Far Pavilions (23 page)

Lily had a loose mouth and a roving eye, and she had formed a habit of coming in last thing at night in her dressing-gown to make sure that Ash's bedroom windows were open and his curtains properly drawn. Her heavy corn-coloured plaits fell almost to her knee, and one night she combed them out and sat on the edge of Ash's bed to show him, she said, that she could sit on her hair. From there things had moved very fast and Ash was never quite sure how she had come to be in his bed, or who had put out the light; but it had been wildly exciting. His own inexperience had been more than compensated for by Lily's extreme proficiency, and he had proved such an apt pupil that she had enjoyed herself immensely and contrived to spend the next six nights in his bed. She would certainly have spent the seventh there as well had they not been discovered by Mrs Parrot, the housekeeper,
in flagrante delicto
– though that was not precisely the term Mrs Parrot had used when reporting the incident to Ash's Aunt Millicent…

Lily Briggs was dismissed without a character, while Ash received a sound thrashing and a lecture on the evils of concupiscence from Uncle Matthew, and a black eye and a split lip from the second footman, who had been one of the faithless Lily's most fervent admirers. The remainder of that holiday passed without incident and the next one saw him back with Colonel Anderson.

Once or twice a year there would be a letter from Zarin. But on the whole these contained little news; Zarin could not write, and the bazaar letter-writer he employed had a flowery style and a habit of beginning and ending every letter with polite and protracted inquiries as to the recipient's health, and long-winded prayers to ‘the Almighty God’ for his continued well-being. Sandwiched in between would be a few disconnected items of news, and by this means Ash learned that Zarin was to be married to a second cousin of Awal Shah's wife; that a young squadron officer, Lieutenant Ommaney, had been murdered by a fanatic while attending band practice in Mardan; and that the Guides had been out against the Utman Khel, who had been raiding villages in British territory.

Sometime during those early years Zarin's mother died, and shortly afterwards Koda Dad Khan resigned his post and left Gulkote. The Rajah had been loth to part with his old and trusted servant, but Koda Dad had pleaded ill-health and his desire to end his days among his kinsmen in the village where he had been born. His true reason, however, had been a lively distrust of Janoo-Rani, who had made no secret of the fact that she suspected him of complicity in Ashok's escape. She had done her best to poison the Rajah's mind against him, but without success. The Rajah valued the old man and had been curt with Janoo-Rani, and Koda Dad knew that he had nothing to fear from her while he enjoyed her husband's favour and protection.

But there came a day when the Rajah decided to journey to Calcutta in order to see the Viceroy and personally press his claim to the neighbouring state of Karidarra, whose late ruler, a distant cousin, had left no heir. He announced that his eldest son, the Yuveraj, would accompany him, and that during his absence the Rani would act as Regent – a piece of folly which (in Koda Dad's opinion) many people besides himself might have cause to regret. The list of officials who were to travel to Calcutta in the Rajah's suite did not include the Master of Horse; and noting that omission, Koda Dad knew that the time had come for him to leave Gulkote.

He was not sorry to go, because now that his wife was dead and his sons were soldiering in the north, there was little to stay for: a few friends, his horses and his hawks, that was all. The Rajah had been more than generous to him, and he had ridden away on the finest horse in the royal stables, with his favourite hawk on his wrist and his saddle-bags crammed with enough coins to ensure a comfortable old age. ‘You are wise to leave,’ said Hira Lal. ‘Were it not for the Yuveraj – who, the gods know, needs at least one servant who is not in the pay of the
Nautch
-girl – I would follow your example. But then I am to go to Calcutta with him; and I do not think she suspects me, for I have been very careful.’

