The Ravi Lancers

by John Masters

  ‘Until we win,’ Major Bateman said, and led up the stairs. ‘Come on, Krishna, I’ll show you to your room.’

  Next day, after a lazy morning and a light lunch Krishna met Warren Bateman and Ralph Harris in the hallway, all three wearing white flannel trousers, white shirts, and blazers. As they were about to leave the house Joan Bateman called downstairs, ‘Wait for me!’ Warren turned his head up, ‘You want to watch cricket? What’s come over you?’

  ‘Oh, what else is there to do?’ she said, appearing at the head of the stairs, the children behind her.

  ‘Well,’ Warren said dubiously, ‘I don’t know how much Louise and Rodney can stand ... but you can always bring them back.’

  At the cricket field half a dozen men were already gathered, most wearing corduroy trousers held up by braces, farm boots, and wool shirts. Two more were driving half a dozen shorthorn cows out of the field with expert cries and gestures. Major Bateman introduced Krishna Ram to the men as they came up. Most touched their forelock with a smile as they said, ‘Afternoon, Mr. Warren, so ‘ee’s back from India, eh?’ And to Krishna again the touched forelock and, ‘Pleased to meet ‘ee, zur,’ in an accent that, when they were talking among themselves, Krishna could barely understand.

  As Ralph Harris and Joan Bateman wandered away together, a man of about Major Bateman’s age came up, wearing white flannels, silk shirt and proper white cricket boots. He said, ‘I heard you were home, Bateman. On leave?’

  ‘Three days,’ Major Bateman said briefly. ‘This is the Yuvraj Krishna Ram of Ravi. Paul Hutchinson. He’s by way of being squire of Hangerton. And captain of their cricket team, naturally.’ Krishna could tell from the other’s accent that this was another gentleman, and noted also that he made no attempt to shake hands but greeted the introduction with an offhand nod. Now he said to Warren Bateman, ‘Are you playing Fuller?’

  Major Bateman said, ‘I asked him to play last night, but he had a previous engagement.’

  ‘Just as well,’ Hutchinson said. ‘On all counts, he’s a really top class bowler ... much too good for most of our fellows on a pitch like this.’

  He strolled away with another nod, and Krishna said, ‘Who’s Mr. Fuller, sir?’

  Major Bateman hesitated before answering. ‘He’s a man ... a gentleman ... who lives in the village.’ He hesitated again. ‘There was a lot of unpleasant talk about him ... about unnatural vice ... Personally, I am not sure that the accusation was just, and I am also not sure that it is Christian to cut someone off from society like that, even if it were. But you know what people are. This is a very small community. Fuller’s retired into his shell. Doesn’t see anybody . . . Come on. It’s time for the toss. And by the way, call me Warren off parade.’

  Major Bateman won the toss for Shrewford Pennel and put his team in to bat. Krishna settled in one of the rickety deck chairs on the rickety verandah, with his pads on, for he was going in first wicket down. His turn came soon enough, for the opening batsman only made five before swinging across a ball that failed to rise more than six inches, having slid in an old cowpat trace, and was bowled neck and crop. Krishna walked out with his bat swinging lightly, and his shirt sleeves rolled half way up his forearm, just the way Ranji wore his. The church and a corner of the Old Vicarage were just visible on the low rise of land beyond the road, where the Green Man’s inn sign swung to and fro in a light breeze. Two heavy copper beeches towered over the pavilion, their leaves beginning to speckle the grass with a coppery glint.

  He took middle and leg, glanced round at the field, and waited. The ball came a shade slower off the pitch than he had expected. He thought, even with this dry weather the ground here is nothing like as hard as the matting in India. He watched the ball very carefully for the rest of the over, leaned on his bat for the next over while the sturdy farm boy at the other end hit two fours, and then again faced the fast bowler. He began with a straight drive over the bowler’s head for six, followed by a late cut off a rising short one for two, and then another drive, this one past cover point, for four more. Each time a thin ripple of applause reached him from the pavilion, and for the two boundaries, all the Hangerton players applauded too.

  For forty-five minutes he batted as well as he ever had before one of Hutchinson’s leg breaks had him caught in the slips off the edge of his bat. He swung round with a grin, tucked his bat under his arm and started the walk back to the pavilion, all in one motion. All the Hangerton players were clapping and as he passed Hutchinson the latter said, ‘A nice knock, Yuvraj. Are you a relative of Ranji’s?’

