Death in Kashmir (16 page)

Part III

SRINAGAR

‘Look for me by moonlight;

Watch for me by moonlight;'

Alfred Noyes,
‘The Highwayman'

8

It was the last week of May; ten days after the Charity Dance at the Peshawar Club; and the Creeds, accompanied by an unexpected passenger in the form of Miss Sarah Parrish, were on their way up to Kashmir for Hugo's leave.

Only a few hours ago on the long drive from Peshawar to Attock on the Indus, and on into Punjab to the great garrison town of Rawalpindi from where one of the main routes into Kashmir branches off from the Grand Trunk Road towards the foothills, they had been scorched by the heat and choked by the dust of the plains … and now they were picnicking by the roadside among pines and firs and deodars, and breathing cool mountain air.

‘How did that dear old bolster, your Aunt Alice, take this sudden change of plan?' inquired Hugo through a mouthful of curry puff: ‘I shouldn't have thought she would have approved at all.'

‘Oddly enough,' said Sarah, ‘she took it quite calmly. I think it has at last dawned on her that any girl who served in the forces during the late unpleasantness ought to be able to look after herself. Besides, the minute I said I was going up with you, all was well. Antonia is “a dear girl” and Hugo “such a
nice
man”.'

‘How right she is,' said Hugo complacently. ‘About me, I mean. She has made a noticeable error of judgement in her estimation of my wife, but she can't really be blamed for that. She was probably mixing her up with two other women.'

A car swished past, covering them with dust, and drew up twenty yards ahead with a scream of brakes.

‘I wonder what that's for?' said Fudge, waving the dust away from her nose with a chicken sandwich. ‘Do you suppose they've run out of petrol, or want to ask the time?'

‘As long as they do not wish to borrow beer,' said Hugo, ‘all that I have is theirs, including my wife. Oh
blast!
It's Helen. I might have known it. Go and head her off, my sweet. She worries me worse than the hives.'

Fudge said: ‘Vulgar brute!' and sliding off the low wall, went to meet the smartly clad figure that was advancing upon them from the car.

‘My dear!'
—Helen's voice had much in common with a peacock's—‘I thought it was you! I made Johnnie pull up. We've been driving for hours, so I thought we might as well stop and have our lunch with you. I'd forgotten you were coming up today. What luck meeting you. God, how this journey bores me! If only there was somewhere else decent one could go. But of course there isn't. And anyway, none of us will ever go to the place again. At
least
this will be the last time, thank goodness.'

She checked suddenly at the sight of Sarah. ‘Good heavens! It's Sarah. What on earth are you doing here, my dear? I thought you were supposed to be going to Ceylon or Singapore or somewhere? Don't tell me you're bound for Kashmir too?'

‘Well, it looks that way, doesn't it?' said Sarah sweetly. She had a sudden and quite definite conviction that Mrs Warrender had stopped her car not because she had seen the Creeds, but because she had seen that there was a third person with them, and suspecting who it was, had wished to verify the suspicion. Her surprise was slightly overdone.

‘But my dear! How nice. You'll simply adore Srinagar. Personally, I loathe it; but then of course Johnnie says I'm
far
too particular about the people I make friends with. Of course
I
always say one
can't
be too particular in that respect, but I know everyone else isn't quite so——Well anyway, I'm sure you'll have a lovely time. Not that there'll be anyone up here this year. In fact I hear it'll be
dead
—though I expect you'll find a sort of dying flicker here and there. Why, hello, Hugo!'

‘Yes, this is me, Helen. In the flesh. Odd, isn't it? Even Fudge scarcely recognizes me in this pair of socks. What's happened to Johnnie? Is he busy with Mother Nature, or just sulking?'

‘He's getting out the lunch basket. I'm afraid there are rather a pile of things on top of it. Here he is now. Oh, thank goodness you've got some beer, Hugo. I quite forgot to bring any with me, and we're both simply parched with thirst. I could drink six.'

Hugo closed his eyes and moved his lips in what may have been a silent prayer but was probably not, and Fudge said hurriedly: ‘I'm so sorry, Helen, but I'm afraid that's the last bottle. However, if you can manage on half each, you're welcome to it.' She dropped her coat neatly over one of the two remaining bottles and turned to smile at Johnnie Warrender who came up carrying a large wicker lunch-basket under one arm and a car rug under the other.

