The Faraway Drums

by Jon Cleary

  “No, that’s where the guessing starts.” Political intelligence was mostly a guessing game; which was why Lathrop enjoyed it so much. He swore obscenely, but only to get his imagination oiled. “You tell Savanna there’s a plot to assassinate the King—you have no proof, but he’s heard enough rumours for your suspicions to be the final straw. He skedaddles down to Serog to see Mahendra, to ask if he knows anything about the plot. Sankar is there and he decides that Savanna has to be got rid of. But the poison, whatever it was, doesn’t work as swiftly as they’d planned. So Savanna is still alive when you and the others arrive.”

  “Savanna would have been against the plot to kill the King?”

  Lathrop nodded. “He was a stupid bugger, I never really wanted him in the Service once I found out what he was like, but he’d sucked up to all the right desk-wallahs and I couldn’t get rid of him. He was stupid and traitorous, too, I suppose, but he would never have had any part of a plot to kill the King. He was too middle class for that.”

  Farnol smiled. “I thought that was what we were?”

  “No, dear boy. Families like ours—” The Lathrops had been in India even longer than the Farnols; the first George Lathrop had been on the staff of Thomas Pitt when that opportunist had governed Madras for the East India Company in the 1690s. “We’re classless, I think. And stateless, too, I’m afraid. When the Raj finishes here, who’ll want us?”

  “You think we’ll have to leave India some day?” Farnol wasn’t surprised by what had been said, only that it was Lathrop who said it.

  “Not in my lifetime, nor perhaps in yours. But we can’t rule ‘em forever, Clive. This plot we’re talking about—it’s indicative.” He stood up. “Go and check in with your chaps—I’ll have a gharry take you over to your regiment. Your father’s there—he’ll be delighted to see you.”

  “I’ve got my man Karim Singh keeping an eye on Sankar. What about the others?”

  “I’ll have them watched. I’ll see H.E. first thing in the morning when he arrives from Bombay with the King. We’ve brought in an extra 4000 police and security is as tight as we can make it. But you never know . . . I’ll make sure that Sankar and Bertie and Mahendra are in the procession tomorrow morning for the King. Keep ‘em out in the open where we can keep an eye on them.”

  “There’s going to be an attempt some time, George. Sankar hasn’t come all the way down here to pay his respects to His Majesty.”

  On his way out Farnol stopped to be greeted by the NCOs. They were all friendly smiles, but there were questions behind the smiles: they knew something was up, they were eager to know what it was. But Farnol knew Lathrop would tell them in his own good time.

  Outside, as he was about to step into the gharry that had been called, he said, “What about Monday?”

  “Let him go. I don’t think Krupps would reward him for being actively engaged in you know what—”Again a warning nod at the gharry driver. “We’ll let him and his wife stay for the Durbar, then we’ll quietly escort him down to Bombay and put him on a ship for somewhere.”

  “He’s talking of Singapore.”

  “Good. Let them worry about him for a while.” The Empire, if not one giant bureaucracy, had learned bureaucratic habits: if a problem couldn’t be solved, pass it on to someone else. “By the way, that newspaper gel, Miss O’Brady—is she likely to start writing any articles that could stir things up?”

  “Possibly. The Americans invented something they call freedom of the Press.”

  “Bloody idealists. They make it so hard to run the world properly. But they’ll learn some day . . . Better keep an eye on her, too. Shouldn’t be too difficult, eh, you lucky blighter?”

  Farnol rode through the city of tents, marvelling at and amused by the splendour of some of the camps; the regiments appeared, like the princes, to want to out-do each other in magnificence. He saw familiar flags: Skinner’s Horse, Mayne’s Horse, the Bengal Lancers, the Guides: history fluttered in the breeze. Then the gharry drove in under the green, silver and gold banner of his own regiment and there was his father to greet him.

  “Clive.”

