The Lotus and the Wind Read online

  The Lotus and the Wind

  John Masters

  First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd May 1953

  All rights Reserved

  ISBN 07181 0221 5

  To The Lotus

  To The Wind

  To Barbara

  CHAPTER 1

  The girl leaned against the side of the carriage and looked down the Indus. It was December, and in the dawn she had been cold. Now the mid-morning Punjab sun warmed her and sparkled on the river and made her screw up her eyes. She saw boats moored in the stream, and an English engineer working over a plane table on the far bank. That was where the bridge would go up.

  From behind her, from the other side of the carriage, a sharp voice cried, ‘Anne! Anne! Where are you? We’re waiting.’ There were soldiers around her, talking in many languages, and bullocks grunting, but the girl picked out her mother’s mood and rebelled, staying silent where she was.

  After a minute she said aloud, ‘Oh dear, it’s no good,’ and stood upright. ‘I’m here, Mother.’

  ‘Where have you been? What--? Your father’s waiting. This is not our carriage.’

  ‘I know, Mother. I’m riding to-day. You said I could.’

  ‘Oh yes. With--? Very well. Good morning, Major Hayling. You’re sure you don’t mind Anne’s company?’

  ‘It’s an honour, ma’am.’

  Major Hayling was already mounted. The girl watched him smiling down at her mother, and detected her mother’s bridling smirk. The major’s good left eye, on Anne’s side, twinkled cynically. His voice was soft and his mouth hard; he was forty-seven. His right hand ended in a stump and a steel hook.

  The ungainly column was already on the move. The travellers wound out in due order from the ferryhead, their faces to the North West Frontier of India. The wheels, the hoofs, and the boots pounded the Grand Trunk Road. Anne’s groom helped her to mount. She adjusted her hat and habit, took her crop from the groom’s hand, and was ready to go. Her father had been posted to the garrison of Peshawar, and she and her mother were going with him.

  She looked at the river again, and at the savage rocks by Attock Fort, and said, ‘It’s the grimmest place I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘You’ll see grimmer.’

  ‘I don’t want to. Look at that horrible slate cliff.’

  ‘That’s called Jalalia. And the one on the other side is called Kamalia. They’re named after heretics whom the Emperor Akbar had thrown into the whirlpool. That has a name too.’

  He was a strange thin man, with unexpected humours and odd enthusiasms. She watched the engineer at the plane table and listened with half an ear to her companion. The engineer was little more than a pin man in the distance, but she imagined his face and warmed towards him. He was building a bridge. The bridge would carry rails across the Indus. Then the rails would creep forward again and bring peace into this desolation. These travellers who pressed forward now about her were the forerunners. They were not settlers, but they brought peace and law, with guns in their hands and pianos in their baggage. There were soldiers, Highlanders and Gurkhas, marching in step; there were officers’ families, with wardrobes and chests and trunks full of curtain material, linen, and crockery. The families travelled in carriages or on horseback; their chattels filled a string of bullock carts. She watched the carts, and behind them saw Captain and Mrs. Collett in a carriage, and waved shyly. Edith Collett wore a heavy veil to protect her complexion from the sun. Perhaps she had not seen the wave.

  Major Hayling gestured, and the steel hook flashed.

  ‘Alexander the Great crossed the river a few miles upstream . . ‘ It was funny how, as she grew older, she could tell by the sound of a man’s voice whether he liked her, and in what way.

  The land was trying to speak too, in the rustle of a dry wind over barren earth. It was a low, harsh voice, saying, ‘Remember, before you forget.’ She remembered the dawn, those few days back, where the rails ended. That was in the Punjab, where peace had already settled. In that dawn hoar frost made the grass white, and the Highland soldiers blew on their fingernails and chased each other between the rails like boys, yelling to keep warm; and the little Gurkhas swung their arms around and stood hunchbacked and stamped their feet. Back there in India men tilled the fields and women lit the cooking fires. This seventeenth day of December, 1879, she had crossed the Indus. India lay behind her. Central Asia ahead. Yesterday she had seen a shimmer of white suspended in the sky above the northern horizon, above the dust, above the clouds.

