The Far Pavilions Page 17

  ‘But why was it your responsibility?’ asked Ash, genuinely puzzled. ‘I don't see that it had anything to do with you – I mean with us. India isn't even anywhere near us. It's at the other side of the world.’

  ‘My dear boy, you have not been giving proper attention to your books,’ said Sir Matthew, striving for patience. ‘If you had read more carefully you would have learned that we had been granted trading posts there. And trade is not only vital to us, but to the prosperity of the entire world. We could not permit it to be disrupted by continual vicious and petty wars between rival princes. It was necessary to preserve order, and that we have done. We have, under God's providence, been able to bring peace and prosperity to that unhappy country, and bestow the blessings of progress on a people who have for centuries suffered atrocious persecution and oppression at the hands of greedy priests and quarrelling overlords. It is something we may be proud of, and it has not been without grave cost to ourselves in labour and lives. But one cannot hold back the march of progress. This is the nineteenth century, and the world is becoming too small to permit large portions of it to remain in a state of medieval depravity and barbarism.’

  Ash had a sudden vision of the white pinnacles of the Dur Khaima and the wide sweep of the plateau across which he had ridden out hawking with Lalji and Koda Dad, and his heart sank: it was terrible to think that one day there might be no wild, beautiful places left where one could escape from the things that Uncle Matthew and his friends called ‘Progress’. He had formed an unfavourable opinion of Progress, and he did not continue the conversation, it being obvious to him that he and his uncle would never see eye to eye on such subjects.

  Ash was aware (as Uncle Matthew was not) of a great many things in Pelham Abbas that were in need of reform: the waste and extravagance, and the feuds that raged in the servants' hall; the tyranny of the upper servants and the miserably inadequate wages that were considered sufficient payment for long hours of gruelling work; the unheated attics in which such despised underlings as kitchen and scullery maids, boot-boys and under-footmen slept; the long flights of uncomfortable stairs that the housemaids must toil up and down a dozen times a day carrying cans of boiling water, slop-pails or loaded trays, with the dread shadow of instant expulsion without recompense or reference hanging over them should they commit any fault.

  The only difference that Ash could see between the status of the Pelham Abbas servants and those in the Hawa Mahal was that the latter led pleasanter and more idle lives. Yet he wondered what his uncle would think if Hira Lal or Koda Dad – who were both wise and incorruptible men – were suddenly to appear before the gates of Pelham Abbas accompanied by the guns, war elephants and armed soldiers of the Gulkote State Forces, and take over the management of the house and estates, setting them to rights according to ideas of their own? Would Uncle Matthew gratefully accept their domination and willingly obey their orders because they were running his house and his affairs better than he could run them himself? Ash doubted it. People everywhere preferred to make their own mistakes, and resented strangers (even efficient and well-meaning ones) interfering with their affairs.

  He resented it himself. He hadn't wanted to come to Belait and learn to be a Sahib. He would far rather have stayed in Mardan and become a sowar like Zarin. But he had not been given the choice, and felt in consequence that he understood more about the feelings of subject races than his Uncle Matthew, who had spoken so patronizingly of ‘bestowing the benefits of peace and prosperity on the suffering millions of India’.

  ‘I suppose they look on me as one of the “suffering millions”,’ thought Ash bitterly, ‘but I'd rather be back there, and working as a coolie, than here, being told what to do all day.’

  The holidays had been oases in a dry wilderness of lessons, and but for them he often felt that he would not have been able to endure this new life; for although he was encouraged to walk and ride in the park, it was never alone but always under the watchful eye of his tutor or a groom. And as the park was surrounded by a high stone wall and he was not allowed beyond the lodge gates, his world was in many ways as restricted as that of a prisoner or a mental patient. Yet the loss of freedom had not been the worst thing in those years, for Ash had experienced much the same restriction in the Hawa Mahal. But then Sita had been there, and he had had friends; and at least Lalji had been young.

  The age of his present gaolers irked him, and after the colourful muddle of an Indian court he found the decorous and inflexible ritual of Victorian country-house life dreary and meaningless – and alien beyond words. But since his pocket money, like the servants' wages, was too meagre to permit him to think of escape – and in any case, England was an island and India was six thousand miles away – there was nothing he could do about it except endure it, and wait for the day when he could go back to join the Corps of Guides. Only obedience and hard work could hasten that day; so he had been obedient and had worked hard at his lessons, and his reward had been the end of tutors and life at Pelham Abbas, and four years at the school his father and grandfather and great-grandfather had attended before him.

