The Distant Kingdom Read online

  It was at those times that Perdita would leave him almost entirely to James Thurleigh and search for something to occupy herself elsewhere. She had tried to help the women at their various apparently unending tasks around the compound, but they would not let her. She used to watch the girls leave to fetch water twice every day, and would beg Aktur to let her go with them. Invariably he answered:

  ‘No, lady-sahib. It is not fitting or safe.’

  ‘But, Aktur, I wish to go. To walk outside would mean so much.’

  But he would never allow it, and so she watched the procession leave every morning and evening, each girl muffled up against the snow in a coarse black woollen blanket over her red or purple tunic and trousers, carrying an elegant plain clay pot on her shoulder. The picture they presented was magnificent, with their brightly coloured clothes set off by the brilliant snow and the translucent blue sky, their carriage so graceful under the burdens they carried. Once Perdita said as they came back, tired but uncomplaining from their three-mile trudge:

  ‘Aktur, why do you not have a well dug within the compound, instead of sending them so far every day for water?’

  ‘There is water in the river. How do we know that there is any here for a well? Besides, we have always done it so. What else have the women to do?’

  Having felt the crushing weight of boredom living in his village with no function, Perdita could say nothing more. None of the women of his clan could read or write; none of them travelled outside except to join a husband from another village. Reason told her that he was right: there was nothing they could do except keep themselves and their men and children clothed and fed. Yet it troubled her that the women toiled so hard and looked so much older than their husbands. Aktur’s father was a fine upstanding eagle of a man; his wife, a bent, wrinkled, exhausted old woman who appeared to labour unceasingly.

  Now that she understood the harshness and poverty of their lives, Perdita could also understand the legendary and much-mocked Afghan liking for money, and indeed the rapacity of the tribes who held the passes. But understanding did not bring acceptance. It seemed to her that their lives need not be so difficult; that there would be easier ways to provide the necessities of life, and to leave time for the pursuit of civilization and gentleness.

  But then she would ask herself how much civilization her own people showed, or why the Afghans should be gentle with a foreign army that had invaded their country, whatever the spuriously legal excuse they gave for it. Her mind seemed like a cage of wild animals prowling angrily round and round. As soon as she persuaded one uncomfortable thought to lie down, another would rise and snarl in its place.

  She came to hate the village and the life they had to lead, and by the middle of February, she realized that Captain Thurleigh hated it too. She did not know what kind of thoughts tormented him, but she saw their effect and tried to sympathize.

  Her efforts were clumsy, though, and her words so irrelevant to his concerns that he hardly heard them, saying only:

  ‘What was that you said? Leave? I expect they’ll let us go in the end. If they had other plans they’d have done something by now. No, I think you can take it that we’re being allowed to live.’ The sneer in his rough voice was too obvious to miss, but she could not understand it. She had no way of knowing that he saw the promise of life as something shameful.

  When he had seen Marcus and his family carried off, James had ridden impulsively in pursuit. He had had little hope of saving them; but he had not wanted to let Marcus die alone. Now it seemed that he had bought his own life by deserting his post and the shame of it ate deeper into him every day.

  He had watched angrily as his friend’s children became assimilated into the life of the village children and Perdita talked with increasing fluency to the headman and his sons. To James Thurleigh she seemed serene and without conception of her disloyalty to her country in treating with its enemies. Then she had come to talk to him for the first time in days and had bleated out what he took to be a demand for reassurance. Bitterness seethed in him, and once again he tried to blame her for her husband’s condition and his own desertion. That he could not made his angry shame worse and flung back on him the full weight of despair.

  The next morning Perdita went as usual to fetch their meagre breakfast as soon as the door to their room was unlocked, leaving James Thurleigh to deal with the unspeakable latrine jar. When she came back carrying a pile of flat, greyish wheat cakes and a water jar, she saw him standing outside the door, staring out at the mountains, with a pistol in his right hand. She understood at once and ran to stand in front of him. With her hands full of food and her blue eyes blazing with anger, she said:

  ‘How dare you?’

  He looked down at her and said unemotionally:

  ‘I have to.’ Then seeing her look of uncomprehending anger, he went on: ‘I am a deserter. It is a matter of honour.’

  The stupidity of it, the wickedness, held her mute for a full minute. Then she bent down to put her burden on the filthy ground and straightened up to say bitingly:

  ‘If you think it more honourable to shoot yourself here, causing God knows what trouble, than to live to help me get a blind man and two children safely through eighty miles of enemy-held mountain passes to Jellalabad you must be demented. And better dead.’

  Then she turned from him, hardly caring whether he lived or died, to take the food in to Marcus. She tried to put the incident from her while she fed him, soaking the unappetizing grey bread in water for him and coaxing him to eat it. As usual, he stopped her after a few mouthfuls, and said:

  ‘What were you and James quarrelling about?’

  It was the first sign he had made that he was aware of anything outside his own suffering body. Perdita wanted to lie soothingly but was too relieved to know that he was sane to shut off the real world from him, and so she compromised:

  ‘He is ashamed because he thinks that in riding after us to save us from the tribesmen he deserted his post. If we had all died, that would have been acceptable and he would have been an honourable man, but because he is still alive he sees himself as a coward and deserter. I tried to make him see reason.’

