Bayonets Along the Border (16 page)

‘In fact, I think I would be called a nigger, wouldn’t you say, or more like niggah, if it was a well-educated English chap describing me.’ Alice realised that the smile that lingered around his lips had not reached his eyes.

‘Oh, certainly not,’ she said immediately. ‘That would be incredibly rude.’

He lowered his head in acknowledgement and took another sip of the brandy. ‘Well, my dear Mrs Fonthill, that is what I
was
called many times at Winchester – such an old-fashioned English school, you know – and by the hearties at Cambridge.’

‘You were educated at Winchester and Cambridge?’ Alice’s jaw dropped again.

‘Oh yes, as well as at school here in India.’

‘But what are you doing here, in this … this wilderness, with these tribemen – and fighting with them, against us, the British?’

‘Yes, perhaps it is time to reveal all, as they say in the best plays in London. But only if you drink your cognac. I do insist.’

She took another sip and he nodded in approval.

‘I know your name because when we were … er … I think the word is
sacking
the fort, we found your belongings in a room by the ramparts and your bag was brought to me. And I must say, Mrs Fonthill, that you do travel light for an English memsahib. Oh, I must reassure you. I have the bag in my own tent and I couldn’t carry it
and
the brandy, you see. I will fetch it presently, so that you can change and retire here for the night, without molestation, I assure you. Oh, and some water and soap, etcetera, so that you can wash. But in the circumstances, you see, I felt the brandy took priority.’

He smiled again and Alice could not refrain from returning it. As he was speaking, her eye was taking in every detail of his appearance. He had been forced to duck very low to enter the tent so he must, she estimated, be very tall, perhaps six feet two inches, certainly tall for an Indian, yet he was obviously not a Sikh. The coat he wore was of calf length and seemed to be a mixture of cotton and silk, for gold threads lined the edges so that it glittered in the lamplight. He wore high
boots of some soft leather, worked into a pattern along the calf, and a high-buttoned, collarless jacket reached to his neck. A cummerbund circled his waist and from a belt hung a long, curved dagger that seemed to have jewels in the hilt. She seemed to remember a coloured turban when he came through the cookhouse door but he was not wearing it now and his hair was black and long, curling up over his collar at the back. Two large rings glittered from his fingers. He was a man, Alice decided, of some standing and with more than one or two rupees to his name.

‘Well, thank you,’ she said. ‘I am now beginning to enjoy the cognac. And,’ she gestured down at her bloodstained blouse and riding breeches, ‘I would welcome the chance to wash and change.’

She checked herself. What on earth was she doing exchanging drawing room pleasantries with a man who had taken part in – maybe even led – a savage attack on British/Indian sepoys? She made her voice take on a colder, more disapproving tone.

‘What happened to the wounded in the cookhouse?’

He shrugged. ‘They were killed, I am afraid. It is the way here, you know, in these hills.’

‘Yes. So it seems. But you are clearly a civilized man. What makes you take part in this … this … butchery? I saw your sword. You had taken part in the fighting.’

‘Oh. It is very simple. I hate the English, you see.’

Alice stared at him, her mouth open.

Then the Indian stood and slightly bowed his head. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘if you will excuse me for a moment, I will leave my brandy here and fetch your bag and ensure you have water and a washing bowl. Then I hope you will be more comfortable.’

She watched him stoop and slip through the tent flap. Who on earth was he, this articulate, well-mannered Indian, who looked like a maharajah, sounded like an English aristocrat and carried a sword like Genghis Khan? She shook her head, absent-mindedly raised her brandy glass and then, without drinking, threw the contents onto the earthen floor with a sudden gesture of disgust. To hell with this! She had to get out of this place.

Alice started for the tent flap and then sat down again abruptly. How stupid! She was still unsteady on her feet and, anyway, he – whoever ‘he’ was – would be back in a moment and, even if she was able to slip through the encampment unnoticed, he would raise the alarm. She took a deep breath. Better to wait until the camp was asleep and, anyway, she must find out more about this man who was her captor.

There was a flurry of movement at the tent flap and then Scarface bustled through carrying a pitcher of water, soap and a rough, loosely woven cloth to act as a towel. He was followed by an Indian carrying her bag.

