"This weather is getting unbearable. Are we never to go up to the hills?" Carol Carnac-Smyth drawled.
The other five women lying in the shallow pool of water were all of the same opinion. The searing Punjabi sun beating down on the wooden roof above their heads was far too hot for comfort, especially when the baking summer winds blew in from the arid plains which surrounded Gazepore. There were many delightful places in colonial India in which wives of British officers might live their lives. Gazepore was not one of them. A small and isolated garrison town, its only amenities for Europeans were a social club and a cinema with walls and roof of corrugated iron. And, perhaps best of all, the railhead station, which at least promised some chance of eventually leaving the dismal place.
It had been an unlucky day for the 17th Sikh Rifles when they were assigned the barracks in unlovely and unhealthy Gazepore as their regimental home.
In fact the officers' wives should have left the town already for their yearly migration at the start of the hot weather, a longed for trip up to the hill stations on the lower ranges of the Himalayas, where it was always cool and green below the eternal snow line.
Unfortunately the arrangements for their departure had been disrupted when the regiment had been ordered post haste to the North West Frontier, where the Pathans had begun raiding out of the hills again.
The Pathans and their Afghan cousins lived for fighting and plundering, being experts at both. They traversed rough terrain like mountain goats, they shot as accurately as trained snipers, they waited in ambush positions for days without a cough or a whisper, then struck with total ferocity in a whirl of knife blades. They also dyed their hair with henna, frequently made love to young boys and used handfuls of sharp stones in lieu of toilet paper. The British Army had fought everywhere and everybody in its time and, man for man, the Pathans were the toughest opponents it had ever encountered. So it was never any great surprise for any of the border regiments when they were called out to repel yet another round of raids from the tribal areas.
In fact the Sikh enlisted men and their white officers rather enjoyed the challenge of pitting their professional skills against the Pathans. The wives of the Sikh soldiers were at least left living in their own country and their own territory. It was the British wives abandoned to the heat and dust of Gazepore who found time hanging heavily on their hands. Especially with the advancing summer weather bearing down on them ever more oppressively. In faraway cities like Calcutta and Bombay there was electricity, and fans and refrigerators – but no such modern comforts were available in Gazepore. The old ways were still the only ways, and an old remedy against the heat was still the only remedy.
Many years before a Colonel's wife had discovered a small spring on the outskirts of the Regiment's cantonment, a spring which provided a trickle of wonderfully cool water from some subterranean source, even when the rocks around it were too hot to touch with a bare hand. Being a lady of enterprise and determination, the Mem-sahib had arranged for a wooden hut to be erected at the spring and a bathing pool to be made inside it. A small pool to retain the freshness of the spring water, round, twelve feet across, with a two foot high retaining wall. The spring rose in the center and an overflow pipe took away the excess water, the pool thus staying cool enough to provide a wonderful refuge from the otherwise inescapable heat.
The Colonel's lady had provided pots of ferns, tables for magazines and newspapers, even a spring driven gramophone, and then laid unmistakable claim to the hut by calling it the Moorghi-Khana, the Hen's Room. And so it had remained, a place used only by the British wives and their attendant ayahs, their maids. The ayahs were presently sitting cross legged on mats against the wall of the hut, watching the white women relaxing in the pool and ready to attend when called. One of the odd things about the Moorghi-Khana was that both types of women were wearing Indian saris wrapped about them. Normal dress for the Indian women, naturally, but only worn by the European wives when bathing in the pool. It would, of course, be unthinkable for native girls to be allowed to see white women naked – just as offensive as it would be for the British wives to see each other unclothed. Queen Victoria had been dead for a long time but her spirit still lived on in Gazepore.
Jean Ellington shook her head in disbelief at the picture in a copy of the "Tatler" she was carefully holding above the water. The magazine was the most recent copy available, having arrived on the dawn mail train only two months after being published in London.
"Have you seen these pictures from Germany? Von Hindenburg with that upstart Adolph Hitler. A Field Marshal shaking hands with a scruffy ex-corporal! It's beyond belief. Surely the Germans are never going to give any real power to a raving lunatic with a silly little mustache?"
"Don't be so naive, Jean," Camilla Hartley-Dexter said. "Hindenburg is just using Hitler's gang to get rid of the communists. As soon as that dirty job is done the Germany Army will toss Herr Hitler back into jail and throw away the key."
"Maybe," Mrs Ellington said, rather doubtfully. "But one can never tell with the Germans, can one? And the little corporal seems awfully bellicose. There couldn't be another war, could there?"
All the other women shook their heads, some a little wistfully. A war with Germany would mean a huge expansion of the Army, rapid promotion for their husbands and all the advantages which went with it – such as saying goodbye to Gazepore for ever. But there was never going to be another big war, and certainly not one in Europe.
"Never mind, darlings," Amanda Priller said lightly. "If the worst comes to the worst, we've always got the Maharajah's Own to protect us." There was an outburst of giggles around the pool.
