The Faraway Drums

I had come to India to cover the Great Durbar in Delhi, one of the few women correspondents granted such permission. Females were still considered lesser beings in those days, even in the so-called enlightened offices of newspapers; some of the most bigoted male chauvinists I have met in a lifetime of such encounters have been newspaper editors. But I had been taken on as a cub reporter by the editor of the Boston Globe who owed a favour to someone who owed a favour to Mayor Honey Fitz, for whom my father worked as a ward boss. I had managed not to blot my notebook and gradually had been given assignments that had, after several years and with great reluctance on the part of the paper’s male management, resulted in my being granted a by-line. I had covered stories spread over a great deal of the United States and had attained a certain fame; or in certain circles where anyone who worked for a newspaper, regardless of their sex, was looked upon as a whore, a certain notoriety. Disgusted at the growing cost of Presidential inaugurations, the editor had decided to send me to India to see how the British Empire spent money on crowning an Emperor. It was I who had suggested that I should also do a story on Lola Montez, the Irish-born courtesan who had begun her career in Simla as a 15-year-old bride of a British officer. The editor, thinking of syndication, had readily agreed. There were probably fifty million housewives throughout the United States who were dreaming of being courtesans.

‘Quote every word, Miss O’Brady.’ Major Farnol up till then had offered only a few words, the crumbs of politeness that gentlemen offer to ladies in whom they are not particularly interested. But now he looked at me full face and I saw his gaze run quickly up from my bosom, over my shoulders and throat and up to my face and hair. I learned later that he was famous for swift appraisals of the landscape and was known amongst the Pathan tribesmen of Afghanistan as Old Hawkeye. ‘We must keep on with the good work done by the late King Edward, making our royalty appear human. We have suffered too long from Victorian stuffiness.’

‘Oh, I say!’ said the stuffed shirt at the top of the table.

‘Ach, no.’ The one-armed German Consul-General, Baron Kurt von Albern, leaned to one side while a servant took away his plate. He leaned stiffly and with his head seemingly cocked to balance the weight of his one arm; he looked rigid and very Prussian, though he was riot a Prussian. He had close-cropped grey hair, a thick grey moustache, wore gold-rimmed spectacles with a silk cord running down to his lapel and looked like Teddy Roosevelt without the bombast. ‘Kings should never appear human. They should always suggest a little mystery.’

‘Is there any mystery about the Kaiser?’ said Major Farnol. ‘Other than whether or not he wants to go to war with us?’

The Baron shook his great head sadly. ‘Always talk of war. The English and the Germans will never fight. Your own King is almost more German than he is English.’

‘More’s the pity,’ said Lady Westbrook. ‘Can’t understand why we ever let the Tudors go.’

‘Our King is beloved just as he is.’ Major Savanna seemed to have had a little too much to drink. He glared down the table in my direction and for a moment I wondered what America had done recently to bring on this aggression. Then I realized he was looking at Major Farnol. ‘That correct, Major?’

‘Perhaps in England. Here in India no one knows him.’

The King, as Prince of Wales, had visited India in 1905, but he had seen, and been seen by, very few more than the British civil and military brass and the Indian princes. Though England had ruled India for almost two centuries, no reigning monarch had ever set foot in the country. The monarch’s surrogates had been the real rulers, the Governors-General and the Viceroys who had had all the trappings of a king and almost as much power, possibly even more. The armorial bearings of all those surrogates hung from the walls above our heads, from the first of them, Warren Hastings, to the present one, Hardinge. Pictures of the monarch might hang in offices and railway stations and jungle bungalows, but everyone knew who was the actual British Raj of the moment.

‘I met him once at Lord’s,’ said the Nawab. ‘Came to see the Second Test against the Australians, looked bored stiff. Bally undiplomatic of him, I thought. That’s the German in him, I suppose.’

‘Being undiplomatic or being bored by cricket?’ said the Baron.

The Nawab laughed, a high giggle that didn’t go at all well with his appearance. He was rather saturnine, a look that went against the mould of the imitation Englishman he tried to be; when his face was in repose he looked slightly sinister, an image the English have washed from their countenances if not from their hearts.

‘Touché, Baron. It’s a pity you didn’t go to Harrow, as I did. With your physique they’d have made a jolly good fast bowler of you.’

