But the Governor General – the man on whom half the world, it seemed, was now bending its thoughts – the Governor General woke, and … for a moment, as George slowly surfaced from his sticky sleep, he thought he was at sea. The gentle rocking motion to which he woke each morning had never struck him like that before, and he opened his eyes in a state of confusion. He came to his senses consecutively, with a series of corrections. The rocking stopped, and by him, patiently, was the boy with the morning chai and the little old man whose task it was to lay hands on the bed and silently rock George into wakefulness. Not at sea, but in a camp; George stared up at the canvas, and collected himself. The next thing was to recall who he was; the Governor General. The next was to summon up his own name, George, and what he was doing there. The purpose of the day swam into his consciousness like an eel, and with it the thought which always came to him last, as he woke in the mornings. The last thought, as ever, was a single word, and the word was this: Peshawar.
‘Thank you,’ he said to the lowly attendants, and as he did so, clutching his chai to his nightgown, translucent with sweat, the higher attendants, the bath-wallahs, entered with the accoutrements of ablution. And as the flaps of the inner tent opened and closed behind the tin tub, a glimpse of the high authorities of the Governor General’s suite could be glimpsed. They ought to be grave and silent and tall as angel executioners, George felt, but they never were. The connection of Palmerston (so very distant a connection) was glimpsed squeezing the shoulder of an adjutant, and the rest of them were joshing and laughing like undergraduates at some long-established joke. They awaited the Governor’s instructions, and he would make them wait; George pondered the odd fact that they would only ever do what they had agreed to do anyway. He did not have the power, he had reluctantly concluded, to give instructions or to summon unwilling princes, and, indeed, had not particularly wanted these princes to come; he had followed the advice of his underlings, or as other people might have put it, their instructions. But if he did not have that power, he had, at least, the power to make his giggling entourage wait. He had, at least, the power to decide to bathe, and rise, and eat, if not entirely the power to decide when he should do these things, and he watched the tin bath being filled from steaming kettles, thickening up the dense soupy air one degree further, with a sense of smug half-sleepy half-satisfaction.
3.
Laughter erupted, outside the door of the tent, from the Governor’s suite – no, from further away, from the soldiers who were forever lounging outside.
‘What is that?’ Auckland asked petulantly. ‘What are they laughing about?’
‘A silly fellow shot himself last night,’ the mahout confirmed.
Auckland raised an eyebrow.
‘Shot himself in a ridiculous way,’ the mahout went on, rattling the story off in case the honoured Governor General’s bath should be concluded, and he dismissed with his marvellous narrative not fully told. ‘He was trying to see down the barrel of his gun with a candle, and it went off.’
‘No matter for … merriment, sir,’ Auckland said, who had problems with his Ms and Fs.
‘No, indeed, Your Lordship,’ the mahout said, retreating into one of his lowest bows, his arms opening wide and round like the arms of a mechanical toy. But the effort not to laugh at such a story was too great to be quelled even by the full gravity of the Governor General, and he soon burst out again, as the boy with the chai cast alarmed looks at his boldness. ‘He was a foolish fellow, sir, a fellow no ornament to the Company, who promised nothing much. And last month the fellows stole his boots as a jape and he came before you on parade in his stockinged feet, he had the audacity, and was whipped for it—’
‘I recall,’ Lord Auckland said, as the mahout hugged himself with laughter at the memory of the silly fellow, in his breeches and his stockinged feet, being lightly, so lightly beaten, as if in jest, and still howling.
‘Well, he was no soldier and promised nothing,’ the mahout said. ‘Every day, a different different fault, an inventive fellow in his failings, one might say. Never the same fault twice. Gracious heavens, Lordship! And yesterday he had not cleaned his gun, and was told to clean it, and instead he lay in his tent and slept until it was quite dark. And he could not see to clean it, so he lit a candle, and he held the candle to the barrel of the gun, and he peered, careful careful, into the barrel so he could see all the way down to the powder, and then, and then …’
The mahout could not go on, the story was so funny.
‘… and when the Colonel came in, he saw – he saw – who it was – he saw—’ The mahout paused and, dropping an octave, corrected himself statelily, ‘—whom it was – and—’ presto, ‘—and remembered the fellow. And the Colonel looked up at the wall of the tent where the brains were painted, and the Colonel said, without even thinking or seeming to think, that this was one mess the useless fellow had made that he would have to be excused, excused from cleaning up …’
‘Gentlemen!’ the Governor General called over the boy’s head. The attendant was already doubling up with laughter, and converted it neatly into a deep serious bow, retreating around the advancing suite. ‘Well, good … morning, gentlemen. I hope you, at least, have something rational to tell me today. I am … most undisguisably tired of listening to the most abject nonsense. If there is a … man who suffers … more than I, or who wastes every hour of the day enduring the silliest conversations, at the conversational … mercy of the lowest of his body-servants, I pity him, gentlemen, I pity him.’