  ‘Be gentle with him, Perdita. You are so strong.’

  The absurdity of it shook her. That the sneering, arrogant, hateful man who could shrivel her always shaky confidence with a look should need gentleness from her was patently nonsense, but Marcus had asked for it. She lowered his shoulders back against the mud wall and put down the cup she had been holding, before saying:

  ‘Very well, Marcus, I shall try.’

  She stood up and walked back to the courtyard, blinking in the sudden light. There had been no shot, and so she was not afraid of what she might find. The first thing she saw was the revolver lying in the dust. She picked it up gingerly, only to find that it was not cocked. She thrust it into her waistband. Then she said as kindly as possible:

  ‘Captain Thurleigh?’

  He was sitting in the corner formed by the compound wall and that of their room, his hands clasped around his calves and his head resting on his bent knees. She walked over to him and put her hand on his shoulder. She saw with distaste that her skin was grimy and her fingernails torn and full of God knew what filth. A louse ran out on to her hand from under his collar, but she barely noticed them now.

  ‘Captain Thurleigh?’

  He raised his head then, and she was shocked to see that his eyes were red and the dirt on his face streaked white by tears. His magnificent face seemed pinched. He looked beaten. For the first time she felt pity for him, and a twisting kind of desperation. Much as she had, always disliked him, she had relied on his strength and his knowledge to take them safely back to the army. Now, she knew, there was no one but herself to do that.

  He leaned forward and scrambled on to his knees, pressing his face into her dirty and stinking skirts and gripping her body. She heard him say:

  ‘Oh, God, what will become of me?’

  She put bot
h hands on his rough, caked hair, feeling, yet another louse under her fingers. Pushing her disgust away firmly, she said:

  ‘Don’t weep, James. We shall all live. When we get to Jellalabad all will be well. You shall rejoin the regiment. No one will think that you have deserted. There are truly times when life is worth more than honour.’

  As though that word had triggered something in him, he dropped his arms and withdrew from her. Turning his head away, he got up and said in a barely audible voice:

  ‘I beg your pardon, Lady Beaminster.’ And he walked away.

  She stood looking after him and wondering how they were all going to live cramped in their one room for another two months after this. She saw Aktur and waved to him. He came up to her and before he could speak, she asked:

  ‘Aktur, what is the news?’

  ‘Nothing new, lady-sahib. They say that at Jellalabad the general has refused to make a treaty with the Ghilzais and that the feringhees were rebuilding the walls when the earthquake hit them. All their walk were thrown down, but when Akbar came to take the fort they had been built up again.’

  Taking a deep breath to steady her voice, she said:

  ‘Then, Aktur, do you think we could leave soon? If the division is safe in Jellalabad and the tribesmen are preoccupied with the earthquake, would it not be better if we went now?’

  ‘The cold and the snow will stop you.’

  ‘But if we wait for the spring, it will be worse. There will be rain, and all the rivers will flood. We should have to wait until May at least and then it might be too late. The English might have left Jellaalabad. I think you should send us now.‘

  He looked at her as though weighing up what she had said against unvoiced arguments of his own. The fear that lived just below the surface broke through again and Perdita remembered the endless broken promises of men of his race and was afraid that she might have aroused his anger. He said abruptly:

  ‘I go to speak to my father and my brothers.’

  Five days later they marched, with Aktur as their guide, carrying provisions for ten days. He thought that it would take them only half that time to reach the fort, but none of the adults was prepared to risk another march like the last. They all wore the poshteens they had brought from Caubul, and heavy black blankets the headman had given them for cloaks. He had also provided torn strips to replace their tattered leg wrappings.

  In the end Perdita and James Thurleigh parted from him with regret. Filthy, uncomfortable and verminous his village might have been, but it had provided sanctuary. Now that they were setting off across wild mountains, expecting to face bands of vengeful Ghilzais, they knew how to value that safety. And now too, they were certain of it, as they had never been while they lived under his protection. He said:

  ‘My son will take you as close to Jellalabad as possible, and he will show you the rest of the way. He tells me you have no ammunition left for your guns, so take this.’

  Perdita waited, expecting to be offered a long jezail, but he presented her with a smallish, heavy goatskin bag. She handed it to Thurleigh, saying to the khan.

  ‘We thank you for this, but also for your hospitality and for the risks you have taken for us.’ Then she turned to Thurleigh to say:

  ‘He says we have no bullets for the revolvers. Are those the right sort?’

  ‘Yes. By God, do you realize where …’ Perdita cut in hastily:

  ‘They must have come from the passes. I know. But do not say anything now, please, Captain Thurleigh.’

  ‘Don’t you understand? These blackguards must have been looting the bodies of our men. They probably killed them too.’

  ‘Of course I know. How do you suppose Aktur has been getting his news if he were not joining the other Afghans down there? But we cannot stop that or change it. We can only accept that they are helping us and be grateful for their help. Will you reload both guns?’

  ‘Of course.’ She handed him hers, took the leading rein of Marcus’s pony, smiled at the children who were sharing one provided by the chief, and led them out of the compound gates.

