“As it happens, Angus MacLean has kindly offered to make me his partner in a new venture.”
“That does not surprise me.”
Ramsey, however, was surprised: by the ironical way in which Whittaker said this.
“Why do you say that?”
It was a moment for prevarication. “Well, you are a very personable young man and you have unusual knowledge of the country. Naturally the first person to know of your availability would take you up. MacLean was aware of your financial circumstances?”
“Indeed he was. It was good of him to be so quick to offer me such a good opening.”
“He hasn’t done himself any harm in the process either,” said Whittaker drily. “May I ask what he expects of you?”
“I am going to represent his firm in an independent native state, Zafarala.”
Ruth, who, with her mother, had been listening in silence, but, unlike Constance, with pretended uninterest, looked up and involuntarily said “Oh! That is where we are going.”
“Really?”
Henry and Constance exchanged a smile. They were well accustomed to the effect their daughter had on young men, and the pleasure Ruth’s announcement had given Ramsey was plain.
Ruth, they also noted, had recollected her resolve of indifference: for she said, flatly, “Yes, really.”
“When do you leave Calcutta?”
“You had better ask Papa that.”
Whittaker said “We hope to set off by road in two or three days’ time. I know it’s a longer route, but by using horse-drawn wagons, with a spare pair of horses for each, and riding good horses ourselves, we shall make up the time.”
“That is certainly an original way of travelling.”
Ruth showed some animation once more. “It is the American way, Mr. Ramsey; the way we spent three years crossing the plains out in the far West.”
“It is just as well you are experienced, Miss Whittaker. I understand it is a dangerous life in those parts. I trust you have been properly advised about protecting yourselves against dacoits, Whittaker?”
“Dacoits?”
“Armed robbers.”
“Oh, yes. We are well prepared. My wife and daughter are both excellent shots. We have more than once had to fight off Indians — Red Indians, I believe you call them — and what we call road agents: highwaymen, to you.”
Ramsey looked from Constance to Ruth in astonishment. “You ladies have had to fight for your lives... with guns?”
“Sure,” said Ruth. “Our scalps. Mother and I have both got notches on our gun butts for the Injuns we’ve shot.”
It was a fine show of nonchalance and Ramsey, first amazed and then admiring, began to laugh.
“I confess I have never met anyone like you before.”
“Plenty more like us back home,” Ruth told him.
“There is just one piece of advice which I hope you won’t mind my giving you.”
Whittaker nodded. “I was hoping to ask you many things. Go ahead.”
“Have you engaged a chaukidar?”
“What is that?”
“A night watchman. You should take one with you. And make sure he is a Ramusi.”
“Is that some tribe that specialises in... er... night watching?”
“Yes, a tribe of thieves. That is why they make the best guards, just as poachers make the best gamekeepers: other thieves will not try to rob their masters.”
“How would a robber know that the night watchman was a Ramusi?”
“In India everyone’s caste, religion, social position, district, everything about him or her, is recognised by every other Indian by numerous signs that most Europeans...”
“We’re Americans,” Ruth put in quickly.
“I should have said whites... don’t recognise. The way a man ties his turban can tell one a great deal about him. I’ll find you a Ramusi, if you wish. MacLean employs one. He’ll soon produce one of his brethren.”
“You are a very useful fellow to know, Ramsey. I am delighted to hear that we are going to the same place. That is, I presume you are also going to the capital of Zafarala?”
“To Nekshahr? Yes, I am.”
“Have you ever been there?”
“No. But my father was there twice. Once as a young officer and again when he commanded the regiment.”
“Do you have friends there?”
Ramsey hesitated at this strange construction. To anyone accustomed to correct English “do you have” could only imply a continuing action, could only mean “are you in the habit of having?”
