CHAPTER EIGHT: HOW TO SWAT A MULLAH

“I have not had that pleasure, Lady Churchill,” I said somewhat warily, for the talk around the clubs was that young Winston was a pushy, pot-hunting little sod who should be avoided at all costs. I remembered Johnny Dawson telling me that the boy had taken three go’s to get into Sandhurst from Harrow (well, it’s not much of school) but had done reasonably well once in uniform, passed out quite near the top of his term and taken a commission in Paget’s Irregulars,67 which ain’t up to the Shiners but was a perfectly decent Light Cavalry Regiment.

“But you must, Colonel Speedicut,” she replied. “Since he was commissioned, my poor, fatherless boy has been in Cuba, observing the fight against the revolutionaries, and is now on his way out to India to re-join his Regiment. I know that he would love to meet you, now that you are such a famous journalist.”

“Hardly that, Lady Churchill,” I said hastily. “My assignment in Africa was of a purely temporary nature - to oblige the Commander-in-Chief – and it’s one that I’m sure will not be repeated.”

“That’s not what I hearrd,” growled Bertie from the other side of the table.

“Your Royal Highness?”

“Blood was telling me the other day that he has especially asked Wolseley for you to be his official Warr Correspondent.”

“Sir Bindon Blood, Sir?” 68

“The verry man.”

“But surely he’s in India, Sir?”

“You arre, as usual, well informed, Speedicut; the conversation was before he embarked.”

“But I thought that all was quiet in India, Sir?”

“In India, yes, but not – so it seems - acrross the North-West Frrontier where the trribes are once again getting rrestless. Blood’s to lead a punitive expedition to suppress them next year.”

“But why would he want to drag along an old buffer like me, Sir?” I squeaked, as the prospect of service on the Indian frontier loomed with all the appeal of a free Tsarist picnic.

“It seems he was imprressed with your rreports from Afrrica and wants the same coverage for his show.”

“But…” I spluttered.

“Anyway, if you haven’t yet heard from the Warr Office, I may be wrong.”

“But if His Royal Highness is correctly informed, Colonel,” chimed in Her Ladyship, “that would mean you could meet Winston in India.”

“He’s a fine young man,” added Bertie, tucking in to the large schnitzel that had been placed in front of him, “… quite a crredit to his delightful Mama,” he added, giving Her Ladyship a lascivious wink.

“But why would your son want to meet me?” I asked her.

“You see, Colonel,” she murmured with a feline purr, as she leaned in closer to me, “he too aspires to be a journalist as a means of enhancing his fortune and his reputation,” or lack of them, I thought, “and he wants to learn at your knee.”

Was that her foot I felt rubbing behind the portion of my anatomy in question? Hmm. Well, if he looked anything like his mother (and shared her attraction to an elderly, albeit fine, pair of cavalry whiskers) then, despite his newly-minted reputation as a bumptious minor twig on the insufferable Marlborough family tree, I might help – particularly if, in so doing, I earned a chalk mark or two from the lady’s royal mount. But not if the price was a trip to the world’s Number One dunghill.

“Of course, I will help young Winston in any way that I can, Lady Churchill. But I doubt, despite what His Royal Highness has just said, that my military skills – even of the purely reportin’ variety - can possibly still be in demand. So our meetin’ will have to be when your son next returns on leave.” She gave me a very odd look at this, then turned to her neighbour.

It was difficult to find out quite what happened next, despite the fact that Wolseley was in the Brotherhood: the GB was either being discreet or simply didn’t know. Anyway, whether Lady Randy intervened with the C-in-C in the way that only she knows how, or Bertie was right, the upshot was that a couple of weeks later a letter arrived from Wolseley’s principal ADC asking me to present myself to the great man at my earliest convenience. Fearing the worst but hoping for the best, I got Atash to drive me to Whitehall.

“Come in, Speedicut!” called Joe through his open oak when, after much saluting and many stairs, I arrived outside his office. “Take a seat. That will be all, Stibbe,” this last to a rather paunchy half-Colonel in the Tins, who’d met me at the head of the staircase. From what he said, it appeared that he was in charge of the C-in-C’s outer office, despite the fact that Joe was at that time Colonel of the Blues. “I wish to speak to Colonel Speedicut alone.” Christ, that didn’t bode well. “I gather, Brother Jasper,” he said once the door had clicked shut, “that you may have been forewarned about the subject of our meeting.”

“Possibly,” I said cautiously, “but not forearmed – not even with an assegai.” Wolseley had the kindness to chuckle at my feeble attempt at a joke.

“Well, where I would like you to go you’re not going to need one of those.” I heaved a premature sigh of relief. “No, you would be better to arm yourself with a Colt or a Mauser.” Damn. So it was India, I thought. Shit.

“Why, Brother Wolseley, are the Irish gettin’ uppity again?” I said in a vain hope that I was wrong. That said, Dublin’s almost as bad as Delhi.

“Not the Irish: the tribes of the Swat Valley.”

“Ah, Swat,” I said trying to sound knowledgeable, although I hadn’t a clue where it was.

“How much do you know about the ‘Forward Policy’?” he continued.

“About as much as the average reader of The Times,” I said in a bid to hide my ignorance on the subject.

