The Far Pavilions by M. M. Kaye
Mahdoo was back from his holiday in his home village of Mansera beyond Abbottabad, and feeling, he said, rested and greatly refreshed. But though he looked much the same, it was clear that the long journey to Bhithor and that headlong return in the worst of the hot weather had left its mark on him, and that he like Koda Dad Khan was beginning to feel his age. He had brought a young relative with him: a good-tempered, gangling youth of sixteen with a deeply pock-marked face, who answered to the name of Kadera and would in time, said Mahdoo, become a good cook: ‘For if I am to have a “makey-learn”, I prefer to choose my own and not be worried by some chokra who cannot be trusted to boil water, let alone prepare a burra khana!’
The bungalow smelt stalely of mildew and lamp-oil and overpoweringly of flowers, the mali (gardener) having filled every available jar with tight bunches of marigolds and zinnias, and there was a pile of letters on the hall table, mostly mail from Home and addressed to Wally. Two, not in English, were for Ash, and both had been written over six weeks ago and described the ceremonies and festivity that had accompanied the installation of the new Maharajah of Karidkote. One was from Kaka-ji and the other from Mulraj, and both had thanked Ash yet again for his ‘services to their Maharajah and the State’, and passed on messages from Jhoti, who appeared to be in high feather and wanted to know how soon the Sahib would be able to visit Karidkote. But apart from that reference to his ‘services’, there had been no mention at all of Bhithor.
‘Well, what else did I expect?’ thought Ash, folding away the sheets of soft, hand-made paper. As far as Karidkote was concerned that chapter was closed, and there was no point in turning back the pages when there was so much to look forward to. Besides, in India the posts were still slow and uncertain, and the distance between the two states of Karidkote and Bhithor was roughly the same as that which separated London from Vienna or Madrid. It was also unlikely that the Rana, having failed to cheat the late Maharajah, would wish to correspond with his successor or encourage Jhoti's sisters to do so.
That same evening, their first back from leave, Wally had suggested that they drop in at the Club to look up various friends and hear the latest news of the station, but as Ash preferred to stay and talk to Mahdoo, he had gone there alone – to return two hours later with an unexpected guest: Wigram Battye, who was also on his way back from leave.
Lieutenant Battye had been shooting on the borders of Poonch, and Wally, meeting him on the Mall and hearing that he intended to spend a day or two in 'Pindi, had insisted that he would be far more comfortable in their bungalow than at the Club (which was not strictly true) and brought him back in triumph. For though Ash still held first place in Wally's regard, Wigram came a close second, not only because he happened to be a likeable and very popular officer, but because his eldest brother, Quentin – killed in action during the Mutiny occupied a special niche in Wally's private hall of fame.
Quentin Battye had taken part in that famous march to the Ridge of Delhi when the Guides, at the height of the hot weather, had covered close on six hundred miles in twenty-two days, storming a rebel-held village on the way, and going into action within half an hour of their arrival at the Ridge, despite having marched thirty miles since dawn. The battle had been Quentin's first and last. He had been mortally wounded (‘ noble Battye, ever to the fore' wrote Captain Daly in his diary that evening), and dying a few hours later had muttered with his last breath the words of a famous Roman: ‘Duke et decorum est, pro patria mori.’
Wally, himself a patriot and a romantic, had been moved by that story and fully approved the sentiment. He too considered that to die for one's country would be a good and splendid – thing, and in his eyes Quentin's brothers, Wigram and Fred, both now serving with the Guides, were tinged with the gold of reflected glory, as well as being what he termed ‘cracking good fellows’.
Wigram, for his part, had taken to young Walter Hamilton at their first meeting over a year and a half ago, which was in itself no small tribute to Wally's character and personality, considering that the meeting had been arranged by Ash, whom Wigram regarded as being wild to a fault – not to mention the fact that young Hamilton obviously regarded him as some sort of hero instead of a thoroughly difficult and insubordinate junior officer who, in the opinion of his seniors (and they included Lieutenant Battye), had been more than lucky to escape being cashiered.
In the circumstances, Wigram might have been forgiven if he had decided to steer well clear of Pandy Martyn's protégé. But it had not taken him long to realize that there was nothing slavish in the younger man's attitude towards Ashton, and that his admiration for him did not mean that he would try and emulate his exploits. Walter's head might be in the clouds, but both his feet were firmly on the ground, and he had a mind of his own. ‘A good boy,’ thought Wigram. ‘The kind who will make a first class Frontier officer, and who men will follow anywhere because he will always be out in front… like Quentin.’ Wigram had made a point of seeing what he could of Ensign Hamilton whenever duty or pleasure brought him to Rawalpindi, and had spoken so warmly of him to the Commandant and the Second-in-Command that it was largely due to his efforts that Walter had been offered a commission in the Corps of Guides.
Ash was not unaware that Wigram, as a dedicated soldier, regarded him with a certain amount of disapproval, and though they were on tolerably good terms, and on the whole got on well together, that it was Walter's company that Wigram enjoyed, and Walter who brought out the best in Quentin's quieter, steadier brother, making him laugh and relax and behave as though he too was a young ensign again.
