The Faraway Drums

by Jon Cleary

  “One is expected to put on a show. I’m afraid I’ve brought the bally lot. The wives, y’know. They’re all looking forward to dazzling the English ladies. God knows how much the blighters would get if they did rob us. A couple of million pounds’ worth at least.”

  “I can’t understand why they haven’t already put in an appearance, or fired on us.” Farnol looked around him, puzzled. “At least one shot, just to let us know they’re here.”

  There was no sound but the hissing of steam from the engine’s boiler. A chill breeze blew up the narrow tree-shrouded valley below them; an eagle hung in the air like an ominous leaf; clouds seemed to form out of nothing to cover the sun and turn the green pines black. Then Farnol caught a glimpse of movement and round the next bend up ahead came a small flat-bed trolley-car, two men working the seesaw lever that propelled it and a third man sitting on the front of the trolley. The two men suddenly stopped pumping as soon as they saw the landslide and the trolley slid to a stop just short of it.

  “Stay here!”

  Farnol left the Nawab and the others still sheltered beside the engine and scrambled across the slide, expecting a bullet at any moment to hit him or slap into the dirt beside him. Twice he missed his footing and he had to grab at a fallen tree as the earth slipped away beneath him; once he just managed to jump ahead as the tree he had grabbed also slid down; out of the corner of his eye he saw it plunge over the edge and a moment later heard it crash into the trees below. He had just reached the far side of the slide when there was a rumble behind him. He turned to see the rocks and earth and trees slipping away, taking a section of the track with it. The rumbling deepened, then faded; dust rose up in a brown cloud and when it cleared there was a wide gap in the ledge that carried the railway line. It was going to take a month of Sundays, as the driver had said, before any train would be running on this part of the track again.

  The three men on the trolley were Post and Telegraph workers. Two of them were Indians, the two who had been doing the hard work on the lever handles, and the other was a chee-chee, one who might have passed for European but for his slightly bluish gums and the blue marks in his finger-nails. He was grey-haired and in his fifties, his gullied face a network of lines and pockmarks.

  “No, sir, we didn’t see no soldiers down the line. Nobody. We been looking for breaks in the telegraph line, I dunno nothing about the telephone wires. We found four breaks between here and Solan, sir, cut by snips. I don’t like the looks of it. These buggers here wanted to go home right away.” He nodded to the two Indians standing in the background; then he winked at Farnol, man to man, us whites sticking together. “You know what they’re like soon’s they get a sniff of trouble.”

  Who can blame them? thought Farnol; but he said, “Gibson, I want you to go back to Solan, get on the telegraph and ask the Railway Superintendent at Kalka to send up another train immediately. You can leave your two fellows here and I’ll send two soldiers with you. It’s all downhill so you should make pretty quick time.”

  The sergeant brought up two soldiers, who cautiously made their way across the slide above the gap. Farnol gave them instructions; they looked at him dubiously but scrambled aboard the trolley. They took up their positions on the front of the trolley, their rifles at the ready, and Gibson got up behind them.

  “It could be midnight before they get a train up here, sir.”

  “Just so long as they get here. I may have to take this train back up the line, but I’ll leave someone here to meet the Kalka train. Good luck.”

  The two soldiers looked sourly over their shoulders at him when he said that, but Farnol had given the trolley a push and it went rolling down the track, gathering speed on the slight decline that led to the next bend. It disappeared round the bend and Farnol stood for a moment wondering why the dacoits, or whoever had caused the landslide, still had not shot at him and the train. He felt that eyes were watching him, but there was no way of guessing how close the watchers were. He clambered up the slope into the trees above the slide and worked his way across through the thick forest. He was stiff with tension, his breath hissing as he forgot to breathe steadily in the high thin air; for a moment he seemed to have lost all the animal skills that had been natural to him for so long. He was no stranger to danger, but he had never before been responsible for a train-load of civilian men, women and children. He watched every tree as if it hid an assassin, but no one jumped out at him with gun or knife and at last he slid down on to the railway line.

