The Siege of Krishnapur - J. G. Farrell [34]
“What d’you call this blighter?” asked Burlton.
“Ant,” said Rayne.
Burlton slapped his knee and abandoned himself to laughter.
“I’d like to know what Mr Fleury thinks of this Meerut business,” said Ford. “What? Can you beat that! I’m damned if he’s even heard of it! Where have you been all day?” And delighted, he set to work to give Fleury what seemed to be a largely imaginary account of some terrible uprising of sepoys, full of “plump young griffins, fellows about your age” being “hacked to pieces in their prime”. Fleury could see that he was being made fun of, but was alarmed all the same.
“Don’t worry,” said Burlton condescendingly; he had been in India almost a year and thus was less of a griffin than Fleury. “Jack Sepoy may be able to cut down defenceless people but he can’t stand up to real pluck.”
“When did all this happen?”
“What day is today? Tuesday. It happened on Sunday night.”
Ford had lost interest in Meerut by this time but Fleury managed to get some idea of what had happened from Burlton. Two native infantry regiments had shot down their officers and broken into open revolt; in due course they had been joined by the badmashes from the bazaar who had set to work plundering the British cantonment. The British troops had been on church parade when the trouble started. In the end they had managed to quell the outbreak but the mutineers had escaped with their firearms. The telegraph wires had been cut soon after the first word of the outbreak had come through, but all sorts of grim rumours were circulating. Krishnapur was almost five hundred miles from this trouble. All the same, news travelled fast in India even without the telegraph...one only had to think of the speed with which the chapatis had spread. What nobody knew was whether the sepoys at Captainganj would follow this example and attack the Krishnapur cantonment.
“Ant! Monkey! Bring simkin double quick!”
“Of course, they’re bound to know of it already,” said Burlton. “What beats me, Rayne, is how the blessed natives got to hear of it before I did. I overheard the babus chatting in the Magistrate’s office about Meerut this morning. They were saying that the mutinous sepoys had marched on Delhi and that soon the Mogul Empire would be revived.”
“A likely story. The people know when they’re well off. They wouldn’t stand for it.”
“Well, they seemed to think it could happen. They wanted to know who were the fifty-two rajahs who would assemble to place the Emperor on the throne.”
But Rayne and Ford were not interested in this fancy of Burlton’s and Ford said crushingly: “The first thing one learns in India, Burlton, is not to listen to the damned nonsense the natives are always talking.” And poor Burlton flushed with shame and avoided Fleury’s eye.
Fleury had by now grown accustomed to the gloom and could see that Ford was a heavy-featured man of about forty; in spite of his inferior social status as an engineer, he clearly dominated Rayne and Burlton. Ford said unpleasantly: “Perhaps Mr Fleury will tell us what he thinks about it, since he has so many bosom friends among the ‘big dogs’ at Fort William.”
“What I think is this,” began Fleury...but what he thought was never revealed for at this moment his interlocutors sprang to their feet. Startled, Fleury jumped up too; all this talk of mutiny had set his nerves on edge. But it was only the two ladies entering the room.
“What a disgusting creature!” exclaimed Mrs Rayne, smiling prettily.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I say, Burlton. Would you mind telling that little beggar to bring more simkin for the ladies?”
“Haven’t you heard, Mr Fleury, that there is an English-woman who has been behaving disgracefully at the dak bungalow? The Padre has been out to reason with her more than once, I hear.”
“Could they not send the wretched girl away?” Mrs Ross wanted to know. “She can’t live for