by M A Bennett
Shafeen was the first to speak. ‘She’ll still burn. Even now.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘How many times have you heard her say, Your father says this, or Your father says that? Or mention his name or one of his opinions? She’s lived her life in his anglicised fantasy, not because she wants it, but because he does. She loves him, Greer. She truly loves him. I realise now that nothing in his diary is going to change that. We have to bring him back. If we don’t, desolation and loss will burn her up and there’ll be nothing but ashes left.’
Numb, I dropped my head back against the headrest and breathed in the princess’s perfume. What was it – Guerlain L’Heure Bleue? The perfume of England’s queen. Odd, because at breakfast she’d only smelled very faintly of it, and she hadn’t been in this car today. I wondered if the smooth, smiling Hari was using it himself on the quiet. The thought made me smile to myself, and God knows I needed to smile.
22
When we got to the Tiger Club there was no sign of Henry.
Shafeen instructed Hari to wait, then we went up the white stairs together. Colonel Moran, the bluff and British undersecretary person, was waiting at the top of the steps, greeting his safari-goers. A bearer, dressed much like the absent Prem, carried gin and tonics around on a tray, even though it was only about eleven in the morning. As we explained that we needed to join the tiger safari, the colonel listened politely. But then he said, ‘Look here. This is awfully sticky. But as you are – neither one of you – officially members of the club, it’s really against regulations to let you come along. Your father, Mr Jadeja, is, of course, a member, but you are not. And Miss Greer is your guest, not his. I would ask Lord de Warlencourt, but he’s gone ahead to check the bait and the hides, just to see that everything’s tickety-boo.’ I remembered from our previous visit that the colonel’s slang was about a hundred years old. ‘Of course, outside guests are sometimes invited, but that’s not the case here.’
‘Oh, but we were invited,’ I said, perfectly truthfully. ‘Didn’t Henry say?’
‘No,’ said the colonel. ‘Regrettably he did not.’ You could see him struggling between being polite to his boss’s chums and following the club rules by which he lived. ‘I don’t think … that is, it’s quite irregular. If only there was a way to … confirm … with Lord de Warlencourt.’
What you need right now, buddy, I thought, is a mobile phone. But I didn’t say anything.
‘Let me offer you a drink at the very least,’ he said, beckoning the bearer. ‘I would certainly urge you to linger for a moment and see the … safari … off. It’s quite the parade.’
‘We don’t want –’ began Shafeen hotly, but I grasped his arm to shut him up.
I suddenly had a thought as I took my glass from the tray. I raised my drink to the colonel and said, very deliberately, ‘I like to drink to the Siege of Gibraltar.’
The colonel stopped with his glass halfway to his lips. He looked at me and then at Shafeen. He never drank that drink, but set his glass carefully down on the tray. ‘If you come with me, I’ll have the houseboy find you some suitable clothes.’
23
You could obviously stay at the Tiger Club, because the room I was given to change in was as nice as the nicest hotel, with rattan furniture and a ceiling fan and a lovely private veranda opening out onto the plain.
With a massive feeling of déjà vu, I put on the clothes that had been left on the bed. Odd, really, that the outfit I’d been given was not very different to the huntin’ shootin’ and fishin’ gear we’d been given at Longcross. A light shirt, breeches, boots and a jacket in army green with plenty of pockets, one of which was fitted with a wicked little hunting knife – I could have been heading into Longwood. But this wasn’t Longwood. This was the jungle.
When Shafeen knocked on my door he was wearing much the same, except that around his neck he wore the stripy orange-and-black tie of the Tiger Club, just like the one belonging to his father, which he’d worn as a belt at dinner the other night. ‘Ready?’
‘I think so,’ I said. My stomach felt extremely weird. ‘Is it dangerous?’
‘No,’ said Shafeen. ‘In the bad old days, they even drugged and baited the tigers so that the participants would see “good sport”. Then they’d make out that the tigers were all fierce and deadly, even though they were really half asleep. It made the hunters feel braver. I imagine it’s the same today. When have you ever known the de Warlencourts to play with a straight bat? The tigers won’t get near us.’
