The Ravi Lancers (44 page)

Krishna and Diana walked on in the opposite direction. ‘What an extraordinary thing,’ Krishna said slowly, ‘he was my tutor for five years in Basohli, and his name was Fleming.’

‘He calls himself Fuller here,’ Diana said, and then, ‘They say he’s a ... pansy, the girls at the factory call them.’ She was blushing. ‘He was in everything here--shooting, cricket, carol singing--until something happened, something to do with a boy on holiday from Eton. I don’t know how serious it was, but...’

Krishna remembered the talk at the cricket match in September. And Warren Bateman telling him one afternoon--they’d been discussing Sher Singh--that he’d met the man Fuller in the lane on his leave and snubbed him. Fuller was his dear Mr. Fleming. He realized now, knowing what he knew and having seen what he had seen, that he accepted without question that Mr. Fleming was a homosexual. Perhaps he had always guessed it although he had made no sexual advance during his five years as Krishna’s tutor.

But this man was his Mr. Fleming. He had not become a drunkard, taken to dope, or changed in some other way. He was the same man he had always been. This village--and people like Warren--were rejecting him because of his suspected homosexuality. This in the name of charity? How differently they, Indians, had dealt with Sher Singh!

The puppies bounded on and Diana cracked her whip and shouted. She was getting a little hoarse, he noted. She at any rate was real, and generous.

The train steamed away, Londonward, the barrister leaning out and waving. Diana said briskly, ‘Well, there’s nothing more we can do. If we hurry we won’t keep Mother waiting long for lunch.’ She took the driver’s seat of the trap, with Krishna beside her and Ralph Harris and Joan Bateman in the back. She shook the whip and cried, ‘Hup, Mr. Harcourt!’ They trotted down the station approach and set off on the drive to Shrewford Pennel.

No one spoke for a while, until Ralph said bitterly, ‘There’s English justice for you today! Those magistrates had no right to make that offer they made Sam.’

‘It’s quite common, nowadays,’ Diana said defensively. ‘After all, men are wanted in France.’

Joan said, ‘Yes, but to offer a man--a self-confessed pacifist--the choice of three months in jail or volunteering for the army, is a disgrace. For Sam it isn’t a choice at all. It’s like fining him a hundred pounds or sending him to jail. He doesn’t have a hundred pounds.’ Her scarf flew out in the breeze. Her face was made up white with pale mauve lips and huge kohl-ringed eyes. Her long skirt was of yellow and mauve silk, and both her arms were covered in bangles and hanging charms.

‘What do you think, Krishna?’ she said suddenly. ‘Would you allow a thing like that in India?’

‘Not exactly the same,’ he said cautiously, turning round to speak to her. He reflected that his grandfather might have ordered Young Marsh’s hand cut off, or set him free, but he wouldn’t have made it a choice; and pacifists were not going to make good soldiers.

Diana said, ‘Poaching has got to be punished. Especially taking birds out of season.’

Ralph said, ‘I don’t agree. As Sam said in court, the rich have no right to preserve wild birds for their own use. He only poached ... took ... those six birds to give to the poor in London.’

’Someone must have betrayed him,’ Diana said thoughtfully. ‘The policeman arriving and knowing where to look was too much for a coincidence.’

‘It was his father,’ Ralph said. ‘Old Marsh. Old Marsh would do anything for Sir Tristram.’

‘Well, the Pennels have employed him for over sixty years,’ Diana said.

‘That doesn’t matter any more,’ Joan said. ‘There are more important things than loyalty to feudal overlords ... Can’t you see? Can’t you feel? The wrongness was always there, but what’s happening in France is making everyone see it.’

‘I wish the war was over,’ Diana said, glancing at Krishna.

‘I used to pray for that,’ Joan said, ‘when I thought of my father. Harry. Tim. Young Tristram Pennel. Dick Sturgess. Jim Hall. Tommy Cutler. People I’d grown up with ... Now, I don’t. I want the war to go on until it destroys everything we’ve believed in. Then we can start again.’

There was a long silence. The horse’s hoofs clopped on. A light summer shower drifted over, cloud shadows momentarily dark above the white horse carved on the hill. Diana said, ‘I’m glad we were allowed to give notice of appeal, and keep Young Marsh out on bail ... but where’s the money coming from? Mr. Woodhouse must be very expensive.’

‘Mother said she’d pay as much as she could,’ Ralph said shortly. ‘I told Mr. Woodhouse and he agreed to mark his brief accordingly.’

‘For Mother’s sake,’ Diana said pointedly.

