Far Pavilions (36 page)

‘Bad news?’ asked Wigram Battye sympathetically.

‘ No. Only a headache – touch of the sun, I expect. Think I'll go and lie down,’ said Ash. And added unexpectedly: ‘I don't believe it!’

‘Believe what? I say, old fellow, hadn't you better see the M.O.? You're looking like death,’ observed Wigram candidly. ‘If it is sun-stroke –’

‘Oh, don't be an ass,’ said Ash unkindly, and went back to his room to sit on the edge of his bed and re-read Mrs Harlowe's letter.

He read it half-a-dozen times, and each time it seemed to be less believable. If Belinda had really been falling in love with someone else, surely he would have sensed it when he last saw her – which was barely three weeks ago? But her last words to him had given no indication of any drastic change of heart, and he did not believe that after all that there had been between them, she would have asked her mother to write such a letter. If it were true, she would have written to him herself; she had always been honest with him.
Ambrose
– Who the hell was Ambrose? It was all a plot on the part of her parents. A plot to separate them. Either that, or they were forcing Belinda into a distasteful marriage against her will.

Mrs Harlowe's letter had arrived on a Friday, and there were still eight days to go before Ash was officially allowed to see Belinda again. But on the following day he defied orders and rode over to Peshawar.

Once again, as on the occasion of his first visit, the Harlowes' bungalow was empty and a servant informed him that the Sahib and the memsahibs were out to lunch and not expected back until mid-afternoon. Ash retired, as he had done before, to the Club; and here too, history repeated itself, for though the Club was far from empty and the lawns and terraces were packed with a gay and chattering Saturday morning crowd, the first person to accost him was George Garforth.

‘Ash!’ cried George grabbing at him as he passed. ‘Mus' talk to you. Don't go. Have a drink -’

Ash had no desire at all to talk to George – or to anyone else, apart from Belinda. But two things prevented him from disengaging himself and walking away. The first, that George was tipsy, and the second that here was someone who would certainly know if there was any truth in this tale of an engagement. Though the very fact that George was drunk – and at this hour of the morning – made his heart shrink with foreboding.

‘Jus' the fellow I wanted to shee,’ babbled George hoarsely. ‘Wan' t' talk to you, Ash. Only one I can talk to. But not here… too many people here… too many b-bloody stuck-up snobs sitting around and listening. Le's go t' my bungalow for
t-tiffin
.’

In the circumstances it seemed a sensible suggestion, for Ash could think of nothing worse than having to listen to what George had to say (if, as seemed only too likely, it concerned Belinda) in the presence of half the members of the Peshawar Club. In any case, the sooner Mr Garforth removed himself from such a public spot the better, for his behaviour was obviously attracting a considerable amount of attention. Far too many people were staring at him in patent disapproval and whispering to their neighbours, and it was plainly only a question of time before the Secretary or some irate member requested him to leave – a disgrace that to someone of George's over-sensitive temperament would cause a degree of suffering and humiliation out of all proportion to the offence. Ash sent for a tonga and took the inebriated Mr Garforth back to his bungalow, which turned out to be a large, square building, part office, that was owned by his firm.

George's portion of it was a modest one, consisting of a small back-bedroom with an adjoining bathroom and one end of a verandah (screened off from the remainder by a
chik
*
) that did duty as a combined sitting-room and dining-room. The whole bore a depressing resemblance to a dâk-bungalow, but the servant who appeared at the sound of the tonga bell was able to produce a three-course lunch, accompanied by two bottles of Brown & MacDonald's light ale, so that despite his forebodings Ash contrived to make a tolerable meal. His host, on the other hand, rejected every dish with expressions of loathing, and sat slumped in his chair muttering belligerently and scowling at the
khidmatgar
. It was only when the table was eventually cleared and the servant went away that he abandoned this truculence in a startling manner.

The verandah
chik
had no sooner dropped into place behind the departing
khidmatgar
than George leant forward, and laying his folded arms on the table, dropped his head onto them and burst into tears.

