Lieutenant of the Line

by Philip McCutchan

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and surprisingly added, ‘damn army life.’

  ‘Dear, dear!’ she said lightly. ‘James, it’s no use damning army life like that! You’re in it now.’ She turned away towards a sofa, and sat. She patted the seat beside her and when he too had sat she went on, ‘yesterday was horrible I’m sure, and I’m thankful Tom wasn’t there. It would have appealed to his blood lust and he’d have been even more impossible afterwards.’

  ‘Why wasn’t he there, Mary? I quite expected him to be.’

  ‘He went ahead to Calcutta. You didn’t know that?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. Mary, it...it’s not just that horrible hanging. It’s that patrol and all its led to. I don’t know...I’m starting to hate the whole thing, the whole idea of soldiering. I didn’t take a commission to be a bastard to the men. And that’s what Fettleworth expects an officer to be.’

  ‘Oh, Fettleworth!’ she said disdainfully. She smiled at him.

  ‘It’s all very well saying that. He has the power to do pretty much as he likes. And honestly, Mary, his mentality makes me sick.’

  She smiled again, conspiratorially. ‘Not too loud,’ she warned. ‘Walls have hundreds of ears in Peshawar. I suppose you realize it’s quite bad enough we’re alone together in Tom’s absence—if we should be overheard talking treason as well, we’d both be rushed off to gaol!’

  He didn’t seem to be listening. He said, ‘d’you know, I’ve a damn good mind to chuck it—send in my papers.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ she said in concern. ‘It’s as bad as that! I’m sure it isn’t really.’ She hesitated, then went on crisply, ‘Stop being sorry for yourself, James. It never did anyone any good. Think in terms of success. After Jalalabad, everyone knows you have it in you. Don’t worry about that old bludgeon Fettleworth. He has a reputation that stretches from Colchester to Hong Kong and back.’

  ‘Yes—and he’s still a general! That being the case, I’m not sure my own ambitions haven’t taken rather a knock!’

  ‘Oh, fiddlesticks, James. If you become a general, you won’t be one like Fettleworth. Tom tells me the army’s changing quite fast these days...of course, he doesn’t like that. He likes the old ways. He’s old enough to be a general himself if he had the right friends in the right places, and his thinking’s much the same as Fettleworth’s. But he has enough intelligence to see what’s coming. Generals aren’t always going to be like Fettleworth. Your time’ll come, and when it does, you’ll be able to do your bit to speed the process of change. You could regard that as what you owe to the men, couldn’t you? But in the meantime, James dear, you can tell me exactly what Fettleworth said that upset you.’

  He did; and told her also of his subsequent interview with Lord Dornoch, and of the fact that he was being sent to Simla without the option. She listened to him as she had so often done, without overdoing her sympathy, and chided him out of some of his depression. When he had gone she went back to her bedroom thoughtfully and spent some while in front of her looking-glass, studying herself and thinking about James Ogilvie as she did so. Mary Archdale was no fool and she had a streak of hardness in her of which she was fully aware; and she knew that James wanted far more of her than just a motherly talking to. She would, indeed, dearly have loved to give him what he wanted, but India was India and the army was the army. No one had a private life unless they were most exceptionally clever. James was far too transparent. If she should have an affair with him his face, when they met socially in company, would give him away. An affair with another officer’s wife would be bad, could be disastrous for his career. Mary was fond of him and had no wish to cause him harm; but she liked his company and that streak of hardness made her disregard the possible consequences that could flow from a continuance of their friendship. Despite the social life of Peshawar, her own life was empty and dull; Tom she detested, as James Ogilvie knew well enough—she had never been slow to criticize her husband to him, but she did not feel this to be underhand since she criticized Tom to his face as well. Tom had no money to compensate for his boorishness, either, and as an unhappy young woman married to an elderly boor with no private means she felt a rather desperate need for congenial company whenever possible. The fact that James Ogilvie gave every appearance of having fallen in love with her was a complication and, for him, a shame; but it was also a compliment and quite exciting.