“Have I friends there?” Whittaker nodded, puzzled by the repetition. “Yes, I have one childhood friend. His name is Ghulam Kasim. His father was the present Nawab’s elder brother, who died while the old Nawab was still alive. He — the elder brother, Ghulam Kasim’s father — brought his family to Calcutta for a year to make himself known to the Governor General and to British officials here. He was a far-sighted man and would have made an excellent ruler. Ghulam Kasim and I were both seven years old then. We were inseparable friends for that year. The regiment was on a year’s garrison duty here, at Fort William, instead of the usual Barrackpore duty, so Ghulam Kasim and I were in and out of each other’s houses all the time.”
“That sounds like a very useful connection. I guess you must have many of them, all over India. What can you tell us about Zafarala?”
“It has an interesting history. In the early Seventeenth Century, when the Moghuls — who were, of course, Muslims —were at the height of their power, the Raja of a small Rajput state, who was, of course, a Hindu, converted to Islam. That meant that his whole family had to change its religion. As you probably know, the Rajputs are the pre-eminent warrior race. The Moghul Emperor was waging war on several small states to the south and east of Balaspur and the newly-converted Raja offered his services. The Balaspur Army was small but very ferocious, and with the Raja leading it personally, it quickly conquered the territories of three other minor rulers. In gratitude, the Moghul Emperor gave the Raja of Balaspur these three states to add to his own and renamed the new, and very large, state Zafarala; which means Sublime Victory.”
Constance clapped her hands. “Well now, isn’t that interesting! And so romantic.”
Ruth’s expression suggested that she was not of the same opinion.
Constance asked “Does Nekshahr have a meaning?”
“It means Beautiful City.”
“Oh, isn’t that nice to hear, Ruth?”
Ruth shrugged. “What does ‘beautiful’ mean in India? Do the Indians consider Bombay and Calcutta are beautiful?”
Ramsey gave her an amused look. “You do not think they are, evidently.”
“I grant there are some fine buildings here, and the seashore gives Bombay something. But I’ve never known even a cow-town that smelled as bad as either of them.”
“A cow-town?”
“A small town in cattle country out in our West. They are pretty smelly, you know, what with...”
“Ruth!” Constance cut her off sharply. “That is hardly a seemly topic for the dinner table.”
Ruth glared at Ramsey and coloured under his answering grin.
“When are you leaving for Nekshahr?” Whittaker asked.
“In a week or so. I still have a lot to learn here. We should arrive at about the same time. I’m taking a consignment of goods as far as I can by country boat.”
“Will you be so kind as to send along a chaukidar for us in the next day or two?”
“With pleasure.”
“What can you tell me about the Nawab of Zafarala? Is he a good ruler? Can he be trusted? And why is he not called Raja?”
“Raja is a Hindu title. Nawab is Muslim. And as for what I know of him, I have heard nothing to his credit. He is a monster.”
“That is what I heard. It seems to me that should make it even more attractive to establish some enterprise in his state: nobody else would want to compete.”
“That
had never occurred to me.” Ramsey smiled wryly. “It just goes to show how ignorant I am of commerce.”
When he had taken his leave, and told them he was looking forward to renewing their acquaintance in Nekshahr, Whittaker said “That is one very fine young man. I wish I had gotten to him before he fell into MacLean’s clutches.”
Constance looked concerned. “I hope you don’t mean he was been tricked, Henry?”
Whittaker’s reply did not answer her question. “Did you notice he was so well-mannered he did not ask what I aim to do in Zafarala?”
Ruth tossed her head. “That was cold British aloofness.”
*
“How much longer do you want me to delay my going, Angus?”
Ramsey had been here four days now and it had been all flies and stench and swelter, not at all like soldiering. He felt himself being boiled in his own sweat: no new discomfort, but made more burdensome in town than on parade or manoeuvres. The broad river offered an escape to cooler breezes. However brazenly the sun blazed from the molten sky, surely there would be some surcease under the awning of a boat, fanned by the airs it created by its passage, the heat reflecting less brutally off the water than from the baked earth, city streets and buildings.