Ash retired precipitately to the dusty compound where a solitary neem tree provided an oasis of shade in the mid-day glare. He would have liked to walk back to the Club, but he could not bring himself to abandon George at this particular juncture, even though he was by now fairly certain that the cause of both drunkenness and grief must be Belinda's engagement, and he was no longer sure that he wanted to hear what George had to say on the subject. He sat down on a root of the neem tree, feeling angry with himself and angrier with George, and waited. The harsh, gulping sobs were not a pleasant sound to listen to, but they stopped at last and he heard George blow his nose and stumble away to the bedroom where, judging from the noise of splashing, he appeared to be emptying the contents of the water
chatti
over his head.

Ash rose and came back to his chair on the verandah, and presently George reappeared wearing a towel around his shoulders and with his hair dripping water. He poured himself out a cup of black coffee from the pot that the
khidmatgar
had left on a tray, and subsided heavily into a sagging cane chair where he sat sipping the hot liquid and looking utterly demoralized. There seemed to be nothing left of the talkative and bumptious young man who for over a year had been such a success at tea-parties and Club dances. Even his good looks had vanished, for his pallid face was puffy and unshaven and his eyes red with weeping, while his sodden hair had lost its Byronic curls and straggled limply down his neck and forehead.

Confronted by this spectacle Ash's irritation became diluted with sympathy, and resigning himself to the role of confidant and comforter, he got up and helped himself to coffee and said with an effort: ‘You'd better tell me about it. I suppose it's this engagement.’

‘What engagement?’ asked George tonelessly.

Ash's heart gave a leap that set his pulses racing, and the coffee slopped all over the floor. So he had been right after all. Mrs Harlowe had lied to him, and it wasn't true.

‘Belinda's of course. I thought that was why – I mean…’ He was incoherent with relief. ‘I'd heard she was engaged to be married.’

‘Oh that,’ said George, dismissing it as something of no account.

‘Then it isn't true? Her mother said –’

‘It wasn't really her,’ gulped George. ‘She – Mrs Harlowe – tried to be nice about it, I think. She really did like me, you know. But Belinda… I – I wouldn't have believed that
anyone
… no, that isn't true; I suppose it was just because I did believe it that I tried to keep it quiet. I should have known that someone would find out one day.’

‘Find out what? What the blazes are you mumbling about, George? Is she engaged or isn't she?’

‘Who? Oh, Belinda. Yes. They got engaged after the Bachelors' Ball, I believe. Look, Ash, do you mind if I talk to you about something? You see, I don't know what to do. Whether to stick it out, or give in my notice and quit, or… I can't stay on here. I won't. I'd – I'd rather shoot myself. She'll tell everyone – she's started already. Didn't you see the way they were all staring at me and whispering at the Club this morning? You must have noticed. And it will get worse. Much worse. I don't think I can –’

But Ash was not listening. He had put down his cup with a hand that was noticeably unsteady and now he sat down with some suddenness. He did not want to hear anything more or to talk to anyone. Not to George, anyway. And yet…

He said abruptly: ‘But that can't be true. The Bachelors' Ball was right at the beginning of the month. That's nearly six weeks ago, and I've seen her since then. I had tea with her, and if it was true she would have told me then. Or her mother would. Or someone.’

‘They didn't want to announce it too soon. They kept it quiet until his new appointment came through – I suppose it sounded grander then. Marrying a Resident, you know.’

‘A
Resident
? But –’ Ash broke off and scowled at George, who must be even drunker than he had thought, because a Residency was a senior appointment: a ‘plum job’ of the Indian Civil Service. Only men who had served that department for many years were sent to represent their Government in some independent native state with the title of ‘Resident’.

‘Bholapore – one of those states somewhere down south,’ said George indifferently. ‘It was in the papers last week.’

‘Bholapore?’ repeated Ash stupidly. ‘But – Oh, you must have made a mistake. You're drunk. That's what it is. How would Belinda ever meet anyone like that, let alone get engaged to him?’

‘Well, she has,’ said George flatly and as though it did not matter very much. ‘Friend of her father's. You must have noticed him: stout party with a red face and grey whiskers. He was having tea with them the last time you were here, and Belinda was all over him.’

‘
Podmore-Smyth
!’ gasped Ash, appalled.

