The Far Pavilions (83 page)

The bungalow smelt stalely of mildew and lamp-oil and overpoweringly of flowers, the
mali
(gardener) having filled every available jar with tight bunches of marigolds and zinnias, and there was a pile of letters on the hall table, mostly mail from Home and addressed to Wally. Two, not in English, were for Ash, and both had been written over six weeks ago and described the ceremonies and festivity that had accompanied the installation of the new Maharajah of Karidkote. One was from Kaka-ji and the other from Mulraj, and both had thanked Ash yet again for his ‘services to their Maharajah and the State’, and passed on messages from Jhoti, who appeared to be in high feather and wanted to know how soon the Sahib would be able to visit Karidkote. But apart from that reference to his ‘services’, there had been no mention at all of Bhithor.

‘Well, what else did I expect?’ thought Ash, folding away the sheets of soft, hand-made paper. As far as Karidkote was concerned that chapter was closed, and there was no point in turning back the pages when there was so much to look forward to. Besides, in India the posts were still slow and uncertain, and the distance between the two states of Karidkote and Bhithor was roughly the same as that which separated London from Vienna or Madrid. It was also unlikely that the Rana, having failed to cheat the late Maharajah, would wish to correspond with his successor or encourage Jhoti's sisters to do so.

That same evening, their first back from leave, Wally had suggested that they drop in at the Club to look up various friends and hear the latest news of the station, but as Ash preferred to stay and talk to Mahdoo, he had gone there alone – to return two hours later with an unexpected guest: Wigram Battye, who was also on his way back from leave.

Lieutenant Battye had been shooting on the borders of Poonch, and Wally, meeting him on the Mall and hearing that he intended to spend a day or two in 'Pindi, had insisted that he would be far more comfortable in their bungalow than at the Club (which was not strictly true) and brought him back in triumph. For though Ash still held first place in Wally's regard, Wigram came a close second, not only because he happened to be a likeable and very popular officer, but because his eldest brother, Quentin – killed in action during the Mutiny occupied a special niche in Wally's private hall of fame.

Quentin Battye had taken part in that famous march to the Ridge of Delhi when the Guides, at the height of the hot weather, had covered close on six hundred miles in twenty-two days, storming a rebel-held village on the way, and going into action within half an hour of their arrival at the Ridge, despite having marched thirty miles since dawn. The battle had been Quentin's first and last. He had been mortally wounded (‘
noble Battye, ever to the fore
' wrote Captain Daly in his diary that evening), and dying a few hours later had muttered with his last breath the words of a famous Roman: ‘
Duke et decorum est, pro patria mori.
’

Wally, himself a patriot and a romantic, had been moved by that story and fully approved the sentiment. He too considered that to die for one's country would be a good and splendid – thing, and in his eyes Quentin's brothers, Wigram and Fred, both now serving with the Guides, were tinged with the gold of reflected glory, as well as being what he termed ‘cracking good fellows’.

Wigram, for his part, had taken to young Walter Hamilton at their first meeting over a year and a half ago, which was in itself no small tribute to Wally's character and personality, considering that the meeting had been arranged by Ash, whom Wigram regarded as being wild to a fault – not to mention the fact that young Hamilton obviously regarded him as some sort of hero instead of a thoroughly difficult and insubordinate junior officer who, in the opinion of his seniors (and they included Lieutenant Battye), had been more than lucky to escape being cashiered.

In the circumstances, Wigram might have been forgiven if he had decided to steer well clear of Pandy Martyn's protégé. But it had not taken him long to realize that there was nothing slavish in the younger man's attitude towards Ashton, and that his admiration for him did not mean that he would try and emulate his exploits. Walter's head might be in the clouds, but both his feet were firmly on the ground, and he had a mind of his own. ‘A good boy,’ thought Wigram. ‘The kind who will make a first class Frontier officer, and who men will follow anywhere because he will always be out in front… like Quentin.’ Wigram had made a point of seeing what he could of Ensign Hamilton whenever duty or pleasure brought him to Rawalpindi, and had spoken so warmly of him to the Commandant and the Second-in-Command that it was largely due to his efforts that Walter had been offered a commission in the Corps of Guides.

