The Faraway Drums

The man abruptly stopped; Farnol guessed that his toes must be curled over the very edge of the tremendous drop. He stood there poised, unmoving, seemingly leaning on the breeze that blew up from the valley; Farnol waited for him to plunge off into the void. Then he turned round; Farnol would swear that for a moment the man actually stepped off the terrace edge, stood on the air. Then he walked back across the terrace, gliding in the long brown robe. As he disappeared past the corner of the monastery wall he looked towards Farnol and the lama. Farnol caught a glimpse of a black beard, a hooked nose and dark deep-set eyes that he was sure saw neither himself nor the lama.

‘Were the gods protecting that man when he stood there on the edge?’

‘Who knows? We can only put our trust in them. You should put your trust in them, too.’

‘I only wish I could.’ But that was not the truth: he had the sceptic’s false faith in himself.

All that had been a month ago and since then, journeying slowly back through the high passes, working the villages for information like an insurance salesman looking for new clients, he had learned nothing from the gods or any less exalted source. He had heard a rumour or two, but they had been only echoes; nobody knew, or would tell, where the gossip had begun. Once, in a village, a man had pointed a finger, but when Farnol had looked round the man the finger had been pointed at had disappeared; when he turned back the would-be informer had also disappeared. It had always been like that here in the Himalayas: mystery and magic were part of the atmosphere, conjurers, mesmerists and the occasional charlatan were as native to the mountains as the gooral sheep and the snow leopard. The only defence was never to show your bewilderment.

So he had slowly come down from the high places till he found himself on the Tibet Road above the Satluj River and there been ambushed.

He and Karim buried the three ambushers and the dead porter under cairns of stones, mindful that they would wish their own bodies to be treated that way, safe from the jaws of jackals. Then Karim had shouted at the top of his large voice, a trumpet call for the cowardly, despicable, thieving porter-buggers to come back up the ridge and pick up their packs. The porters, who had not yet been paid, a shrewd yoke that generally kept them from running too far, came back, suffered a lash or two from Karim’s lathi cane, picked up their loads and fell in behind Farnol and Karim. That night and the next Farnol and Karim took turns in keeping guard when they camped, but nobody had appeared to disturb or attack them. Yet Farnol had felt every step back along the Road, through Narkanda, Theog and Fagu, that he was being watched. But whenever he looked back, no matter how quickly, he saw no one.

On the third day after the ambush, in the late afternoon, Farnol walked into Simla. Smoke came up the steep slopes of the narrow ridge on which the town seemed to be plastered rather than built. Down in the bazaar and in the houses where the native population lived on the south side of the ridge, cooking fires had been lit and the smoke rose like an evening mist, drifting into the rear of the Europeans’ bungalows built on the upper roads. Maids came hurrying to close the windows, shouting abuse down at the lower life who dared cause this inconvenience. The lower life replied with abuse as thick and pungent as the smoke. It was an evening ritual that each level would miss if ever it were discontinued.

Farnol walked along the road just below the Mall. Indians were not allowed to walk on the Mall, the road that ran along the top of the ridge; that hand-swept, spotless roadway was reserved strictly for Europeans and the Indian nobles. Even they, too, were restricted in that they could not ride in a carriage or motor car; that privilege was reserved for the Viceroy, who, when in residence at the Lodge, would drive the length of the ridge every Sunday morning to church while lesser souls tested their faith with their feet or rode amongst the fleas in a rickshaw.

Farnol, still dressed as a hillman, did not want any run-in with the police till he reached the Viceregal Lodge. Several of the better-class Indians, out for their evening promenade, necks held stiff in their Celluloid collars, looked contemptuously at him, Karim and the three porters; but there was something about the bearing of the tall bearded hillman that stopped them from telling him to get down to one of the even lower roads. Farnol smiled to himself, knowing their thoughts: there was no one more jealous of his station than the Indian who worked for the Indian Civil Service. But then there was no one more class conscious than the English Brahmins of the ICS.

‘Snob buggers,’ said Karim Singh, who had his own contempt for office wallahs. ‘When do we go down to Delhi, sahib?’