But it seemed that Hira Lal had not been careful enough. He had allowed himself to forget that Lalji, spoilt, vain and gullible, had never been capable of distinguishing between his friends and his enemies, and could be counted upon to prefer the latter because they pandered to him and flattered him. Lalji's chosen favourites, Biju and Puran, were both spies of the Rani, and they had always distrusted Hira Lal. One hot night on the long journey to Calcutta, Hira Lal had apparently left his tent in search of air and been attacked and carried off by a tiger. There had been no signs of a struggle, but a fragment of his blood-stained clothing had been found caught on a thorn bush a hundred yards from the camp; and there was known to be a man-eating tiger in the territory. The Rajah had offered a hundred rupees for the recovery of his body, but the surrounding country was full of thickets, elephant grass and deep ravines, and no further trace of him had been found.

Hira Lal had vanished. But as Koda Dad's friends were not addicted to writing him letters, he never heard the tale – or anything further from Gulkote. And neither did Ash, since Koda Dad's departure from the state had severed his last link with it. Inevitably, the past retreated, for life in England allowed him little time for retrospect. There was always work to be done and games to be played, school to be endured and holidays to be enjoyed, and in time the memory of Gulkote became shadowy and a little unreal, and he seldom thought of it, though at the back of his mind – ignored but ever-present – there lurked a curious feeling of emptiness and loss, a haunting sense of being incomplete because something that was vitally necessary to him had gone out of his life. He had no idea how long that feeling had been there, and he made no attempt to analyse it for fear that it might lead him back to the day of Sita's death. But he was convinced that just as soon as he returned to his own country and saw Zarin and Koda Dad again, it would vanish; and in the meantime he accepted it much as a man with one arm or one leg accepts his disability and learns to live with it; and to ignore it.

He made no close friends and was never particularly popular among his contemporaries, who found him difficult to know and continued to regard him as something of a freak – a ‘loner’. But in a world where the ability to hit a ball or out-run one's fellows was prized above scholarship, his prowess at sports at least earned him their respect (and in the case of his juniors a large measure of admiration), and in his last year at school he had a batting average of fifty-two point nought three, took seven wickets for sixteen in a house match, made a century at Lord's and passed into the new Royal Military College at Sandhurst by a comfortable margin.

It was a come-down, after those three final terms, to find himself once more in the position of an obscure ‘new boy' at the bottom of a ladder. But on the whole he preferred the R.M.C. to his public school, and did well there; well enough, at all events, for some of his fellow cadets to try and dissuade him from going into the Indian Army – especially now that the purchase of commissions was to be abolished, which meant that the sons of rich men would in future be obliged to rely on ability instead of their purses to obtain promotion. Thus handicapped, few gentlemen would now care to plump for an army career, and Ash's advisers prophesied (correctly as it happened) a disastrous drop in cadets; their own term being the last to enter before the new rule came into force. It was going to be bad enough in a decent regiment, let alone going off to soldier among a lot of pushing, provincial nobodies. ‘And you don't want to do that, you know. After all, it's not as if you were short of the ready, so why go off and bury yourself in some colonial back-woods among a lot of blacks and second-raters? My pater says…’

Ash had retorted with some heat that if the speaker and his father and his friends really thought along these lines, then the sooner the British cleared out of India and left her to run her own affairs the better, for she could probably do so more successfully with her own first-raters than with anyone else's second-raters.

‘Pandy's up on his elephant again!’ jeered his Company (the nickname had followed him to the Military College). But a Senior Instructor, who had overheard the exchange and repeated it to the Company Commander, had been inclined to agree with him.

‘It's the old Horse Guards' attitude,’ said the Senior Instructor. ‘All those fellows were as caste-ridden as Hindus, and used to regard an India Army officer as some form of Untouchable. Why, old Cardigan wouldn't even eat in mess with one. But if we want to have an Empire, we need our best material to serve overseas, not our worst. And thanks be to God there are still enough of the former who are prepared to go.’