  She touched her horse’s flank with her heel and trotted up the road. Major Hayling fell into place beside her, and soon they caught up with her parents’ carriage. Her mother looked up crossly, but Anne knew she would say nothing in Major Hayling’s presence. The major was mature and a bachelor, so Anne had to be treated as a sensible, grown young woman of twenty-three, fully ready for the responsibilities of marriage. One day her mother would say so in as many words--then Anne would seize her opportunity.

  Across the scrub-covered plain approached men with camels. The men had the faces of eagles and walked with a long, slow, lifting stride. One of them looked up as he passed by. Anne smiled at him, expecting the salaam and the answering smile of an ordinary Indian wayfarer. But this was not India. The man stared her down, from pale green kohl-rimmed eyes. He carried a long rifle slung across his shoulders; a woman, shapelessly swathed in red and black cotton, swayed on top of the camel that he led; a lad of fourteen walked behind the camel; the lad had no beard, but his stride was an exact imitation of his father’s insolent lilt, and he too carried a rifle.

  ‘Pathans--Aka Khel Afridis,’ Major Hayling said. Anne stared after them, a little angry, a little frightened.

  The dust of the Grand Trunk Road slid back eastward under her horse’s hoofs. To the right, out of sight to-day, the ramparts of Central Asia rose up, tier upon tier, in her imagination, as clear in her mind’s eye as they had been to her sight that day when she had seen them. To the left the Indus plunged into the Attock gorge, after that flowing on down between rocks and deserts to the sea. Behind her lay such peace and security as India knew. That was a good life back there. Simla was there, and Robin had been in Simla. Robin was out in front, to the west, now. In front the land was jagged and the people harsh and the sky unrelenting. Together they threw a challenge into her face. It was here that she had to live and make her home.

  They were still riding near the carriage, and her mother raised her voice. ‘That’s Sunbeam that Anne’s riding, Major. She won the Ladies’ Jumping on him in Meerut last cold weather.’

  ‘Well, congratulations!’ The major turned to Anne in mock awe. ‘You must be good.’

  Anne smiled thinly. She might as well be a piece of prime meat in a butcher’s shop. Not that she disliked Major Hayling, really. He was infinitely better than most of the old men her mother seemed to approve of.

  Mrs. Hildreth trilled, ‘It is so kind of you, Major, to ride with us, and tell Anne all about this.’ She waved her hand at the bleak landscape. Her trill rose to a scream as she strove to make herself heard above the clop of hoofs and the creak of carriage springs.

  Major Hayling said, ‘Ah, Mrs. Hildreth, you don’t know what a pleasure it is to have such a charming listener.’

  Anne tried to keep her face straight but she could not. The major’s voice was just correctly unctuous, as if, from the bottom of his heart, he meant what he said. She caught his eye--it was on the side hidden from her mother--and it winked slowly.

  Her father looked up from the week-old newspaper that bounced and fluttered in his hands as the carriage jolted onward. ‘Seen this, Hayling? Bad news from Kabul. General Roberts was right all along. I wonder what the Russians
will do, whether they’ll try to push in, eh?’

  ‘So do we all, Hildreth.’

  ‘That’s your job, isn’t it?’

  ‘What? Wondering?’

  ‘No, no, finding out.’

  ‘In a way.’

  The two men began a desultory, shouted conversation. Mrs. Hildreth eyed her daughter and made surreptitious gestures that Anne should smooth down her habit. Anne pretended not to see, and in turn watched her father. He was fat and had become hot, and his eyes bulged, but he was nice. She turned her head and looked out over the low hills on the left of the road.

  The slopes were bare of trees, the rocks ochreous and black and green. Here and there a small bush sprouted in a patch of yellowing grass. She saw no people, no crops, no animals. The land was hostile to men. No--such men as the one with the eagle face and the green eyes would stride over it and enjoy its barrenness that matched their own. The land was hostile to women and all that women wanted.

