The Far Pavilions (28 page)

Listening to his own voice, it seemed to Ash that the day had taken on a queer dream-like quality in which nothing was real. Their whole future, his and Belinda's, was at stake; yet here they sat, sipping tea and nibbling egg sandwiches, and talking trivialities as though nothing else mattered. The entire day had been a nightmare from the moment that he had arrived at the Harlowes bungalow and learnt that Belinda had left to go shopping: George's unwelcome conversation, the long, slow hours of waiting, Mrs Harlowe's nervous chatter, and now this. The room seemed to be full of an invisible glue in which he struggled feebly like a fly trapped in a pot of jam, while Mrs Harlowe talked of Zenana Missions and Belinda gleefully listed the various gay functions she had attended during the past week, and drew his attention to the impressive array of engraved cards that stood ranged on the chimney-piece.

Ash glanced at them and said abruptly: ‘I saw George Garforth at the Club. He says he has seen you fairly frequently during the past week.’

Belinda laughed and made a little moue. ‘If he has, it is only because nearly all the presentable men are out in camp, so he is almost the only one left who can be trusted not to tread on one's dress at a dance. Do you dance, Ashton? I do hope so, for I find I enjoy it more than anything.’

‘Then perhaps you will give me some dances tonight,’ said Ash. ‘I understand that there is to be a dance at the Club, and though I cannot undertake to dance as well as George, I will at least try not to tread on your dress.’

‘Oh, but –’ Belinda stopped and looked appealingly at her mother, and poor Mrs Harlowe, distracted by the whole situation and finding herself quite incapable of dealing with it, issued a flustered invitation to Ash to join their party that evening, which she had certainly not meant to do. She had only asked him to tea in order to give the young couple an opportunity to talk the matter over in the garden and decide – as of course they must decide – that there was no point in continuing the association and that it would be better to part. Belinda could then return Ashton's ring, and after that the poor boy would naturally wish to leave Peshawar immediately, as the very
last
thing he would want to do would be to return an hour or so later in order to dine with them. She could not imagine why she had invited him to do so, but perhaps he would have the sense to refuse.

Ash had disappointed her: he had accepted with alacrity, under the mistaken impression that the invitation showed Mrs Harlowe to be still on his side and prepared to support his suit; and when she suggested that Belinda might like to show him the garden, he took it as a further proof of her good-will. Once again, as on the Peshawar road in the early morning, his spirits soared, and he followed Belinda out into the garden and kissed her behind a kindly screen of pepper trees, feeling light-headed with love and optimism. But what followed was worse than anything that he had endured or imagined in the dismal days since his interview with Major Harlowe and the Commanding Officer…

Belinda had certainly returned his kiss, but having done so she had also returned his ring and had left him in no doubt as to her parents' opposition to the engagement. Ash learnt that Mrs Harlowe, far from supporting his suit, had gone over to the enemy and was now fully persuaded as to the folly of the whole affair. There was no question of either parent relenting, and as Belinda herself would not be of age for another four years, there was nothing to be gained by arguing or protesting.

Her reaction to Ash's suggestion that they elope had been blank dismay and an emphatic refusal to consider it for a moment. ‘I wouldn't
dream
of doing anything so – so silly and outrageous. Really, Ashton, I think you must be mad. You'd be dismissed from your Regiment and everyone would know why, and there'd be a vulgar scandal and you'd be disgraced; and so would I. I'd never be able to hold up my head again, and I think you are quite horrid to – to even
mention
such a thing to me.’

Belinda burst into tears, and only the most abject of apologies on Ash's part had prevented her from running back to the house and refusing to see him again. But though she had eventually agreed to forgive him, the damage had been done, and she would not agree to any private contract between them. ‘It's not that I don't love you any more,’ explained Belinda tearfully. ‘I do, and I would marry you tomorrow if Papa approved. But how can I know what I shall feel like when I'm twenty-one? – or if you will still be in love with me by then?’

