The Faraway Drums

The British passengers on the train were sensibly dressed for the long dusty journey; there would be plenty of time down in Delhi for them to bring out their finery. But excitement and anticipation made their faces bright and I’d never heard such a chattering amongst a group of English; they sounded like the Italians I had heard down on Mulberry Street in New York, except for the vowel sounds. Their children, usually so well-behaved (whatever happened to well-behaved children? They now appear to be an extinct species), raced up and down without restraint. I wondered what the King, who was reputed to be a notoriously strict parent, would think of this wilfulness that his coronation had brought on. If Major Farnol thought there was still too much Victorian stuffiness prevailing, the Simla residents seemed determined to leave it behind them in the hills, at least for this journey.

The Ranee of Serog and the Nawab of Kalanpur, with their entourages, had arrived at the same moment, coming down opposite roads to meet at the junction just above the station in a traffic jam of rickshaws, tongas and doolies, those swaying contraptions carried by two or four bearers in which the passenger swung and bounced as on bumpy currents of air. Doolie passengers knew turbulence long before jet planes were invented. There were shouts and screams of argument between the drivers and bearers, then some British soldiers, who would be travelling on the train as an escort, rushed up and sorted out the jam, prodding beasts and humans alike with their bayonets. The colourful procession flowed like a slow rainbow-shot waterfall down the final incline to the station.

The Nawab, dressed for travelling but still looking like a peacock beside the sober English turkeys, came up to me, all charm and a mile-wide smile. ‘Where do you travel, Miss O’Brady, in which carriage?’

‘I don’t know. Wherever I can manage a seat, I suppose.’

‘Miss O’Brady! Don’t you know the precedence here in India? I am at the top, of course, being a prince. But the English have so many classes. Where will you fit in amongst them, a stranger and an American? Will you be with the pukka Brahmins of the ICS, the Indian Civil Service? Don’t you know Simla is known as the Heaven of the Little Tin Gods? Or will you be lower down the scale, with someone from the army perhaps? Or even further down, down there amongst the bally commercials, the bank managers and other low life? Travel with me in my carriage, Miss O’Brady. You need not sit with my wives but can keep me company. We’ll be jolly good company for each other.’

‘Your wives? Plural? You look like a bachelor if ever I saw one, Your Highness.’

He waved at his zenana of half a dozen wives. ‘What better way of being a bachelor than having more wives than one? I have more freedom than any bachelor who keeps a mistress. One woman is one too many, half a dozen is not enough. I should like several dozen, but the blighters cost money.’

He was laughable, a joke really; but something about him told me it would be dangerous to laugh at him. Perhaps he really did want to be English, but I found it hard to believe; he enjoyed being a prince too, even if only an Indian one. He would believe in precedence as much as any of the English he had just been maligning. Don’t we all? Hollywood didn’t invent the star system, it just followed historical custom.

Then there was a commotion some distance away and Lady Westbrook came sweeping down on to the platform. She was followed by a single servant toting a trunk and a suitcase, but she gave the impression that she was trailed by a whole retinue of bearers. She also gave the impression that she had decided to wear everything she hadn’t been able to pack into the trunk and suitcase. She was wearing two large-brimmed hats, one felt and the other straw, a tweed suit over which she had pulled on a long cardigan and an Inverness cape; over one arm she carried two more cardigans and round her neck was thrown a thick cashmere scarf. Nothing she wore matched anything else; she was a dazzling clash of colours. Everything about her suggested she had just come from a better sort of English bazaar. But she was a true eccentric, as distinct from today’s exhibitionists who try to pass as eccentric, and one knew she really had no idea how she looked nor did she care.

‘I am not sitting in there!’ she trumpeted at the station-master as he tried to usher her into the carriage immediately behind the engine. ‘You know blasted well where I’m entitled to sit! Give me my proper accommodation!’

