The Far Pavilions (36 page)

‘What's that?’

‘Limbo – according to Milton.’

‘Oh. Yes, you may be right. Though I wouldn't have described it as a Paradise, myself.’

‘It might have its advantages,’ suggested Wally.

‘Maybe. But I admit I can't think of any,’ said Ash wryly.

Once, sitting out in the warm moonlight among the ruins of Taxila (the 'Pindi Brigade was in camp), he had spoken of Sita, which was another thing that he had never been able to do before. Not even to Zarin and Koda Dad, who had known her.

‘… so you see, Wally,’ concluded Ash reflectively, ‘whatever people say, she was my real mother. I never knew the other one and somehow I can't believe in her; though I've seen a picture of her of course. She must have been a very pretty woman, and I don't suppose that
Mata-ji
– Sita – was pretty. But then she always looked beautiful to me, and I suppose it's because of her that I feel that this country, and not England, is my own. Anyway, Englishmen don't talk about their mothers. It's considered to be either “soppy” or “bad form” – I forget which.’

‘Both, I think,’ said Wally, and added smugly: ‘Though I'm allowed to, of course. It's one of the privileges of being Irish. Sentiment is expected of us. It's a great relief. Your foster-mother must have been a remarkable woman.’

‘She was. I didn't realize just how remarkable until much later on. One takes such a lot for granted when one is young. She had more courage than anyone I have ever known. The best kind of courage, for she was always afraid. I know that now, though I didn't then. And she was such a little woman. She was so small that I…’

He broke off and sat staring out across the plain, remembering how easy it had been for an eleven-year-old boy to lift her in his arms and carry her down to the river…

The night wind smelt of wood-smoke from the camp fires, and very faintly of pine trees from the near-by foothills that lay like wrinkled velvet in the moonlight. Perhaps it was that last that had recalled the ghost of Sita. ‘She used to talk to me about a valley in the mountains,’ said Ash slowly. ‘I suppose it must have been her home, where she was born. She was a hill-woman, you know. We were going to go and live there one day and build a house and plant fruit trees and keep a goat and a donkey. I wish I knew where it was.’

‘Didn't she ever tell you?’ asked Wally.

‘She may have done once. If she did, I've forgotten. But I imagine it's somewhere in the Pir Panjal; though I always used to think it must be in the mountains below the Dur Khaima. You don't know about the Dur Khaima, do you? It's the highest mountain in the range you can see from Gulkote: a great crown of snow peaks. I used to say my prayers to it. Silly, isn't it?’

‘Not really. Did you ever read Aurora Leigh? –
“Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees takes off his shoes.”
You were merely taking off your shoes – that's all. And you aren't the only one either: millions of people must have felt the same, for there are holy mountains all over the world. And then there was David, of course:
“Levavi oculos”
–’

Ash laughed. ‘ I know. It's funny you should say that. I used to think of the Dur Khaima every time we sang that in chapel.’ He turned to face the foothills and faraway line of the mountains that rose up behind them, dark against the stars, and quoted in an undertone: ‘ “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” D'you know, Wally, when I first came to England and didn't know any better, I tried to find out in what direction the Himalayas lay so that I could face that way when I said my prayers, like Koda Dad and Zarin, who always faced towards Mecca. I remember my aunt was simply horrified. She told the vicar that I was not only a heathen, but a devil-worshipper.’

‘You can see her point,’ said Wally tolerantly. ‘Now I was luckier. Fortunately for me, my family never discovered that for years I thought I was praying to my godfather. Well, you can see how it was – “God-the-Father” – it was perfectly obvious to me. Particularly as the old boy had an impressive set of white whiskers and a gold watch-chain, and every one was terrified of him. I can tell you it gave me no end of a jolt when I finally discovered that he wasn't really God and that I'd been sending my petitions to the wrong address. All those years of earnest supplication straight down the drain. It was a disaster, so it was.’

Ash's shout of laughter woke the occupant of the nearest tent, and an irate voice urged them to shut up and let a fellow sleep.

Wally grinned and lowered his voice. ‘No, seriously now, it was the waste that worried me most. But I've come to the conclusion that it's the intention that counts. My prayers had been perfectly genuine, as I expect yours were too, so the fact that they were wrongly addressed was an error for which I do not believe the Almighty will hold us responsible.’

