, the mad blue eyes staring, unseeing, in a white face rendered the more startling by the stream of bright red blood which still flowed from a gash on the side of her face.

‘Maud?’ she said as they gathered round her. ‘I’m so sorry! Maud! Oh, where’s Maud?’

Ť ^ ť

Northern India, Spring 1922

Joe Sandilands felt the judder of the train as the brakes were applied. Eager to put the tedious journey behind him, he thankfully rose to his feet to take his hand luggage from the rack. His sudden movement triggered a fluttering response amongst the other passengers in the carriage. The two army wives roused their four children, hot and cross, who stirred about, stretching and yawning and quarrelling sleepily amongst themselves.

Joe helped them to lift down and sort out picnic hampers, toys and crayons and travelling sleeping bags, and his smiling good humour and easy ways with the children were rewarded by effusive thanks and inviting smiles from their mothers. He replied politely to suggestions of attending picnics, dinner parties, fund-raising events and theatrical performances in Simla.

‘Are we there yet? Is this the Hills?’ asked the youngest child for the twentieth time.

‘Not yet, darling. Fifty miles to go. This is Kalka. This is where we change trains and get on to the Toy Train. Then we’ll go chugging up into the Hills. Round lots of bends we’ll go, through lots of tunnels, up and up into the clouds. And you’ll see snowy mountains and huge trees and lots of monkeys! You’re going to love it in Simla, Robin!’

‘Are you coming on the Toy Train with us, sir?’ Robin asked Joe.

‘No, Robin. I’ll be sorry to miss it but a friend is sending a car to the station to pick me up. We’ll have a race, shall we? See which of us gets to Simla first?’

‘A car?’ said the boy’s mother, Mrs Major Graham, raising her eyebrows. ‘You have friends in high places then – socially as well as geographically, I mean. I understand that there are only two or three cars allowed to enter Simla

’

‘The Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal,’ said Joe, answering the question good manners forbade her to ask, ‘Sir George Jardine, has kindly lent me his summer guest house for the month while I’m on leave.’ He waited with curiosity to see the effect the name would have on his audience. In caste-conscious and precedent-conscious India it was always a preoccupation to establish where in the pecking order to place a new acquaintance. Joe was humorously aware that both women would subconsciously have been marking him out of ten. Policeman? One mark only. DSO ribbon, on the other hand – three marks perhaps. Quite personable and well spoken, perhaps another three. But, borrowing the Lieutenant-Governor’s guest bungalow and having a car sent to meet him! Many, many marks! Certainly up to an aggregate of ten. Good old India! thought Joe, reading the by-play and the glances exchanged between the women. He was amused to see their friendly directness now salted with a pinch of deference as they reassessed his status.

The children, supremely unaware of any change in social nuances, pounced on this new information.

‘Has the Governor got an elephant?’ they wanted to know.

‘He has four in Calcutta where he lives in the cold weather but none in the Hills,’ Joe explained.

‘Will you have to wear your medals all the time if you’re staying with a Governor?’ asked the oldest boy.

‘Oh, yes, Billie. At breakfast, at tiffin, at dinner. I shall even

’ Joe leaned forward and finished confidentially, ‘have to wear them on my pyjamas.’

Round-eyed disbelief was followed by a shout of laughter and the children were still giggling as Joe bounced them out of the carriage and into the waiting arms of their ayahs and bearers who hurried forward to retrieve their families ready for the next leg of the journey.

The Umballa to Kalka train had been crowded with English families fleeing the heat of the plains for the cool of the Himalayan foothills. In early April the temperature was already unbearable in Delhi and government and military alike were on the move to the summer capital of India. Simla. Joe looked above the heads of the excited crowds milling around him hoping to catch his first sight of the town perched on its spur of the mountains. Though, disappointingly, Simla was still hidden from view he stood for a moment making out the line of mighty snow-capped mountains in the distance beyond the dark foothills, the morning sun striking the summits with a theatrical brilliance, rank after rank and on and up into Kashmir and far Tibet.