  Krishna shook his head, smiling. ‘No, sir. I wish I was.’

  Then he was back in the pavilion and everyone was clapping and Major Bateman said, ‘Well played, Krishna. Pity you missed your century.’

  ‘What did I make?’

  ‘You mean you don’t know? Eighty-four.’

  Ralph Harris went out to bat. Joan Bateman watched him walk out, a peculiarly distant expression on her face. She was wearing a flowing yellow silk scarf, the colour of Krishna’s blazer, a magenta dress, and a wide-brimmed black hat. As Krishna was taking off his pads he heard Warren Bateman say, ‘Look what the children are playing with, Joan! ‘ his voice sharp. Glancing up, Krishna saw that they were using cowpats as modelling clay.

  ‘We mustn’t stult their creative impulses,’ Joan said firmly, ‘there’s nothing wrong with cow dung ... Is there, Krishna?’ Krishna blushed and cleared his throat. Personally he thought that cow dung was no different from horse dung or the dung of any other grass eater, but to the Brahmin it was sacred, like the cow itself; to most of the people of Ravi it was a principal fuel.

  Warren Bateman said wearily, ‘As you can see, Krishna, my children are being raised by the Harz-Goldwasser method.’

  ‘Sir?’ he said puzzled.

  ‘They’re Austrian Jews who’ve invented a new way of raising children. You should read Saki’s story The Schartz-Metterklume Method, where he satirizes that sort of thing beautifully.’

  Joan Bateman said, ‘That story’s quite funny, but the idea behind it is not. It’s just narrow-minded. A lot of us think the old ways of raising children are barbaric and produce nothing but unhappiness later--perversions, impotence and worse ... class prejudice, colour prejudice, hate ... Oh, well hit!’ She clapped enthusiastically and Krishna saw that Ralph Harris had hit a six. He watched a while longer and saw that Harris did not concentrate. He would not last long. Nor did he, clean bowled, to be succeeded by the young servant who had taken the trap away, Sam Marsh. ‘They could do with him in the army,’ Warren said.

  Joan said, ‘Mother needs him here. Besides, he doesn’t believe in fighting. Ralph’s told him not to volunteer, whatever pressure is put on him.’

  Warren laughed, ‘Well then, he won’t go, will he? But we won’t beat the Huns if we don’t give our best.’

  ‘The Huns?’ Ralph Harris said. ‘You mean the Germans? You never used to call them Huns, Warren.’

  He shrugged and said, ‘I’ve been reading the papers. About the sack of Louvain and Ypres. The killing of Belgian babies. They’re acting like Attila.’

  Joan Bateman said, ‘You shouldn’t believe all that you read, Warren. Don’t you realize there are people trying to make us hate? Oh, God, I loathe this war.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that, Joan,’ he said sharply. Then a shout from the field told them that Marsh had come to his doom, swinging energetically at a ball well out of reach, and been stumped. Warren walked out, bat in hand.

  ‘That war turrible shot,’ Marsh said, grinning, as he came in. ‘Oi missed ‘un by a moile.’ He sat down, mopping his broad brow.

  ‘Sam’s father is the gamekeeper up at Pennel House,’ Joan said, ‘and he could follow in his footsteps if he wanted to, but he doesn’t. Ralph’s taught him how wrong it is to preserve game for the rich and privileged. So he helps Mother round the garden and stables.’

  Young Marsh said, ‘Taint what we preserve, loike, but what we change,
as matters now, Ralph says.’

  Krishna said, ‘I see.’ He had read a little about socialists, and Mr. Fleming had explained roughly what they believed in. He would have liked to ask Ralph Harris some questions, but now Ralph was talking to Joan Bateman, slowly and with much more concentration than he had shown when at bat. And Krishna felt a vague enmity towards the man. He obviously had a feeling of respect for Warren, but with it there was a latent hostility. What could the relation between them be? Or was it between Harris and Joan, Warren’s wife? Whatever the truth was, neither Ralph nor Marsh, nor even Joan, were treating Warren Bateman the way he deserved. He was the salt of the earth--a stronger, braver Mr. Fleming, the sort of man Krishna so often wished his father had been.

