The Faraway Drums (22 page)

“We’re going to put ropes round that section of the bridge and have these elephants here drag it up on to the road. But before we do that we’re going to cut the
mahout
out from those bridge ropes, otherwise they’re going to slice him in half.”

The Ranee said, “You don’t have to risk your life, Clive. There are enough bearers here—let them go.”

“I’d rather do it myself, Mala.”

He was not curt with her, but he turned away at once and made his way out on to the tangle of ropes and timber. His wet clothes were chilling him now; he badly wanted a leak. But he was ashamed to be feeling any discomfort: it was nothing to what the boy bound to the elephant must be feeling.

He and Karim worked their way carefully down the hanging bridge. It was still moving, its bottom end dragged by the current; it moaned and squeaked like a living thing. Up on the bank Ahearn was supervising the feeding out of the long harness ropes and the Nawab had cleared the roadway. There was no pandemonium now but an organized effort to prevent the
mahout
and the elephant being swept to their
death.

“Mahmoud!” Farnol hung in the rigging above the boy and the elephant.

The boy stirred, tried to turn his head but was too constricted by the rope across his neck. “Sahib?”

“We’re going to get you out of this, Mahmoud. Hold on just a little longer.”
Where the hell do I expect him to go
? But Farnol knew the banalities that were uttered in moments of crisis: it was the sound of a voice, not the words, that comforted.

It took them ten long minutes to get the harness ropes down round the elephant. It took another twenty, even longer minutes to chop through the planks of the roadway hanging below the elephant; the weight of the trailing length of bridge in the water would be too much for even a dozen elephants to pull up on the bank. At last there remained only the skimpy basket, supported by the harness ropes, in which hung the elephant and Mahmoud.

“Right.” Farnol looked across at Karim on the other side of the big rough basket. “Do you want to go back up on the road? When I cut this rope to free Mahmoud the whole lot may come unstuck.”

Karim, like Farnol, was hanging like a mountaineer from the web of bridge ropes, his feet wedged in above a splintered plank. Below him the elephant, tiny eyes red with fear and exhaustion, was grunting and heaving in huge gasps. Mahmoud still couldn’t move, but he was conscious and tensed, ready to be saved.

“I think I had better stay, sahib. It may need the two of us.”

Farnol nodded his thanks; Karim had been with him too long for words always to be necessary. He took out the knife he had brought down with him, sawed at the rope across the boy’s neck. It snapped and fell apart; Farnol saw the bloody wound across the thin brown neck and almost wept for the boy. But he didn’t linger on the
mahout
’s injuries, instead he went on to the other two ropes that bound him. The elephant, as if sensing that something was about to happen, began to struggle weakly; its trunk came out of a gap in the web and thrashed like a dark handless arm. The ropes creaked, a plank splintered and fell away into the water and was gone from sight immediately.

“Tell him to be quiet, Mahmoud! Be still!”

The boy beat a weak fist on the elephant’s head, shouted at it. The animal quietened, but it was
still
terrified; Farnol could see the great grey hide trembling under the ropes like volcanic mud about to erupt. He slashed at the last rope that trapped Mahmoud, grabbed the boy as he slid down into his arms. The elephant, feeling the boy slide from its back, feeling itself abandoned, let out a terrible scream and began at once to struggle frantically.

“Pull!” Farnol yelled. “Pull!”

Up on the road the four elephants began to strain against their harness. Slowly the end of the bridge was drawn up; the stricken elephant came up in its basket of planks and ropes like meat being delivered to some upper storey. The elephants strained forward and the ruined bridge came up over the edge of the bank, bringing with it its mixed cargo.

A loud cheer went up and even the Ranee beamed and applauded. Only Mahendra remained unmoved by it all.

6

I

Extract from the memoirs of Miss Bridie O’Brady:

I DON’T
know if I joined in the cheer when Clive, Karim Singh, the
mahout
and the elephant were at last drawn safely up on to the road. It seemed to me that I had been holding my breath ever since Clive had gone down to put the harness ropes in place; if I did cheer it could only have been a silent one. My legs were suddenly just sticks of jelly and I sat down without really looking to see if there was anything behind me. Fortunately there was a rock, a hard rough seat that I barely noticed against my bottom.