Joe had enjoyed the company of talkative children on the long journey from Umballa; he had even enjoyed fencing with their inquisitive mothers but now the pending arrival in Simla – so much looked forward to – was too precious to share. Joe wanted to savour it in tranquillity, and as the crowds swirled away to the Toy Train he found himself at last alone on the platform. Alone that is but for one other passenger. A tall, distinguished, heavily built man was, like him, gazing in rapt absorption at the mountains.

He seemed to be in no hurry; he was clearly not intending to take the Toy Train. He seemed, like Joe, to be savouring this moment. Joe tried to place him in the hierarchy of India. Expensively dressed in a casual linen suit. Not made in England – not made in India. France? No. Joe decided – America. Also, the man himself – English-looking but not English. His silver-grey hair was longer than any London barber would have permitted. Distinguished. Confident and attractive in his frank enjoyment of this shared moment. He caught Joe’s eye and smiled.

Joe decided to test him out. ‘ “A fair land – a most beautiful land is this of Hind – and the land of the five rivers is fairer than all,” ’ he said.

‘ “Look, Hajji, is yonder the city of Simla? Allah, what a city!” ’ finished the man in the white suit and they looked at each other, in instant rapport. ‘I am addressing an admirer of Kim, I take it? But how did you guess that I too

?’

‘I didn’t guess,’ said Joe. ‘I noticed your copy of the book sticking out of your pocket.’

The stranger took out the small leather-bound volume. Balanced on his hand it fell open at a well-read page. ‘Need I say? Kim’s arrival in Simla!’

‘Mine too,’ said Joe. He pulled a similar book from his bag and demonstrated. He wondered whether the stranger had noticed the appalling condition of his copy. Every battered page was stained with Flanders earth and candle grease, and peppered with cigarette burns; some were even stained with his own blood. The cheeky, proud and resourceful bazaar boy, Kim, had been his companion through four years in the hell of France and he had never tired of reading it. Kim’s spirit had encouraged, even chided him in the depths of despair; the scents and sounds and sights of a hot country he had never seen, nor expected to see, had always seemed able to distance for a while the bleak landscapes and cloying mud of the battlefields.

He looked more closely at the other. There was something familiar about him. Joe had the extraordinary feeling that he knew this man and yet he was sure they had never been introduced. As he spoke Joe’s guess that he wasn’t English was confirmed. He spoke with a slight accent that was neither French nor Italian. It could have been German but Joe didn’t think so. He had a tall figure with a massive torso and carried himself with the confidence of an actor. The man laughed out loud at the sight of Joe’s disreputable book and all at once the sound of that laugh triggered a memory. Joe had got it. He recalled a performance of Faust at Covent Garden when the Royal Opera House had reopened after the war. Mephistopheles had been played by a Russian baritone. He thought furiously and a name came to him.

‘I think I have the honour of addressing Feodor Korsovsky,’ he said. ‘My name is Sandilands. Joseph Sandilands and I am a detective. From London.’

Another burst of laughter greeted this. ‘A detective! You do not surprise me! Are you now going to tell me what I had for breakfast and the name of my tailor?’

‘Elementary, my dear sir,’ said Joe. ‘You were on the Umballa train so you had a chapatti, vegetable curry and a pot of tea. Your tailor though? American? Too obscure for me but I will tell you what you are thinking

You’re wondering how you would best go up to Simla. You’re weighing the advantages of a journey on the Toy Train with its longer route and its one hundred and seven tunnels against the shorter but more precipitous cart road in a bumpy tonga drawn by a wheezing old hack of uncertain strength and speed.’

‘Quite right, Mr Sandilands.’ He pointed to the line of dejected-looking tonga horses standing by to carry passengers in relays up into the Hills. ‘I was instructed to take a tonga but I fear my weight would be too much of a challenge. And yet I think the romance of the approach to Simla which I have often dreamed of would be somewhat spoiled by the summer migrants if I took the train.’ He nodded to the crowds milling around it. ‘And are you going to tell me which I am to take?’