  ***

  It was a long and uncomfortable journey to Simla, which lay in the foothills of Himalaya some 450 miles south-east of the garrison at Peshawar. Nevertheless Ogilvie, who started the journey three days after his interview with Lord Dornoch, enjoyed the experience of travelling free of regimental cares and duties. At Kalka he was met by a bullock-cart and proceeded at a leisurely pace along a mountain road for Simla, making an overnight stop en route at a so-called hotel that turned out to be little more than a hovel in a smelly village street. He reached Simla through a dense mist that overlay the Plain and rolled up around the lower hills, gradually engulfing the peaks. The natural scenery was splendid enough, as he was to see when the mist had cleared—the firs, the multitudinous variety of brilliantly colourful blossoms set against a deep blue sky with the background of snow-covered mountains to the north—but man, it seemed, had done his best to ruin what nature had provided. Simla’s public buildings were utterly depressing—nothing more than a conglomeration of terrible architecture, while the private dwellings, thrown across the spurs of the foothills or perched on the hilltops and seeming in constant danger of sliding down into the valleys, were mostly unbeautiful single-storey bungalows of wooden construction and with the most hideous corrugated-iron roofs; even Viceregal Lodge, completed on Observatory Hill by Lord Dufferin back in ‘88, was little more prepossessing. The roads were excessively narrow and were unable to accommodate carriages, so that while the menfolk rode on horseback the ladies were pulled in four-man rickshaws. The climate, however, was pleasant with the fragrance of the mountain air. In point of fact it was not so very different from that of Peshawar; but Ogilvie could well imagine what a relief it must be to the government officials to shift their place of work, in the summer months, from the steamy heat of Calcutta to this near-English hill station.

  His mother, he found, as befitted the wife of the General Officer Commanding at Murree, had a very much more imposing bungalow than the majority of those he had passed on his way in; and she was as delighted to see him as he had known she would be.

  ‘It’s so truly wonderful, darling,’ Lady Ogilvie said for the tenth time as, soon after his arrival, an Indian servant brought tea to the drawing room, ‘to think I shall have you here for your birthday...though I’ve a suspicion you’d sooner have spent it with your regiment all the same! I know quite well what young men are, James.’ Her eyebrows lifted at him over her fine, dark eyes. ‘Well? Am I right?’

  He laughed. ‘Good heavens, no, mother! I’m as pleased as punch, honestly I am.’

  She nodded, content with the reassurance. ‘You shall not be short of people of your own age, James, that’s one thing. Half British India seems to be here—plenty of young government men, and any number of daughters of the older ones, of course. You’ll have your work cut out to avoid them, I can tell you!’ He noticed his mother was looking at him curiously. Did you know you’ve grown remarkably good looking, dear boy?’

  ‘Oh, nonsense, mother,’ Ogilvie protested. He was never entirely certain whether or not she was teasing him; and in any case such sentiments embarrassed him.

  She said, ‘but it’s true, James darling. And all the young women are here for one thing above all, husbands!’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’ve heard that.’

  ‘Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.’ Lady Ogilvie spoke with a suspicion of asperity. James as a handsome escort for the daughter of a General or a high-ranking Civilian was one thing; he would do his mother great credit. James as a husband was quite another. Lady Ogilvie disapproved of officers marrying young and James was certainly much
too young; and besides, she wanted him all to herself for a few more years yet. ‘More tea?’ she asked.

  ‘Thank you.’ He got to his feet to pass her the cup, but she waved him back. She said, ‘the bell, James. Please ring it.’ He walked across the big room and tugged at an embroidered bell-pull and the Indian servant came in, took his cup on a word from Lady Ogilvie, stood while the memsahib refilled it, and then conveyed it back to the young sahib. Ogilvie reflected that he had had to walk farther to the bell-pull than he would have needed to walk to reach the tea-table. When the servant had withdrawn Lady Ogilvie said, ‘I think your father will be coming to Simla soon.’

