Far Pavilions (131 page)

The fact that Sarji's family and friends believed that cock-and-bull story that he and Bukta had invented, and repeated it as the truth to all who called to commiserate, was of great service to Ash, as it conveyed the impression that they had known all along that the two had been shooting in an area that was a great deal further to the south of Ahmadabad than the border of Rajasthan was to the north. And this, taken in conjunction with Ash's behaviour and the absence of any evidence that the late Rana's widow was in Gujerat (or even that she was still alive), evidently succeeded in convincing the Diwan's spies that they were on the wrong track, for by the end of the week Gul Baz was able to report that the bungalow was no longer being watched.

That night there had been no skulking figure among the shadows, and next morning when Ash went riding he did not have to be told that he was not being followed or spied upon, for he could feel it in his bones. All the same he took no chances, but was careful to behave as though the danger still existed; and only when a further three days and nights passed without sign of a watcher did he feel able to relax and breathe freely again – and began to think of the future.

Now that he was no longer under surveillance, there was no reason to linger in Ahmadabad a moment longer than necessary. But it was not possible to leave immediately, because two of the three dates proffered by the station master on which he could guarantee accommodation on the train to Bombay with a through booking to Delhi and Lahore had already been lost. The remaining one entailed a further delay of several days, but now Ash closed with it and told Gul Baz to see to all the necessary arrangements for the move, he himself having other things to occupy him.

Despite the anxieties that bedevilled the tense days that followed upon his return to cantonments, the need to engage in trivial pursuits had proved a blessing, for together with the long hours of enforced idleness and the longer nights it had provided him with ample time in which to sort out the problems of the future. Yet the major one still remained unsolved: what to do about Juli?

It had all seemed so simple once; if only she were free he could marry her. Well she was free now, free from both the Rana and Shushila, and there should have been nothing to prevent him doing so. But the trouble lay in the fact that the gap between day-dreaming about remote possibilities and dealing with the reality was so wide as to be almost unbridgeable…

The same could be said of his feeling for the Corps of Guides, for at one stage of the unforgettable journey with the bridal camp he had actually considered deserting – leaving India, with Juli, to take refuge in another country and never see Mardan or Wally or Zarin again. It astonished him now that even in the first fever of his passion for Juli he could ever have contemplated such a thing: except that he had been in disgrace at the time, banished from the Regiment and the Frontier, and with no idea how long his exile would last – or any certainty that some future Commandant would not decide that it would be better not to have him back at all. But things were different now… he had been recalled to Mardan to take up the duties he had abandoned when he joined the hunt for Dilasah Khan and the stolen carbines, and there was no question of his refusing to return. The ties that bound him to the Guides stretched too far back into the past and were too strong to be easily broken; and even for Juli's sake he would not – could not – bring himself to sever them and lose both Wally and Zarin. Nor was there any point in doing so, when even if he could persuade someone to marry him to Juli, he would never be able to claim her openly as his wife.

‘The problem is this –’ explained Ash, discussing the matter with Mrs Viccary, who, besides being the only person in Gujerat whom he felt able to tell the story to, could be trusted not to let it go any further and to listen to it without being swayed by any prejudice on the score of Juli's ancestry or his own.

It was not advice that he needed (being well aware that if it ran contrary to his own wishes he would not take it) but someone to talk to. Someone sensible and sympathetic who loved India as he did and with whom he could discuss this whole situation, and by doing so get it straightened out in his own mind. And Mrs Viccary had not failed him: she had neither blamed nor praised, or been shocked by his desire to marry a Hindu widow, or by Anjuli's view that no legal marriage was necessary.

‘You see,’ said Ash, ‘once it was known that we were married she wouldn't be safe.’

‘Or you either,’ observed Edith Viccary. ‘People would talk, and news travels fast in this country.’

That of course was the point; and Ash was inexpressibly grateful to her for seeing it at once instead of bringing up all the more obvious arguments against such a marriage – beginning with the fact that, until he reached the age of thirty or the rank of Major, he could not marry without the consent of his Commanding Officer (which in the circumstances he would certainly not get) and going on to point out that in a regiment such as the Guides, which recruited Mussulmans, Sikhs, Hindus and Gurkhas, a British officer who married a Hindu widow would be anathema. By doing so he would sow dissension among the men under his command, offending not only the caste Hindus, but probably the Sikhs as well, causing the Mussulmans to despise him for thinking so little of his own religion, and Sikhs, Mussulmans and Gurkhas together to suspect him of favouring his wife's co-religionists whenever he was called upon to judge between a Hindu and a man of another faith, or to recommend one or other for promotion. The Guides would ask him to leave, and no other Indian Army regiment would accept him for the same reasons.

Ash knew all about that; and so did Mrs Viccary. But none of it was worth worrying about for the simple reason that even if he could arrange to marry Juli, to do so openly would be tantamount to signing her death warrant – together with his own – since such a marriage, once made public, was bound to cause a great deal of talk and speculation and scandal. And in a country such as India where not only regiments but members of the Civil Service, medical officers, policemen, clergymen, men in trade and numerous other Britishers, all accompanied by large numbers of Indian servants, were moved about from one end of the country to another at short notice, a story of this kind would be gossiped over in the Clubs of every military station from Peshawar to Trivandrum, and in every bazaar where the servants of the ‘Sahib-log’ gathered to talk over the doings of the
Angrezis
and retail the gossip of the station they had just left. And the Indian grape-vine was the swiftest and most efficient in the world…

It would not be long before Bhithor came to hear that the same Guides officer who had escorted the late Rana's wives to their wedding (and been stationed in Gujerat at the time of the Rana's death and the disappearance of one of his widows) had subsequently married a Hindu widow. The Diwan would add two and two together, and coming up with the correct total, would send someone to investigate; after which it would only be a matter of time – probably only a very short time – before Juli died. For Bhithor would require vengeance for their own dead – all those who had died (and there must have been many of them) in the fight to defend the entrance to Bukta's secret road – as well as for the insult that had been put upon them by the abduction of their late Rana's widow.

