‘May I remind you that you took another man’s wife as your mistress, and he is greatly aggrieved by the fact? Greatly aggrieved. I would be most interested to hear why, in these circumstances, you consider you did no wrong.’
The soldier seemed almost tearful, and Burnes waited, his chin resting on his two hands.
‘If I was in Bristol – and if I had me a wife – and if the Afghans were there and ruling over me – and if one of them came and took her as his mistress – sir, I know it wouldn’t be for cause of my neglect, and not because, I mean, in those circumstances, sir, she couldn’t say justly that a beauty like that lay abandoned and unhappy because I, the husband, you understand, her husband, spent his nights away from her bed, and not—’ The soldier gulped, and for a moment Burnes could almost believe that there was some compassion and not just idle lust in him, ‘—not because he left her lying there while he went and took his pleasure elsewhere, with, with boys, sir, with boys. I’m telling you the truth, sir, he doesn’t deserve her. With boys, sir.’
‘Soldier,’ Burnes said. He steadied his voice. ‘You understand that we are in a very strange place, and one whose ways must seem to us different from our own in many ways. That is no concern of yours, and no excuse for your fornication, unhappy as the lady’s existence must inevitably seem. Whether you are the first man to have taken a woman to his bed out of motives of selfless generosity, I leave you to ponder. What I am concerned about is the gentleman’s outrage, not what must seem to us his disgusting behaviour, and the consequences of that outrage. You will mend your conduct immediately, and it is only fair to warn you that your punishment will be severe and exemplary. That will be all.’
‘Sir,’ the soldier said, downcast; he wheeled, saluting, and left the room with an anonymous soldier’s briskness. Why these tasks fell to Burnes, he could not say; it was not the first such case with which he had had to deal, and he knew perfectly well it would not be the last.
4.
Burnes and his brother lived within the city, in a requisitioned merchant’s house; the merchant and his family had, he gathered, removed themselves at the approach of the British. The house had been rapidly colonized and stripped bare in the interim, and Burnes had found a dozen families camping in different rooms, who accepted their eviction with surly equanimity. It was only after some time that he learnt, from the servants, that the owner of the house had only left a week before; the squatters had established themselves so thoroughly, and many of the rooms were blackened and greasy; like most Afghans, they had not thought twice about lighting fires in a windowless room.
The house was handsome and substantial, built, like Jubbur Khan’s, around a courtyard, in the middle of which a single mulberry tree grew (Burnes had inspected the tree, but no branch had been torn from it recently; and, in any case, the city was full of mulberry trees). The nomadic poor had taken what the merchant’s family had left, and now the house was picked bare, like a bone. Burnes went from room to blackened room, and it seemed blank to him; there was nothing to distinguish a bedchamber from a dining room, and he had to divide up the house randomly. His decisions, it was apparent, seemed very eccentric to the establishment – he had discovered, for instance, that he had scandalized the servants by selecting a room as his bedchamber which had formerly been used for the family’s devotions – but the architecture of the house was dictated by principles he did not quite understand, and which he certainly would not share. He did his best to live his English life in a house, a succession of rooms, and was conscious that nothing quite fitted.
Charlie inhabited what had once been the women’s quarters, and they still had an occluded, enveloping air; some sense of decency, perhaps, had discouraged the scavengers from taking down the elaborate wooden shutters. It was restful to retreat there, and feel the weather at one dramatic remove, as the dry cold sunlight cast its slow shifting patterns through the wooden veil onto the white floor, or the rain dripped and pattered as if on a drum. Here, the city was simplified to the noises of its weather, and Burnes and his brother came here to be alone, and forget where they were. Charlie was indulging him in this, Burnes knew; but he never suggested that he would rather be out and roaming, gazing at the amazing city with his gullible wide eyes, and for that undemonstrative kindness Burnes was grateful.
‘Ahmed asked me if we ate pork today,’ Charlie said. ‘He seemed rather interested.’
‘Yes, they all ask that,’ Burnes said. ‘Never wise to admit to it, of course. What did you say?’
