A God in Every Stone (22 page)

Viv dispatched the judge's question with an inclination of her head which said his wife had correctly summed up the situation and returned what remained of her faltering concentration to the no-longer-young bachelor who was trying to impress her with some story about his valour during an encounter with fanatics along the Khyber Pass. She stood up abruptly in the middle of his story – catching Mr Forbes' look of sympathy – and, saying something which was tone rather than words, walked rapidly out to the arched portico and drew the night air deep into her lungs.

Fairy lights strung all around the garden gave the impression that the starlit sky had lowered onto the treetops.

– You're in a mood tonight.

She didn't even turn at the sound of Remmick's voice.

– And you'll be in trouble when you go home if you stand out here much longer, she said.

– A minute in your company is worth an hour of trouble at home.

– Stop it, she said sharply.

– Don't lose your friends, Miss Spencer, he replied, and walked away.

She called him back apologising, and told him what had happened that afternoon with Najeeb.

– A Pathan is a Pathan at any age, he said, but with sympathy rather than any triumph at having been proved right.

– I've been arrogant. Thinking I knew better than everyone who lives here.

– I have to say, it's a relief to hear you say that. You see now why this plan of yours – to go excavating on the outskirts of Peshawar – is such a bad idea?

– In what way?

– I've said it before. A woman leading a team of Pathan workmen . . .

– Not everyone in the Peshawar Valley is Pathan.

– Aren't your days full enough? We could find you some teaching, if you miss it; Native students, English students, whichever you prefer. Or there's plenty of cataloguing needed at the Museum. You'd be valued there.

A certainty announced itself, so clear, so well-defined, she knew it had been there for a very long time, lurking in the corner of her eye.

– You aren't actually doing anything to sort out the leasing problem of Shahji-ki-Dheri, are you?

A little shrug, a gesture of defeat.

– I did make enquiries. No one's particularly interested. General opinion has it the best finds of the site have already been discovered.

– All this while you've been lying?

– Oh come now, Miss Spencer.

– Oh come now, Miss Spencer?

He gestured to her to lower her voice, the air of command so unmistakable she wondered how she'd ever thought this was a man who would simply do anything she asked of him, merely because she asked it. Even so, she wasn't prepared for what came next.

– We're long past the point when the smiles you flick at me are compensation enough for everything I do for you. I found you a house, staff you could trust, I've allowed you to use all the privileges at this club that are usually reserved for a member's wife. Now you expect me to go to the Deputy Commissioner and tell him he needs to push through complicated negotiations about a crumbling piece of land simply because you're curious why a statue was white rather than grey?

– The Forbeses were helping me to find a house when you came along and told me you had the perfect one. I didn't ask you to provide me with staff – you just wanted to keep an eye on me. Oh yes, I know they report to you, Remmick, how foolish do you think I am? If you weren't going to do this for me, why didn't you just say so?

He laughed, a little bitterly.

– What man doesn't want a beautiful woman to keep believing he can do anything he sets his mind to?

– There is no shortage of men who would choose honesty over dissembling under all circumstances.

– You speak of honesty? Very well, let's be honest. There is a dance of men and women; we all recognise its rules. You, with nothing more than your smiles as reward, you were the first to break those rules.

– The dance of men and women! You make it sound so finely balanced. But you always lead, don't you?

He was standing very close to her, his hand on her waist as though it had a right to be there.

– Allow yourself to be led, Vivian. You'll enjoy it far more than you think, with the right partner.

She pushed him, hard.

– Not you, she said. Never you.

She stalked back inside, and told Mr Forbes she was feeling unwell, would he be good enough to escort her home?

 

That tree in Regent's Park which she could see from her bedroom window would have turned yellow-leafed by now. Every year she would walk out with Papa when there were more leaves on the ground than on the branches, and carefully, deliberately, they'd choose the most beautiful of the leaves and take it home to preserve it in a scrapbook she'd made with YELLOW LEAF printed on the cover in a child's hand.

If she left now there might just be a few yellow leaves still in the grass when she returned. The thought brought with it a relief, a release.

After the war, Tahsin Bey, we'll come back to Peshawar, and dig for the Circlet together.

March 1916

There was no broom for the new boy, but during the break in lessons the other students, all fourteen of them, walked out into the fields and each returned with a twig which they tied together with twine and brought to Qayyum so he could snap them into an even length. At the end of the day while some of the boys took the rugs outside the one-room structure and beat the dust from them, the others swept the ground and the new boy joined in as though it were an honour. A few weeks earlier when Qayyum had told Ghaffar Khan he wanted to teach at one of the schools his new hero had opened in the Peshawar Valley – just a short distance from Kalam’s father’s orchards – Ghaffar Khan had said don’t forget, the most important thing you’ll teach them is service. Qayyum had thought of Najeeb and the word ‘service’ was a weight he’d have to impose on the students’ lives, but now he heard the exclamation of delight with which one of the boys found a dead ant and, with a great flourish of his broom, passed it across to a boy nearer the door who swept it over to the new boy who scooped it up in his hands and proudly carried it out, the other boys applauding him on.

When Qayyum started to ride away on his bicycle he could hear the calls of the departing boys – Alif, Bey, Pay! The Pashto alphabet a song which they carried across the orchards to their homes where literacy had never before crossed the doorway.

Spring had come to the Peshawar Valley, and there was nothing in the world that wasn’t possible. Qayyum rode through a world in bloom, slowing to check the progress of the sugar cane and the plum blossoms, though he had walked among them just a few hours earlier with Kalam’s father as he did every morning on his way to the schoolhouse. From orchards to gardens to city walls to the Street of Storytellers – he pedalled through the heart of the Peshawar Valley, feeling it pulse all around him, gathering its potential. Something new was coming, he was part of it. He watched a regiment marching past and there was pity in him for the Indian soldiers who didn’t understand the disquiet in their own breasts.