‘It sounds a dreadful fate,’ said the Baron.

‘I don’t think the King should have come out here.’ The Ranee dismissed His Majesty with a wave of her hand, an explosion of diamond lights. ‘Anything could happen to him. He could be trodden on by an elephant, killed by a tiger. Accidents happen in this country.’

‘Planned accidents?’ said Major Farnol.

Perhaps I was too quick for an outsider; but what should a newspaperwoman be if not quick? ‘You mean an assassination?’

I saw Farnol and Savanna exchange glances. The Ranee also saw it: ‘What’s going on, gentlemen? Have you heard something?’

There was silence for a moment and it was obvious that the two majors were each waiting for the other to reply. Then Major Farnol said, ‘No, nothing.’

‘Of course not!’ But Savanna’s voice was not so loud from drink alone; he was far too emphatic. ‘Ridiculous! Their Majesties will be as safe here in India as in Buckingham Palace. Correct, Farnol?’

I saw Farnol’s jaw stiffen, but he nodded. ‘Of course.’

Then dinner was finished and the ladies rose to be banished as we always were. The port and the cigars were already being produced, but as we went out the door Lady Westbrook turned to one of the servants. ‘I’ll have a large port in the drawing-room. Better bring a small decanter.’

I sat with Lady Westbrook and the Ranee for half an hour, then I excused myself and went up to bed. I had been riding that afternoon and was genuinely tired. As I reached the gallery that led to the bedrooms I pulled up startled. Major Farnol sat in the shadows, in a large chair against the wall of the corridor.

‘Oh! I thought you were still downstairs with the other gentlemen.’

‘I just wanted to say goodnight, Miss O’Brady.’ He stood up, towering over me. He wore a tail-coat, the dinner jacket had not become universal with gentlemen, but the suit looked as if he had had it a long time; it was shiny and tight and he looked, well, caged in it. ‘Will you be going down with us on the Durbar Train? May I have the pleasure of escorting you?’

‘Only if you will tell me if you think King George is in danger of being assassinated.’ I’m afraid I was rather a direct person in those days. Perhaps I still am.

‘I thought you were interested only in Lola Montez?’

‘I have all the material I need on her. I’m a newspaper-woman, Major Farnol. A plot to assassinate a king is a story I’d give my right arm for.’

‘Both arms?’

We did not use the word corny in those days. ‘Major Farnol, I expected better than that of you. I’m not some high school girl panting to be taken.’

He smiled, then abruptly sobered. ‘All right, no flirting. No, Miss O’Brady, I know nothing about any assassination plot.’

‘I think you are a liar, Major.’ I gave him what I hoped was a sweet smile.

‘All the time.’

‘Goodnight, Major.’

I left him then, but I knew we were going to be talking to each other a lot over the next few days, whether he was a liar or not. In the course of her life a woman will meet a man, or several men if she is fortunate, with whom she feels an instant current of attraction. I had felt that way about Richard Harding Davis, but he was already married; I had also been strongly attracted to a well-known matinée idol, but he was in love with himself at the time and no woman can compete with that. I didn’t think Major Farnol would ever be in love with himself but he did strike me as being very self-contained, with few doubts about himself or anyone else, which can be just as frustrating for a woman. My trouble was that, being Boston Irish, I had such little mystery about me that might raise a doubt or two in his or any other man’s mind. A woman who loves love as much as I did, and still do, can be too honest for her own good.

But I was not thinking about love that night. I undressed in the big bedroom I’d been given and was brushing my hair when I heard voices in the corridor outside. Moments earlier I had heard voices down at the front of the house; that would have been the Ranee, Lady Westbrook and the Nawab and the Baron going home. Then the big house had been suddenly silent till I heard the raised voices out in the corridor.

I opened my door an inch and peered out. It was not a lady-like thing to do, but a newspaperwoman was not expected to be a lady; it was an implied contradiction in terms. Major Savanna, looking very much the worse for drink, was standing arguing with Major Farnol, whom I could not see.

‘You will not mention this ridiculous theory of yours again till we get down to Delhi! There you can do what you damn well please!’

‘Keep your voice down, Savanna. This isn’t a polo field.’