‘It was only opened,’ he said, gesturing to the bag, ‘to establish your identity. Ah, I see you have finished your cognac. Good. I took the opportunity of bringing in what was left.’ He raised the bottle he was carrying. ‘I thought we might as well finish the bottle together.’ He gave her his disarming smile. ‘I don’t often have the opportunity of indulging in interesting conversation these days.’

Alice lifted up her hand to refuse the cognac but he refilled her glass anyway. He gestured around him. ‘I have been living rather roughly, as you see, for some days.’

She gulped. ‘What … what has happened to the other forts in the
Pass?’ she asked, trying to keep her voice level.

‘Take a sip and I will tell you.’ He gestured with his glass.

Reluctantly, she did so, beginning to feel that she was playing some exotic – erotic? – game, here in these savage hills with this smooth, educated barbarian.

‘Well done. The forts? Oh, we took the other two quite easily in the end, although you will be glad to hear that I was instrumental in us allowing the garrison of Fort Maude to retreat to Jamrud, after they had surrendered the fort. Some of the garrison at Ali Masjid were allowed to get away too. So, you see, I am not quite the butcher that you seem to think I am.’

‘Hmm. The wounded at Kotal – and your sword was bloodstained?’

For a moment, his voice lost its urbanity. ‘I had to fight into the fort there with the Pathans. But I personally do not kill wounded men, madam. Now,’ his words resumed their level tone, ‘at last, the Pathans have regained control of the Khyber Pass,
their
Khyber Pass, after it has been in the hands of your countrymen for so long. The main road into Afghanistan, then, you see, is back in the hands of the people whose country it is. Right and proper, don’t you think?’

Alice suddenly thought of Simon and her heart almost missed a beat. Would he hear of the Pathan victories here and find some other way back to Peshawar? Her brain offered up an unspoken prayer and then she went on: ‘Yes, but why do you hate the English so? You were brought up, it seems, in our country?’

His mouth eased into his mirthless smile again and he gestured to Alice to drink her cognac. She lifted the glass to her lips but allowed only the smallest drop to enter her mouth. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘that that is one of the reasons. Your country, madam, or at least your class,
has the most distasteful attitude to what they call the coloured races, you know. Oh, they like young Ranji – that’s Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji, a distant relative of mine, by the way, who was at Cambridge with me – because he’s good at cricket. But I hated the stupid game and …’ he paused. ‘Come to think of it, one MCC member called Ranji a “damned dirty nigger” last year, even though he had just scored a century against the Australians for England. So there you are. You see, madam, it is easy to hate someone who calls you that, don’t you think?’

‘Of course.’ Somewhere a drum had begun to beat again. Did they never stop? Alice thought quickly. Although she shared the views of the Indian about the English upper classes’ ethnic snobbery, she was damned if she was going to appear sycophantic by agreeing with him. ‘But your own race, you know, is quite as bad,’ she said. ‘Your caste system is nothing more than snobbery, now, isn’t it?’

‘Ah. It is much more than that, but that is too complicated a matter really to go into now. And, anyway,’ he took another sip of the cognac, ‘my hatred of your people is more fundamental.’ He leant forward. ‘After fighting over India with the French, like two dogs over a bone, the English have occupied my country and subjected its people, using them to prop up your empirical economy, sending back to “the mother country”,’ he spat out the phrase, ‘our cotton yarns, our cloths, our spices, our dyes, everything that can be squeezed from India at rock-bottom prices to be converted into high-priced merchandise at places like Manchester and London and then exported to the rest of the world.’

His eyes were now flashing and his lip curled with disgust. ‘And, what is more, madam, you have put Indian against Indian. You push
our poor people into your so-called “Army of the Raj” and make us police the country for you. And when they revolt – as they did in the fifties – you stamp out the insurrection with great cruelty.

‘Now, you have acquired new territory in these hills by laying down some arbitrary line, established by some idiot from Calcutta, and telling the Amir of Afghanistan, a friendly ruler of a so-called independent nation, that he must like it or … or … limp it.’

‘Lump it,’ corrected Alice distantly.

‘What?’

‘I think the phrase is like it or lump it.’