Watching them now as they joked and talked together, Ash could only be grateful for Wigram's presence, though at any other time he might well have felt a twinge of jealousy at Wally's obvious admiration for the older man, and the fact that they had plainly seen a good deal of each other during the eight months that he had been away, and become fast friends. But he had not been looking forward to these last few days in the bungalow, with the rooms strewn with reminders of Wally's departure and the loneliness that would follow, and Wigram's presence would not only help to make the time pass quicker, but ease the strain of parting from the only real friend he had ever made among men of his own blood.
It would also help Wally, since as Wigram was leaving on the same day they would be riding together, which not only meant that Wally would have a companion on the journey, but that he would arrive in Mardan in the company of one of the most popular officers in the Corps. That alone should guarantee him a flying start, and his own engaging personality, together with the excellent reports that Zarin would have carried back, would do the rest.
Ash had no fears for Wally's future in the Guides: he had been born under a bright star and would one day make a great name for himself. The sort of name that he, Ash, had once imagined himself making.
The bungalow had seemed very quiet after Wally had gone, and there were no more martial hymns from his bathroom of a morning. It also seemed intolerably empty – empty and over-large, and depressingly squalid.
Ash had not noticed until now how dilapidated it had become, or how shoddy were the few bits of furniture they had hired at an exorbitant monthly rate from a contractor in the bazaar. He had thought it comfortable enough before, and despite certain obvious drawbacks, even friendly. But now it appeared sordid and inhospitable, and the smell of mildew and dust and mice that pervaded it was an active offence. The room that had been Wally's study and bedroom already looked as though it had been unoccupied for years, and the only proof that he had ever slept and worked there was a torn scrap of paper that appeared to be part of a laundry list.
Looking about that empty room, Ash was conscious of an uncomfortable conviction that he had lost Wally. They would meet again, and certainly see a good deal of each other in the future once he himself was allowed to return to the Regiment. But time and events would be bound to loosen the close ties of friendship that at present existed between them. Wally would find other and worthier men to admire
The morning had been dark and overcast, and now a gust of wind, forerunner of one of the violent monsoon rainstorms that periodically drenched the plains, swept through the deserted room, setting the chiks flapping and bringing with it a small cloud of dust and dead neem leaves from the verandah beyond. It sent the crumpled fragment of paper, sole relic of Wally's occupation, bowling across the matting to Ash's feet, and he stooped and picked it up, and smoothing it out saw that it was not a laundry list. The poet had been jotting down rhymes –
Divine. shine. pine. mine. wine? Valentine. en…
En—? ‘Entwine?’ pondered Ash, amused. Or perhaps something more exotic, like ‘encarnadine’ –? (Wally's verse was apt to be peppered with such words). Ash wondered whom he had been addressing, and if one day he would meet a girl who would not only attract his passing fancy, but capture it and keep it for good. Somehow he could not picture Wally as a sober and settled pater familias. As a love-lorn suitor, yes. But a suitor who took good care not to press his suit too hard or allow himself to be taken too seriously, and who preferred to pursue some unobtainable She.
‘The fact is,’ mused Ash, ‘that he enjoys paying court to pretty girls and scribbling poems bewailing their cruelty or praising their eyebrows or ankles or the way they laugh, but that's about as far as it goes, because the thing he is really in love with is glory. Military glory, God help him. Until he gets that out of his system, no girl has a ghost of a chance. Oh well, he's bound to grow out of it one of these days: and out of me too, I suppose.’
He turned the scrap of paper over and discovered on the reverse side part of an exercise in Persian. Wally had evidently been translating a passage from Genesis into that language, and it occurred to Ash that this crumpled fragment of paper provided an accurate sketch of the boy's character, in that it bore evidence of his piety, his attempts to write verse, his light-hearted philandering, and his dogged determination to pass the Higher Standard in Languages with Honours. The translation proved to be a surprisingly good one, and reading the graceful Persian script, Ash realized that Wally must have been studying even harder than he had thought –
... set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the East of Eden…
Ash shivered, and crumpling up the scrap of paper into a ball, flicked it away as though it had stung him. Despite his upbringing, he was not over-given to superstition and a belief in omens. But Koda Dad had talked of trouble in Afghanistan and been disturbed by the possibility of another Afghan war, because the Frontier Force Regiments would be the first to become involved; and Ash knew that among men of the Border country, and throughout Central Asia, it is believed that the plain of Kabul is the Land of Cain – that same Nod that lies to the east of Eden – and that Cain's bones lie buried beneath a hill to the south of the city of Kabul, which he is said to have founded.