  The view in front of them was breathtaking: rank after rank of mountain peaks glittering under a sun that blazed in a sky as pale and clear as enamelled glass. A mile and a half away across the plateau she could see the river where the women went for the water, and above it the magnificent sight of a frozen waterfall. The air was so clear that even from that distance she could make out the great ice stalactites that hung from its black rocks and the curtains of ice that spread downwards into the still liquid pools.

  As they rode nearer, she pointed out its glories to the children, saying:

  ‘Just imagine, Annie, when the spring comes all that will be water again, pouring down into the river. Perhaps we shall be back in Simla by then. Do you remember it at all?’

  ‘I do,’ said Charlie proudly. ‘There were monkeys there that came into the dining room to eat the fruit.’

  Perdita laughed, and Marcus smiled to hear the sound She said:

  ‘Yes; how clever of you. There was one who came in one morning. Do not look so frightened, Annie. It was only once.’

  ‘I don’t remember that,’ said Marcus, sounding almost gay.

  ‘Well, it must have been after you left. Yes, it was that last summer before we joined you, just after Charlie’s second birthday.’

  ‘Ah, I see. And how much do you remember about Simla, Annie?’

  ‘Not very much, Papa. But I don’t think it was so cold as Caubul.’

  ‘No, it was not. And much more beautiful. There is a little valley up above the town, so lovely you would hardly believe it could be real, with flowers and a lake. The flowers…’

  Perdita could hardly bear to listen, understanding that Marcus was trying to see it again with his memory as he never could with his eyes. She had not known that he thought like that about places, and she glanced baack at Captain Thurleigh to see what he made of it.

  He was riding a little behind Marcus, and she saw him watching her husband with a smile of frightening tenderness. She had no way of knowing that he was remembering the last time they had seen that valley.

  They had ridden there one morning when Marcus was smarting after a set to with his mother. As they reached the valley, he had said:

  ‘James, I am sorry to burden you with my megrims. But you are the only one who understands.’

  ‘Of course I do, my dear,’ James had answered, leaning over his saddle to ruffle Marcus’s hair, as he had done all those years before when Marcus had been a scared and homesick subaltern. They had dismounted and tethered the horses in the shade.

  Then, much later, as James had sat with his back: propped against a warm, smooth rock, he had looked down at Marcus, lying beside him on the ground, his head on James’s thigh, and had said:

  ‘Better, old fellow?’

  Marcus had looked up, his brown eyes unshadowed; and said:

  ‘I feel clean again.’

  James remembered vividly the feel of Marcus’s lips as he traced them with his fingers. He remembered how he had said something like:

  ‘You must not let them worry you so. While I am with you nothing can happen to hurt you.’ Marcus had answered simply, and with complete confidence, ‘I know.’ James Thurleigh shuddered at the thought of the hurt he had not managed to prevent and looked around for something to help control his feelings. He looked up at the sun far to the left and said angrily to Perdita:

  ‘Jellalabad lies directly to the east. What is this savage doing? We must be heading almost due south. Tell him we know what he is up to.’

  ‘James.’ she said pacifically, ‘we must trust him. I assume he has a reason.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he has,’ he answered, heavily sarcastic, ‘but ask him what it is.’

  ‘Very well.’ She handed him the leading rein and spurred her pony forwards. After a short colloquy with Aktur, she rode back and said, ‘He says there is a Ghilzai fortress in the way. We must go round it to avoid trouble
. I believe him.’

  Thurleigh only shrugged, but by the end of that day’s march, even he accepted that once again they were heading in the right direction. Aktur led them along barely discernible tracks way up in the hills to avoid any possible collision with Akbar’s forces or stray looting parties on their way to or from one of the richly strewn passes.

  They slept that night in the shelter of a vast overhanging rock and were up and moving off just after sunrise. All that day and the next they met no one, and the holiday mood of the first morning’s ride persisted. It was very cold, but no snow fell, and the sensation of travelling home, unhindered and unencumbered, was so powerful that even James Thurleigh succumbed and ceased to frown.

  On the evening of the fourth day, when they had made their bivouac and shared out the ration of dried fruit and bread, Aktur said slowly to Perdita:

  ‘Jellalabad lies just over those hills there.’ He pointed directly opposite the declining sun, which had dyed the sky and the mountains a deep orangy-gold. ‘Tomorrow I must leave you. But if you follow this track it will take you across the hills and you will see the fort.’

  ‘Must you leave us?’

  ‘Yes, lady-sahib. I must go to my people. I cannot ride into the feringhee camp.’

  ‘I see.’

  She turned away and hunched down under her coarse blanket, ashamed of herself for wanting so much more from this man, to whom they all owed their lives and who had probably risked his own to help them. She told herself that if Jellalabad were really only the other side of the hills, nothing could go wrong. And she had no reason to doubt his word. Nevertheless, she dreamed horribly that night, and in the morning could only just prevent herself flinging herself down in the snow to catch his stirrup and beg him to stay with them.

  Instead she thanked him formally for what he had done on her own behalf and that of the others, and he answered only: