The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [117]
The thought of his rival picnicking in the pine-woods with Belinda and partnering her to dances was intolerable. But there was nothing he could do about it, for when he applied for permission to take hot-weather leave in Murree, the Adjutant had brusquely informed him that if he wished to go on leave he could go and shoot in Kashmir – and via Abbottabad, not Murree – which would do him a deal more good than poodle-faking at tea-parties.
Zarin had been equally unsympathetic. In his opinion, to go running like a tame puppy-dog, begging for scraps, after a woman who would neither marry or bed with one, was both undignified and a waste of time that might be put to better use. He advised Ash to abandon any thought of marriage for at least five years, and suggested instead a visit to one of the better-known houses of ill-fame in Peshawar or Rawalpindi.
Ash was strongly tempted to accept, and it would probably have done him a great deal of good, for the life of an unmarried subaltern in the Indian Army was a monastic one. The majority of his fellow-officers, similarly placed, kept their sexual appetites within bounds by taking violent exercise, while the remainder risked contracting unpleasant diseases and being robbed of their valuables by paying surreptitious visits to brothels in the bazaar, or indulging in less orthodox affairs with local youths after the fashion of the Frontier tribesmen, who have never seen anything wrong in such behaviour. Ash, however, had no leanings towards homosexuality, and being enamoured of Belinda he could not bring himself to purchase the favour of harlots – even those of such notable charmers as Masumah, the wittiest, prettiest kasbi in Peshawar. He went fishing in the Kangan Valley instead.
By September the nights were cooler, even though the days were still intolerably hot. But by the middle of October there was a freshness in the air, and once again duck and teal appeared on the jheels and the quieter reaches of the rivers, and long lines of geese flew high overhead, making for their winter feeding-grounds in central and southern India. Zarin was promoted to Jemadar, and Belinda and her mother arrived back in Peshawar.
Ash rode over to take tea with the Harlowes. He had not seen Belinda since the spring, nearly six months ago – though it seemed to him more like six years, and might almost have been so, for she had altered a great deal. She was still as pretty as ever, but she no longer looked like a gay, heedless school-girl who had only recently escaped from her lesson-books and was revelling in newly acquired freedom and her first heady taste of life. She had acquired a good deal of assurance and was suddenly very much a young lady. And although she was just as gay, it seemed to Ash that her gaiety was no longer spontaneous, and that her laugh and the pretty airs and graces, that had once been wholly charming and unselfconscious, now held a trace of artificiality.
The change in her disturbed him and he tried without success to convince himself that he had imagined it, or that after so long a parting Belinda felt shy and possibly a little awkward at seeing him again, and that once this had worn off she would be her own sweet, familiar self again.
The only gleam of consolation in that dismal afternoon was the fact that George Garforth, who had also been invited, had received even less attention from Belinda than he himself had done. On the other hand, George was obviously very much at home in Mrs Harlowe's drawing-room, and on excellent terms with her (she had addressed him on several occasions as her ‘dear boy’) while politeness had compelled Belinda to devote most of her attention to entertaining a stout and elderly civilian who rejoiced in the name of Podmore-Smyth and was a friend of her father's.
It would be interesting to know what course Ash's life might have taken if he had never met Belinda, or having met her, had avoided provoking her into flirting with George Garforth. Only one of the three was to avoid suffering from the fact that the threads