‘We are quite sah-pwised,’ the most senior of the junior adjutants put in jovially, pink-cheeked and chuckling with excitement. ‘Sah-pwised – like the Goddess Venus at the forge of, of some old Gweek fellow, Lord Auckland—’
‘Caught out, disturbed in our slumbers, quite unawares,’ another cried.
‘And if it had been one’s enemy, one had all been slaughtered, all slaughtered in one’s beds,’ the terrific swell added, going a little too far, and feeling constrained to add a falling and rather apologetic ‘no doubt, no doubt, Lord Auckland’, and blushing. The Governor General decided to be indulgent, however.
‘Not that we have any enemies, eh, what … Frampton?’ he said. Frampton was a particular trial to the Governor’s tongue. The whole suite collapsed in sycophantic hilarity. ‘Caught out, eh? Caught short with our breeches down.’ This was almost too much for the entourage, who might have been at a country raree show, so concertedly did they contrive to split their sides. Really, the Governor General thought with forgiving delight, of all the Governor Generals they have known, how much the most must they admire me, to want to please me so much. ‘So I presume we have a … visitor. Rather early in the day to call, I should have said.’
‘A visitor, indeed,’ the entourage chorused.
‘The Lion of the Punjab—’
‘Arrived in the night, an hour before dawn, cool as you like—’
‘Sitting there, demanding to be fed and watered, stuffing away, pleased as Punch—’
‘Bacon and eggs—’
‘Bacon and eggs—’
‘Never seen the like—’
‘Not at home, Governor, not at home, one could always say that, one supposes—’
‘Is this—’
‘The fellows are saying he said, is this, is this—’
‘Is this your English beef?’
‘Is this your English beef!’
‘Vewy happy, most happy indeed, to wait on Your Lordship’s pleasure.’
‘Very happy indeed. Head to foot in cloth-of-gold, and nothing to say for himself but more of your English beef, sir, more beef, sir!’
‘More beef!’
‘More of your English beef!’
The hilarity swallowed any kind of explanation, and the entourage clung on to each other, helpless with mirth.
‘I advise Your Lordship, however,’ the connection (rather a distant connection) of Palmerston said, entirely straight-faced, ‘not to delay paying your co
mpliments to Mr Runjeet Singh. It might be entirely wise to pay one’s civility in person, and soon. After all, I fear that a delay of an hour might very well lead to tragic consequences. At the current rate, it is very strongly to be thought that a further pig will have to lay down its life, and the pig-keepers advise me that the sties are in a most mutinous state already. Whatever their gruntling feelings on the prospect of dying to please the English private soldier, there is a distinct sense of disgruntled, disgruntled muttering when they consider on whose plate they may now end up. The sense of duty so carefully inculcated in Your Lordship’s pigs is flagging, sir, distinctly flagging. I will be frank, Governor General. To ask for a further hoggish volunteer to sacrifice himself in the cause of the Lion of the Punjab’s fierce although somewhat idle curiosity about what to him must be the exotic and fascinating processes of an English breakfast may very well lead to distressing and unfortunate scenes among the porcine members of Your Lordship’s suite. I apologize, I truly apologize, for speaking so frankly.’
‘Kedgeree—’
‘Kidneys—’
‘He is a marvel, a true marvel.’
‘Very well, gentlemen,’ the Governor General said. ‘Let it be so. You have … my word that what thirty minutes shall achieve in the inner gubernatorial recesses shall suffice, and I shall be with you very shortly. I had heard … much of Runjeet Singh, the Lion of the Punjab, but – kedgeree?’
‘Kidneys—’
‘Bacon—’
‘Bacon and eggs, if it please Your Lordship.’
‘And,’ Lord Auckland continued, serenely delighted. ‘We shall do … more for him. We shall make him … feel that he has had the supreme honour of keeping us waiting for his august presence, rather than, let us say, appeared at an absurd hour of the night and caused us to be dislodged from our … most comfortable beds. Not only that, I propose to make the ultimate sacrifice myself, and, in the … matter of breakfast, throw myself on the King’s … mercy. As for you – you will shift for yourselves. There … may be something next door. Liberty Hall, gentlemen, Liberty Hall. Half an hour, if you please.’
The Governor General in his damp nightgown bowed, and the entourage, chuckling delightedly, retreated. The flaps of the tent closed, and he allowed the attendants to pull his nightgown over his head. And the Governor General stood naked before his bath.
4.