‘Yes,’ Ralph said. ‘Certainly not for mine. Or Sam’s. Mr Woodhouse thinks he’s a danger to society. I saw it in his face. And a coward...’

‘So does Mother, sometimes,’ Diana said.

‘I know, but Mother ... she’s different. She’s the only person in the world I care about hurting. Or losing the respect of.’

Like the rissaldar-major, Krishna thought suddenly. There was something very similar about Margaret Bateman and Baldev Singh--serenity, courage, opinions held decidedly but with a tenderness to the opinions of others, firmness with gentleness.

Diana glanced at him again. ‘I wish you didn’t have to go back to France,’ she said.

‘So do I,’ he said. ‘But I must.’

Hill Cottage was small, square and ugly, built of brick about 1880 to house a farm labourer’s family in the minimum acceptable conditions. Mr. Fleming greeted him in the tiny parlour into which the front door opened. The tea kettle was on a black range in the back of the room, a silver teapot warming, and a Coalport tea set arranged on a small table. Mr. Fleming seemed to hurry him into the house, with nervous gestures, but once he was inside his manner gradually relaxed. While he poured tea, offered Krishna buttered toast and Gentleman’s Relish, he demanded and listened to a stroke by stroke description of Saturday’s innings at the Oval. Outside the begonias made splashes of dark green and scarlet behind the lace curtains. Now and then a farm cart plodded down the lane, or they heard the sharp clip-clop of a delivery cart, and once the put-put of a motor car.

At last Mr. Fleming sat back and said, ‘I suppose you want to know why I call myself Fuller now.’

‘No,’ Krishna said quickly. ‘I don’t. I don’t care. You’re just the man who was so good to me when I was a boy.’

‘Thank you, Krishna ... You were always something quite out of the ordinary. So much sensitivity. You know, Indians don’t have as much sensitivity as the world gives them credit for. I mean, they don’t necessarily feel with another person. It’s usually that they can read what the other person is feeling quicker than Europeans. Krishna, I... I...’

Krishna thought desperately, Oh God, Parmeshwar, Brahma, how can I get him out of this? And then he prayed that the tutor would not belie or lessen the truth, but would trust him to have grown up in soul as much as he had grown in body.

Mr. Fleming said, ‘I have a compulsion towards the vice for which Oscar Wilde was sent to gaol.’

‘If it is a vice,’ Krishna said quietly.

The tutor shot him a quick, wondering look. ‘Yes ... Only God knows that. I know it is a burden, a cross to bear.’

‘Only here,’ Krishna said.

‘Ah, these small villages! I suppose in London, I could disappear ... or no one would care.’

‘I meant, in England. In Christendom,’ Krishna said. ‘Not in India. Afghanistan. Turkey. Arabia.’

‘Oh.’ The tutor was silent, sipping his tea. ‘I am more afraid of women than I am fond of ... men,’ he said. ‘There is something about women that, when we get close--in spirit, I mean, when they begin to show affection--that is like what hearing a barrage approaching must be to you. I feel I am going to be destroyed.’ He laughed, pleased at his little simile.

Krishna Ram said, ‘Worse. The barrages will end some day.’

‘But not womankind, eh? ... It is not as bad here as you might imagine. The lower classes generally do not bother me one way or another. I get respectful service at the butcher’s and baker’s. It is only the people of my own class and education...’

‘I know,’ Krishna said.

The tutor said, ‘After leaving Basohli ... with a very generous gift from your grandfather, a very generous gift, indeed, I may say ... I obtained an appointment as an assistant master at Uppingham. That lasted four years, and I was very happy until ... I could not control myself. The boy was partly to blame. He was of our persuasion. Still is. Quite a famous actor now ... Then I came here, under a different name. I thought the shock of being dismissed from Uppingham had cured me. It had not. There was an Eton boy, seeming to beg my affection. I was wrong ... Warren Bateman snubbed me brutally, not long ago. I had thought him different from the others.’

‘I know,’ Krishna said, ‘but that’s not the real him, sir. He’s under a terrible strain. I can’t explain ... Mr. Fleming, come back to Basohli. I will pay your fare. I will see that my grandfather employs you--you, as you are, not as what some others think you ought to be. You are welcome in India. You know it.’

‘I do know it!’ the tutor cried unhappily. ‘I have even thought of writing to you ... but I am not Indian! I am English. I believe in English standards, and try, try, to live up to them. It is these people, these villagers of Wiltshire, gentlemen such as Warren Bateman, ladies such as his mother and Lady Pennel, whom I need the acceptance of. I am of them, and cannot live among others, however kind.’