“Another three days, Hugh. There’s more I want you to know yet. Let’s give it a full week. Better sure than sorry. Tomorrow’s the Sabbath and you can spend the day as you wish: I’ll not impose on you at all, although I hope you’ll come with us to St. John’s for Matins. Sunday is the one chance I have in the week to spend time with my children: a picnic in the Cold Weather is the extent of our social activity, and then it’s for the bairns’ amusement. On Wednesday morning as early as you wish you may take your leave of Calcutta. The boats will be loaded and ready on Tuesday night.”
“Don’t think I’m ungrateful.”
“I don’t think that at all. It’s right that you should be eager to set off. I recall how irksome I found the journey here from Scotland. There was no room in my mind for anything but getting to grips with whatever awaited me.”
“That’s a diplomatic way of reminding me a week is nothing to get impatient about; and you’re right.”
“I’m glad you’ve got such fire in your belly: you wouldn’t be the man for me, or for this job, if you hadn’t. But another three days won’t be insupportable, will they now?”
*
Morning Service at St. John’s was a grand affair graced by the Governor General. The line of wheeled conveyances and palkis, palanquins, converged on the big church at one side of the maidan from every direction. Ramsey had always wondered, when he saw the gentry going to their fashionable London churches, how many went to worship and how many to display their expensive clothes. And when he attended church in the country he wondered how many were there to pray and how many because their absence would be conspicuous in a small community and displeasing to the squire or the lord of the manor. He asked himself the same questions now, for both applied in Calcutta where there were high fashion, social climbing and a European population in which almost everyone knew everybody else at least by sight.
He saw Pocock descend grandly from a carriage accompanied by his wife and three spinster daughters. The lawyer politely but coldly raised his hat to the MacLeans and ostentatiously cut Ramsey; who equally ignored him, but with a sarcastic laugh which turned the women’s heads to glower at him.
In the evening he borrowed one of MacLean’s horses and joined the leisurely-moving assemblage up and down the Red Road and The Strand, known as The Course, which he had been unable to during the week. He felt that most of the acknowledgments he received to his greetings were strained and he found that an unusual number of his acquaintances happened to be looking the other way when he passed. Officers and their ladies were polite but hardly cordial. The disgrace his regiment had brought upon itself was exacting a mortifying penalty. In defiance of the opinions of people whom, at that moment, he held in the same contempt as shown by his Pathan orderly, he stayed until the last of them were going home.
Later he dined at Fort William as the guest of one of the lieutenants who had acted as his seconds. He had been looking forward to a few hours in the kind of company he most enjoyed, but in the event they exacerbated his vexation. None of the married officers was dining in and many of the bachelors were out on social engagements. His two friends were kind and cheerful but he felt that others were regarding him askance; the thought came to him that perhaps he had been invited tonight just because there would be so few present to chasten him. He stayed only as late as good manners demanded.
On Monday morning the world seemed a sour place to Ramsey when he woke: until he reminded himself that he had to endure only 48 hours more of tedium and insults, that he was on the threshold of a great venture that was to be the fulfilment of his dreams when he sailed for India as a callow 18-year-old, and that the coming two days would be filled with preparation and the acquisition of further new knowledge.
Sher Mahommed Khan seemed to be similarly enlivened, for he pottered about his work singing quietly to himself: Pathan love songs of surpassing indecency. Karim Baksh, still limping from his leg wound, brushed clothes and carried off soiled linen to the dhobi as cheerfully as Ramsey had seen him since Alec Lumsden’s murder: and so he should, for from Zafarala it was a short journey to his home in the Punjab.
MacLean was edgy, all Monday-morning crispness and preoccupation, unusually taciturn, restless when they reached the office. After half an hour he left Ramsey to work his way through a pile of invoices, bills of lading and trading accounts and had himself carried in his palki to see a junior attorney at his office near the Court House about a debtor.