‘I hope you're right. Do you still say your prayers, Wally?’

‘Of course,’ said Wally, genuinely surprised. ‘Don't you?’

‘Sometimes. Though I'm not sure who I address them to.’ Ash stood up and slapped the dust and dried grass from his clothes. ‘Come on, Galahad, it's time we turned in. This bloody exercise is due to start at 3 a.m.’

In the circumstances it was hardly surprising that Wally should have set his heart on joining the Guides, though there was, as yet, very little that he could do about it because he must first pass for his Lieutenancy. Ash had been in some doubt whether a good word from him might not hinder rather than help his friend's chances of being offered a vacancy, so he had used a more oblique method and introduced him to Lieutenant Wigram Battye of the Guides, who had twice been over to Rawalpindi on duty. And, later on, to Zarin.

Zarin had taken short leave in the heat of June and ridden into 'Pindi bringing messages from his father and brother, and news of the Regiment and the Frontier. He had not been able to stay for long as the monsoon was due at any moment, and once it broke, the fords would be impassable and travelling become a slow business; but he had stayed long enough to gain an excellent impression of Ashok's new friend. Ash had made certain that Zarin should see for himself that the boy was an admirable shot and a born rider, and had encouraged the two to talk, knowing that under his own unorthodox tutorage, and the more scholarly methods of a Munshi, Wally had already made great strides in the two main tongues of the Frontier. And though Ash had said nothing in his praise, Mahdoo had said a great deal:

‘That is a good Sahib,’ said Mahdoo, gossiping with Zarin on the back verandah. ‘One of the old kind, such as Anderson-Sahib was in his youth. Courteous and kind, and with the bearing and courage of a king. Our boy has become a changed man since they met. Cheerful again, and full of laughter and jokes. Yes, good boys both.’

Zarin had learnt to respect the old man's judgement, and Wally's own character and personality did the rest. Wigram Battye too watched and listened and approved; and both he and Zarin carried favourable reports back to Mardan, with the result that the Guides, always on the look-out for good material, took note of Ensign Walter Hamilton of the 70th Foot as a possible future addition to their Corps.

The hot weather that year had not been as abominable as the previous one, but it was Wally's first and he suffered all the torments that can beset the novice undergoing his first experience of soaring temperatures. Prickly-heat, boils and sandfly-fever, dysentery, dengi and other hot-weather maladies plagued him by turn, and eventually he went down with a severe attack of heat-stroke and spent several days in a darkened room, convinced that he was dying – and with nothing done of all the many things he had hoped to do. On the advice of the M.O., his Colonel had packed him off to the hills to recuperate, and Ash had managed to get leave and gone with him.

Accompanied by Mahdoo and Gul Baz, the two had left by tonga for Murree, where rooms had been booked for them in one of the hotels that at this time of year were full of summer visitors escaping from the blazing heat of the plains.

Wally celebrated his own escape by falling in love with three young ladies at once: a pretty girl who sat with her mother at a near-by table in the dining-room, and the twin daughters of a High-Court Judge who had hired a cottage in the hotel grounds. His inability to choose between them prevented any of these affairs from becoming serious, but they inspired him to write a good deal of love-lorn verse, all of it deplorable, and led him to accept so many invitations to dine, dance or take tea that if Ash had not intervened, his chances of enjoying the rest and quiet advocated by the doctor would have been minimal. But Ash had no intention of wasting his leave dancing attendance on ‘a bunch of bird-witted girls and giddy grass-widows’, and said so with considerable force - adding a rider to the effect that in his opinion the objects of Wally's divided devotion were three of the most insipid damsels this side of Suez, and his doggerel was worthy of them.

‘The trouble with you,’ retorted the incensed poet, touched on the raw, ‘is that you have no soul. And what's more, if you're going to go on posing as a misogynist for the rest of your life just because some silly chit gave your fresh young illusions a black eye and a bloody nose a few years ago, you haven't any sense either. It's about time you got over Bertha or Bella or Belinda or whatever her name was, and realized that there are other women in the world – and very charming ones too. Not,’ conceded Wally generously, ‘that you have to marry them, of course. I don't think, myself, that a soldier should get married until he's at least thirty-five.’

