Far Pavilions (163 page)
There was not even a proper entrance gate, and the sole barrier between the compound and the surrounding houses was a crumbling mud wall that a child of three could scramble over without difficulty; which augured a complete lack of privacy, as any member of the public who wished to do so could stroll in without let or hindrance to gaze at the Escort, hang around the stables watching the horses being groomed and fed, or even (if the doors of the barrack block were open) stare through the long central courtyard at the Residency itself.
‘Faith, it's a combination of a gold-fish bowl and a rat-trap, so it is,’ pronounced Wally that first afternoon in the Bala Hissar, as he and the surgeon surveyed the place that was to be the home of the British Mission. His critical gaze travelled to the towering bulk of the Arsenal, and from there to the tiers of tall, flat-roofed Afghan houses that overlooked the compound. Behind and above these rose the walls and windows of the palace; and above again, the fortified heights of the Shere Dawaza…
‘Glory be, will you look at that now!’ exclaimed Wally, appalled. ‘We might just as well be living on the floor of a bull-ring or the Circus Maximus, with every seat filled with spectators staring down on us, watching every move we make and hoping to see us bite the dust. What's more, they can get in here as easy as winking, while we can't get out if they choose to stop us bad cess to them.
Brrr
! it's enough to give one the creeps. We shall have to do something about this.’
‘What? If that is not a leading question?’ inquired Dr Kelly absently, surveying the surroundings from a professional viewpoint that took account of drains, smells, sanitation (or lack of it), the direction of the prevailing wind and the source of water, while Wally was interested only in the military angle.
‘Well, put the place into a state of defence, to begin with,’ said Wally promptly. ‘Build a good stout wall across the entrance of the compound, with a door we can bar from this side: an iron one for choice. And get another one put up on this side of that archway bit that leads into the barracks, and close both ends of the lane that runs behind it, so that if there should be a shindy we could stop anyone getting at the Residency itself except through the barracks; or into the compound, once we'd closed the gate. As things are now, we'd be sitting ducks if anyone wanted to attack us.’
‘Ah, come now, no one's going to attack us,’ returned the doctor comfortably. ‘The Amir won't be wanting another war on his hands, and as he'll know that's the quickest way to get one, he'll take good care to see there's no trouble. Besides, the Bala Hissar is his own particular stamping-ground, which means that while we are here he is our host; and I'll have you know that Afghans are very punctilious on the subject of hospitality and the treatment of guests, so you can stop worrying and relax. In any case, there isn't much you can do about it, for if all those spectators you mentioned – the boyos up there in the dress-circle and the gallery – decided to turn their thumbs down, they could pick us off one by one as easy as wink your eye.’
‘That's just what I said,’ returned Wally forcefully. ‘I said we'd be sitting ducks, and it's not a role that appeals to me. Nor do I think it's a good idea to put temptation into the heads of the ungodly. Remember the C.O. of that Yeomanry regiment that was stationed in Peshawar a couple of years ago?’
‘If you mean old “Bloater” Brumby, yes – vaguely. I thought he was dead.’
‘He is. He died during a period of piping peace while the Brigade were on autumn manoeuvres near the Frontier. Took a stroll on his own one evening all dressed up in his scarlet-coated best because some big-wig had come out from Peshawar that day, and was standing around admiring the view when a tribesman picked him off. The tribal elders were most apologetic, but they insisted that it was the Colonel-Sahib's own fault for providing such a beautiful target that the temptation had been too great for poor Somebody-or-other Khan, who had not been able to resist taking a shot at him. They were sure the Sahibs would understand that there was no malice about it.
Verb. sap
.!’
‘
Hmm.
’ The doctor glanced up at the rooftops and the small barred or latticed windows that looked down on the British Mission's compound, and said: ‘Yes, I see what you mean. But we're in a cleft stick, Wally. You'll just have to grin and bear it, and trust to the luck of the Irish that no marksman finds us an equally tempting target. Because there's nothing to be done about it at all, at all.’