‘I said I couldn’t rightly remember,’ Charlie said. ‘True enough. I don’t suppose I’ve had the opportunity since I left England; if I’d thought, I would have marked my last leg of pork with fireworks. Or maybe with a wake and hired mourners. I dream of bacon, Sikunder, every night.’
Burnes smiled at the new nickname Charlie had settled on; in Scotland he had been Allie, like every other Scots Alexander, but this, used only when they were alone, gave him an unfamiliar delight. ‘Cheese,’ Burnes said. ‘I can hardly recall the taste of cheese, but I still dream of it.’
‘Yes, cheese,’ Charlie said. ‘Cheese and an apple and a rasher of cold bacon and a book and a bed in the heather. That’s the thing.’
‘Did you not eat pork on board ship?’ Burnes said.
‘That’s so,’ Charlie said. When they spoke like this, together, their voices curled together like duetting singers, sumptuous with the neglected vowels of their childhood; only in solitude. ‘I grew so sick of pork, I wonder I miss it now so much. Heavens, we talked about those boring pigs, grunting and shitting their days away no more than six feet from my cabin porthole. You would hardly credit there being so much to say about half a dozen pigs as we found, and – you know, Allie, I’ve known some pigs, and would never have taken any of them as a bosom companion, but of all the pigs in the world, those were the dullest, and, heavens, how we talked about their funny wee ways while we were chewing up one of their brothers. I promise you, we spent the whole voyage debating the question of whether sows’ milk could be drunk, and no one could guess why goats, cows, asses but not sows.’
‘I would not care for the task of milking an angry sow,’ Burnes said. ‘A sow would happily take your hand off with a bite if she were in the mood. Did no one think to try? In any case, the Afghans, I always tell them with a straight face that it is only eaten by the very poorest people in England, and it is said to taste something like beef. That always seems to satisfy them. They are odd, you know, the people here, and you should be wary in talking to them. I thought I understood them, but sometimes I think them stranger than anything.’
‘They seem strange to me, but you have spent so long in India …’
‘I know,’ Burnes said. ‘It all must seem very similar to you, all strange in much the same way, but – you remember those first days in India, when all brown faces seem very much alike, and in a week, you wonder that you ever thought them at all similar? It all seems strange, I know, and all the customs and habits very much alike in their strangeness, as to those lady novelists who place their haunted castles in Sicily, China or Scotland indifferently. You will come to see, in time, Charlie. To them, you know, a Hindu from Calcutta is as strange and as exotic as you are, and very much the same sort of animal as a bacon-eating Scotsman. These people are different; you can say anything to an Indian, but here you should think before you speak, because the only thing you can be sure of when an Afghan replies is that he will not tell you what he is thinking.’
‘They seem like children, almost,’ Charlie said. ‘Their sports – you know, Sikunder, I saw the oddest thing yesterday in the street. Two men, very grave and bearded, hopping at each other until one fell over. If only we had known it when we were nine years old – but it seems a curious way for grown men to spend their afternoons, I have to confess. I had the greatest difficulty not abandoning myself to hilarity, but they were surrounded by spectators, all taking it with the greatest seriousness. The most absurd sight, like this—’
Charlie got up, and took his left ankle in his right hand, hopping a little to keep his balance.
‘Like this?’ Burnes said gravely, and then he, too, got up and took his left ankle in his right hand.
‘Exactly that,’ Charlie said. ‘A most extraordinary sort of thing for a grown – oof!’
Burnes had launched himself at his brother, and caught him off guard; Charlie stumbled back against the wall, but did not fall, and then they were nine years old again, and in the yard of a Montrose manse. Burnes was helplessly giggling.
‘Very well, sir,’ Charlie said. ‘I feel constrained to warn you—’ hop ‘—however, that were you relying on any respect from me, that your age, frailty and—’ hop ‘—worldly distinction entitle you to any—’ hop ‘—consideration, you mistake the mettle of your opponent. Sir—’ hop ‘—you tangle with me at your peril. On guard, sir.’
