The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [140]
Ensign Walter Richard Pollock Hamilton of the 70th Foot was at that time only a year younger than Ash had been when he landed at Bombay. And like Ash, he saw India as a wonderful and mysterious country, full of endless possibilities for excitement and adventure. He was a pleasant youth, good-tempered, high-spirited and intensely romantic – and he too had fallen desperately in love with a yellow-haired chit of sixteen during the voyage from England. The girl had had no objection to flirting with the tall handsome boy, but his suit had been rejected out of hand on the score of his youth, and two days out of Bombay she had become engaged to an elderly gentleman who must have been at least twice her age: ‘Thirty, if he was a day,’ declared Walter disgustedly. ‘And a civilian too. Some dreary fellow in the Political Department. Would you believe it, now?’
‘Only too easily,’ said Ash. ‘Belinda, let me tell you –’
But that story, as he told it now, was no longer a tragic one, and any bitterness that remained was solely on George Garforth's account. For this was something else that had altered during the past two years; and looking back on his abortive romance, Ash could not only recognize it for the foolish and ephemeral thing it had been, but also see the comic side of it. Retold to Walter, the chronicle of his misfortune lost all trace of tragedy, and eventually became so hilarious that the ghost of Belinda was exorcized for ever, swept away on a gale of laughter into the limbo that is reserved for forgotten love-affairs. Walter's flirtatious sixteen-year-old had followed her there, and he celebrated the fact by writing a ribald poem entitled ‘Ode to Forsaken Subalterns’, that would have surprised and pained his fond relatives – who were used to more elevated out-pourings from ‘dear Wally’.
Wally rather fancied himself as a writer of verse. It was the only thing in which his sense of humour failed him, and his letters home were apt to contain deplorably amateur poems that were passed round the family circle and greatly admired by doting aunts and similar biased and unqualified critics, who considered them to be quite as good as ‘dear Mr Tennyson's’. And wrote to say so. The ‘Ode’, however, was in a very different style from any of his previous effusions, and Ash translated it into Urdu and had it set to music by a Kashmiri singer of his acquaintance. It subsequently achieved quite a success in the ‘Pindi bazaar, and versions of it (the more colourful ones) were sung for many years throughout the Punjab.
Wally himself was no mean singer, though the songs he sang were less secular. He had been a member of his school choir for several years, and nowadays, when he felt the urge to sing (which was often, for he sang whenever he was happy or exhilarated), he would launch into one of the more militant hymns of his youth: ‘Fight the good fight’, ‘Onward Christian Soldiers!’, ‘Forward be our watchword!’ or ‘For all the Saints’ – the last being a special favourite. There was no irreverence in this: Wally approved the sentiments and genuinely liked the familiar melodies (he said they were ‘corking tunes’) and could see no reason why hymns should only be sung in church; particularly the ones that conjured up for him visions of banners and trumpets and legions of armed men charging into battle to smite the troops of Midian. His fondness for these stirring anthems meant that the day in the bungalow invariably began with the sound of a baritone voice, accompanied by much splashing of bath water, announcing melodiously that ‘Time like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away’, or, alternatively, demanding ‘Oh, let thy soldiers, faithful true and bold, fight as the Saints who nobly fought of old, and win with them the Victor's crown of gold – Alle – luia! Al – le – lu – ia!’ Similar hymns frequently enlivened the evening rides,