  The afternoon wore on at a pleasantly rural and unrhythmic pace. Krishna took his turn at umpiring and eventually, at 4.30, took the field, with Shrewford Pennel all out for 182. He fielded at cover point, made one catch, threw two men out at the crease, and with the light almost flat behind the church and the shadow of the elms that lined the road lying like giants across the pitch, he bowled the last Hangerton man out. Then the cows were let back into the field, and all twenty-two men climbed the stile, crossed the road, and flocked into the Green Man. The faces were sun-bronzed and happy. The voices were saying, ‘‘Ee played nobly, zur, right nobly ... Them were the best late cuts Oi zeen zince Oi zaw Frank Woolley one day up to Lunnon.’ The beer was heavy and bitter but he was thirsty and drank it down greedily. Joan Bateman had long since taken the dung-covered children, by then almost naked, back to the Old Vicarage. Warren Bateman drank one long whisky and soda before saying, ‘Time we went home, Krishna. Are you ready, Ralph?’

  They walked up the road together, silent, until Warren said, ‘I suppose Joan’s right about not hating the enemy ... but I don’t know whether we can win if we don’t. And we must win ... for this.’ He gestured in the twilight, at the valley fading from sight, the tower of the church black against the dusk, the call of an owl from the graveyard copse.

  ‘We will win,’ Krishna said, ‘for England.’

  Ralph said sombrely, ‘England isn’t worth it. Not this England.’

  ‘Shut up, Ralph!’ Warren said angrily. ‘If you have opinions like that, you’ve got to keep them to yourself in wartime.’

  Krishna wanted to touch Warren’s arm, or take his hand and press it, or even embrace him, as he would have done to his father or grandfather, to show how strongly he agreed with him; but that was not the way the English acted. They walked on in silence.

  After dinner that night the whole family gathered round the piano, and old Mrs. Bateman played and sang with them, and when he went to bed Krishna thought he had never felt so great a peace, so warm a contentment.

  A few minutes before eleven next morning the family walked through the stable gate, and crossed the churchyard to the church. This was Harvest Home, and the Vicar had come over from Hangerton to hold services in the old church. Krishna was introduced at the door to Sir Tristram Pennel, fat and sad, and his erect iron-faced wife (‘They lost their only son in the Coldstream at Landrecies,’ Mrs. Bateman whispered to him), and recognized several faces from yesterday’s cricket match. In the church he was lost once more in recognition; for all this--the flowers and pumpkins and sheafs of corn, and the choir boys in white and red, the creaking of the old organ, the cold of the stone underfoot and the polished hardness of the wooden pews, the parson droning from the pulpit--all this he had read of, and all this Mr. Fleming had talked of, though more specifically of a school chapel rather than a village church. He sat between old Mrs. Bateman, whose musical contralto rang out unafraid in the hymns, and Diana, who sang out of tune, but not loudly.

  Then it was roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and sherry trifle. Bees hummed in the flowers and a robin chirped on the sill of the open window. He thought he would find a comfortable chair in the sun, and doze.

  Diana said, ‘We ought to take a walk after eating all that. Warren?’

  ‘Sorry, Di, I have accounts to go through with Mother.’

  ‘Ralph?’

  ‘You know I think exercise is for barbarians. Cricket hardly counts as exercise, does it?’

  She looked at Krishna and he leaped to his feet. ‘Certainly, Miss Bateman.’

  She led off at a brisk pace down the road, the spaniel Fudge trotting at heel, his leash swinging unused in her hand.

  ‘How did you like the church service?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, very nice,’ he said. She walked with an athletic swing and a long stride, but she was not mannish. She wore a thin grey sweater with a single string of pearls, and a tweed skirt half way down her calves. Her hair glistened in the sun, for she wore no hat.

  ‘I was engaged to the vicar, once,’ she said.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, not knowing quite what tone to put into it.

  ‘I thought Warrie must have told you. Years ago, when he was curate. Father was vicar here, you know ... This is the edge of Pennel land, the hedge here. Old Marsh is the Pennels’ gamekeeper. Don’t you think Sam should be in the army--Young Marsh?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘I think he’s a slacker, but Warren says it’s Ralph’s fault. Ralph puts the ideas into his head, Warren thinks.’

  ‘Oh.’

  They walked up a long slope, thorn hedges thick on either side, the view slowly widening behind them. Thrushes sang in the hedges and larks climbed singing to the skies out of the short grass behind. At the top she turned and said, ‘There it is. Pewsey Vale.’

