Mrs Meadows summoned the bearer and ordered a hot infusion of tea and ginger.
Alice sighed. ‘I don’t want anything hot.’
‘This will do wonders, my dear,’ said the missionary, ‘if you’re suffering from what I think you are.’
‘Major Jenkins says I have melancholia.’
‘Complete nonsense!’ cried Mrs Meadows. ‘I can tell just by looking at you.’
‘Tell what?’ asked Miss Cook.
‘Our dear Alice,’ said the missionary with a sympathetic smile, ‘is carrying a child.’
At first Alice would not believe she was pregnant but George was so pleased at the idea that she was encouraged too. The ginger drinks helped calm her nausea and she developed a passion for bananas that seemed to coincide with her strength returning. After a couple more weeks the sickness began to wear off and Alice’s spirits revived. She was full of guilt for her unkind words to her husband.
‘George, I’m so sorry for the way I’ve treated you these past weeks,’ she said. ‘I’ve been monstrous.’
‘No, dearest,’ he said, pressing her hands between his, ‘it’s I who must apologise. I should never have subjected you to Major Jenkins and his wretched leeches. I could have endangered you and our child . . .’
Alice saw the tears in his eyes. ‘There is no harm done,’ Alice assured him with a smile. ‘I am made of hardy northern stock, remember?’
Now that pregnancy appeared to be a reality, Alice was secretly unnerved by the thought of being a mother. She worried that she might turn out like her own – devoid of motherly feelings and unable to love her child. Would she take one look at her baby and instantly want to give it away? She was ashamed of such thoughts, especially when the idea of them being parents had filled George with a renewed tenderness towards her.
Alice agreed readily to her husband’s insistence that they should leave without delay for the hills.
‘You will have the healthiest air possible,’ George decreed, ‘and we will travel before the monsoon makes the roads impassable.’
‘Simla?’ Alice cried in hope. ‘Please can we go there?’
‘Yes, Simla.’ George grinned. ‘I’ve already written to the Aytons to see if we can lodge with them at Daisy Cottage.’
Alice threw her arms around him and kissed him roundly. ‘Thank you, George!’
The arduous journey upriver and across the baking Indian plains took three jolting, exhausting weeks. But Alice never complained once at the heat or the flies, her determination to get to the hills keeping her strong. When the Himalayan foothills finally came into sight, there were still several days of hair-raising travel up narrow winding paths on the backs of mules. But the higher they climbed, the clearer the air became, until they were riding through pine-scented trees.
Alice laughed, gulping in breaths of the sweet air. ‘I haven’t smelt such wonderful fragrance since leaving Northumberland.’
Her first sight of Simla was a hillside thick with mighty cedars and firs and dotted with bungalows whose windows glinted in the evening sun. Soft plumes of smoke arose from chimneys into a blue-grey sky.
When they arrived at the Aytons’ wooden bungalow, nestling into the slope with a view that dropped away to the hazy plains, Alice couldn’t contain her emotion. She fell into Emily’s arms – her friend’s belly already large with child – and burst into tears of relief.
CHAPTER 14
In the damp mist of the Choor mountain, John huddled in a blanket under a dripping awning and waited. His fellow surveyor, Hodgson, was trying to light a wet cigar at the stove. They were bearded and unwashed but triumphant at having completed the thirty-foot-high pyramid of stone for their theodolite at the top of Choor. If a sudden storm – an early precursor of the monsoon – had not caught them on the peak and marooned them in a cloudbank, they would have finished this section of the trigonometrical series and been on leave.
But the cloud hadn’t lifted for days. They waited in frustration for it to clear enough for them to send a signal from their heliotrope or receive flashes of light from the triangulation points on the neighbouring mountains.
‘Have some more claret,’ John said, pouring out the wine with numb fingers.
His servant Rajban was attempting to brew up coffee in the thin atmosphere; John had developed a passion for the drink since coming to India seven years ago. He admired the hillsmen who worked alongside him, carrying the heavy survey equipment and provisions, digging and hacking with pickaxes and sleeping in the open muffled in their blankets. He could hear their talk and laughter just below on the stony slope and smell their aromatic pipe smoke.
