The Lotus and the Wind (15 page)

Hayling rubbed glue liberally down one side of the stick, thrust it into the muzzle of the jezail, and held it there. While they waited for the glue to harden he said, ‘There’s something here, all right. It’s a favourite hiding-place, as long as you think you’re not going to use the weapon.’ As he slowly drew the stick out of the barrel a roll of thin paper came with it. With Robin’s help he prised the gluey stick loose without tearing the inside paper. When he spread out the roll she saw that it was not one but four or five sheets of paper. ‘A report,’ Hayling muttered. ‘But who from and who to, we’ll have to find out.’ He began to study the graceful, tightly-written, right-to-left script. ‘H’m. Not, I think, to our address. That’s interesting.’ He rubbed his hand across his chin, his hook holding down the papers on his lap. The jezail lay on the verandah floor at his feet. ‘I haven’t got time to read them now. But tell me one thing, Anne. Did you see Selim Beg fire this, at Attock?’

She thought back carefully. He had been behind a rock, she saw him clearly; he’d turned, and--’Yes, he did. I saw him.’

‘Then he probably had no report in it. He might have decided to blow it out while shooting, but I doubt it. We’ll work all that out later. This is not the place. All this is just an introduction to our talk--a timely one, but perhaps not altogether a coincidence. You see, we--representing certain branches of the government of India--have been looking for someone with an unusual set of qualities, the most important being an ability, a preference, for working in isolation.’

Anne sat forward on the edge of her chair. It was long past tiffin time. All the other riders would be back, and her mother would know it. Every minute she stayed would put her mother into a worse temper, make it more difficult to cajole her into the right mood for approving the engagement. But she had to stay.

Hayling said, ‘Savage, I can offer you a post in Intelligence. More, I can give you a specific job. It will be dangerous, but you can make it as violent or as introspective as you wish.’

‘I’ll take it, sir,’ Robin said at once. Anne clenched her left hand quietly. She’d have to do something quickly.

‘Wait. You’ll learn in a minute why I’m letting you hear all this, Anne. The task of the ordinary agent is to live in a place, travel about a bit, keep his eyes and ears open, and report. He does not deduce or infer, he just sees and tells. And he never sees much. No agent manages to hide under the table at Tsarskoe Selo. No agent gets the whole of a big plan, all at once. The key to Intelligence is this--the bigger the plan, the bigger the preparations. For example, if Russia intended to attack Afghanistan tomorrow the preparations would have been visible months or years ago--route reconnaissances, water surveys, road building, and, above all, the flow of Russian money, in bribes, payments for services rendered, for sweeteners and so on. Now, half the agents in Asia work for both parties to any quarrel--and both the parties know it. What’s more, each party knows just about every agent of the other party. Disguises, false beards, and stained faces are used all right, but almost as a matter of form--it is not done to spy too openly. Agents are .seldom arrested in time of peace. Once they are known, each side uses them to channel misleading information to the other side.’

Robin said, ‘Why did they kill Selim Beg?’

‘Ah. The charade ceases to be pretence when an agent gets hold of something really important. That very seldom happens. Important things are usually uncovered by the piecing together of innumerable unimportant ones.’

‘Then if my job is going to be dangerous, as you said, I will be near something important?’

‘Yes. The better you are at this work, the greater your danger. We have decided to find out what it was that Selim Beg had come to know. We have decided that none of our agents has enough learning for the job--except one Hindu who is now in Tibet, and he’d never do for Moslem countries. We have been waiting for the right man. We are in no great hurry. This is big and it will therefore develop slowly. You have the qualities needed for the work. We have the time to add to those qualities our specialized training. From the impersonal standpoint of duty, there is no further problem.’

Major Hayling got up and began to pace the verandah with long, slow strides. When opposite Robin on his third trip he wheeled curtly and snapped, ‘Unfortunately, we are people. Do you want to leave Anne for months on end?’

Robin said, ‘No, sir.’ He didn’t add, ‘but I’ll have to.’ There was no need. She saw it in his face, in a kind of sadness that was not regret but something more remote.

Hayling said, ‘You’ve just asked her to marry you. You realize that when you return--if you return--you may be a changed man?’ Anne wanted to interrupt, challenging him. But it was Robin’s place to answer that question. Also she thought there was an overtone to it; that it was not a simple question of whether Robin would still want to marry her, but something else that she did not quite comprehend.