I was wet through. My hair had come loose and was hanging down about my face. I felt weak and almost ill; yet I was thrilled and full of admiration. I had just seen the rescue of the man I was coming to love, though I had not yet admitted that to myself; but I had also seen what made the British Raj work. It was the beginning of my education in the British in India.

Up till then all I had seen, possibly because it was all I wished to see, was a master-servant relationship, with all the advantages to the master. Like most Americans, but not all, of that period, I was anti-colonial, a firm, if unsworn, enemy of imperialism. So far I had sent home two despatches and both of them had been tinged with my American distaste for the British presence in India; it was the sort of story that the Boston Irish readers, and particularly my father and Mayor Honey Fitz, would relish reading. Like all nationalities we Americans have convenient memories and eyes that can turn blind on a whim. Our occupation of the Philippines wasn’t really imperialism, though of course there were some Americans who were honest and stupid and proud enough to claim that it was and what was wrong with it, anyway? Too, even as I had written my despatches, American bankers had, with their acquisition of the National Bank of Nicaragua and the state railroads, virtually been allowed to buy Nicaragua. Imperialists are like certain seducers: it is only rape when the other fellow does it.

Now,
beside the wrecked bridge on the banks of that remote river in the Himalayan hills, I had seen what made the Raj work. It was leadership, the quality that impelled a man like Clive Farnol to risk his life to save that of a young
mahout
and an elephant. He could have stood safely on the bank and sent several of the hundred or so servants, the easily replaceable, out to risk their lives on the bridge. But he hadn’t; and I saw that all the servants, the ordinary Indians, respected him for what he had done. They might not love the British nation and its institutions, as the Nawab professed to do, but they could admire and sometimes love the individual Englishman. Of course, in the end, individuals do not prevail.

While the caravan got itself organized again, I found a secluded spot and changed out of my wet clothes. Clive Farnol, in another spot, may I point out, did the same. We met again at the head of the procession as it moved off.

There was an intimacy to our relationship now that neither of us was yet quite ready to mention frankly. We were hamstrung by several factors. Even though I was, and still am, emotionally impulsive, I had already told myself that I was in the wrong place for allowing myself to fall in love with a man. India was not for me; and I was sure America was not for Clive. There was also the matter of our careers: I could not see myself giving up my job as a newspaperwoman to be the wife of an Indian Army officer. I had already paid short visits to army posts and seen the boring life that army wives led. They were no more than walking decorations for their husbands’ tunics, and they were always under the command of the colonel’s lady, made as conscious of their inferior rank as if they wore pips instead of posies on their dress fronts. I could not see myself as Mrs. Major Farnol.

All these reservations did not, of course, come to me at once. But the glimmerings of them were there as we resumed our journey down the cart road to Kalka. We rode alone at the head of the procession. The Nawab and Prince Mahendra were at the rear of the caravan and that did not strike me as odd till I saw how alert Clive was. Sitting tensed in the saddle, as if ready for some sudden buckjumping by his horse, he was looking up and around him, his eyes never still.

“Are you still expecting to be shot at?” Without thinking, I allowed my horse to drop a pace or two behind his.

He looked over his shoulder. “That’s a good idea. In fact, it might be better if you went right down to the back, rode with the ladies in the coach. Yes, they could take another pot-shot at me. I’m just
wondering
why Bertie and Mahendra decided to leave us up here on our own. Especially Bobs. He wanted so much to be leader of this little parade.”

I kept my distance behind him, but I didn’t want to go back to join the ladies. I wasn’t thinking of being brave; I just wanted to remain with him. I was not indulging in any Irish recklessness; there is also an Irish caution that tends to be overlooked. So I kept a good horse’s length behind him, a safe distance measured against the accuracy of those hillmen snipers, and kept my own eye out for any movement on the surrounding slopes.

“What about the Nawab?”

