The Ravi Lancers (13 page)

Warren read on, a fatuous servants’ hall novel from which his attention kept straying--to images of Hindu gods--to the poor saddlery in A Squadron--to Himat Singh and how he could instil in him the drive and confidence a squadron commander needed in war--to young Krishna Ram and how he would face battle--to the problem of
bhang
, the use of which was apparently winked at in the regiment, though it was strictly forbidden in the Indian Army...

He hardly noticed the music at first because he had heard it so often from the lines of his regiment, or in the Lahore bazaars as he strolled about looking for a bargain, or in the evening at a nautch. It was a
raga
played expertly by
sitar, dol
, and drone. Glancing up he saw the Terrible Twins and Pahlwan Ram crowded round the gramophone listening to the record, which seemed to belong to the Twins. He listened appreciatively. He did not pretend to be an expert on Indian music, but Joan had taught him how to appreciate it, and this was a good tune, well played, with a very tricky beat. He let the book fall into his lap, leaned back, and closed his eyes. The music flowed over him like a river, as infinite in its rhythms.

A voice startled him, shouting, ‘Turn that thing off.’

He opened his eyes and noticed, a little way from him in another chair, a Fusilier captain. It was he who was shouting at the group by the gramophone. They did not hear. The captain got up and strode towards them. He was a red-faced fellow, burly to the point of fatness. Warren suddenly realized that he must be the same man on whom someone--probably indeed the Terrible Twins--had played the trick with the deck chair. Warren thought his name was Simpson. He reached the gramophone and shouted angrily, ‘I said, turn off that bloody wog music. This is an officers’ mess.’

He jerked the tone arm off the gramophone, took the record and threw it on the floor, where it shattered.

Warren stiffened. Pahlwan Ram, so small, dark, and ugly he seemed to be an image of the white man’s worst thoughts about India, scuttled out of the room leaving the Terrible Twins to face the furious Englishman. They looked alarmed but not frightened, as though amazed that anyone could act so rudely.

The captain said, ‘Perhaps that’ll teach you to play your dirty Indian tricks with British officers.’

Warren jumped up and called sharply, ‘Captain Simpson!’

The electric bells by the door and at various places along the walls burst into a frenetic jangle, loud enough to drown all other sound. The men somnolent in the armchairs, or bent over their cards, or turning to listen to the argument, all jerked to their feet and for a moment held there, heads cocked like an assembly of robots first started, then disconnected in mid motion.

The steward called out, ‘Submarine alarm! Boat stations!’ They all ran for the door as the ship’s siren began to boom out a series of hysterical short notes while the bells clanged and jangled. Already sowars and soldiers were tumbling up on deck, lifebelts on. Warren forced his way against the stream to his cabin, his mind racing. He’d speak to the Fusilier captain. And the Twins. But now he had to check A and B Squadrons at their boat stations while the CO did C and D. Was there a submarine in this calm greasy sea, where a porpoise would be seen five miles away? Surely there were no enemy submarines in the Red Sea?

Grabbing his life jacket and fastening it as he ran he hurried back up the now empty companions to the main deck. A quick glance down the starboard side showed the men of A Squadron at ease in their allotted places, quiet, Krishna Ram and Ishar Lall strolling up and down in front and the VCOs facing the men. He hurried through to the port side. A mob of sowars was trying to fight its way into the boats now swinging down from their davits on the deck above. Farther along, a company of Fusiliers stood at ease, watching the chaotic scene.

Warren ran forward shouting, ‘What the hell’s this? Get back!’ He began to yell in Hindustani. ‘Get back! You will not get into the boats until ordered! ‘

He gave a young sowar a tremendous cuff on the side of the head. He saw a jemadar there, and called, ‘Draw your revolver, sahib! Shoot anyone who tries to get into the boat! ‘

The jemadar looked astonished but did as he was bid. Warren saw Captain Himat Singh clawing ineffectually at the back of the crowd. Gradually they prevailed. The squadron took up a shaky line on the deck, well back from the rail.

Warren turned on Himat Singh like a tiger, ‘What is the meaning of this? Your squadron acted like a panic-stricken mob!’

‘They ... they didn’t understand, sir,’ Himat Singh stammered. ‘They thought... they had to get into the boats ... as soon as they were swung down.’