  Krishna gazed out over the green land. A small river wound between water meadows. The patchwork of the fields was dotted with copses and barns and farms. One or two roads showed white between the hedges. Five miles north the hills rose again.

  ‘This’--she was pointing the other way--’is Salisbury Plain.’

  In that direction the grass reached to an empty horizon doubly strange after the denseness of cultivation and habitation in the valley. The wind blew across the grass from a great distance, and there were no hedges, no cattle, no roads, only a few stark thorn trees, far apart.

  She walked out on to the Plain where the lane and the hedges ended, saying, ‘Come on! This is the best air in the world.’

  For an hour they strode side by side southward into the teeth of the wind, before turning at an ancient milestone half buried in the grass and heading back to the brow of the escarpment. They had talked of cattle and cricket, of churches and gardens, of the regiment and the war. Standing at the edge of the Plain she said, sighing, ‘Warrie’s the best man in the world. We just don’t see enough of him at home.’

  ‘He’s marvellous,’ Krishna said fervently. She was marvellous herself, he thought: so open, looking you straight in the face, speaking directly without women’s deceptions and circumventions. Such men as Warren Bateman had made the English rulers of the world, and women like Diana had supported them as no other women could have.

  They started back down a shallow lane towards the valley. Diana broke a long silence when she said abruptly, ‘Mother’s upset because Ralph gave up the job she’d got for him in Edinburgh.’

  ‘I think he said he was sacked--dismissed,’ Krishna said.

  ‘Oh, he did it on purpose, I’m sure ... Joan’s pleased ... I wish Warren could get a job at the War Office or something.’

  ‘He wouldn’t take it!’ Krishna said, shocked. ‘Not with the regiment going on active service.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But... you like Warrie, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said.

  ‘Well, Mother and I are worried because ...’ She stopped, looking down the lane. A horseman was spurring up towards them, urging his horse. It was Young Marsh. As he rode up he leaned down from the saddle. ‘There’s a telegram calling ‘ee and the major to France at once,’ he said. ‘The major said for ‘ee to take the horse and ride back as fast as ‘ee can, and the both of ‘ee’ll loikely catch the 5.26 from Woodborough.’

&nbs
p; He swung down from the saddle and Krishna turned to Diana. ‘I suppose I must... Goodbye, Miss Bateman,’ he said awkwardly, ‘I can’t tell you how much . . .’

  ‘Oh, call me Diana,’ she said. She did not hold out her hand. Krishna swung up into the saddle.

  ‘Good luck. Come back to see us again.’

  He jabbed his heels into the gelding’s side and at length urged it into an ungainly lurching gallop.

  September 1914

  Clouds covered the sky, but heat permeated the air with a heavy dampness that reminded Krishna of days late in the rains at home. The dust hung higher than the riders’ heads and most of the men, riding slumped in the saddle, had covered their mouths with handkerchiefs or the ends of their turbans. Every now and then French refugee families would pass, squeezed into the ditch by the river of horsemen riding in the opposite direction.

  Krishna turned in the saddle, as he did every fifteen minutes, and looked back down his squadron. There was his trumpeter at one quarter of his horse, Hanuman at the other and the two bodyguards behind them. Sweat ran down all their faces, making channels of mud in the caked dust. Behind them rode Rissaldar Shamsher Singh at the head of 1 Troop, and then the khaki column, black sweat staining all the heavy tunics. The lance points glittered back down the road--no red and white pennants now to relieve the cold glint of steel--and at the back two peaked caps, where young Ishar Lall, his own 2nd-in-command, was riding with the commander of the next squadron, Himat Singh.

  All looked well, though the horses’ heads were hanging and some of the sowars were tired. It was noon and the regiment had been on the move for forty-two hours, first marching from their camp outside Marseilles to a railhead twelve miles away, and then by train. Entraining had taken a considerable time because of a confusion over the loading of the wagons. Colonel Hanbury explained that the markings Hommes 40, Chevaux 8 on the sides of the wagons meant forty Men, eight Horses. Soon the VCOs responsible for the actual loading came to complain that it was almost impossible. After investigation, Warren Bateman and a wildly gesticulating French movement control officer had to explain that the sign meant that either forty men or eight horses were to be fitted into each truck, not both. Krishna heard Warren’s chuckling remark to Colonel Hanbury about it. ‘Only the Indian Army would have tried to fit both in ... but you know, sir, they were actually getting it done!’