“I’m not sure about him. He may be back there just keeping an eye on his wives.”

“Why should he suddenly start worrying about them?”

“Not all of them. Just one.” He rode in silence for a while and I thought he was concentrating on scouting the hills up ahead. Then he looked back over his shoulder again. “The youngest one. She wants to tell me something.”

“Something about Major Savanna, do you think?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. But Bertie interrupted us and I’m not sure if he suspects her. I must try and see her tonight somehow.” He twisted even further round, looked directly at me. I suddenly realized that he had just made a decision to take me fully into his confidence from now on. The thought warmed me, even if it frightened me a little. “Perhaps you’d help.”

“How?”

“Could you keep Bertie occupied for ten or fifteen minutes this evening?”

“Occupied?” It was a term Toodles Ryan used to use. “You don’t mean—?”

For a moment he looked blank; then he burst out laughing, the snipers in the hills forgotten. “Good God, no! Do you think the Political Service uses ladies that way?”

Mata Hari hadn’t been heard of then; but I knew of Belle Boyd and other female spies and I had no wish to emulate any of them. “I’ll distract the Nawab’s attention, if you like, but I shan’t keep him
occupied
.”

He smiled and again I was aware of the new intimacy between us. “Bridie,” he said, “when we get to Delhi, save me every night you’re there.”

The
exchange seemed to relax him; or perhaps he thought we had moved far enough down the road to be beyond the range of any snipers who had been watching what went on at the bridge. He pulled his horse back, to ride beside me and keep me enthralled for the next hour with his adventures in the Indian Army and later the Political Service. It was like listening to Mr. Kipling’s stories come to life. I began to appreciate what sheltered lives ward bosses led, but I knew I would never embarrass my father by telling him so. He thought he led the most exciting life of any O’Brady since an uncle of his had retired, stuck with arrows, from being a Pony Express rider.

Several of the carts had been sent on ahead before the bridge had collapsed. There were no oxen drawing the carts, as would have been normal; they were pulled by horses. Loaded down as they were with tents and camp gear, everything that the Ranee and the Nawab and Mahendra would need when they set up their establishments down in Delhi, the carts’ progress was necessarily slow. So by the time we started off they were already several miles down the road ahead of us, the several butlers riding with them and scouting for a place to set up camp for the night. Back in America I had covered several stories on the rich, on the people such as the Fishes and the Lorillards and the Flaglers, but I had never experienced their way of life. Now, as an outsider, I was coming to appreciate the advantages of having squadrons of servants when travelling. All one had to do, it seemed, was to
arrive
.

So in the late afternoon we arrived at the latest camp site. The road still ran close by the river, but here the water ran more smoothly. Tents had been set up and there was a canvas bath in each one, with hot water, as it were, on tap. I bathed, changed and, putting on a coat against the dusk’s chill, went out to occupy the Nawab. I was not inexperienced in getting men’s attention and holding it; I think there is a courtesan somewhere inside me who never quite managed to get out. Most men, when flattered by a woman’s attention, can be as simple and unguarded as the boys most of them really are; but I was not so sure that the Nawab was ever unguarded behind that smiling, “dear boy” front of his. Cricketers may live in a fantasy world (Rudyard Kipling had once called them “flannelled fools”), but Bertie, the Nawab of Kalanpur, well aware of the real world, was no fool, flannelled or otherwise.

He, too, had bathed and changed and was sitting in a canvas chair down on the river bank. On a table beside him were glasses, bottles of gin and tonic and some limes. “My dear Miss O’Brady! A drink? Do join me—I feel so sinful when I drink alone. My dear pater wanted to cut me off without a rupee when he
learned
that I took alcohol. Fortunately he died before he could disinherit me.”

The bottles and glasses were right beside him and he could have poured me a drink without effort. But, without looking round, he clicked his fingers and a bearer appeared out of the dusk and poured me a drink. The Nawab raised his glass to me and I knew I was going to get all his attention, at least for a while. I could not see Clive, but I hoped he could see me and was taking advantage of what I was doing for him.