Soldier of the Raj

by Philip McCutchan

  ‘Good afternoon, Colonel. May I ask what the General wanted?’

  ‘You may, Andrew. It was mere routine, nothing more.’

  ‘To do with the Frontier situation, Colonel?’

  ‘Yes — to do with the Frontier situation.’

  ‘There are no fresh orders for us?’

  ‘No, Andrew, none.’ Reaching the door of his office building, Dornoch dismounted and handed his horse over to an orderly. He wished Black would go away; he was a persistent fellow and more than usually unwelcome just now.

  Black said, ‘I wonder how Ogilvie is getting along, Colonel.’

  ‘Yes — I wonder.’ Turning his back, Dornoch went inside. To his relief the Adjutant did not follow him. Dornoch’s face was stiff with anger and dislike, and he found to his alarm that he was shaking all over, so much so that it must surely be noticeable. Black was one of the men, one in the chain of circumstance Dornoch was positive, who had been responsible for sending Ogilvie into Waziristan; and would be the first to acquiesce, with a loathsome joy, in his obliteration.

  *

  The news, released at last in an upward direction by Fettleworth, who could not sit on it for ever, reached Army Command at Murree in a secret despatch addressed only for the eyes of the General Officer Commanding personally.

  To read it in bald black and white was an immense shock; to read Fettleworth’s decision was another. It took a moment or two for the impact to strike, and then Sir Iain Ogilvie gave a deep sigh. His head seemed to swing, and he fell forward a little way, across his desk. Only for a moment, and then he had regained control; but not before his A.D.C., who had brought Fettleworth’s despatch to him, had noticed that something was wrong.

  ‘A glass of water, sir.’ The A.D.C. moved to the door.

  ‘What? Don’t be an ass, man. Something much stronger.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘I’ll see to it myself, thank you, Elliott. My compliments to Brigadier-General Leith. I’d like to see him — at once.’

  ‘Sir!’ Captain Elliott left the room. Sir Iain Ogilvie sat for a minute or so, staring across his desk and out through the wide windows, across an immaculate and well-watered garden to where chairs and a table stood in the cool shade of dusty trees. His wife was there, chatting to Barbara Leith, wife of his Chief of Staff; a native servant stood discreetly at a distance, awaiting orders. Sir Iain closed his eyes, then opened them again and blew his nose hard. He got to his feet, slowly, and went over to a cabinet where he kept a bottle of good Scotch whisky and some crystal tumblers. He poured himself two fingers, and took it neat. Whisky was a good friend to a Scot so long as the companionship was sought in moderation; but this time, the comfort was not there, only the bitter lees. To be a General, to be a General Officer Commanding and responsible only to the Commander-in-Chief in Calcutta, brought very many advantages over lesser men, advantages, obvious ones enough, of station, autocracy and physical comfort; but not the one that thoughtless people, ignorant people, the little men, usually took it for granted one had: one could distribute favours to other men’s sons but could never single out one’s own son for positive military assistance.

  His Chief of Staff came into the room. ‘You sent for me, Sir Iain?’

  ‘Oh — yes, Leith. A matter’s come up. My son — supposed to be attached to my staff, as you know.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘I gave him leave, as you also know.’

  There was a pause. Leith, puzzled now, said, ‘I’m aware of all the facts, sir.’

  ‘Not all of them, Leith. Not all of them.’ Ogilvie gave a short, hard laugh. ‘The damn natives have got him, Leith. He’s been rumbled. You’d better read Fettleworth’s despatch.’ He handed it over with a hand that shook. ‘This is to go no further, you understand — no further at all. My son’s...leave is extended. See to that, if you please.’

  ‘Of course. I’m very sorry, sir.’ Leith’s face was full of concern.

  ‘Thank you. That’s all.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Leith hesitated, but didn’t leave. ‘Would it not be possible to mount an --’

  ‘I said, that’s all, Leith.’

  ‘Very good, sir. I’ll be available whenever you want me.’ The Chief of Staff turned away and shut the door quietly behind him; but not before he had heard Sir Iain say, in a voice that sounded dragged from his very heart, a voice of bitter regret, ‘I’d like to wring Fettleworth’s bloody neck!’

