The Ravi Lancers Page 2

  ‘He’s unusual, all right,’ Warren said.

  He spread marmalade on his toast, while the khitmatgar put the fresh pot of hot water on the table. Ralph Harris was a queer one, sullen and boisterous by turns, sometimes rude, sometimes over-polite, often withdrawn into himself. One could hardly blame him. His situation wasn’t his fault. Still, it was a pity that Joan found Diana so dull. There was a lot they could have done together, even in the depths of Wiltshire, if they shared the same enthusiasms.

  He got up, wiping his mouth, ‘I think I’ll take a look at the stables, dear. See that the carriage is cleaned up. We don’t want to go to Shalimar looking like a party of Southend trippers.’ He bent and kissed her hair.

  They drove back from the picnic lunch in the great Mogul gardens after three o’clock, the children dozing fitfully between ayah and Diana on one seat, himself and Joan opposite, the khitmatgar in full livery smart on the box beside the syce, the fox terrier Shikari sitting proudly between them. Shalimar was very beautiful, Warren thought. All the works of the Moguls had a great strength and calm, at least the early ones. The Taj Mahal felt flashy and somehow foreign after one had really absorbed Fatehpur Sikri and the Red Fort. He had tried to point out to Diana some of the special graces of Shalimar. She listened, because he was her brother--he could tell that she was not really interested; but the crowds of Indians in the gardens had held her attention. After six months she could barely tell a Sikh from a Muslim, but that didn’t matter for it was always the children that absorbed her--they, and the marks of poverty and disease, which were prominent enough even in this rich capital of a rich province.

  The carriage rolled past the garrison cricket field, and Warren saw that a match was in progress. He said, ‘Who’s playing?’

  ‘The Club against Ravi State,’ Joan said. ‘I saw the announcement last week but didn’t tell you in case you decided to play instead of taking us to Shalimar, as you’d promised.’

  Warren laughed. ‘Naughty puss ... Well, I think I’ll watch for a bit. Might as well doze in one of the chairs here as at home.’

  The children woke up. ‘Daddy, Daddy, can we watch too?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You go home with Mummy. Idder rokna, Afzal ... No, Shikari, home you go, a cricket field’s no place for an inquisitive little dog. Do you want to spend an hour or so here, Diana? Good ... See you about five, dear. We’ll walk back.’

  He waved briefly as the carriage rolled away. It was no use even asking Joan whether she would like to watch the cricket. She wouldn’t.

  He found empty chairs among those set up outside the pavilion, and greeted a few friends. ‘Who’s batting?’ he asked his neighbour.

  ‘Fellow at the crease is Krishna Ram, Yuvraj of Ravi. He’s the captain, of course, though he’s only twenty-five or twenty-six. Couldn’t have a subject ordering his prince about, could they? Don’t know the fellow at the other end’s name. Doesn’t matter, for he won’t be there long, I can see. But the Yuvraj ... oh, good shot! ‘ The lithe figure in white bent, the bat swung powerfully, the red ball whistled along the dried grass past the pavilion. Diana clapped heartily. Warren settled down to watch, and was rewarded with half an hour of grace, during which the young Indian prince scored forty runs. Two wickets fell and then the Yuvraj, seeming to grow careless, hit across a good-length ball and was clean bowled.

  ‘That’s the trouble with these people,’ Warren’s neighbour muttered, ‘no perseverance.’

  The Yuvraj was walking back to the pavilion, his bat under his arm, taking off his batting gloves. Everyone was applauding politely, except Diana who was on her feet, clapping enthusiastically. The prince glanced at her and acknowledged her with a little nod and a touch of his hand to the long peak of his yellow and white cap. ‘He looked as though he knew you,’ Warren said.

  ‘In a way. He was standing next to us at the parade this morning. We didn’t speak, though.’

  ‘Well, we could now. They’re taking tea.’

  Diana at his side, he strolled under the awning set up behind the pavilion. The Yuvraj, divested of pads and cap, came in rubbing his hands. Warren said, ‘A pretty knock--except the last stroke.’ He smiled.

  The Yuvraj said, ‘I know, sir. I ought to be ashamed of myself.’

  ‘You’re the Yuvraj of Ravi, aren’t you? I’m Warren Bateman, 44th Bengal Lancers.’

