‘Just what,’ he said, hardly able to pick his words, ‘the hell do you think you’re doing?’ He crooked an imperious police forefinger at her and indicated that she should withdraw from the crowd and present herself.
‘Well, my!’ The voice could not have been more cheerful and unconcerned and could not have been more incongruously American. ‘I guess you must be my policeman, Commandant Sandilands!’ she said, easing her horse out of the mêlée. ‘Do you know – they tried to put me in a – what did they call it? – a staff car! I wasn’t going to do that. I haven’t come all the way from Chicago to drive about in a Delage! Gee! This is just great! This is the proper way to travel in this country!’ She beamed round her at the line of admiring British troopers.
‘Young lady did well!’ said the troop sergeant. ‘Could have been doing it all her life.’ And there was a murmuring of adoring agreement from the troop.
‘I’m sorry, sir!’ said Monty Melville. He turned a desperate face towards Joe and hissed, ‘I know what the orders were and I did my best but you might as well explain King’s regs to a langur monkey as get any sense into this blasted girl!’ He shot a sweating and indignant glance at Lily. ‘Especially as she seems to have got all my chaps on her side.’
‘I see,’ said Joe, turning a frosty glare on Lily, ‘that I’m going to have to explain the facts of life – the facts of frontier life, that is – and, not to put too fine a point on it, you can count yourself lucky you’re not put on the next “staff car” and sent back to Peshawar! If I had my way that’s just what would happen. I’m getting too old to play hide and seek with little girls.’
‘Aw!’ said Lily. ‘Don’t be like that! This is what I came for.’ She swept a complicitous glance around the troop and added, ‘Sir George warned me about him. But they say his bark’s worse than his bite! Is that right, Commandant?’
‘Can I explain that this is a dangerous part of the world? You’re not on a dude ranch here. You could get into serious trouble. I wouldn’t mind that myself but some good men might find themselves put into danger pulling you out of it. I’m responsible for your safety – problem enough if you do what you’re told, impossible if you don’t. Is that clear, I wonder?’
Lily’s reaction to this was to favour him with a cheeky salute copied, Joe supposed, from the convention of West Point.
Chapter Four
Dr Grace Holbrook was accustomed to come and go on the frontier protected only by her reputation and, accordingly, when she discovered that she was to form part of a well-armed and elaborately escorted convoy from Peshawar to the fort, she was not amused. She complained to her friend the High Commissioner. ‘It’s taken me nearly twenty years,’ she said, ‘to earn the trust of these people and I do so with difficulty all the time. It’s going to do me nothing but harm to appear with a military convoy’
Sir John Deane did his best to smooth her ruffled plumes. ‘Nobody,’ he said, ‘is going to suspect you of all people of martial intent, Grace!’ He smiled at the short, middle-aged figure leaning angrily over his desk. In her divided skirt, white shirt and brown silk tie held in place with a gold pin, Grace Holbrook presented an image of perfect decorum. ‘They know you too well; they welcome you too warmly. Of course, it’s up to you to wait until the present convoy has returned but I didn’t imagine that would suit you either since it would involve holding up the Afghani end of this operation at the fort.’
‘It certainly wouldn’t suit me!’ said Grace indignantly. ‘I stick meticulously to any arrangements I may have made and I have arranged to be in Kabul in ten days’ time. You might have warned me, John, that there was going to be some sort of awful jamboree going on at the fort! Not my sort of thing as well you know!’
‘Well, you know how it is out here… nobody is told anything until the last second and that is an arrangement I would be the first to defend. Imagine the consequences of this guest list becoming general knowledge before the event! Blood runs cold when I think of it! An heiress, a trading empire nabob, top civil servant and RAF top brass! And all gathered together in Peshawar – the kidnapping capital of the western frontier! But I’ll tell you something, Grace – the only one of the party whose safety I really give a fig for is the one who’s trying to shrug aside the protective measures on offer.’
Never an easy subject for flattery, Grace opened her mouth to give a sharp retort and he hurried on, ‘Anyway, your professional services may well be called on during the journey.’ Pleased that he had awakened her curiosity he went on, ‘It’s Betty Lindsay, James’s wife. Yes, I hadn’t told you that either! She is to be of the party. I know it’s against all the rules but just this once I’m bending them! Fact is, Grace, she’s in a delicate condition, er… um… ’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, John!’ Grace interrupted. ‘Did you imagine I didn’t know she was pregnant? I’ve been treating her for morning sickness for the past month! There’s nothing delicate about Betty! She’s a strong girl and doesn’t need me or anyone else to sit beside her with the smelling salts but, oh, all right… ’ Grace gave him a surprisingly warm smile. ‘I’ll play chaperone. I’ll go along on condition that I sit next to Betty and as far as possible from that little Miss Coblenz whose acquaintance I was unlucky enough to make at your soirée yesterday.’
Arriving at the fort, Grace watched in amusement blended with not a little satisfaction as a striking but grim-faced man rode determinedly down the column and hauled Miss Coblenz out of the troop. She threw back her motoring veil the better to watch the scene unfold. Good! Whoever this was, he seemed to be giving her a jolly good and well-deserved wigging. The American girl had delayed the whole column forming up outside Government House back in Peshawar for fifteen minutes while she objected, argued and cajoled. At last she had got what she wanted which, perversely, appeared to be to ride twelve miles in the heat at the back of the column breathing exhaust fumes and dust and surrounded by twenty clattering and sweating Lancers.
‘Did you see that, Betty?’ Grace exclaimed excitedly. ‘It looks as though she’s met her match at last! I wonder who that authoritative young man is? What a face! I think he’s going to shake her!’
‘Oh, no!’ Betty smiled. ‘That’s Joe! Joe Sandilands. He’s the policeman I was telling you about. He may have the face of a killer – which is what I suppose he once was – but he’d never lay hands on a woman. There, you see, short and sharp and now she knows who’s in charge!’
They watched as Joe reinserted Lily into the centre of the troop and began to trot back up the column. When he drew level with their car he stopped. He bowed to Grace, selected a white rose from his epaulette and handed it to her. ‘Dr Holbrook, welcome to Gor Khatri.’ Handing a red rose to Betty, his face alight with affection, ‘Lovely Betty! How good to see you again!’ And he rode on ahead of them to the gates.
Grace inhaled the strong fragrance of her rose with pleasure, intrigued by their new escort. She could admire a man who was capable of military firmness one moment and melting charm the next. A considerable man, was her fleeting first impression, a manly man, if that wasn’t too old-fashioned an expression. His grey eyes were intelligent and humorous and his face must at some point in the past have been handsome. She wondered how the wreckage had occurred. Her professional eye diagnosed bad surgery on the battlefield.
Pity he hadn’t fallen into her hands – she would have made a better job of it. Grace had acquired a reputation for restorative surgery over the years. The tribesmen were all too apt to slice each other up in their conflicts and would unhesitatingly come into Peshawar, often clutching the lopped-off ear or fingers, and ask her to make all good again. She had stifled her anger and disgust the first time a man of the Mahsud tribe had brought his wife to her. The husband had sliced off his wife’s nose in a jealous rage and later regretted it. What could the good doctor do about it? Grace was proud of the technique she had evolved of cutting a Y-shaped flap of skin from the forehead and training it down to graft over the damaged area. She had lost count of the number of women she had treated. Behind their veils the women of the hills were as tough as their men, athletic and strong and well able to defend a fort or village if necessary, but some fell victim to gynaecological problems, cholera, typhus, stray bullets and mutilation at the hands of their husbands. And, since no male doctor would have been allowed to treat or even look at a woman, Grace was the only resort.