The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [518]
‘It was worth trying,’ said Wigram defensively.
‘I suppose so,’ conceded Ash with a sigh. ‘You know, I didn't mean to unload my bile on you. I only meant to ask you about my wife, and about Wally and Zarin and the rest, and to ask you to see that Zarin lets my wife know that you have seen me and talked to me and that I'm all right… and so on. I didn't mean to get side-tracked into this other nonsense, but I suppose it's been weighing on my mind too much.’
‘I'm not surprised,’ said Wigram with feeling. ‘It's been weighing on mine too. And if it comes to that, so have you! I've found myself lying awake at night wondering if I did right in interfering and getting you involved in all this, and if I wouldn't have done a lot better to keep my mouth shut and avoid having your death on my conscience.’
‘I didn't know you had one,’ mocked Ash, grinning. ‘You don't have to worry, Wigram: I can look after myself. But I admit I shall be infernally glad when this is over.’
‘Me too!’ agreed Wigram with ungrammatical fervour. ‘In fact I'll have a word with the Commandant, and see if he can't ask for you to be recalled.’
Ash's grin faded and he said ruefully: ‘No, Wigram, don't tempt me. I walked into this with my eyes open, and you know as well as I do that I must go on with it as long as there is a ghost of a chance that even at this eleventh hour reason may prevail: because Afghanistan is no country to fight a war in – and an impossible one to hold if you win. And anyway, I object, on principle, to injustice.’
‘ “It isn't fair” in fact,’ murmured Wigram provocatively.
Ash laughed and acknowledged the hit with a raised palm, but remained unrepentant: ‘You're right. It isn't fair. And if war is declared, it will be an unjust and unjustifiable war, and I do not believe that God will be on our side. Well, it's been good to see you Wigram. Will you see that my wife gets this' – he handed over a folded and sealed piece of paper – ‘and give my love to Wally and Zarin and tell them that their Uncle Akbar has their interests at heart. And if you have any influence with Cavagnari, try to persuade him that I am neither a liar nor a renegade, and that to the best of my knowledge everything I have told him is strictly true.’
I'll try,’ said Wigram. ‘Goodbye – and good luck.’
He rose to his feet and went away down the hillside, and reaching the plain in safety, mounted his waiting horse and rode swiftly back to Jamrud in the bright mid-morning sunlight.
Later that day he had talked with Major Cavagnari about Ash. But the conversation had been brief and inconclusive, and Wigram was left with the impression that he would have done better to leave well alone.
Neither man was, at the time, aware that much of Ash's views were shared by no less a person than Her Majesty's Prime Minister, Lord Beaconsfield – Victoria's beloved ‘Dizzy’ – who in the course of a speech delivered at the Lord Mayor's Banquet at London's Guildhall had expressed them to a nicety: though he had been careful to avoid naming names…
‘One would suppose, from all we hear,’ Dizzy had said, ‘that our Indian Empire is on the eve of being invaded, and that we are about to enter into a struggle with some powerful and unknown foe. In the first place, my Lord Mayor, Her Majesty's Government are by no means apprehensive of any invasion of India by our North-West Frontier. The base of operations of any possible foe is so remote, the communications are so difficult, the aspect of the country is so forbidding, that we do not believe under these circumstances that any invasion of our North-West Frontier is practicable.’
But though the invention of the telegraph had made it possible to send news from one end of India to the other with miraculous speed, communication with England was still painfully slow, so no one in India was aware of these sentiments. Nor would the planners in Simla or the busy Generals in Peshawar and Quetta and Kohat have paid much attention to them if they had known, for though Cavagnari's scheme of capturing Ali Masjid had been abandoned,