‘Hello, Johnnie. Here, don't put that down on top of the sandwiches! What time did you leave 'Pindi?'

‘We didn't. I mean we spent the night at Murree,' said Johnnie depositing his burden on the wall. ‘Hello, Sarah. I didn't know you were contemplating a Srinagar season.'

‘Well, I always meant to do it sometime,' said Sarah vaguely, ‘and as this seemed about the last chance I'd get, I decided to cadge a lift off Fudge and Hugo.'

‘Good show. Pity you didn't see it in its heyday. It was a good spot once. We used to get some damned amusing polo there too … Oh well! Good God, Helen! Is this all you've brought in the way of lunch?' He regarded the sloshy mass of tomato sandwiches with unconcealed disgust, and having pitched them down the hillside, helped himself to one of Fudge's curry puffs.

Johnnie Warrender was an ugly little man who looked like a cross between a gentleman jockey and Groucho Marx, but possessed, despite this, a considerable portion of charm. Left to himself he would have been an attractive and cheerful nonentity; but he was not so left. From the time it had first been realized that Johnnie Warrender of the Lunjore Lancers could hit a bamboo ball farther and straighter, and with greater frequency from the back of a galloping polo pony than the majority of his fellowmen, the course of his life had been altered, and he became, in a small way, a celebrity.

Gone were the days of happy obscurity and unashamed and cheerful penury, for Johnnie's magic wrist and eye brought him into the circle of the rich, the leisured and the socially prominent. Government Houses and Residencies, together with the homes of every Brass Hat and Little Tin God in India, were open to him, and Maharajahs, Rajas, Nawabs and Princes were quick to follow suit: to lend him polo ponies and invite him to their Palaces as an honoured guest.

Unfortunately, there is something about Fame, even in such a comparatively narrow sphere, that is insiduous and corroding except to those of steady temperament and balanced judgement. And save in the matter of horseflesh and the polo field, Johnnie Warrender possessed neither steadiness nor judgement. He was still accounted a ‘good fellow' and his capacity for gaiety and alcohol remained undiminished. But from being a happy-go-lucky and charming person, he became a spendthrift and a snob; in both of which his wife excelled him.

Helen, who had been a young and unaffected girl, became almost overnight a hard, selfish and scheming woman, and that worst of all Indian pests, an indefatigable social climber. Her goal was not a high one, and by dint of flattery and determination and her husband's prowess on horseback she achieved a fair measure of success—though at a cost. The children she had meant to have were the first casualty, because they ‘could not afford the money'—or the time. Not now, anyway: though of course she would start a nursery one day. But somehow that day never came.

The friends of earlier years went next; ruthlessly discarded as she mounted to higher things, while money that Johnnie could ill afford went on the lavish entertaining of their newfound friends. The bills mounted and the Warrender overdraft achieved terrifying proportions. But Helen, if she possessed any fears for the future, refused to face them, while Johnnie's motto was ‘sufficient unto the day'. And now their world had crumbled round them, never to be rebuilt.

The first blow had been the mechanization of the cavalry. ‘It could never happen,' said Johnnie and his type. But it did; and with the departure of the horses and their replacement by tanks and armoured cars, the standard and opportunities for polo among the less wealthy regiments shrank perceptibly. Then Hitler marched his storm troops into Poland, and the tide of the Second World War, damned for twenty years behind slowly rotting barriers, roared hungrily across the world. And for Johnnie and Helen, as well as for thousands of their class and kind, it was not the beginning, but the end of an epoch. A
Götterdämmerung;
a Twilight of the Gods.