Ash was not unaware that Wigram, as a dedicated soldier, regarded him with a certain amount of disapproval, and though they were on tolerably good terms, and on the whole got on well together, that it was Walter's company that Wigram enjoyed, and Walter who brought out the best in Quentin's quieter, steadier brother, making him laugh and relax and behave as though he too was a young ensign again.

Watching them now as they joked and talked together, Ash could only be grateful for Wigram's presence, though at any other time he might well have felt a twinge of jealousy at Wally's obvious admiration for the older man, and the fact that they had plainly seen a good deal of each other during the eight months that he had been away, and become fast friends. But he had not been looking forward to these last few days in the bungalow, with the rooms strewn with reminders of Wally's departure and the loneliness that would follow, and Wigram's presence would not only help to make the time pass quicker, but ease the strain of parting from the only real friend he had ever made among men of his own blood.

It would also help Wally, since as Wigram was leaving on the same day they would be riding together, which not only meant that Wally would have a companion on the journey, but that he would arrive in Mardan in the company of one of the most popular officers in the Corps. That alone should guarantee him a flying start, and his own engaging personality, together with the excellent reports that Zarin would have carried back, would do the rest.

Ash had no fears for Wally's future in the Guides: he had been born under a bright star and would one day make a great name for himself. The sort of name that he, Ash, had once imagined himself making.

The bungalow had seemed very quiet after Wally had gone, and there were no more martial hymns from his bathroom of a morning. It also seemed intolerably empty – empty and over-large, and depressingly squalid.

Ash had not noticed until now how dilapidated it had become, or how shoddy were the few bits of furniture they had hired at an exorbitant monthly rate from a contractor in the bazaar. He had thought it comfortable enough before, and despite certain obvious drawbacks, even friendly. But now it appeared sordid and inhospitable, and the smell of mildew and dust and mice that pervaded it was an active offence. The room that had been Wally's study and bedroom already looked as though it had been unoccupied for years, and the only proof that he had ever slept and worked there was a torn scrap of paper that appeared to be part of a laundry list.

Looking about that empty room, Ash was conscious of an uncomfortable conviction that he had lost Wally. They would meet again, and certainly see a good deal of each other in the future once he himself was allowed to return to the Regiment. But time and events would be bound to loosen the close ties of friendship that at present existed between them. Wally would find other and worthier men to admire - Wigram, for one – and because he was bound to be liked and to make friends wherever he went, he would be an immensely popular officer and an asset to the Guides. Ash did not do him the injustice of imagining that he would allow any new friendship to diminish the old one, yet its quality was bound to alter at the will of circumstances and pressures, and what officialdom termed ‘the exigencies of the service’.

The morning had been dark and overcast, and now a gust of wind, forerunner of one of the violent monsoon rainstorms that periodically drenched the plains, swept through the deserted room, setting the
chiks
flapping and bringing with it a small cloud of dust and dead neem leaves from the verandah beyond. It sent the crumpled fragment of paper, sole relic of Wally's occupation, bowling across the matting to Ash's feet, and he stooped and picked it up, and smoothing it out saw that it was not a laundry list. The poet had been jotting down rhymes –

Divine. shine. pine. mine. wine? Valentine. en…

En—? ‘Entwine?’ pondered Ash, amused. Or perhaps something more exotic, like ‘encarnadine’ –? (Wally's verse was apt to be peppered with such words). Ash wondered whom he had been addressing, and if one day he would meet a girl who would not only attract his passing fancy, but capture it and keep it for good. Somehow he could not picture Wally as a sober and settled pater familias. As a love-lorn suitor, yes. But a suitor who took good care not to press his suit too hard or allow himself to be taken too seriously, and who preferred to pursue some unobtainable She.

‘The fact is,’ mused Ash, ‘that he enjoys paying court to pretty girls and scribbling poems bewailing their cruelty or praising their eyebrows or ankles or the way they laugh, but that's about as far as it goes, because the thing he is really in love with is glory. Military glory, God help him. Until he gets that out of his system, no girl has a ghost of a chance. Oh well, he's bound to grow out of it one of these days: and out of me too, I suppose.’