‘Would you class young Pandy Martyn among the best?’ inquired the Company Commander sceptically. ‘Damned if I would. If you want my opinion, he's as wild as a hawk and liable to fly off at a tangent at any moment. Doesn't take any too kindly to discipline either, for all that surface appearance of docility. I don't trust the type. The army's no place for Radicals – especially the Indian Army. In fact they're a downright danger, and if I had any say in it I'd keep ‘em out of it. And that goes for young Pandy!’

‘Nonsense. He'll probably end up as another Nicholson. Or a Hodson, anyway.’

‘That's just what I'm afraid of – or would be, if I were his future C.O. Both those two were mountebanks. Useful ones, I grant you. But only because of the particular circumstances. It was probably fortunate that they died when they did. From all one hears, they must have been quite insufferable.’

‘Oh, well, perhaps you're right,’ conceded the Senior Instructor, losing interest in the subject.

As at school, Ash made no close friends at Sandhurst, though he was liked, and to a great extent admired – the latter again almost solely on account of his success as an athlete. He won the Pentathlon, played football, cricket and fives for the College, took first place in the riding events and marksmanship, and passed out twenty-seventh in a list of two hundred and four cadets.

Uncle Matthew and Aunt Millicent, Cousin Humphrey and two elderly female Pelham-Martyns attended the Passing-Out Parade. But Colonel Anderson had not been present. He had died in the previous week, leaving a small legacy to each of his two Indian servants, in addition to a sum sufficient to cover their return to their own country, and a letter to Ash asking him to see that they reached their homes in safety. His house and its contents had been left to a nephew, and Ash, Ala Yar and Mahdoo had spent their last month in England at Pelham Abbas; embarking at the end of June on the S.S.
Canterbury Castle
, for Bombay. The years of exile were over, and for all three of them, home lay ahead.

‘It will be good to see Lahore again,’ said Mahdoo. ‘There be many larger cities in
Belait
, but save only in the matter of size, none can rival Lahore.’

‘Or Peshawar – or Kabul,’ grunted Ala Yar. ‘It will be pleasant to purchase proper food in the bazaars once more and to smell the morning among the Khyber hills.’

Ash said nothing. He leaned upon the rail and watched the foam-streaked water widen between the ship and the shore, and saw life opening before him like a vast sunlit plain stretching away and away towards unimaginable horizons. A plain across which he could travel at will, choosing his own path and taking his own time.

He was free at last. He was going home, and the future was his to do what he liked with. The Regiment first: the Guides and Zarin and soldiering among the wild hills of the North-West Frontier… perhaps one day he would command the Corps; and after that a Division. In time – who knew? he might even become
Jung-i-Lat Sahib
– Commander-in-Chief of all the armies in Hind – but that would be a long way ahead… he would be old then and all this would be in the past. He did not have to think of the past just now: only of the future…

8

Ash had returned to India in the late summer of 1871.

It was a year that had not been without interest to many millions of people. France had seen the capitulation of Paris, heard Prince William of Prussia proclaimed Emperor of Germany at Versailles, and once again declared herself a Republic. In England, Parliament had finally legalized trade unions, and an end had been put to the long-established and iniquitous system by which commissions in the British Army could be purchased by the highest bidder, irrespective of merit. But none of these events had been of any interest to Ashton Hilary Akbar, compared to the fact that he was returning at last to the land of his birth after seven long years in exile.

He was home again. He was in his nineteenth year – and he was engaged to be married…

Until recently, Ash had had very little to do with girls of his own class, for after Lily Briggs the well-bred and well-behaved sisters and cousins of his schoolmates had seemed painfully prim and colourless, and he had gone out of his way to avoid them. Lily had had her successors, but they had made no lasting impression and already their names and faces were becoming dim, for his heart had never again been involved. As a cadet he had gained the quite unfounded reputation of being a misogynist by refusing invitations to tea-parties, picnics and dances, and announcing grandly that he ‘had no time for women But there had been plenty of time – hours and days and weeks of it – on the long sea voyage from London to Bombay. And Miss Belinda Harlowe was not only a young lady, but far and away the prettiest girl on board.