The Ravi Lancers (14 page)

Krishna sat in the little private room, fondling the glass. This was another dry wine, but he was getting used to them now. Wine and whisky not only tasted good, but they made everything a little easier. It was a strain sometimes, being so far behind. He felt that he was running with all his might to attain what these people had been born with, or at any rate had held so long that it had become a part of themselves. Here, where millions of pounds were being handled, so easily, so quietly, over glasses of sherry, he felt like the barbarian that this quiet man with the pince-nez probably imagined him to be.

Then it was Sackville Street and Wyricks for three sets of uniform. ‘They’re our regimental tailors in the 44th,’ Major Bateman said. ‘We think they’re very good.’

The head cutter in Wyricks looked extraordinarily like the frock coat in the bank, perhaps a shade more deferential in manner yet in no way subservient. They sat in comfortable armchairs among bolts of cloth while the cutter, a tape round his neck, brought out rolls of khaki. ‘This is the regular barathea of your regiment, Major Bateman. But perhaps, for active service in France you might do better with this one ... It’s a whipcord, an ounce or two heavier but a bit stronger. Oh yes, quite a bit stronger. Less liable to tear on thorns and brambles, you understand ... very good. The whipcord.’ He put it aside on a table and strolled off to return with another roll. ‘This is the cavalry twill for the breeches. You can’t get anything stronger that will hold its cut. Three pairs? ... Very good. Now perhaps I had better check your measurements, sir. It’s, let’s see, over three years since you were here last, I think.’

‘You mean, in case I’ve grown a potbelly, Thompson, don’t you? I think I’m in pretty good shape. I’ve been playing a lot of polo.’

‘Indeed, sir? Quite. H’m. No change. Very good. You are to be congratulated. Now, sir . ..’ turning to Krishna Ram. ‘And perhaps a glass of sherry while we put the details into the ledger?’

Krishna fondled the glass. A great wine. Warming, and a little sweeter than the last. Banking and tailoring were run the same way here. And cricket. And war, perhaps. Then he remembered his grandfather describing how British troops had bayoneted the rest of the royal family in Basohli during the Mutiny. Of course the Tommies were the lower classes, but still...

They returned to Paddington and their hotel and later out to dinner at the Savoy, with Krishna as host. Major Bateman said, ‘I had hoped Joan would be able to come up to have dinner and spend the night--I sent her a telegram from Dover, you know--but she’s just replied that Louise, that’s our little girl, has a bilious attack, so she can’t come.’ He stowed the pink telegram slip into a pocket. ‘We’ll have to be bachelors.’

‘That’ll suit me,’ Krishna Ram said. ‘I am rather nervous with ladies.’ He thought of Mr. Fleming’s words of warning, about how fatally easy it was to go wrong with ladies, insulting them either by saying too much or too little, by being too cold or too warm--though he could not understand how a well-brought-up English lady, so cold in her chiselled beauty, could ever expect more than a man, in his coarseness, might offer.

They ate by an open window of the Savoy dining room, looking out over gardens heavy with the scents of late summer, the Thames flowing now towards the sea, a river of polished darkness touched by golden lamps along the Surrey shore and the lights of boats gliding upon the unseen stream. Inside, the string band played overtures and light operas during the meal, and the champagne glass at his elbow sparkled like the lights in the chandeliers and the stars spangling the women’s long gowns. Their breasts and shoulders and arms were white as alabaster, and barer than an Indian harlot’s, and they glided in insolent beauty down the aisles between the tables, ahead of their escorts, fur and silk half-covering, half-revealing pearls and diamonds gleaming at the cleavage of their breasts and in the gold piled on their heads.

‘I feel like a boor sitting in here in uniform at this time of day,’ Warren Bateman said. ‘The staff aren’t used to it yet, either. The head waiter had to remember there’s a war on before he let us in ... Now, what shall we have? I can tell you that I’m going to order the grouse.’

After consideration, Krishna chose roast beef. Major Bateman raised an eyebrow, but Krishna said, ‘The roast beef of Olde England is the best in the world, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. I was thinking that your grandfather might not approve.’

‘I don’t care,’ Krishna said recklessly, ‘I’m in England now ... Europe ... I have to live the European way. This is London, not Basohli.’ He drank deeply from the fizzing, cold glass.

Major Bateman smiled and said, ‘Enjoy yourself. I won’t sneak on you ... But I’d be careful with that champagne, if I were you. It’s stronger than it looks, or tastes.’