‘Tomorrow, perhaps the day after. It will depend on Colonel Lathrop.’

A lot would depend on George Lathrop. It was he who had recruited Farnol from Farnol’s Horse and, three years ago, sent him into the North-West Frontier as a political agent. Since then there had been other excursions, all of them dangerous, not all of them rewarding; Farnol, a man ambitious for a certain degree of comfort, had had moments when he had wondered why he agreed to work for Lathrop. He had been born in India of a family that had first come here in 1750 to work for the East India Company; his great-great-grandfather had formed Farnol’s Horse, a Company regiment, in 1776 and the eldest son or only son of each succeeding generation had been expected to join the regiment. After his education in England Clive had returned to join the Horse, to find his place in the circumscribed life that was the way of the Indian Army. Even if all the blood in him was English, he had been infected by Indian ways: he saw the sybaritic life that the princes lived and he had longed for the opportunity to fall prey to such corruption. He had slept with the daughters of princes and with the wives of several; had he been caught his pure English blood would have run very freely out of his slit throat and down his dress uniform, for princes had a proper sense of occasion even for executions and would not have allowed him to die in regimental undress. But his success with the ladies, by their being clandestine, had not led to any invitations to join the luxury life in the palaces. In the end, bored by life in the regiment, he had instead accepted Lathrop’s invitation to be seconded to the Political Service. He had also come to realize that if some prince did offer his daughter in marriage, he would probably back out. He was the sort of man who wished to be corrupted only at a distance or, if closer, then only occasionally.

Three months ago, at the beginning of September, Lathrop had sent him up the Tibet Road to the mythical frontier only believed in by statesmen and cartographers. The word had gone out earlier in the year that on the 12th day of December in this year of grace 1911, George the Fifth of Great Britain and his consort Queen Mary were coming to Delhi to be crowned, at a Great Durbar, Emperor and Empress of India. Farnol had been instructed to find out if the hill tribes were excited by the news, troubled by it or if, indeed, they cared at all. The general attitude, he had found, had been one of bemused puzzlement: King Who? In a region so remote that some villages did not know the name of the headman of the next village fifty miles away on the other side of a mountain, there was little cause for the clapping of hands and shouts of Hats off, the King! when someone produced a piece of paper and read to them the news that a Great Raj from over Le sea (‘What is a sea, sahib?’) was coming to let them crown him their Emperor. Farnol knew it would have been different in the Afghan hills where the tribesmen had a political sense that kept their knives sharp and their guns hot. But in the mountain fastnesses kings had held no sway: a man lived and died subject only to his father, his village chief and the gods who ruled them all.

At the gates to the curving drive leading up to the Viceregal Lodge Farnol and his entourage were halted by two guards. The two soldiers prodded the tall dirty hillman and told him to clear out.

‘Nickle-jao! Piss off!’

‘I shall not piss off. I am Major Farnol, of Farnol’s Horse, reporting to Colonel Lathrop. Take that bayonet out of my belly.’

The soldiers peered at him, then one said to the other, ‘Escort him up to the house, Mick. Let them make up their mind who he is. Give him a poke up the arse if he tries anything. I’ll keep this lot down here.’

Farnol walked up the long sloping drive, the guard right behind him with his bayonet at the ready. He did not blame the soldiers for their attitude; one rarely found rankers who were happy in their work these days. A shilling and fourpence a day and a seven-year contract did nothing to make India an attractive tour of duty. Their devotion to duty had not been improved by the policies of the previous Viceroy, Lord Curzon, who had favoured more freedom and rights for the natives; nor had Lady Curzon, an American lady, fired them with enthusiasm when she had said that the two ugliest creatures in India were the water-buffalo and the British private soldier. A poke up the arse with a bayonet was something a man who looked like an Indian and claimed to be a British officer should not find unexpected or even unreasonable.

They came to the junction in the drive where one arm led to the rear of the huge house and the other to the portico over the front entrance. Farnol looked up at the mansion towering against the pale pink of the western clouds. Each time he came here he was amused by the extravagance of it, the incongruity of this massive country house that paid no respects to its foreign location. But it had the most magnificent site in Simla and he always enjoyed walking in its gardens. Ten years ago, when he had been a very junior aide on the staff of Lord Curzon, he had been standing on the south lawn when the Viceroy had come and stood beside him.

