The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [143]
‘I still think of it as my own country, and that I belong here,’ confessed Ash, ‘even though I've learned that feeling one belongs doesn't mean much, unless one is accepted as belonging; which I am not – except by Koda Dad, and sometimes by strangers who don't know my history. To those who do, it seems I am and always will be a “Sahib”. Though when I was young I was, or thought I was, a Hindu for almost seven years – a life-time, to a child. In those days it never occurred to me or to anyone else that I was not one, yet now no high-caste Hindu would care to sit at the same table with me, and many would have to throw away their food if my shadow fell on it, and wash themselves if I so much as touched them. Even the humblest would break any dish or cup that I had eaten or drunk from, so that no one else would be defiled by using it. That sort of thing isn't so with Mohammedans, of course; but when we were hunting Dilasah Khan and I lived and fought and thought as one of them, I don't think that any of the men who knew who I was ever really forgot it. And as I can't seem to learn to think of myself as a Sahib or an Englishman, I presume that I am what the Foreign Office would call “A stateless person”. A citizen of no-man's-land.’
‘ “That Paradise of Fools, to few unknown”,’ quoted Wally.
‘What's that?’
‘Limbo – according to Milton.’
‘Oh. Yes, you may be right. Though I wouldn't have described it as a Paradise, myself.’
‘It might have its advantages,’ suggested Wally.
‘Maybe. But I admit I can't think of any,’ said Ash wryly.
Once, sitting out in the warm moonlight among the ruins of Taxila (the 'Pindi Brigade was in camp), he had spoken of Sita, which was another thing that he had never been able to do before. Not even to Zarin and Koda Dad, who had known her.
‘… so you see, Wally,’ concluded Ash reflectively, ‘whatever people say, she was my real mother. I never knew the other one and somehow I can't believe in her; though I've seen a picture of her of course. She must have been a very pretty woman, and I don't suppose that Mata-ji – Sita – was pretty. But then she always looked beautiful to me, and I suppose it's because of her that I feel that this country, and not England, is my own. Anyway, Englishmen don't talk about their mothers. It's considered to be either “soppy” or “bad form” – I forget which.’
‘Both, I think,’ said Wally, and added smugly: ‘Though I'm allowed to, of course. It's one of the privileges of being Irish. Sentiment is expected of us. It's a great relief. Your foster-mother must have been a remarkable woman.’
‘She was. I didn't realize just how remarkable until much later on. One takes such a lot for granted when one is young. She had more courage than anyone I have ever known. The best kind of courage, for she was always afraid. I know that now, though I didn't then. And she was such a little woman. She was so small that I…’
He broke off and sat staring out across the plain, remembering how easy it had been for an eleven-year-old boy to lift her in his arms and carry her down to the river…
The night wind smelt of wood-smoke from the camp fires, and very faintly of pine trees from the near-by foothills that lay like wrinkled velvet in the moonlight. Perhaps it was that last that had recalled the ghost of Sita. ‘She used to talk to me about a valley in the mountains,’ said Ash slowly. ‘I suppose it must have been her home, where she was born. She was a hill-woman, you know. We were going to go and live there one day and build a house and plant fruit trees and keep a goat and a donkey. I wish I knew where it was.’
‘Didn't she ever tell you?’ asked Wally.
‘She may have done once. If she did, I've forgotten. But I imagine it's somewhere in the Pir Panjal; though I always used to think it must be in the mountains below the Dur Khaima. You don't know about the Dur Khaima, do you? It's the highest mountain in the range you can see from Gulkote: a great crown of snow peaks. I used to say