The Maharajah that Amanda was talking about was the Maharajah of Kultoon. Kultoon was one of the small semi-independent states which were dotted about India, most of them ruled as an absolute monarchy by a hereditary Maharajah. None of these petty kingdoms were important enough to be a threat to British rule over the the sub-continent so the rulers were allowed to do pretty well what they liked inside their own territory. The Marajah of Kultoon's principal occupation, despite his age, was fornication. Both in legal wedlock and out of it no ruler had more right to be called the father of his nation.
His Highness was also a strict observer of his faith. He absolutely refused to consider having a railway built across his state less some infidel should consume pork in the dining car of a train whilst travelling through Kultooni territory. The Maharajah always had excellent reasons for resisting anything which might change his country in any way. A position strongly buttressed by the fact that the royal family of Kultoon happened to be incredibly wealthy because of several rich diamond mines inside their small country.
Not that these matters would normally have been a matter of any interest in distant Gazepore, far from Kultoon's borders. It was one of the Maharajah's increasingly erratic whims of his old age which had made the difference. For the Maharajah of Kultoon had his own army -or, to be precise, a regiment of cavalry. Outfitted in expensive uniforms, riding the best horseflesh money could buy, and well drilled in all kinds of parade ground maneuvers. The regiment was also a standing joke throughout all of India because of its title: "The Maharajah of Kultoon's Own Irregular Lancers".
To begin to understand the joke it was only necessary to take a look at its officers. Every single one of them had been fathered by the Maharajah – and they were just the legitimate tip of the iceberg. A further glance along the enlisted ranks of the Maharajah's Own Irregulars showed a further number of facial similarities clearly conceived by the Maharajah's own irregular liaisons: an astonishing number of them. The Kultooni cavalry was indeed a band of brothers -or half brothers, at any rate. And most of them had inherited in full the Maharajah's handsome good looks and strapping vitality. Which he in turn was reputed to have acquired from his own mother's indiscretion with a unscrupulous English cavalry officer called Flashman.
So perhaps it was an inherited love of fine horses which had inspired the creation of the Irregular Lancers. Nobody had cared one way or another, until the Maharajah had summoned the Vice Regal Diplomatic Representative accredited to his court and announced his desire to send his regiment to the North West Frontier to assist his good friends, the British, in defending the imperial borders of India.
Well, for a few months anyway, as the Kultooni military would obviously have to abandon any thoughts of warfare once the polo season started.
The British representative was startled, appreciative and deeply unhappy at the idea. He knew very well that the Maharajah's Irregulars fired their carbines about once a year and had never shown the slightest interest in any kind of soldiering which didn't involve shiny buttons and admiring watchers – especially female ones. Putting the Kultooni cavalry up against the Pathans would be like sending the Boston Missionary Society to drive the Apache tribes out of Arizona.
The holy warriors from Afghanistan would chew the Irregulars up like betel nuts and spit them out in bright red splashes across the mountain rocks.
On the other hand, the British hadn't ruled India for a hundred and fifty years by needlessly insulting rich and powerful Indian rulers, especially ones who were genuinely friendly towards the Empire. So the Irregulars would at least have to be sent to some garrison post up in the border areas and the Maharajah assured that they were performing honorable service. Thus would the ruler's good will be kept – a good will which would quickly evaporate if some of his favorite sons' testicles ended up as kebabs on Pathan daggers.
On the third hand – not left, nor right, but underhand – was the British diplomat's concern for one royal son in particular, the commanding officer of the Kultooni Regiment, His Royal Highness the Colonel Prince Ravi of Kultoon. The Vice Regal Diplomat knew all about young Prince Ravi, late of Eton College and Oxford University, and heir to the throne of Kultoon. He knew that Ravi was probably the most dashing and good looking of all the Maharajah's sons. The diplomat also knew that the Prince was clever, cowardly, unscrupulous and totally determined to maintain his life of privilege and wealthy indolence at all costs.
In other words he was just the sort of reliable chap the British wanted to replace the Maharajah when the old ruler finally made one trip too many to his harem and went to Allah with a smile on his face.
But there was a very good chance that Prince Ravi would not be available to be weighed in diamonds at his coronation if Colonel Ravi was allowed anywhere near the frontier passes, where every open space was swept by eagle sharp eyes behind carefully adjusted rifle sights.
The Pathans might not be great scholars or mathematicians but they could all read ground like Napoleon and judge the range to a target with incredible accuracy. Neither did they care in the slightest whether their targets had white, brown, black or yellow skin. The Pathans were a totally fair minded people: they didn't care who they shot, raped, looted or tortured.
Urgent messages were exchanged between Kultoon and New Delhi. The decision was unanimous: a place where Gurkha, Sikh and British infantry battalions needed all their professional skills to stay alive was no place for the Kultooni irregulars and their polo sticks. But since the 17th Rifles were being called out of barracks to defend Warzistan then Prince Ravi and his men could be sent to Gazepore to defend the garrison town against any threat which might emerge in the 17th's absence. Of course there was no real threat to Gazepore, only a few dacoits, loose-wallahs, and barely active bandits easily controlled by the local police. But the Maharajah didn't know that and his cavalry could mount impressive patrols around the town with spurs jingling and lance-pennants fluttering, all of which could be represented to the Maharajah as valuable frontier duty. And when the old boy finally got tired of having his regiment away from home it could be returned to him as shiny and complete as a box of lead soldiers newly purchased from Harrods.
