The Passage to India

by Allan Mallinson

  Annie was shaking but trying not to, still crouching under the table, with Allegra beneath her. She hadn’t been shaking before. Every muscle had been as taut as a wire.

  ‘Is it a good snake or a bad one, Mick?’

  She was stroking Allegra’s hair now, to restore her own nerves as much as comfort the child.

  ‘Not is, Annie love. Was.’

  He’d heard Johnson prattle on often enough about good and bad – and every fakir in Bengal.

  ‘An’ it were a bastard.’

  And then under the table he saw Allegra.

  ‘Oh, bloody ’ell, Annie, you … Oh, I’m sorry, Miss Allegra, I didn’t mean to … Good God, Annie, lass, what ’appened?’

  Kezia lay upright when he came, her hair spread, shining gold, tumbling onto green silk pillows, her eyes bright, her complexion peaches and cream – the image of health, and of contentment. She’d smiled at him with such warmth, perhaps as only the bearer of a lover’s child could, their son sleeping in a basket beside her, and the ayah with a look that said that all was well. Kezia said she was not at all tired, that she hoped to be out of her bed soon, and that she craved only to immerse herself in the great swimming bath.

  They’d not spoken before of names. Hervey asked what was her wish. But she replied that that was for him to say, and with a completeness to her smile that made him unable to think for the moment. Then he’d taken up her prayer book and looked to see whose day this was, or nearest, but it was Swithun, which would not serve. Then Kezia said that since it was by Somervile’s good offices that all this had come about, here, perhaps the child should be called Eyre. And he thought it an admirable idea, not least that it would be a fine reciprocation; and so it was settled.

  Then she said she would like to see Allegra now that their son had a name, and also – she smiled again – because she now had her husband’s assurance that she was fit to be seen, rather than just that of her looking glass. But first she asked for some hot milk sweetened with honey, and Hervey said he would ask Annie to bring it – or should he ask Sarah? ‘Annie,’ Kezia replied, so that she could thank her for all that she’d lately done: ‘Such an obliging girl.’

  Hervey said he would go himself and tell her, and then bring Allegra.

  Annie was sitting in the servants’ hall off the kitchen with a dish of tea, trembling still so that she could hardly sip without spilling it. She got up when he came in, but he insisted at once she sat down again.

  Serjeant Stray caught his eye.

  ‘Is there something untoward?’

  Stray told him.

  Hervey looked aghast. ‘Annie … We must send for the surgeon.’

  ‘It looked so evil, sir,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Its eyes – it just stared at us, hating us, wanting us dead. And we … we’d done nothing to it, sir. Nothing to hurt it at all.’

  Serjeant Stray put a hand to her shoulder. ‘Annie, love, they don’t mean it like that,’ he tried again. ‘It’s just the way God made ’em.’

  He turned to Hervey.

  ‘It were nowt but a bit of a thing, Colonel. It gave ’er a bit of fright, but she’ll be all right – won’t you, Annie love?’

  Annie nodded. ‘Yes, sir, I’ll be all right. But Miss Allegra’s had a terrible fright. Miss Ames has taken her to see the ponies.’

  ‘She’ll be right as rain in no time, Annie,’ said Stray, as avuncular as he could make himself sound. ‘You’ll see. Bairns – they don’t think much o’ these things.’

  ‘Are you quite sure you don’t want Mr Milne to come, Annie?’

  She shook her head again. ‘No, sir; thank you. I’ll be all right.’

  ‘Might it help take your mind off it if I asked you for some hot milk with honey? Mrs Hervey asks for it – and most particularly indeed that you bring it so she may thank you.’

  Annie put down the dish and stood up, brushing her smock with her hands, though there was hardly need. ‘Yes, sir, of course. I’d like to as well. I’m sorry, sir, I forgot myself: he’s a lovely baby. I’m sure we’re all very glad for you.’

  Hervey smiled. ‘Thank you, Annie. You are very good. Say nothing of this to Mrs Hervey, though, before I’ve had chance to speak of it with her.’

  ‘Of course, sir. And it’s not my place to.’