‘It would have to be kept secret,’ said Ash.

‘Then you still mean to marry her? Even though you tell me that she herself can see no reason for it?’

But Ash was nothing if not obstinate. ‘What else? Do you think I want her as a mistress… a concubine? I want to know that she's my wife, even though I can't acknowledge her as such. It's – it's something I
have
to do. I can't explain…’

‘You don't have to,’ said Edith Viccary. ‘If I were in your place I'd feel the same. Of course you must marry her. But it isn't going to be easy.’

The difficulty, she explained, was that marriage being a Sacrament of the Church, no clergyman would consent to employ it to unite a Christian to a Hindu, unless it could be proved that the latter had undergone a genuine conversion. ‘God is not mocked, you know,’ added Mrs Viccary softly.

‘I didn't mean to mock. But then I never think of Him as being an Englishman – or a Jew or an Indian or any other nationality that we've invented for ourselves. Nor do I believe that He thinks of us like that. But I did realize, as soon as I began to think about it, that the Church wouldn't marry us, any more than Juli's priests would, even if I dared risk asking them, which I don't. But I thought perhaps a magistrate -?’

Edith Viccary shook her head decidedly. She knew the local British magistrate a good deal better than Ash did, and Mr Chadwick, she assured him, was the last person to consent to such a thing. He could also be trusted to report Ash's request for a marriage licence to the Commissioner, who apart from being equally horrified would ask a great many awkward ques-ions. And once inquiries were set on foot, the fat would be well and truly in the fire.

‘Yes,’ said Ash bitterly. ‘We can't risk that.’

There seemed to be no way out. It was inconceivable – fatuous and unjust and totally unfair – that two grown people who only wanted to marry each other should not be permitted to do so, when their marriage would harm no one. It was a purely personal matter, and if people could get married at sea without the aid of magistrates and licences, like that couple on the
Canterbury Castle,
there should be some equally simple method by which those on land could do the same, and he –

‘By God, that'S it!’ cried Ash explosively, leaping to his feet. ‘Red Stiggins – the
Morala.
Why on earth didn't I think of that before?’

Red had said something about sailing for Karachi ‘in a few weeks' time' and had invited him to come along for the voyage. And if the
Morala
had not left yet…

Pausing only to bestow a fervent hug on the bewildered Mrs Viccary, he ran from her drawing-room, shouting for Kulu Ram to fetch his horse, and ten minutes later anyone happening to be abroad at that hottest hour of the day would have seen a Sahib riding hell-for-leather down the glaring cantonment road towards the city.

The shrewd Gujerati who looked after Captain Stiggins's business interests in the peninsula had a small office in a street near the Daripur Gate, and he had been enjoying his customary afternoon's siesta when the Sahib burst in on him, demanding to know if the
Morala
had already set sail for Karachi, and if not, when she would be leaving and from where. And this time Ash's luck was in, for the
Morala
had not yet sailed, though she would be doing so very shortly – in the next day or two if all went well, and certainly not later than the end of the week. The ship was at Cambay at the head of the Gulf, and if the Sahib wished to send a message –?

The Sahib did, and was grateful for the offer as he had no time to spare for writing letters. ‘Tell him that I accept his invitation and to expect me tomorrow; and that whatever he does, he is not to sail without me.’

There was a great deal to be done and not much time in which to do it, for the port of Cambay was all of sixty miles from Ahmadabad, and Ash rode back to his bungalow at the same break-neck speed at which he had left Mrs Viccary's.

46

Captain Stiggins scratched the copper-coloured stubble on his chin with a horny thumb and stared thoughtfully at Ash for a full two minutes, pondering the matter. Then he said slowly: ‘Well now… I can't say as I'm pre-cisely the same kind of animal as one of them gilded skippers of a steam packet – no more'n the old
Morala
is a fancy passenger ship. Still, I'm the master of this ‘ere craft, and so I don't see as 'ow that shouldn't give me the right to do anything a cove in a frock-coat and brass buttons can do aboard one of them swanky great P & O boats.’

‘Then you'll do it, Red?’

‘Well, son, I ain't never done such a thing before, so I can't say as I'll go bail for its bein' legal. But I reckon that's yore 'eadache, not mine. And seein' as we're pals, I'm willin' to chance me arm and splice yer… now, now–’old yore 'orses, son. I've said as I'll do it as a favour – but I ain't a goin' to do it 'ere and now. Not for you nor no one will I go pretendin' that this 'ere duck-pond is an ocean, so you'll just 'ave to wait until we're standin' well clear o' the land and a good 'arf way between 'ere and Chahbar, see? That's goin' to make it look a sight better in the log-book; and it seems to me, young feller, that yore goin' to need to do everything you can t' make this caper o' yores look ship-shape and above board. Them's my terms, son. Take 'em or leave 'em.’

‘Where the hell is Chahbar? I thought you were bound for Karachi.’

‘So I am – on the way back. But there's bin a change of plan. I reckon you bin too busy with yore own affairs to notice that there's bin a famine around for nigh on three years now – particular in the south. That's why I'm shippin' a cargo o' cotton to Chahbar, which is way up on the coast of Mekran, and bringin' back a load o' grain. It's a longish haul, but on the way back I could put you ashore any place you fancy. Are you on?’