He turned the scrap of paper over and discovered on the reverse side part of an exercise in Persian. Wally had evidently been translating a passage from Genesis into that language, and it occurred to Ash that this crumpled fragment of paper provided an accurate sketch of the boy's character, in that it bore evidence of his piety, his attempts to write verse, his light-hearted philandering, and his dogged determination to pass the Higher Standard in Languages with Honours. The translation proved to be a surprisingly good one, and reading the graceful Persian script, Ash realized that Wally must have been studying even harder than he had thought –

... set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the East of Eden…

Ash shivered, and crumpling up the scrap of paper into a ball, flicked it away as though it had stung him. Despite his upbringing, he was not over-given to superstition and a belief in omens. But Koda Dad had talked of trouble in Afghanistan and been disturbed by the possibility of another Afghan war, because the Frontier Force Regiments would be the first to become involved; and Ash knew that among men of the Border country, and throughout Central Asia, it is believed that the plain of Kabul is the Land of Cain – that same Nod that lies to the east of Eden – and that Cain's bones lie buried beneath a hill to the south of the city of Kabul, which he is said to have founded.

The link was far fetched, and the fact that Wally had selected that particular passage for translation could hardly be termed a coincidence, for he had recently been reading the memoirs of the first Mogul Emperor, Barbur the Tiger, and on learning of that legend, had obviously been sufficiently interested to look up the story in Genesis, and later use it as an exercise in translation. There was nothing in the least remarkable about it, decided Ash, ashamed of that superstitious shiver. But all the same, he wished that he had not read the thing; because that part of him that was and always would be Ashok saw it as an ill-omen, and not all the Western scepticism of the Pelham-Martyns or those years at an English public school could wholly succeed in convincing him that this was absurd.

A second gust of wind whisked the little ball of paper under the flapping
chik
and across the verandah into the dusty waste of the compound beyond, and the last trace of Wally's occupancy had gone. And as Ash closed the door against the whirling dust the first drops of rain splashed down, and in the next moment the day was dark and full of the roar of falling water.

34

The downpour lasted over the weekend. It laid the dust and lowered the temperature, and flooded out the snakes who lived in holes below the bungalow and among the tree roots, and who now took up residence in the bathrooms and between the flower pots on the verandah – from where they were evicted by the servants to the accompaniment of much shouting and noise.

Unfortunately it had not been possible to evict Captain Lionel Crimpley, who moved into the bungalow on the Monday in place of Wally, for there happened to be a severe shortage of accommodation in Rawalpindi at the time, and if it had not been Crimpley it would have been someone else. Though Ash was of the opinion that almost anyone else would have been preferable.

Lionel Crimpley was a good ten years older than Ash, and he considered that his seniority should have entitled him to better quarters. He deeply resented having to share half a bungalow with a junior officer, and made no secret of the fact – or that he disliked everything about the country in which he had elected to serve, and regarded its inhabitants as inferiors, irrespective of rank or position. He had been genuinely horrified when a few days after his arrival he had heard voices and laughter coming from Ash's room, and on walking in without knocking, discovered the owner enjoying a joke with his cook who, to make matters worse, was actually smoking a hookah.

To give Crimpley his due, he had supposed that Ash must be out and that his servants had taken advantage of his absence to sit around in his chairs and gossip. He had apologized for his intrusion and left, looking inexpressibly shocked, and that evening at the Club had described the disgraceful incident to a like-minded crony, one Major Raikes, whose acquaintance he had made when their respective regiments were stationed at Meerut.

Major Raikes said that he was not at all surprised; there had been some very queer rumours going around concerning young Pandy Martyn. ‘If you ask me, there's something deuced fishy about the feller,’ pronounced Major Raikes. ‘Speaks the lingo a sight too well, for one thing. Mind you, I'm all for bein' able to speak it well enough to carry on out here, but that don't mean one need speak it so well that one could pass for a native provided one was blacked up.’

‘Quite so,’ agreed Lionel Crimpley, who, though like all Indian Army officers had had to pass the set language examinations, had never added to a meagre vocabulary or outgrown an unmistakably British intonation.