Krishna Ram nodded absently. He felt good. He wasn’t worried about anything, including his grandfather. That was the secret of how the English had conquered India so easily and ruled it with so little trouble. With their sherries and champagnes and whiskies, they didn’t worry.

He said, ‘The only thing I’m sorry about is missing the cricket. I did hope to see Jack Hobbs bat and Richardson bowl at the Oval.’

Major Bateman said, ‘The first class season’s over, but if the weather holds we’ll get a game. We have a Harvest Saturday cricket match at Shrewford Pennel every year. It’s against Hangerton, that’s the parish we’re joined with. My father was vicar of Shrewford Pennel but as soon as he was dead the Church authorities abolished it as a separate parish--it’s Hangerton-cum-Shrewford Pennel now. But they let my mother live on in the vicarage ... the Old Vicarage, it’s called now. The vicar of the new combined parish lives in Hangerton.’

‘Will I be allowed to play?’ Krishna asked, his heart lifting. A hundred times Mr. Fleming had told him that village cricket, on the village green, was the core and heart of the game.

‘Oh, yes,’ Major Bateman said, ‘there are never enough players just in the villages! The Pennels usually have a house party and their male guests form the best part of our team. This time we at the Old Vicarage will do that.’ He stood up slowly, dabbing his mouth with his napkin. He was looking at someone standing behind Krishna’s chair.

Krishna turned and saw a tall young woman, standing close, one hand rested easily on the back of his chair. A ruby brooch sparkled at the base of her décolleté, emphasizing the disappearing curve of the breasts. She wore a heavy bracelet of rubies on her left wrist. ‘I’m Harriet Symonds,’ she said. ‘We’re one man short in our party, and we ladies would prefer it to be one man extra. Would you care to join us?’ She was about twenty-three, golden-haired, her mouth wide. She smiled down at Krishna and he felt a chill run up his spine. He stared at her, helpless as a rabbit before a weasel.

Major Bateman said, ‘This is the Yuvraj Krishna Ram of Ravi, Lady Harriet. I’m Warren Bateman, 44th Bengal Lancers. It’s very kind of you indeed, but we’ve just landed from India, we’ve been running about London all day, and really are just about to go to bed. Please do excuse us.’

‘Very well,’ the lady said, ‘you’ll be on leave again.’ She was looking directly at Krishna. ‘You’ll find me in the telephone book. I’d love to show you London.’

She turned and strolled away, her head high, the movement of her buttocks easily visible in the tightness of the silk across them. The two men sat down. ‘I’ve seen her name and photo in the glossy papers,’ Major Bateman said. ‘She’s one of the leaders of the young set in London, I believe. And quite a wild one, I gather.’

Krishna said, ‘Her father is a peer?’

‘An earl. The Earl of Hanwell.’

‘And she is allowed to talk to men she has never met before?’ Major Bateman smiled--a trifle grimly, Krishna thought--and said, ‘In this country there’s no way of stopping her ... Well, as we said we were leaving, we’d better do so. I’m quite tired anyway.’ He hesitated and said, ‘There’s no reason you should come, too, you know. They only really need one man.’

Krishna said, from his heart, ‘I don’t want to stay here alone. I ... I feel out of my depth.’

For a time after they had gone to their rooms at the hotel, and he had undressed and lain down, he could not sleep. The city had a hum and a beat that was rather like the throb of the Nerbudda, but quieter, deeper--and bigger. As the ship would not--could not--swerve from its course for pieces of seaweed or sea birds in its path, so Krishna felt that the city would not--could not--swerve from its accustomed and necessary way for the sake of animals or people in its path. If you went with it, at its pace and for its purposes, then it would carry you effortlessly forward; but if you wanted to go another way, or at another speed ... what then? Before he could answer his own question a vision of Lady Harriet Symonds hung before him, its wide blue eyes staring into his own ... inviting? That was not possible! Then why had she told him she was in the telephone book? Why had she come over at all?

The champagne and brandy he had drunk gently submerged him and he knew no more until he heard an insistent knocking on the door and the key turning and the maid in black and white coming in with a tray and a bright, ‘Good morning, sir, it’s ‘alf past eight and ‘ere’s your early morning tea and I ‘ope you like
The Times
, ‘cos that’s what I’ve got for you.’

They spent the most of the next day at the War Office where Krishna signed a score of agreements on behalf of his grandfather, and ate dinner at their own hotel. The following morning Krishna found himself in another train.