  “Driver, could you reverse the train as far back as Simla?”

  “Not with all these carriages and wagons, sir. If they was empty, yes, but not with all them elephants and horses. It’s a pretty heavy load for an old engine like this one.”

  Farnol nodded, glancing up at the ancient engine that looked as if it had had trouble getting the train this far downhill. Then the Nawab said, “There’s the trolley, across there on that far bend. I say, they’re going fast!”

  Farnol looked beyond the near bend round which the trolley had disappeared a few minutes ago, saw it now in view on a far shoulder of the mountain that towered above the railway line. The foreman was working the driving lever up and down as fast as he could, speeding the trolley along, as if once he was out of range of Farnol he was as determined as the soldiers with him to get out of the danger zone as soon as possible. The trolley was a hundred yards short of the far bend when the foreman fell forward over the seesawing arm of the lever. It swung up, lifting him sideways, and he toppled off the trolley and went hurtling down the sheer cliff-face below the track. One of the soldiers straightened up, then he, too, fell off the trolley, hit the permanent way and rolled over the edge of the cliff and followed the foreman down into the green surf of trees far below. The other soldier just lay back as if going to sleep and as the sound of the three rifle shots reached the watchers beside the engine, the trolley disappeared round the far bend, its see-sawing driving lever still going up and down in a stiff-armed farewell.

  Farnol acted at once. “Back into the train! Get us back as far as you can, driver! Hop to it!”

  But the driver couldn’t budge the old engine. It gasped and wheezed and its wheels spun with a thin screech on the rails; but none of the carriages or wagons behind it moved even a yard.

  “Ain’t no use, sir. She’ll just bust her boiler.”

  Farnol, still standing beside the track, looked at the Nawab. “I’m afraid all your animals have to come off, Bertie. Mala’s too. Will you organize it while I tell the passengers what’s happening? I’m going to have to send them all back up to Simla. They’ll be safer there than down here.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think I’ll try to get down to Kalka somehow. I have to get on the telegraph to Delhi. Now hop to it, will you?”

  The Nawab went hurrying down the train and Farnol followed him, stopping beside each carriage and telling the curious passengers what he intended doing. They had heard the echoes of the shots and most of the faces that hung out of the windows and doors were frightened and puzzled. One didn’t expect this sort of thing in the hills south of Simla, this wasn’t the Khyber Pass or the North-West Frontier.

  There was also chagrin and disappointment. “But we may never get to the Durbar in time! We can’t possibly go back up to Simla!” She was a formidable woman who filled a window of her own, like an oversized portrait in a too-small frame. “We shall wait here till they send up another train!”

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort, madam. I can’t be responsible for the lives of all of you. I’ll have a man stay here and bring a message up to Simla when a relief train arrives.”

  But he had no faith that that would happen. When the Durbar Train did not arrive down in Kalka on time there would be worried questions, especially since it was known that the telephone and telegraph lines had been cut. He could imagine the argument and indecision that would occur as to whether another train should be risked.

&n
bsp; He left the woman and went on down the train.

  “I’m not going back up to Simla,” said the Ranee. “Have them take my elephants and horses and coach down to the cart road down there. I’ll go down to Kalka by road.”

  “Mala, you can’t—”

  But one of her servants was already helping her down. “Clive, don’t tell me what I cannot do—as I told you before, I’m not one of your little base wallah wives. Coming, Baron?”

  “Of course.” The Baron, heavily-built and one-armed, also had to be helped down to the ground.

  Then the Nawab came back. “Shouldn’t be long. I’m having my chaps take everything down to the cart road—Hello, Mala old girl. Where are you going?”

  “She’s going down to Kalka by road, so she says.”

  “I say, what a topping idea! Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Bertie, for God’s sake—! It’ll take four or five days at least, those blighters could take pot-shots at you all the way—”

  “Perhaps, old chap. But what’s the alternative? Leave everything here and have them pick my chaps off one by one and then steal the lot? What sort of show would I be able to put on down at the Durbar then?”