Burnes was giggling too wildly to do anything but hop limply, and as Charlie launched himself at his brother, puffing histrionically like a bull, he was already falling backwards onto, happily, a pile of cushions. Charlie fell with him, bringing the low table with him, and they lay there among the remains of their early breakfast, lost in hilarity. Burnes reached up and, still laughing, stroked his brother’s hair; it was so nice to be nine again, and with your brother for an idiotic hour. Their fall raised a cloud of dust from the cushions, and Charlie fell to sneezing; and that was the funniest thing in the world.
‘Sir Alexander – achha – Burnes,’ Charlie managed to get out, giggling and sneezing and wriggling all at the same time. ‘For services to – achha – to the Lord knows what – achha—’
‘For distinguished and dignified service to—’
‘Sir Allie,’ Charlie said. ‘Anyone would think – achha – you were some kind of important person. Sir Allie. If the Queen could see you now.’ He grew still, pensive for a moment. ‘Does the old man know?’
Burnes thought; he wondered who, in England or Scotland, would have heard, and for a moment he was in a quiet London house, looking at a woman, reading the same four lines in a newspaper, over and over. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘Perhaps they do by now. I wrote at the time. Yes, I suppose they do. I know what they’ll say.’
‘Is that the best you can – achha—’
‘Have you nothing of interest to share with us, boy?’
‘I suppose you think yourself very fine, now.’
Burnes smiled, as they lay there, each grinning into his brother’s face. Yes, the old man would be saying something of the sort, running his eyes over his son’s letter, grumbling at its length. Perhaps at this very moment, sitting in the dining room at the manse, the windows open for the sake of the Lord’s good fresh air and ignoring the shivering footmen. But then Burnes remembered that some quite different time was happening, there, far away, across the world, in Scotland; a different hour to this fine bright morning, and somehow at exactly the same moment. He willingly forgot the world, there, laughing helplessly with his brother. And then, outside, there was the urgent sound of a pack of foxhounds, barking as they ran into the courtyard, and all at once, so sad, as he stood up and feeling the beginnings of an ache in his arm where he fell, he was alone and in Kabul and did not know why.
The shikar, it had been agreed, would meet at Burnes’s house and set off from there, though there was no need, surely, for the natives to bring the hounds into the yard. Outside the window, the hounds romped and yowled over each other like a lot of unruly ginger schoolboys; the climate here suited them, and they were quite different from the disconsolate and shabby animals they had been in the Calcutta stableyards. As everyone agreed, they had benefited, too, from the care of their native keepers, who seemed fond of and knowledgeable about animals, and they were now as admirable a pack as any English hunt’s; the horses, too, were healthy and well watered, and no longer shrank from a fierce day’s riding. Irritation at the kennel-boys’ unwillingness to follow simple instructions had passed away, as their own methods of exercise and feed established themselves, and the hounds conspicuously thrived.
A dozen officers and Englishmen were assembling, their horses tied up outside, and the turbanned kennel-boys lounged about the gate to the courtyard, waiting for a tip and a dismissal. Macnaghten and Elphinstone were here, although not in riding clothes; perhaps merely to see the shikar set off. The rains had cleared, and the morning was bright as Burnes and Charlie came out into the courtyard in stockinged feet, their boots in their hands. Frampton sauntered over, saluting them.
‘Fine day, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I sincerely hope you have no very determined plans for the day – after you excused yourselves so stwangely early last night, the mess hatched a plan for the day’s hunt. Digby, you know, has a spot in mind, a half-hour’s hard widing east of here, a secluded valley, pullulating with deer, and we put it to the beawers, and they seemed to have no objection to the place. If that seems suitable, sir, I think we can pwomise you an admiwable intwoduction to the delights of the shikar. But we must not delay.’
Burnes and Charlie agreed, and once they had put on their boots with the aid of the body-servants of the establishment, they mounted and ordered themselves into some semblance of precedence, Burnes and Frampton at the front, wading through a turbulent sea of dogs.
‘Good morning, sir! And to you, sir!’ Burnes called to Elphinstone and Macnaghten, standing in their ordinary uniforms at the gate. ‘You do not join us?’