The engine of this one was dark green and it had a deep band of burnished copper round the top of the funnel. The coaches were chocolate below and cream above. But the countryside was the same, a patchwork of meadows gliding by, so green, dotted with old mansions, churches, hamlets. The train stopped in gentle sunlight for old men to get on and young children to get off, it whistled politely down verdant valleys, and followed fat trout up a winding stream, until Major Bateman leaned across, tapped him on the knee, and said, ‘You’re daydreaming again, Krishna. We get out at the next stop.’

The train slowed and a platform sign passed:
Woodborough
. A tall young man of about Krishna’s own age, wearing a pepper and salt tweed suit and a tweed cap, was standing at the station gate opposite their carriage. Warren Bateman got down, exclaiming, ‘Ralph! I thought you were working in Edinburgh.’ Krishna detected the surprise in the voice.

‘I was, until a week--a couple of weeks ago. Then I left. Got sacked, as a matter of fact. I was too socialist for those feudalists up there ... This is your Rajah, I suppose.’

‘The Yuvraj Krishna Ram of Ravi,’ Warren corrected him. ‘Krishna, this is Ralph Harris, who lives with us. My mother was his guardian.’

The man’s hand was out, his eyes looking into Krishna’s. He was over six feet, thin and pigeon-chested where Warren was square and sturdy, but their hands and feet were oddly alike in their gangling bigness, and the eyes, grey and deep set, were identical. Krishna thought they must be some relation to each other.

‘Let’s have your bags, and I’ll stow them.’

A few minutes later they were rolling away in a trap. It was the same countryside that Krishna had seen from the train, but now it passed more slowly, more closely. Now the smell of the dust in the road, of the hay in the stacks was added to what he had only experienced through his eyes. Major Bateman and Ralph Harris talked desultorily, the major asking after various people and the other answering briefly. After half an hour’s brisk trot in sunken lanes between thick hedges the road swung, revealing a two-storeyed building of grey stone, with many big windows and a flat roof line, facing the road across fifty yards of green lawn, behind a low dry-stone wall.

‘The Old Vicarage,’ Major Bateman said. ‘It’s church property. That’s the church, beyond. The old graveyard’s behind the holly hedge.’

The wheels of the trap crunched on the gravel of the curved drive, and stopped. Major Bateman jumped down, the door opened, and a woman came out, a half-naked boy child running ahead: ‘Daddy, Daddy!’ the little boy cried. The woman said quietly, ‘Warren.’ Major Bateman held out his arms. ‘Joan! ‘

Krishna busied himself helping Ralph Harris get the suitcases out from under the seat, in order not to intrude on the reunion. Then he heard another woman’s voice, this one older and more musical than the other; and Major Bateman’s, ‘Mother! ‘

He turned then and came forward. Warren Bateman said, ‘My mother ... Yuvraj Krishna Ram of Ravi, mother.’

She was above normal height, even for an English woman, a little stooped, her black hair streaked with grey, her skin rather sallow. Her eyes were strong blue, and her voice steady as she said, ‘Welcome to England, Yuvraj. You have brought lovely weather with you.’

He bowed over her hand, wondering whether he ought to kiss it. Then Major Bateman was saying, ‘My wife Joan. You didn’t meet her in Lahore, did you?’

‘No, sir. Only your sister, Miss Diana.’

Warren’s wife was an inch taller than her tall mother-in-law, but slimmer, a willowy body bending as she held out her hand, long blonde hair straying in the breeze. Her face was very different, long, long nose, high forehead, her mouth always moving. Her hands were long, the fingers like the stalks of lilies. At her skirt, which was of gipsy cut, the little boy stood with legs apart, staring up at Krishna, his hands thrust into the pockets of his only garment, a pair of velvet shorts.

‘I’m Rodney Bateman,’ the child said. ‘I’m four and a half. My sister’s been sick again.’

A tall strongly built man, not more than twenty-one years old, came round the corner of the house. He was deeply sunburned, with a powerful throat rising from broad shoulders. His fair hair stuck out in dense curls at the back and sides of his cap. He was wearing a labourer’s corduroy trousers and shirt, with no coat. ‘Is ‘ee finished with t’ trap, Ralph?’ he said and Krishna caught the flitting frown on Warren Bateman’s face, at the familiar address from a man who was obviously a servant of some kind.

‘Yes, Sam ... unless you want him to give a hand with the suitcases, mother?’