Joe hesitated. This precious moment! This moment of solitude in the impressive company of the mighty hills. Did he want to share it with a stranger? He took a further look at his companion and answered his question.

‘Yes. Neither.’

‘I am not fifteen-year-old Kim to walk the fifty miles!’

‘No need to do that. I would be delighted if you would accompany me. We could pass the long journey happily boring each other with quotations from Kipling!’

‘Indeed! And how are you proposing to get up there?’

Joe had spotted a groom in the livery of the Governor of Bengal waiting at the entrance to the station, anxiously scanning the crowds. At a gesture from Joe he hurried forward, hand extended, and gave Joe a letter. Joe tore it open and read a note in Jardine’s sprawling hand:

‘Joe. Welcome to the Hills. This man will drive you to the foot of the town and then conduct you to your quarters. I came ahead of you, you see. Dinner at seven. Theatre at nine. G.J.’

‘Packard. We’ll go in the Governor’s Packard. Where’s your luggage?’

Rickshaws and tongas veered out of their path as they motored by at a steady fifteen miles an hour. At this pace Joe calculated that they would just manage to arrive in Simla by mid-afternoon. His fellow passenger settled into the big Packard with the air of one well accustomed to such luxury and even smiled and waved graciously whenever they overtook a pretty woman. He could well have been taking the air in the Bois de Boulogne, Joe thought, instead of trundling along a desert road in a temperature of over a hundred degrees. Man of the world he undoubtedly was, but Joe was amused and touched by the innocent enthusiasm with which he looked about him, curious and joyful.

The few hot sandy miles from the plains to the uplift of land which marked the beginning of the foothills passed quickly in the Russian’s company. He was an entertaining companion and talked about himself with a refreshing lack of reticence. He had travelled the world and yet this journey up into the Indian hill country seemed to be a very special one for him, amounting, perhaps, to a pilgrimage.

‘You know, for centuries we British have been expecting an invasion from Russia in the north,’ Joe said with mock seriousness. ‘We believe their armies to be poised ready to rush down through the passes of the Himalayas to sweep the British out of India and snatch it from our grasp. But here – what have we? A Russian invasion from the south? Must we think our guns are pointing the wrong way?’

Another rumbling laugh greeted this comment. ‘One baritone does not make an invasion! And besides I come here for two very unmilitary reasons. One, I have been invited to perform at the Gaiety Theatre by the Amateur Dramatic Society of Simla. A great honour! Many distinguished singers and actors have performed there. And secondly, as you must have guessed, I was swept away by the romance of India and especially these hills at a very impressionable age. I was thirteen, of a diplomatic family living in London, when someone gave me a copy of Kim which had just come out. From then on, I knew one day I would have to make this journey

Listen! Is that a cuckoo? It was a cuckoo! And there are the trees!’

Both men enjoyed the moment when, turning a bend, a rush of cool mountain air, faintly scented with pine trees, fanned their faces. The hood of the car was down so, turning their heads this way and that, they had a complete view of the rising ground whose character changed from minute to minute. As they chugged on and up they heard the chatter of a hundred brooks spilling the spring meltwater in torrents down the hillsides. They saw the trees growing ever more plentiful, the few scrubby cacti of the plains now replaced by pine and lush rhododendron. Birds called loudly to each other and Joe thought he spotted the grey shapes of monkeys swinging through the branches of the trees.

They were not the only travellers on the road. They passed strings of Tibetan merchants on foot, men and women of the hills who stopped to gaze in amazement at the car, tongas struggling to make way for them to overtake and a good deal of foot and horse-borne traffic. Loads obviously too cumbersome to be stowed into the narrow gauge Toy Train were being carried up on the backs of men. To Joe’s astonishment they passed two men labouring under the weight of a grand piano while a third walked behind carrying its legs. At the passing places when they pulled over they were greeted by cheerful young men on their way back from leave down to the plains by tonga and all asking the same rueful question: ‘Hot down there, is it?’ And Joe’s reply was the same to all: ‘Hotter than hell!’