The Faraway Drums

by Jon Cleary

  “Weren’t you ever ambitious?”

  The Baron turned his head and smiled as he reached across with his one hand and turned out the lamp. “Of course. But at my age one wonders why.”

  In the early morning Farnol, accompanied by Karim Singh, went up the road to the village. A small group of elders waited, as if they knew he would be coming. “We have seen the dead man, sahib. He is a stranger.”

  “You have never seen him before?” Farnol kept the surprise out of his voice; he had assumed that the merchant had had a store in the village. “Not even yesterday before we arrived?”

  “No, sahib.” The spokesman peered at Farnol out of cataract-dimmed eyes; he could have been an honest man but his eyes would never bear witness. “We want nothing to do with the stranger. You must bury him yourself, sahib.”

  The body rested on the camel-drawn cart, on the cargo of bright silks. Someone from the village, knowing the stranger was dead, had stolen the tarpaulin during the night but left the silks; the latter would be too easily identifiable. The cart had become a gaudy hearse, but the camels looked as indifferent as ever and smelled just as badly.

  “I shall pay you to dispose of the body.”

  “With respect, sahib, we want nothing to do with an enemy of the Raj.”

  Oh, pretty soon, whether you like it or not, you may have a great deal to do with an enemy of the Raj. He looked at the five faces around him, but it was impossible to tell the thoughts behind the dimmed eyes and the veils of wrinkles. “Thank you for your respect. All right, I shall have the body burnt.”

  “Will you burn the man’s goods with him, sahib?” The eyes were not so dim that they couldn’t see the value of the silks.

  “I present them to your village for your loyalty to the Raj.”

  “We are most honoured, sahib.” Their feet scraped the dirt as they itched to be at the gift.

  So for the second time the caravan’s bearers had to build a pyre and burn a body; but this time there was no call to wait for the ashes. The caravan moved on after a breakfast at which there was very little conversation. Farnol watched the Nawab and Mahendra for their reaction to last night’s attempted murder of himself, but other than a quiet question from the Nawab as to how he felt this morning the night could have been uneventful.

  But as they started off at the head of the caravan Mahendra said, “Will you be leaving us at Kalka, Major?”

  “That will depend on how I’m to get down to Delhi. Does my presence worry you?”

  “Not really. But you do seem to carry bad luck with you.”

  “Not for myself. I’ve been very lucky so far.”

  It was a quiet day: no incident, and very little talk amongst those most concerned with the safe arrival of the caravan at Kalka. The escort and cooks and bearers chattered amongst themselves; they had their own problems and the possibility of a dead sahib would make no difference to their lives. In mid-afternoon the procession came down through a defile on to the main Simla-Kalka road and at the first village Farnol reined his horse in before the store that was also the post office.

  “Is the telegraph working?”

  The postmaster’s tunic had been inherited from a predecessor, who had been a much larger man. He kept losing his hands up his sleeves, so that half the time he appeared handless. “Oh yes, sahib, working very well to Kalka. But not to Simla. Something is very wrong up there, I fear.”

  “The telephone?”

  “Oh sahib, this is a poor village. We have no telephone. I shall be dead and gone before there is a telephone here.” He beamed, as if neither death nor the absence of a telephone worried him.

  “I want to send a telegraph message to Kalka. Urgent.”

  “Everything is urgent priority from here, sahib. Nobody uses the telegraph, everyone is too poor.” A generous hand appeared out of a sleeve like a crab.

  “The telegraph line is all yours, sahib.”

  Farnol sent the message to the O.C. of the Military Depot at Kalka. He requested that a detachment of troops be sent up the Simla road to meet the caravan and that a special train be ordered for the guests of the Government, the Ranee of Serog, her brother Prince Mahendra and the Nawab of Kalanpur. The answer came back in an hour. Am aware of situation on Simla-Kalka railway line. Escort will meet you. Will do best with special train but jolly short supply.