  She sighed. The sounds of the men and women moving down the road drowned the faint voice of the wind. They would all live in houses in this ferocious wilderness, but could they or she or anyone actually come to like it? Robin had said once that he knew he was going to like it; but when he said that he had never been up here. Where he was now, beyond the Khyber, it must be worse. There, over the passes, in the snowbound sloping deserts under the Hindu Kush, the land must be as cruel as the fanatic Afghan mullahs it bred. The mullahs who--

  She heard a popping sound and looked around to see where it came from. Her father ploughed on with his diatribe about the Russians. Her mother made a pretence of listening to him. Major Hayling had turned his head to the south, and his face was strained; he looked like someone who is trying to hear two conversations at the same time.

  Again--pop! pop! The sound came from the hills. She heard a louder, different crack!--emphatic as a snapping stick, then a long metallic whir overhead that was at last lost in the creak of the carts and carriages.

  Major Hayling said brusquely, ‘Listen, Hildreth--shooting. Don’t be alarmed, ma’am. Sergeant!’ He waved his hook at the sergeant marching beside a squad of Highlanders just in front of the carriage. Anne’s heart beat faster. The popping had sounded so far away, the long whir so close. Her father put down his newspaper and stared with a comical mixture of rage and alarm at the empty hills. Mrs. Hildreth screamed, ‘Sit still, Edwin, don’t you dare leave us! Oh, Major Hayling, what is happening? Why doesn’t--?’

  ‘I don’t know, ma’am. A blood feud, probably, and nothing to do with us, or they’d have been much closer. Sergeant, there’s some shooting going on over there.’

  ‘Aye, sir, we heard ut.’

  ‘Get your men ready for action, just in case. Jemadar-sahib!’ A jemadar of Gurkhas had come running, and Major Hayling spoke to him briefly in Hindustani. The jemadar saluted, hitched up his sword, and ran back down the road.

  The excitement communicated itself to the horses. Sunbeam skittered about on the road, and the coachman jumped down to hold the carriage-horses’ heads. Breathless, Anne dismounted. The groom took the reins from her, and she stood in the middle of the road and stared at the hills, one hand to her throat. The N.C.O.s shouted orders, the bullock drivers screamed at their bullocks; the sounds echoed back, redoubled, from the rocky hillside.

  The crest of the nearest low ridge ran parallel to the road and about three hundred yards away. Sunlight and shadow and outcroppings of rock broke up the surface of the ridge into a thousand patterns which seemed to move, dancing, as the air shimmered over it. Suddenly Anne saw a man running along the ridge. From somewhere out there--she couldn’t place them exactly--more shots came in over the road. Near her a Highland soldier yelled and fell to his knees, his arm swinging limply and his face twisted. Hayling dismounted and ran up the road. A score of Gurkhas panted past, led by their jemadar. It must be a hold-up, such as they had in America--but who would be foolish enough to try and rob a convoy that included a hundred soldiers, all armed?

  She wanted to run as the men were running, to shout and scream and join in their active excitement, but she did not know how to begin. She remembered the frightening whir of the bullets and slid down to sit in the shallow ditch beside the road. Her mother was in the carriage still, shouting furiously at her father. Her father swung cautiously to earth and lumbered forward to join the soldiers. Anne snapped, ‘Be quiet, Mother, and come down here!’--but her mother did not move.

  She had not seen a single ‘enemy’ except the one running man, and he had disappeared. One of those pictures in the Illustrated London News would have made it quite clear--tribesmen with knives rushing down that slope, soldiers standing there in a line--tongues of flame spouting from the rifles. But it wasn’t like that. Some of the soldiers knelt, some stood. Bursts of vile language and--incredibly--laughter came from them. The shooting had stopped.

  She saw the running man again, this time clearly, and she saw the long jezail in his hand. Her throat tightened so that the words she tried to scream came out as whispers. ‘There! By that rock!’

  Major Hayling had gone, her father had gone, her mother was blowing her nose. No one was listening. Anne caught up her habit in her hand and ran along the ditch towards the soldiers, scrambling over the uneven surface, stumbling as she turned her head to keep her eye on the running man. She saw him crouch and raise his jezail. The sun caught the brass bands around the long muzzle--but his aim was across the hill, away from them all on the road. Besides, he had dropped down to the left of a rock for shelter; from the road anyone who knew where to look could see him clearly. Whoever his enemies were, they were farther over to the right. She stopped, panting, looked in the direction the lone man was pointing his jezail, and caught a glimpse of fluttering grey cloth and, for a moment, the jerk of a man’s head.

