Far Pavilions (97 page)

The link was far fetched, and the fact that Wally had selected that particular passage for translation could hardly be termed a coincidence, for he had recently been reading the memoirs of the first Mogul Emperor, Barbur the Tiger, and on learning of that legend, had obviously been sufficiently interested to look up the story in Genesis, and later use it as an exercise in translation. There was nothing in the least remarkable about it, decided Ash, ashamed of that superstitious shiver. But all the same, he wished that he had not read the thing; because that part of him that was and always would be Ashok saw it as an ill-omen, and not all the Western scepticism of the Pelham-Martyns or those years at an English public school could wholly succeed in convincing him that this was absurd.

A second gust of wind whisked the little ball of paper under the flapping
chik
and across the verandah into the dusty waste of the compound beyond, and the last trace of Wally's occupancy had gone. And as Ash closed the door against the whirling dust the first drops of rain splashed down, and in the next moment the day was dark and full of the roar of falling water.

34

The downpour lasted over the weekend. It laid the dust and lowered the temperature, and flooded out the snakes who lived in holes below the bungalow and among the tree roots, and who now took up residence in the bathrooms and between the flower pots on the verandah – from where they were evicted by the servants to the accompaniment of much shouting and noise.

Unfortunately it had not been possible to evict Captain Lionel Crimpley, who moved into the bungalow on the Monday in place of Wally, for there happened to be a severe shortage of accommodation in Rawalpindi at the time, and if it had not been Crimpley it would have been someone else. Though Ash was of the opinion that almost anyone else would have been preferable.

Lionel Crimpley was a good ten years older than Ash, and he considered that his seniority should have entitled him to better quarters. He deeply resented having to share half a bungalow with a junior officer, and made no secret of the fact – or that he disliked everything about the country in which he had elected to serve, and regarded its inhabitants as inferiors, irrespective of rank or position. He had been genuinely horrified when a few days after his arrival he had heard voices and laughter coming from Ash's room, and on walking in without knocking, discovered the owner enjoying a joke with his cook who, to make matters worse, was actually smoking a hookah.

To give Crimpley his due, he had supposed that Ash must be out and that his servants had taken advantage of his absence to sit around in his chairs and gossip. He had apologized for his intrusion and left, looking inexpressibly shocked, and that evening at the Club had described the disgraceful incident to a like-minded crony, one Major Raikes, whose acquaintance he had made when their respective regiments were stationed at Meerut.

Major Raikes said that he was not at all surprised; there had been some very queer rumours going around concerning young Pandy Martyn. ‘If you ask me, there's something deuced fishy about the feller,’ pronounced Major Raikes. ‘Speaks the lingo a sight too well, for one thing. Mind you, I'm all for bein' able to speak it well enough to carry on out here, but that don't mean one need speak it so well that one could pass for a native provided one was blacked up.’

‘Quite so,’ agreed Lionel Crimpley, who, though like all Indian Army officers had had to pass the set language examinations, had never added to a meagre vocabulary or outgrown an unmistakably British intonation.

‘Any case,’ continued Major Raikes, warming to the subject, ‘hob-nobbin’ with these people on equal terms don't do us any good as a race. What happened in '57 could happen again if we don't see to it that the natives have a proper respect for us. You ought to speak to young Pandy Martyn, y'know. High time someone did, if he's started getting pally with his
nauker-log
(servants).’

Captain Crimpley had thought the advice good and acted upon it at the first opportunity. And Ash, who had been fortunate enough not to have encountered this particular viewpoint before (the Crimpley–Raikes species being a rarity), had begun by being amused, but on discovering, with incredulity, that his mentor was perfectly serious, ended by losing his temper. There had been an unfortunate scene, and Lionel Crimpley, enraged at being addressed in such opprobrious terms – and by an officer junior to him in rank – had complained to the Brigade Major, demanding an immediate apology and the offender's head on a platter, and insisting that he, Crimpley, be given other and more suitable quarters, or if that was not possible, that Lieutenant Pelham-Martyn should be expelled from the bungalow instantly, as he himself refused to remain under the same roof as any insolent, abusive, unlicked cub who smoked and gossiped with the servants, and moreover…

There had been a good deal more on this head, and the Brigade Major had not been pleased. He held no brief for Captain Crimpley, or for Captain Crimpley's views, but then neither did he approve of Lieutenant Pelham-Martyn's, for his own were strictly middle-of-the-road and he disliked extremes. In his opinion, the attitudes of both Crimpley and Pelham-Martyn were equally displeasing, and neither could be held blameless. But as no junior officer must be allowed to hurl abusive epithets at one senior to him, whatever the provocation, Ash had received a sharp dressing-down, while Crimpley for his part had been brusquely informed that for the time being both he and Lieutenant Pelham-Martyn would remain where they were, as no alternative accommodation could be provided for either of them.

‘And serve them right,’ thought the Brigade Major, pleased with himself for this judgement of Solomon and unaware how severe a punishment he had inflicted on both offenders.

The best that either could do was to see as little of each other as their cramped quarters permitted, but the next few months had not been pleasant ones, even though the Captain did little more than sleep in the bungalow, and took all his meals in the mess or at the Club. ‘Couldn't possibly bring myself to eat or drink with a fellow of that stamp,’ confided the Captain, airing his grievances to his friend Major Raikes. ‘And if you ask me, our Government is making a great mistake in allowing that sort of outsider to come to this country at all. They ought to recognize the kind and weed ‘em out at once.’

