by John Masters
The strain on her arms and at the back of her closed eyes grew intolerable. She had to let go. She opened her eyes and stared silently a long while into Robin’s. His head was a dark shape on the sky; his eyes held no answer to her question, nor would he say where he had been, how high, how near, how far.
She said, ‘What are you going to do when your leave’s over? Does Major Hayling want you to stay in the Intelligence? Did your father talk to you about returning to your regiment? You know he’s been able to fix something with Old Alma and Colonel Franklin so that--I mean, they aren’t going to--’
Robin leaned away from her with a gentle movement. He laughed quietly, not bitterly. ‘Good heavens, yes, I’d forgotten I was a coward. They were right, though. I am.’
‘Robin, please!’
‘The question won’t arise for a bit. I’ve got to go.’
Got to go where? What do you mean, go? The rising tide of alarm filled her throat so that she could not say the words. She knew now that this was what he had been trying to tell her ever since he came to Srinagar.
‘Why do you have to go? Have you been ordered to?’ She forced herself to speak in a business-like tone--although she felt the wind rushing about her in the calm of the lake, tugging at her because she loved Robin, and tugging at him to tear him apart from her. The lotus was in her hair, and the wind was jerking at it to cast it out and away--but the water was calm, and the flowers on the lake did not stir petal or stem.
Robin was speaking. ‘I haven’t been ordered to go. I’ve been ordered not to go.’ He began to explain to her about central routes and southern routes and railways and mountains and deserts and rivers, and the Russian whose wife was like an anchor--or was it a rope he compared her to? At length he said, ‘I’m waiting to get my strength again, then I’ll go.’
‘How long will that be, before you’re fit?’
After a short hesitation he said, ‘I’m lying, even to myself. It isn’t physical strength I’m waiting for, but moral courage--and it hasn’t really got much to do with the secret-service work. That’s just the--the arena in which I’m struggling. I’m waiting for a sign that says “Go,” and gives me the strength to do what I ought to do--leave you alone.’
‘For ever, not to come back?’ She spoke very calmly.
‘I don’t know. Will I find another coin and be able to interpret it?’ Then, suddenly forceful, ‘Anne, I’m sinking.’
‘What! Is the boat leaking?’ She sat up hurriedly and peered over the side.
He laughed hard, a fresh laugh that blew away some of the phantasms his words and his manner had conjured from the lake to frighten her. He said, ‘Not the shikara, Anne. Only me.’ Then, seriously but not tragically, he said, ‘I’ve told you. More love is being heaped on me than God gave me capacity to bear.’
‘Oh no, Robin, no! We’re not asking you to give anything back, none of us. We only want you to be yourself, to be happy.’
He said flatly, ‘Love is a load, and I don’t think I can carry it without its breaking me. If it did break me I’d become a better husband, a better son, a better father. But--I can’t willingly allow myself to be broken, Anne! I can’t. You couldn’t! Nobody can!’
She thought he might mean the excess of domesticity that had surrounded him since he came back. She thought he might imagine that with the babies he would be tied all his life to paved roads and padded comfort. She thought a hundred things--while the wind whistled in her ears.
She said, ‘Let’s get away from our people for a bit. Let’s go up the Sind Valley. Your father says it is beautiful and wild. We can shift camp as often as you like. Peter and Catherine will have to come, but they can be carried in doolies. I’m not very strong yet, but when we get into camp you can go out and fish and shoot and climb. You can paint.’ She kneaded his right hand between both her own. A hardness and dryness in her mouth prevented her from swallowing while she waited for him to answer.
He said, ‘Yes. All right. That will do.’
‘Then we’ll start to-morrow!’
‘It’ll have to be the day after. We can’t arrange it in time for to-morrow. I’ll warn Jagbir to-night.’
She bit her lip, then determined to say it. ‘Please don’t bring Jagbir, darling. I think he reminds you of everything you’ve been through. He’s not part of this--this thing, this horrible thing which makes you believe you can’t love people. He doesn’t know the answer, he can’t tell you anything.’ She finished, breathing deeply, and as soon as the last word was out of her mouth she wished she could recall it.