‘What will you do on leave?’ Hodgson asked, sucking hard on his disintegrating cigar. It was a question that had occupied John’s thoughts during the frustrating hours of waiting.
‘Join my artillery friend MacRae for a month of hunting up the Sutlej River,’ said John.
‘Into the unknown, eh?’ Hodgson nodded.
‘Not for Rajban. He comes from the Bushahir district so knows those hills and speaks the language. He’ll be my guide.’
‘You’d put your trust in that wily old devil? He’ll sell you into slavery to the Tibetans or Chinese.’
‘I’d trust him with my life,’ John retorted. ‘He’s a Highlander like me – and not much older, for all he has a face like leather.’
‘Well, be careful is all I’d say.’ Hodgson gulped at his wine. ‘You don’t want to stray beyond British-held land – don’t want to upset the Sikhs, or the Tibetans for that matter. If you do, the Company won’t come to your rescue.’
John felt a flicker of unease at his friend’s words; they strangely echoed the secretive conversation he’d had the previous month in Dehra Dun, the Survey’s headquarters. A political agent, sent by Colonel Wade from Ludhiana on the banks of the Sutlej, had come to sound him out. Over several glasses of wine and port, the man had flattered him about his work with the Grand Trigonometrical Survey and his ability as a mountaineer.
‘Your superior officer, Everest, speaks highly of you – one of his most able triangulators. You need strong lungs and a cool head to climb the mountains that you do and carry out your work.’
‘I grew up with mountains,’ John had said, wondering where the conversation was going. The man had called himself Captain Smith but John doubted that was his real name.
‘Some of our political officers are keen to know what lies beyond the Himalayas – what the routes through might be,’ the man continued. ‘Trade is of vital importance to the Company – especially as our sources in Persia tell us how Russia is flexing its muscles in our direction. We want to explore possible new markets – the Tibetan trade in pashm is of particular interest. But,’ Smith cautioned, ‘nothing must be done to upset the Sikh ruler in the Punjab, Ranjit Singh. We need him as an ally of the British and he has designs on certain of the Himalayan states.’
‘So what are you suggesting?’ John had asked.
‘A foray into the mountains to the east of the Punjab, mapping out the trade routes.’ Smith gave a charming smile. ‘You are a keen hunter, I hear, and could make that your excuse for exploring the region. We would provide you with money to do so – cover your expenses.’
‘And travel permits?’
‘Ah,’ Smith had said with a regretful shrug, ‘I’m afraid not. You would have to rely on your wits. But if you come back with information that is valuable to the Company, you will be richly rewarded.’
John had replied, ‘Rewards don’t interest me but a hunting trip in the mountains is a more tempting offer.’ He had contemplated the other man. ‘Still, I’m sceptical about how far I would get with just a hunting gun and a Company uniform. If you gave me a legitimate trading mission – to buy horses from the Ladakhis, for instance – and a letter of introduction from the Company,’ John bargained, ‘then I could go much further.’
Smith eyed him shrewdly. ‘And if you didn’t get these things would you refuse to go?’
‘Then I would simply go hunting’ – John smiled – ‘and stay the right side of the Sutlej River.’
By the time they had finished off another bottle of port, Smith had promised him a limited trading role as cover for his exploration and John had agreed to the venture.
‘The letter we send with you,’ Smith had warned, ‘will specify that your interest is only in horses. You cannot promise political alliance or British protection to any of these hill kings.’
John had readily agreed to that, having no interest in political intrigue. He relished the horse-buying trip and the chance to map mountain passes unknown to the British; and both would provide him with plenty of opportunity to hunt.
At the end of a long night’s drinking, Smith had said, ‘Just one last thing. Unofficially, I encourage you to go as far as you can this summer. But if you get caught straying beyond the bounds of British influence and are accused of spying, you’re on your own. The Company won’t come to your rescue. Is that understood, Sinclair?’
John had given a dry smile and nodded.
