Barbara Cleverly - The Damascened Blade

‘What is that stuff, Iskander?’ she wanted to know.

‘Flakes of white cardamom, Miss Coblenz.’

‘An excellent carminative,’ said Grace. ‘Frightfully good for the digestion. You should all try it.’

Lily held out her cup for a sprinkling of the spice from Iskander’s hand and sniffed the fragrant brew, her eyes over the rim smiling her appreciation. Zeman watched her in some disquiet. He held out his cup and invited Iskander in florid language to favour him with the wherewithal to calm a stomach so full of good things after such a generous and delicious meal.

‘Oh, Lord!’ thought Betty. ‘What comes next? Burps? Do Pathans do burps?’

Her thoughts were interrupted by, of all people, Edgar Burroughs. Almost silent until now, he had been steadily eating his way, Betty had noticed, through a good number of the dishes. At last he had a useful contribution to make to the general chatter. ‘If it’s stomach settling you’re after, you fellows,’ he said, addressing, rather uncomfortably, the two Pathans, ‘you couldn’t do better than these. Swear by them!’ He produced a packet of bismuth tablets and passed them to Zeman. Politely concealing his surprise, Zeman took a pill and swallowed it with expressions of gratitude. Everyone else politely refused and handed them back to Burroughs who now felt free to avail himself of his favourite relief without the subterfuge of palming one into his mouth under the pretence of coughing.

Zeman, apparently determined to play the exotic and compelling mysterious man of the East, had reclaimed Lily’s attention and was introducing her to Pushtu poetry. Lily listened, drawn in despite herself by the seductive sounds. The translations when they came had by all appearances nothing in them to give offence.

‘I think that’s just beautiful!’ she exclaimed. ‘Now tell me, who wrote that?’

Zeman smiled a secret smile and said, ‘I think that is a Persian poet whom we sometimes refer to as Nisami. And he also wrote… ’ There followed a rush, a surge of soft Persian and then he murmured, hypnotic dark eyes on Lily,

‘The silver fingers of the Moon

Explore the dark depths

Of the sleeping pool

And I wait to see your shadow fall

On the garden’s midnight wall.’

Joe stirred uncomfortably. Should he intervene? Was Zeman playing his role with a little too much zest? Local colour was one thing but this was oversteering surely? She was just impressionable enough to want to be off with the wraggle-taggle gypsies-o, and he had no intention of shipping a heartbroken Lily Coblenz back to Simla. Better be safe than sorry. He cleared his throat. ‘Shall you be racing at Saratoga this summer, Miss Coblenz?’ he asked brightly.

He was not the only one to feel concern for Lily. Lord Rathmore had been keeping a watchful eye on her. And now the torrent of suggestive and sinuous verse poured into her innocent ear by this silk-clad tailor’s dummy was more than he could stomach. If that police lout who was supposed to be squiring her was not prepared to do anything about the unpleasant situation that was developing, he would! He leaned forward and his voice boomed out above the general chatter.

‘Are you aware, I wonder, Miss Coblenz, of our own English poets? Kipling perhaps? Ever heard of him? Excellent chap! Now he really knows how to put it together! Brings a tear to the eye every time! He has something very apt to say about this part of the world, in fact. Would you like to hear it?’

Stunned and annoyed, Lily could only nod dubiously.

‘Here goes then! Now what was it? Ah, yes! Got it!’ He prepared his voice for recitation with a disagreeable rasping noise, put one hand on his hip and the other over his heart and began.

‘With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem,

The troopships bring us one by one,

At vast expense of time and steam,

To slay Afridis where they run.

The “captives of our bow and spear”

Are cheap alas! as we are dear!’

This was exactly what Betty had been afraid of. ‘Men!’ she thought angrily. ‘If you take their guns and knives away, they’ll fight with anything that comes to hand – even, apparently, lines of verse. Better than hurling bread rolls but not much. Rathmore! What a fool! Such a cheap shot! And now Zeman is insulted and will have to take his revenge!’