Near the Street of Courtesans his bicycle wheel wobbled, but just in time he heard Najeeb calling out to him from across the road and, dismounting, went to meet his brother.

– Were you about to go into that alley, Lala?

– Of course not.

– Have you ever been in there?

– Keep asking questions like that and I’ll send you back to the mullah.

Najeeb grinned at that, and butted Qayyum’s shoulder with his head. Their mother’s insistence on accompanying Najeeb to the mosque had lasted less than a week. The trick of it, Qayyum had explained to his brother, was simply to tell her everything he’d learned from the mullah that day as she walked him home. She never exactly said he should stop going, but one day she said he should go without her, and the next day she sent him to the market to buy vegetables and when he said he couldn’t do that and be at his lessons at the same time she shrugged and said, potatoes come to us from heaven, and it was understood. So it was Qayyum now who took over his brother’s religious instruction, teaching him as he taught the boys at school – Islam teaches us goodness, teaches us virtue, teaches us service, teaches us brotherhood, teaches us gentleness. But we are Pactyike, the most warlike of the Indians, Najeeb replied, indignant. That most unwarlike boy ever to be born into a Pashtun family. It was impossible not to laugh.

– Where are you coming from? The Museum?

–Yes. Lala, in my holidays will you take me to Shahbaz Garhi?

– Of course. I’m glad you’re finally interested in seeing the Yusufzai lands.

– It’s a great archaeological site. The Rock Edicts of Asoka.

Qayyum laughed, threw his hands up in a gesture of defeat. Every day more English words in Najeeb’s Hindko – Classics, archaeological site, excavation, scholarship, university. Even their mother knew there was nothing to do but accept it. How do you pull the wings off a bird in flight? she’d asked Qayyum after Najeeb had sent her to the Museum on its women-only day and chattered away to her for hours after she’d returned, explaining what it was she’d seen there.

Home now, and he climbed the steps behind Najeeb towards the sounds of his mother and her eldest granddaughter, a sparkling-eyed girl of four. They were sitting at the long table as he entered, his mother holding a doll in her hand and his niece kneeling on a chair, elbows on the table, looking at the open pages of one of Najeeb’s books.

– Do you want to learn how to read?

Najeeb sat down beside her as he spoke, both of them small enough to occupy a single chair. The child nodded her head, placed her hand on the page and said,
Alif, Bey, Pay
. Qayyum lifted her up in his arms, away from the book, away from Najeeb’s questioning gaze, and placed her on her grandmother’s lap.

– Play with your doll, little one.

Pulling the blanket close about his shoulders, Najeeb settled himself onto the rope-bed beneath a small-leafed tree on the Street of Storytellers, and respectfully greeted Ashfaq Lala. In return, the Storyteller gestured to an attending boy who approached with a blue enamel cup which the sun patterned with leaf-shapes as it passed into Najeeb’s hands. Najeeb ducked his head in thanks, raising the mug to his face to take in the scent of
kahwa
as the Storyteller leaned forward on his raised platform, and began the
badala
:

Listen to my story, but first add sugar to your tea,

There are salty tears aplenty here but no sweetness, you’ll see.

It’s a story of Darius, the King of over-there,

King of Kings, King of all things, King of over here.

One morning he awakes – where there should be wife, there’s parchment,

Queen Atossa thus transformed! Is this hell- or heaven-sent?

The night before she lay beside him, flesh and blood and breath,

This morning she’s papyrus, the length of his bed.

What happened here, you ask? Be patient, I’m the Storyteller.

Her ink as warm as blood, her skin oiled. What demons dwell here?

The King reads down the length of her, his lips near her skin.

How long since Atossa was so smooth, so pliant, so thin.

But when he stops reading, the King of Kings he weeps,

The Queen watches, nodding, from the alcove of the Keep.

It wasn’t her at all, of course – you believe such silly things.

She left this parchment here for him, for Darius, King of Kings.

He weeps for what Scylax has written. Scylax the Trusted One.

His words rip the King’s heart like twenty bullets from a gun.

How could the man who wore his circlet write these words of praise

Not of Darius and the Persians but of that Carian slave!

Where do you place your loyalty, my good Peshawari men,

If you wrote of heroes today whose deeds would move your pen?

Najeeb nodded approvingly – Ashfaq Lala was telling it better than ever before. The idea for this
badala
had occurred to him a few weeks ago when he was flipping through
The Encyclopaedia of Antiquity
in the Native Assistant’s office at the Museum, and found an entry on Scylax with this intriguing line:
The lost biography of Heraclides of Mylasa has also been attributed to Scylax
. He had turned to the entry on Heraclides and found that he was a Carian prince who had ambushed Darius’ forces and
routed them in bloody battle
. Why would anyone think Scylax the Trusted One had written a biography of such a man? He had closed the encyclopaedia, leaned back in the chair, and thought, But Qayyum would like the story – the man who served the Empire turning to the service of his people. What would Miss Spencer make of it, though? The thought brought with it a stab of sorrow. He had tried to go back to see her, wearing his sister’s burqa so no one could report him to his mother, but her house was empty. Perhaps one day when he was older and the world was different she’d return and he could bring them both here together – Miss Spencer and Qayyum. They’d sit on either side of him and laugh and cry together at the story of Scylax, as interpreted by Najeeb Gul, the Herodotus of Peshawar.