Far Pavilions (39 page)

‘Was a half-caste,’ finished Ash impatiently. ‘Yes, I know. And I don't see that it is any concern of yours or anyone else's, so you needn't go on about it.’

‘Was he a half-caste? I didn't know that. Are you sure? He didn't look it.’

‘Then what on earth are you talking about?’ demanded Ash, angry with himself for betraying George's secret to someone who obviously did not know it and would now inevitably hand it on.

‘Garforth, of course. He shot himself this afternoon.’

‘
What?
’ Ash's voice cracked. ‘I don't believe it.’

‘Perfectly true, I'm afraid. I don't know what he'd been up to, but it seems that several people cut him at the Club last night. Then this morning he got a couple of letters cancelling invitations that he had already accepted, so at lunch time he took two bottles of brandy from the shop, drank 'em both and then shot himself, poor devil. I got it from Billy Carddock who'd just met the doctor coming away from the firm's bungalow. He said they'd no idea what was behind it.’

‘I was,’ whispered Ash, his face grey and drawn with shock: ‘He asked me what I'd do if I were in his place, and I told him… I told him –’ He shuddered, and pushing the unbearable thought away, said aloud: ‘Belinda was behind it. Belinda and all those narrow-minded, bigoted, bourgeois snobs who purred over him while they thought his grandmother was a countess and cut him when they found out that she was only a bazaar woman from Agra. The —,—!’ The end of the softly spoken sentence was in the vernacular and happily unintelligible to young Mr Cooke-Collis, but its virulent obscenity startled the
khidmatgar
into dropping a box of cigars, and drew a shocked protest from a senior Major who happened to be standing within earshot.

‘Here, I say,’ objected the Major. ‘You can't talk like that in mess, Ashton. If you must spout filth, go and do it somewhere else, will you.’

‘Don't worry,’ said Ash, his voice deceptively gentle. ‘I'm going.’

He lifted his glass as though drinking a toast, and having drained it, tossed it over his shoulder in the manner of an earlier day when it had been the custom in some regiments to drink a young queen's health in broken glass. The crash brought conversation to a stop, and in the brief lull that followed, Ash turned on his heel and walked out of the mess.

‘Silly young ass,’ observed the Major without heat. ‘I shall have to give him a talking-to in the morning.’

But Ash was not there in the morning.

His room was empty and his bed had not been slept in, and the sentry who had come on duty at midnight reported that Pelham-Sahib had left the fort shortly after that hour, saying that he could not sleep and would walk for a while. He had been wearing a poshteen and a pair of Pathan trousers, and as far as the sentry could remember had not been carrying anything. His horses were still in the stables, and Ala Yar, questioned by the Adjutant, said that apart from the poshteen and a pair of
chupplis
and some money, the only thing missing from his room was a set of Pathan clothing and an Afghan knife that his Sahib always kept in a locked box on top of the
almirah
(cupboard). The box had not been in its accustomed place when he, Ala Yar, had brought in his Sahib's
chota hazri
(small breakfast) that morning; it had been on the floor, open and empty. As for the money it was a matter of a few rupees only, and it was certain that no thief had taken it, for his Sahib's gold cuff-links and silver-backed brushes lay on the dressing table where no one could have failed to see them. It was Ala Yar's opinion that his Sahib, being troubled in his mind, had taken leave and followed after the father of Risaldar Awal Shah and Jemadar Zarin Khan, who had been visiting his sons and had left in the late afternoon of the previous day to return to his village.

‘Koda Dad Khan is as a father to my Sahib, who has a great affection for him,’ said Ala Yar. ‘But yesterday there was some small disagreement between them, and it may be my Sahib desires to mend matters and make his peace with the old man, and when he has done so he will return swiftly. No harm will befall him beyond the Border.’