It was the old mistake, of fighting the wrong fight. She was a fool to set Jagbir up as an enemy in her mind, as someone who competed against her for Robin. Jagbir was on her side and he was a friend. Jealousy, in connection with Robin, was the last fatuity. Robin feared all who came close to him. He had just explained to her that he feared they would break into him to exorcise the comfortless presence reigning over his spirit. But the presence, however forbidding, was the gift of God, and he had to fight to prevent man substituting for it any lesser gift. Anne realized now that anyone was her ally who could help her show Robin that human love did not have to be demanding. If a woman of the streets could for a moment persuade him of the reality of any kind of love, that woman was her ally and to be loved by her. If Jagbir could show him the reality of faithful, unasking, all-giving devotion, Jagbir was her ally and her friend. But the words had been spoken, and Robin took them up quickly. ‘Very well. I’ll leave Jagbir behind.’
The enemy blew down from the mountains, and she jerked her head against it, knowing it was not real, just a wild wind of her imagination. But the lotus blossom fell out of her hair and dropped to the surface of the lake, where it lay motionless, its petals extended.
CHAPTER 18
Sitting in front of the tent, she watched Robin move down the face of the mountain. He had gone off from the previous camp at five in the morning, to explore a side valley for flowers and rejoin the rest of them here.
She heard the bearer tell her that tiffin was ready, and acknowledged the message with a nod but did not turn her head. They had been five days on the trail by now, and the business of pitching camp had settled into an easy routine. She had to crane her neck to see the cliffs beneath the hidden summit of the mountain. Below the cliffs a grassy alp hung to the face of the rock. Below that the slope bent steeply down through thin, insecurely anchored pines. A lammergeier circled, a tiny dot, across the face of the cliffs, the wind carrying his dark, rushing shadow over the marmot in its hole and the hare in its form. She saw Robin run down across the alp and drop into the pines. Twenty minutes later he came out on the last slope, walking now with a long, easy stride. He did not stop at the stream but came straight on across it, leaping from stone to stone and, when the boulders failed, stepping down to wade through the boiling, icy water. Then he ran up the slope to her and reached the grass. His light-grey tweed trousers were wet from the waist down, and the breeze could not stir his perspiration-wet, dishevelled hair. He held a bunch of flowers loosely in his right hand.
He extended his arm. ‘I found these up there on the cliff.’
‘Above the alp? It looks terribly steep.’
‘It is. Look, isn’t this one like edelweiss? And this is a blue poppy.’
‘Darling, it’s beautiful!’ She leaned over the flowers in his hand and sniffed them carefully. There were white and pink and scarlet and blue. The poppy was like a flower carved of veined blue ice, so cold and fragile it seemed in Robin’s brown hand. Beside it the red button of an anemone winked gaudily from the protection of a frieze of spear-like grey-green leaves.
He said, ‘Take them, put them on the table. They don’t last long in captivity but while they do they’re worth the getting.’
She took the flowers and got up from her chair. ‘Tiffin’s been ready for half an hour. You’re soaked. You must go and change or you’ll catch pneumonia.’
‘Not a hope.’ He looked down at his shirt.
‘But I’ve been sweating. I’ll change.’ He glanced up at the sun and around at the rocks and the shadows of the trees with a curious, all-embracing sweep of the eyes. ‘It’s just after one. I’m hungry.’
At tiffin she remembered that she was going to persuade him to stay here at least an extra day. She said, ‘What shall we do this afternoon? Let’s fish. Then to-morrow you can take me up there.’
His eyes were hollow and blue-rimmed, and the brown and green flecks in them did not move with the Light as they used to. A transparent pallor was visible under his sunburn, like a ghost seen through a dark veil, and in the evenings she imagined sometimes that his skin shone like phosphorus. She knew that he hardly slept at night. Twice she had awakened to find him gone from the camp bed beside hers. She had heard nothing until he came in from outside, when by the dim lantern she saw that he wore only his nightshirt and that his feet were bare. He had become impervious to cold and heat.
He said, ‘Fishing?’