In the morning the mysterious Smith had gone but a week later a package of money had been delivered to John’s quarters with a vaguely worded letter bearing the Company’s seal, attesting to his good character and stating that his business was to buy horses.
‘. . . and the Annandale Fair is supposed to be a lively occasion with fancy dress and horse racing.’
John’s attention was brought back to the present. He realised Hodgson had been talking about his own plans for recreation once they got off the mountain.
‘The Eden sisters are supposed to be full of fun,’ Hodgson said. ‘Simla has never been as full of social events as this year’s hot season.’
‘The Eden sisters?’ John queried.
‘The new Governor General’s sisters,’ his friend cried. ‘Goodness, Sinclair, don’t you hear any of the gossip?’
‘Not stuck up a mountain with you,’ John joked. ‘I don’t know how you manage to hear of such things.’
His friend laughed. ‘Because I bother to write and receive letters. I never see you write to anyone.’
‘I’ve never been much good at writing – unless it’s mapping or filling in plane-table charts.’
John felt a stab of guilt at his lack of letter-writing to Hercules or his Aunt Morag. He thought about them often – and his dear friend Azlan – but he was a hopeless correspondent. He had lost the appetite for writing letters and expressing his thoughts when Alice had ignored his love letters. How long ago that seemed now and yet he could still conjure up her fair face and pretty eyes too easily.
Over the years, on the long journey up the length of India, working for Everest’s mapping survey, he had thought of Alice. On hot nights in jungle camps he had lain awake plagued by memories of her. He would imagine her riding the bridle paths of her father’s estate or attending balls in Newcastle. She would be married off by now and probably the mother of several children. John would clench his teeth and screw his eyes tight to stop himself remembering the feel of her cool hand on his face or the taste of her lips.
He had known other women since Alice but none had excited him or made him as sore at heart as she had done. That had been a relief, for John’s life was a rootless one, moving on from place to place and never calling anywhere home. He loved his job in the survey team; the painstaking and ambitious project of mapping India in a grand arc – a series of triangles – from Cape Comorin in the south to the Himalayas in the north. Early on in his army career he had seized the chance to travel the length of the sub-continent and was one of the few engineers who had been able to withstand the temper and exacting standards of their superior officer, Everest. John took tongue-lashings with good grace and often diffused outbursts with wry humour because he respected the man for his dedication to science and passion for discovery.
‘So is that where you’re meeting MacRae?’ Hodgson asked.
‘Where?’ John said, dragging his thoughts back to the mountain once again.
‘Simla! I think the altitude is turning your brain to porridge, Sinclair.’
John laughed. ‘What I wouldn’t do for a bowl of porridge just now.’
‘Simla would be the best starting off point for a hunting trip up the Sutlej,’ said Hodgson. ‘Plenty of mules and coolies for hire to carry your kit. And a spot of socialising before you go, eh?’
‘Aye, why not?’ John grinned. ‘Meet these Eden sisters. Do your gossips say whether they are bonny?’
It was the end of June before John and his survey team were finished on Choor Mountain. Once the fog had lifted, the nights had been cold and the slopes had dazzled in silvery moonlight like polished pearls. To the south spread the sweltering plains of India, while to the north, in a series of dark waves, lay the foothills and Simla.
Returning first to Dehra Dun, John sent a message to Colin MacRae at the barracks in Subathu to meet him in Simla. By the time he and Hodgson and their entourage of servants had wound their way into the hills again, Colin was already established at the house of fellow Scots officer, Captain Charlie Nairn. As political agent to the hill kingdoms, Nairn had set up home in Simla and had a reputation for generous hospitality and long, raucous dinner parties.
John and Colin thumped each other on the back and exchanged Gaelic greetings.
‘Look at you with your brown face and black beard,’ Colin teased. ‘You could pass for an Afghan!’
‘I’ve got used to not shaving when out on survey.’ John laughed. ‘And I hope you’ve been keeping your guns primed and your eye trained for the game we’re going to be hunting.’
John bathed and shaved off his beard. They had a long, leisurely dinner, catching up on the past year, eating well and drinking late into the night.