  ‘I recognize you from the parade this morning. I thought your squadron was the best. Of course that may be because they are Rajputs, like us.’ He laughed lightly, a fresh boyish laugh.

  Warren said, ‘This is my sister, Diana. She’s staying with us.’

  ‘In the fishing fleet,’ Diana said with a smile, ‘though I haven’t caught anything ... or is it me who’s supposed to be caught?’

  The prince was the same height as Warren, about five-foot-ten, but slimmer, his skin the colour of wheat, his hair shining black and wavy, his eyes dark brown and deep set under strong straight eyebrows. He was bowing awkwardly to Diana, obviously a little ill at ease with her. He wouldn’t have much knowledge or experience of European society, living up in that remote pleasant little kingdom nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas.

  ‘Where did you learn your cricket?’ Warren asked idly.

  ‘My grandfather employed an English professional when I was a boy. Then I had a tutor, Mr. Charles Fleming. He played for Oxford. Have you heard of him?’

  ‘Fraid not,’ Warren said. ‘Well, whoever it was taught you well. You could be another Ranji, if you put your mind to it. And time, of course. And went to England.’

  ‘I’d love to,’ the young man sighed, ‘but ...’--he spread his hands--’My grandfather says my place is in Ravi, with our people. If my father were alive, perhaps I could, but he is dead, so I am the heir.’

  They sipped tea. The prince looked surreptitiously at Diana when she looked somewhere else. Twice Warren thought that he was trying to frame some polite remark to her, but didn’t know how. He remained silent. Diana smiled at him and he smiled back.

  Suddenly he blurted out, ‘I’ll be seeing you at Ratanwala Camp, sir.’

  Warren said, ‘Oh? Of course, I forgot, the Ravi Lancers are coming down to act as enemy for us. But I didn’t know you were serving in them.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’m a major, the Second-in-command.’

  ‘Then for heaven’s sake don’t call me “sir”. I’m only a captain and should be calling you “sir”.’

  ‘Yes, sir ... Captain Bateman.’ The prince smiled again. ‘But you know I’d only be a subaltern in your regiment ... if I were allowed into it.’

  ‘I wish I could come to Ratanwala, too,’ Diana said.

  ‘We don’t allow camp followers in the Indian Army--haven’t for a long time,’ Warren said, grinning.

  ‘And afterwards I’ll be going home ..

  ‘Are you going home?’ the Yuvraj said, his face falling.

  ‘On February the 4th,’ she said.

  The prince said, ‘I was hoping ... I was going to ask Captain Bateman if you would all like to visit Ravi. It is very beautiful. Of course, it is only a small state, and our capital, Basohli, is not much more than a village. But ... we have very good snipe shooting ... some duck ... cricket ... polo . . .

  Warren shook his head, ‘Very kind of you, Yuvraj, but there just isn’t time. Now, Di, we’d better be getting back. Goodbye, Yuvraj. See you at Ratanwala.’

  ‘Goodbye, sir. Goodbye, Miss Bateman.’

  ‘Goodbye, Yuvraj,’ she said. She smiled and held out her hand. He took it and bowed awkwardly, the pale gold of his skin suffusing with a blush.

  They walked away round the edge of the ground. The sun was low over the distant trees and the blue smoke of cooking fires rose from the hidden bungalows of the cantonment to mingle with the dust from trotting carriages and exercising horses.

  ‘Seems a nice chap,’ Warren said. ‘Though I don’t envy these princes at all ... raised as petty gods to find when they grow up that they really have no res
ponsibility. I believe Ravi comes under the Agent to the Governor General for the Hill States ... A lot of them take to drink, or worse. I can’t say I blame them.’

  ‘It’s a shame we can’t visit it,’ Diana said, ‘but it can’t be helped.’

  ‘No ... When you get home, let me know at once if there’s any trouble between Joan and Mother, won’t you?’

  ‘Oh, there won’t be!’ Diana exclaimed. ‘No one quarrels with Mother.’

  ‘No, but Joan has her own ideas about so many things--the way the children ought to be brought up ... this Harz-Goldwasser method ... the way she dresses, eats, acts ... It looks pretty odd sometimes. Mother might not approve.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Warrie,’ his sister said, taking his arm. ‘We’ll all get along famously until you come home in August. And I’m so sorry you wasted so much time and trouble trying to find me a husband. I’ll just have to reconcile myself to dying an old maid, won’t I? ... By the way, are you going to take Shikari to camp?’