Something of all this was in Sarah's mind as she sat on the low stone wall at the side of the Kashmir Road, listening to Johnnie talking horses and Helen complaining about the impossibility of the British officers who had been sent out to India during the last years (‘My dear, half of them simply don't know a racehorse from a tonga pony!'); and seeing, in the merciless midday sunshine, the marks of dissipation and weakness on the one face, and the bitter lines of discontented middle age on the other. Perhaps, with the ending of the war, they and many like them had subconsciously expected the clock to turn back again. But the old days were over for good. India was to be given her freedom and 150 years of British rule would end. There was nothing left for the Johnnies and Helens except memories and debts …

Suddenly Sarah felt acutely sorry for them both and for the inevitable tragedy of their kind. There is always something more pitiful in the destruction of petty but prized possessions than in the crash of dynasties, for the latter is at least spectacular and dramatic, while the former is of no more account in the eye of history than the breaking of a child's toy.

Hugo courteously handed the last of the chicken sandwiches to the ever hopeful Lager and slid off the wall: ‘
En avant, mes enfants!
“The sun is sinking fast, the daylight dies”—Hymns A. and M. In other words, it's almost five past two and we've been hogging it here for over an hour. If we're thinking of getting to Srinagar this evening we must put on no ordinary turn of speed. I refuse to navigate this tortuous road in the dark. Our headlights are rotten and my nerves are worse. Get off that rug, Helen, it goes in the back of the car.'

Helen rose languidly and, stooping to the lunch-basket at her feet, produced from it a battered-looking watermelon. ‘Here, have this Hugo. Johnnie simply loathes watermelon and after all, we have eaten a good many of your curry puffs. But fair exchange is no robbery, is it?'

‘Must I, Helen? Oh well–very thoughtful of you.' Hugo took the green globe with unconcealed reluctance and stowed it gingerly in the boot of the car.

‘You can eat it for breakfast tomorrow. Where are you staying in Srinagar, Sarah? At Nedou's?'

‘I expect so,' said Sarah. ‘I may take a houseboat though. “When in Rome” you know.'

‘Oh, then you aren't staying with Fudge and Hugo?'

‘Of course she's staying with us,' said Hugo. ‘We have hired four houseboats for the season. One for each of us and one for the dog. We are people of large ideas. You must come and look us up some day. Hi! Ayaz!'

Hugo's bearded Mohammedan bearer appeared round the bend of the road where he had been eating his own meal, and Helen said: ‘Of course we will. And I must get Gwen to ask you to the Residency one day. We're staying with the Tollivers you know. Well,
au revoir.
Shall I give your love to Charles Mallory when I write, Sarah? But no!—you're sure to be writing to him yourself. All the girls do.'

‘Sarah,' said Hugo cheerfully, ‘is always too busy reading letters to have time to write any herself. You wouldn't believe the number of people who write to her. In fact, all the boys do. Well, so long. See you at Philippi.'

The car slid away, swung round the corner and was gone.

‘Crude,' remarked Hugo, lighting himself a cigarette with one hand, ‘but probably more effective than subtle methods. Sarcasm and subtlety are wasted on Helen. Well, it's nice to have you with us, Sarah, and I'm glad you decided to give Ceylon the miss-in-baulk at the eleventh hour.'

‘Yes,' said Sarah slowly, ‘I think I am too.'

She leant back and closed her eyes against the sunlight and the mountain scenery, and thought again of the events that had led up to her decision to return to Kashmir.

Sarah had returned home after the Charity Dance shaken with fury at Captain Mallory, and determined to leave for Ceylon as soon as possible. But she had been unable to sleep. She had accused Charles Mallory to his face of cowardice, yet she was no better than a coward herself.

It was no good hiding behind the excuse that Janet had never meant that message for her. Of course she had not! Nevertheless it was to Sarah that she had been forced to entrust it. And she, Sarah, who had promised to help—should ‘anything happen' to Janet. Well, it had happened. So how could she back out of her promise now? For all she knew, the record that Janet wrote of might be of desperate importance, not only to a few individuals but to hundreds of thousands—perhaps to millions of people.

Yet supposing she did go up to Kashmir herself, and took over Janet's boat, and found it? What could she do with it? No, of course it was impossible! She must forget all about it and let sleeping dogs lie. If only there was someone she could give the letter to. Someone to whom she could hand over the whole responsibility … She considered going to the Governor, or the Chief of Police. But she could not forget that Janet had said: ‘Of course I can't go to the police! What could I tell them? Give away the results of months of work and planning, and ruin everything at the eleventh hour?'