‘Ah yes. Well, the same thing. So, having learnt a little of your ways – and also of your military strategy at Sandhurst …’

‘Good Lord! You were there, too?’

‘Yes. But I never served in your imperial army. So having acquired your so-called wisdom, I came back to my country …’

‘
Your
country, sir? Is this actually your country? Surely, you would argue that this is Afghanistan, in truth?’

She saw a flash of petulance in his face and realised that he was not used to being corrected. ‘I came back to
my country
, I said,’ he continued, ‘and decided to help the Pathans here by putting something of my acquired military skills to good use. These people, you see, are brave, fine fighters, but they lack strategic and tactical ability – attributes needed to overcome well-defended forts like these in the Pass.’

Alice nodded slowly. She remembered seeing how the tribesmen had spread up into the hills so that they could fire down on the defenders of Landi Kotal. Someone, she had noted, was in charge of this rabble.

A silence fell on the interior of the tent. It was as though the Indian
had spent his passion in argument and, indeed, that Alice, who had long argued against the Raj’s exploitation of cheap labour in India to fill the coffers of the merchants of London and the cotton spinners of Manchester, could find nothing to say in opposition.

Then she cleared her throat. ‘I – and there are many others in England in the Liberal Party there – who agree with much of what you say, Mr … Oh, do come along. You know my name. I must know yours. What shall I call you?’

The Indian’s expression softened slightly. ‘Ah, so you are a Liberal. Good. Call me Ali. It will do.’

‘Very well, Ali, I agree with much of your argument, certainly about exploitation of your poor people. But your accusation about putting Indian against Indian does not exactly hold water, you know. I know, for instance, that a
subedar
within the fort here had one son defending it and two outside attacking it.’

‘Ah yes.
Subedar
Akbar Khan. A fine fighter. His sons were sorry that he died. But I must remind you, Mrs Fonthill, that Pathans are not Indians. They are not truly of the Punjab. They are virtually an individual race of many tribes, but if one must be nationalist, then we should call them Afghans. These hills are more a part of Afghanistan than India.’

Alice frowned and, in exasperation, took a far larger sip at her brandy than she meant to and coughed. Damn it, she was being worsted in argument! If this man was used to getting his own way, so too was she, in debate.

Ali seemed not to notice and leant forward earnestly again. Was he trying to convert her, she wondered?

‘But this is not a political revolt, you know,’ he went on. ‘This is
as much about religion as it is about who owns what territory. The Pathans are dedicated Muslims, as am I, and—’

Alice immediately raised her eyebrows and leant forward to meet him, interrupting his discourse. She pointed at his cup. ‘I thought Muslims did not touch alcohol.’

He immediately slumped back on the cushion and, for a moment, looked embarrassed. ‘This,’ he said, tapping the cup, ‘is a very bad habit I learnt in England. I trust that Allah will take it into account when he comes to decide whether I should enter Paradise. But back to the Pathans, they not only hate the English for occupying their land, taxing them, and telling them how to live. They hate them for being infidels, unbelievers. It is a double disgrace, you see, for a militant race to allow such people to rule them.’

‘Yes, I can see that. So it must be easy for the mullahs to raise the individual tribes. Like putting a match to dry grass.’

‘Of course. I am glad you understand.’ He lifted the brandy bottle. ‘Now, this is an interesting conversation and one of the things I learnt at Cambridge is that one can debate better with the help of a little alcohol. So you really must help me finish the bottle. Come along, now.’

Reluctantly, Alice leant forward and offered her glass. He upended the bottle into it. She took another sip. It really was excellent cognac. She felt it speed through her nervous system like the effect of the hashish she had once tried in the Sudan. But she really mustn’t encourage him by asking its provenance – and she mustn’t, she
really mustn’t
get tipsy. Ali was continuing and she frowned in concentration.

‘So, as you say, it wasn’t so difficult for the mullahs – and some of them, like this one, Mullah Sayyid Akbar, are splendid preachers
– to raise the flag of rebellion. What’s more, my dear Mrs Fonthill, this is no petty little revolt.’ He put down his glass and, leaning forward, clasped both of Alice’s, brandy glass and all, in both of his, to emphasise his story. Alice found herself looking deeply into those brown eyes and made no attempt to withdraw either hand.