  ‘I thought I’d have to. Joan never sees that he’s properly exercised ... but you’ll be here, won’t you? I’d rather not take him unless I have to.’

  ‘I’ll exercise him, Warrie.’

  ‘Good. He’s a nice little dog, but ... well, I don’t think a manoeuvre camp is the place for dogs. Except retrievers, perhaps.’

  ‘Ooh ... darling ... aaah!’ Warren groaned in Joan’s ear, his weight bearing rhythmically down on her. Her legs were twined round his back, her head twisted, the fair hair a cloud on the moonlit pillow. The bed creaked faster. Her teeth met gently, then suddenly sharp, in his ear. She began to moan, muffling the sounds against his throat.

  Afterwards, he went to the bathroom and disposed of the contraceptive which she always insisted that he used. The damned thing turned the act of love into something vaguely unnatural and degrading, and it didn’t feel so good, physically; but that wasn’t of much importance compared to Joan’s peace of mind; and they certainly should not have another child, partly because of the expense and partly because she had had such a bad time giving birth to Rodney three and a half years ago.

  He lay down again beside her, and she curled up in his arms. ‘I wish you were coming back to England with us,’ she said.

  ‘So do I,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I think you’d miss the manoeuvres, the parades, the sowars.’

  He said thoughtfully, ‘Yes, I would, but I shall miss you more. One can’t have everything in this world.’

  She lay silent against him for a while, then said, ‘I wish your family lived in London.’

  ‘H’m,’ he said noncommittally. He liked London well enough, to visit as a young man, or on leave, but--to live in the Smoke, as the cockneys called it? What was it that woman said in the Shaw play? Not bloody likely! And it was no use pretending to Joan about it.

  ‘I’m starving for art,’ she said, ‘theatre, music, people who think and talk instead of clumping about on stupid great horses. People with their brains in their heads not in their behinds.’

  ‘You could spend some nights in Uncle Rodney’s flat--he has a spare room, I know--and do some things from there ... as much as we can afford.’

  ‘It’s difficult for a woman alone,’ Joan said. ‘She gets stared at, which I don’t mind. And pestered, which I do ... Oh, well, you’ll be back in August, and perhaps I can persuade Ralph to take me up once or twice.’

  Warren kissed her and turned over sleepily. ‘Yes, that’s an idea. You may be able to bring him out of his shell ... persuade him the world isn’t all against him.’

  January 1914

  Warren and his brother officer, George Johnson, walked slowly round the Ratanwala jheel, the village headman beside them. ‘I should think four guns is the maximum here,’ Warren said. ‘We could have a shoot tomorrow, unless old Rainbow’s got something planned for us.’

  Johnson shook his head. ‘No, there’s nothing till the day after. Some of the infantry have to march out into position, that’s all.’ Warren said, ‘All right.’ He told the headman what he wanted done about the snipe shoot. The headman said, ‘It will be done, sahib,’ salaamed twice and walked away across the fields to his village. Warren and Johnson set off down the road to the camp, both smoking pipes as they strolled along. It was four o’clock on another perfect cold weather afternoon in the northern Punjab. The tents of the Lahore Brigade stood in long rows among mango and oak trees on a gentle slope ahead, the mud-walled village of Ratanwala to the north, the shallow lake, Ratanwala Jheel, reputed to provide some of the best snipe shooting in India, in a depression to the east.

  At the entrance to the camp, they met a group of officers all of whom Warren knew from the club and previous manoeuvres--Upchurch of the Oxford Fusiliers, Moore of the Gurkhas, and Corelli of the 8th Brahmins, keen shooters all. Upchurch said, ‘Been arranging that shoot we were talking about, Bateman?’

  Warren nodded, ‘Yes. It’s all fixed. Four guns. Let’s draw lots for the places this evening, and then another four can take the jheel on Sunday.’

  ‘Good enough,’ Captain Corelli said. He looked up the road, ‘Here, what’s this? I thought your lot were the only cavalry going to grace these manoeuvres with your presence.’

  Warren, looking along the dusty road which bordered the camp, saw the glitter of lance points to the north. ‘It’ll be the Ravi Lancers,’ he said. ‘They’re going to act as enemy.’

  ‘Indian States Forces?’ Moore said. ‘That ought to provide some comic relief.’

