The Ravi Lancers

by John Masters

  ‘Yes. On convalescent leave. I was gassed.’

  ‘How dreadful! Though you appear to have made a remarkable recovery ... Do you know Prince Ranjitsinhji?’

  ‘Not personally, although he is distantly related to my family.’

  ‘Really? Indeed?’ The little man’s sharp nose quivered and he took off his pince-nez. ‘Does that mean that you are a prince, too?’

  Krishna said, ‘Yes, of a sort. My grandfather is the rajah. I suppose I shall inherit in due course, if I am not killed first.’

  ‘That would be appalling,’ the little man said energetically, ‘a needless waste, your highness, when there are so many others the world can well afford to lose ... This merely doubles the force of what I was going to propose to you. I spoke to Mr. Wilkinson and our senior professionals while you were batting. They all agreed that you should be asked to turn out regularly for the county side. We are not playing a full schedule of course because of this wretched war, but there are enough matches and charity games to keep the players’ eyes in for when the war is over and we can get back to real cricket. Will you accept?’

  ‘I can’t think of anything I’d like more,’ Krishna said slowly. ‘It’s been my dream, my ambition all my life. Of course I used to imagine myself playing for Sussex ... like Ranjit ... but I’m going down to Wiltshire now to finish my convalescence, and then I have to go...’

  ‘But you have done your bit!’ Mr. Holmes said eagerly. ‘Already wounded and gassed! We are in a position, through our contacts in the government--I may say that a member of our committee is in the Cabinet--to give you a posting here in England--in London District, in fact--which would enable you to play cricket nearly every day. Indeed, playing cricket would be part of your duties.’

  Krishna looked out of the window. The great sweep of turf was empty except for the heavy roller going over the centre pitch, the horses plodding on padded hoofs, and a band of men clearing paper off the benches. A strong smell of coal gas wafted through the window from the gasworks. He said, ‘It is my grandfather’s regiment that I am serving with. How can I leave it?’

  Mr. Holmes cried, ‘He would not want his grandson and heir to die in a muddy French ditch, when he could be gracing the playing fields of England ... And you would have a considerable effect on our club’s finances, your highness. We need money to attract the best young professional prospects, and we’d like to pay a little more to those we already have. We want to put in some improvements here at the Oval, and we are starting a scouting scheme to find good players around the county ... Your name, Prince Krishna Ram, would draw the crowds. That’s my business...’

  Krishna Ram thought sadly, the smell of poisonous gas, coal gas, is drifting across the striped turf, and a layer of soot is steadily falling on it. It was going on when he was out there, soiling the white flannels and the peaked caps and the sunburned forearms and the graceful bats, overlaying the smell of linseed oil with a layer of chemical filth, even as this sharp-nosed little man was burying the beauty of the game under commercial pollution. In that moment he knew that even cricket, his first and greatest love, would never be the same for him again. Damn them all! What was going to be left to live with, and live for?

  He rose to his feet. ‘I appreciate your offer,’ he said. ‘I must go back to France.’

  He had started to say it was his duty, but the word sounded pompous, and indeed was false, for what was sending him back to France was not duty but something more complex, which he could not yet properly define or explain to himself, except that it was to do with Warren Bateman.

  ‘After the war, then?’ Mr. Holmes said, coming round the desk.

  ‘I shall be returning to India,’ Krishna said.

  Mr. Holmes dropped his hand in despair. ‘Well, your highness, may I please have your promise that you won’t sign up with any other county, then?’

  Krishna Ram said, ‘Yes, I’ll give you that. Good-bye.’

  Diana was waiting at the pavilion exit when he came out, carrying his suitcase. Some men at a pub across the road were catcalling and whistling at her. He frowned at them, but she came running to him, her eyes shining. ‘Oh, Krishna, I’m so proud of you! After Jack Hobbs making a duck, too! Here, let me help you carry that suitcase. It looks as though it weighs a ton.’

  ‘It does,’ he said, ‘but I’m fit again. I can carry it.’ But she had grabbed the handle, her hand behind his, and so they went down the Kennington Road together until Krishna saw a motor taxi-cab approaching and hailed it. ‘It’ll be terribly expensive, all the way to Paddington,’ Diana said. ‘I thought we were going to the tube station.’

