As they walked across the square towards the durbar hall, the insistent notes of a bugle call floated over the fort and, to amuse and distract Lily, Joe sang the words the soldiery had long ago fitted to the Officers’ Mess Call:
‘Officers’ wives have puddings and pies
But sergeants’ wives have skilly,
And the private’s wife has nothing at all
To fill her poor little belly.’
‘I know how she feels! Do you realize, Joe, I’ve had nothing to eat for over a day? What I wouldn’t give for a bowlful of skilly – whatever that is!’
‘It’s grits – I think you’d call it grits,’ said Joe. ‘But didn’t they give you food at Mahdan Khotal? The Scouts and I were only there for about three hours but they sent us three lots of refreshment in that time. Surely…?’
‘Oh, they kept sending me plates of this and that but I couldn’t eat. When someone you like’s screaming in agony and probably dying in the next room it sort of shuts down your appetite.’
‘We may find the next hour has much the same effect,’ said Joe lugubriously as they arrived at the open door of the durbar hall.
They stood for a moment in the doorway allowing their eyes to adjust to the darker interior. Already seated around a table which had been set out in the centre of the room, James and Betty waited side by side, ready to defy the world. A small white face peered out from Betty’s lap and snarled. Minto, too, was ready as always to defy the world. Edwin Burroughs, bored and bleak, was giving nothing away; Iskander sat with blank face and expressionless eyes; Fred, as ever cheerful, smiled his pleasure at seeing them. Grace, looking exhausted and wary, just managed a wan smile of welcome. At the head of the table with his back to them was a grey-haired and solid figure. All turned to greet them as they stepped into the room.
‘Well, there you are!’ came an amiable and gravelly voice and the figure at the head of the table turned. Not the Commissioner. Much, much worse! Inevitably perhaps: Sir George.
‘There now,’ he said, his face wreathed in avuncular smiles. ‘There now! The two people above all whom I wanted to see! Sandilands, the Harbinger of Doom and Miss Coblenz, the Sower of Discord. The fact they should both be under restraint can hardly have escaped anybody but we will first see what they have to say. Now, come and sit by me, Miss Coblenz, and may I say how well it suits you to have been out in the sun? Sandilands, why don’t you sit next to your charge? And now we only await Lord Rathmore.’
He turned again to Lily and said conversationally, ‘I had a telephone call from your esteemed father yesterday morning. How on earth he got through I can’t imagine but there you are – that’s Americans for you. And didn’t they after all invent the electric telephone? Or have I got that wrong? He asked how you were. I didn’t know how you were! So I said, “Fine!” He then asked where you were. I didn’t know that either so I said you’d gone to spend the weekend with friends. That’s rather a loose description of your recent excursion into the inaccessible interior but I didn’t think the time was ripe for a larger account. I’ll just pause there and ask you the question – “How are you?” ’
‘Starving!’ said Lily with spirit. ‘Haven’t had anything to eat for twenty-four hours and not much to drink.’
‘Help yourself, Lily,’ said Betty, suddenly contrite. ‘There are sandwiches. Not very exotic, I’m afraid. I cut them myself. I didn’t know how many to cut for.’ And a very English-looking plate of hard-boiled egg and cress, cucumber and corned beef, lamb and pickle sandwiches was hurried down the table to Lily.
‘Aw! Wow! It’s not puddings and pies but it shore beats skilly,’ said Lily, helping herself.
‘In a manner of speaking, Sir George,’ said Joe with a helpful smile, ‘you could well say that Lily had spent the weekend in the country with friends. She was never for a moment out of the sight of Iskander or Iskander’s sister and later Grace and myself. Lord Rathmore too, of course, was of the party.’
Joe was momentarily taken aback by his own suppleness. George’s ability to manipulate the truth was evidently catching. A fleeting narrowing of the clever old eyes in satisfaction made Joe want to kick himself. Was he already following in the direction George had decided they would all go? He looked critically at the man Lily had concluded was the chief, though unacknowledged, authority in India.
To recognize the fact that it was Sunday and not, therefore, a working day, he was suavely but casually dressed in a dark blue blazer bearing on its pocket the insignia of an obscure but distinguished and long-defunct Cambridge cricket club, white flannel trousers and a club tie. George Jardine looked as though his Bentley had just dropped him off at Hurlingham to watch a chukka or two with friends. There was no indication in his bearing that he must have set out on his journey immediately after putting down the telephone on speaking to Joe at nine o’clock on Saturday morning. Joe knew just enough about the workings of India to guess that he had been driven to Umballa to get a train – probably a special summoned up at a moment’s notice for official use – and travelled the four hundred miles west to Peshawar. Sir John Deane would have sent a car to pick him up at the station somewhere round about midnight.
After a night’s sleep at the Commissioner’s residence and an unhurried opportunity over breakfast to fill himself in on the situation to date and to decide with Sir John what the official line was going to be, Joe calculated, he would have set off for Gor Khatri. Sir George’s jocular charm did not disguise from Joe the realization that his very presence here at the heart of things testified to the extreme seriousness of their predicament. Joe might be the Harbinger of Doom but George was, to his mind, the Deus ex Machina, the Big Gun wheeled out to level the opposition. His anxiety increased. This spoke of a formidable opposition.
Lily, however, seemed unaffected. ‘That’s right! I was with friends the whole time and if any nosy parker wants to know, that’s what they’ll hear from me!’ she said stoutly.
Edwin Burroughs tapped his finger ends on the table with exasperation but remained silent. Fred wrestled with a smile.
‘Family occasion, you might say,’ Lily went on, enjoying her invention. ‘Iskander took me to stay with his sister, the Malik’s wife, and I was lucky enough to be there for the birth of her child.’
It was Grace’s turn to look thoughtful.
‘Ah, yes! Alexander! The convenor of this jolly expedition, the Afridi Robin Hood!’ said Sir George. And then, turning to the company at large, ‘I always call him Alexander. It’s what Iskander means – did you all know that? Alexander the Great! He rose to the occasion, you know, conquered the civilized world, and the interesting thing to see will be if Iskander can do the same. For various reasons this would seem to be a time of opportunity.’ He smiled benevolently around the table.
On cue but with her mouth full, Lily cut in, ‘We have an opportunity – that is to say the Coblenz Corporation have an opportunity, an opportunity in which we may be so lucky as to involve Iskander.’
The room looked at her with astonishment. All, that is, except Iskander himself who looked thoughtfully down at the table in front of him.
‘It’s obviously no secret,’ she went on, ‘but just so’s everyone’s got it straight – I’ve offered Iskander a position with the Coblenz Corporation. Either in Delhi or in the States, it hasn’t been decided yet. And I should say he’s still considering the offer – it’s still on the table, you might say.’
‘Well,’ said Sir George genially, ‘I may be old but I’m not too old to experience surprise occasionally and there aren’t many people around in this part of the world who can surprise me but, Lily, it would seem you are one of them! Perhaps you can surprise me too, Alexander?’ he said.