She decided to forestall this by closing down the dinner party and she began to rise to her feet, catching the eyes of the other two ladies, but too late, Zeman had rounded on Rathmore. She could tell he was deeply angry by the sweetness of his smile and the softness of his tone as he addressed the red-faced lord.

‘I see you know your Barrack Room Ballads, Rathmore! But you miss your chance to quote the best verse of that poem. “Arithmetic on the Frontier”, wasn’t it? May I?

‘A scrimmage in a Border Station -

A canter down some dark defile -

Two thousand pounds of education

Drops to a ten rupee jezail.

The Crammer’s boast, the Squadron’s pride,

Shot like a rabbit in a ride!’

He clearly relished delivering the last line and asked smoothly ‘Have you calculated the worth of your expensive education, my lord, should some tribal owner of a ten rupee Afridi musket take you for a rabbit?’

The blue of Rathmore’s small blue eyes intensified. All held their breath.

‘Much the same as yours, I would estimate, old boy! Not a vast deal of difference between Rugby and Harrow, I should think. You tell me!’ he replied, looking about him triumphantly for support for his thrust. ‘And now, I can see that Betty is making a move to send us all off upstairs with our mugs of cocoa! Miss Coblenz, let me escort you to your room.’ He put out an arm and, scowling and uncertain, Lily took it. They came over to Betty and thanked her in turn for their evening and left the room, Lily casting a speaking glance over her shoulder at Zeman.

The last they heard from Rathmore was a rumbling laugh and in a stage whisper to Lily, ‘Rugby indeed! All paid for by the British, of course, if my information is correct.’

Joe walked silently round the guest wing. ‘Past eleven o’clock and all’s well,’ he was tempted for a moment to call out. But only just ‘all well,’ thanks to that bloody fool Rathmore! Blast him! He could have provoked a fourth Afghan war with his jingoistic rubbish. Just the kind of thing to raise the sensitive prickles of Zeman and, indeed, the even more sensitive prickles of Iskander. To insult a guest was against all the rules of Pathan hospitality – against all the rules of Joe’s idea of hospitality too. Luckier than he deserved, than he even realized in fact, that Zeman had taken it so lightly.

Joe, James and Fred had stayed on with the two Afghans after the party broke up, James calling distractedly for brandy. Fred, bottle in hand, did the honours, pouring out with lavish hand glasses of a fine old cognac. Joe guessed that the generosity of Fred’s measures reflected the relief of the five men that they had been left behind by the civilians. He could not deny that he felt more comfortable in the after-dinner company of Zeman and Iskander than that of Rathmore and Burroughs. To Joe’s surprise both the Pathans accepted a glass of brandy. To Joe’s further surprise they were quite prepared to settle down and do what Pathans enjoy after a good meal: they proceeded to swap news and scandal and tell stories and even to have a laugh at Rathmore’s expense. Unexpectedly, Iskander gave an impassioned and hilarious imitation of Rathmore’s declamatory style. This broke any remaining ice and they all relaxed gratefully into the familiar unbuttoned comfort of an after-dinner officers’ mess.

So in the end, everyone had rolled away to bed in high good humour, beyond anything Joe and James could have expected. Accompanied by vigilant Scouts James patrolled the lower fort, Eddy Fraser the grounds, and it fell to Joe to check the guest wing. ‘Remember,’ James had said, ‘the frontier never sleeps,’ and, thankfully at last, his patrol complete, he had settled in for the night with Betty in the double-sized guest room on the first floor. Not much concession to marital comforts here! Two iron beds, two narrow mattresses, four coat hangers, two candlesticks, two candles, and two bedside tables. ‘No concessions!’ he had warned Betty. ‘Not even for the memsahib! We don’t want to get a reputation for having gone soft. This is a barracks not the Ritz!’ But his wife’s presence turned it into paradise. James had no yearnings for silk-clad houris reclining on damask cushions; Betty and an army issue blanket filled his world for the night.