  Later in the morning, just before luncheon, Sir Iain Ogilvie walked into his wife’s drawing-room and found her, much to his relief, alone.

  ‘Fiona,’ he said, staring at her, holding out his arms.

  She smiled. ‘What is it, Iain?’ She patted the sofa beside her. ‘Come and sit down. I’m so tired, and we’ll have people arriving any minute.’

  ‘People? What people?’ He remained where he was, staring down at her.

  ‘Surely you’ve not forgotten? The Benhams, Lord Dunstaffnage, Colonel Hawke...’ Her voice died away, and when she spoke again there was a sharp note of anxiety. ‘Iain, what’s the matter?’

  He shook his head, lifted his arms in a hopeless, beaten gesture, and then sat down beside his wife. Holding nothing back, he told her such facts as Fettleworth had revealed. He expressed no opinion as to what he believed might happen to their son, but knew he had no need — unfortunately perhaps — to do so. Fiona, as a soldier’s daughter and a soldier’s wife, with much past experience of the Frontier, could make as accurate a guess as he. He had scarcely finished when a servant announced Lord Dunstaffnage, who came in smiling and elegant and jovial, smelling of good soap and expensive linen and cracking the joints of his fingers as he advanced towards his host and hostess; a habit that his colleagues at the India Office in Whitehall found irritating in the extreme. After Dunstaffnage, closely, Major-General Sir Hugh and Lady Benham; and then the rest of the luncheon party. It was a partly gay, partly serious occasion. The Ogilvies kept up appearances and their manners did not slip. Sir Thin was fully attentive to Lady Benham on his left, to Lord Dunstaffnage on his right; at the other end of the table, while her husband expressed dutiful and thoughtful opinions to Dunstaffnage on Indian affairs ranging from the military to the civil by way of the railways and the drains, Fiona Ogilvie responded to the heavy, antique witticisms of Colonel Hawke, a venerable gentleman who had served in the Mutiny and had not yet ceased talking about it and recounting endless and pointless funny stories connected with it.

  Afterwards, all the guests said, sincerely, how much they had enjoyed the luncheon. There was a great deal more to being a G.O.C. than simply commanding an army. Noblesse, that long day, obliged through heartache. It was not until the late evening that Sir Iain Ogilvie was able once again to talk at length and privately with his wife. Knowing the answer, she nevertheless asked if there was anything that could be done.

  ‘Not a thing, my dear, not a thing. It’s too late now. What could have been done, should have been done before he started for Waziristan.’

  ‘You mean over-ruling General Fettleworth, Thin?’

  ‘What else? I could have done it, I suppose. I wish I had.’ He stumbled for the right words. ‘What’s position, set against the boy? Hm. Come to that — what’s duty? That’s really what I meant to say, Fiona,’ he added quickly. ‘God! I’d never have for one moment considered the pomp and ceremony as being in any way important, as against James.’

  ‘Oh, my dear man, d’you imagine I don’t know that?’ Her eyes were filled with tears that sparkled in the soft glow from the oil lamp. ‘But whatever happens you must never lose your sense of duty, Iain — that’s a different thing. It’s so deep in you. Without that...’ She didn’t finish; without the prop of his stern concept of duty, her husband could crumble — any soldier could. It would be like an archbishop losing his faith in God. She returned to her original question. ‘We have to think of the present now, and the future, not the past. Are you quite sure nothing can be done, Iain?’

 
‘Yes. That oaf Fettleworth does happen to be right, damn his eyes! He can’t act — neither can I. It could be a trap. One can’t commit troops on that basis. Besides, there’s another angle, though I doubt if Fettleworth thought of that.’

  ‘Well?’

  He said, ‘To send in an expedition might be his death warrant, Fiona. They would never let him be found alive. Hard as it is, my dear, we must face the fact that disregard, total disregard of the Waziri message, is the only possible way.’

  ‘Just — leave him? Leave him all alone, at those brutes’ mercy, if they even know the word?’

  He nodded, his face set. ‘Yes, my dearest, yes!’ He held her close to his chest, clumsily moving a rough hand up and down her arm. ‘Don’t cry, Fiona. It doesn’t help. We can help best by showing nothing. It’s very important in my view as in Fettle-worth’s, that no word should get back to Waziristan that anybody knows anything about a man called Wilshaw.’