He was as good as his word, and half an hour saw him striding out of the tent. The entourage was in high good humour – it had taken quite ten minutes for their overt hilarity to subside over the cold breakfast – and they formed themselves into the rough precedence of the suite casually behind the Governor General’s fresh morning face. It was an inexplicable, casual order, made up of a series of tiny historical unspoken negotiations between rank and birth, so that the connection of Palmerston’s (rather a distant connection) had burrowed and pushed and been pushed until he had arrived at his customary place in the caravan, rather in advance of what, elsewhere, might have seemed his superiors, and at the point where no one in front of him would give way. They formed themselves into an informal knot, punctual and pragmatic rather than orderly, and Frampton, the waggish swell, the junior magnifico whom everyone rather liked, brought up the rear, chatting happily like a spaniel with its tail up. There was nothing formal or ostentatious about the Governor’s progress through the camp, and yet the little groups of soldiers and attendants shot out of his way sharply, saluting.
In one of the tents, two soldiers sat in their combinations, absorbed in their work of polishing the buttons on their dress uniforms. They spoke from time to time.
‘Nice day off for us,’ McVitie said.
‘Makes a nice change,’ the other one agreed.
‘All that fucking marching,’ McVitie pointed out. ‘All that fucking standing around in the fucking dust.’
‘And for what?’
‘You said it.’
They continued with their polishing, contentedly.
‘That cunt,’ McVitie said.
‘What cunt?’
‘That cunt. What’s his name. Shot himself.’
‘Cunt.’
‘I’d have shot him, saved him the trouble.’
‘Didn’t mean, to, though, did he? Didn’t fancy a bit of the old felo de se?’
‘Might have meant to. Might have wanted it to look accidental.’
‘Didn’t have the fucking iron for it, though, did he?’
‘Not a fucking drop.’
Next to the two of them, a naked body raised itself from its bed, and regarded McVitie and his crony balefully.
‘Some fuckers are trying to get some fucking kip around here.’
‘Fuck off,’ McVitie said, amicably, and the soldier lay back again. ‘Who’s this fucking wog, then?’
‘What fucking wog?’
‘This wog who’s come to see stammering George.’
‘Some wog.’
‘He’s called Sugar and Milk,’ the supine private called out. ‘That’s his fucking name.’
‘Who the fuck asked you, you cunt?’ McVitie said. Then he turned back and said, ‘What’s he want, then?’
‘Fuck knows. I know what’s in it for us, though.’
‘Skive and a kip, I should say.’
‘There’s two wogs, aren’t there?’
‘Fucking thousands.’
‘Skive and a kip.’
‘Skive and a kip,’ McVitie said, and all the long luxury of courts, of great beds, of great idle eternities was in his voice.
‘I should fucking say so.’
The Lion of the Punjab had finished and departed by the time George and his men reached the tent which had been set aside for the visitors’ pleasure. The curtains were drawn aside and they swept in, but there was nothing there but a long table, strewn with dirty dishes, and, across the canvas floor, the detritus of coffee grounds and fish bones and broken crockery. The servants paused at the appearance of the Governor and his men, and, as one, flung themselves panting to the dirty floor.
‘Damn them,’ Auckland said. ‘Where are they?’
‘A wetweat,’ Frampton offered, cheerily, but it was at least fifteen minutes too late for joking, and he shut up briskly.
‘Where are they?’ Auckland said again, tetchily.
The most nearly senior of the men in the tent made a hopeless silent gesture at the tent walls, and lowered himself again.
‘I see,’ Auckland said, and with a quick steely look sent a boy on his way. The others shifted uncomfortably at this slight, and said nothing. ‘And the other one?’
‘The other one, sir?’
‘Our pensioner. Shah Shujah.’
‘No word, sir.’
‘Send to … find, gentlemen. Yes?’
The messenger was quickly back. ‘The King of the Punjab has returned to his settlement, sir.’
‘Send for Runjeet Singh, then, send for him,’ Lord Auckland said. ‘No, better – let us pay him the compliment of visiting him in his lair. That will flatter him. Let us make obeisance … My sisters?’
‘They are following, sir.’
‘Very well.’ And Auckland was off, leaving the great of the Empire to sort themselves out and follow in some sort of order.
A new camp had been established in the night, somewhere outside the Governor’s little canvas citadel. Some tactic, some meaning lay behind the placing of the King’s camp, some fifty yards from the outer boundaries of the camp. Not too far, but not exactly adjoining, either. The Sikh tents were pointedly magnificent, swathed in brilliant crimson silk and flagged at every corner with pennants the colour of a dreamt sun. Their shape was not as the British tents, and not practical in the slightest; they were gay and grand as an oriental court in a Persian painting, and shone even in the muddy light like Brighton Pavilion. There were seven tents, altogether, grouped like mushrooms that had sprung up in the night, and around, a solid glossy field of Stubbs-splendid horses.
The Mulberry Empire Page 24