‘I shall always be in love with you!’ vowed Ash passionately.

‘Well, if you are, and if I am still in love with you, then of course we shall get married because we shall have proved that we must be the right people for each other.’

Ash insisted that he already knew that, and for his part he would be willing to wait for any length of time if only she would promise faithfully to marry him some day. But Belinda would not promise anything. Nor would she take back the ring. Ashton must keep it, and perhaps one day when they were both older, if her parents and his Commanding Officer approved and if they themselves were still of the same mind –

‘If – if – if,’ interrupted Ash savagely. ‘Is that all you can offer me? “If your parents approve”, “If my C.O. permits”. But what about
us
my darling? – you and me? It's
our
life and
our
love and
our
future that is being decided. If you loved me –’

He stopped, defeated. Belinda was looking hurt and upset and it was obvious that if he were to continue in this strain it would only lead to another quarrel and more tears, and the possibility of an immediate and permanent break. That last was something he could not bear to contemplate, so he reached for her hand, and kissing it, said contritely: ‘I'm sorry, darling. I shouldn't have said that. I know you love me and that none of this is your fault. I'll keep your ring for you, and one day, when I've proved myself worthy of you, I shall ask you to take it back again. You know that, don't you?’

‘Oh, Ashton, of course I do. And I'm sorry too. But Papa says – Oh well, don't let's talk about that any more, because it doesn't do any good.’

Belinda dabbed her eyes with a sodden scrap of lace and cambric and looked so forlorn that Ash would have kissed her again. But she would not let him do so, on the grounds that having returned his ring and thereby formally ended their betrothal, it would not be proper. She hoped, however, that they could remain friends, and that he would not feel obliged to change his mind about joining the party that evening, for she was sure that he would dance delightfully; and in any case, an extra man was always useful. On which deflating note the conversation ended and Ash escorted her back to the bungalow, with a face of doom and a strong desire to cut his throat – or get drunk.

The reflection that his presence that evening as an extra man would be ‘useful’ was not calculated to soothe the feelings of a rejected suitor. But as he could not bring himself to forgo even a moment of Belinda's company, he swallowed his pride and attended the party.

He had not expected to enjoy it, but it had proved a surprisingly pleasant evening. Belinda had danced with him three times and been kind enough to commend his waltzing, and emboldened by this success, he had begged as a keepsake the yellow rose-bud she wore at her breast. She would not give it to him (George had already made the same request and been refused, and besides, Mama would be sure to notice), but she had allowed him to take her for a stroll on the lantern-lit terrace, which prevented him from feeling unduly depressed by the fact that she had also given three dances to George Garforth, and two waltzes and the supper dance to a tall, chinless young man who was, apparently, an aide-de-camp to some high-ranking General. But then Belinda in a ball-gown was such a bewitching sight that Ash felt himself quite unworthy of her and even deeper in love than before – if that were possible. The thought of having to wait for her, even if it should mean serving seven years, as Jacob had for Rachel, no longer seemed an intolerable injustice, but only reasonable and right. Such dazzling prizes should be earned, not snatched carelessly and in haste.

Mrs Harlowe, who had feared that the presence of Belinda's discarded lover would cast a gloom over her party, was relieved to find that his behaviour could not be faulted, and that he had actually contributed a great deal to the evening's success, being pronounced a delightful young man and an asset to any party. While as for Belinda herself, the impression that Ash had made on the other young women present had not been lost upon her. Being confident of his devotion it pleased her to know that she possessed something that others found desirable, and on parting with him she returned the pressure of his hand with so much warmth and such a speaking look from her blue eyes that he went back to the dâk-bungalow walking on air.

Her mother too had been unexpectedly kind and had actually said that she hoped he would call on them when next he was in Peshawar, though she was sorry that prior engagements would prevent them from seeing him on the following day. But this had not depressed him, for as their carriage drove away down the dark cantonment road, Ash looked down at the thing that Belinda had pressed into his palm under cover of the conventional farewell, and was comforted and uplifted to find that he held a much crushed and faded yellow rose-bud.