  But Farnol saw behind the smile, knew that Bertie was concerned for something more than his vanity, his image as a prince in the parade of princes. He looked to the rear of the train, saw the first of the elephants already being led back between the railway tracks to the path that led down to the narrow road cutting through the trees several hundred feet below.

  “All right, get everything down there. See that your guards have their rifles loaded, keep two of them on the alert all the time. I’m coming with you.”

  “I hoped you’d say that,” said the Ranee right behind him.

  “Be jolly glad to have you,” said the Nawab.

  “You’ll be excellent company, Major,” said the Baron.

  Farnol looked at the three of them, suddenly uneasy again; but this time he was not looking for some distant rifleman to take a shot at him. He was surrounded by hospitable smiles, but all at once he trusted none of them. Especially the Ranee’s, the widest smile of all.

  “Get everything down to the road, Bertie. I’ll join you as soon as “I’ve got the train under way.”

  But his arguments were not over yet. Bridie O’Brady and Lady Westbrook were on the platform of the Nawab’s carriage and as soon as Farnol told them what was happening they said they would be travelling down to Kalka by road.

  “Miss O’Brady and I can ride in the Ranee’s coach. For twenty years I travelled up and down this road by tonga—I know every bump and dip in it. We’ll go down in style, Miss O’Brady, pretending we’re princesses. We may even throw a penny or two to the peasants—”

  “Lady Westbrook—”

  “No more discussion, Clive. Just see that my bearer gets my things off the train. What is going on, anyway?”

  Farnol was unaccustomed to arguing with women. He came of a long line of Farnol men who looked upon women as one of God’s more pleasant afterthoughts, like rainbows and other trivia of nature. His own father had never quite accepted Queen Victoria as his sovereign and had been surprised the Empire had survived under her. He himself had progressed to the extent that he allowed women equal rights in the bedroom; at least in a bedroom there was no other man, one’s true peer, to see him occasionally playing second fiddle. In public he took it for granted that a woman knew her proper place.

  “Viola, there are dacoits covering the railway line and the road. If you persist in going down that road, you could be shot. You, too, Miss O’Brady. I’m ordering you both to get back on the train.”

  Lady Westbrook sniffed, looked at Bridie. “Do you allow the men in America to talk to you like that?”

  “No,” said Bridie. “I’m sorry, Major Farnol. I’m accompanying Lady Westbrook.”

  “Damn!” said Farnol and didn’t apologize.

  Twenty minutes later the wagons and flat-cars were empty. The elephants and horses were down on the road, the elephants saddled with their howdahs; half a dozen of the Ranee’s men were struggling with her coach as they eased it down the steep path to the road. There had still been no more shots and Farnol had the feeling he was working in a vice that would close as soon as the train had disappeared. But he knew he had to stay with the party going down by road, more for his own reasons than for theirs. Somehow he had to get on the telegraph to Colonel Lathrop. He was certain that Lathrop would take heed of his warning of a plot against the King’s life.

  He spoke to the sergeant of the escort. “When you get back to Simla tell Captain Weyman I suggest he has everyone on twenty-four-hour stand-by. I’ll have the telegraph line repaired as soon as possible.”

  “You think they’ll try coming up to Simla, sir?”

  “I doubt it. This isn’t some sort of uprising, sergeant—we’d have heard about it before this if anything had been stewing. I think they are just dacoits and nothing more.”

  “Puzzles me why they haven’t opened up on us. Them buggers usually don’t waste no time.”

  “It puzzles me, too, sergeant.”

  “You think they’re waiting to pop them off down there?” The sergeant nodded down at the small caravan gathering on the road below. “Maybe I’d better give you some of my blokes, sir—”

  “No, they’re needed to guard the train, just in case. Hop aboard, sergeant, there’s the whistle.”