‘That attitude isn’t helping,’ I said. ‘Remember, you need to ask Henry for a favour.’ But at the same time, I suspected he was right.
We went out onto the steps just in time to hear the sound of a purring engine. Hari, no longer needed, was driving away, and Colonel Moran pulled into the space he’d left in an ancient jeep – which seemed a bit Savage for this antiquated club.
As we got in he said, ‘Awfully sorry about the old banger. We’re playing catch-up, as the others rode out while you were changing.’
‘On horses?’
I envisaged the day going a little bit like the Boxing Day hunt at Longcross – that now we’d been given things to wear, we’d be given things to ride.
‘No horses,’ bellowed the colonel as politely as he could over the noise of the engine, the jeep bouncing over the terrain. ‘Lord de Warlencourt’s orders. His family don’t have much luck with horseflesh.’
Shafeen and I exchanged a knowing glance. ‘Is that right?’ he yelled back. But, as it turned out, Colonel Moran wasn’t only talking about Rollo on Boxing Day.
‘Oh, yes,’ the colonel hollered back. ‘His grandfather Monty rode every day of his life – well into his nineties. We all tried to stop him, but he insisted that he would carry on until it killed him, which of course it did.’
‘It did?’ I yelled.
‘Yes. Went out for his morning ride from the clubhouse, on this very route, aged ninety-two, if you please. Horse got spooked by something, reared and chucked him off. And then, damn me if the very same thing didn’t happen to his son the Earl of Longcross this Boxing Day just gone. Dashed bad luck.’ Shafeen and I couldn’t look at each other. ‘So Lord Longcross – young Henry, that is – doesn’t ride any more. He’s a bit superstitious, and I can’t say I blame him.’
I remembered Henry once galloping up the drive of Longcross Hall on a black stallion, and couldn’t help thinking that was rather a shame.
‘Not that it matters anyway,’ Colonel Moran went on, ‘because we don’t ride horses on the safari. Horses don’t like big cats.’
‘So what do you ride?’
It was the earth, not the colonel, which seemed to answer me. As the undersecretary stopped the jeep, the ground seemed to continue to move.
The earth shook beneath my feet; my ribs shuddered in my chest. Through the trees – enormous, grey, long of trunk and baggy of knee – came a herd of elephants.
24
The muster of the elephants for the tiger hunt was one of the most surreal things I’d ever seen.
The huge grey beasts were picturesquely decorated, as if someone very skilled had gone crazy with a pack of felt tips. They all had caste marks on their foreheads. ‘That’s the red of the goddess Kali,’ said Shafeen. But all I could think of was the fox’s blood dabbed on Aadhish’s forehead when he was blooded at Longcross after his first kill. There would be more blood today.
I wasn’t the only one who thought so. The vultures we’d spotted in the distance on our last visit circled in the skies above – much closer now – and a jackal slunk by, side-eyeing us hopefully, his chops drooling in anticipation of a carcass later.
‘I don’t see Henry,’ I said to the colonel as we decanted ourselves from the jeep.
‘He’ll have gone ahead to make sure everything is in place,’ said the colonel. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll catch him up.’
The poor elephants were being loaded with gear – some stuff recognisable,
some less so. There were bottles and hampers, as if we were going on a glorified picnic, but also long poles and leafy branches. ‘What’s that stuff for?’
‘That’s for building a machan – a kind of platform in the trees,’ said the colonel. ‘Sometimes there’s quite a wait for a tiger to come along. Machans can be quite sophisticated, with roofs to keep off the sun and cushioned seats. In the old days they used to take gramophones up there.’
‘Is it safe though?’
‘Not entirely,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Tigers aren’t great tree climbers, but other big cats are. A panther might easily get you.’
We were directed to our elephant – bizarre though that sounds – by the colonel. ‘We don’t have to drive it, do we?’ I said to Shafeen in an undertone.