‘Yes, Robin.’ She laughed lightly. ‘Trout fishing. That’s what we came up the Sind to do. Remember?’
He said, ‘I must go up the mountain the other side.’ He waved his hand behind him. The tent door faced the stream, but she had examined the other side of the valley while waiting for him to come, and she remembered what she had seen. The pines climbed up from the camp site until, after several thousand feet, they died away, and the eye, climbing on, passed over a desolate square mile of scree where cloud shadows moved in procession across tumbled rocks. Above again, wisps of cloud wandered along the distant, set-back Crestline. She thought, Above the trees there will be small mosses pushing through between the stones; alpine flowers stippling a wilderness of grey and black with pinpoints of colour; the mist will embrace the climber in dank arms, then release him suddenly and set him on a platform where the view stretches for ever; the sun will shine a minute, then an icy breath will bring the cloud, and the sun will hide. She must go up and experience all these things for herself. She said, ‘I’ll be strong enough to come with you to-morrow, I hope. Won’t you fish to-day?’
‘I must go up. I’m going to paint. I’m sorry. We’ll go together to-morrow, though.’
He wiped his mouth, left the table, and went to collect his painting kit. Two minutes later he came back to say he was off. Canvases and miniature palette were slung across his back. In a hollow metal cylinder at his side he carried paints, brushes, and charcoal. He kissed her hand, looked carefully at the nails in his boot soles, and began to climb up through the pines. Soon she could not see him.
She fed the twins and after that took her rod and walked slowly down to the stream. She began listlessly to cast the pool a hundred yards above the camp. One of the coolies followed her, appointing himself the carrier of her creel and gaff, but she could not talk to him. What could he answer if she said to him, ‘There is a Russian woman, beyond those mountains somewhere, who is my ally. How can I tell her that I am her friend, that I pray for her and for myself?’ She had not managed even to tell Jagbir, before leaving Srinagar, that she was on his side.
She had not been fishing for half an hour when, looking around, she saw movement on the trail beyond the camp. There was a little pass where she had stood and watched the men putting up the tents. She peered under her hand, thinking for a moment it might be Robin, but of course it wasn’t. It was a horseman whom she saw breasting the slope, and behind him another. Other horsemen followed the first two. She did not count them but watched while they passed above the camp, disappeared into a re-entrant, and reappeared higher up the hill. At last the pines and the convolutions of the valley hid them, and she turned again to her fishing. She must remember to tell Robin about them and ask him who they could be. One or two of them had guns on their backs, which had made her think for a moment that they must be a detachment of Kashmir Cavalry, but she had dismissed that idea at once because they weren’t wearing uniform and because, apart from the men with the guns, the riders were slung about with sacks and baskets, as were most of the horses. Besides, there were women among them. They had made an odd, silent little procession as they passed north. She would like to know who they were and where they were going.
She was glad when ayah brought the twins down to the river and squatted at her side. She did not protest when ayah brought out an old stub of one of Robin’s cheroots and began to suck noisily on it, though she had told her often enough not to smoke near the babies. Ayah said, ‘Baba log like noise of water, sleep well, memsahib.’ Anne nodded and tried to concentrate on the fishing, but found herself glancing continually at the hill behind her.
The sun sank below the mountain crest, and suddenly it was cold. She packed up the rod and returned to the camp.
The dusk came, and the small sounds of day faded--the sounds that are not heard individually but by their mass nevertheless deaden other noises. So when it was dark the river roared louder, and the wind droned in the pines, and the men spoke more softly. She held up dinner for an hour, but then she had to eat because she was hungry and the babies were crying. When she was alone at last her mind leaped back to something Rupert Hayling had said on one of those hunting mornings--’He’s not so sure as you are. . . . He might bring himself to some harm.’ Robin hadn’t taken a gun with him up the mountains. But on the mountain were crags and cliffs and precipices. The terrors of doubt might drive him to the edge. She saw pictures that were darkly lighted but chillingly exact. He lay dead at the base of a cliff. Blood ran from his head. It was dark and steep, and the searchers could not see him, so he lay there for ever. It began to snow.