11

Mardan looked friendly and familiar in the evening light, and Ash was surprised to find himself glad to get back to it. The sounds and smells of the cavalry lines, the little star-shaped fort and the long line of the Yusafzai hills, rose-red in the sunset, already seemed like home to him; and though he had not expected to be back until late, Ala Yar was waiting on the verandah, ready to talk or be silent as the mood took him.

In the months that followed there had been little time in which to brood over Belinda and the unsatisfactory state of their love-affair, and there were even days sometimes several in succession when he did not think of her at all; and if he dreamed of her at night he did not remember it by morning. For Ash was discovering, as others had done before him, that the ways of the Indian Army (and in particular the ways of the Corps of Guides) differed a great deal from the pattern laid down by the Military Academy at Sandhurst. That difference was very much to his taste, and had it not been for Belinda, he would have had nothing to complain of and much to commend.

As a junior officer of the Guides he was expected to devote a part of each day to the study of Pushtu and Hindustani, the former being the language of the Border and the latter the lingua-franca of India and the Indian Army. But though he needed no instruction in either, he had still not learned to read or write them with the same facility with which he used the spoken word, and now he studied hard under an elderly munshi (teacher) and being Hilary's son made rapid progress. Which, it may here be noted, availed him little, for when he subsequently sat for the written examination in the Higher Standard, he failed to pass, to his own bewilderment and the fury of his munshi who took the matter up with the Commandant, asserting angrily that it was impossible for Pelham-Sahib to have failed; never before had he taught such a pupil and there must be some fault on the part of the examiners – a misprint perhaps? The papers were not returnable, but the Commandant had a friend in Calcutta who on the promise that no action would be taken, borrowed them from the files, only to discover, scrawled across them in red ink, the terse comment:
Flawless
.
This officer has obviously used a crib
.

‘Tell the boy to make a few errors next time,’ advised the Commandant's friend. But Ash never sat for an examination again.

November saw the beginning of squadron training, and he exchanged his hot, high room in the fort for a tent on the plains beyond the river. Camp life, with its long hours in the saddle and frosty nights under canvas or the open sky, was far more to his taste than the routine of the cantonment; and after sundown when the tired squadron had finished their evening meal and his fellow officers, sated with, fresh air and hard exercise, had fallen asleep, Ash would join a group around one of the fires and listen to the talk.

This to him was almost the best part of the day, and during it he learned a great deal more about his men than he would ever have learned in the normal course of his duties, not only about their families and personal problems, but the dissimilarities in their characters. For men who are relaxed and at ease show a different side of themselves from that which appears when they are on duty; and as the firelight faded and the ring of faces became shadowy and unrecognizable, they would discuss many things that would not normally have been raised in the presence of a
feringhi
. The talk would range widely, from tribal matters to theology; and once a Pathan sowar who had recently met and conversed with a missionary (to the mystification and deep misunderstanding of them both) had demanded of Ash an explanation of the Trinity: ‘For the Missionary-Sahib,’ said the sowar, ‘says that he too believes that there is only the One God, but that his god is three gods in one person. Now, how can that be?’

Ash hesitated for a moment, and then, picking up the lid of a biscuit-tin that someone had been using as a plate, poured a drop of water into three of the corners and said: ‘Look here are three things, are there not? Each separate to itself.’ The assembly having looked and agreed, he tilted the tin so that the three drops ran together and formed a single and larger one: ‘Now tell me, which is which of the three? There is now only one, yet all three are in that one.’ His audience had applauded and the tin was handed round to be peered at and argued over, and Ash achieved an overnight reputation for great wisdom.