  ‘Oh—that’s good news, mother.’ Frankly, he wasn’t sure if it was good news or bad; his father was always apt to treat him as a defaulter. ‘When’s he due?’

  Lady Ogilvie shrugged. ‘One never quite knows with your father, dear boy. He’s terribly busy in his new command and he’s all over the place, which is why he prefers me to remain here rather than be with him all the time. I think we can expect him within the next week or so, though. I know he’ll want to be here for your birthday if he can.’ She smiled, tenderly. ‘A twenty-first is a once-and-for-all occasion, after all.’

  ‘Yes.’ He drank his tea. He had a strong feeling his mother was keeping off the subject of the patrol and the hanging and he was grateful; he had rather dreaded being questioned, but supposed he needn’t have been. His mother was a soldier’s daughter and a soldier’s wife as well as being a soldier’s mother—that must count, though there had been times in the past when she hadn’t always been so tactful with his father. There was a somewhat long pause and then Lady Ogilvie said, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard Anne’s coming out?’

  ‘Really?’ Anne was James’s sister, the Ogilvies’ younger married daughter. ‘Well, that’s jolly good news, I must say—’

  ‘Not really, James—for you, I mean. She won’t be here at the same time as you—but I shall hope to bring her to Peshawar, so perhaps you’ll see her then. John’s managed to get long leave from his regiment and is going on safari in Africa. You remember he always wanted to...bag a lion, I think was what he said. He’s sending Anne to us while he’s out there.’ She paused again. ‘There’s another piece of news as well, James.’

  ‘Something else I don’t know?’

  ‘Yes. Hector’s out here.’

  ‘Here—in India?’ Ogilvie looked highly surprised; he could scarcely begin to imagine his neatly-dressed, starchy cousin as part of the Indian scene. Hector Ogilvie was much more suited to his normal habitat, which was Belgravia when away from his duties and, when engaged upon them, the quiet, dark corridors of the India Office overlooking the ordered cleanliness of the Horse Guards. His squeamish soul would surely revolt against the dirt and smells of the subcontinent, the rotting, disease-ridden beggars lying inertly in the Calcutta streets, covered with flies that they had not the strength or the will to disperse from their rag-covered bodies. But then, no doubt, the aristocratic young first-flight Civil Servants of the India Office needed on occasion to come to grips with the territory they so distantly ruled—and in fact it was no bad thing that they should familiarize themselves with the realities of life and the results of their paper work. Ogilvie asked without enthusiasm, ‘where exactly is he—Calcutta?’

  ‘Yes, at the moment. He’s attached to the judiciary—don’t ask me to be more precise than that, for I can’t be—and his department is moving here for the monsoon—’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes—’

  ‘When, mother?’

  ‘Quite soon. He’ll be here for your birthday, James.’ Lady Ogilvie smiled placating. ‘I’m sorry, darling, I know you two don’t get on, but it really can’t be helped.’

  No, mother, of course not.’ They sat and talked for a long time of family matters, of life back at the regimental depot at Invermore in Scotland, which Ogilvie was unlikely to see again for the next six years. They talked of home—of Corrie-Craig Castle left to the cares of the Ogilvies’ agent whilst its master and laird was defending the cause of Empire over-seas. A servant came in to clear away the remains of tea, returning shortly after to bring in the lamps. Ogilvie sat and watched the shadows grow long over the surrounding hills and valleys—the drawing room had a magnificent view right into Himalaya—and the sunset colours on the snow-capped peaks in the far distances where they ran back into the mysterious closed land of Tibet and then through to China. They were still talking when the evening drinks were brought in and the curtains drawn. The Indian servant poured sherry for Lady Ogilvie, whisky for the son. After the immense dinner which followed the whisky, Ogilvie went early to bed; he was physically tired from the jolting, lurching ride in the slow bullock-cart, and he was mentally tired as well, his mind still dwelling on the grotesque grimness of that last parade at Peshawar.