  Hugh Farnol was as tall as his son, but bonier; his face suggested an axe-head, he looked as if he would cleave his way through life. He struggled to overcome the emotion of the occasion. To lead the regiment before the King at the Durbar would be the climax of his life and for the past week he had felt the excitement building; but to see his only son again after six months, to have him here to ride behind him in the parade, swelled his feeling to where he felt he must burst with it. He wanted to fling his arms round Clive, hold him to him; but that would never do. Instead he tried to break his son’s fingers with the strength of his handshake.

  Clive saw and felt the emotion in his father, but he was equally constrained by his Englishness and just returned the strength in his father’s grip. The handshake had, if nothing else, lessened the risk of hernia brought on by emotion.

  IV

  Extract from the memoirs of Miss Bridie O’Brady:

  “She’s too huge for such a frock. She looks like a sequinned landslide.”

  “He plays second fiddle to everyone. Rather badly, too.”

  “You mean you think she sleeps with any man who asks her?”

  “If the Dutch cap fits—”

  There were no gossip columnists in those days; had Cholly Knickerbocker and the others been alive and working then they would have had a ball at the reception held by Farnol’s Horse. I suppose it was the same virtually everywhere else that evening in the tent city of what in the future would be called New Delhi. Malice is a weapon of the bored; and there were many bored amongst the English in India. Receptions such as this were ideal for such gossips; victims were pinned against walls by phrases every bit as sharp as knives. Being a stranger, which is the best camouflage, I was still comparatively safe. I moved through the crowd and aroused nothing more than curiosity.

  “Listen to them!” Colonel Farnol was flushed with disgust. “You must think we’re a dreadful lot, Miss O’Brady.”

  “It’s the same the world over, I’m sure. Don’t be too ashamed.”

  “I suppose so. My elder gel, Clive’s sister Elizabeth, is married to an Australian, God save her. Met him when he came over here selling us horses. Lives up-country in New South Wales, near some small town. Says it’s just the same there. I suppose women need gossip to keep ‘em alive.”

  Oh, he almost got a knife in his ribs then. He was saved by the approach of Mrs. Farnol and Clive’s other sister Penelope. It was ridiculous, but somehow I hadn’t thought of Clive as being part of a family; he had seemed so self-contained, as if he had created himself. I was still feeling my way round him, if that isn’t too indelicate a way of putting it; belonging to a family as close as the Farnols seemed to be, somehow he seemed more human. Some women, and I am one of them, prefer not to fall in love with loners.

  “We’ve been admiring your frock, Miss O’Brady.” Mrs. Farnol might have been voluptuous if she had let herself go; but she wore the corset of respectability as well as that of fashion. “We’ve been reading about the new hobble-skirt.”

  “It isn’t comfortable, Mrs. Farnol. One could never run away from men in it.”

  “Does one want to?” Penelope was nineteen, beautiful and unmarried.

  “Behave yourself,” said her mother, but her smile showed she meant no rebuke. She was in her element tonight, Queen of the Regiment if not its Bride, two of her three children with her. “Ah, here’s Clive!”

  As he had promised he did indeed look exotic. As did his father and all the other officers of Farnol’s Horse: I had been promised peacocks and I had got them. They were not wearing their turbans, they were for outdoor parades; but the dress uniform made us women look dowdy, farmyard hens. It was an emerald green jacket with silver facings, tight gold trousers with a green stripe down the leg, the lot topped with a green-and-gold sash piped with silver. Graustark could never have looked so gorgeous as that regimental
tent in Delhi that evening. True, the diplomats and the Indian Civil Service men were soberly dressed, but the soldiers had the courage of their conceit. They knew that no one but the Indian Army could look so beautiful; at least none of the Europeans present. The princes were still to arrive.

  Clive took my arm and led me out of the tent on to a carpeted walk, a sort of portable terrace. There were shrubs in massive pots, thick white ropes slung between freshly painted posts, forty yards of green and gold carpet; but it all looked as impermanent as a stage set. Ever since I’d arrived in this city of canvas the impression had been growing that I was in a theatre, a summer stock show that, as soon as we all turned our backs, would have its lights turned out and its sets struck. It suddenly occurred to me that so far there had been no applause, that India was silent.

  “Where have you been?” I asked. “When you weren’t here to meet me I wondered if they’d think I’d gate-crashed—”

  “I was held up.” He took my hand. “You look beautiful.”