He was sorry when the camp broke up and they returned to the cantonment, but apart from the blow to his hopes of an early marriage, he thoroughly enjoyed his first cold weather in Mardan. He got on well with his fellow officers and was on excellent terms with his men – all of whom, by the mysterious grapevines of India (for neither Zarin nor Awal Shah had talked), knew something of his story and took a keen and faintly proprietary interest in his progress. Because of this his troop soon acquired the reputation of being the smartest and best disciplined in its squadron, for which Ash received more credit than he deserved, as it was his background rather than any special talent for leadership or force of character that was responsible for this state of affairs. The men knew that ‘Pelham-Sahib’ not only spoke but thought as they did, and therefore could not be fooled by lies or tricks such as might serve occasionally with other Sahibs. They knew too that it was safe to bring him their private disputes, because he could be counted upon to make allowances for certain factors that would for ever be beyond the comprehension of those born and bred in the West. It was Ash, for example, who while out on detachment with his troop gave a judgement that was remembered and appreciated for many years on the Border…

His men had been told to keep a look out for a grey polo pony stolen from an officer stationed at Risalpur, and on the following night a missionary doctor, riding a grey horse, had jogged past in the moonlight and been challenged by a sentry. The horse had taken fright and bolted, and the sentry, supposing this to be the action of a thief putting spurs to his steed, fired at the doctor and fortunately missed. But the shot had gone uncomfortably close and the doctor, an elderly and choleric gentleman, had been exceedingly angry and lodged a complaint against the sentry. The man had come up for judgement the next morning and Ash, using the judiciary powers of a detachment commander, had sentenced him to fifteen days' detention with loss of pay: two days for firing at a Sahib, and the remainder for having missed him when he did. The sentence had been received with considerable acclamation, and the fact that the Commandant had later put it aside on the grounds that the sowar in question had acted in good faith did nothing to affect the popularity of the verdict; the men being well aware that Ash could not have enforced it and had merely taken this way of showing his disapproval of poor marksmanship. His seniors, however, had not been amused.

‘We shall have to watch that young man,’ said his Squadron Commander. ‘Good stuff in him, but he lacks balance.’

‘
Too rash, too unadvised, too sudden
,’ quoted Lieutenant Battye. ‘I agree. But he'll learn.’

‘I suppose so; though there are times when I have my doubts about it. If only he had a cooler head and a bit more steadiness, he'd be first-class material for a Corps like this. But he's too apt to go off at half-cock. Frankly, he worries me, Wigram.’

‘Why? The men think the world of him. He can do anything with them.’

‘I know. They treat him as though he were some sort of minor deity, and I believe they'd follow him anywhere.’

‘Well, what's wrong with that?’ demanded the Lieutenant, puzzled by his senior's tone of voice.

The Squadron Commander frowned and tugged unhappily at his moustache, looking baffled and irritated: ‘On the face of it, nothing. All the same, and just between the two of us, I'm not at all sure that in a crisis he wouldn't leap before he looked and lead them into something he couldn't get them out of. He's got plenty of courage, I'll grant you that. Possibly too much. But he seems to me to be guided too often by his emotions and not enough by… And there's another thing: in a pinch, and supposing he had to make a decision, which way would his loyalties lie? With England or India?’

‘Good God,’ gasped the Lieutenant, genuinely shocked. ‘You aren't suggesting he'd turn traitor, are you?’

‘No, no, of course not. Well… not exactly. But with a fellow like that – with that background I mean – there's no knowing how it might look to him. It's a deal simpler for you and me, Wigram, for we are always going to assume that our side of any question is the right one; because it's ours. But which is his side? See what I mean?’

‘Can't say that I do,’ admitted the Lieutenant uneasily. ‘After all, it's not as though he had any Indian blood in him, is it? Both his parents were as British as – as beer. And just because he was born out here – Well, I mean, dozens of fellows were. You were, for one.’

‘Yes, but I never once thought of myself as an Indian! Well he did, and that's the difference. Oh well, time will show. But I'm not at all sure that we didn't make a hell of a mistake in fetching him back to this country.’

‘Couldn't have stopped him,’ said the Lieutenant with conviction. ‘He'd have got back even if he'd had to walk – or swim. Seems to look upon it as his home.’