‘Any case,’ continued Major Raikes, warming to the subject, ‘hob-nobbin’ with these people on equal terms don't do us any good as a race. What happened in '57 could happen again if we don't see to it that the natives have a proper respect for us. You ought to speak to young Pandy Martyn, y'know. High time someone did, if he's started getting pally with his
nauker-log
(servants).’

Captain Crimpley had thought the advice good and acted upon it at the first opportunity. And Ash, who had been fortunate enough not to have encountered this particular viewpoint before (the Crimpley–Raikes species being a rarity), had begun by being amused, but on discovering, with incredulity, that his mentor was perfectly serious, ended by losing his temper. There had been an unfortunate scene, and Lionel Crimpley, enraged at being addressed in such opprobrious terms – and by an officer junior to him in rank – had complained to the Brigade Major, demanding an immediate apology and the offender's head on a platter, and insisting that he, Crimpley, be given other and more suitable quarters, or if that was not possible, that Lieutenant Pelham-Martyn should be expelled from the bungalow instantly, as he himself refused to remain under the same roof as any insolent, abusive, unlicked cub who smoked and gossiped with the servants, and moreover…

There had been a good deal more on this head, and the Brigade Major had not been pleased. He held no brief for Captain Crimpley, or for Captain Crimpley's views, but then neither did he approve of Lieutenant Pelham-Martyn's, for his own were strictly middle-of-the-road and he disliked extremes. In his opinion, the attitudes of both Crimpley and Pelham-Martyn were equally displeasing, and neither could be held blameless. But as no junior officer must be allowed to hurl abusive epithets at one senior to him, whatever the provocation, Ash had received a sharp dressing-down, while Crimpley for his part had been brusquely informed that for the time being both he and Lieutenant Pelham-Martyn would remain where they were, as no alternative accommodation could be provided for either of them.

‘And serve them right,’ thought the Brigade Major, pleased with himself for this judgement of Solomon and unaware how severe a punishment he had inflicted on both offenders.

The best that either could do was to see as little of each other as their cramped quarters permitted, but the next few months had not been pleasant ones, even though the Captain did little more than sleep in the bungalow, and took all his meals in the mess or at the Club. ‘Couldn't possibly bring myself to eat or drink with a fellow of that stamp,’ confided the Captain, airing his grievances to his friend Major Raikes. ‘And if you ask me, our Government is making a great mistake in allowing that sort of outsider to come to this country at all. They ought to recognize the kind and weed ‘em out at once.’

‘Crimpley,’ wrote Ash angrily, describing him in a letter to Wally, ‘is precisely the type of supercilious, bone-headed bastard who ought never to be allowed to set foot in this country, for he and his kind can ruin the lifework of a thousand good men by a single fatuous display of rudeness and insularity. Thank God there are only a very few of them. But even one would be too many, and it is depressing to think that our descendants will probably accept the view that dear Lionel was “typical “, and that the whole damned lot of us, from Clive onwards, were a bunch of pompous, insular, overbearing and mannerless poops!’

Ash had many acquaintances in the cantonment, but no close friends. He had not needed any while Wally had been there, and now that Wally had gone he did not trouble to make any others among his fellow Club members, largely because he preferred to see as little as possible of Crimpley, who could always be found at the 'Pindi Club out of office hours. Instead, he took to spending much of his free time in the company of men like Kasim Ali or Ranjee Narayan, sons of well-to-do middle-class men who lived with their families in large, rambling houses set in leafy gardens on the outskirts of the city, or in tall flat-roofed ones in the city itself. Merchants, bankers, cultivators and landowners, contractors or dealers in gems. The solid, sober backbone of any city.