  Nothing in Ash's formative years had prepared him for life in an English public school, and he detested every aspect of it: the regimentation, the monotony and the lack of privacy, the necessity to conform and the bullying and brutality that were meted out to weaklings and all whose opinions differed from those of the majority; the compulsory games and the reverence paid to such gods as the Head of Games and the Captain of Cricket. He was not given to talking of himself, but the fact that one of his names was Akbar had elicited questions, and his replies having revealed something of his background, he had promptly been nicknamed ‘Pandy’, a name applied for many years by British soldiers to all Indians, whom they termed ‘Pandies’ in reference to the Sepoy, Mangal Pandy, who had fired the first shot of the Indian Mutiny.

  ‘Young Pandy Martyn’ had been treated as a species of foreign barbarian who must be taught how to behave in a civilized country, and the process had been a painful one. Ash had not accepted it in the proper spirit, but attacked his tormentors with teeth, nails and feet in the manner of the Gulkote bazaars, which was apparently not only uncivilized but ‘unsporting’ – though it did not appear to be unsporting for five or six of his opponents to set upon him at once when it became clear that in the matter of muscle he was a match for any two of them. But numbers invariably triumphed, and for a time he had again seriously contemplated flight; only to reject it once more as impractical. He would have to endure this as he had endured the lesser evils of Pelham Abbas. But at least he would show these feringhis that on their playing fields he could be as good or better than they.

  Koda Dad's training in marksmanship having encouraged a naturally good eye, it had not taken long for Ash's schoolmates to discover that ‘young Pandy’ could more than hold his own at any form of sport, and it had made a great deal of difference to their attitude towards him – particularly once he had learnt to box. When he eventually graduated from the Second Eleven to the First, played fives and football for his House and later for the school, he became the object of considerable hero-worship among the junior forms; though his contemporaries found him difficult to know. Not unfriendly, but apparently uninterested in any of the things that they had always believed in, such as the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon races, the importance of being well-bred, and the Divine Right of the British to govern and control all coloured (and therefore unenlightened) peoples.

  Even Colonel Anderson, in most matters so wise and understanding, had little sympathy with Ash's views, for his own opinions inclined more in the direction of Sir Matthew's. He too had pointed out that with the triumph of the steam-engine and the improvement of medical standards, the world was becoming smaller and more overcrowded every year. It was no longer possible for either nations or individuals to go their own way and do exactly as they pleased, for if everyone were free to do as they liked, the result would not be contentment, but anarchy and chaos. ‘You
'll have to find a desert island, Ash, if you want to live your life without anyone else interfering with it. And I don't suppose there are many of those left.’

  The English climate had not improved Colonel Anderson's health as much as had been hoped, but though he had been forced to resign himself to a life of semi-invalidism he continued to take an active interest in Ash, who still spent the greater part of the school holidays under his roof. The Colonel's house was a small one on the outskirts of Torquay, and though in no way comparable to Pelham Abbas, Ash would have preferred to spend all his free time there, since those portions of the holidays that had to be spent in his uncle's house continued to be a severe trial to both of them. Sir Matthew being annoyed to find that, except in the matter of sport, his nephew showed no signs of turning into a credit to him and every sign of being as intransigent as his father Hilary had been, while Ash, on his part, was equally baffled and exasperated by his uncle, his relatives and his relatives' friends. Why, for instance, would they persist in asking for his views, and then be affronted when he gave them? ‘What do you think, Ashton?’ might be a well-meaning remark, but it was also a singularly stupid one if he were not expected to give an honest reply. He would never understand the English or feel at home in their country.

  Colonel Anderson never asked stupid questions and his conversation was astringent and stimulating. He loved India with the single-minded devotion that some men give to their work – or their wives – and would talk by the hour of its history, culture, problems and politics, and the knowledge and guile that must be acquired by those who aspired to serve and govern its peoples. On these occasions he invariably spoke in Hindustani or Pushtu, and as neither Ala Yar or Mahdoo ever addressed his protégé in English, he was able to report to Mardan that the boy still spoke both languages as fluently as ever.

  The Colonel had been ill in the winter of 1868, so Ash had spent the Christmas holidays at Pelham Abbas, where his education – if it could be called that – had taken a new turn. He had been seduced by a recently engaged housemaid, one Lily Briggs, a bold, brassy-haired girl some five years his senior, who had already caused considerable rivalry and dissension among the men in the servants' hall.

  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…’