  Hervey smiled again, appreciatively.

  He nodded to Serjeant Stray to say he would have him follow, and went to the stillroom. One of the houseboys had begun mopping the floor. He took in the scene – the position of the table, the place where the snake met its end, the relative distances … and shook his head.

  ‘A bit of a thing, Serjeant Stray?’

  ‘Well, Colonel …’

  ‘Where is it now?’

  ‘I got the chowkidar to take it out.’

  ‘I will see it.’

  ‘No, Colonel, there’s no need.’

  Stray sighed, knowing well enough he couldn’t conceal the fact any longer, even for right reason.

  ‘It were a bloody big ’un. As big as I’ve seen. Well, perhaps not exactly – perhaps it just looked bigger in t’room, but it weren’t a little bazaar thing. It were the big sort – hood as big as a saucer. Them that kill you in an hour.’

  He paused, as if thinking whether he should say more.

  ‘Colonel, that lass – Annie: as brave as a lion …’

  ‘Oh, indeed: I see it all, Serjeant Stray – and you yourself.’

  ‘Oh, I did nowt that anyone wouldn’t’ve, Colonel.’

  ‘Perhaps; but quicker, I’ll warrant – and more effectively. Thank you.’ He offered his hand.

  Stray muttered inaudibly; he hoped Mrs Stray wouldn’t make any fuss when she too heard.

  ‘And now if you will, try and find a sampera to stop up any holes, and tell why such a snake came into the lines, let alone the house. What said the chowkidar when he saw it?’

  ‘I don’t know what he said, Colonel, but his eyes nearly popped out of ’is ’ead.’

  Hervey went to find Allegra. It didn’t do to think on what might have been – an inch in a miss was as good as an ell – but if the snake had struck …

  Media vita in morte sumus. For so long he’d taken it for granted. It was his trade. But in the midst of life here, where death could lurk in a stillroom, where strange ills bred and where violent hands were for hire so cheap, it was well to buckle on as much armour as one might.

  XXII

  In the Midst of Life

  19 December

  THE MONSOON, WHEN it broke in early October, had at first been welcome – as it always was, relief from the humidity that grew by the day and which in September seemed as if it could not be borne, when many of the gora log sought the relief of the hills. Not the Sixth; not this year at least. Hervey knew that if they were to endure a long posting in this station, they must work unceasingly this first season. Between them – he, Lieutenant (Quartermaster) Collins, Serjeant-Major Armstrong, and Surgeon Milne as their unflagging guardian – there was enough knowledge of India to make sure that unceasing work did not turn to exhaustion. They exercised the horses – with troop and squadron drill once a week – in the first hours of the day, or, when there was a good moon, at night. They laboured until the middle of the morning on camp comforts – making playing fields of all kinds; building a court for Wessex Fives, a game that one of the cornets come on exchange had brought with him; digging a fine swimming pool and new storm drains; getting going the regimental farm; and then at eleven they rested until three before parading for recreation or skill-at-arms, officers and men alike, and school for those who could not read or write.

  The school had begun at Hounslow, but not without misgivings in some quarters, for there were officers of high rank in the army who were of the opinion that the fewer the men who read or wrote, the better behaved they were; and, indeed, it had met with no great success, for many a dragoon held the view that he’d enlisted for subsistence, not for self-improvement. Here in Madras, however, many an unschooled
dragoon came to realize that a man might feel he were in less alien parts if he could read for himself a letter from home and write one in return, and also the periodicals and such like in the reading room. And while a dragoon might think it no shame to be unschooled at Hounslow, seeing ‘darkie’ here reading his language – English – was an affront to his pride. (It was curious, thought Hervey, how the children of the regimental school, who could all write the alphabet on their slates by the time they were six, were not a greater affront.)

