The Faraway Drums

by Jon Cleary

  “Major Farnol seems to think of everything.”

  I went downstairs, stopping twice to ask directions of a servant; it was like being a guest in Grand Central Station in the early hours of the morning. The Ranee had described the palace as home; but one couldn’t describe it as homely. I finally came down into the entrance hall and there was Prince Mahendra at the foot of the stairs. He was dressed for the evening, in colours even more gorgeous than those he had worn that afternoon.

  As I discovered a little later, all the gentlemen were in evening dress. In those days in India, even on remote out-stations, gentlemen always dressed for dinner; it was called “keeping up appearances” and I must say that it appealed to me. It was probably foolish, sometimes uncomfortable and often inconvenient; but the gentlemen kept up their standards. Younger readers may laugh at such social snobberies, but every generation has its idiosyncrasies. I find it amusing that the world today has been captured by four grown young men who affect Buster Brown haircuts and swear like longshoremen.

  Prince Mahendra was certainly dressed for the evening; in sunlight he would have blinded one. He wore pink silk: long achkan, tight ankle-length breeches, silk slippers; his turban was pink-and-purple stripes. He appeared to be wearing so many rings, necklaces and bracelets I wonder that he was not bent over under the weight of them all. Then his sister came down the stairs and beside her he paled into a piece of paste jewellery. There is a point beyond which vulgarity has its own splendour. Some sunsets are vulgarly splendid or splendidly vulgar and the Ranee could have taken her place with them.

  “What lovely pearls, Miss O’Brady!” She squinted as if she were having some difficulty in seeing my single strand. “A present from an admirer?” Her tone implied that he must have been an impoverished one.

  “No, I bought them myself.”

  “American women are so independent. I treasure my own independence . . .” Then she looked at her brother. “Bobs, you’ve been at the treasury again. I’ve told you before—you must ask me before you go in there and start decorating yourself.”

  Bobs pouted. “I did it for you. I thought you would want to impress your guests.”

  She gave him a forgiving smile. “Dear Bobs. Of course. Thank you.”

  I mentioned in an earlier chapter of these memoirs that the most fateful dinner party I ever attended was at Viceregal Lodge at Simla. The dinner at the palace of Serog was almost as fateful and not a little bizarre. The dining-hall was immense, with fluted columns rising out of the walls to support a domed ceiling so high that it was lost in shadows above the glow of the oil lamps hung along the walls. There were four huge fireplaces in which log fires blazed; one needed their warmth in that vast hall. It was rather like dining in Canterbury cathedral, though there was no feeling that anyone had ever knelt down there to say a prayer or two.

  All the plate and cutlery was solid gold; the wine goblets were gold and encrusted with rubies. The wine was French, the absolutely best clarets and champagne. The food was a mixture of English and Indian cooking at its very worst. The soup was an offering that was a desecration of the golden bowl in which it was served; the fish, had it still been alive, could have swum contentedly in the water which flooded my plate; the curried camel, for it could have been nothing else (I am sure I got part of the hump as my serving) was just a plateful of yellow jaundice. The sweet was an English trifle, a concoction of stale cake set by a bricklayer in a mortar of custard. Admittedly it was pot luck for unexpected guests, but with two thousand staff it could have been expected that at least one or two of them could have whipped up a decent meal.

  Everyone but Prince Mahendra had been drinking more than their proper share of wine, obviously intent on washing away the taste of what they were eating. Some could hold their wine; others could not. One of those who could was the Nawab; he and the Ranee evidently ignored their religion’s ban on liquor. One of those who could not was Magda Monday, who, I’m sure, had no religion but herself.

  “I have played in England with Ranji.” The Nawab was trying to explain to her the pleasures of cricket. “Prince Ranjitsinhji. To see him step down the wicket and drive the rising ball—Ah! It is like making love to a beautiful, responsive woman!”

  “Really?” Magda, even if she had been totally sober, did not look as if she could imagine the pleasure of being made love to by a cricketer who could drive a rising ball, whatever that is. She looked across the table at Baron von Albern, who was sitting on the Ranee’s left and on my right. “Do you understand this English cricket, Herr Baron? Do they play it in Berlin?”

  “I do not know,” said the Baron. “Did you play any cricket there this summer, Bertie?”