  ‘I’ve heard this lot are good,’ Warren said. ‘They have a damned good polo team, anyway.’

  The lances were advancing. Ahead of them rode a tall thin man in a heavy pith helmet. ‘A British officer?’ Corelli muttered.

  Warren said, ‘Yes. Colonel Hanbury. He was Central India Horse, re-employed by the Rajah.’

  The column came on, the thin colonel at the head sitting stooped in the saddle, looking neither to right nor left. The watching officers, all in mufti, raised pith helmets or battered felt hats as he passed. He glanced at them then, and touched his right hand to the peak of his topi. A trumpeter rode to his left rear and a sowar bearing a yellow guidon to his right. Now he was reining in his charger, halting, turning round so that he was stopped at the side of the road, his back to Warren and the others. The leading squadron, led by an Indian wearing a khaki turban, wheeled left into the camp. A fat Indian captain, riding like a sack of potatoes, trotted out of the camp, turned his horse alongside the leading squadron commander, and began pointing and gesticulating. Now came the sowars ... horses well groomed, coats healthy in spite of the dust covering all of them, Warren noted. In the rifle buckets they were carrying the old carbine, but the buckets were well dubbined, everything tight fastened, nothing flapping, girths tight, no horse lame or pecking ... they were better looked after than the men. Not that the men were badly turned out, but they lacked the polish and expert management obvious in the horses: their turbans were not all equally well tied, nor their puttees well fastened, and they didn’t sit alike--this man proud and erect, that one like a stuffed doll in the saddle. The lances were slung, where most regiments rode into camp at attention, but the men looked alert, untired, and cheerful. There was some laughing in the ranks, and Upchurch muttered, ‘Lots of talky-talky, eh?’

  Corelli exclaimed, ‘Look!’ Warren stared. Elephants, by God! Down the road came a string of twenty elephants loaded with tentage. They entered the camp. Small parties of men cantered up from the rear of the column, and an old Indian with fiercely upturned white moustaches, who had ridden up to sit easily beside the British colonel, gave them orders. Warren recognized him as Bholanath, the polo player. As the elephants shambled across the area allotted to the Ravi Lancers for their camp, every few yards a man on top would throw down a rolled tent. Oxcarts came now, gaily decorated, with un-uniformed men, ordinary peasants, naked but for loin cloths, perched on the yoke.

  ‘I’ll bet those carts are norma
lly full of women,’ Moore muttered.

  ‘Of course,’ Upchurch said, ‘can’t expect those fellows to do without their home comforts.’

  The carts wheeled into the camp, axles screaming. That was good management, very good, Warren thought, for oxcarts moved at barely two miles an hour, less than half the rate of cavalry, and to have both arrive in camp together was a feat of timing. Also, the carts must have started out very early.

  Another squadron arrived, headed by two men riding side by side. One of them was a captain, the other a sowar, carrying a lance. As they passed Corelli stifled a guffaw and Upchurch said--not very softly--’Good God, bloody Wog pansies?’ Warren saw that the officer and sowar were holding hands as their horses walked together.

  ‘That explains why they haven’t brought any women,’ Moore of the Gurkhas said. ‘They don’t need them.’

  Warren stared after the couple, not sure whether to smile or frown. He knew that there was homosexuality among many Indians, as Oscar Wilde’s trial had shown that there was among Englishmen. He knew it was more prevalent among some Indian peoples than others. An officer commanding Sikhs would be more aware of it than one commanding Dogras or Rajputs, such as these men; and an officer commanding Pathans would have to develop a broad tolerance and follow certain well-defined rules, for among them it was almost universal. But in the Indian Army it would never be flaunted on parade, nor would such a relationship be accepted between an officer and a sowar or sepoy. Colonel Hanbury must have seen, but had said nothing. Well, this was the Ravi Lancers, not the Central India Horse or the 44th of the old Bengal Line.

  The other watching British officers drifted away. Warren and Johnson headed for their mess. As they walked, a squadron of Ravi Lancers wheeled into a column of troops directly in front of them, and its captain called out in Hindi, ‘This is our place, rissaldar-sahib. Allot the tents.’

  Nothing happened. The squadron commander wore spectacles and did not sit his horse well. He was now fidgeting about, looking right and left, while a rissaldar and two jemadars had a heated argument nearby. One of them called, ‘There are not enough tents for my troop, captain-sahib! ‘