‘I should take great pleasure,’ Macnaghten called, ‘but other pressing demands prevent it. Take care to keep the bearers well ordered, sir. You know what idle fellows they are. And ensure you return with all my men in one, in one piece – the country, you know, it is not, it is not Hertfordshire …’
‘Really,’ Burnes said, turning to Charlie, mounted by his side on the roan, ‘I do believe Sir William the greatest old woman that ever was seen. If he worries so about a day’s hunting in the hills, I cannot imagine what use he would be in the heat of battle. Frampton! Call halloo!’
And they poured out of the gates as Frampton spurred his mount, Burnes and Charlie at the front, the other officers close behind, and the hounds roaring at their heels; two British soldiers at the back with a dozen mounted native bearers on their splendid horses. There was no thought given to trotting through the outer streets of the city, and the people of Kabul ran for cover. It was a splendid day; the rains had swept the sky clear, and over the city, the white block of the Bala Hissar shone against the brown slopes above the city like chalk. They were soon beyond the city gates, and past the British cantonments; the horses pounded the earth like demons, and the saluting soldiers flew past, their faces little white mushrooms by their furious path. They left the road, and were up into the hills, the hounds baying behind them, Framp-ton calling halloo joyously, the Afghan bearers behind giving hoarse guttural cries from the depths of their throats, and the still air was made wind by their flight. It was no more than half an hour before Frampton called a halt, and they stopped, the horses sweating in the cold mountain air. They were in utterly empty country; Kabul left far behind, and before them the great foothills of the distant eastern mountains, still capped with snow, seeming to float in the deep blue sky.
They paused there silently after their gallop, and no one said anything for a minute or two.
‘Fine pwospect, ain’t it, sir?’ Frampton said. His face was glowing with an enormous grin. ‘This blasted wasteland of ours.’
‘In five years,’ an officer said, ‘this will be a favourite pic-nic spot for the ladies of the Company.’
‘No doubt,’ Frampton said. ‘But for the pwesent, let us enjoy it while we may. Shall we dismount, gentlemen?’
The tiffin was laid out by the bearers, and, though none of them had breakfasted more than an hour or so earlier, the clear air and the ride had made them hungry again. They fell on the cold food, the roast game, bread and cold curries with abandon, throwing the bones to the hounds, and even the bearers, some d
istance off, sucked at fruit and picked at the cold quail with enthusiasm. There was nothing so good as food taken in the clean high air.
‘Are there no tribesmen living here?’ Charlie said. ‘It seems quite deserted.’
‘There may be,’ Burnes said. ‘They hide themselves well, timid little fellows; they would run from the sight of us and we would never know. But it is quite as likely that there is no settlement within ten miles. You will see; this is a land of desert, and its population is deer and birds. If you wish, I shall ask the bearers. Hai!’
A bearer rose, and came over, throwing a bone into the mass of feeding dogs, the expression on his face direct and unservile. Burnes spoke to him in his own language; he frowned and spread his hands, and replied, turning away and going back to his place without waiting for a dismissal.
‘The man said there was a settlement of some sort here once,’ Burnes said to Charlie. ‘Of infidels, he said, but that may mean anything; probably no more than that they spoke an unfamiliar language. He had no idea what had happened to them; he thought they might have travelled on. Much of the country lives in a nomadic fashion, you know, moving on when someone else challenges for the land, or when no rain comes for a season, or when the snow falls. It is more than likely that there is no one living within some miles, and if there is, they will take some care to avoid a pack of warlike strangers.’
‘I should like to see a rustic shepherd or two,’ Charlie said.
‘That, I fear, is not very probable; they have good reason not to put themselves in our way. Today, you must be satisfied with some good hunting. Shall we begin, gentlemen? Sergeant, be so good as to pack up the tiffin?’
‘Very good, sir,’ Sergeant Porter said, saluting briskly.
The party had halted at the neck of a valley. At Frampton’s orders, the shikar was to be conducted in a strictly Afghan fashion, according to the habits of the Kabul hunting nobility; in part, because the efficiency of the somewhat unsporting method had been tested, and found quite admirable, and in part for the education of their Charlie Burnes, the likeable griffin. They formed themselves into a loose crescent with no particular regard for rank or status, Frampton and Burnes at the centre, Sergeant Porter at the extreme left, the bearers at the right, and, the dogs running before them, descended into the sparsely wooded valley.
The Mulberry Empire Page 49