‘ “A Daniel come to judgement”!’ mocked Ash. ‘Well, in that case, the sooner we remove ourselves from temptation the better.’

They removed themselves to Kashmir, leaving most of their luggage behind in the hotel and hiring hill ponies for the long trek between Murree and Baramullah, from where they turned aside to shoot duck on the Wula Lake and red bear and
barasingh
in the mountains above it.

It was Wally's first experience of high mountains, and gazing at the white crest of Nanga Parbat, the ‘Naked Mountain’, rising tall and stately above the long range of snows that ring Lalla Rookh's fabled valley, he could understand the awe that had moved Ash as a small boy to pray to the Dur Khaima. The whole country seemed extravagantly beautiful to him, from the lotus-strewn lakes and the winding, willow-fringed rivers, to the vast forests of deodar and chestnut that swept upwards to meet the shale and the great glaciers that lay above the snow line. He was loth to leave it, and 'Pindi seemed hotter and dustier and more unpleasant than ever as their tonga rattled along the cantonment road on the last day of leave, bringing them back once more to their bungalow. But the mountain air and the long days spent in the open had done their work. He returned fit and well, and suffered no more illness during the remainder of that hot weather.

The heat had not worried Ash, but desk work bored him to distraction and there was always too much of that in Rawalpindi. Zarin, riding over from Mardan, told him that the Guides were to provide an escort for the eldest son of the
Padishah
(the Queen) when he visited Lahore during his tour of India in the coming cold weather.

‘It's a great honour,’ said Zarin, ‘and I grieve that you will have no share in it. How much longer do they mean to keep you here, tied to a desk? It is nearly a year now. Soon it will be three years since you last served with the Guide Corps, and that is far too long. It is time you came back to us.’

But the authorities did not agree with this view. They had made a promise to send Lieutenant Pelham-Martyn further away from the Frontier as soon as a suitable opportunity presented itself, and now, nearly eleven months later, they roused themselves from the lethargy induced by the hot weather, and redeemed it.

A letter had come from the Governor of the Punjab's First Secretary requesting them, on behalf of His Excellency, to nominate a suitable British officer to escort the two sisters of His Highness the Maharajah of Karidkote, to Rajputana, to be married to the Rana of Bhithor. The officer's principal duty on the march would consist of seeing that His Highness's sisters were received with due honour and the proper salutes by any British garrisons on the route, and that their camp was adequately provisioned. On arrival in Bhitor he would be expected to see that the agreed bride-price was paid and the brides safely married, before accompanying the camp back to the borders of Karidkote. Taking all this into account, and bearing in mind that the camp was likely to be a large one, it was essential that the officer selected should not only be a fluent linguist, but have a thorough knowledge of the native character and the customs of the country.

It was that final paragraph that had brought Lieutenant Pelham-Martyn's name to mind; and the fact that the assignment would certainly take him well away from the North-West Frontier had served to clinch the matter. Ash himself had not been invited to express any opinions or allowed the option of refusing the appointment. He had merely been sent for and given his orders.

‘What they appear to want,’ said Ash disgustedly, describing the interview to Wally, ‘is someone to act as a combination of sheep-dog, supply officer and nursemaid to a parcel of squealing women and palace parasites; and I'm it. Oh well, bang goes polo for this season. Who'd be a peace-time soldier?’

‘Faith, if you ask me, it's a lucky divil you are,’ said Wally enviously. ‘I only wish they'd chosen me. Just think of it – jaunting off across India in charge of a pair of beautiful princesses.’

‘Pair of bun-faced dowds, more likely,’ returned Ash sourly. ‘Bet you anything they're fat, spoilt and spotty – and still in the schoolroom.’

‘Blather! All princesses are ravishingly beautiful. Or they should be, anyway. I can just picture them: rings on their fingers and bells on their toes, and hair like Rapunzel's – no, she was a blonde, wasn't she? They'll be brunettes. I adore brunettes. You wouldn't be asking if I could go along with you, would you now? As a sort of right-hand-man: head cook and bottle-washer? You're sure to need one.’