‘Please remember what I have said, though,’ Krishna said. ‘You may change your mind. My address is Ravi Lancers, Field Post Office No. 46, B.E.F.’

He stood up. The tutor stood, his hand out. ‘Thank you, Krishna. And I can’t tell you how deeply I am moved by seeing you in our uniform, risking your life a score of times a day, for my country, for those things that I think I taught you to value.’

Krishna shook the proffered hand warmly, but his thoughts were grey. Him, too? When it came to the crisis, would Mr. Fleming be on Warren’s side, just because they shared the same colour of skin? Or because they had both, with their mother’s milk, absorbed the spirit of the West, been cradled in the laps of the West’s gods?

Half an hour later he was back at the Old Vicarage, walking up and down the emerald green of the lawn, thinking, thinking, thinking, and finding no exit from the closed wall of his thoughts.

Saturday, a week after the great day at the Oval, was his last full day of leave. In the morning he walked the puppies for an hour, afterwards helped prepare the Old Vicarage display at the flower show. In the afternoon he wandered round the show with Diana, watching old Mrs. Bateman, who was a judge, and drinking in the scents and colours of the flowers and basking for the last time in the peace, however shallow, of the day. Young Marsh, big and strong and curly-haired, was helping Mrs. Bateman, and Ralph Harris was walking with Joan; and many were the knowing looks that Krishna intercepted, sent at their backs as they strolled among the marquees set up on the lawns of Pennel House--the tall willowy shape of Joan arrayed now like Ariadne, her hair down her back held at the nape of the neck with a plain gold clasp, her children dressed in Greek togas--Ralph Harris, as close and carelessly possessive as it might be her husband or acknowledged lover, instead of her husband’s bastard half-brother.

The long afternoon wore slowly on and as the sun set in red flame down the vale Krishna bathed and then dressed for the ball at Manningford Bohun. He was going to wear uniform, but after he had put on his khaki shirt and trousers, he stopped. In the suitcase he had a set of the formal dress of his kingdom--white jodhpur trousers, tightly wrinkled from ankle to knee, fuller above that, and a long gold-silk
achkan
, like a frock coat, buttoning to the stand-up collar, cuffs and collar heavily embroidered with silver metal thread. With these there were ornate white and gold slippers, a necklace of worked-gold chain, sapphire studded, and the diamond and ruby star of the Royal Order of the Sun of Ravi. He only hesitated a second before quickly taking off his uniform and dressing again as the Yuvraj of Ravi.

Diana was passing across the hall, a shimmer of white organdie and blue ribbon, as he came down the stairs. She stopped, stared, put her hand to her mouth and gasped, ‘Krishna ... Oh, Krishna! You look marvellous! I feel we ought to have outriders and an escort of cavalry ... The trap’s ready.’

Then old Mrs. Bateman came down, exclaimed over Krishna, and made sure they were well wrapped; and Joan came and said, ‘Well... enjoy yourselves. It may be the last time.’

‘Joan,’ her mother-in-law said reprovingly.

‘I didn’t mean the war,’ she said. ‘I meant, the last time anyone will be holding balls like this. Anyway, I really mean, have a good time.’ She pecked Diana on the cheek.

The ball was being held, in a house three miles away, in honour of the heir to the estate’s twenty-first birthday. He was home on a week’s leave from his regiment, the Rifle Brigade, and greeted them at the door with a grin and a wave. He said, ‘Major Krishna Ram, isn’t it? And a century for Surrey.’ He was wearing tails and Krishna Ram thought he was already slightly drunk. Then he took off his overcoat and led Diana into the decorated drawing-room, to an audible gasp from the young men and women already gathered there.

The dinner was excellent; he did not eat the roast beef, but managed to make do with soup, roast potatoes, vegetables and dessert. Nor did he touch the wine, again managing to avoid the attentions of the butler without causing comment from anyone. When the dancing began he felt light and almost as though again at the wicket, entirely concentrated now on Diana Bateman. Her body was firm and close in his arms in the waltz, her eyes level, close to his, and, he thought, questioning, waiting. She looked as she had looked in court in Pewsey, while waiting for the magistrates’ decision on Young Marsh. The hostess introduced him to other young women, and he danced with them, but always returned to Diana. The heady sweetness of night-scented stock wafted in through open windows, with the smell of cut grass, and a soughing in the huge trees at the far edge of the lawn. He floated, knowing he was floating, and when the end came, floated through the farewells, through the good wishes to the twenty-one-year-old, who by now was absolutely drunk. Like Krishna, his leave was at an end. In a few more hours, they would both be back in France. But for Krishna, floating without wine, there was no tomorrow, no yesterday, only this day, this hour.