The station-master, a mixed blood, a chee-chee as the English called them, was harassed and out of his depth. He tried to squeeze his painfully thin face in behind his toothbrush moustache. ‘Memsahib, all the other carriages are full –’

‘Then some people have seats to which they’re not entitled! Look at all those children! They should have been left at home with the cats and dogs – Ah, Bertie!’ She had sighted the Nawab, came barging along the platform like a runaway junk stall. ‘Do you have a spare seat in your carriage? Of course you must with all those wives. They can sit on each other’s laps. In there!’ She waved a hand to her servant and he struggled into the Nawab’s carriage with her trunk and suitcase. ‘Is Miss O’Brady travelling with us, Bertie?’

To my surprise the Nawab did not seem annoyed at Lady Westbrook’s intrusion. Instead he laughed and shook his head at me. ‘Ah, do you not love the English? They walk all over us and expect us to love them.’

‘Wrong, Bertie,’ said Lady Westbrook, taking out a cheroot and fitting it into her ivory holder. ‘We never look for love, that’s not an English need. What about you Americans, m’dear – do you look for love?’

‘All the time.’

‘Foolish – you’re due for so many disappointments.’ She puffed on her cheroot, looked up and down the platform. ‘Well, we’re going to be a jolly little party, aren’t we? If only they can keep those damned children quiet . . . Be off!’ She slapped at some children who were chasing each other round us. ‘Ah, here comes Major Farnol. My, how handsome he looks!’

She looked at me as soon as she said it and I recognized her as another of those banes of the lives of young presentable girls. She was a woman who, with too much time on her hands, exercised herself by playing match-maker. I looked away from her and at Major Farnol as he approached. Unlike most military men he moved with considerable grace; West Pointers, for instance, tend to walk like flagpoles. He was dressed, as he had been this morning, in his field uniform of khaki tunic, breeches, highly polished riding boots and topee. It was drab in its colour but somehow he gave it a dash of glamour, though we did not use that word in those days. He saluted me and Lady Westbrook and winked at the Nawab, with whom he seemed on intimate terms.

‘Are we all sorted out? Am I still riding with you, Bertie?’

‘Of course, old bean.’ The Nawab seemed eager to play the genial host. ‘But I thought you’d be riding down with Mala.’

‘Nothing ever escapes the gossips up here, does it?’

‘It’s food and drink to us,’ said Lady Westbrook. ‘Are you having another affair with her? The Ranee’s a man-eater,’ she explained to me. ‘Destroyed more men than any tiger.’

‘But not me.’ Major Farnol smiled, winked at the Nawab, then, as an afterthought, winked at me. ‘I’ve reformed, Viola. I’m positively monkish.’

‘Like those monks in The Decameron.’ But Lady Westbrook gave him an affectionate smile.

Then the station-master blew his whistle and the assistant station-master blew his and the engine-driver blew his; we were whipped aboard the train by a chorus of thin blasts. The train drew out past a packed mass of smiling faces and waving hands, the Europeans left behind standing in the front of the crowd, the Indians bringing up the rear. I had noticed on my journey up from Bombay and then from Delhi up to Simla that railroad stations in India are never empty, that even in the middle of the night there were always people standing, sitting or lying fast asleep on the platforms. They came there for company, for shelter, for some distraction from their poverty; but they always looked to me as if they were waiting to be asked aboard, to be given a ticket on a journey to anywhere but that spot where they waited so patiently and hopelessly. I sometimes wept at the hopelessness one found in India and I understand it has got no better, is even worse now than then.

We all settled down in the Nawab’s private car, which was far more luxuriously decorated and furnished than any Pullman car I had seen back home, even that of the President. The wives sat at one end, cramped together on two couches covered in red silk; three of them, the younger ones, kept their veils up across their faces, but the three older ones sat and watched us with bare-faced curiosity. I looked for some resentment in their stares, but there was either none or I was not sharp-eyed enough. The Nawab seemed oblivious of them, which, I suppose, is a good defence when you have six of them.

Though it was only 65 miles down to Kalka, the journey was going to take us at least five hours. The railroad track wound its way in a series of loops down through the hills, with never a stretch of straight track longer than a hundred yards; coming up, I had been struck by the number of tunnels we passed through and then had seen the numbers painted at the entrance to each one; the final number had been 103. The train went round its first long curve and I looked back through the window and saw the open wagons and the flat-cars at the tail. The elephants and horses stood swaying in the wagons, backs to the smoke from the locomotive blowing back over them. On the last flat-car, their backs also to the smoke, were the dozen soldiers who were our escort. That, I guessed, was the order of precedence, the British Tommy right back there behind the elephants and horses.