  “So do you. You also look worried.”

  He hesitated, then nodded. “I’m worried about Karim Singh. I sent him to keep an eye on Prince Sankar—Sankar was supposed to be here this evening, but he hasn’t turned up. Neither has Karim—he was to meet Private Ahearn at the Red Fort in the Old City, but he didn’t turn up, either.”

  A small group from the regimental band was seated at the end of the walk, facing an open end of the reception tent. They finished a Gilbert and Sullivan medley, then, to show their taste was universal, they began on Swanee River.

  “Where’s Ahearn now?”

  “He’s gone back to the rendezvous.” I don’t think I realized till then that the word was also a military term. In my world only lovers had rendezvous. I was learning . . . “I’ll join him as soon as I can get away.”

  “Be careful, Clive.” Then I did something I’d never done before: I kissed a man before he kissed me.

  He didn’t embrace me, just continued to hold my hand while he returned my kiss. But when I took my hand out of his I could barely open my fingers.

  “God, I wish we could go somewhere! Nothing but damned tents—and I’m sharing mine with three other chaps!”

  He was right: a tent is no place for an assignation, except perhaps for desert sheiks, Boy Scouts and Girl Guides. Maybe it was just as well: I think I would have thrown caution—and my corsets—to the winds that night. “What’s the matter? Now you look uncomfortable.”

  “Dress trousers aren’t made for lovers.”

  “Do you mind!” But I wasn’t really shocked, I was too much of a lover.

  We went back into the tent and Viola Westbrook stumbled towards us looking as if she was about to topple on her face. She was dressed in a hobble-skirted frock in a yellow that matched the trousers of the officers; it threw a ghastly hue up on to her face, highlighting all the years that face had spent in the Indian sun. She told me she had ordered the dress from Harrods in London, sending them her measurements and asking them to send her the most fashionable frock they had in the season’s most fashionable colour. She hadn’t bought a new frock in six years and she hadn’t known that the pastel shades of the Edwardian era had given way to bright colours.

  “I should have sent them my age instead of my measurements,” she said. “But now it’s here and I’ve paid for it, I’ll damn well wear it.”

  Now, swaying like a carnival tent that had collapsed about its pole, she put a hand on Clive’s arm and leaned on him. “I’d love to sit down, but there’s no room in this damned tube to bend my knees. I’d have done better to have come in my old tweed skirt and my cardigan. I’ll be glad when all this is over.”

  “You won’t, you know.” Clive smiled affectionately at her. He was one of those men who had time and regard for old women. They are rare today: I know. “You’ll dine out on this till the next Durbar.”

  “I shan’t be here for that. This King is going to be like his grandmother, live for years. Am I right?” She looked at him shrewdly, half a dozen other questions in her eyes.

  “That’s what we all hope.”

  “What sort of answer is that?”

  Then the Nawab, the Ranee and Prince Mahendra arrived, bright and beautiful as a trio of birds of paradise. Only the hen was as beautiful as the cocks.

  The Ranee looked at Clive, admiration and lust in her dark eyes: I could have assassinated her on the spot. “Darling Clive, you do India proud!”

  “Thank you, Mala. But that wasn’t the intention.”

  Then Viola said, “Bertie, where are your wives? I was looking forward to that chorus line of saris! Surely you’re not keeping them in purdah on such an evening?”

  “They have headaches,” said the Nawab.

  “All five of them? That must be frustrating for you.” Viola glanced sideways, gave me a wicked grin.

  “What a beautiful frock,” said the Ranee, not wanting to be overlooked while other, absent women were discussed. “It’s a little tight, isn’t it? Did your dressmaker run it up on you?”

  Nothing about the Ranee was tight except her smile. She wore a rich blue sari that flowed round her like liquid silk; her movements were so lazily graceful that one was almost hypnotized just looking at her. Only the blaze of her jewellery kept you from dozing off. Her hair was done in a single thick plait worn down one side of her head and over one of those magnificent breasts; the plait was encased in a net of diamonds. She wore a collar of emeralds and rubies and each wrist was cuffed with a bracelet of diamonds set in gold: she was a willing prisoner of her own rich vulgarity. Behind her, looking sulky, perhaps even a little mad, was Mahendra, sporting nothing but a pearl stickpin in his pink turban.

