The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [337]
After the keen, pine-scented air of the mountains, they found Srinagar unpleasantly warm and humid, the city itself a squalid jumble of ramshackle wooden houses, crammed together and intersected by insanitary alleyways, or narrow canals that smelt like open sewers – and frequently were. But the Dal Lake was ablaze with lotus blossoms and alive with the flashing blue and green and gold of innumerable kingfishers and bee-eaters, and they bathed and lazed, gorged themselves on the cherries, peaches, mulberries and melons for which the valley was famous, and visited Shalimar and Nishat – enchanting pleasure gardens that the Mogul Emperor, Jehangir, son of the great Akbar, had built on the shores of the Dal.
Yet all too soon, like all pleasant times, the careless, sun-gilt days were over and they were being rattled and jolted along the flat cart-road to Baramullah at the mouth of the valley, and from there into the mountains and the pouring rain; clattering through vast rock gorges and forests of pine and deodar, jogging through the streets of little hill villages, and along tracks that were no more than narrow shelves scraped out of mountainsides that dropped sheer away to where the foam-torn Jhelum River roared in spate three hundred feet below.
They were not sorry to see Murree again, and to be able to sleep in beds that were both dry and comfortable, though Murree too had been swathed in the mist and rain of the monsoon. But as they jogged down the endless turns of the hill road, the clouds thinned and the temperature rose, and long before they reached the level of the plains they were back again in the gruelling heat of the hot weather.
Mahdoo was back from his holiday in his home village of Mansera beyond Abbottabad, and feeling, he said, rested and greatly refreshed. But though he looked much the same, it was clear that the long journey to Bhithor and that headlong return in the worst of the hot weather had left its mark on him, and that he like Koda Dad Khan was beginning to feel his age. He had brought a young relative with him: a good-tempered, gangling youth of sixteen with a deeply pock-marked face, who answered to the name of Kadera and would in time, said Mahdoo, become a good cook: ‘For if I am to have a “makey-learn”, I prefer to choose my own and not be worried by some chokra who cannot be trusted to boil water, let alone prepare a burra khana!’
The bungalow smelt stalely of mildew and lamp-oil and overpoweringly of flowers, the mali (gardener) having filled every available jar with tight bunches of marigolds and zinnias, and there was a pile of letters on the hall table, mostly mail from Home and addressed to Wally. Two, not in English, were for Ash, and both had been written over six weeks ago and described the ceremonies and festivity that had accompanied the installation of the new Maharajah of Karidkote. One was from Kaka-ji and the other from Mulraj, and both had thanked Ash yet again for his ‘services to their Maharajah and the State’, and passed on messages from Jhoti, who appeared to be in high feather and wanted to know how soon the Sahib would be able to visit Karidkote. But apart from that reference to his ‘services’, there had been no mention at all of Bhithor.
‘Well, what else did I expect?’ thought Ash, folding away the sheets of soft, hand-made paper. As far as Karidkote was concerned that chapter was closed, and there was no point in turning back the pages when there was so much to look forward to. Besides, in India the posts were still slow and uncertain, and the distance between the two states of Karidkote and Bhithor was roughly the same as that which separated London from Vienna or Madrid. It was also unlikely that the Rana, having failed to cheat the late Maharajah, would wish to correspond with his successor or encourage Jhoti's sisters to do so.
That same evening, their first back from leave, Wally had suggested that they drop in at the Club to look up various friends and hear the latest news