‘Have you a liking for vistas, Farnol? Are you long-sighted?’

‘Yes, sir.’ He knew that the Viceroy liked to think he had a poetic imagination.

‘I sit here and imagine I can see all of India all the way south to the Coromandel Coast.’ Tall though Farnol was, he always felt that the Viceroy was just that much taller. Curzon held his long narrow head in such a way that he always seemed to be looking down on people. It was partly his natural arrogance, but he also had back trouble which forced him to stand very upright: so can minor afflictions set one’s image for history. One of the last great imperialists, though neither he nor virtually anyone else saw it that way, he looked upon India as his own domain; he would not have been embarrassed by any modesty if it had been suggested that he should be crowned Emperor. ‘And I rule it all in the King’s name.’

A mere subaltern didn’t query such illusions of grandeur. ‘A great responsibility, sir.’

Then Curzon smiled, showing the sense of humour that was rarely seen. Or was it something else, a sense of irony at his claim to being long-sighted? ‘It is all just in one’s imagination.’

Then he had nodded abruptly and gone back to the house and Farnol had been left wondering. A breeze suddenly blew up, whispering through the deodars, and he had shivered, felt the chill of the unknown years ahead.

The bayonet poked him in the buttock. ‘Turn right, matey. We’re going in the back way.’

‘We’re going in the front way. Stick me in the arse again with that bayonet and I’ll shove it down your throat. What’s your name?’

The soldier lowered his rifle, shook his head, then snapped to attention. ‘You got to be an officer. No coolie would talk to me like that. Sorry, sir. Can’t be too careful.’

‘I said, what’s your name?’

‘Mick Ahearn, sir. Private Ahearn.’

‘Irish, eh? Are you with the Connaughts?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Farnol knew of the Connaught Rangers’ contempt for Indians; their unofficial motto was that those who had been conquered by the sword must be kept by the sword. Since swords were not standard issue, they settled for a jab with a bayonet or a boot up the behind of the conquered. ‘In future, Private Ahearn, make sure you have the right coolie before you start blunting your bayonet on him.’

Ahearn followed Farnol up to the big portico and waited while Farnol went up the steps and rang the bell beside the wide front doors. The Indian butler who answered the bell was even more brusque than the soldier had been in dismissing the dirty, ragged hillman. But Farnol pushed him aside, strode into the huge high-ceilinged entrance hall and demanded to see Colonel Lathrop. At that moment a man appeared on one of the galleries that ran around the upper floors of the hall.

‘What’s going on down there? Who’s that ruffian? Have him thrown out!’

Farnol looked up and recognized the man on the gallery. Oh God, he thought, not him! But he bounded up the wide stairs, came out on to the gallery and advanced on Major Rupert Savanna, who was slapping his pockets as if looking for a gun.

‘Savanna, old chap, how are you? I know you think I’m a ruffian, but you don’t have to spread it around amongst the servants. Where’s Lathrop?’

Savanna was an unfortunate man. He was plain to the point of anonymity; he would have been more identifiable had he been ugly. Everyone tended to overlook him and so he had made himself more unfortunate: he had become aggressive to be recognized and only succeeded in antagonizing everyone he met. He hated India and everyone on the whole sub-continent; but he knew that if he went back to England he would be even more anonymous and overlooked. He was hard-working, a rare quality amongst the British officers in India, and his diligence, if nothing else, had raised him to a senior staff position in the Political Service, the diplomatic corps of the Viceroy. It was said that he had been promoted on the assumption that a man so disliked would not have any friends to whom he might leak a confidence.

‘Farnol? Good God, man, do you have to come up here looking like that? Couldn’t you have spruced yourself up?’

‘I’ll do that later. Where am I staying – down at Squire’s Hall?’

‘Afraid not – the painters are in there. You’ll have to stay here.’ Savanna looked as if he were offering a pi-dog a room for the night. ‘We’re all staying here. Got permission from His Excellency, just for the two nights. The Durbar Train leaves tomorrow. I presume you’ll be coming down to Delhi?’