  They were better victualled than in Hounslow, certainly, and with cooks to make a good meal of it rather than the boiling pot in the corner of the barrack room. Collins’s little army of bearers saw to chota hazree for every man when the sun came up – sweet tea and biscuit – and then bacon or the like when morning stables and exercise was done. There was a trencher of fruit at one o’clock (which they got to enjoy, for it kept them regular), with lime or lemon water; and then when the sun was down, a good mess of mutton and rice or some such, and, by common consent, excellent Indian coffee. The native sutlers were not bad either, was the opinion. Collins had them on a tight rein. The wet canteen opened earlier, but it also closed earlier; it had not taken long for the dragoons to realize that slaking a thirst with arrack and water, or the local millet beer, was a very temporary pleasure, the consequences next morning being more than unpleasant (only rarely did their pockets run to English porter, shipped in returning Indiamen). Charges of drunkenness were soon nothing to compare with Hounslow – to Armstrong’s considerable satisfaction, for recalling his own youthful days he could become almost the abstinent on matters of ‘barrack liquor’. There was even a temperance association begun from out the civil lines, though this troubled both Armstrong and Hervey, wary as they were of excess in any direction.

  As many dragoons fell foul of la grande vérole here as at home, however – although it might have been more had Milne not addressed them regularly on the fearful consequences of the mercury treatment – tooth loss, ulcers of the mouth, throat, and skin; violent dementia; death – though this last to many seemed no more troubling a risk than was soldiery itself. In fact, so the chief medical officer at Fort St George reported, the Sixth’s losses to the Grim Reaper by accident or disease honourably contracted (or at least, not dishonourably) in their first year in Madras were half the average for a comparable body of troops. Nevertheless, among these ‘Indian mortalities’ were one or two men whom Hervey had known for many a year. ‘Shepherd’ Stent, one of the Warminster men that he himself had ’listed, and who with Serjeant Stray had saved Armstrong at Bhurtpore when the tunnel collapsed, died of a fever in August. Two serjeants’ wives had gone the same way – Milne found it hard to say by what exactly, though it wasn’t cholera (that had steered clear of the lines) – leaving three orphans. Stent’s funeral had been bad enough – he was popular, and after Bhurtpore a hero too – but those of the wives were particularly melancholy, with both widowers in despair of what would become of their ‘bairns’. Had it been the serjeants themselves that had succumbed, their widows would have found a husband in but a few weeks, as was the custom in India, but despite the best efforts of Kezia and her ladies, there were no wives to be found.

  As for ‘the household’, a new chowkidar and a long-toothed sampera – and a good carpenter – had prevented any repetition of the stillroom occurrence. Kezia had received the news without excessive alarm, though she was in no doubt of the peril in which Allegra had been, for in gratitude she’d had made a gold bracelet for Annie, with a sentiment inscribed. And when, a week or two later, Miss Ames – in truth the person who seemed to feel it the keenest, for she blamed herself for allowing Allegra to stray (although bidden to the birthing bed) – said she wished to resign her position and return to England, Kezia appointed Annie in her stead.

  ‘She may be unread for a governess,’ she told Hervey, ‘but in every other respect I think her admirable.’

  And he had had to agree. Indeed, he said that anyone who had struggled as she had during the passage out to read Mills’s History of British India (with its strange ideas about the place) was not lacking in understanding. He’d even seen Hazlitt’s New and Improved Grammar of the English Tongue in the servants’ hall. So now she was promoted to ‘Miss Gildea’ and given new clothes and seated in the same pew as the family at church – where, indeed, she became the object of admiration (and no doubt even more of desire) by all ranks.

  Hervey himself increasingly left the running of the regiment to Major Garratt and the adjutant and Armstrong, while he and Neale, who arrived in early September, just in time, he said, to enjoy his second monsoon of the season, spent their time in the maps room at the commander-in-chief’s headquarters, consulting every document that seemed of relevance to the great object of Somervile’s governorship. There was no shortage of accounts of battle with the Coorgs. Their rajahs’ strategy in war with the lowland chieftains to the westward, or with the Mysoreans, had long been to let them enter the country, leading them on with the appearance of success, retiring to strongpoints in their mountain fastness and there letting them exhaust their provisions and patience. Then, attempting to retire with the glory of having penetrated so far, the invaders found the stockades they’d forced or turned so easily during their advance had been re-garrisoned. Checked in retreat, harassed on the flanks and now in rear by a pursuing, jubilant enemy secure in his knowledge of the jungle paths, too late the invaders recognized their perilous position – whereupon the Coorgs laughed at their confusion and spared neither sick nor wounded who fell into their hands. The general result of a small force entering Coorg was its utter extinction. Only once, it seemed, had the Coorgs been tempted from their highland stronghold – by Tippoo; and thereby been defeated. That, indeed, was the portent of the rajah’s ‘fraternal address’ at Madkerry.