  The train creaked its iron joints, the wheels gave faint squeals, then it started to ease slowly backwards up the slight incline. Farnol stood beside the track, nodding to the heads hanging out of the windows as they went by above him. The stout woman would have fallen out of her window if she could have squeezed through; she could see the social climax of her life disappearing as the train took her backwards away from it, all the unwritten letters to her less fortunate friends in England never to be written at all; her tirade at Farnol drifted back, harder on the ear than the clang and screech of the iron wheels. Two little girls hung out of a window crying, deprived of the biggest picnic they would ever have seen. Finally the engine went past, puffing and grunting and wheezing like an old bull elephant coaxed out of retirement to push its way through a teak forest; the conductor stood on the step, ready to drop off and take cover further up the line where he could hide and wait for the arrival of the relief train, if and when it came. The engine went by, Farnol waved to the driver, then turned to walk down the path to the road. And stopped.

  On the other side of the line, between the tracks and the steeply rising hillside, stood a man and a woman, two suitcases beside them.

  III

  “Awfully sorry to trouble you, Major.” It was the long-nosed, long-jawed man who had spoken to Farnol earlier. He had put on a deer-stalker cap and it only seemed to accentuate the long thinness of his face. “My name is Monday. This lady is my wife.”

  She was pretty in a vague sort of way, as if her looks came and went with shifts of light. She was dressed in a brown travelling suit and brown hat and she reminded Farnol of a good-looking field mouse. She smiled sweetly.

  “We’re coming with you, Major. I’m sure you’ll be able to find room for us.”

  All at once Farnol suspected she might be a field mouse with very sharp teeth. “Sir, just who are you that you think you can invite yourself to travel with me?”

  “Please don’t misunderstand me, sir. We are not forcing ourselves on you.” For the first time Farnol noticed that the man had a slight accent. “Perhaps we should not have got off the train without requesting your permission. But here we are and I trust you will not leave us here.”

  “I may do just that, sir. You still haven’t told me who you are.”

  “I am the Asian representative for Krupps.” Both he and his wife stood very still, as if the name Krupp sounded like the single note of a leper’s clapper bell even in their own ears.

  “You have an English name, or so it sounds.”

  “My grandfather was
English. My wife and I are Hungarian. But we always stand for God Save The King.”

  “Bully for you,” said Farnol and started walking down the path towards the road. When he stopped and looked back the Mondays were still standing on the far side of the railway line, their suitcases still on the ground. “Righto, you’d better follow me. But I warn you—I shan’t be responsible for you.”

  “You are a sweet man.” Magda Monday followed Farnol down the path, leaving her husband to struggle with the two suitcases. “So gallant.”

  Farnol just bowed his head, then looked up past her at her husband whose arms looked as if they were being pulled out of their sockets by the weight of the suitcases he carried. “Cannonballs, Mr. Monday?”

  Monday managed a Hungarian smile, which can be read a dozen ways. “We shall enjoy the Major’s company, my dear. The English sense of humour is famous.”

  Mrs. Monday put her hand out for Farnol to help her down a steep part of the path; she went past him on a wave of perfume that suggested she might have upset a bottle of it all over herself before getting off the train. He noticed that the buttons of her brown jacket were undone; her bodice was low-cut, exposing more bosom than one expected to see in India in the daytime. She saw the direction of his gaze and looked directly at him, turning her body slightly towards him. He knew a whore when she smiled at him.

  “Englishmen never treat their women with any sense of humour, do they, Major?”

  “Only when we bury them, madam. Our graveyards are full of husbands’ wit.”

  Bridie O’Brady, Lady Westbrook, the Ranee of Serog and now this one: Farnol could feel his latent misogynism rising sourly within him. He led the way down to the road, getting well ahead of them, and walked up to Baron von Albern, who stood beside the Ranee as they waited for horses to be hitched to the Ranee’s coach. The other horses were being saddled; final adjustments were being made to the howdahs on the elephants’ backs. None of the servants looked enthusiastic about the journey ahead and kept glancing over their shoulders up at the surrounding hills.