With the aid of her husband, also a doctor, she had established a clinic in Peshawar and to the astonished concern of the authorities had continued to run it, treating British citizens and Pathans alike even after the death, at native hands, of her husband. The tribesmen were more astonished than her compatriots. She was frequently asked by patients how she could bring herself to do this work, caring for the very people who were responsible for his death. Surely, they wondered, she must want to invoke the right of badal, to be avenged for her husband? Surely there was some young man of her family who would pick up and run with the tale? And she herself was well placed to take revenge, they would say, with a meaningful and nervous glance at her sharp instruments. She always reassured them that her only interest was in putting people together again. She usually managed to bring her God into the conversation too, explaining the theory of Christian forgiveness. They had come to trust her and she was a well-known and welcome guest in the tribal territories.
Frederick Moore-Simpson had acquired a pretty extensive knowledge of the frontier. He could ask sensible questions and he could give sensible answers. He knew his way round this Debatable Land. But this was the first time he had stood down on its earth. His knowledge had been acquired from a height of five thousand feet but the more he had looked and the more he had listened, the more he had become converted to the Forward Policy. To his calculating and pragmatic RAF mind it seemed that war on the ground must go in favour always of the native Pathan. Others had found this. The Moghul emperors had found it, as had the Sikh invaders and now the British, poised and ready to repeat the same mistakes.
When every corner of this land was overlooked by a defensible mountain crag, and every crag occupied by vigilant and highly trained riflemen, if there was to be any conclusion there had to be, as he put it, ‘a change of bowling’. And the change of bowling could be supplied by the RAF. An adequacy of landing strips and the work once done by sweating infantrymen both British and Indian on the ground could be done by the modern cavalry – a squadron of light bombers. Fred knew a good deal about this. He had served on the Western Front. ‘Aerial proscription’ they called it and Fred was convinced that this was the way ahead. ‘Trench strafing,’ he would say, ‘that’s the stuff!’
He had expended much energy and much eloquence in pressing this point of view on the unreceptive Edwin Burroughs as they drove up together from Peshawar. Fred didn’t like Edwin Burroughs. He didn’t like his patronizing Indian Civil Service approach. He didn’t much like his braying voice, his supercilious expression and his improbably shining silver hair. Least of all did he like his insistence that the way ahead was not to advance but to retreat. In effect, to pull back east of the Indus and leave the tribesmen to sort their problems out themselves, thereby saving the British Government a very great deal of money. Leaving the British Empire open on a thousand-mile-wide front to attack from Russia more like, Fred thought. Couldn’t the man see that?
Fred understood his subject. He had cultivated an RAF manner – casual and informal – but most people swiftly came to the realization that behind this there was an icy determination, by fair means or foul, to press and establish his view. James had at times been surprised at the vehemence into which Fred could so easily slip. So surprised, indeed, that he had applied for and obtained an intelligence report on Fred’s background. Impeccable. Nothing suspicious there. Or was there? Among recent activities on the part of the RAF and in which Fred had been closely involved had been an early experiment in aerial proscription, successful within limits but revealing the surprising fact that the slow-moving bombers available to the RAF at the time were vulnerable targets to Afridi and Wazir snipers on the ground.
‘Just like a covert shoot!’ someone had said. ‘Slow birds!’
Several young flying officers had been forced into crash landings in tribal territory. It was generally believed that a straight and lethal crash was to be preferred to a successful crash-landing. Pilots who in this way fell into Pathan hands in spite of handsome rewards for their return to the British did not last long and did not die easily. James had wondered if Fred’s single-minded pursuit of his aggressive policy was fuelled in any way by hatred or even guilt.
Sir Edwin Burroughs was not in a receptive mood. His piles were killing him. The long journey by train to Peshawar had been bad enough, the accommodation in Peshawar had not been what he was accustomed to but the onward jolting, bumpy journey to the fort had of itself been a source of the sharpest anguish, intolerable at any level but brought beyond bearing by listening to that ignorant damn fool Moore-Simpson pressing the claims of the forward policy which in the mind of Burroughs and many others had long been abandoned by the sensible.
Burroughs had listened but had taken refuge behind the dry cough, the Olympian smile and the parade of saintly patience. He counted the days as best he could until he could be comfortably at home again in Delhi. He didn’t want to spend time listening to Grace Holbrook explaining the views of the Amir. He didn’t want to listen to the domestic preoccupations of the fort commander’s wife (though he understood that James Lindsay was sound enough). He learned that a banquet – a Pathan banquet, if you please! – was being laid on for his benefit that evening. He detested native food. A lively curry always animated his ulcer. He feared that if there was anything at all to drink other than mineral water it would be beer of local manufacture. Aerated drinks did not suit him. He hoped – on the one hand – that he would find himself seated next to this American girl and, on the other hand, that she would be as far away from him as possible. He could do without the stirrings of senile lust which she provoked in him. And, if he were to believe all he heard, the modern American woman was better avoided. They were over-emancipated for many men’s taste, bold and apt to have their own strong opinions. Trouble.
Dermot Rathmore was reputed to have done well out of the war. ‘Something to do with army contracts’ rumour had said and rumour, for once, was right. Seeing a gap in the market he had contracted widely to supply the American forces in France and, unusually, had beaten an American entrepreneur to the draw. And then there was his peerage. ‘Lord’ Rathmore! ‘What was that about?’ people asked. Blatantly – more blatantly even than most – his peerage had come from subscriptions to party funds but this was not widely known outside England, and the North-West Frontier of India was a lord-loving corner of the Empire. These events left him with a considerable sense of his own importance and an exaggerated sense of his own power to manipulate the situations in which he found himself to his further advantage. In the circumstances he was not pleased to find himself in his present company. He had expected a red carpet instead of which he found himself in something little better than a parish outing. He tuned for a moment back into the conversation of Betty and Grace Holbrook and decided it was worse – a Sunday School outing by charabanc was nearer the mark. And one of the wretched women had even brought her dog along for the ride. He looked with disfavour at the small white Jack Russell terrier lying at his feet, its eyes unwaveringly on his ankles. The commanding officer’s wife appeared to be loosely in control of it.
And here was this missionary female, Grace something. He didn’t associate with missionaries though he was told this one had the ear of the Amir of Afghanistan. She might be useful. If he was truly to establish trade relations between the Indian Empire and the Kingdom of Afghanistan a friend at court might come in handy, even a humble missionary. He wondered if he could offer her a retainer. Always worth a try.