‘Of course. Where’s George?’

‘Afraid he’s not here. Went back to Delhi yesterday, got tired of waiting for you. You were due here a week ago.’

‘Blast!’ Farnol leaned against the balustrade, restrained himself from spitting down into the well of the entrance hall. He looked sideways at the portly little man with the very pale blue eyes and the blank face behind the ginger moustache. ‘I was held up by a landslide the other side of the Satluj, I had to make a detour. I was ambushed, too.’

‘I say! Lose any bearers?’ Savanna dreamed of being a hero but was glad he was a desk-wallah. Dreams were safer than deeds and he feared the day when he would have to act. ‘Better put that in your report to me.’

‘To you?’

Savanna flushed. ‘Of course. I’m your superior officer, am I not? George Lathrop asked me to stay on here and bring your report down with me when I go.’

‘What I have to report will need to get to him quicker than that. I’ll encode it and you can put it on the telegraph line to him tonight.’

‘I shall want to know what’s in the report before you encode it. I can’t authorize its despatch if I don’t know what’s in it.’

Farnol sighed, scratched himself through his rags. It was always the same when he came back from the hills: as soon as he was within smell of hot water and soap he began to itch. The same irritation affected him whenever he was within smell of a desk-wallah. ‘Righto, whatever you say. I’ll put it all down in clear first. The gist of it is that I think there is a plot to assassinate the King.’

Savanna gave a half-cough, half-laugh. ‘Oh, I say! You expect me to put something like that on the telegraph to Delhi? They’d laugh their heads off. What proof have you?’

Farnol sighed again, scratched himself once more: Savanna, more than any of the other desk-wallahs, always did get under his skin more than the dirt and the lice. ‘None. Just suspicions.’ He quickly recounted the story of the ambush. ‘It ties in with what I heard further up in the hills.’

‘What did you hear? Rumours?’ Savanna shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, old chap. I can’t put that sort of clap-trap on the telegraph. It would be one thing to mention it personally to Lathrop, one can bandy suspicions back and forth all day across a desk. But to put it in code on the telegraph –’ He shook his head again, adamantly this time: after all, he was the senior officer, even if their ranks were the same. ‘Can’t be done. There have been plots and rumours of plots ever since the days of John Company. There’s sure to be one about His Majesty – what better way to create a little mischief? You know what these Indians are. But no one down in Delhi would believe it was anything more than a rumour. They’re all too busy getting spruced up for the Durbar.’

Farnol knew that plots to kill the British, or their leaders, were not new. Ever since the East India Company, John Company as it was called, built its first trading post in 1640, there had been resistance to the British presence in India and the neighbouring countries. The Indian Mutiny of sixty years ago had not blown up on the spur of the moment; the Afghan Wars had not been riots of sudden bad temper. Conspiracies for independence had been uncovered; one or two princes had rebelled and been firmly put back in their place. But no Viceroy, the King’s representative, had died from an assassin’s bullet or knife. They had died from cholera or malaria or boredom, but that had been only the climate of the country and not the climate of the population demanding its wage or revenge. Savanna was right: now, especially now, no one would take any notice of a rumour that hadn’t a shred of concrete evidence to back it. Farnol had been at the Great Durbar, Curzon’s durbar of 1903, and he remembered how for a month before it no one had had any thought for anything but the social events that accompanied it. With the King and Queen due within the week he could imagine the pushing and jostling, like beggars scrambling for coins in a bazaar, that would be going on down in the new capital.

‘All right, I’ll hold the report till we get down to Delhi.’

Savanna stiffened with six years’ seniority. ‘You can still write it in clear and give it to me.’

‘I’ll write it on the train going down.’ Farnol straightened up, daring Savanna to command him to write the report immediately. But the other knew his limitations, knew when he sounded petulant rather than commanding. He stayed silent and after a moment Farnol said, ‘Do I have to dress for dinner? Are there only you and I?’

‘Of course you’ll dress! The Ranee of Serog is coming to dinner and also the Nawab of Kalanpur – you know Bertie, a very decent chap. And there will be Baron von Albern and Lady Westbrook.’