  He smiled at her almost masterfully. ‘I’ve had nothing else to spend my money on while I’ve been in France. We could take a taxi all the way to Shrewford Pennel if we wanted to.’

  ‘Oh, no! ‘ she said.

  Then they were in the high cab and the driver was turning it skilfully in the street and they were off. The clouds had lifted and the sky was a dusty grey damask, alive with swallows and martins swooping about the silhouetted chimney pots, and golden points of light piercing the twilight to unimaginable depths. The growing dusk hid the squalor of the streets and lights made the river a luminescent carpet under Westminster Bridge. The trees were heavy in the parks, and the people walking under them pale smudges of movement on the new-cut sweet-smelling grass.

  For a time the presence of London, as Krishna had first sensed it in September ‘14, came back to him, and behind it the bearing strength of England, the ancientness of her foundations--the Abbey towers a darker bulk against the sky--then the walk to Woolwich slithered up from its deep resting place, and the smells of gas and vomit overcame him. The awe subsided. This was a foreign city, of which he knew much--perhaps too much; and this a foreign land, which had forced its tongue on him; off a foreign continent, its monuments not his, its gods no more ancient, only different, and now showing themselves to be disgusting and dangerous.

  It was the woman at his side who awed him now, in the taxi, in the clamour of Paddington. They were early, and having taken their places, strolled up the platform. The green and copper engine hissed at the head of the immaculate train and signal lights gleamed like red stars on the road bridge at the end of the platforms. There was a mixed smell of steam, coal smoke and burning anthracite, but it was not unpleasant. She linked her arm again in his, unbidden, and he caught a few curious stares, but he did not care. Let them stare. His thoughts were beyond their ken, for they were not Indians. Then they took their places, full darkness fell, and with a long whistle the train glided out through the lamplit slums towards the country.

  Sunday morning, the bells ringing for church, and the Bateman women pulling on their gloves in the hall. ‘I don’t know why I go,’ Joan Bateman said. ‘Not many people in this country are behaving in a Christian manner ... and certainly none of the parishioners here.’

  ‘Now, Joan,’ old Mrs. Bateman said equably, ‘while you’re in this house, you’ll go to church, like the rest of us. It would be very impolite to Mr. Wyatt if we didn’t.’

  ‘Oh, Mother,’ Joan said impatiently, ‘politeness doesn’t matter compared with honesty.’

  ‘One can be too honest for one’s own good,’ Mrs. Bateman said. She looked at Krishna, who opened the door, and offered her his arm. From behind them Joan, her arm on Ralph Harris’s, said, ‘And charity is another thing that’s missing here. You wait till the trial tomorrow and see how much charity there’ll be for Sam, on account of six miserable pheasants. Six! It isn’t charity that’ll help him, but the lawyer I’ve got from London.’

  Diana said plaintively, ‘Please don’t let’s talk about it any more, Joan. You’ll spoil Krishna’s holiday.’

  Then they were in the church, and the sexton was tolling the sharp hurry-up bells, and the service began. In London it had been the chemical filth and the terrifying power of the machines that came between Krishna and an acceptance of so much that was beautiful and good in Europe. Here it
was the contrast between what the Christian church taught and what Christians did. The church believed in poverty--but many here were far from poor, certainly the vicar with his fat smooth face; and it believed in charity--but as Joan said, who was being charitable towards Young Marsh? And it taught ‘Thou shalt not kill’----but the parson was preaching a sermon of hate against the Huns, as the despoilers of Christianity. What he said was not true, Krishna thought, listening: it was not the Germans who were destroying Christianity, but Christendom bent on destroying itself, and with the very qualities that had made it what it was and sent it out to dominate the world.

  After lunch Diana said, ‘Can I walk the puppies for you today, Joan?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ Joan said moodily. ‘I’m going to give them back to the Master soon. Not a soul in the hunt has a spark of generosity in him. Why should I help them with hounds?’