  That night, in his bedroom adjoining hers, the G.O.C. lay awake listening to his wife’s crying. His clenched fist beat continually at the sheets by his side as he listened. He did not realize that she was blaming herself, that she was bitterly regretting her earlier insistence that a father should not interfere. Thin had said, and now the words seemed to burn like fire in her mind, ‘if you really feel I should, I’ll find a way of countermanding Fettleworth’s order’. And her own eventual decision —although Iain had stressed he would regard her answer as an opinion only — had been that matters should be left alone. She had probably been right in basis, for such interference would have done husband and son no good in the long run; but, now as then, she doubted her own real motives. Lying in her bed, fearful of the next news that might come from Peshawar, she ached with a terrible longing to tell James that Mary Archdale would be more than welcome to Murree and, eventually, to Corriecraig Castle on Speyside as a daughter-in-law.

  Three days later another message, of a sort, reached the garrison at Peshawar: an unrecognizable lump of rotting flesh and bone, an armless and legless trunk bearing on a strip of cured goatskin attached to the neck the inscription, Jones Sahib, British spy, was found by a patrol a little to the south of the entry to the Khyber Pass. Trundled in a commissariat cart to Peshawar, Mr. Jones’s sordid remains were examined with clinical detachment and professional interest by Fettleworth’s Staff Surgeon, and with revulsion by the Political Officer, Major O’Kelly. Little useful information was gleaned from the corpse, but it was hierarchically inevitable that the item’s receipt should be reported to Sir Iain Ogilvie in Murree. Brigadier-General Leith was present when Ogilvie read the despatch, and he remarked afterwards to the A.D.C. that he was worried about the General.

  ‘Watch him,’ he advised. “We don’t want him to crack up, Elliott.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be surprising if he did, sir. What’s new?’

  ‘His reaction to a report from Peshawar.’ Briefly, the Chief of Staff recounted the grisly details. ‘In a way, I suppose it was characteristic, but in another sense, it was far from being so. Sir Iain’s never been a man to speak out against his subordinate commanders in front of officers junior to them.’

  ‘What did he say, then?’

  Leith rubbed at his jaw. ‘He said he wished to God it had been bloody Fettleworth. It’s not like him, you know, not like him at all.’

  Elliott laughed. ‘I’m afraid I don’t agree, sir. It’s only too like him. My guess is, he’s fighting back — and that’s the best possible sign, isn’t it?’

  *

  From where he was still imprisoned in the hole behind the slotted boulder, Ogilvie realized that he had a commanding view of a track leading through a mountain pass out of Afghanistan. He realized this only when, after many days of increasingly painful inactivity, he saw a long straggling line of men and mules coming through below him. The mules looked heavily laden, and the men were many. No doubt the mules carried supplies, and also arms and ammunition. After a while no more mules came through, but still more men. More and more as the day passed towards evening. These must be the tribes, joining Nashkar Ali Khan for the grand assault, which could not now be long delayed. The old sadhu was still up there on his peak, as stark and as lonely as ever, still fasting, still waiting for his sign to come to him. Ogilvie’s guard had been changed many times over during the past days, but there could be no replacement for the sadhu. Ogilvie wondered how the old man would announce the advent of the sign. Would he blow a horn, or a trumpet, would he yodel out his message across the mountain tops? Or would Ogilvie’s guarding warrior be sent scurrying down the hillside with the tidings, and start a relay to carry them to the lord and master, Nashkar Ali Khan? Even if he were to be left unguarded, Ogilvie knew he would still be unable to escape. From time to time the guard had risked official displeasure by falling asleep on his post, and Ogilvie had tried desperately to shift the boulder by pushing against it with face and chin, but it had been hopeless. It wouldn’t budge a tenth of an inch, and there was no room to draw up his arms.

  During one long night of his imprisonment the mountain around him rumbled and trembled to a brief but deep shock, something far off. Ogilvie’s heart leaped with fear. He called out to the guard, asking in Pushtu what had happened.