  “Where’s Prince Sankar?” Clive said. “He was invited.”

  “Perhaps he has a headache, too,” said Viola, carrying more knives than a fancy French butcher.

  “I am not his keeper, Clive.” The Nawab lost nothing in comparison with the officers of Farnol’s Horse. He wore gold breeches and a silk achkan in a pattern of red, gold and blue stripes; his turban was gold with a blue aigrette in which a ruby glimmered like a drunk’s eye. He looked to me as if he had been splashed with egg and ketchup. He saw me looking at him and he turned away from Clive as if he were glad to be distracted. “You see me in all my glory, Miss O’Brady. These are the MCC colours.”

  “MCC?” The colours were an eyesore.

  “Marylebone Cricket Club. I wore this once at Lord’s and the gateman refused to let me in.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Viola. “You’d have ruptured Jack Hobbs.”

  If he was offended, he did not show it. He laughed, a little too heartily, and began to tell a boring story about when he had once batted with Jack Hobbs, who, I gathered, was a sort of Ty Cobb of cricket. The band began to play a Victor Herbert waltz and I wished there was room for dancing, so that Clive could take me in his arms.

  Then a regimental orderly slipped up beside Clive. I heard him say, “You are wanted outside, Major. There’s been some trouble.”

  End of extract from memoirs.

  V

  Private Ahearn stood in the shadow of the high wall of the Red Fort beside the main gate. He was dressed in baggy breeches, a long shirt, a leather waistcoat and a muslin turban and he felt bloody ridiculous. But Major Farnol had insisted that he had to make himself inconspicuous when he came down into the Old City to meet Karim Singh; he had even smeared dirt on his face and hands to make himself look more like a coolie. He felt like he was playing some kid’s game and he was glad none of the fellers back in the Connaughts could see him. But the last few days, ever since they had left the palace at Serog, had been no game and he had done everything that the Major had told him to. He had come here at four-thirty this afternoon, expecting Karim Singh to turn up at five o’clock as arranged, and had squatted down against the wall to make himself look even less conspicuous. At six o’clock, with still no sign of Karim, he had trudged back to the camp of Farnol’s Horse and,
after an angry argument with a suspicious sentry, had reported to Major Farnol. Who had promptly sent him back here and told him to wait all night for Karim Singh if needs be.

  He sat down with his back to the wall, careful not to prod himself with the bayonet he carried in the belt under his long shirt. It was the only weapon he had and he wished for the comfort of his Lee-Enfield. He watched the traffic passing him, going down to the bazaars. He ducked his head as four British soldiers went past on their way to the brothels; he wished he were going with them instead of sitting here; he’d rather risk a dose of the clap than what might happen here in the dark of the Fort wall. He was too uneducated, too ignorant of history, even Irish history, to appreciate the irony of a Belfast Catholic assisting to uncover a plot against the English. He was an Irish rebel, but for himself not for Ireland. He just hated the bloody Army, not the English.

  But maybe things were going to be different when he got himself into Farnol’s Horse. He stirred a little, feeling the horse beneath his legs again; it was almost better than having a woman under you. He looked down the road after the soldiers who had disappeared into the darkness and all at once felt contemptuous of them. Bloody foot-sloggers. He’d been one of them himself, technically still was, but ahead of him he had more delights than those poor sods would ever find in a brothel. Karim Singh, who wasn’t a bad sort for a coolie, had told him what it was like in the regiment. It sounded just the life he’d settle for: his only real ambition was to get off his poor bloody feet . . .

  He stood up, stretched his arms and almost fell over with shock as Karim Singh softly called to him from the black shadow of the gateway. “Holy Jay-sus! Where you been, boyo?”

  “Come here—quick!”

  Ahearn recovered, slipped into the gateway. In the darkness he could barely see Karim, but the big Sikh seemed to be pressing himself back against the stonework, an arm held across his belly.