I turned back and looked at Major Farnol. The Nawab and Lady Westbrook had got up and moved to the front of the car where a bearer was serving them tea and biscuits. ‘Still nothing on Major Savanna?’

‘He’s disappeared completely.’

‘Are the telephone and telegraph wires still cut?’

‘I checked just before we got aboard. The wires are still dead. Captain Weyman is now worried about what has happened to the men he sent down the line.’ He looked out at the hillside dropping away like a cliff right beside us. The tops of the pines and cedars were just below us and it was as if we were riding on a rattling magic carpet above the forest. Monkeys swung along the tree-tops, keeping pace with us like urchins, and the children in the train hung out of the windows and screamed encouragement at them. ‘We have just two stops, at Solan Brewery and Bangu. Don’t get out, stay here in the carriage.’

‘Is that an order?’ I said with a smile.

‘Yes.’ But he didn’t return my smile.

We had been travelling for no more than half an hour, had gone perhaps no more than five or six miles, when the train abruptly began to slow, the wheels screeching on the rails and the cars battering each other with a loud jangling of iron buffers. I put out a hand to steady myself and it fell on Major Farnol’s knee opposite me. He put his hand on mine, pressed it, then rose quickly and went to the door that led out on to the rear platform. I saw that he had taken his pistol from its holster as he stepped out the door.

‘Damned trains!’ Lady Westbrook was on her second cup of tea; or rather it was on her. She wiped herself down where the liquid had spilled on her. ‘Never a journey without something going wrong!’

‘They are still better than making that dreadful journey up here by tonga, all those painful weeks by cart. You don’t really want the old days to come back, Viola.’ But the Nawab was not paying any real attention to her. He handed his cup to a servant, brushed past his wives, snapping something at them in Hindi that stopped their chattering in an instant and went out on to the rear platform to join Major Farnol.

I stood up to follow him, but felt Lady Westbrook’s hand on my knee. I was surprised at the strength of it; it was like a claw. ‘Stay here, m’dear. Leave it to the men.’

I sank back on my seat. ‘What’s going on?’

She let go of my knee, sat back, rattled her cup and saucer and handed them to the servant as he jumped forward. ‘I don’t know. But in these hills, when the unexpected happens, you learn it is better for women to stay out of the way.’

Then the Nawab came back, no longer genial, looking decidedly worried. ‘I’m afraid this is as far as we go. There’s a bally great landslide up ahead, completely blocking the line.’

End of extract from memoirs.

2

Farnol jumped down from the carriage, followed by Karim who had been riding on the rear platform. As they began to walk up towards the front of the train they were joined by the sergeant of the escort of soldiers. ‘Don’t look good, sir.’

They were walking on the cliff side of the railway line. The track curved round one of the many tight bends and they looked across at the tumble of rocks and earth and trees just ahead of the grunting, steaming engine. As they passed the Ranee’s private carriage, she came out on to its platform right above Farnol. He was surprised to see Baron von Albern, the German Consul-General, standing in the doorway behind her; he had not known her to be particularly friendly to the Baron. But he made no comment.

‘Are we going to be delayed long, Major?’

‘I don’t know, Your Highness. But from the look of it from here, I’ll be surprised if we get through at all.’

Other than the two private cars of the Ranee and the Nawab, all the carriages had box compartments. People were leaning out the windows, voluble and curious. Farnol, Karim and the sergeant walked on past them, careful not to miss their step on the rough permanent way and go plunging down the hillside into the trees below. Trees cloaked the steep hillside above the track and Farnol, on edge again, recognized the situation for an ideal ambush. He had instinctively chosen to walk along the outer edge of the permanent way, with the train itself as a barricade against any gunfire that might come from up there in the trees.

He stopped, said quietly, ‘Sergeant, go back and deploy your men along the other side of the train. Tell them to keep low, in against the bank. And see that no one gets out of the train.’

