The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [157]
He sat silent for a long time, staring into the starlight and re-living the past, while behind him the camp settled down to sleep. The voices of men and animals sank to a murmur that lost itself in the rustle of leaves as the night wind breathed through the branches of the banyan tree, and beside him Mahdoo's hookah bubbled a rhythmic accompaniment to the monotonous tunk-a-tunk of a distant tom-tom and the howl of a jackal-pack out on the plain. But Ash heard none of these sounds, for he was a long way away both in distance and in time, talking to a little girl in a balcony on a ruined tower that looked out upon the snows of the Dur Khaima…
How could he possibly have come to forget her almost completely, when she had been so much a part of his years in the Hawa Mahal? No – not forget her – he had forgotten nothing. He had merely pushed her into the back of his mind and not troubled to think of her: perhaps because he had always taken her for granted –
Later that night, after Mahdoo had gone, Ash unlocked the small tin cash-box that he had bought with his first pocket-money and in which he had kept his most treasured possessions ever since: a little silver ring that Sita had worn, his father's last and unfinished letter, the watch that Colonel Anderson had given him on the day they arrived at Pelham Abbas, his first pair of cuff-links and a dozen other trifles. He turned them over, looking for something, and finally emptied the contents of the box onto his camp bed. Yes, it was still there. A small flat square of yellowing paper.
He carried it over to the lamp, and unfolding it, stood looking at the thing it contained: a sliver of mother-of-pearl that was half of a Chinese counter shaped like a fish. Someone – the Feringhi-Rani, perhaps? - had bored a hole through the fish's eye and threaded a strand of twisted silk through it so that it could be worn as a medallion, as Juli had worn it. It had been Juli's most precious possession, yet she had given it to him for a keepsake and begged him not to forget her; and he had hardly ever thought of her again… there had been so many other and more urgent things to think of: and when Koda Dad had left Gulkote there had been no one to send him news of the palace, because no one else – not even Hira Lal – knew what had befallen him or where he had gone.
Ash slept little that night, and as he lay on his back looking up into the darkness, a hundred trivial incidents that had been lost with the years came trooping back again to dance before his mind's eye. A night full of fireworks and feasting that celebrated the birth of a son to Janoo-Rani – Nandu, who was now Maharajah of Karidkote. The names and faces of the boys he had played with in the streets of Gulkote – Gopi and Chitu, Jajat and Shoki and a dozen others. The death of Tuku the little mongoose, and Hira Lal telling him that he should be patient with Lalji, for he, Ashok, was more fortunate than his master. Juli bringing him a silver four-anna piece so that they could begin saving up for the house they would build in Sita's valley, and the two of them hiding the precious coin under a loose stone on the floor of the Queen's balcony. They had meant to add other coins to it from time to time, but had never been able to do so, and it was curious to think that unless Juli had taken it out after he had gone, it must still be there, hidden away and forgotten – like his half of her luck-piece that had lain so long in the bottom of the tin cash-box, out of sight and out of mind.
The stars were beginning to pale by the time he fell asleep, and just as his eyes closed, an odd fragment of a conversation returned to him out of the past – something that he himself had once said, though he could not recall the occasion, or why he should have said such a thing:
‘If I were you, Juli, I wouldn't get married at all. It's too dangerous.’
Why dangerous? thought Ash drowsily as he drifted into sleep.
15
‘Ahsti! Ahsti! Khabadar, Premkulli. Shabash, mera moti – ab ek or. Bas, bas! Kya kurta, ooloo?… Nikal–jao! Arré! Arr