  The first ten days thereafter passed quickly in a whirl of his mother’s social engagements, when Ogilvie was introduced to as many prominent personages as could be fitted into the calendar against a time when they might prove helpful to his career. On the eleventh day he had a surprise, a very pleasant one. Mary Archdale turned up in Simla. The first he knew of this was when a letter came for him. ‘My dear James,’ she had written. ‘Here I am in Simla!! I can imagine your surprise! Things moved fast after I saw you, Tom seems to think trouble is coming from the tribes north of Peshawar, though I am not supposed to say this, anyway he wanted to get me away in case & decided to pull some strings & send me to Simla for the time being. Do come & see me won’t you. Love Mary.’

  With no very precise idea why, Ogilvie said nothing of the letter to his mother, but he went round to Mary’s bungalow that very afternoon although he knew he had annoyed and disappointed Lady Ogilvie. She had protested, ‘tut you can’t go out, James. Really you can’t! You know the Cuthbertsons are coming to tea, and there are bound to be more callers who will want to meet you.’ She saw the obstinate look that came over his face and she sighed. ‘What is it you want to do, dear boy?’

  ‘Just to—to get away by myself for a while.’

  She nodded. ‘Simla is like that, I know. But must it be this afternoon?’

  ‘Yes, mother. I—I have things to think about. I can’t explain more than that, honestly.’

  She narrowed her eyes, noted the look of strain that had succeeded the obstinacy. Undoubtedly, the immediate past was on his mind, and it was not good that he should brood. She hoped it would not be too long before her husband arrived. Meanwhile, she knew she could do no more than put the best face possible on the present matter. She said a little distantly, ‘oh, very well, James, you know your business best. I’ll try to explain to Colonel and Mrs. Cuthbertson...but it is a pity. Colonel Cuthbertson is such an influential man.’

  He couldn’t help grinning at that. ‘More than father?’

  She said, ‘Surely I don’t need to tell you that an outsider is usually in a better position than a father to help young men?’

  ‘That’s true,’ he said, ‘but I’m not running after influence. I’ll work my own way. Sorry, mother, but I really must go out.’ He bent and kissed her on the cheek, feeling a rotter. It was thoroughly bad form to run out on his mother when she had a tea party arranged, and he knew it, and because in addition he had told her an out-and-out lie, if only by way of concealment, for the first time in his life, his conscience was heavier than it would otherwise have been when he presented himself at Mary’s bungalow. As the wife of a major on the Staff, Mary had been able to secure a better bungalow than the wives of equivalent regimental officers, but it was still much below the standard of the Ogilvies’ accommodation, and looked out to the south of the town, a view which, though pleasant enough, lacked the majesty of the higher ranges to the north. As Ogilvie went up the path between banks of heavily scented flowers, he felt suddenly an acute self-consciousness, as though many eyes were watching him from the windows—almost as though the eyes of Major Tom Archdale were among them, and that
the portly figure of the Major would appear, metaphorically with sword drawn, pompously demanding to know what the devil a subaltern from Peshawar was doing, calling unbidden by himself upon his wife. But there was no Tom Archdale, just Mary, in the drawing room when he was shown in. He took her hand, impulsively, when the servant had left them together. He felt a tremendous longing, an almost overwhelming surge of feeling for her, one that dangerously threatened to overcome all his built-in inhibitions. Had he been sure of her response—had it not been for the fact that always she seemed to keep him as it were at arm’s length—he might well have been indiscreet, for it had come into his mind, and he wondered if it had come into hers, that the luxuriantly lazy life of Simla might loosen some of the restraints imposed in distant Peshawar with all its regimental codes and disciplines and trappings.

  Mary smiled and said, ‘James, you’re looking terribly hot and bothered.’ She went so far as to lay her cheek very briefly against his; and then at once regretted it. ‘No, no,’ she said, as his arm went round her waist. ‘No, James dear, please, you mustn’t make things difficult.’

  He flushed. ‘I’m awfully sorry.’ He stood away from her. Awkwardly he asked, for the sake of something to say, ‘how’s Peshawar, and the regiment?’