The sergeant looked surprised, but he was an old campaigner and he took off at once on the order, running back towards the rear of the train. Immediately above Farnol a voice said, ‘Something wrong?’

A man was hanging out the window of one of the compartments. He was hatless and his thin blond hair hung down in a fringe round his long-nosed, long-jawed face. He had the adroit eyes of the ambitious or the survivor, and Farnol wondered how acute his hearing was.

‘Nothing.’ He wanted no panic starting up amongst the passengers.

‘But I heard you tell the sergeant –’

Farnol stared up at the man. ‘You heard me tell him nothing, sir. You understand what I’m saying?’

‘Of course,’ the man said after a moment. But other heads were hanging out of windows close by and as Farnol walked on he saw the heads withdraw and he felt, if he did not hear, the murmurs inside the compartments.

The engine-driver and his fireman were standing at the front of the train with the conductor. Farnol introduced himself and the driver, a chee-chee with a plump face and a thick moustache, looking like a coal-dusted walrus, shook his head resignedly.

‘Never get past here in a month of Sundays, sir.’ The landslide was a sixty-foot-wide mound of rocks, earth and trees that covered the track and ran down to disappear into the trees below. ‘I don’t understand it, sir. There ain’t been any rain for a fortnight, that’s what usually causes the slides.’

‘Karim, go up to the top of the slide. Keep your eyes peeled.’

Karim caught the warning in Farnol’s voice, unslung his rifle and went clambering up the slope beside the landslide. Then the sergeant came back and with him was the Nawab.

‘My men are in position, sir. I tried to tell His Highness he oughta stay in the train –’ The sergeant was a 12-year man, his dislike of India and Indians of all ranks, but particularly princes, burned into his dark, wizened face.

‘If something’s going on, Clive, I think you can do with my help.’ The Nawab sounded less British, less an impostor. ‘My bodyguard is back there, six men with rifles.’

‘I’m hoping we shan’t need them.’

Then Karim came sliding down the slope. ‘Oh, I don’t like it, sahib. Some bugger has used dynamite up there –’

‘Righto,’ Farnol snapped, ‘everyone back behind the engine! Sergeant, get down and warn your men. Better get the Nawab’s men, too. Tell them to take as much cover as they can. And tell all the passengers to keep away from the windows on your side of the train.’

The sergeant went round the front of the engine and raced down the track below the trees. Farnol and the others remained on the outer edge of the track, the train crew all squatting down to make themselves smaller targets.

‘Is it an ambush?’ the Nawab said.

‘I don’t know, Bertie. It could be dacoits. I suppose Mala herself must be carrying a fortune in jewels with her. You too?’

‘One is expected to put on a show. I’m afraid I’ve brought the bally lot. The wives, y’know. They’re all looking forward to dazzling the English ladies. God knows how much the blighters would get if they did rob us. A couple of million pounds’ worth at least.’

‘I can’t understand why they haven’t already put in an appearance, or fired on us.’ Farnol looked around him, puzzled. ‘At least one shot, just to let us know they’re here.’

There was no sound but the hissing of steam from the engine’s boiler. A chill breeze blew up the narrow tree-shrouded valley below them; an eagle hung in the air like an ominous leaf; clouds seemed to form out of nothing to cover the sun and turn the green pines black. Then Farnol caught a glimpse of movement and round the next bend up ahead came a small flat-bed trolley-car, two men working the seesaw lever that propelled it and a third man sitting on the front of the trolley. The two men suddenly stopped pumping as soon as they saw the landslide and the trolley slid to a stop just short of it.

‘Stay here!’

Farnol left the Nawab and the others still sheltered beside the engine and scrambled across the slide, expecting a bullet at any moment to hit him or slap into the dirt beside him. Twice he missed his footing and he had to grab at a fallen tree as the earth slipped away beneath him; once he just managed to jump ahead as the tree he had grabbed also slid down; out of the corner of his eye he saw it plunge over the edge and a moment later heard it crash into the trees below. He had just reached the far side of the slide when there was a rumble behind him. He turned to see the rocks and earth and trees slipping away, taking a section of the track with it. The rumbling deepened, then faded; dust rose up in a brown cloud and when it cleared there was a wide gap in the ledge that carried the railway line. It was going to take a month of Sundays, as the driver had said, before any train would be running on this part of the track again.