‘That's all very well, but he's got no damned business to be beyond the Border – now or at any other time,’ retorted the Adjutant, forgetting for a moment whom he was addressing. ‘Just you wait until I get my hands on that young –’ He recollected himself and dismissed Ala Yar, who returned to the Sahib's quarters to remove the
chota hazri
tray that he had ‘placed on the bedside table in the dawn, and in the agitation of the morning omitted to remove. It was only then that he saw the letter underneath it, for in the dim light of the early morning the envelope had not shown up against the clean cloth that he himself changed daily on the Sahib's table.

Ala Yar had learned to read a little English during his years in
Belait
, and ten minutes later, having deciphered the address, he was in the Commandant's office.

Ash had indeed gone over the Border. But not to visit Koda Dad. He had gone to join Malik Shah and Lal Mast and their fellow clansmen, who had been sent to track down Dilasah and bring back the two stolen rifles. And though search parties were sent out to bring him in, they could find no trace of him. He had vanished as completely as Dilasah had done, and nothing more was heard of him for almost two years.

That afternoon Zarin had gone to the Commandant and asked for special leave so that he might go in search of Pelham-Sahib. But this had been refused, and a few hours later, after a long talk with Mahdoo and a shorter and slightly acrimonious one with Zarin, Ala Yar had gone instead.

‘I am the Sahib's servant, and he has not yet dismissed me from his service,’ said Ala Yar. ‘There is also the promise that I made to Anderson-Sahib that I would see to it that the boy came to no harm, and as you cannot go after him, I must do so. That is all.’

‘I would go if I could,’ growled Zarin. ‘But I too am a servant. I serve the Sirkar and I cannot do as I please.’

‘I know. Therefore I go in your stead.’

‘You are an old fool,’ said Zarin angrily.

‘Maybe,’ agreed Ala Yar without rancour.

He left Mardan an hour before sunset, and Mahdoo accompanied him for a mile along the track that leads towards Afghanistan and stood to watch him grow smaller and smaller against the vast, desolate background of the plain and the Border hills, until at last the sun went down and the dusty purple twilight hid him from sight.

13

‘There are men out there. Beyond the nullah, to the left,’ said one of the sentries, peering out at the moonlit plain. ‘Look – they are moving this way.’

His companion turned to stare in the direction of the pointing finger, and after a moment or two laughed and shook his head. ‘Gazelle. This drought has made the
chinkara
so bold that they do not fear to approach within a stone's throw. But if those clouds yonder do not fail us, there should soon be grass in plenty.’

The summer of 1874 had been a particularly trying one. The monsoon had been late and scanty and the plains around Mardan were burned to a dry golden-brown in which no trace of green showed. Dust-devils danced all day among the mirages and the parched thorn bushes, and the rivers ran low and sluggishly between banks of blinding white sand.

There was no grass on the hills either, and most of the game had moved up the far valleys in search of food. Only a few wild pig and
chinkara
had remained, and these plundered the fields of the villagers by night, and would occasionally even venture into the cantonment to eat the shrubs in Hodson's garden, or nibble the leaves of the mulberry tree that marked the place where Colonel Spottiswood had killed himself over seventeen years ago. The sentries had become so accustomed to the sight of them that a dark shape skirting the parade ground or moving among the shadows no longer brought a challenge followed by the crack of a carbine; and in any case, the section of Frontier adjacent to Mardan had been quiet for so long that men were becoming used to peace.

There had been no ‘Border incidents’ for over five years, and the Guides had had no active soldiering to occupy them. They had provided an escort under Jemadar Siffat Khan to accompany a new Envoy on a mission to Kashgar, and a year later two of the escort had carried the completed treaty from Kashgar to Calcutta in sixty days. A sepoy of the Guides Infantry had been detailed to accompany a messenger across the Oxus and from there, by way of Badakshan and Kabul, to India, and a sowar of the Cavalry, who had been sent to Persia with a British officer bound on a special mission, had been killed on the road to Teheran while defending the baggage from a gang of robbers. The Corps itself had taken part in a year-long ‘camp of exercise’ at Hasan Abdal, from where it had returned to Mardan in February of that year, to occupy itself with the normal routine of cantonment life, and pray throughout that hot weather for rain to temper the remorseless heat.

