The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [350]
His conversation was as salty and invigorating as the sea and interlarded with frequent quotations from the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer – the only printed works apart from manuals on sailing and navigation that he had ever read - and altogether he proved such an entertaining companion that by the time the train at last pulled into Ahmadabad, the two had become the best of friends.
35
Ahmadabad, the noble city that Sultan Ahmad Shah built in the first half of the fifteenth century, retained few traces of its legendary beauty and splendour. It was set in flat, featureless surroundings near the banks of the Sabar-mati River, and the fertile land was as different from the harsh, lion-coloured Border country as the sowars of Roper's Horse were different, both in appearance and temperament, from the men of the Frontier Force regiments; the Gujeratis being by nature a peace-loving folk whose best-known proverb is ‘Make friends with your enemy’.
Their senior officers struck Ash as being surprisingly old and staid, and far more set in their ways than those in his own Regiment; while as for their Commanding Officer, Colonel Pomfret, he might have been Rip Van Winkle in person, complete with ragged white beard and a set of ideas that were at least fifty years out of date.
The cantonment, however, differed little from the scores of similar cantonments scattered across the length and breadth of India: an ancient fort, a dusty sun-baked parade ground, barracks and cavalry lines, a small bazaar and a few European shops and a number of officers' bungalows standing in tree-shaded compounds where parakeets, doves and crows roosted among the branches and little striped squirrels scuffled among the tree roots.
Life there followed a familiar pattern of reveille, stables, musketry and office work, but on the social side Ash made a pleasant discovery: the presence of an old acquaintance from the Peshawar days – no other than Mrs Viccary, whose husband had recently been transferred to Gujerat. The pleasure had been mutual, and Edith Viccary's bungalow soon became a second home to him since she was, as ever, an interested and sympathetic listener, and as the last time he had seen her was prior to Belinda's defection and his own disappearance over the Border into Afghanistan, there was much that he had to tell her.
As far as his work was concerned, he found himself at a grave disadvantage in the matter of language. Once, long ago, he had learned Gujerati from a member of his father's camp; but that was too far back for him to remember it, so now he must start again from the beginning, and like any newcomer, study hard to master it. The fact that he had spoken it as a child may possibly have helped him to make better progress than he would otherwise have done – certainly his fellow officers, unaware of his background (though the nickname of ‘Pandy’ had followed him), were astonished at the speed with which he picked it up, though their Colonel, who thirty years ago had met Professor Hilary Pelham-Martyn and subsequently read at least one volume of the Professor's monumental work The Languages and Dialects of the Indian Sub-Continent, did not think it strange that the son should have inherited his father's linguistic talents. He could only hope that the young man had not also inherited his parent's unorthodox views.
But Ash's behaviour during the first few months of his attachment gave no cause for alarm. He performed his duties in a perfectly satisfactory manner, though without over-much enthusiasm, and was voted a ‘dull dog’ by the junior officers because he showed even less for cards and convivial evenings in the mess. Though they agreed that this could well be due to the heat, for the hot-weather temperatures were apt to cast a damper on the liveliest of spirits, and once the cold season came round he might prove more gregarious.
In this respect, however, the arrival of the cold weather had made no difference, except that his prowess on the polo field was sufficiently