Robin was white of face and sweating. ‘I realize, sir. Whatever I do, someone will be hurt.’

Hayling said slowly, ‘I fear so. But
I
am a person too, and I have to tell you that I love Anne. So--I will not be responsible for sending you away until you have married her.’ With an effort he regained his usual hard self-control, but his hand still trembled slightly as he adjusted his eye-patch. ‘I must go now. With your permission, I’ll take the jezail. No, hand it up to me when I’ve mounted, please.’

When he was gone Anne said heavily, ‘I’ve got to get back at once. Don’t you want to marry me, Robin? You don’t have to. I won’t sue you for breach of promise.’ After the hunt and the tension of Hayling’s talk all her strings were unloosed and shuddering within her. She felt sick.

Robin said, ‘I’ll walk back to your bungalow with you. My sais can bring Beauty along.’ She nodded dispiritedly. He said, as they set off down the drive together, ‘Major Hayling is a good man. We’ve got to trust him.’

‘We have? You mean
you
have. I don’t trust him--oh dear, I suppose I do.’ In the books men in Robin’s position were always jealous. Jealousy was a terrible evil, but it was more human than this.

Robin stopped in the middle of the walk at the side of the road and faced her. He took her two hands in his. There were few people about at this time, but she knew the word would go around. In Peshawar nothing could be hidden. Her weariness began perceptibly to fall away, leaving her shoulders light and her head clear.

Robin spoke slowly, and his voice dropped a tone. ‘Listen. Hayling seems to know exactly what I feel. Sometimes I think that what I want in life is outside me--you, love, friends. Sometimes I think it is inside me. And if that’s true, then you and every other person would always be outside. The work Hayling has for me will give me the opportunity to find out which of the two is the truth.’

‘But we can’t wait,’ she muttered. ‘We have to get married before Major Hayling asks for you. And, Robin--I don’t want to wait. I don’t care how long you have to be away. Then I’ll wait. I want you to know that
I
am here for you to come back to, whoever else changes, whatever else happens.’

He didn’t pause long before answering. All this he seemed to have foreseen. He said, ‘You deserve someone better than me. Someone different. Your eyes shine; your hair is so thick and beautiful in the sun. You are brave and kind. It’s like being in the sun when you look at me.’

‘That’s because I love you,’ she said. There
were
people about. Someone’s bearer was skirting carefully around them and listening, goggle-eyed.

‘How can we get your mother’s consent?’

She took a deep breath. ‘Compromise me.’

He stared down at her, and she blushed a furious, welling crimson. ‘Take me out riding to-morrow afternoon, say we’ll be back by tea-time--they can’t say no, and if they do I’ll go, anyway--but let one of the horses lose a shoe, or we’ll get lost and not come back till midnight.’

‘It might not work,’ he said calmly. ‘They might guess the truth and take no notice.’

‘Not my mother! She’ll have the wedding arranged at once. That--that’s all you have to do--to compromise me, isn’t it? I mean, if--it has to be--something else, I--Robin --Robin!’

‘That is all,’ he said, and kissed her quickly on the mouth.

Some people stationed in Nowshera--friends of the Hildreth family--had sworn they’d brighten up the dak-bungalow, but when Anne and Robin got there from Peshawar it looked as spiritless as on the last occasion she had seen it. Standing on the verandah, watching the hired carriage rattle away towards the Nowshera bazaar, she thought, They put Selim Beg to lie here in the cold, where my feet stand. Only travellers used the bungalow, and none of them for long, nor any with desire to impress their personalities upon it. But there should have been flowers for the traveller Selim Beg, if not for the travellers Robin and Anne Savage.

She’d have two days and three nights here with him, to remember as a honeymoon when he and she had parted. The carriage disappeared, and they turned together and entered the bungalow.

Robin went out again at once to find the watchman. For a minute she watched the Pathan bearer unpacking her dresses, then she sent him out. The old man knew nothing about women’s clothes and seemed shocked and embarrassed at having to deal with them. She finished the job herself, working slowly and thoughtfully.