  Diana said, ‘Come on, Krishna, a good walk will do us good.’ She collected the three gangling fox-hound puppies from the stables, took a whip, and set off down the lane towards the north. ‘Last season’s puppies have to be walked every day, to get them fit, and they have to be taught to obey the voice and the whip--the sound of it,’ she said. ‘You never actually hit them except to whip them off the kill or a false scent or if they chase a cat or something awful like that.’ She cracked the whip over the puppies’ heads with a bloodcurdling shriek, ‘Coo-o-me back there, Hector, Ajax! Coooome back! ... There are usually about six couple of new hounds to be walked every summer. We agreed to walk one and a half couple for the dog pack, and then I went to work in Woolwich. I felt dreadful, asking Joan to walk them for me, and now she doesn’t want to. Oh dear.’

  She strode on, her grey skirt a clear foot above her ankles, her short hair free in the unmoving air. Cows dozed somnolently under the oaks in the big fields, bees hummed and butterflies flitted among the flower banks. Along the banks of the Avon the pups barked at trout clear in the water and Diana cracked her whip and called them fool and idiot. The tower of Woodborough church fell back on their left and they began the gentle climb to the Canal. Then they strode out along the towpath towards Wilcot, the vale of Pewsey spread like a chequerboard below. A long train, green and copper, chocolate and cream, drew a plume of white steam down the vale as it raced through oak copses and elm rows, past long barns and the gleam of ponds. On the far hill a white horse, cut into the chalk by a Saxon king 800 years before, stood out like a prehistoric talisman against the bare green of the slope.

  In the distance, down a long stretch of the grass-grown towpath, a walker approached. He was swinging a cane, a man walking alone, without a dog. When still a quarter of a mile away it seemed to Krishna that he hesitated and looked to right and left for a way to escape; but the canal ran here on an embankment and there was a thick hedge at the foot of the steep slope.

  Krishna thought, the man’s walk is familiar, I have seen him before. Then Diana cracked her whip and shouted, ‘Coooome back, Apollo! Heel, heel!’ as the hounds bounded forward to meet the oncoming walker, and Krishna recognized him. His heart too leaped and, like the hounds, he bounded forward, wondering for a moment whether the whip would crack over him, too. As the big puppies bayed, he cried, ‘Mr. Fleming! ‘

  Diana said, ‘Down, Ajax! ... It’s Mr. Fuller.’

  Krishna said, ‘It’s Mr. Fleming ... How are you, sir?’ His hand was out, the other had taken it, and Krishna pumped eagerly. This was his old tutor, there was no mistaking the sandy hair, long thin face, pale eyes and full lips, the look at once bookish and athletic. It was ten years since he had left Basohli and so he must be about forty-five now. He looked a little older.

  ‘It is Mr. Fuller, isn’t it?’ Diana said.

  ‘Yes, Miss Bateman,’ the man said. He hesitated and then said to Krishna, ‘And Mr. Fleming, too. But I suggest you forget that ... that you ever knew me.’

  ‘How can I forget?’ Krishna cried. ‘You taught me everything I know about England ... manners ... cricket...’

  ‘Today’s Observer has quite a long account of your innings yesterday,’ Mr. Fleming said with a half-smile. ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘Thank you, sir ... I had no idea you lived near here. You must come to the Old Vicarage, and...’

  The other man said, ‘I don’t think that would be welcomed.’

  ‘Then I will come and see you. There is so much to talk about. My father died ... my mother and I were so worried when you didn’t write.’

  The man said again, supplicating, ‘Krishna, I beg of you, forget that I ever existed.’

  ‘I can’t,’ he said, realizing that Diana had taken herself a little way off under pretence of controlling the hounds. ‘I’m staying a week more, then I have to go back to France.’

  ‘I know,’ the man said. ‘And I watched you play for the village last summer ... from a long way off.’

  ‘When can I come and see you?’

  The man hesitated a long time, then said, ‘I suppose it’ll be best ... Will tea on Wednesday do? My cottage is off the Pewsey road, two doors past the post office. It’s called Hill Cottage and it has begonias growing in the front garden. Four o’clock then. Goodbye, Miss Bateman.’ He replaced the tweed cap, which he had taken off when Diana first spoke his name, and strode quickly away along the towpath.

  Krishna and Diana walked on in the opposite direction. ‘What an extraordinary thing,’ Krishna said slowly, ‘he was my tutor for five years in Basohli, and his name was Fleming.’