‘God, no. Each elephant has a mahout. The mahout has often been with the elephant all its life. They have a unique bond.’
We clambered up onto a platform on the back of our elephant, which had obligingly gone down on its knees. I thought we would be lifted up on its trunk like in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but in fact we used a sort of bamboo ladder. The platform looked very uncomfortable for the poor elephant but was very comfortable for us, with padded seats and siderails. Apparently Shafeen and I were the only passengers for this ride, for Colonel Moran raised his hand to us in farewell. ‘Happy landings,’ he said cryptically, before heading off to find his own ride.
The mahout sat astride the neck, I guess you would call it, between the flapping ears. He smiled at us and nudged the elephant with his toes, at which it gave a sickening lurch as it got to its feet. I had to cling to Shafeen to stay on.
We set off at a rolling gait, which reminded me of being at sea in very choppy waters. It was the oddest Uber in the world. As we went, I noticed that some elephants carried only a single rifleman. ‘Those are the shikars,’ said Shafeen. ‘They are experienced hunters who run the hunt at different “beats” and direct operations.’
‘They’re armed.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Just in case.’
Despite the heat, this pronouncement made me shiver.
The way was draped with fabric, hung at intervals in the trees. That, and the fact that many local men on foot lined the route, chanting and pounding the trees with hollow bamboo, gave the hunt the air of a carnival. I could see why the colonel had wanted us to see this spectacle. ‘Those men are the beaters,’ supplied Shafeen. ‘They drape turbans and body cloths along the route to direct the tiger to the machans.’ I watched the beaters shout and clap and wave branches. ‘I’m amazed the tigers come anywhere near that noise.’
‘They don’t mind noise so much. It annoys them rather than frightens them, so it’s a way to drive them where you want them to go. But it’s a fine line,’ said Shafeen. ‘If they make too much noise, the tiger might charge them directly.’
‘A risky job,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he agreed grimly. ‘You’ll notice the shikars keep the lines properly regimented. Beaters are placed in gaps in the trees as “stops” to prevent the tiger getting through. They are human barriers.’ He squinted at me. ‘It’s almost as if the Tiger Club doesn’t care about Jaipur’s indigenous population.’
I noticed that the elephants ahead of us, bearing all those dentists and ex-army servicemen and British noblemen, were creating their own path through the jungle and trumpeting as they went, exactly like Colonel Hathi and his troops in The Jungle Book. All we were missing was the marching music.
‘We’re heading to the nala,’ said Shafeen. ‘The watering hole. It’s a hot day, so the tiger will go to drink, and the elephants know where the water is. The beaters crush down underbrush and drive them in the right direction to keep the tiger moving along the tiger beat.’
‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ I said. Then I remembered the very first time we’d been hunting together, pursuing the stag at Longcross on our first ever morning there. He’d told me he knew how to shoot from hunting tigers. Then I wondered if he’d been joking. Now I knew he hadn’t been. ‘You’ve been before, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, I’ve been before. With my father.’
Before I could get into this, there was a shout ahead and the whole procession stopped. We didn’t quite all pile into the back of each other like Colonel Hathi’s brigade, but it was close enough. Ahead, one of the mahouts was pointing and shouting, and all the others took up the cry.
At length the procession moved off again, and I said, ‘What’s going on?’ Shafeen relayed this question to the mahout in Hindi and he turned and addressed me directly.
‘Padachihn, memsahib,’ he said. ‘Footprint.’
And he jabbed his finger at the ground as we passed.
I followed the pointing finger and I saw it. I’m not kidding when I say that the print in the soft mud – quite distinct, with five toes and the gouge marks of claws – was as big as a bin lid.
It was both beautiful and absolutely terrifying.
25
We emerged from the lip of the jungle to see a watering hole fringed by trees.
‘This is the nala,’ said Shafeen as our elephant lurched forward into the strong sunlight.