‘Don’t tell me – ! You’re absolutely insufferable, Farnol, insufferable! You keep your voice down – not another word about these rumours, you understand! That’s an order!’

He took a sudden step backwards and I realized that Farnol had abruptly shut the door of his room in his face. Savanna raised a fist as if he were about to batter down the door, then suddenly he went marching down the hall towards his own bedroom. Marching: it struck me that for a man who a moment ago had sounded drunk he was remarkably steady on his feet.

I closed the door, finished my toilette and got into bed. But I couldn’t sleep; I could smell a story like a magnetic perfume, ink brewed by M. Coty. I tossed and turned for an hour, then I made my decision. I got out of bed and put on my red velvet peignoir. It had been bought for Miss Toodles Ryan, the girl friend of Mayor Honey Fitz, but Toodles was annoyed with Hizzoner for some reason and she had given me the gown. Each time I put it on I felt the delicious thrill of being a kept woman, if only by proxy: the safest and least demanding way. Only a year before he was assassinated I mentioned Toodles Ryan to President Kennedy and he, Boston Irish and a ladies’ man, winked and smiled. Honey Fitz’s hormones were still alive and well in 1962.

I looked at my hair in the mirror, saw that my tossing and turning had made it into a fright wig. I hastily pushed it up, looked around for something to hold it in place, saw the derby, the bowler hat I had worn that day while riding and shoved it on my head. I remembered one of the few pieces of advice my mother had given me when I told her I was determined to go out into the sinful Protestant world and make my own way: ‘Always wear a hat, sweetheart. That way you’ll always be thought of as a lady, if only from the neck up.’

Clasping my notebook and pencil I opened my door, crossed the corridor and tapped gently on Major Farnol’s door. Then I opened it and stepped inside. And felt the pistol pressing against the back of my neck.

The electric light was switched on. Major Farnol was dressed in pale blue silk pyjamas and looked absolutely gorgeous.

‘They’re not mine – I found them in a drawer. I think they belong to one of the A.D.C.s. Heaven knows what sort of chap wears things like these.’

‘You’re wearing them.’

‘Just as well, if a half-naked woman calls on me in the middle of the night. Do you usually wear a bowler when you go prowling bedrooms?’

I crossed to a chair beside the bed. ‘You may get back into bed, Major. You’re perfectly safe. This is a professional call.’

‘Do you charge for your services?’

I don’t know where Major Farnol learned his badinage with Women. I discovered later that he had had considerable success with them, but it could not have been because of his conversational approach. ‘Put your gun away, Major, and get into bed. I’ve taken you at your word that you’re a liar and I don’t believe you when you say there is no plot to assassinate the King.’

He put the pistol on a bedside table and got beneath the covers. Thinking back, it was one of the strangest interviews I ever conducted. Both of us were aware of the atmosphere around us: he in his glamorous pyjamas, I in my peignoir (even if the bowler did dampen the effect), and the wide bed itself. But I was there on business and I was determined to keep it that way.

‘Tell me what you really think is going on, Major.’

He shook his head. ‘Miss O’Brady, I am what is called a political agent.’

‘Is that something like a ward boss? My father is one in Boston.’ I explained what my father did in the interests of democracy and the Democratic Party, which are not necessarily the same thing.

‘No, I don’t think there’s too much similarity. I suppose one could say I’m a cross between your Secret Service and one of your Indian agents from the Wild West.’

‘But that’s exactly what a ward boss is.’

‘Well, I’m sure your father doesn’t give away secrets to the chaps from the newspapers. Or even to you, I’ll wager.’

‘Not unless he’s looking for favours.’ I saw the gleam in his eye and got in first: ‘Please, Major. No more flirting. So you won’t tell me what you suspect?’

‘No.’ There was no badinage there: his voice was flat and emphatic.

‘I could write my story without your corroboration.’

‘If you did that and I should ever meet you again, I’d tan your bottom.’

‘An officer and a gentleman?’

‘I make no claim to the latter title. Goodnight, Miss O’Brady. Please turn off the light as you go out.’

I was used to being dismissed, that was part of the game in my profession; but somehow the dismissal by him hurt me. I knew I had brought it on myself, but there are certain occasions when a woman wishes she could retire with dignity. I tried for that as I walked towards the door, but even then I knew that in my peignoir and derby I could not look regal or even viceregal.