He was back in less than an hour, out of breath, his face grave and his voice portentously lowered when he leaned across his desk to speak.
“I’ve sent word to Garden Reach to load the boats for Zafarala immediately.”
Ramsey sat up sharply and put a paperweight on the page of a ledger, now an automatic action. “Why?”
“There’s a hornets’ nest stirring around the courts and the lawyer’s offices. The news will be all over the town by tiffin.”
“I don’t understand, Angus.”
“It seems Pocock is near to death.”
“Pocock? What has that to do with Zaf...”
“He was attacked last night and badly beaten.”
“Pocock? Where? What happened?”
“Did you know they live out at Alipore? He and his wife were on their way home from a dinner party — not far from my house, as it happens — and their carriage was stopped on a lonely stretch of road...”
“Good God! Was she...”
“They didn’t harm her. It seems one of them held a gag over her mouth to stop her screaming and another man — a Pathan, they say — gave him and his coachman an unmerciful thrashing.”
During a shocked silence Ramsey felt a surge of confused thoughts rushing about in his head. Then the portent of what MacLean was trying to say came to him.
“Are you telling me that that is why...”
“Yes, Hugh, that’s why I’ve ordered the boats to be loaded at once and I want you to leave for Zafarala immediately.”
“But, by God, you don’t think I had anything to do with it, do you?”
“Of course I don’t. But I fear everyone else will think differently; and I am sure I need not explain to you why.”
“But that’s monstrous.”
“Aye, it’s purely circumstantial, but it will look very bad for you if Pocock dies. And for your servants.”
“I’m not going, Angus.”
“You have to, Hugh. For your own good and for my sake too.”
“If I run away I’ll invite suspicion. In any case, I wouldn’t do it: that would be sheer cowardice.”
“You may be safe enough, but witnesses can be bought for a few rupees to perjure themselves about anything. No alibi your servants put forward would be worth anything against that sort of
evidence.”
“They are not men to run from any kind of danger.”
“You’re being very selfish. You put me in a most awkward position. Whether or not Pocock recovers, you’ll be under suspicion.”
“There’s an easy solution to that: forget our arrangements; I’ll take my chance on my own.”
“Now, Hugh, don’t be hasty...”
“What else d’you expect me to say?”
“You may have high and mighty ideas about your lofty code as an officer, and you may look down on merchants and the like, but your father is my friend and I am beholden to him.”
“I’m sure that whatever you ever felt you owed my father was repaid long ago; and in the way he’d appreciate most, hard cash, not in kind by way of favours to his son.”
“That kind of cynicism doesn’t become a decent laddie like you. I know you’ve been deeply hurt and I know the wound is still raw, but there’s no need to talk like that.”
“I’m sorry. But what good would it do if I did bring forward my departure? If the court wants to arrest me, it can be done just as easily anywhere in Bengal as in Calcutta. Where I’m going is no secret. It’ll be many days before I’m out of British territory.”
“If you’re decently out of the way, they’ll not bother.”
“And I’d never be able to show my face in Calcutta again. Or hold up my head in front of my friends anywhere. What would my old Army friends think of me? What would my father feel? And what about the regiment? I don’t want to add to its discredit.”
“If you intend to cling to that old scale of values, my boy, you made a great fundamental mistake when you decided to venture into the world to make your fortune. You’d better ask Colonel Howell to take you back. Forget Zafarala: take a boat to Barrackpore.”
Ramsey stood up and leaned across the desk, resting his fists on its top. MacLean flinched back.
“Now listen to me very carefully, Angus. You’ve been good to me and I’m grateful; and indebted. But don’t you ever... ever sneer or jeer at me again. Understand? Because if you do, I’ll tear your bloody head off your shoulders with my bare hands.”
Ramsey felt choked with anger and his voice shook with it. MacLean sat well back in his chair and regarded him for a long time with eyes that had taken on a hard glaze like porcelain.
A Good Soldier Page 10