The ship’s siren boomed a long steady note and a passing ship’s officer said, ‘Stand down. It was a false alarm. The lookout mistook a bit of flotsam for a periscope. No submarines around here.’

Himat Singh said, ‘It wasn’t their fault, sir. They ... they were not afraid. They didn’t understand.’

Warren lost some of the edge of his rage. He said wearily, ‘Did
you
understand that they weren’t supposed to get in the boats until so ordered?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then why in the name of God didn’t you make it clear to them? You do it now, and then dismiss to the troop decks. In one hour from now I shall call a boat drill for your squadron only. And tell the Adjutant, from me, that you are Field Officer of the Week for the next four weeks running, and confined to the regimental lines.’

‘Yes, sir ... Sir, will you tell the men it was not their fault, but mine. Otherwise, they ...’

‘By God, I’ll do nothing of the kind. You tell them. Don’t apologize. Don’t explain. Tell them what they did wrong, and tell them what they should do right next time. Then practise it, all day and all night if necessary.’

He turned on his heel, acknowledging the other’s salute with a curt finger to his cap, and strode towards his cabin, to restow his lifejacket. An orderly met him, saluting,
‘Colonel-sahib salaam bholta.’

He found Colonel Hanbury in the cabin set aside for the regimental office. The colonel said, ‘I have been ordered by signal from the War Office to send two officers to London to settle details of the regiment’s absorption into the Indian Army for the duration ... pay, pensions,
batta
, promotions, replacements and reinforcements, and so on. I have decided to send you and Krishna Ram. You will go by train direct from Marseilles, where I understand the division will be in camp until it is concentrated.’ He nodded in dismissal. As Warren turned to go he added, ‘Unless we are hurried into action, you can take a few days leave while you’re in England.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

Warren set off again for his cabin. What a stroke of good luck! He’d invite Krishna Ram to come down to Shrewford Pennel with him, unless he wanted to have a fling in London. But probably not; he seemed a very well behaved, even rather priggish young man.

In his cabin the pictures of Joan and the children in the leather folder smiled at him from the top of his chest of drawers. He began to undress and after a time found his anger melting. They were good people, really, but what a job he had ahead of him! He took the folder off the drawer, gently kissed all three of them in the photographs, and then went to have a bath.

Krishna Ram stood in the corridor of a South Eastern and Chatham Railway first class coach, staring at the passing fields with an intense awareness that made him see everything with the clarity of a stereopticon. He and Major Bateman had had seats in the compartment behind them, where their suitcases still rested on the rack, but before the train left Dover a lady entered and Krishna Ram had eagerly given her his seat. She was the first English lady he had seen in her own country, and like the country itself she was all that his dreams, and Mr. Fleming, and the books, and the magazine illustrations had promised.

The fields slid by, intensely green though it was the end of summer. Surely they ought to be burned out by now, and ready for the cold weather rains. Tall trees, still rich in leaves, marched in front of bare skylines. A ploughman walked slowly towards the train behind two horses--but what horses! They were huge, stately as chestnut elephants, with heavy masses of hair round their fetlocks and mighty necks curved like heraldic beasts in some temple of the Ganges. Behind them the plough glided through the heavy loam of the land. Now a village appeared, grey stone houses, wheat-thatched, grey walls, a stream with green cress swirling under a grey bridge, a boy with a fishing rod, a pink-cheeked English boy wearing knickerbockers and shirt and tie and bright school cap. A church steeple raised a slate finger to the clouds from a cluster of dark trees ... a school, the playing fields empty, the goal posts white against the green ... oast-houses, hop fields, orchards red with fruit. The clack of the wheels on the rail joints grew faster, the carriage swayed in long steamer-like rolls. The foreground blurred, a station passed in a stammering blur of sound and vision. Krishna Ram said, a little apprehensively, ‘My goodness, we are going fast, aren’t we, sir?’

Major Bateman smiled, ‘About sixty miles an hour, I should think. It’s quite safe. Expresses always go as fast as this in England.’

‘I’ve never been so fast in my life,’ Krishna said. He drew a deep breath of the racing air, for the corridor window was open. ‘I like it ... It’s exciting. Like a galloping horse! ‘

Soon the houses began to cluster along the line, the paired rails increased from two to four to six, still the train raced on, the exhaust beat of the engine and the clatter of the wheels flung back now by grimy warehouse and pulsing factory.