The three men on the trolley were Post and Telegraph workers. Two of them were Indians, the two who had been doing the hard work on the lever handles, and the other was a chee-chee, one who might have passed for European but for his slightly bluish gums and the blue marks in his finger-nails. He was grey-haired and in his fifties, his gullied face a network of lines and pockmarks.

‘No, sir, we didn’t see no soldiers down the line. Nobody. We been looking for breaks in the telegraph line, I dunno nothing about the telephone wires. We found four breaks between here and Solan, sir, cut by snips. I don’t like the looks of it. These buggers here wanted to go home right away.’ He nodded to the two Indians standing in the background; then he winked at Farnol, man to man, us whites sticking together. ‘You know what they’re like soon’s they get a sniff of trouble.’

Who can blame them? thought Farnol; but he said, ‘Gibson, I want you to go back to Solan, get on the telegraph and ask the Railway Superintendent at Kalka to send up another train immediately. You can leave your two fellows here and I’ll send two soldiers with you. It’s all downhill so you should make pretty quick time.’

The sergeant brought up two soldiers, who cautiously made their way across the slide above the gap. Farnol gave them instructions; they looked at him dubiously but scrambled aboard the trolley. They took up their positions on the front of the trolley, their rifles at the ready, and Gibson got up behind them.

‘It could be midnight before they get a train up here, sir.’

‘Just so long as they get here. I may have to take this train back up the line, but I’ll leave someone here to meet the Kalka train. Good luck.’

The two soldiers looked sourly over their shoulders at him when he said that, but Farnol had given the trolley a push and it went rolling down the track, gathering speed on the slight decline that led to the next bend. It disappeared round the bend and Farnol stood for a moment wondering why the dacoits, or whoever had caused the landslide, still had not shot at him and the train. He felt that eyes were watching him, but there was no way of guessing how close the watchers were. He clambered up the slope into the trees above the slide and worked his way across through the thick forest. He was stiff with tension, his breath hissing as he forgot to breathe steadily in the high thin air; for a moment he seemed to have lost all the animal skills that had been natural to him for so long. He was no stranger to danger, but he had never before been responsible for a train-load of civilian men, women and children. He watched every tree as if it hid an assassin, but no one jumped out at him with gun or knife and at last he slid down on to the railway line.

‘Driver, could you reverse the train as far back as Simla?’

‘Not with all these carriages and wagons, sir. If they was empty, yes, but not with all them elephants and horses. It’s a pretty heavy load for an old engine like this one.’

Farnol nodded, glancing up at the ancient engine that looked as if it had had trouble getting the train this far downhill. Then the Nawab said, ‘There’s the trolley, across there on that far bend. I say, they’re going fast!’

Farnol looked beyond the near bend round which the trolley had disappeared a few minutes ago, saw it now in view on a far shoulder of the mountain that towered above the railway line. The foreman was working the driving lever up and down as fast as he could, speeding the trolley along, as if once he was out of range of Farnol he was as determined as the soldiers with him to get out of the danger zone as soon as possible. The trolley was a hundred yards short of the far bend when the foreman fell forward over the see-sawing arm of the lever. It swung up, lifting him sideways, and he toppled off the trolley and went hurtling down the sheer cliff-face below the track. One of the soldiers straightened up, then he, too, fell off the trolley, hit the permanent way and rolled over the edge of the cliff and followed the foreman down into the green surf of trees far below. The other soldier just lay back as if going to sleep and as the sound of the three rifle shots reached the watchers beside the engine, the trolley disappeared round the far bend, its see-sawing driving lever still going up and down in a stiff-armed farewell.

Farnol acted at once. ‘Back into the train! Get us back as far as you can, driver! Hop to it!’

But the driver couldn’t budge the old engine. It gasped and wheezed and its wheels spun with a thin screech on the rails; but none of the carriages or wagons behind it moved even a yard.