‘We'll see about that,’ retorted Wally vigorously. And that same evening, when the Envoy and his suite returned from paying their first official visit at the palace, he had spoken about it to William Jenkyns, and later to Sir Louis himself; only to receive a dusty answer from both. Nothing, as Ambrose Kelly had predicted, could or would be done. For the simple reason that refusal to occupy the accommodation that had been placed at their disposal would be grossly discourteous, while to demand that it be made secure against attack would be regarded as an insult not only to the Amir, but to the Commander-in-Chief of the Afghan Army, General Daud Shah, together with practically every high-ranking official in Kabul.
Nor was it possible for the members of the Mission to take matters into their own hands and set about closing off the compound or improvising defences, for to be seen doing anything of the kind could only suggest that they distrusted their host and were afraid of being attacked – which could not fail to offend the Amir and Daud Shah, and might well put ideas into the heads of many citizens who would otherwise have remained peaceably inclined.
‘In any case,’ said Sir Louis, ‘it is no bad thing that the Residency should be easily accessible to anyone who wishes to walk in. The more visitors we have the better. Our first duty is to establish friendly relations with the Afghans, and I want no one turned away, or anything done that might suggest that the public are unwelcome and that we wish to keep them at arm's length. In fact, as I have just been saying to the Amir…’
The Amir had received the British Envoy and his suite with flattering cordiality and every sign of friendship, and appeared only too willing to accede to any demand. Sir Louis' request that members of his Mission should be free to receive visits from Afghan officials and Sirdars had been instantly granted, and Sir Louis had returned to the Residency in high feather and dictated a telegram to the Viceroy that read: ‘All well. Had interview with Amir and delivered presents.’ After which he had sat down to write his first dispatches from Kabul, and been able to retire to bed that night feeling elated and confident: everything was going smoothly and his mission to Afghanistan was going to be a triumphant success.
Wally, lying awake in the house on the opposite side of the Residency courtyard, was feeling less pleased with life, having discovered that his bed contained lodgers. It had been bad enough to be reminded of the fact that another and rival Mission had also been official guests in the Residency (and not so long ago either) by finding Russian names scribbled on the walls of his room. But bed-bugs as well were beyond the line. He hoped fervently that his Russian predecessor had suffered equally badly from their attentions, and decided that if these were the best quarters that the Amir of Afghanistan could offer to high-ranking foreign guests, then the rest of the Bala Hissar must be a slum.
The house in which he lay, and the one opposite to it, were both gimcrack structures of lath and plaster supported by wooden pillars, the Envoy's house being a mere two storeys high, while the newly christened ‘Mess House’, in which the three members of the suite were quartered, was a storey higher. Both houses, after the Afghan pattern, had flat roofs that were reached by a flight of stairs, but unlike the single-storey barrack block, neither roof possessed anything that could be called a parapet, and Wally decided that he had seen considerably better buildings in many an Indian bazaar.
He was soon to discover that large, stone-built buildings, tall towers and marble minarets are unsuitable for an area that is subject to earth tremors, and though mud-bricks, wood and plaster may not make for magnificence, they can be safer. Almost the only stone-work in the compound was to be found in the large, single-storeyed barrack block, where a line of stone pillars supported a sloping verandah roof and formed an arcade on either side of the long, open courtyard that divided the quarters allotted to the Mohammedans from those of the Sikhs. Here, despite Cavagnari's orders, Wally had eventually managed to get a second door made to close the front of the open archway that led into it, on the pretext that it would ‘help to keep the place warmer in the winter’.
This archway ran back a full ten feet, like a miniature tunnel, to form a portico from which two flights of steps, one on either side of the entrance, led up in the thickness of the wall to the roof above. The inner end of this tunnel already boasted a massive iron-barred door, and now Wally had had another put in the outer one: admittedly a regrettably flimsy affair, as it was made from unseasoned planks. But in an emergency it would allow his men to use those stairways unseen.