  They camped that night in the lower hills, within sight of the plains. Farnol walked out on to a low bluff and gazed south. He could see the long low haze of smoke and dust hovering over the villages; he sniffed and imagined he could smell the acrid air that stretched south a thousand miles from here. The setting sun turned the haze into golden shields above the villages, but one had to be here on the slopes, far away, to appreciate the beauty of it. He doubted that anyone in the villages was raising his head to look at the colours above him.

  “I’ll be glad when this journey is over.” Bridie had come and stood beside him. “But I’m not looking forward to Delhi, despite the Durbar and all the spectacle that’s promised. I think I’ve fallen in love with the mountains, the high ones up beyond Simla. I only saw them from a distance, when I’d go riding down at Annandale, but they were so beautiful . . .”

  “You have to live amongst them to appreciate them.”

  “Will you be going back to your regiment to stay?” The regiment was stationed on the plains. He remembered the polo matches, the pig-sticking, the practice charges across the maidan: there had been pleasures in being a cavalryman. But he also remembered the formalities that had irritated him, the small world of the mess and the parade ground and the tight, precedence-bound social circle that surrounded both. He had known a freedom in the past three years that had spoiled him for the regiment.

  “It depends. My father feels I should go back—he’d like me to command it, as he and his father and my great-grandfather did.”

  “Does family tradition mean much to you?”

  “Yes and no. I don’t think I’d feel much for myself if I broke the tradition. But I’d feel for my father. The regiment for him is family.”

  “Then you’ll be expected to go back to it.”

  “They’re not going to give me command while I’m away in the Political Service. I think I may have been away too long.”

  “You don’t sound as if you do want command.”

  He’d had that ambition once; but he doubted it now. “It’s cavalry. I wonder if they’ll use horses in the next war—”

  “You think there’ll be another war?”

  “They are talking about war in Europe now. There have been enough flare-ups this year—the Germans rattled their swords at Agadir in June. Oh, there’ll be another war some time, sooner or later. There’ll always be wars while men are still alive to fight them.”

  “You’re talking like a soldier. Hoping there’ll be one—”

  “No. I don’t want a war. It won’t be fought here in India if there is one. Perhaps some skirmishes with the tribesmen, perhaps even something bigger with the revolutionaries. But it won’t be the war—that will be fought in Europe. And I don’t think there’ll be a place for cavalry there. They’ll be using motor cars and lorries—”

  “Is that what the generals think?”

  “I don’t know. But all the generals are old now—they won’t last long with their old ideas. Then the new men will take over. I don’t think I’d want to fight a war in a motor car.”

  “You think it should be some operatic exhibition, all your horses charging and you waving your sword?”

  “Yes.” But he smiled; then was sober. “But I don’t think the next war will be like that. Not with the guns I hear Krupps are making . . .” He looked back towards the camp for Monday, as if expecting the Hungarian to produce a sample. “I think I may emigrate to America. You will be neutral in all future wars.”

  “Why should we be?” In her own ears she sounded like William Randolph Hearst, eager to provide yet another war for newspaper copy.

  “Why shou
ldn’t you be? You have all that water, the Atlantic and the Pacific, on either side of you.” But he knew that West Point and Annapolis would be disappointed if he were right.

  She changed the subject. Or changed to a detail of the same subject: she wasn’t sure which. Till she had crossed the Atlantic she had not known there was so much talk of war in the chancelleries of Europe. When she had left Boston at the end of October the newspapers had been full of the Philadelphia Athletics’ World Series win against the New York Giants; the comments of Connie Mack and John J. McGraw had had far more importance than the warnings of statesmen in foreign capitals. She began to wonder who would listen to Mr. Mack and Mr. McGraw if America went to war.

  “I wish you’d tell me more of what’s going on here.”

  “If I did, you’d write an article for your newspaper. And it might all be based on rumour. I promise you—I’ll tell you everything when we get down to Delhi. Or as much as I can.”

  “We were partners when we started out from Simla. That’s what you led me to believe.”

  “It’s become much more complicated since then. Be patient, Bridie, it’ll only be another day or two.” He put out a hand and after a moment she gave him hers.