Ash found their company much more relaxing and their conversation more to his taste than anything that he could find in social gatherings within the cantonments, for their talk ranged over a much wider field of subjects – theology, philosophy, crops and trade, the problems of local government and administration – and was not confined to horses, station-scandal and military ‘shop’; or to the politics and squabbles of democratic nations on the far side of the world. Yet even here he was not wholly at ease, for though his hosts were unfailingly kind and extended themselves to make him feel at home, he was always conscious of a barrier, carefully disguised, but still there. They liked him. They were genuinely interested in his views. They enjoyed his company and were pleased that he should speak their tongue as well as they themselves did… But he was not one of them. He might be a welcome guest, but he was also a
feringhi
: a foreigner and a member of the foreign Raj. Nor was that the only barrier -

Because he was not of their faith or their blood, there were certain things that they did not discuss with him or mention in his presence; and though their young children came and went freely and accepted him without question, he never caught so much as a glimpse of their women-folk. When visiting Ranjee Narayan's house or in the homes of Ranjee's relatives and friends, there was also the barrier of caste, for many of the older generation could not (to quote Captain Crimpley) ‘bring themselves to eat or drink with a fellow of that stamp’, because their religious beliefs forbade it.

Ash saw nothing odd in this, for he realized that one cannot change immemorial attitudes in a decade or two. But there was no denying that it tended to make social intercourse between the Orthodox and the Outsider a difficult and somewhat delicate business.

There had been talk that cold weather of an important conference to be held in Peshawar between the representatives of Great Britain and the Amir of Afghanistan, on the question of a treaty between the two countries. The political implications of this had been the subject of much discussion in Rawalpindi – and indeed throughout the Northern Punjab – but despite what Koda Dad had told him, Ash had not paid over-much attention to it, mainly because he seldom went to the Club or the mess and so missed a good deal that he might otherwise have heard.

Zarin had managed to visit Rawalpindi once or twice during the autumn, and Wally had actually been able to get a week's leave at Christmas, which he and Ash had spent shooting duck and snipe on the Chenab near Morala. The week had passed very pleasantly, but by contrast the long days that succeeded it seemed even more tedious, though Wally wrote regularly and Zarin at intervals, and once in a while there would be a letter from Kaka-ji that brought news of Karidkote and messages from Jhoti and Mulraj; but no mention of Anjuli – or of Bhithor. Koda Dad too wrote, though only to say that he was well, and that things were much the same as they had been at the time of their last meeting – which Ash took to be a reminder that the situation he had spoken of last summer still prevailed and showed no signs of improving.

Captain Crimpley, who occasionally caught sight of one of these letters (the post was laid out daily on the hall table), spoke scathingly at the Club about Pandy Martyn's correspondents, and hinted that they should be investigated by Intelligence. But apart from Major Raikes, no one paid any attention to these allegations. The Captain and his crony were not popular with their fellow members, and it is unlikely that they could have done Ash much harm if it had not been for the affair of Mr Adrian Porson, that well-known lecturer and globe-trotter…

January and February had come and gone. The days were warm and sunny, and Mr Porson was among the last of these birds-of-passage to appear in Rawalpindi, the genus preferring to be out of the country well before the first of April. He had already spent several months seeing India under the aegis of such exalted personages as Governors, Residents and Members of Council, and was at present staying with the Commissioner of Rawalpindi,
en route
to his final port of call, Peshawar, before returning to Bombay and Home. The object of this tour had been to acquire material for a series of critical lectures on ‘Our Eastern Empire’, and by now he considered himself to be an authority on the subject, and had chosen to air his views to a group of members at the 'Pindi Club one early March evening.

‘The trouble is,’ said Mr Porson in a voice trained to carry to the back rows of a hall, ‘that as I see it, the only Indians you people out here care to know are either Maharajahs or peasants. You would seem to have no objection to hob-nobbing with a ruling prince and pronouncing him to be quite a “decent sort of chap”, but, one asks oneself, how is it that you fail to make friends with Indian men and women of your own class? That, if you will forgive plain speaking, one finds inexcusable, as it indicates a degree of shortsightedness and prejudice, not to say racial snobbery, that must strike any thinking person as offensive in the extreme. Particularly when one compares it with the patronizing indulgence extended to your “faithful old servants” that you speak so highly of the subservient “Uncle Toms” who wait on you hand and foot and care for all your creature comforts, the –’

It was at this point that Ash, who had dropped in to pay a Club bill and paused to listen to Mr Porson's discourse, was moved to intervene:

‘It would be interesting, sir,’ observed Ash, in a tone that cut across those rolling periods like acid, ‘to know why you should sneer at faithfulness. I had always supposed it to be one of the Christian virtues, but obviously, I was wrong.’