I stopped at the door and turned. ‘You and I are not finished with each other, Major. I do not give up easily.’

‘Nor I, Miss O’Brady. Goodnight.’

I switched off the electric light and opened the door. The club thumped down on my bowler hat and I slumped to the floor.

End of extract from memoirs.

2

Farnol leapt out of bed as the man, masked by a ragged scarf, jumped over the girl and came at him, the club in one hand and a long dagger in the other. Farnol grabbed for the gun on the bedside table, but in the gloom of the darkened room, his eyes still full of the just extinguished electric light, his hand fumbled and knocked the gun to the floor. The intruder dived across the bed at him and he flung himself back, just avoiding the swish of the dagger. He stumbled around in the unfamiliar room, bumped against a clothes-horse. He picked it up and swung it, hitting the assassin full in the face with the wooden shoulders inside his tail-coat. The man let out a gasp and staggered back and Farnol, eyes accustomed to the darkness now, went after him. The thug swung the club blindly and Farnol grunted as it grazed his ribs.

Then the man was past him, jumping over the still prostrate Bridie in the doorway and racing out into the corridor. Farnol scrambled after him, not stopping to waste time in looking for his gun. The man appeared to know his way about the huge house. He ran along the dimly-lit corridor, out on to the gallery and down the wide stairs. Farnol, a blue silk streak, was only a few stairs behind him as they reached the entrance hall. The thug made no attempt to go out the front doors, as if he knew he might run into one of the roving picquets in the main drive. Instead he went straight down towards the ballroom. Farnol grabbed a heavy brass candlestick from a table and chased after him.

The man was tall and thin, as tall as Farnol; and he was swift, just that much swifter than Farnol. His clothes were ragged, but he was recognizable as a hillman: the dark turban wound Pathan style, the blue scarf round his face and the sheepskin jerkin said he wasn’t from the plains.

The next two or three minutes were like some bizarre conducted tour of the Lodge. The two men raced through the huge moonlit ballroom, skidding on the polished floor; through into the dining-room where the logs in the big fireplace still glowed; back across the hall to the drawing-room. Here the thug ran headlong into the great velvet curtain that draped its entrance; he dropped his club and tried to slash his way through the heavy cloth with his knife. Farnol caught him and grappled with him, but once again the man got away. He raced back up the stairs and still Farnol pursued him, wielding the candlestick. But the man was frantic now, drawing away from Farnol with every step. He tore down the corridor between the bedrooms. At the far end Farnol glimpsed the open window. The thug went through it without seeming to lose speed. Farnol reached the window, pulled up gasping and looked down, expecting to see the man spreadeagled on the ground below.

But the thug had not committed suicide; once again he had shown he knew the lie of the land around the Lodge. There was a great deodar tree outside the window and Farnol saw the stout branch still going up and down from the weight of the man as he had landed on it. A moment later he saw the man run out from the black shadow at the base of the tree, race across the lawn, vault the balustrade and disappear. There was no point in shouting for the guard; they would never find the thug in the tangled growth down the steep hillside below the lawn. Farnol turned back, still holding the candlestick, and hurried back along the corridor to his room.

Bridie was sitting up, feet spread out in front of her, back against the door, her crushed hat in her lap. She looked at him as he squatted down beside her. ‘Did you get him? I saw you gallop past.’

‘He got away. How are you?’

‘It will teach me not to go uninvited into a man’s room.’ She stood up, taking his arm; he could feel she was still shaken. ‘I’m all right, I think. I’ll have a headache in the morning.’

He had to admire her composure. The women who had lived in these hills for years were accustomed to the regular emergency: he would have expected them to recover quickly. But Miss O’Brady was a city girl and an American one at that: he knew little or nothing about Boston or New York but he guessed that ladies there did not have to face emergencies too often. ‘I must say, Miss O’Brady, you’re not the hysterical sort, are you?’

‘I suppose that’s an Englishman’s compliment, is it? Thank you. No, I’m not the hysterical sort.’

‘Jolly good.’

Assured that she was uninjured except for a sore head, he abruptly left her, went along to the gallery and looked down into the entrance hall. Then he came back.