‘There’s only one bit of bad news,’ Colin said, as the brandy bottle was passed around. ‘Vernon Buckley’s on Auckland’s staff. I’ve seen him strutting around the sports’ ground at Annandale with his cavalry sword clanking.’
John snorted. ‘Doesn’t surprise me. He always did have a long tongue for licking the boots of the rich and powerful.’
Colin nodded in agreement. ‘Just the type to get himself a comfortable, well-paid position while we do the dangerous work. He’s a captain now, so we lieutenants have to bow to the insufferable man.’
‘Good luck to him,’ John said, ‘I wouldn’t want to trade places. Give me a frozen mountaintop and a mutton curry over a life of governor’s dinners and gout any day!’
It wasn’t long before John came across Vernon. The European population of Simla swelled in the summer to several hundred but the social activities – card parties and soirées – were held in a dozen of the more spacious houses or recreation was taken outdoors. If it wasn’t raining, the British took leisurely rides along the wooded tracks and picnicked at Annandale, a picturesque glade below the town that was big enough to hold sporting events such as archery and horse racing.
After two days of continuous rain and mist hanging over the trees like smoke, the sky had cleared and word had gone round that there would be racing and a charity fair at Annandale.
‘Well, well,’ Vernon crowed as he spotted John and Colin riding into the grassy arena, ‘if it isn’t the Scotch boys. Come to gape at the real horsemen?’
‘Buckley.’ John smiled, dismounted and went to shake his hand. ‘As charming as ever, I see.’
‘Captain Buckley to you,’ he said with a satisfied smile, briefly touching John’s extended hand. ‘Still measuring bits of desert with your chain links, Sinclair?’
‘No, the survey has progressed into the mountains,’ John replied, ignoring his sneering tone. ‘We climb with ropes as well as our theodolites. Not a chain link in sight.’
‘Well, you wild Scotchmen are as surefooted as mountain goats, aren’t you? I’m glad you’ve found your purpose in life.’
‘And you are dancing attendance on the new Governor General, I hear,’ John said with a wry smile. ‘Congr
atulations on becoming one of Auckland’s aides.’
Vernon’s smug expression faltered, unsure if he was being slighted in some way. He turned and called to a fellow officer who was standing nearby in the entrance to a refreshment tent.
‘Ayton, come here! Let me introduce you to two of your kind.’
A ruddy-faced man, a few years their senior, ambled over.
‘Two fellow Scotch for you, Sandy – from the Bombay Presidency. There’ll soon be enough of you for one of your savage reels, eh?’ Vernon laughed, clapping Sandy on the back. ‘Ayton here is from Edinburgh and has one of the prettiest wives in the service.’
John and Colin exchanged bows and pleasantries with Sandy.
‘Where is Mrs Ayton?’ Vernon interrupted. ‘Stitched together with the delightful Mrs Gillveray no doubt. Where one fair lady goes the other must follow, eh?’
‘They’re in the exhibition tent with George,’ said Sandy. ‘Mrs Gillveray’s watercolours are selling well. Why don’t you come over and take a look?’
The men entrusted their horses to the syces and followed Sandy, John thinking that the name Gillveray sounded familiar. The tent was crowded with bonneted women and their uniformed husbands, and noisy with their chattering as they exclaimed over the displays of embroidery and paintings in the charity sale. Vernon stopped at a table of lacework to compliment some young women.
‘Oh, there you are!’ a petite woman called to Sandy. Frizzy blonde hair escaped her bonnet and she was heavily pregnant. ‘Nearly all of Alice’s paintings have sold already. Isn’t that marvellous?’
‘Emily, here are two fellow countrymen,’ beamed Sandy, ‘who have come to bid for the rest. Lieutenants Sinclair and MacRae.’
John bent over the hand that Emily held out. ‘Mrs Ayton.’ As he straightened up he asked, ‘Are you one of the artists?’
‘Goodness no.’ She laughed. ‘I was always hopeless at drawing. But my friend Alice has a real talent for it. Alice!’
In the Far Pashmina Mountains Page 18