‘That's the fellow. Pompous old bore, but I'm told he's no end of a catch. Sure to be knighted before long and end up as a Lieutenant-Governor, and all that. His wife only died last year, and his daughters are older than Belinda, but she doesn't seem to mind that. He's got a lot of money of course – his father was one of those Calcutta Nabobs, so he's simply rolling in it. And I suppose she likes the idea of being Lady Podmore-Smyth. Or Her Excellency the Governess. Or possibly even Baroness Podmore of Poop one day.’ George gave a hollow crack of laughter and helped himself to more coffee.

‘I don't believe it,’ said Ash violently. ‘You're making it up. She wouldn't do a thing like that. Not Belinda. You don't know her like I do. She's sweet and honest and –’

‘She's honest, all right,’ agreed George bitterly. His lip quivered and once again his eyes filled with tears.

Ash disregarded them: ‘If she's engaged to him it's because she's been forced into it. Her parents are behind this – that dried-up old stick of a father and her idiotic, gossiping mother. Well, if they think I'm going to let them ruin Belinda's life and mine, they're wrong.’

‘You're the one who's wrong,’ said George. ‘Her parents didn't like it above half, but she coaxed them round. She's a taking little thing, as you should know by now. But then you don't really know her at all. Neither did I. I thought I did, and I would never have believed… Oh God, what am I going to do?’

The tears brimmed over and trickled down his cheeks, but he made no attempt to brush them away or any effort to control them. He merely sat there slumped in his chair and staring into vacancy, with his jaw slack and his fingers clenching and unclenching on the coffee cup. He was an embarrassing sight and his unashamed misery exasperated Ash. What right had George to behave like this? It was not as though Belinda had even been engaged to him, or ever would have been. Ash told him so with considerable sharpness, and found a perverse comfort in doing so. But though he had not minced his words they drew no answering spark of anger from George.

‘It's not that,’ said George dully. ‘You don't understand. Of course I knew she'd never marry me; I'm not a fool. I was too young and I hadn't any prospects. I hadn't…
anything!
I suppose that's why I invented all that stuff. To make myself more interesting… But I never thought – I didn't dream that she'd take it like that if she found out.’

‘Found out
what
?’ demanded Ash, justifiably bewildered. ‘For God's sake, George, pull yourself together and stop babbling! What is all this about? What did she find out?’

‘About me. You see I – I've told a lot of lies about myself. And that woman Mrs Gidney, who Belinda's mother is so thick with, has a friend in Rangoon who knows someone who – Well, it was like this…’

It was a simple and rather sordid little story, and no one came out of it very well. Mrs Gidney, writing to a dear friend in Rangoon, had happened to mention George's name and comment on his romantic ancestry, and by an unfortunate coincidence the friend was acquainted with a certain Mr Frisby in the teak trade. And that was how it had all come out…

George's grandmother, far from being a Greek countess, had been an Indian woman of humble parentage whose union with his grandfather – a colour-sergeant in a British regiment stationed in Agra – had been of a strictly temporary nature, but had resulted in the birth of a daughter who had eventually been placed in a home for the orphaned or abandoned children of mixed parentage. At the age of fifteen the child had been found employment as a nursemaid in an army family, and subsequently married a young corporal in her master's regiment, one Alfred Garforth. Their son George, who had been born in Bareilly, was the only one in the family to survive the Mutiny of 1857, his parents, his baby brother and three small sisters having all been murdered in the space of fifteen frenzied minutes.

George had been spending the day with the family of a friendly storekeeper who had escaped the massacre, and during the few years that remained before the regiment returned to England, the same kindly couple had given him a home, for as his father too had been an orphan, there were no relations to take care of the boy. It was during this period that little George learned from his playmates that a ‘half-caste’ was an object of scorn. There were several such among the barrack children, and they and he were teased and despised by those whose parents and grandparents were white, and looked down upon - with almost equal scorn by Indian children with parents and grandparents who were brown.

‘Yer grandma was a sweeper-woman!’ or ‘Yah, yah, yer a bleedin' blacky-white,’ were familiar taunts in scuffles among the barrack children, while the vocabulary of the bazaar children could be even more wounding. Yet George, by the irony of fate, was fairer than many of his white tormentors, and had he possessed a tougher character, or been less good-looking, he might have lived down the unknown grandmother. But he was not only a very pretty little boy, but a painfully timid one, a combination that endeared him to adults but made his own generation yearn to kick him – which they did with enthusiasm and on every possible occasion.