  “I worry for you, Clive,” Bridie said. “Last night I was so sick I couldn’t sleep—”

  He knew then that he wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to her in Delhi. But he didn’t know what else he would be able to say.

  Then Magda came storming towards them. Zoltan had kept from her the news that he was under arrest, but at last she had noticed that he had been accompanied all day by the bearded Sikh or the glum Irishman. A few minutes ago she had learned why they were keeping so close to him.

  “Major Farnol, how dare you arrest my husband!”

  “Mrs. Monday—”

  “Madame Monday!” It sounded better: she had taught herself all the nuances of social elevation. “You have no right to do such a thing! My husband is no criminal. People are being killed and all you can do is arrest my husband for going about his business!”

  “Is he really under arrest?” said Bridie. “That’s something you didn’t tell me.”

  He wanted to tell her it was none of her business. Why did she have to keep putting on her reporter’s hat? “Mr. Monday knows the reason,” he told them both. “I think it would be best, Madame Monday, if you left the matter to us men.”

  “Oh my God!” said Bridie, putting on her feminist hat.

  “Horseshit!” Magda lost all her social elevation: she was back on the Fisherman’s Bastion in Budapest. Then she remembered where she really was, tried to recover a few rungs in the ladder. “Excuse me. I get so angry and excited when someone insults my husband. Dear Zoltan—all he is trying to do is make a happy life for me.”

  Farnol had the grace not to laugh. “Madame Monday, I’m sure Mr. Monday is a devoted husband and a good man. Unfortunately, he happens to sell arms . . . I shall see that he is put to no indignity. But I also have to see that for the time being he is out of business. Just look at it as a holiday, a vacation. Sit back and enjoy the rest of the journey.”

  “What happens when we reach Kalka?”

  “There, I’m afraid, things will be taken out of my hands.”

  She went back to the camp. Women don’t walk gracefully when they’re angry, especially if they are wearing high-heeled boots. Bridie, looking after her, decided that if ever she had to make an angry exit she would not hurry. Then she looked at Farnol.

  “Are you two-faced?”

  “Possibly.” But it hurt to be thought so. “I’m in good company—Janus was a god, you know.”

  “You’re not only two-faced, you’re insufferable.”

  “It’s a family virtue.” Then he took her hand again and lifted it to his lips. Magda, sneaking a look back at him, thought he looked very dashing and Hungarian. But she wouldn’t tell Zoltan that. “In the job I’ve had for the past three years, if one doesn’t look both ways at once, one doesn’t survive. Being two- faced isn’t always a nasty fault.”

  She pressed her hand against his lips. “I’d love my father to meet you. He’d have you in the US Senate in no time.”

  The camp that night was quiet. The atmosphere at the dinner table was strained, but no arguments arose. Everybody went to bed early and everybody rose early, as if eager to get the last day of the caravan over and done with as soon as possible. Prince Mahendra appeared at breakfast with a smile, which he displayed as if it were a birthday gift for everyone. The Nawab, his grief for his young wife now put aside (or perhaps inside: grief, like the heart, becomes shabby if worn on the sleeve too long), told a cricket joke that no one but Farnol appreciated. The Baron replaced the straw hat he had been wearing with a white topee and looked younger and quite dashing. The Ranee, Lady Westbrook and Magda took their places in the coach and raised their parasols against the morning sun as if they were running up celebration flags. Bridie, her bottom becoming more accustomed to the saddle, took her horse up to the head of the column beside Farnol. The Nawab and Mahendra rode at the very front of it and Zoltan Monday, flanked by Karim Singh and Private Ahearn, rode at the rear, just behind the coach and ahead of the last escorts. The caravan crossed the border from Pandar to the Punjab, but not even Farnol noticed any difference in the air. He could not imagine the revolutionaries, if and when they surfaced, stopping to mark the boundary.

  The detachment of troops from Kalka met them on the road in mid-morning. A platoon of infantrymen, khaki uniforms dusty and sweat-stained, topees pushed back from their flushed faces; two camels drawing a water-cart, another two camels harnessed to a kitchen-cart; half a dozen bearers; and a pink-cheeked lieutenant on a horse. The soldiers were whistling Soldiers of the Queen and somehow managed to make their whistling sound satirical and even obscene. The whistling died away when they saw the caravan bearing down on them.