It had been a long day, and she had travelled far--from expectation to achievement, from Peshawar to Nowshera. On this, her wedding morning, she had seen the dawn. As she lay, mysteriously shivering, the fingers of light reached around the eastern horizon and spread behind the southern and northern mountains. A minute before, the night had held both the sky and the mountains wrapped together in the same blue darkness. Then the light came into the sky so that it slid farther and farther, infinitely far, away and left the mountains dark-blue, ragged-peaked, and alone. It was an ill joke to play on her--perhaps that was why she had shivered--that usually it was only on hunting mornings that she saw the dawn. All day the sun had shone. By noontime it had warmed the earth so that the air stirred and a breeze blew.

She closed the wardrobe doors, took off her shoes, eased her corset, and lay down wearily on the bed.

This was not just one day of journeying drawing to a close, but the last of twenty-two consecutive days. They counted from the stroke of that midnight when she and Robin had got back from their ‘compromise’ ride. The guards seemed to be expecting them; she found out later that that was Major Hayling’s work. How had he guessed? She didn’t have time to think much about it, still less to discuss it, though she had seen a lot of the major. She could not have got through those three weeks without him--him and Mrs. Savage, Senior, Caroline. Rupert Hayling got most of the practical arrangements made, in the face of her mother’s new dislike of him. She seemed to hold him responsible for the whole affair, presumably because he had not accepted the slave girl offered to him. Her mother could not know, and Anne did not tell her, that it was not his fault. So Anne had relied on him to do the things her father would forget to do. He had not failed her, and Robin was not jealous. Of course he had no reason to be, but--she set her mind to it and, after an effort, imagined Robin seeing as much of Edith Collett as she had of Rupert Hayling. She would have wanted to ask him questions about his visits--what did they talk about, why couldn’t he get help from some other woman--herself, for instance--or from another man? Therefore she was a jealous woman, and not yet married twelve hours. It was a nice warm feeling. If Robin could experience that same little spurt in himself--why, he would come close to her and speak hotly, and then . . . Her heart kicked, and she got up quickly to wash her face in cold water.

From the centre room she watched Robin returning across the compound. He too was tired, and still dirty from the road. The watchman followed him in, salaamed to her, and drew a thin, dirty register out of the table drawer. He opened the book and brought out a pen and a bottle of gummy ink. He gave the pen to Robin and stood respectfully aside.

In the first column, under
Name
, Robin wrote ‘Mr. and Mrs. R. Savage.’ He did not turn and smile at her, though it was the first time he had ever written the words. Her right hand, rising to touch the fingers of his left, fell again to her side.

In the second column, under
Regiment
, he wrote ‘13th Gurkhas.’ At the third column, under
Nature of Duty
, he paused. Finally he wrote ‘Honeymoon.’

Anne stammered, ‘I have to change,’ and returned to the bedroom. Most of the entries in the third column of the visitors’ register read simply ‘Duty’ or ‘Leave.’ Some men she knew might write ‘Honeymoon’ as a joke. But to her, considering the way in which she and Robin had achieved their marriage, it wasn’t a joke but a wound. Besides, Robin did not make jokes like that. He didn’t make any jokes. She jerked off her dress and threw it down. Let the bearer learn how to put that away. Still, it would have been as bad if he’d written ‘Duty,’ and he couldn’t write ‘Leave’ because officially he was travelling to Simla on orders. After that she didn’t know. He would tell her if he could. She sat down in the zinc tub, scrubbed her back carefully with the loofah, and washed herself all over with soap and water. As she finished dressing, Robin knocked. She went out to the centre room, and he went into the bedroom.

She began to thumb over some tattered copies of the
Illustrated London News
, but they were old and she had read them. She heard Robin moving about; the walls were not thick, and there was a great space under the bedroom door. She looked at the backs of the books on a hanging shelf and pulled one out. She began to read. After two pages she found she could not understand what the writer was telling her. Also, fish insects had eaten pieces out of the paper. She put the book down and stared at the front door.

Robin came out of the bedroom, doing up the last button of his velvet smoking jacket. His thick hair was brushed down and shiny from the water on it. She leaned back in her chair, felt the brush of his lips on her forehead, and closed her eyes. When he spoke his voice came from far away. ‘I expect we shall have barley soup, roast chicken, caramel custard, and Angels on Horseback.’