‘Exactly what I've been saying – but it isn't: not really. And one day he's going to find that out, and when he does, he'll realize that he doesn't belong anywhere – unless it's in Limbo, which as far as I remember is somewhere on the fringes of Hell. I tell you, Wigs, I wouldn't be in that boy's shoes for all the tea in China; and I probably wouldn't have cared a damn about it if he'd managed to get back here off his own bat, because that would have been his own affair. As it is, we – the Corps – saddled ourselves with the responsibility for it, so it's ours too, and that's what worries me. Though mark you, I like the boy.’

‘Oh, he's all right,’ said the Lieutenant easily. ‘A bit difficult to get to know, if you know what I mean. You get just so far and no further. But there's no denying that he's the best all-rounder on the sports side that we've had in years, and we ought to knock spots off the rest of the Brigade at next month's gymkhana.’

Neither Awal Shah nor Zarin were in Ash's squadron, and he saw comparatively little of them in Mardan, though whenever possible one or other of them would accompany him out shooting. When neither of them could do so, he would either go alone or take one of his sowars Malik Shah or Lal Mast, tribesmen from the country beyond the Panjkora, whose company he enjoyed and from whom he had learned much.

Malik Shah was an excellent
shikari
who could stalk a herd of gurral so cunningly that not one would see him until he was well within range; and in this his cousin, Lal Mast (the relationship was so remote that it was impossible to work out the degree), was almost his equal. But though Ash spent many hours in the hills with one or other of them when Zarin was otherwise occupied, he never learned to move as skilfully or as silently as they did, or mastered completely their trick of melting into the landscape and becoming so much a part of it that one would have sworn that there was no human being within miles.

‘It has to be learned when young,’ said Malik Shah consolingly, as the buck they had been stalking threw up its head and bounded away across the plain. ‘In my country, to move unseen, taking advantage of every stick and stone or blade of grass, may often mean the difference between living and dying; for we are all good shots and we make many enemies. But with you, Sahib, it is different; you have never had to lie as still as a stone, or slither from rock to rock as silently as a snake because an enemy waits for you on the far slope – or you yourself stalk one for his life. Had I a gun such as this one' (he had been shooting with his army-issue carbine) ‘I should make myself master of our valley and a score of villages among the hills. Wait here, Sahib, and I will drive the buck this way again – between that nullah and those thorn bushes yonder. That should give you a good shot.’

Ash acquired a number of friends among the villages and spent many nights as the guest of headmen beyond the Border, where few if any of the inhabitants had ever seen a white man before. The men of his own troop were drawn largely from the Border tribes: Yusafzai, Orakzai and Khattak, with a sprinkling of Afridis. But the Guides also recruited a large number of Sikhs, as well as Hindus from the Punjab, Gurkhas from Nepal, Dogras, Farsiwans (Persians) and Punjabi Mussulmans; and Ash would sometimes head southward across the Indus to shoot snipe and
chinkara
in the company of Risalder Kirwan Singh of the Sikhs, or Bika Ram, one of the Hindu non-commissioned officers; cheerful men whose talk reminded him of the play-fellows of his youth – those merry companions of his careless, carefree years in the bazaars of Gulkote city. Yes, it was a good time – or would have been, if it had not been for Belinda.

For Belinda's sake Ash would willingly have spent all his free time dancing attendance upon her in Peshawar. But Major Harlowe would not permit him to visit her more than once a month, and then only to take tea; and even Mrs Viccary, who was often a fellow-guest on these occasions, and would ask him back to dine and listen sympathetically to his woes, refused to concede that the Major's behaviour was unreasonable, advising him instead to try putting himself in the anxious father's place. Only at Christmas time (proverbially a season of Peace and Goodwill) had there been any relaxation of this rule, but by then the Peshawar Brigade were back from the Kajuri Plain and Belinda was involved in a festive whirl of parties, race-meetings and balls.