  Major Farnol was sitting across the table from me, on the Ranee’s right. He had been about to drink from his goblet, but he abruptly paused; above the mask of gold and rubies I saw his quick sideways glance along the table at the Nawab.

  Bertie himself suddenly seemed to have lost all his enthusiasm for cricket.

  “What were you doing in Germany?” said Farnol. “I thought you always spent all the summer in England, playing cricket every day?”

  “It rained for a few days, washing out any cricket. I just popped over to Berlin to buy some Dresden figurines. I collect them, you know.” It was such an obvious spur-of-the-moment fabrication that even I could see it.

  “No,” said Farnol. “I didn’t know that. I thought you collected only cricket bats and balls.”

  The Nawab laughed heartily; one could almost see him forcing the laugh out of himself. “You’re so droll, Clive.”

  “I’ve heard,” said Lady Westbrook from where she sat between the Nawab and Prince Mahendra, “that Har Dayal was in Berlin this year.”

  “No,” said the Ranee from the top of the table, “the last I heard he was in California, at some place called Berkeley.”

  “Who is Har Dayal?” I asked.

  There was silence for a moment. It struck me even then that only Magda Monday and I did not know who he was; even Zoltan Monday, sitting on my left, had stiffened when Har Dayal’s name was mentioned. Magda, quite tipsy now, slurped in the silence as she took another sip of champagne.

  Then Prince Mahendra said, “He is the leader of our principal revolutionary movement. He was at Oxford five or six years ago and since then he has hated the English.”

  “He should have gone to Cambridge,” said the Nawab, in control again. “Look at me—who loves the English more than I?”

  “What would he be doing in California?” I asked.

  “He is there trying to corrupt the Sikhs who emigrated to America some years ago.” The reputedly half-mad Mahendra seemed remarkably well-informed about a world from which he had cut himself off. He was better informed about parts of America than I was; I didn’t know there had been any Sikh immigrants into California, though I learned later it was true. He looked along the table at his sister and smiled. “Am I talking too much, dear Mala?”

  “Dear Bobs, of course not.” She ducked her head under its skullcap of diamonds, bent over her trifle in a glitter of hard light.

  Farnol was looking across the table at Zoltan Monday. “You appear to know Har Dayal, Mr. Monday. Has he ever tried to buy arms from you?”

  “I once met him in Constantinople. He was not in the market for arms then.”

  “A pity,” said his wife, in the market for more wine; she tapped her empty goblet and looked over her shoulder at the servant who stood behind her. Each of us had a uniformed servant standing behind his or her chair and Magda had kept her man busy pouring champagne. “Krupps sends poor Zoltan nasty little notes when he doesn’t sell his quota of guns. Would you care to buy half a dozen howitzers, Your Highness?”

  I’m sure everyone thought she was addressing the Ranee; instead she looked sideways at the Nawab. I thought for a moment he was going to hit her with his wine goblet; then he lowered it slowly to the table and smiled. He was not the best actor I’d seen, but he wasn’t bad.

 
; “I’m a peaceful man, Madame Monday. All I shoot are tigers and one doesn’t need howitzers for that. Isn’t that so, Bobs? You were the only man who could shoot more tigers than I.”

  “Bobs never goes shooting now.” The Ranee was too quick with her intrusion; I saw Mahendra stare furiously at her. I saw with horror the madness about to break through the thin dark mask; but the Ranee saw it too. She rose abruptly, finishing the meal. “We’ll have coffee in the Peacock Room.”

  It sounded as if we were dining in a hotel, were about to repair to some side room with one of those fancy labels so beloved of hotel managements; but I don’t think I remarked it at that moment. I was still sitting watching Mahendra. He jumped to his feet, sending his chair back with such force that it almost knocked over the servant standing behind it. He whirled (there was no other word for it; I should not have been surprised if he had spun right round like a Dervish) and literally ran out of the room. The Ranee lifted a hand and four servants disappeared after the fleeing prince. I noticed that the four servants were her own men who had been at her end of the table, not the palace servants who had been serving the rest of us.

  She gave us all a smile as bright and hard as the blaze of diamonds on her head. “Bobs is having another of his little attacks. Excuse him.”