  They had not, of course, faced an army of the Honourable East India Company. While, however, it was tempting to imagine that no native force could withstand the resources, both material and moral, of the Company, Hervey was not minded to believe that the same fate was impossible simply by nature of the coats they wore. It was certain that the rajah could not be tempted from his fastness; so there was no alternative but to enter the country. It followed that the size, composition and policy of his force must be such as to avoid the unhappy ends of those who had gone before. Time spent in reconnaissance was never wasted; and nor was time spent in gathering intelligence from the efforts of others, no matter how long ago.

  Once a week Hervey held his commanding officer’s conference, once a fortnight he attended a regimental parade, and from time to time he visited a troop drill; but orderly room he left to Garratt, whose views on discipline matched his own. As for St Alban, he regretted not seeing him every day, but if only to assure him there was no loss of regard for having announced his intention to leave, the adjutant found himself just as frequently invited to dine at Arcot House as before.

  In Neale, however, he found a thinking officer whose knowledge and sense of the country was as good as he dare hope. In his twenty-something years – despite a third of them in India – there was a wisdom of the world that St Alban could not yet equal. And while St Alban descended from the earls of Bicester, Neale, like Hervey, was a son of the parsonage – and a poorish living at that, in the marches of Montgomeryshire. From a boy he had wanted to join the Twenty-third, the Royal Welch Regiment of Fusiliers, but the Reverend Mr Neale had not the means, and so at thirteen he had gone to the Company’s Military Seminary at Addiscombe in Surrey, and four years later arrived in Madras a probationary cornet. Hervey reckoned that in the long hours in the saddle when they went once more to Bangalore to consult in as great secrecy as they might with General Hawker, he’d learned as much about the south of India as he knew of the north.

  Indeed, he’d been contriving ever since how to make him adjutant when St Alban left. Neale wouldn’t have the means, of course. He might have saved a little gold, for there were peculiar opportunities in I
ndia, but so too were there to spend it, even in the most wholesome way. Yet if he did have the means to purchase – and indeed the means to live thereafter (the Sixth were by no means the most expensive of regiments, but expensive enough) – why would he wish to? He was quite evidently in his element with native troops; what might attract him to change his coat? And so Hervey thought to say nothing of the idea at once, and let things take their course for a month or so longer. He would at least make him temporary captain when – and it was surely when and not if? – the Coorg Field Force was embodied, for Neale would be major of brigade. There was, however, still no indication when they might begin operations; and yet barely a week went by without more intelligence of outrages perpetrated by the rajah – even of late against the Christian community, little as it was, and papists all, though their priest, a Portugais, was spoken of highly in Bangalore. To Fort William, Coorg must seem a place of no account, and Fort St George a fussing presidency.

  At any rate, as the year drew to a close, and with it the retreating eastern monsoon, Hervey had at last completed his appreciation of the situation and made his plan. He was greatly pleased when Somervile approved it in its political detail – though he insisted that on no account were the troops to fire first, believing there was reason to hope the ryots would join the Company against their ruler. Hervey was content: these things were settled quickly enough once campaigning began. He accepted, too, the logic of the ultimatum that would be delivered to the rajah once the force was assembled, for since it was hardly possible to assemble such a force in any secrecy, there was little chance of achieving surprise. Besides, an ultimatum would only add to the legitimacy of the undertaking.

  He was equally gratified when General O’Callaghan approved the plan – indeed, commended it – in its military particulars. Only the intelligence of the caltrops was unresolved; and on this the general had no advice. For what might they do but bear it as best they could?