  “Christ Almighty, it’s Hannibal and his fooking elephants!”

  “Don’t get too close to ‘em. You ever seen them dark spots on an elephant’s foot? That’s all that’s left of slow coolies.”

  The troops were recently arrived from England and today’s march was the longest they had so far made. They were hot, footsore and already hated the young officer who had his horse to prevent his being footsore. He was Lieutenant Lord Bunting and his father, so they said, was a bloody belted earl.

  “Freddy Bunting, Major. Northern Fusiliers. Jolly warm, isn’t it? The ladies must be feeling it, eh?” He sounded bluff and confident, but he was actually shy. He was just twenty and India pressed down on him with more than just the heat of its sun. His troops stood easy and contemptuously behind him and he wondered how long it would be before he could gain their respect. He longed for action, to take the Khyber Pass on his own and prove himself. “I’d like to rest my men for an hour. Then we can start down again.”

  “Did the O.C. manage to get us a special train?”

  “Afraid not. The Railway Superintendent’s almost off his rocker, poor chap. We got a message through from Solan about the landslide that stopped the train from Simla. The Superintendent’s sent a train up to meet them, but they’re going to be rather squashed. Only two carriages, it’ll be rather stacks on the mill.”

  But Farnol knew that everyone from Simla would get down to Delhi, if they had to build pyramids on each other’s shoulders.

  Mahendra said, “The Superintendent will have to find a train for us.”

  The second son of an English earl and the Indian prince stared at each other. Freddy Bunting had been told how arrogant some of these rajah blighters could be. “I think you’ll have to take that up with him, old chap. I don’t work for the railways.”

  “Then how do we get down to the Durbar, old chap?” said the Nawab. “We have to be there, y’know. We can’t insult His Majesty by not turning up.”

  Bunting wished he could be there himself. As a six-year-old boy he had seen the Diamond Jubilee parade of Queen Victoria. Look at it, my boy, his fathe
r had said, that’s the glory of the Empire. It seemed to him that the whole world had ridden through the streets of London on that shining day. And heroes, too: Roberts of Kandahar, Wolseley of Tel-el-Kebir: they brought the blaze of Empire with them. He had looked forward to the Durbar, but as soon as he had arrived at Bombay he had been shunted up-country. The old hands had grabbed the Durbar for themselves, it was theirs and no Johnny-come-lately was going to share it with them.

  “You had better see if one of your own chaps can help,” he said. “There’s a special being got up today in the yards at Kalka. It belongs to the Rajah of Pandar, I think.”

  IV

  They reached Kalka just after dark, into an evening still warm from the day. The station was crowded, as if everyone in the Punjab had decided he would try for a seat on a train to Delhi. But only some of them were travellers and most of those were not interested at all in going to Delhi: they only wanted to get home, to Moradabad, Lucknow, Allahabad; but all the trains via Delhi were booked by the damned sahibs and the chee-chee desk-wallahs and the princes with their damned elephants. The rest of the crowd in the station, the majority, was made up of hawkers, thieves, beggars, spectators and the homeless who came there every night to sleep under the corrugated-iron roof of the platforms.

  Farnol went with the Nawab and Bunting to the Railway Superintendent’s office, picking their way carefully over the shrouded figures that were already stretching out for their night’s sleep. The station was a cauldron of chatter, a shriek occasionally bubbling to the top as a boy tried to steal a fried cake from the portable stove of a woman vendor. A grey-white cow nosed its way down the platform and the shrouded figures, seemingly without seeing it, rolled gently to one side to make way for it. In the yellow-lit smoke under the roof sparrows swooped and darted as if day and night no longer meant anything to them. An engine whistle blew out in the yards and the would-be travellers, recognizable by their cardboard suitcases or their bundles, stood up and looked expectantly into the darkness. But nothing appeared and they subsided again with a laugh, as if amused by their own foolish hope.