She jumped up, shouting, ‘Alif! Alif!’--and when he came, ‘The sahib--we must go and find him.’
The bearer clucked soothingly. ‘It is a steep hill, but the sahib is a good man on the mountains, almost as good as a Pathan. Do not fear. I will collect the coolies, and if he is not back in half an hour we will go with lanterns and look for him.’
She heard the mutter and bustle of their preparations and tried to sit still until the half-hour was up. With five minutes to go she heard shouts, and Robin came in. His hollow eyes shone in his dark, gleaming-wet face. The green lichen that clings to high rocks stained his clothes. He stood upright and did not sway on his feet, but she had never received so strong an impression of exhaustion. He was empty of physical strength, even enough to hold the flesh to his bones and the skin to his flesh. In a minute he would disintegrate before her eyes. She unstrapped his gear and led him to his bed. There he folded at the waist like a jack-knife, sat down, and lay back. She lifted his legs to the bed and called Alif. Without a word the bearer took off Robin’s boots and socks and began to massage his feet.
Robin’s eyes were open. He said in a low voice, ‘Did you see some horsemen passing up the valley?’
‘Horsemen? Oh, yes, twenty or so, but don’t worry about them now. You need----’
‘They are real, then. I didn’t imagine them?’ Alif slipped out and returned with whisky, tea, and a steaming bowl of lentils. Robin sat up in a single hurried movement, as though he must move fast or not at all. He said, ‘I saw the horsemen, on top.’
‘On top! That’s--miles up.’
‘Five thousand feet from here.’
Five up and five down, and at least four this morning--fourteen thousand feet in a single day. He’d kill himself.
‘On the way out I gathered some more flowers for you. They’re in there.’ He gestured towards his satchel. ‘I came down to a col on the Crestline. I was going to paint there. A steep trail leads over it from this valley into the next one to the east. I was moving along the mountainside towards the col. I sat down to rest in shelter a little below the col and a quarter of a mile from it. Then the horsemen came.’
He groped for the glass, swallowed the whisky in one gulp, and began to cough. His eyes, on hers, swelled out with his coughing until they seemed to fill his face.
‘I saw them coming. When they were below me, climbing up, they were little men on horses. Ther
e was mist about, and some cloud. Anne, Anne, as they went over the col they grew huge, they towered up on the skyline in the drifting cloud like giants, monsters on monstrous horses. The hill didn’t alter, it stayed the same--so the horsemen towered over me, but the ground under their horses’ hoofs was a quarter of a mile away. I couldn’t count them, I had to stop because nothing in my brain worked. On the path they’d been twenty-two. I’d counted them. They kept coming, looming up, going over the pass--scores and hundreds and thousands of them in the smoke and the cloud, and long rifles on their backs.’
‘Only two had rifles, Robin.’ He had seen a mountain mirage but his frenzy strained at her common sense until she could not be sure whether it was for his sake or for her own that she held his arm so tightly. She said, ‘It was a trick of the light. It does happen in mountains. I’ve read about it.’
‘I know. I know the horsemen were not all armed. I know they were Baltis. I know there were only twenty-two of them. I know they were crossing from this valley to the next on a short cut back to Skardu. But--now I’ve got to go.’
In the end it came suddenly, like a pistol fired in her face. She started back as though he had indeed shot a bullet between her eyes. Her head hurt, and she stammered, ‘D-darling, not now. You’re so tired you can’t think. Please lie down, let me give you a sedative.’
He did not speak.
‘You can’t go in those clothes. You had disguise before, don’t you remember?’ She had not thought of it until this moment, but of course he must have had. Without the proper clothes he’d have to go back at least to Srinagar, perhaps farther. Once in Srinagar, she would secretly send a telegram to Major Hayling, who would order him not to go--but Major Hayling had already done that. If she could only get him back to Srinagar she’d have time to think of something.
‘I have my clothes here.’
‘Money,’ she said. ‘You’ll need money. We’ve only got a few rupees in camp. You can’t use them over the passes. They’ll give you away. We’ll have to go back to get some money.’
