Jon Cleary - The Faraway Drums

‘My grandfather knew her when she was Mrs James, a very young bride here in Simla,’ the Ranee said.

‘My father always boasted he was one of her first lovers.’ Lady Westbrook was an elderly woman of that rather dowdy elegance that the English achieve absent-mindedly, as if fashion was something that occurred to them only periodically like childbirth or an imperial decoration. But, I learned later, she drank her wine and port with the best of the men and smoked a cheroot in an ivory holder. ‘But that was only after he learned she finished up as the mistress of King Ludwig of Bavaria. I suppose all men would like to think they shared a woman with a king.’

‘Not with King George,’ said the Nawab of Kalanpur and spilled his wine as he laughed. ‘I understand the Queen sends a company of Coldstream Guards with him every time he goes out alone. She’s rather a battle-axe when it comes to morality.’

‘I say, Bertie, that’s going too far.’ Major Savanna was a stuffed shirt such as I had only hitherto seen on Beacon Hill in Boston; I suppose one finds them all over the world, a breed hidebound by what they think is correct behaviour. ‘I hope you won’t put any of this conversation into your newspaper articles, Miss O’Brady?’

I had come to India to cover the Great Durbar in Delhi, one of the few women correspondents granted such permission. Females were still considered lesser beings in those days, even in the so-called enlightened offices of newspapers; some of the most bigoted male chauvinists I have met in a lifetime of such encounters have been newspaper editors. But I had been taken on as a cub reporter by the editor of the Boston Globe who owed a favour to someone who owed a favour to Mayor Honey Fitz, for whom my father worked as a ward boss. I had managed not to blot my notebook and gradually had been given assignments that had, after several years and with great reluctance on the part of the paper’s male management, resulted in my being granted a by-line. I had covered stories spread over a great deal of the United States and had attained a certain fame; or in certain circles where anyone who worked for a newspaper, regardless of their sex, was looked upon as a whore, a certain notoriety. Disgusted at the growing cost of Presidential inaugurations, the editor had decided to send me to India to see how the British Empire spent money on crowning an Emperor. It was I who had suggested that I should also do a story on Lola Montez, the Irish-born courtesan who had begun her career in Simla as a 15-year-old bride of a British officer. The editor, thinking of syndication, had readily agreed. There were probably fifty million housewives throughout the United States who were dreaming of being courtesans.

‘Quote every word, Miss O’Brady.’ Major Farnol up till then had offered only a few words, the crumbs of politeness that gentlemen offer to ladies in whom they are not particularly interested. But now he looked at me full face and I saw his gaze run quickly up from my bosom, over my shoulders and throat and up to my face and hair. I learned later that he was famous for swift appraisals of the landscape and was known amongst the Pathan tribesmen of Afghanistan as Old Hawkeye. ‘We must keep on with the good work done by the late King Edward, making our royalty appear human. We have suffered too long from Victorian stuffiness.’

‘Oh, I say!’ said the stuffed shirt at the top of the table.

‘Ach, no.’ The one-armed German Consul-General, Baron Kurt von Albern, leaned to one side while a servant took away his plate. He leaned stiffly and with his head seemingly cocked to balance the weight of his one arm; he looked rigid and very Prussian, though he was riot a Prussian. He had close-cropped grey hair, a thick grey moustache, wore gold-rimmed spectacles with a silk cord running down to his lapel and looked like Teddy Roosevelt without the bombast. ‘Kings should never appear human. They should always suggest a little mystery.’

‘Is there any mystery about the Kaiser?’ said Major Farnol. ‘Other than whether or not he wants to go to war with us?’

The Baron shook his great head sadly. ‘Always talk of war. The English and the Germans will never fight. Your own King is almost more German than he is English.’

‘More’s the pity,’ said Lady Westbrook. ‘Can’t understand why we ever let the Tudors go.’

‘Our King is beloved just as he is.’ Major Savanna seemed to have had a little too much to drink. He glared down the table in my direction and for a moment I wondered what America had done recently to bring on this aggression. Then I realized he was looking at Major Farnol. ‘That correct, Major?’

‘Perhaps in England. Here in India no one knows him.’

The King, as Prince of Wales, had visited India in 1905, but he had seen, and been seen by, very few more than the British civil and military brass and the Indian princes. Though England had ruled India for almost two centuries, no reigning monarch had ever set foot in the country. The monarch’s surrogates had been the real rulers, the Governors-General and the Viceroys who had had all the trappings of a king and almost as much power, possibly even more. The armorial bearings of all those surrogates hung from the walls above our heads, from the first of them, Warren Hastings, to the present one, Hardinge. Pictures of the monarch might hang in offices and railway stations and jungle bungalows, but everyone knew who was the actual British Raj of the moment.

‘I met him once at Lord’s,’ said the Nawab. ‘Came to see the Second Test against the Australians, looked bored stiff. Bally undiplomatic of him, I thought. That’s the German in him, I suppose.’

‘Being undiplomatic or being bored by cricket?’ said the Baron.

The Nawab laughed, a high giggle that didn’t go at all well with his appearance. He was rather saturnine, a look that went against the mould of the imitation Englishman he tried to be; when his face was in repose he looked slightly sinister, an image the English have washed from their countenances if not from their hearts.

‘Touché, Baron. It’s a pity you didn’t go to Harrow, as I did. With your physique they’d have made a jolly good fast bowler of you.’

‘It sounds a dreadful fate,’ said the Baron.

‘I don’t think the King should have come out here.’ The Ranee dismissed His Majesty with a wave of her hand, an explosion of diamond lights. ‘Anything could happen to him. He could be trodden on by an elephant, killed by a tiger. Accidents happen in this country.’

‘Planned accidents?’ said Major Farnol.

Perhaps I was too quick for an outsider; but what should a newspaperwoman be if not quick? ‘You mean an assassination?’

I saw Farnol and Savanna exchange glances. The Ranee also saw it: ‘What’s going on, gentlemen? Have you heard something?’

There was silence for a moment and it was obvious that the two majors were each waiting for the other to reply. Then Major Farnol said, ‘No, nothing.’

‘Of course not!’ But Savanna’s voice was not so loud from drink alone; he was far too emphatic. ‘Ridiculous! Their Majesties will be as safe here in India as in Buckingham Palace. Correct, Farnol?’

I saw Farnol’s jaw stiffen, but he nodded. ‘Of course.’

Then dinner was finished and the ladies rose to be banished as we always were. The port and the cigars were already being produced, but as we went out the door Lady Westbrook turned to one of the servants. ‘I’ll have a large port in the drawing-room. Better bring a small decanter.’

I sat with Lady Westbrook and the Ranee for half an hour, then I excused myself and went up to bed. I had been riding that afternoon and was genuinely tired. As I reached the gallery that led to the bedrooms I pulled up startled. Major Farnol sat in the shadows, in a large chair against the wall of the corridor.