The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [116]
Ash would have found life easier if, like his fellow officers, he could have concentrated upon building and making use of such bridges, instead of standing with one foot on each bank, uneasily balanced between the two and unable to throw his full weight onto either. It was an invidious position and he did not relish it.
His happiest times were when he was out with Zarin, though even Zarin had changed. The old relationship that both had imagined they had recaptured, and could keep, was being altered by circumstances beyond the control of either of them. Zarin found it increasingly difficult to forget that Ash was a Sahib and an officer set in authority over him, and this inevitably raised a barrier between them: a flimsy one it is true, and Ash, for his part, was barely aware of it. But because of those years in England, his official position in the Regiment and some of the things he would say or do, Zarin was no longer quite sure what his friend's reactions would be in certain circumstances, and therefore felt it safer to walk a little warily. For Ashok was also ‘Pelham-Sahib’, and who could be certain which one, at any given moment, would be in the saddle? - Sita's son, or the British officer?
Where Zarin was concerned, Ash would have preferred to be the former only; but he too had realized that the relationship between them could never be quite the same again. The lordly elder brother and the hero-worshipping small boy of the Gulkote days had both, inevitably, outgrown the past. And in growing up they had drawn level with each other. Their friendship remained, but it had changed its quality and now contained hidden reservations that had not been there before.
Only Koda Dad had not changed; and whenever possible Ash would cross the Border to visit him and spend long hours in his company, riding or hawking or merely squatting comfortably by his fireside while the old man discussed the present or reminisced about the past. It was only with Koda Dad that he felt completely relaxed and at ease, for though he would have hotly denied that there was any change in his relationship with Zarin, he knew that something was there: ‘a cloud no bigger than a man's hand’.
Neither Ala Yar nor Mahdoo, or Awal Shah either, would ever treat him as anything but a Sahib, since none of them had known him in the days when he was merely Ashok. But Koda Dad had never had any contact with the ‘Sahib-log’, and in his long life had seen very few of them: a handful at most. All that he knew of them had been learned at secondhand, so their influence on him had been minimal, and the fact that Ashok's parents had been Angrezis, and that he was therefore a Sahib by right of blood, in no way altered Koda Dad's feelings towards him. The boy was the same boy, and no child could be held responsible for his parentage. To Koda Dad, Ash would always be Ashok and not Pelham-Sahib.
Regimental routine changed with the coming of the hot weather; officers and men now rose before dawn in order to make use of the coolest hours of the day, and during the fierce heat of the morning and early afternoon they remained indoors, emerging again as the sun began to slide once more towards the horizon. Ash no longer rode over to Peshawar, for Mrs Harlowe and her daughter had retreated to the cool of the hills, and he could only keep in touch with Belinda by letter (his letters, not hers). Once, as a great concession, Belinda had been allowed to reply, but the stilted little note, obviously written under Mrs Harlowe's eye, told him nothing except that Belinda appeared to be having an exceedingly gay time in Murree, which was not the sort of news he really wished to hear. She had mentioned no names, but he learned by chance from an officer in Razmak that the firm of Brown & MacDonald, who employed George Garforth, had a branch in Murree, and that George, having suffered an attack of heat-stroke in Peshawar, had been