  Only Magda and I seemed to be surprised by Mahendra’s queer behaviour. It could not have been British phlegm, sangfroid, call it what you will, that kept the others discreetly polite, as if they had seen nothing out of the ordinary. Perhaps Major Farnol and Lady Westbrook could have claimed such a social asset; but not the German, the Indian and the Hungarian. The Baron, the Nawab and Zoltan Monday acted as if they had spent all their lives in Mahendra’s company and knew that the only way to live with his madness was to ignore it.

  As we went out of the room Lady Westbrook said, “I shall come in for coffee in a moment, Mala. I think I should like a little walk first to settle that beautiful dinner. What about you, Miss O’Brady?”

  I am not slow to catch an invitation, especially one accompanied with a stare that dared me to refuse. “A very good idea, Lady Westbrook.”

  “Call me Viola,” she said as she led me down a wide corridor away from the rest of them. She put a cheroot in her holder and began rummaging in her huge handbag, which would not have been out of place carried by a Pony Express rider, for a box of matches. “You and I may have to be allies. Do you mind if I call you Bridie?”

  “Do by all means. And please tell me, what’s going on in this place?” I felt as if I were on some sort of loom, slowly being woven into a pattern that, because I was part of it, I couldn’t see.

  She got her cheroot lit, puffed on it. “I only half-understand it all myself. I don’t know if you should try to find out. Perhaps it would be better if you confined yourself to Lola Montez and went no further.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t given a thought to Miss Montez in the past twenty-four hours.”

  The corridor seemed to stretch for miles ahead of us, a long gloomy tunnel lit by yellow oil lamps. It was cold in here after the warmth of the dining-hall. Archways led into side galleries and as we walked along servants, some of them armed with long swords, materialized like dark djinns out of the shadows, then faded back into them. Somewhere out in the moonlit gardens a peacock screeched. Then I heard a harsh coughing sound.

  “A leopard,” said Viola. “I haven’t been to this palace since I was a gel. I came here once with my husband. But I remember Mala and Bobs’ father had a large menagerie—leopards, tigers, those fighting elephants you saw outside the gates. I suppose Bobs still keeps the animals.”

  We at last reached the end of the corridor and turned to retrace our steps. As we did so a man stepped out of the shadows of an archway, stumbled across the corridor, walked straight into the wall and slid down it. He crouched there on his knees, his face against the wall, then he slowly turned round and sat down, his face turned up to us, his staring eyes showing no recognition of Lady Westbrook or myself.

  It was Major Savanna.

  End of extract from memoirs.

  II

  Farnol put down his coffee cup and said quietly to the Nawab, “You’d better tell me about Berlin, Bertie.”

  “I don’t think it is any of your business, Clive.” The Nawab kept his voice low. The two men were sitting slightly apart from the others in the Peacock Room, a magnificent salon hardly designed as a coffee annexe. The Nawab, who had a modest fifty-room palace, had been looking around enviously at what Mala and Bobs possessed. Every time he came here he entertained the idea of proposing marriage to Mala.

  “Perhaps none of mine, Bertie. But it could be the business of the Government—you know how they feel about the Germans. It used to be the Russians, but now it’s the Germans. Did you meet Har Dayal while you were in Berlin buying your Dresden pieces?”

  “You’re not your usual amiable self, Clive.” He patted at his white tie with a nervous hand. Unlike Mahendra he was dressed English style for dinner; it occurred to Farnol that he had never seen Bertie in an achkan or any other style of Indian dress. He wondered what Bertie’s subjects thought of their prince who so assiduously aped the British. “Do relax, please.”

  “Bertie, someone’s trying to kill me.”

  The Nawab had been smiling, trying to keep the conversation on a light plane; but now he sobered. “You really do think you’re the only target?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  But Farnol no longer trusted the Nawab. He had never been a close friend, they never saw enough of each other for such a friendship to develop, but he had always looked upon him as one of his more likeable acquaintances. But it was six months since he had last seen the Nawab and a change had taken place in him. A change brought on, perhaps, by a visit to Berlin?

  “You’re not going to tell me anything about Berlin?”

  “No, Clive.”

  Then Bridie, breathless from running, appeared in the doorway. “Major Farnol—come quickly! It’s Major Savanna!”

