the Maharajah's Irregulars fired their carbines about once a year and had never shown the slightest interest in any kind of soldiering which didn't involve shiny buttons and admiring watchers – especially female ones. Putting the Kultooni cavalry up against the Pathans would be like sending the Boston Missionary Society to drive the Apache tribes out of Arizona.
The holy warriors from Afghanistan would chew the Irregulars up like betel nuts and spit them out in bright red splashes across the mountain rocks.
On the other hand, the British hadn't ruled India for a hundred and fifty years by needlessly insulting rich and powerful Indian rulers, especially ones who were genuinely friendly towards the Empire. So the Irregulars would at least have to be sent to some garrison post up in the border areas and the Maharajah assured that they were performing honorable service. Thus would the ruler's good will be kept – a good will which would quickly evaporate if some of his favorite sons' testicles ended up as kebabs on Pathan daggers.
On the third hand – not left, nor right, but underhand – was the British diplomat's concern for one royal son in particular, the commanding officer of the Kultooni Regiment, His Royal Highness the Colonel Prince Ravi of Kultoon. The Vice Regal Diplomat knew all about young Prince Ravi, late of Eton College and Oxford University, and heir to the throne of Kultoon. He knew that Ravi was probably the most dashing and good looking of all the Maharajah's sons. The diplomat also knew that the Prince was clever, cowardly, unscrupulous and totally determined to maintain his life of privilege and wealthy indolence at all costs.
In other words he was just the sort of reliable chap the British wanted to replace the Maharajah when the old ruler finally made one trip too many to his harem and went to Allah with a smile on his face.
But there was a very good chance that Prince Ravi would not be available to be weighed in diamonds at his coronation if Colonel Ravi was allowed anywhere near the frontier passes, where every open space was swept by eagle sharp eyes behind carefully adjusted rifle sights.
The Pathans might not be great scholars or mathematicians but they could all read ground like Napoleon and judge the range to a target with incredible accuracy. Neither did they care in the slightest whether their targets had white, brown, black or yellow skin. The Pathans were a totally fair minded people: they didn't care who they shot, raped, looted or tortured.
Urgent messages were exchanged between Kultoon and New Delhi. The decision was unanimous: a place where Gurkha, Sikh and British infantry battalions needed all their professional skills to stay alive was no place for the Kultooni irregulars and their polo sticks. But since the 17th Rifles were being called out of barracks to defend Warzistan then Prince Ravi and his men could be sent to Gazepore to defend the garrison town against any threat which might emerge in the 17th's absence. Of course there was no real threat to Gazepore, only a few dacoits, loose-wallahs, and barely active bandits easily controlled by the local police. But the Maharajah didn't know that and his cavalry could mount impressive patrols around the town with spurs jingling and lance-pennants fluttering, all of which could be represented to the Maharajah as valuable frontier duty. And when the old boy finally got tired of having his regiment away from home it could be returned to him as shiny and complete as a box of lead soldiers newly purchased from Harrods.
It was a neat solution, except that the Commander-in-Chief, Army of India, was concerned that Colonel Ravi would complain to his father that the Kultooni cavalry wasn't being allowed to gallop into a place of honor on the firing line. Fortunately, the Vice Regal Representative in Kultoon was able to assure the C-in-C that it was extremely unlikely that Prince Ravi or any of his fellow officers would choose to complain to anybody about not being shot at. And so the arrangements were made and the Maharajah's Own Irregular Cavalry came to Gazepore by troop trains, as opposed to any tedious riding.
The effect was rather like a Hollywood film company complete with stars arriving in a remote Newfoundland fishing village. Mutual incomprehension and dislike on all sides. The Kultooni cavalry loathed Gazepore from the beginning – horses, men and officers. The horses fought for scraps of shade under the few shriveled trees: the men sought consolation for their exile in the Sikh soldiers' married quarters. But Gazepore had many turban wearing veterans who resented the would be wooers. And in India resentment is never an intangible emotion. Several Kultooni soldiers opted to spend their nights out of barracks – but two of them failed to return before dawn reveille.
Their remains on both occasions were soon located by watchers observing where the vultures were gathering to break their fasts. And it was also noted that whatever the carrion eaters had done to the bodies, it was impossible to blame them for the fact that the Kultooni enlisted men were found with their severed genitals sewn into their mouths. From then on most of the lancers decided to opt for prudent celibacy until they could return to the safety of their own territory.
But most frustrated of all were the rich and dashing young officers of the Maharajah's Own Irregulars. With no local woman worth their caste the only recreational pursuits left open to them were hunting the local pigs and the British wives. And though the local pig sticking wasn't too bad it soon transpired that there were far more black boars available in Gazepore than white whores. In fact all the British women treated the Kultooni officers' advances with amused contempt.
The majority of the officers had never been outside Kultoon before and had little to do with feringi women – they took their rebuffs with rueful grace. Prince Ravi and others like him who had been educated in England did not, for they had never had the slightest difficulty in seducing any number of British women in Oxford or London, whether married or not, and no matter what their social status. The color of their Kultooni skins had been no drawback at all, not when weighed against their royal birth and the weight of their purses.
But this wasn't London, it was Gazepore, and the women here belonged to a colonial society where a Mem- sahib would be far more likely to commit suicide than adultery with an Indian man. A grass widow having a casual affair in a hill station with a young British officer was certainly not unknown, nor likely to be denounced, not if done with discretion. But for a British army wife to get into bed with a Indian of any kind was as completely unthinkable as for her to make love with a goat or a British enlisted soldier. Not only was it not done, it couldn't even be imagined being done. Which was why Amanda's little joke about the Maharajah's irregulars was guaranteed to raise some laughs.
What none of the women in the pool had the slightest inkling of was that Prince Ravi had laid careful plans to give each and every one of them a lesson in Kultooni cavalry rough riding techniques: plans which were only seconds away from being implemented.
Jean rustled the magazine as a signal to her ayah to come and replace it on the table.
'Koi-hai, Lalun.'
The young ayah leapt up far more quickly than usual, padding silently forward on her bare feet, eyes rolling white under masses of black and oily Madrassi hair. As she took the periodical she looked up twice at the white muslin sheets which served as a ceiling, as if expecting the wooden roof beams out of sight above them to come crashing down.
'What on earth is the matter with your girl, Jean?' Deborah Boxwood asked. 'She seems as nervous as a cat on hot bricks.'
'I daresay she's noticed the punkah-wallah as gone to sleep again and she's afraid she'll get the blame for it.'
Jean was right. The long panel of bamboo framed fabric which hung just below the ceiling sheets wasn't moving, as it should have been to keep the air circulating in the room. Which meant in turn that the old man sitting cross legged on the verandah had fallen asleep in the afternoon heat instead of attending to his duty of continually pulling on the rope which kept the punkah swinging.
'I'll send Manga to deal with him,' Carol said and clicked her fingers. The ayah who rose from her mat was by far the oldest of the servants, almost forty and only kept on because of her savage bad temper when dealing with other native servants failing in their duties. 'Punka, juldi, Manga.'
Manga bobbed her head and turned towards the door.
'There's no cord on it,' Camilla observed.
'I beg your pardon?'
'There's no cord attached to the punkah – no wonder it's not moving.'
All of the women looked up at the punkah. Camilla was right. There should have been a cord attached to one end of the punkah flap, a cord ascending up past the muslin sheets to the roof space, and to pulleys which led it sideways, through a gap in the upper wall and then down to the verandah.
Carol shook her head in disbelief at Indian inefficiency: 'How tiresome. Now we'll… '