The link was far fetched, and the fact that Wally had selected that particular passage for translation could hardly be termed a coincidence, for he had recently been reading the memoirs of the first Mogul Emperor, Barbur the Tiger, and on learning of that legend, had obviously been sufficiently interested to look up the story in Genesis, and later use it as an exercise in translation. There was nothing in the least remarkable about it, decided Ash, ashamed of that superstitious shiver. But all the same, he wished that he had not read the thing; because that part of him that was and always would be Ashok saw it as an ill-omen, and not all the Western scepticism of the Pelham-Martyns or those years at an English public school could wholly succeed in convincing him that this was absurd.
A second gust of wind whisked the little ball of paper under the flapping chik and across the verandah into the dusty waste of the compound beyond, and the last trace of Wally's occupancy had gone. And as Ash closed the door against the whirling dust the first drops of rain splashed down, and in the next moment the day was dark and full of the roar of falling water.
34
The downpour lasted over the weekend. It laid the dust and lowered the temperature, and flooded out the snakes who lived in holes below the bungalow and among the tree roots, and who now took up residence in the bathrooms and between the flower pots on the verandah – from where they were evicted by the servants to the accompaniment of much shouting and noise.
Unfortunately it had not been possible to evict Captain Lionel Crimpley, who moved into the bungalow on the Monday in place of Wally, for there happened to be a severe shortage of accommodation in Rawalpindi at the time, and if it had not been Crimpley it would have been someone else. Though Ash was of the opinion that almost anyone else would have been preferable.
Lionel Crimpley was a good ten years older than Ash, and he considered that his seniority should have entitled him to better quarters. He deeply resented having to share half a bungalow with a junior officer, and made no secret of the fact – or that he disliked everything about the country in which he had elected to serve, and regarded its inhabitants as inferiors, irrespective of rank or position. He had been genuinely horrified when a few days after his arrival he had heard voices and laughter coming from Ash's room, and on walking in without knocking, discovered the owner enjoying a joke with his cook who, to make matters worse, was actually smoking a hookah.
To give Crimpley his due, he had supposed that Ash must be out and that his servants had taken advantage of his absence to sit around in his chairs and gossip. He had apologized for his intrusion and left, looking inexpressibly shocked, and that evening at the Club had described the disgraceful incident to a like-minded crony, one Major Raikes, whose acquaintance he had made when their respective regiments were stationed at Meerut.
Major Raikes said that he was not at all surprised; there had been some very queer rumours going around concerning young Pandy Martyn. ‘If you ask me, there's something deuced fishy about the feller,’ pronounced Major Raikes. ‘Speaks the lingo a sight too well, for one thing. Mind you, I'm all for bein' able to speak it well enough to carry on out here, but that don't mean one need speak it so well that one could pass for a native provided one was blacked up.’
‘Quite so,’ agreed Lionel Crimpley, who, though like all Indian Army officers had had to pass the set language examinations, had never added to a meagre vocabulary or outgrown an unmistakably British intonation.
‘Any case,’ continued Major Raikes, warming to the subject, ‘hob-nobbin’ with these people on equal terms don't do us any good as a race. What happened in '57 could happen again if we don't see to it that the natives have a proper respect for us. You ought to speak to young Pandy Martyn, y'know. High time someone did, if he's started getting pally with his nauker-log (servants).’
Captain Crimpley had thought the advice good and acted upon it at the first opportunity. And Ash, who had been fortunate enough not to have encountered this particular viewpoint before (the Crimpley–Raikes species being a rarity), had begun by being amused, but on discovering, with incredulity, that his mentor was perfectly serious, ended by losing his temper. There had been an unfortunate scene, and Lionel Crimpley, enraged at being addressed in such opprobrious terms – and by an officer junior to him in rank – had complained to the Brigade Major, demanding an immediate apology and the offender's head on a platter, and insisting that he, Crimpley, be given other and more suitable quarters, or if that was not possible, that Lieutenant Pelham-Martyn should be expelled from the bungalow instantly, as he himself refused to remain under the same roof as any insolent, abusive, unlicked cub who smoked and gossiped with the servants, and moreover…
There ha
‘And serve them right,’ thought the Brigade Major, pleased with himself for this judgement of Solomon and unaware how severe a punishment he had inflicted on both offenders.
The best that either could do was to see as little of each other as their cramped quarters permitted, but the next few months had not been pleasant ones, even though the Captain did little more than sleep in the bungalow, and took all his meals in the mess or at the Club. ‘Couldn't possibly bring myself to eat or drink with a fellow of that stamp,’ confided the Captain, airing his grievances to his friend Major Raikes. ‘And if you ask me, our Government is making a great mistake in allowing that sort of outsider to come to this country at all. They ought to recognize the kind and weed ‘em out at once.’
‘Crimpley,’ wrote Ash angrily, describing him in a letter to Wally, ‘is precisely the type of supercilious, bone-headed bastard who ought never to be allowed to set foot in this country, for he and his kind can ruin the lifework of a thousand good men by a single fatuous display of rudeness and insularity. Thank God there are only a very few of them. But even one would be too many, and it is depressing to think that our descendants will probably accept the view that dear Lionel was “typical “, and that the whole damned lot of us, from Clive onwards, were a bunch of pompous, insular, overbearing and mannerless poops!’