  ‘It is a shock of the ground, an earthquake.’ The man had bent to speak to him, and there was a bright moon that night, and Ogilvie could see the glitter of excitement in the eyes. ‘It is perhaps the voice of the gods, the sign awaited by the sadhu!’ The Pathan stood upright then, leaving only his legs on display. Ogilvie looked up towards the peak. The holy man was as still and as silent as ever. They watched for a good ten minutes, at the end of which time the Pathan said gloomily, ‘No, it is not the sign, Englishman. We must still wait, and wait.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s a sign the other way,’ Ogilvie suggested unkindly.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘A sign that the gods disapprove of Nashkar’s schemes. A warning to him to retract — or a warning of what will happen to him if he doesn’t. An earthquake that will shatter Waziristan.’ Then he put in a touch of propaganda for himself. ‘It is certain that without my weapons he cannot succeed. Many guns will be needed against the British troops.’

  ‘We have guns enough already.’

  ‘No army ever has that, brother!’

  ‘You are a spy,’ the man said, and spat contemptuously.

  ‘Believe what you wish,’ Ogilvie said, trying to sound casual about it. ‘I speak only the truth, but while I’m here I can’t prove the truth, can I? If I should get out, I would bring much help to you and your brothers in arms. I would thus become rich myself. These riches I could share with those who had helped me. Do you understand?’

  The man’s bayonet came down, silvery in the moon, snaking into the opening above the boulder. ‘A Pathan warrior does not stoop to bribes, Englishman, son of a pig!’

  The rusty steel snicked his nose and he felt the blood run. It was no use. He went back to a silent contemplation of the silent sadhu, one kind of prisoner studying another kind. And many miles away in Maizar, enjoying the fleshpots as promised, Captain Edward Healey, late of the Bengal Lancers, was a little later making a different kind of study — a study of soft and yielding flesh, a dusky smooth skin pinnacling down to a triangle of duskier hair whose geometric symmetry was destroyed as the light touch of his hand widened the legs.

  ‘Earless One, man of my heart, the girl whispered into the hole at the right of his head, ‘why did you leave me so long?’

  ‘His Highness is a man of generosity, Flower of mine,’ he whispered back. ‘And I am a man of catholic tastes. I like different women for different satisfactions. One woman cannot be all things to any man, nor one man to any woman for that matter.’

  A moment later she murmured, ‘You smell of sweat.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. So do you. And I like it.’ He nuzzled her again, and she giggled in delight.

  ‘There was an earthquake,’ she said a little later, ‘and I was s
o frightened.’

  ‘So was I,’ said Captain Healey. ‘So was I.’

  ‘But it was not serious?’

  ‘Stop worrying yourself about it. No, it was not serious. The one tremor only. It is not unusual.’

  Soon the girl slept, curled like a vital young kitten in his arms, but Healey remained wide awake, staring into the darkness.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Peshawar, hothouse garrison of rumour, of intrigue, of long gossipping tongues whose owners, not always female, had too much time on their hands not to indulge in the small cheap thrills of prying into and then dissecting other people’s lives verbally, was vastly and infuriatingly intrigued by Mary Archdale.

  Her slightly improper friendship, so obviously a close one, with Captain James Ogilvie had been widely known and much commented upon in confidential conversations at tea-parties, dinners, balls and those other occasions when the ladies of the garrison forgathered to shred each other’s and their men-folk’s reputations in that delicious intimacy of infelicitation. There was, of course, a strong element of green-eyed jealousy when it came to Captain Ogilvie and his presumed mistress, for James was a good-looking man, and becoming more of a catch for unmarried daughters with every passing month. Had it not been for the wicked, brazen Mrs. Archdale, who should by all decent standards have departed the station after her gallant husband had been killed in action, Captain Ogilvie — so many a fond military mama told herself — would have been a dutiful son-in-law enhancing his wife’s father’s promotion prospects as a result of the alliance with so famed a regiment as the Queen’s Own Royal Strathspeys and so illustrious a father as the General Officer Commanding, Northern Army. Instead of that, what had happened? This wretched woman, this widow, this baby-snatcher seven (at least!) years older than the innocent soldier, had come like an evil witch, a harridan, yes, even a harlot, to snatch away the gilded prize, one of the expected perquisites of the parents of daughters on military stations from Colchester to Hong Kong.