‘Crimpley,’ wrote Ash angrily, describing him in a letter to Wally, ‘is precisely the type of supercilious, bone-headed bastard who ought never to be allowed to set foot in this country, for he and his kind can ruin the lifework of a thousand good men by a single fatuous display of rudeness and insularity. Thank God there are only a very few of them. But even one would be too many, and it is depressing to think that our descendants will probably accept the view that dear Lionel was “typical “, and that the whole damned lot of us, from Clive onwards, were a bunch of pompous, insular, overbearing and mannerless poops!’

Ash had many acquaintances in the cantonment, but no close friends. He had not needed any while Wally had been there, and now that Wally had gone he did not trouble to make any others among his fellow Club members, largely because he preferred to see as little as possible of Crimpley, who could always be found at the 'Pindi Club out of office hours. Instead, he took to spending much of his free time in the company of men like Kasim Ali or Ranjee Narayan, sons of well-to-do middle-class men who lived with their families in large, rambling houses set in leafy gardens on the outskirts of the city, or in tall flat-roofed ones in the city itself. Merchants, bankers, cultivators and landowners, contractors or dealers in gems. The solid, sober backbone of any city.

Ash found their company much more relaxing and their conversation more to his taste than anything that he could find in social gatherings within the cantonments, for their talk ranged over a much wider field of subjects – theology, philosophy, crops and trade, the problems of local government and administration – and was not confined to horses, station-scandal and military ‘shop’; or to the politics and squabbles of democratic nations on the far side of the world. Yet even here he was not wholly at ease, for though his hosts were unfailingly kind and extended themselves to make him feel at home, he was always conscious of a barrier, carefully disguised, but still there. They liked him. They were genuinely interested in his views. They enjoyed his company and were pleased that he should speak their tongue as well as they themselves did… But he was not one of them. He might be a welcome guest, but he was also a
feringhi
: a foreigner and a member of the foreign Raj. Nor was that the only barrier -

Because he was not of their faith or their blood, there were certain things that they did not discuss with him or mention in his presence; and though their young children came and went freely and accepted him without question, he never caught so much as a glimpse of their women-folk. When visiting Ranjee Narayan's house or in the homes of Ranjee's relatives and friends, there was also the barrier of caste, for many of the older generation could not (to quote Captain Crimpley) ‘bring themselves to eat or drink with a fellow of that stamp’, because their religious beliefs forbade it.

Ash saw nothing odd in this, for he realized that one cannot change immemorial attitudes in a decade or two. But there was no denying that it tended to make social intercourse between the Orthodox and the Outsider a difficult and somewhat delicate business.

There had been talk that cold weather of an important conference to be held in Peshawar between the representatives of Great Britain and the Amir of Afghanistan, on the question of a treaty between the two countries. The political implications of this had been the subject of much discussion in Rawalpindi – and indeed throughout the Northern Punjab – but despite what Koda Dad had told him, Ash had not paid over-much attention to it, mainly because he seldom went to the Club or the mess and so missed a good deal that he might otherwise have heard.

Zarin had managed to visit Rawalpindi once or twice during the autumn, and Wally had actually been able to get a week's leave at Christmas, which he and Ash had spent shooting duck and snipe on the Chenab near Morala. The week had passed very pleasantly, but by contrast the long days that succeeded it seemed even more tedious, though Wally wrote regularly and Zarin at intervals, and once in a while there would be a letter from Kaka-ji that brought news of Karidkote and messages from Jhoti and Mulraj; but no mention of Anjuli – or of Bhithor. Koda Dad too wrote, though only to say that he was well, and that things were much the same as they had been at the time of their last meeting – which Ash took to be a reminder that the situation he had spoken of last summer still prevailed and showed no signs of improving.

Captain Crimpley, who occasionally caught sight of one of these letters (the post was laid out daily on the hall table), spoke scathingly at the Club about Pandy Martyn's correspondents, and hinted that they should be investigated by Intelligence. But apart from Major Raikes, no one paid any attention to these allegations. The Captain and his crony were not popular with their fellow members, and it is unlikely that they could have done Ash much harm if it had not been for the affair of Mr Adrian Porson, that well-known lecturer and globe-trotter…

January and February had come and gone. The days were warm and sunny, and Mr Porson was among the last of these birds-of-passage to appear in Rawalpindi, the genus preferring to be out of the country well before the first of April. He had already spent several months seeing India under the aegis of such exalted personages as Governors, Residents and Members of Council, and was at present staying with the Commissioner of Rawalpindi,
en route
to his final port of call, Peshawar, before returning to Bombay and Home. The object of this tour had been to acquire material for a series of critical lectures on ‘Our Eastern Empire’, and by now he considered himself to be an authority on the subject, and had chosen to air his views to a group of members at the 'Pindi Club one early March evening.

‘The trouble is,’ said Mr Porson in a voice trained to carry to the back rows of a hall, ‘that as I see it, the only Indians you people out here care to know are either Maharajahs or peasants. You would seem to have no objection to hob-nobbing with a ruling prince and pronouncing him to be quite a “decent sort of chap”, but, one asks oneself, how is it that you fail to make friends with Indian men and women of your own class? That, if you will forgive plain speaking, one finds inexcusable, as it indicates a degree of shortsightedness and prejudice, not to say racial snobbery, that must strike any thinking person as offensive in the extreme. Particularly when one compares it with the patronizing indulgence extended to your “faithful old servants” that you speak so highly of the subservient “Uncle Toms” who wait on you hand and foot and care for all your creature comforts, the –’