  ‘He calls himself Fuller here,’ Diana said, and then, ‘They say he’s a ... pansy, the girls at the factory call them.’ She was blushing. ‘He was in everything here--shooting, cricket, carol singing--until something happened, something to do with a boy on holiday from Eton. I don’t know how serious it was, but...’

  Krishna remembered the talk at the cricket match in September. And Warren Bateman telling him one afternoon--they’d been discussing Sher Singh--that he’d met the man Fuller in the lane on his leave and snubbed him. Fuller was his dear Mr. Fleming. He realized now, knowing what he knew and having seen what he had seen, that he accepted without question that Mr. Fleming was a homosexual. Perhaps he had always guessed it although he had made no sexual advance during his five years as Krishna’s tutor.

  But this man was his Mr. Fleming. He had not become a drunkard, taken to dope, or changed in some other way. He was the same man he had always been. This village--and people like Warren--were rejecting him because of his suspected homosexuality. This in the name of charity? How differently they, Indians, had dealt with Sher Singh!

  The puppies bounded on and Diana cracked her whip and shouted. She was getting a little hoarse, he noted. She at any rate was real, and generous.

  The train steamed away, Londonward, the barrister leaning out and waving. Diana said briskly, ‘Well, there’s nothing more we can do. If we hurry we won’t keep Mother waiting long for lunch.’ She took the driver’s seat of the trap, with Krishna beside her and Ralph Harris and Joan Bateman in the back. She shook the whip and cried, ‘Hup, Mr. Harcourt!’ They trotted down the station approach and set off on the drive to Shrewford Pennel.

  No one spoke for a while, until Ralph said bitterly, ‘There’s English justice for you today! Those magistrates had no right to make that offer they made Sam.’

  ‘It’s quite common, nowadays,’ Diana said defensively. ‘After all, men are wanted in France.’

  Joan said, ‘Yes, but to offer a man--a self-confessed pacifist--the choice of three months in jail or volunteering for the army, is a disgrace. For Sam it isn’t a choice at all. It’s like fining him a hundred pounds or sending him to jail. He doesn’t have a hundred pounds.’ Her scarf flew out in the breeze. Her face was made up white with pale mauve lips and huge kohl-ringed eyes. Her long skirt was of yellow and mauve silk, and both her arms were covered in bangles and hanging charms.

  ‘What do you think, Krishna?’ she said suddenly. ‘Would you allow a thing like that in India?’

 
‘Not exactly the same,’ he said cautiously, turning round to speak to her. He reflected that his grandfather might have ordered Young Marsh’s hand cut off, or set him free, but he wouldn’t have made it a choice; and pacifists were not going to make good soldiers.

  Diana said, ‘Poaching has got to be punished. Especially taking birds out of season.’

  Ralph said, ‘I don’t agree. As Sam said in court, the rich have no right to preserve wild birds for their own use. He only poached ... took ... those six birds to give to the poor in London.’

  ’Someone must have betrayed him,’ Diana said thoughtfully. ‘The policeman arriving and knowing where to look was too much for a coincidence.’

  ‘It was his father,’ Ralph said. ‘Old Marsh. Old Marsh would do anything for Sir Tristram.’

  ‘Well, the Pennels have employed him for over sixty years,’ Diana said.

  ‘That doesn’t matter any more,’ Joan said. ‘There are more important things than loyalty to feudal overlords ... Can’t you see? Can’t you feel? The wrongness was always there, but what’s happening in France is making everyone see it.’

  ‘I wish the war was over,’ Diana said, glancing at Krishna.

  ‘I used to pray for that,’ Joan said, ‘when I thought of my father. Harry. Tim. Young Tristram Pennel. Dick Sturgess. Jim Hall. Tommy Cutler. People I’d grown up with ... Now, I don’t. I want the war to go on until it destroys everything we’ve believed in. Then we can start again.’

  There was a long silence. The horse’s hoofs clopped on. A light summer shower drifted over, cloud shadows momentarily dark above the white horse carved on the hill. Diana said, ‘I’m glad we were allowed to give notice of appeal, and keep Young Marsh out on bail ... but where’s the money coming from? Mr. Woodhouse must be very expensive.’

  ‘Mother said she’d pay as much as she could,’ Ralph said shortly. ‘I told Mr. Woodhouse and he agreed to mark his brief accordingly.’