  Though Farnol was on his feet at once he missed nothing of the reactions of the others in the room. Everyone but Magda responded to the name Savanna, even Zoltan Monday. The Ranee put a nervous hand to her throat, covering up a lode of diamonds in the choker she wore. The Nawab seemed to go grey under his dark skin; his cup rattled in its saucer as he put it down. And the Baron looked across at Monday and gave just the slightest shake of his head.

  Then everyone rose to follow Farnol as, holding Bridie’s arm, he hurried down the long corridor. He shouted for Karim, his voice echoing and re-echoing down from the high vaulted ceiling, and by the time he and Bridie reached the end of the corridor the tall Sikh had come running, his kris at the ready.

  Lady Westbrook stood up from where she had been kneeling beside the semi-conscious Savanna, her bones creaking as she did so. She rubbed her knees, gasped for breath. “I was never one for being on my knees, even when I was young. He’s in a bad way, Clive. He looks as if he’s been drugged.”

  “Karim, get a couple of the servants to take him up to my room—”

  “There are plenty of other rooms.” The Ranee had arrived. She was somewhat breathless, unaccustomed as she was to moving at anything above a graceful walk; she could make love for hours, but that was another form of exercise altogether. Her breathlessness made her look flustered, something Farnol had never seen before. “There’s a room opposite my suite—”

  “No,” said Farnol flatly. “He goes into my room. He’s my responsibility. Lady Westbrook, Miss O’Brady—would you come with me? I may need your help.”

  “Perhaps I could help?” said Zoltan Monday. “I was once a medical student—”

  “No, thank you.” One part of Farnol’s mind cynically waited for the Nawab and the Baron to offer their help; but they both held back. “I’ll let you know, Mala, if I need any more help.”

  Up in Farnol’s room Savanna was laid out on the big bed. Farnol dismissed the two servants and told
Karim to undress the now almost unconscious man. As if careful of their modesty, he led Bridie and Lady Westbrook across to the windows, careful to keep their backs to the bed where Karim, not very carefully or gently, was pulling off the major’s ragged clothes.

  “He looks as if he’s been through hell,” said Lady Westbrook.

  “I think he probably has been. He’s been pumped full of God knows what. I’ve seen tribesmen in these hills who looked just as he does.”

  “What happens to them?” said Bridie.

  “They start to come out of it, or so you think, then all of a sudden they become uncontrollable and in a minute or two they’re dead.”

  “We must prevent that,” said Lady Westbrook. “Get Karim to get me some mustard. I’ll mix it up and feed it to him, it will make him vomit. Clean out his stomach.”

  Farnol looked across at the bed where Karim was now pulling up the sheet over the undressed Savanna. “You can’t give him that while he’s unconscious. If he comes round, we’ll try it. Go down to the kitchens, Karim, and ask for some mustard. On your way tell Private Ahearn to come across here from Miss O’Brady’s room. Tell him to make sure he’s not seen.”

  “Private Ahearn? Who the devil’s he?” said Lady Westbrook. “I wish you’d tell me what’s going on, Clive.”

  Without hesitation and very succinctly Farnol told her everything, about Private Ahearn and about his own suspicions of a plot to assassinate the King. She was a far from stupid woman and she did not dismiss his suspicions as rubbish. She was seventy years old and she had lived in this country for fifty-two of them, ever since she had come out as the bride of Lieutenant Roger Westbrook. She had missed the Mutiny by only two years; she still remembered the aftermath of bitterness and suspicion. Her husband had spent most of his adult life doing just what Farnol was doing, ostensibly advising the princes and hill chieftains on how best to get along with the Raj but always with a finger in the political waters to note a change in temperature or in the current. Four times she had nursed him when he had come home wounded by would-be assassins; he had never had to tell her that the British Raj was not universally loved. Nowadays she lived amongst tea parties and gymkhana picnics and dances in Simla, sustained by her port and cheroots and gossip, but she had never lost her perspective or her memories of the hatred that still simmered in India after the Mutiny. There was a blind ex-sepoy in Simla, no older than herself, who had seen the bloody revenge taken by the British and one afternoon, sightless eyes staring down the years, had told her all about it in a sing-song voice devoid of any emotion. She believed every word Farnol now told her and did not think of deriding him.