It was a neat solution, except that the Commander-in-Chief, Army of India, was concerned that Colonel Ravi would complain to his father that the Kultooni cavalry wasn't being allowed to gallop into a place of honor on the firing line. Fortunately, the Vice Regal Representative in Kultoon was able to assure the C-in-C that it was extremely unlikely that Prince Ravi or any of his fellow officers would choose to complain to anybody about not being shot at. And so the arrangements were made and the Maharajah's Own Irregular Cavalry came to Gazepore by troop trains, as opposed to any tedious riding.
The effect was rather like a Hollywood film company complete with stars arriving in a remote Newfoundland fishing village. Mutual incomprehension and dislike on all sides. The Kultooni cavalry loathed Gazepore from the beginning – horses, men and officers. The horses fought for scraps of shade under the few shriveled trees: the men sought consolation for their exile in the Sikh soldiers' married quarters. But Gazepore had many turban wearing veterans who resented the would be wooers. And in India resentment is never an intangible emotion. Several Kultooni soldiers opted to spend their nights out of barracks – but two of them failed to return before dawn reveille.
Their remains on both occasions were soon located by watchers observing where the vultures were gathering to break their fasts. And it was also noted that whatever the carrion eaters had done to the bodies, it was impossible to blame them for the fact that the Kultooni enlisted men were found with their severed genitals sewn into their mouths. From then on most of the lancers decided to opt for prudent celibacy until they could return to the safety of their own territory.
But most frustrated of all were the rich and dashing young officers of the Maharajah's Own Irregulars. With no local woman worth their caste the only recreational pursuits left open to them were hunting the local pigs and the British wives. And though the local pig sticking wasn't too bad it soon transpired that there were far more black boars available in Gazepore than white whores. In fact all the British women treated the Kultooni officers' advances with amused contempt.
The majority of the officers had never been outside Kultoon before and had little to do with feringi women – they took their rebuffs with rueful grace. Prince Ravi and others like him who had been educated in England did not, for they had never had the slightest difficulty in seducing any number of British women in Oxford or London, whether married or not, and no matter what their social status. The color of their Kultooni skins had been no drawback at all, not when weighed against their royal birth and the weight of their purses.
But this wasn't London, it was Gazepore, and the women here belonged to a colonial society where a Mem-sahib would be far more likely to commit suicide than adultery with an Indian man. A grass widow having a casual affair in a hill station with a young British officer was certainly not unknown, nor likely to be denounced, not if done with discretion. But for a British army wife to get into bed with a Indian of any kind was as completely unthinkable as for her to make love with a goat or a British enlisted soldier. Not only was it not done, it couldn't even be imagined being done. Which was why Amanda's little joke about the Maharajah's irregulars was guaranteed to raise some laughs.
What none of the women in the pool had the slightest inkling of was that Prince Ravi had laid careful plans to give each and every one of them a lesson in Kultooni cavalry rough riding techniques: plans which were only seconds away from being implemented.
Jean rustled the magazine as a signal to her ayah to come and replace it on the table.
"Koi-hai, Lalun."
The young ayah leapt up far more quickly than usual, padding silently forward on her bare feet, eyes rolling white under masses of black and oily Madrassi hair. As she took the periodical she looked up twice at the white muslin sheets which served as a ceiling, as if expecting the wooden roof beams out of sight above them to come crashing down.
"What on earth is the matter with your girl, Jean?" Deborah Boxwood asked. "She seems as nervous as a cat on hot bricks."
"I daresay she's noticed the punkah-wallah as gone to sleep again and she's afraid she'll get the blame for it."
Jean was right. The long panel of bamboo framed fabric which hung just below the ceiling sheets wasn't moving, as it should have been to keep the air circulating in the room. Which meant in turn that the old man sitting cross legged on the verandah had fallen asleep in the afternoon heat instead of attending to his duty of continually pulling on the rope which kept the punkah swinging.
"I'll send Manga to deal with him," Carol said and clicked her fingers. The ayah who rose from her mat was by far the oldest of the servants, almost forty and only kept on because of her savage bad temper when dealing with other native servants failing in their duties. "Punka, juldi, Manga."
Manga bobbed her head and turned towards the door.
"There's no cord on it," Camilla observed.
"I beg your pardon?"
"There's no cord attached to the punkah – no wonder it's not moving."
All of the women looked up at the punkah. Camilla was right. There should have been a cord attached to one end of the punkah flap, a cord ascending up past the muslin sheets to the roof space, and to pulleys which led it sideways, through a gap in the upper wall and then down to the verandah.
Carol shook her head in disbelief at Indian inefficiency: "How tiresome. Now we'll… "