‘Damn! I think I’ll dine in my room.’ Then he looked down and saw the girl in bowler hat and riding habit come into the hall below. ‘Who’s that?’

‘Miss O’Brady. An American gel. Evidently she met His Excellency and Lady Hardinge down in Delhi, told them she was coming up here and they invited her to stay at the Lodge. Can’t understand why. She’s not only American, she’s also one of those damned newspaper reporters.’

CHAPTER TWO

1

Extract from the memoirs of Miss Bridie O’Brady:

I have been to several memorable dinner parties in the course of a long and, forgive my smugness, very rewarding life. Once, when he and his wife had had a falling-out, Richard Harding Davis, that most handsome and dashing of foreign correspondents, took me to dinner at the White House; President Taft himself had to rescue me from the attentions and intentions of the French Ambassador, who had had a falling-out with his wife. On another occasion Mayor John Fitzgerald of Boston, known to everyone as Honey Fitz, called me up, knowing I was in New York for the night, and asked me to dinner with him at Rector’s with some friends from Tammany Hall. There amidst the cigar smoke, the bubbles of champagne and the giggles of the girls from the Music Hall chorus, I learned more about how a democracy is run than in several months of covering City Hall for the Boston Globe. I sometimes feel that one’s education can be improved more over the right dinner table than anywhere else, with the possible exception of under the counterpane. I speak, of course, as a lady of mature years whose education in both spheres was completed some time ago.

The most fateful dinner party, in personal terms, that I ever attended was at Viceregal Lodge in Simla in India in December 1911. The guests were as varied as one can only find in outposts of Empire; or could find, since empires, if they still exist, are no longer admitted. The acting host was a dull little man named Savanna, but everyone else at the long table in the huge panelled dining-room seemed to me to be an original, even the Nawab of Kalanpur, who did his best to be an imitation Englishman. But the most striking one there in my eyes, even though he may not have been strikingly original, was Major Clive Farnol.

He sat next to me as my partner and through most of dinner I saw little more of him than his profile. He told me later he had only that evening shaved off his beard; that accounted for the paler skin of his lower cheeks and jaw against the mahogany of the rest of his face. He had a good nose, deep-set blue eyes; but his face was too bony to be strictly handsome. He also had a nice touch of arrogance, an air I have always admired in the male sex. Humble men usually finish up carrying banners for women’s organizations.

‘You are writing the story of Lola Montez, Miss O’Brady?’ The Ranee of Serog was dressed as if for a State dinner or a trade exhibition of jewels. Of the upper part of her body only her elbows and armpits seemed undecorated with sparklers; she looked like Tiffany and Co. gone vulgar. She was a walking fortune, several million dollars on the hoof, as they say in the Chicago stockyards. She was dressed in a rich blue silk sari and once one became accustomed to the glare of her one could see that she was a beautiful woman. She was about forty which, from the youth of my then twenty-five years, seemed rather close to the grave. Now I am rather close to it myself I smile at the myopia of youth.

‘My grandfather knew her when she was Mrs James, a very young bride here in Simla,’ the Ranee said.

‘My father always boasted he was one of her first lovers.’ Lady Westbrook was an elderly woman of that rather dowdy elegance that the English achieve absent-mindedly, as if fashion was something that occurred to them only periodically like childbirth or an imperial decoration. But, I learned later, she drank her wine and port with the best of the men and smoked a cheroot in an ivory holder. ‘But that was only after he learned she finished up as the mistress of King Ludwig of Bavaria. I suppose all men would like to think they shared a woman with a king.’

‘Not with King George,’ said the Nawab of Kalanpur and spilled his wine as he laughed. ‘I understand the Queen sends a company of Coldstream Guards with him every time he goes out alone. She’s rather a battle-axe when it comes to morality.’

‘I say, Bertie, that’s going too far.’ Major Savanna was a stuffed shirt such as I had only hitherto seen on Beacon Hill in Boston; I suppose one finds them all over the world, a breed hidebound by what they think is correct behaviour. ‘I hope you won’t put any of this conversation into your newspaper articles, Miss O’Brady?’