The Far Pavilions (19 page)

The Commandant had been much struck by this observation, for although every Englishman in the service of the Government of India was expected to become fluent in one or more of India's languages, very few learned to speak well enough to pass as a native of the country. And those few were for the most part half-castes whose mixed blood debarred them from employment in the higher ranks of the army or the Civil Service – even so gifted a soldier as Colonel George Skinner of Skinner's Horse, the famed ‘Sikundar Sahib’, having been refused a commission in the Bengal Army because his mother was an Indian lady. But it was plain that William Ashton's nephew was a native of India in all but blood, and one of the few who could go deeper than the skin. As such he might one day prove of inestimable value in a country where accurate information often meant the difference between survival and disaster, and Awal Shah was right: such potentially valuable material ought not to be wasted.

The Commandant brooded over the problem, and eventually hit upon an admirable solution. Colonel Ronald Anderson, the District Commissioner, whose retirement had been enforced by ill-health, would be leaving for England on the following Thursday, taking with him his Pathan bearer, Ala Yar, and his
khansamah
(cook) Mahdoo, whose home was in the hills beyond Abbottabad, both of whom had been in his service for over twenty years. Anderson had been a friend of both John Nicholson and Sir Henry Lawrence, and had in his youth spent several years in Afghanistan on the staff of the ill-fated Macnaghton. He spoke half-a-dozen dialects and had an exhaustive knowledge and a deep love for the North-West Frontier Province and the land beyond its borders, and he would be an ideal person to keep an eye on young Ashton during the long voyage home, and for as many school holidays as the Pelham-Martyns would permit – always supposing he could be persuaded to accept such a task. The Commandant of the Guides Corps had wasted no time, but calling for his horse had ridden off that same day to lay the whole matter before Colonel Anderson. And the retiring Commissioner, intrigued by the story, had instantly consented.

‘But of course you will return,’ said Zarin, reassuring the anxious Ash. ‘Only first it is necessary to acquire learning, and that, they say, must be done in
Belait
. Though I do not myself… Well, no matter. But it is even more necessary to remain alive, and it is certain that you are not safe in this country while there is a price upon your head. You cannot be sure that the Rani's spies have lost your trail, but we can at least be sure that they will not follow it across the sea, and that long before you return, both she and they will have forgotten you. I and my brother Awal Shah have been sworn to secrecy and cannot even send news of you to our father, for as letters may be opened and read by the curious, it is better that he should be kept in ignorance rather than risk betraying your whereabouts and your changed fortunes to those who wish you ill. But later, when the
gurrh-burrh
has died down, if the Colonel-Sahib thinks that it is safe to do so, I will write to you to
Belait
; and remember that you do not go there alone. Anderson-Sahib is a good man and one whom you may trust, and he and his servants will see to it that you do not wholly forget us while you learn to be a Sahib – and you will find that the years will go quickly, Ashok.’

Yet there Zarin had been wrong, for they had not gone quickly. They had crawled by so slowly that every week had seemed a month and every month a year. But he had been right about Colonel Anderson. The ex-District Commissioner had taken a liking to the boy, and during the long, tedious days of the voyage he had managed to teach Ash an astonishing amount of English, having impressed upon him that to be speechless in a foreign land would be a grave disadvantage and, moreover, humiliating to pride.

The point had been taken, and Ash, who had inherited his father's gift for languages, had applied himself with such diligence to the mastering of this new tongue that a year later you would never have known that he had spoken any other, for with the natural imitativeness of youth he had come to speak it with the exact drawl and inflection of upper-crust England – the voice of pedantic tutors and elderly Pelham-Martyns. Yet try as he would, he could not learn to think of himself as one of them, nor did they find it easy to accept him as such.

He was to remain a stranger in a strange land, and England would never be ‘Home’ to him, because home was Hindustan. He was still – and always would be – Sita's son; and there were endless things about this new life that were not only alien to him, but horrifying. Trivial things in the opinion of Englishmen, but to one brought up in the religion of his foster-mother's people, incredibly shocking. Such as the eating of pork and beef; the one an abomination and the other sacrilege unspeakable – the pig being an unclean animal and the cow a sacred one.

No less appalling was the European habit of using a toothbrush not once but many times, instead of a twig or a small stick that could be plucked daily and discarded after use; saliva, as everyone knows, being of all things the most polluting. Apparently the English did not know, and there were bitter battles before Ash could be brought to accept this and other practices that seemed to him barbaric.