There was a third stairway at the opposite end of the long courtyard near the door that opened on to the Residency lane. But as any attack would come from the front, the stairs in the thickness of the archway would be as vital to the defence of the barracks as the barracks were to the defence of the Residency. Not that Wally believed that there was the least likelihood of an attack, yet as this was his first solo command it behoved him to take what precautions he could – though they were few enough, in all conscience. But at least he had made a gesture in that line.
He was to make others. ‘Once we are there, it'll be up to us to see that we get on good terms with the people,’ he had told Ash on that night in Mardan. And now he set about doing so with enthusiasm, organizing Mounted Sports, that because they called for skilled horsemanship would appeal to the Afghans, whom he invited to compete with the Guides at tent-pegging, lemon-cutting, spearing a ring with a lance and similar contests. Nor were the others behindhand in the task of fostering good relations; Ambrose Kelly laid plans to start a dispensary, while the Envoy and his Secretary filled their days with informal talks with the Amir, discussions with Ministers, and endless visits of ceremony from nobles and officials.
Sir Louis also made a point of being seen daily riding through the streets, though at the same time he issued an edict forbidding all members of the Mission access to the roofs of any of the Residency buildings, and ordered canvas awnings to be stretched across the barrack courtyard; the aim of both these measures being to protect the susceptibilities of neighbours in the Bala Hissar from the possibility of being affronted by the sight of the ‘foreigners’ taking their ease.
‘This is an amazing country,’ wrote Wally, replying to a cousin serving in India who had written to congratulate him on winning the Victoria Cross and inquire what Afghanistan was like. ‘But you wouldn't think much of Kabul. It's a seedy-looking place…’
The letter had included a light-hearted account of a well-attended ‘
Pagal
Gymkhana' he had organized on the previous day, and contained no suggestion that the Herati regiments in the city were a continuing source of trouble. But the dâk-rider who carried that particular letter to the British-held outpost of Ali Khel, where all the Mission's telegrams and letters were either forwarded or received, had already carried a telegram from Sir Louis Cavagnari to the Viceroy that read: ‘Alarming reports personally reached me today from several sources of the mutinous behaviour of the Herat Regiments lately arrived here, some of the men having been seen going about the city with drawn swords and using inflammatory language against the Amir and his English visitors, and I was strongly advised not to go out for a day or two. I sent for the Foreign Minister and, as he was confident that the reports were exaggerated, we went out as usual. I do not doubt that there is disaffection among troops on account of arrears of pay, and especially about compulsory service, but the Amir and his ministers are confident that they can manage them.’
A further telegram, sent on the following day, was considerably shorter: ‘State of affairs reported yesterday continues in a milder degree. Amir professing complete confidence to maintain discipline.’ Yet in the diary that Sir Louis wrote up every evening and sent off at the end of each week to the Viceroy, he described the arrival of the mutinous Heratis in Kabul, clamorous for pay and completely out of hand.
It was all very well, thought Sir Louis, for the Amir's Foreign Minister to assert that these men would be given their arrears of pay in full within a day or two, after which they would return to their homes; or to insist (as he did) that the reports of their lawlessness and looting were greatly exaggerated and due solely to the behaviour of a ‘few wild spirits’. But Sir Louis had his own sources of information and he had been given several well-authenticated accounts of the conduct of the malcontents that implicated far more than a ‘few wild spirits’ He had also heard that the troops had flatly refused to disperse to their homes until each man had had every anna of his back pay counted out into his hand, but that there was not enough money in the Treasury to pay them. None of which squared with the optimistic statements of the Foreign Minister and his master the Amir.
Yet in one way Ash had been right in thinking that Sir Louis did not fully appreciate the danger in which he and his Mission stood.
The Envoy was by no means ignorant of what was going on in Kabul, but he refused to take it too seriously. He preferred to accept the Minister's assurance that the situation was under control, and to immerse himself instead in schemes for reforming the administration of Afghanistan, together with plans for an autumn tour with the Amir, rather than concentrate on a far more urgent and immediate problem – the devising of ways and means of bolstering up the Amir's shaky authority in the face of the rising tide of lawlessness and violence that had flooded into the valley of Kabul, and was now threatening to engulf the city, and even the citadel itself.