Major Bateman said, ‘Nearly there now.’ The train wound like a long snake round severe curves, seeming to feel its way through the maze of shining rails. A dark river appeared, beyond it scores of spires piercing the sky. Krishna recited to himself a poem Mr. Fleming had taught him:

And high over all the Cross and the Ball
And the riding redoubtable dome of St. Paul

They were back in a trench of houses and factories. Now they were rumbling out across the river. The Thames was flowing in from the sea, rushing silently up, dark and iridescent, wooden crates and boxes and bottles floating on it. The train stopped, an unsignalled cessation of motion, under a smoke-grimed glass arch. ‘Charing Cross,’ Major Bateman said. ‘You get the suitcases down, Krishna, and I’ll see if I can find a porter.’

‘I can carry them, sir.’

‘No, no. An officer in uniform must not carry any bags or boxes in public.’

A porter appeared, touching his cap, and five minutes later they were whirling away through crowded streets lined with massive buildings. ‘This is the Strand,’ Major Bateman said. Trafalgar Square. That’s the Nelson Column ... The Admiralty Arch. Whitehall. I’ve told the driver to take us by Parliament Square.’

Westminster Abbey rose ahead like a dream embodied in honey-coloured stone. To the left a huge Union Jack floated over the buildings he had seen in a hundred paintings and photographs--the Houses of Parliament. Helmeted policemen at the gates were saluting tophatted men as they hurried in. Members of Parliament, they must be, rulers of the world, before whom rajahs and maharajahs bowed, kings and presidents quailed.

‘St. James’s Park and the Horse Guards,’ Major Bateman said, as the taxi bowled along one side of a park, the green of the grass unimaginably deep, and there was a lake mirroring the trees, and ducks and swans and little birds hopping everywhere and people feeding them. Another huge building appeared on the left with soldiers marching up and down in front of it. ‘Buckingham Palace.’ Then there was a high wall on that side but more parkland to the right ... an arch, more acres of rolling park, to the left now, and high-nosed men and women riding thoroughbreds under the dappled shade of long avenues of trees.

The houses closed in on both sides. It was the first time since leaving Charing Cross, Krishna thought, that one side or the other had not been open to the river, or a square, or a park. The taxi stopped. Krishna sat motionless, his mind full of superimposed impressions.

‘Come on, Krishna,’ Warren Bateman’s distant voice said good-naturedly, ‘you’re daydreaming.’

He scrambled out. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I was ... seeing London. It makes Lahore look like a village. And as for Basohli . . . !’

‘It’s a big place,’ Major Bateman said, as they followed the hall-porter into the hotel: but Krishna was not thinking now of the size. It was not by size that England held India; it was by discipline, hard work, courage, and justice. It was not the size of London or the busy-ness of the streets that had overwhelmed him, but the sense of majesty, of ease with which this massive power was supported, of grace shown in the parks and the flower boxes.

They had lunch in the hotel and then set out for the West End. First, Major Bateman took him to his own bank to open an account there. The bank was a large-windowed building, solid, its stones dark with grime but flowers bright along the window sills. Inside Krishna wanted to step on tiptoe, for the only sound was the murmur of voices from a far place. Young men in long black frock coats leaned easily over the polished mahogany counter, and the walls were covered with portraits of His Royal Highness the Grand Duke of Something, Her Majesty the Dowager Empress of Something else, with underneath, in every case, the laconic legend
A customer of the Bank.

‘Good afternoon, Captain Bateman, we haven’t seen you for three or four years, have we?’ a frock coat said cheerfully, holding out his hand. ‘Why, goodness me, are not those a major’s badges on your sleeve? Congratulations!’

Major Bateman introduced Krishna and asked the frock coat to open an account in his name. ‘He has a draft on Bombay to start it with.’ Then Krishna was watching the man write easily with a quill pen on large sheets of paper, and later signed his own name, Krishna Ram of Ravi, in several different places.

‘Is this how you will wish to sign your cheques, sir? Very good. Do you need any cash now? Twenty pounds, I suggest. An officer can’t go around with no money in his pockets in England, I’m afraid, as I understand you gentlemen can in the East. A glass of sherry to celebrate . . . ?’