September had been as scorching as July, but now October was almost out, and the mercury in the thermometer that hung in the mess verandah retreated daily. Men went abroad again at midday, and the wind that blew off the mountains at sunset carried a refreshing edge of coolness. But apart from a few brief and isolated showers there had been no sign of the autumn rains – until tonight, when for the first time in many months there were clouds in the sky…

‘This time –
Shukr Allah
*
– they will not fail us,’ said the sentry devoutly. ‘The wind is behind them and I can smell rain.’

‘I too,’ said his companion. The two men sniffed appreciatively, and as a sudden gust whirled up the dust and obscured any further movement on the plain, they turned together and continued on their rounds.

The wind had been blowing only fitfully since moonrise, but now it steadied and blew strongly, driving the banked clouds before it until presently they reached the moon and blotted it out. A quarter of an hour later the first swollen drops of rain splashed down out of the darkness: forerunners of a lashing torrent that within seconds turned the dust of the long, scorching summer into a sea of mud, and transformed every dry nullah and ditch into a fully fledged river.

Under cover of darkness and that raging bedlam of noise and water, the handful of men that one of the sentries had mistaken for
chinkara
passed the outposts unseen. But head-down against the wind-driven rain, they missed their way and were challenged by the guard on the gate of the fort.

It had been no part of their plan to be dragged before Authority that night. They had hoped to reach the cavalry lines without being detected, and to lie up there until morning; but as it was, the havildar in charge of the guard had sent for the Indian officer on duty, who in turn sent for the Duty Officer; and presently the Adjutant was fetched from the mess where he had been playing whist, and the Second-in-Command, who had retired early, aroused from his bed.

The Commandant had also retired early, but not to sleep. He had been writing his weekly letters home when he was interrupted by the entrance of two of his officers, accompanied by as sorry an object as had ever been seen in that room. A gaunt, bearded tribesman with a bandaged head, from whose tattered blanket, worn cloak-wise in the manner of the Frontier, a dozen little rivulets poured onto the Commandant's cherished Shiraz carpet. The bandage too leaked a steady red-stained trickle down one hollow and unshaven cheek, and the blanket that clung wetly to the man's scare-crow body failed to conceal that he held something long and bulky under its sodden folds. He let his arms drop, and the carbines that he had been carrying slid down and fell with a clatter into the circle of light shed by the oil lamp on the writing table.

‘There they are, sir,’ said Ash. ‘I'm sorry… we took so long… about it, but… it wasn't as easy as… we'd thought.’

The Commandant stared at him and did not speak. He found it difficult to believe that this was the boy who had stormed into his office nearly two years ago. This was a man. A tall one, for he had come late to his full height, and lean with the leanness of hard muscle and harder living. His eyes were sunk deep in his head, and he was ragged, unkempt and wounded, and dazed with fatigue. But he held himself erect and forced his tongue to the English that it had not spoken for so long:

‘I must… apologize, sir,’ said Ash haltingly, the words blurred by exhaustion, ‘for… letting you see us like – like this. We didn't mean… We meant to spend the night with Zarin and – make ourselves presentable, and in the morning… But the storm –’ His voice failed and he made a vague and entirely oriental gesture with one hand.

The Commandant turned to the Adjutant and said curtly: ‘Are the others out there?’

‘Yes, sir. All except Malik Shah.’

‘He's dead,’ said Ash tiredly.

‘And Dilasah Khan?’

‘He too. We got back most of the ammunition. He hadn't used much of it. Lal Mast has it…’ Ash stared down at the carbines for a long moment, and said with sudden bitterness: ‘I hope they're worth it. They cost three lives. That is a high price to pay for anything.’