'If one of those three instruments of policy fails - Sujah, our strength, or our money - we're done for. Oh, I know I'm a 'croaker', as McNaghten would say; he thinks we are as secure here as on Horse Guards. He's wrong, you know. We exist on sufferance, and there won't be much of that if he takes up this idea of cutting the subsidy to the Gilzai chiefs.'
'It would save money,' said Cotton. 'Anyway, it's no more than a thought, as I understand.'
'It would save money if you didn't buy a bandage when you were bleeding to death,' said Nott, at which Cotton guffawed. 'Aye, laugh, Sir Willoughby, but this is a serious matter. Cutting the subsidy is no more than a thought, you say. Very good, it may never happen. But if the Gilzais so much as suspect it might, how long will they continue to keep the passes open? They sit above the Khyber - your lifeline, remember - and let our convoys come and go, but if they think their subsidy is in danger they'll look for another source of revenue. And that will mean convoys ambushed and looted, and a very pretty business on your hands. That is why McNaghten's a fool even to think of cutting the subsidy, let alone talk about it.' 'What do you want me to do?' says Cotton, frowning. 'Tell him to drop the notion at all costs.
He won't listen to me. And send someone to talk to the Gilzais, take a few gifts to old what's-his-name at Mogala - Sher Afzul. He has the other Gilzai khans under his thumb, I'm told.'
'You know a lot about this country,' said Cotton, wagging his head. 'Considering this ain't your territory.'
'Someone's got to,' said Nott. 'Thirty years in the Company's service teaches you a thing or two. I wish I thought McNaghten had learned as much. But he goes his way happily, seeing no farther than the end of his nose. Well, well, Cotton, you're one of the lucky ones.
You'll be getting out in time.'
Cotton protested at this that he was a 'croaker' after all - I soon discovered that the word was applied to everyone who ventured to criticise McNaghten or express doubts about the safety of the British force in Kabul. They talked for a while, and Cotton was very civil to me and seemed intent on making me feel at home. We dined in his headquarters, with his staff, and there for the first time I met some of the men, many of them fairly junior officers, whose names were to be household words in England within the next year - 'Sekundar' Burnes, with his mincing Scotch voice and pretty little moustache; George Broadfoot, another Scotsman, who sat next to me; Vincent Eyre,
'Gentleman Jim' Skinner, Colonel Oliver, and various others. They talked with a freedom that was astonishing, criticising or defending their superiors in the presence of general officers, condemning this policy and praising that, and Cotton and Nott joined in. There was not much good said about McNaghten, and a general gloom about the army's situation; it seemed to me they scared rather easily, and I told Broadfoot so.
'Wait till ye've been here a month or two, and ye'll be as bad as the rest,' he said brusquely. 'It's a bad place, and a bad people, and if we don't have war on our hands inside a year I'll be surprised. Have you heard of Akbar Khan? No? He's the son of the old king, Dost Mohammed, that we deposed for this clown Sujah, and he's in the hills now, going from this chief to that, gathering support for the day when he'll raise the country against us. McNaghten won't believe it, of course, but he's a gommeril.'
'Could we not hold Kabul?' I asked. 'Surely with a force of five thousand it should be possible, against undisciplined savages.'
'These savages are good men,' says he. 'Better shots than we are, for one thing. And we're badly placed here, with no proper fortifications for the cantonment - even the stores are outside the perimeter - and an army that's going downhill with soft living and bad discipline. Forbye, we have our families with us, and that's a bad thing when the bullets are flying - who thinks of his duty when he has his wife and weans to care for? And Elphy Bey is to command us when Cotton goes.' He shook his head. 'You'll know him better than I, but I'd give my next year's pay to hear he wasn't coming and we had Nott instead. I'd sleep at nights, anyway.'
This was depressing enough, but in the next few weeks I heard this kind of talk on all hands - there was obviously no confidence in the military or political chiefs, and the Afghans seemed to sense this, for they were an insolent crowd and had no great respect for us. As an aide to Elphy Bey, who was still on his road north, I had time on my hands to look about Kabul, which was a great, filthy sprawling place full of narrow lanes and smelling abominably. But we seldom went there, for the folk hardly made us welcome, and it was pleasant out by the cantonment, where there was little attention to soldiering but a great deal of horseracing and lounging in the orchards and gossiping on the verandahs over cool drinks. There were even cricket matches, and I played myself - I had been a great bowler at Rugby, and my new friends made more of the wickets I took than of the fact that I was beginning to speak Pushtu better than any of them except Burnes and the politicals.
It was at one of these matches that I first saw Shah Sujah, the king, who had come down as the guest of McNaghten.
He was a portly, brown-bearded man who stood gravely contemplating the game, and when McNaghten asked him how he liked it, said:
'Strange and manifold are the ways of God.'
As for McNaghten himself, I despised him on sight. He had a clerk's face, with a pointed nose and chin, and peered through his spectacles suspiciously, sniffing at you. He was vain as a peacock, though, and would strut about in his tall hat and frock-coat, lording it greatly, with his nose turned up. It was evident, as someone said, that he saw only what he wanted to see. Anyone else would have realised that his army was in a mess, for one thing, but not McNaghten. He even seemed to think that Sujah was popular with the people, and that we were honoured guests in the country; if he had heard the men in the bazaar calling us 'kaffirs' he might have realised his mistake. But he was too lofty to hear.
However, I passed the time pleasantly enough. Burnes, the political agent, when he heard about my Pushtu, took some interest in me, and as he kept a splendid table, and was an influential fellow, I kept in with him. He was a pompous fool, of course, but he knew a good deal about the Afghans, and would go about from time to time in native dress, mixing with the crowds in the bazaar, listening to gossip and keeping his nose to the wind generally. He had another reason for this, of course, which was that he was forever in pursuit of some Afghan woman or other, and had to go to the city to find them. I went with him on these expeditions frequently, and very rewarding they were.
Afghan women are handsome rather than pretty, but they have this great advantage to them, that their own men don't care for them overmuch. Afghan men would as soon be perverts as not, and have a great taste for young boys; it would sicken you to see them mooning over these painted youths as though they were girls, and our troops thought it a tremendous joke. However, it meant that the Afghan women were always hungry for men, and you could have your pick of them - tall, graceful creatures they were, with long straight noses and proud mouths, running more to muscle than fat, and very active in bed.
Of course, the Afghans didn't care for this, which was another score against us where they were concerned.
The first weeks passed, as I say, pleasantly, and I was beginning to like Kabul, in spite of the pessimists, when I was shaken out of my pleasant rut, thanks to my friend Burnes and the anxieties of General Nott, who had gone back to Kandahar but left his warnings ringing in Sir Willoughby Cotton's ears. They must have rung an alarm, for when he sent for me to his office in the cantonment he was looking pretty glum, with Burnes at his elbow.
'Flashman,' says Cotton. 'Sir Alexander here tells me you get along famously with the Afghans.'