I took in the scene. Each of the shady trees that stood by the watering hole had a white goat tied to the trunk, with just enough rope to let the creatures wander temptingly. The unwitting goats bleated wretchedly, only making themselves more obvious. They were the cheese in the mousetrap.
The stage was set. And into the scene, sitting atop an elephant behind his mahout, rifle in hand like the shikars, rode the main character.
Henry de Warlencourt.
When he caught sight of us he jumped so high I thought he was going to fall off his elephant. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
A series of expressions was marching across his face. Shock, fear and then … something like relief.
‘We need to talk to you!’ Shafeen called out.
‘I’m a bit busy to be honest, old chap,’ Henry called back drily, recovering his self-possession. He gestured around at his honoured guests on elephant-back. ‘Could we do this later?’
Then there was a shout from the beaters. ‘Baagh, baagh.’
We turned as one. I didn’t need a translation – I remembered that Shafeen had called himself the son of a baagh at that long-ago dinner at Longcross.
Baagh meant ‘tiger’.
She came out of the jungle, low and slow like a wraith. Her belly was close to the ground and her tail, trailing low behind, was lashing back and forth. Every muscle was tense, and you just knew she could have jumped many feet instantly, in any direction. The beaters wisely retreated as fast and discreetly as they could into the undergrowth, running for their lives as soon as they were clear. To be on foot around this mountain of bunched muscle bound in orange fur would be madness.
Her veins stood out like whipcords. She was big enough to carry a goddess and moved on silent feet as big as the beaters’ drums, now pounding even more wildly.
In contrast to the cacophony of the beat, every soul was silent apart from the mournful goats, still singing their own requiem.
The tiger gave out a low, murmuring growl, which I could feel in my ribs, and then ominously began to sniff the air.
Subconsciously I began to inhale too. Then, on the breeze, I caught it: a breath of the Princess Himani’s scent: the Guerlain L’Heure Bleue. Faint, but quite distinctive.
‘Can you smell that?’
Shafeen, without taking his eyes off the tiger, whispered, ‘What?’
‘Your mother’s perfume.’
‘Greer,’ he said from the side of his mouth, ‘what the hell are you talking about?’
‘Can’t you smell it?’
‘Actually yes. But now is not the time.’
‘Where’s it coming from?’ I persisted.
‘It must have been on us from the car,’ he hissed. ‘But don’t worry, we’re quite safe up here.’
‘I don’t see how we
can still smell of it – we’ve completely changed clothes.’
‘Greer. Not now.’
Then, in the distance, I saw a man in white sheltering under a tree, just like one of the stupid goats. He was the only one on foot in the entire hunt now the beaters had dispersed. Added to his brazen foolishness, he was keening in a long, piteous note, just like the sacrificial goats – a strange, mournful song that was sure to attract the attention of the tiger. I wondered what the hell he thought he was doing. That tree wouldn’t protect him. I had to break that terrible silence or he would be killed.
‘Get out!’ I shouted to him. ‘Get away! There’s a tiger.’
At the sight of me, the sound of me, the man ran forward, then was snapped back cruelly as he came to the extent of his rope.
His rope.
He was tied to the tree like the goats.
‘Memsahib!’
It was the Tiger, the Fox and the Brahmin again. Except this time it was a Dalit, not a Brahmin.
‘Shafeen … it’s … it’s Prem.’
‘He’s soaked in my mother’s cologne,’ said Shafeen slowly. Then, more urgently as he came to the same dreadful conclusion as me, ‘That’s why we’re smelling it … The tiger’ll ignore the goats and go for him.’
We’d thought ourselves so clever, working out that the Tiger Club ‘safari’ was all a cover for them hunting real tigers. But, of course, this was the Order of the Stag we were dealing with. They were not interested in hunting tigers any more than they were interested in hunting foxes. It was humans they were after all along: anyone they saw as inferior. Today they were hunting the lowest caste, because they thought they didn’t matter. They’d been doing this for years – centuries.
‘So much for Henry changing,’ spat Shafeen furiously. ‘So much for any of them changing. For God’s sake, this has to stop.’