‘I wonder where all the servants are? It’s late, but I thought someone would have heard me chasing that chap up and down the stairs. Go back to your room and lock the door.’

‘No. I’ll stay with you till . . . You’re worried about something.’

She was still shaken, but she was recovering fast. Her auburn hair hung down over her shoulders in wild disarray, her voice was a little breathless, she held her bowler hat before her like a battered beggar’s bowl. She was a damned good-looking woman. He wished he had met her a week later, down in Delhi.

‘We’ll go and wake up Major Savanna. He’s probably dead to the world with all that drink he had.’

They went down the corridor to the room at the end. Its door was beside the open window through which the thug had escaped; the cold night air pressed in against them and Farnol shut the window. Then he knocked on Savanna’s door.

With still no answer to his third knock, he opened the door and went in. He fumbled for the light switch, clicked it on. The room was empty, the big four-poster bed unslept in. On the bed was tossed Savanna’s tail suit, his boiled shirt and his dress suit. The wardrobe’s doors were open and the clothes were strewn on the floor in front of it.

‘Right, go back to your room, lock the door and stay there.’ He was already on his way back along the corridor. He still carried the heavy brass candlestick, as if he had forgotten it was still in his hand. He paused by Bridie’s door, swung it open and motioned with the candlestick for her to go in. He looked and sounded like a schoolmaster who had found a pupil in some after-lights-out escapade. ‘Come on – inside! Lock the door. I’ll be back!’

He didn’t wait to see if she obeyed him. He went back to his own room, dragged on the clothes nearest to hand, the tailcoat and dress trousers, over his pyjamas, pulled on his shoes; then, still carrying the candlestick but also his pistol this time, he went down to the entrance hall. He switched on lights, found a bell-pull and gave it several tugs that almost pulled it out of the ceiling, creating a carillon effect down in the depths of the servants’ quarters. In less than two minutes the butler and two bearers, stumbling with haste, puzzlement and the effects of the sleep from which they had been disturbed, came up from the rear of the house. With them was Karim Singh, the only one who looked fully alert.

‘Where’s Major Savanna?’ Farnol addressed the butler, an elderly Punjabi who had a proprietary interest in the Lodge; he had seen Viceroys come and go, none of them had the tenure that a good servant had. ‘Did he say anything to you about going out tonight?’

‘No, sahib.’ The butler looked bewildered and indignant: it wasn’t right that he should be aroused in the middle of the night, in His Excellency’s own house, and rudely interrogated by this army officer who was only a major, not even a colonel. ‘He should be asleep in his room.’

‘He isn’t – his bed hasn’t been slept in. And I’ve had a chap in here who tried to kill me.’ He didn’t mention Bridie. The attack on her had been accidental, he was certain, and he wanted to protect her from any further involvement.

The two bearers hissed with shock, looked over their shoulders, waiting for another attack. The butler said, ‘I regret that, sahib. It has never happened before. His Excellency will be most disturbed –’

‘I’m sure he will. Karim, get down to the guard-house, get the guard up here on the double –’

‘You can call them on the telephone, sahib.’ The butler lifted a big red velvet cover, like a huge tea-cosy, from a side-table, exposing a telephone. ‘We have every modern convenience.’

Every modern convenience but an effective guard system. Farnol called the guard-house and a minute later there was a banging on the front door. The butler, moving with all the dignity of a State occasion, went to the doors and opened them. Three soldiers came plunging in, a sergeant and two rankers, one of them Private Ahearn.

‘How many did you have on picquet tonight?’ Farnol demanded.

The sergeant blinked in the light; he, too, had been sound asleep down in the guard-house. ‘May I ask who you are, sir?’

‘Major Farnol.’ He saw Ahearn’s eyebrows go up; then he remembered he had shaved off his beard. ‘Private Ahearn escorted me up here earlier this evening.’

The sergeant stood to attention. ‘Four men on picquet, sir. Did they miss something?’

‘They missed a bloody thug who got in here and tried to kill me. He got away, went down the south side of the hill. There’s no point in going after him,’ he said as the sergeant looked over his shoulder to give an order to Ahearn and the other ranker. ‘He’ll be halfway to Kalka by now. Have you seen Major Savanna at all?’