  She found two Gurkha riflemen beside her. They held her jacket, tugging at its hem gently and grinning shyly. They pointed back down the road and said together, ‘Wapas, miss sahib, wapas jao.’ Their Hindustani sounded as angular and awkward as her own--well, it would be. Gurkhas came from Nepal, Robin had told her, and were not Indians at all.

  She caught one’s arm, pointed at the lone man on the hill, and yelled, ‘Dekko! Admi! Oh dear, that one--is he friend?’ Then she pointed to the right, screaming, ‘Badmash there! Not here, there!’

  The riflemen at once saw the lone man to the left of the rock. They lifted their rifles while Anne shook her head and screamed, ‘No, no!’ and looked around for someone who could interpret.

  There was no one. She saw the Highlanders and the rest of the Gurkhas struggling up the right-hand part of the slope. If they went on in that direction they would come to where the lone man’s enemies lay hidden. She saw her father’s broad back up there, and on the hill close to him the bare bottom of a Highlander whose kilts had been pushed up over his body when he had stumbled on the rock. The Highlander got up, and the wind blew the laughter and the clattering of arms and the vile, incomprehensible words down to her. She heard Hayling’s voice raised, swearing, ordering, becoming fainter as the soldiers worked farther away across the hill. Out in front of them a shot was fired, then another. The firing grew to a fusillade. The soldiers stopped to fire, then ran forward behind her father, swung right, and puffed over the ridge and out of sight.

  The lone man still crouched in full view on the hillside. On the road the bullock drivers hissed soothingly to their animals. A woman in green knelt in the ditch to tend the wounded Highland private’s arm, and Anne saw with surprise that it was Edith Collett, whom her mother called ‘fast.’

  Then, from straight up the hill, four Pathans broke cover and ran down on the lone man with the jezail. He twisted around his rock, aimed, fired, and dropped down again. One of the running men fell, the others came on, bounding from rock to rock with their robes flying and the sun in their hawk faces. The soldiers, over to the right, could not see them. The lone man rose, turned, and threw himself with desperate steps down the hil
l towards the road.

  ‘He’s looking for shelter, he wants help!’ Anne screamed. The two Gurkha riflemen once more raised their rifles. One of the running trio of Pathans dropped to his knee, steadied, and fired. The lone man curled up like a shot rabbit and fell headlong. Where he fell, he crawled and writhed forward still, and still held to the long jezail in his right hand. Wriggling by jerks and spasms, he reached a cleft of the rock. Anne cried, ‘Save him!’ and found herself running up the hill. She forgot the bullets and the tightness in her throat. Her mind was empty of everything but the lone man’s face. He had been so close to safety when the bullet from behind smashed him down; he was not young, but his face was the face of a man lost, a man far from mother or wife or daughter.

  She stumbled up the hill. The running Pathans came on. The two Gurkhas began to shoot, hurrying a few paces, shooting, reloading, running again, yelling to her to come back. She understood the sense, although the words meant nothing. Her mother began to scream once more.

  One of the three Pathans went down, shot in the head by the Gurkha to her right. She saw his bearded face melt, and he was gone. The other Pathans made to stop and shoot, but after a fractional hesitation they changed their minds and ran on. She and the Gurkhas could not reach the lone man before his enemies did. Her breath pumped in her lungs and her face grew scarlet. The lone man lay sprawled on his stomach. A red stream of his blood trickled down the stones. His right hand moved aimlessly across the bare face of the rock slab below his head. He had let go of the jezail. The Pathans reached him when Anne and the riflemen were still twenty yards away. Knives flashed, and the Pathans swooped. A long steel glitter ended in the lone man’s back.

  The Gurkhas’ rifles exploded by her ear, but their hands were sweaty and unsteady, and both shots missed. The Pathans, without stopping their headlong pace, snatched up the lone man’s jezail and swerved around and bounded like stags back up the hill. They ran with tireless, irregular strides, jinking, separating, coming together again, their robes flying. The Gurkhas fired twice more each, but the Pathans ran on. Then they were gone.