That first year had been a difficult time for all concerned, not least for Ash's relatives, who were equally horrified by the habits and appearance of this young ‘heathen’ from the East. Rigidly conservative and possessing all the in-bred insularity of their race, they flinched from the prospect of displaying Hilary's son to the critical gaze of their friends and neighbours, and hastily revised their original plans, which had included sending their nephew to the famous public school that had been responsible for the education of seven generations of Pelham-Martyns. Instead, they engaged a resident tutor, together with the weekly attendance of an elderly cleric and a retired Oxford Don, to ‘lick him into shape’, and thankfully agreed to an arrangement whereby he should spend his holidays with Colonel Anderson.

Pelham Abbas, the seat of Hilary's elder brother, Sir Matthew Pelham-Martyn, Bart, was an imposing property consisting of a large, square Queen Anne house, built on the site of the earlier Tudor one that had been destroyed by Cromwell's men in 1644, and surrounded by terraced lawns, walled gardens, stables and greenhouses. There was also an ornamental lake, an extensive park in which Ash was permitted to ride, a trout stream, and on the far side of a belt of woodland in which Sir Matthew's gamekeeper raised pheasants, a home-farm consisting of some four hundred acres. The house itself was full of family portraits and Regency furniture, and the Pelham-Martyns, who had feared that their uncivilized young nephew might be over-awed by it, were disagreeably surprised to discover that he considered it cold and uncomfortable, and not to be compared in either size or magnificence to some Indian palace with an unpronounceable name in which, so he said, he had lived for ‘many years’.

It was the first of several surprises, not all of them disagreeable. That the boy should prove to be equally at home with a horse or a gun was something that they had not expected, and for which they were profoundly grateful: ‘As long as he can shoot and ride, I suppose he'll scrape past,’ said his cousin Humphrey. ‘But it is a pity we didn't catch him younger. He doesn't seem to have any of the right ideas.’

Ash's ideas remained unorthodox and frequently led him into trouble; as witness his refusal to eat beef in any form (this was the last and strongest remnant of Sita's training, and the one that took him the longest time to overcome despite the many difficulties involved – not to mention the lectures and punishments it brought down on his head from teachers and schoolmasters, and the anger, resentment and irritation it aroused among his relations). Then, too, he could not see why he should not offer to teach Willie Higgins, the boot-boy, to ride, or invite twelve-year-old Annie Mott, the thin, overworked little scullery maid who always looked half starved, to share his tea in the schoolroom. ‘But it's my tea, isn't it Aunt Millicent?’ asked Ash. Or: ‘But Uncle Matthew gave me Blue Moon for my own horse, so I don't see why…’

‘They are servants, my dear, and one does not treat servants as equals. They would not understand it,’ explained Aunt Millicent, annoyed at being argued with in broken English by this impossible offspring of her eccentric brother-in-law. How
like
Hilary – he had always been a problem, and now that he was dead he was still capable of causing them grave embarrassment.

‘But when I was Lalji's servant,’ persisted Ash, ‘I used to ride his horses, and –’

‘That was in India, Ashton. You are in England now, and must learn to behave properly. In England we do not play with the servants or invite them to share our meals. And you will find that Annie is adequately fed in the kitchen.’

‘No she's not. She's always hungry, and it isn't fair, because Mrs Mott –’

‘That's enough, Ashton. I have said “No”, and if I hear any more of this I shall have to give orders that you are to be kept away from the kitchen and not allowed to speak to any of the underservants. Do you understand?’

Ash did not. But then neither did his relatives. Later on, when he had learned to read and write in English as well as speak it, his uncle, in a praiseworthy attempt to encourage industry and lighten the tedium of lessons, had given him a dozen books on India, saying that they would of course be of special interest to him. The books had included several of Hilary's later works, together with such stirring tales as
The Conquest of Bengal
, Sleeman's account of the suppression of Thuggery, and Sir John Kaye's
History of the Sepoy War
. And Ash had certainly been interested; though not in the way that his uncle had intended. He found his father's books too dry and erudite, and his reactions to the others had seriously annoyed Sir Matthew, who had been rash enough to request his opinion on them.

‘But you asked me what I thought!’ protested Ash in some indignation. ‘And that is what I think. After all, it was their country and they weren't doing you – I mean us – any harm. I don't think it was fair.’

‘Shades of Hilary!’ thought Sir Matthew with exasperation, and he explained tartly that, on the contrary, they had been doing a great deal of harm – what with murdering, oppressing and making war on each other, strangling harmless travellers in honour of some heathen goddess, burning widows alive, and generally obstructing trade and progress. Such horrors could not be allowed to continue unchecked, and it was both the duty and responsibility of Britain, as a Christian nation, to put a stop to these barbarities and bring peace and tranquillity to the suffering millions of India.

‘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’.