“Not much then,” said Joe with a wry smile. “Well, let me enlighten you: ever since the Iron Duke established our control over the Indian sub-continent, successive governments – both here and in Calcutta – have had sleepless nights fretting that the Russians would attempt to take India from us. The received wisdom has always been that they would do this by launching an attack through Afghanistan or, in more recent times, from their newly acquired territories in the Pamirs via the passes through the Himalayas. To deter such a thrust the Forward Policy was developed. This has involved, at various times, physically or politically securing Afghanistan and its contiguous kingdoms and khanates as a buffer zone along the border.”

“That much I do know,” I said, whilst at the same time I decided to see if he would accept any familiarity. “If you remember, Joe,” he didn’t bat an eyelid at the use of his Christian name, “I cut my teeth in the wretched place back in ’42 and then, of course, I was in the Mutiny. But more recently, when I haven’t been involved with you in duffin’ up the fuzzy-wuzzies, my military service has been in our southern African possessions.”69

“Indeed,” he said. “Unfortunately, as of course you know from personal experience, the early iterations of the Forward Policy caused more problems that they solved. More recently – and despite an attempt by the last administration to scrap the strategy altogether - the Forward Policy has involved establishing fortified garrisons on the western side of the passes and, through the occasional use of armed force and the judicious use of gold paid to the local tribal chiefs, keeping the forts safe and their lines of communication to the passes open.

“This has worked reasonably well and ensured that the tribes along the border have expended their surplus energy on fighting each other rather than us. However, last year – and I won’t bother you with the history of the dispute – there was a major uprising in the Swat Valley, the Malakand Pass was blocked, the road to Chitral cut and the garrison there was besieged. It was a direct affront to our rights and treaties in the area and, if it had not been dealt with promptly, would have driven a coach-and-horses through the Forward Policy. Fortunately, following the timely election of Brother Salisbury’s administration and thanks to some brilliant soldiering by Bob Low and Bindon Blood,70 the status quo ante was re-established.” I nodded wisely but said nothing as my guts churned uncomfortably in a way they’d not done for an age.

“What do you know about the Mad Mullah?” Joe then asked rather unexpectedly.

“I thought the bugger was dead,” I said. “Surely he snuffed it the year after he chopped up Brother Charlie?”71

“Not The Mahdi,” he replied, “but a militant Moslem cleric in the Swat Valley.”

“Oh my God, not another one?”

“Yes, I’m afraid it’s in the nature of Islam to produce these fanatics and a damned nuisance they are too. They stir up the locals, preach holy war against ‘the infidels’ and then have to be slapped back into their proper place.”

“I know,” I said, with some considerable feeling.

“This chap’s a bit different, however. Instead of calling on the locals to rise up and push us back across the passes, he sits in his house and works miracles.”

“Really? What kind of miracles?”

“Much the same as the miracle of the loaves and the fishes: when the faithful visit they give him a small offering of food or money and he gives them rice in return. He claims to have nothing but, thanks to ‘the intercession of Allah’, to have fed thousands. He also claims to be invisible at night and invites people to look in his room after dark where, of course, they see nothing. None of these absurd claims would be of any consequence were it not for the fact that, in swallowing the little lies, the simpletons who populate the Swat Valley now believe his big lie.”

“What’s that?”

“He says that God has called upon him to destroy the infidel, but that he needs no help to do so. At a given moment, so he says, the heavens will open and a Celestial Army will descend and sweep us off the face of the earth. Needless to say this has done exactly what it was designed to do.”

“Which is?”

“To ensure that the idiots sign up, lest they miss out on the fun: they’ve been taking the Mad Mullah’s shilling in their thousands. Oh, and once he’s reluctantly agreed to allow them to serve for God and the Prophet, he says they will be immune to our weapons.”

“My God, that’s exactly what the Umlimo – the Africans’ answer to the Mad Mullah - said.” Joe ignored this, although he must have read my African reports and, probably, had had a hand in saving Burnham, Armstrong and (I suppose) me from a charge of murder.

“And,” he went on, “as proof he shows them a bruise which he says is the sole effect of being hit by a twelve-pounder shrapnel shell!”

“What excuse does he use when the poor saps are felled by our boys?”

“That they obviously weren’t true believers,” he said with a laugh.

“There’s one born every minute,” I said, “and it seems not just on the African continent.”

“Maddeningly,” Wolseley went on, “these obvious holes in the Mad Mullah’s rhetoric seem to make the tribesmen all the keener to get to grips with us.”

“So what are we doin’ about it?”

“Blood’s gone back out to India to assemble what we’re calling the Malakand Field Force. It will comprise three Brigades, although hopefully we won’t have to deploy it. But if the Swat Valley does rise up again and attempts to do what they failed to achieve last year, we’ll be ready for them.”

“So where do I come in to all this? I’m hardly in the first flush any longer, I’ve got a shockin’ bad back and, although I’m by no means ready to fade away, wild horses wouldn’t induce me to return to India.”

“Perhaps not wild horses, Brother Speedicut, but would proper recognition of your long service not be enough to change your mind?”

“That horse won’t run, Joe. It’s been too often promised in the past and then knobbled before it ever got to the flag.”

“I see. Well, that’s a pity because Blood is really keen to have you on his Staff, the risks are minimal and a certain lady wants you to coach her son in the arts of Fleet Street.” Ah, ha, I thought, so she had screwed Wolseley.

“What’s young Winston got to do with it? He’ll be with his Regiment in Bangalore playin’ polo, two thousand miles from the Swat Valley.”

“Actually he won’t. It seems that Blood made Lady Churchill a promise to take him on the expedition, should it be mobilised, and the boy has on the strength of that – and with his mother’s help – obtained contracts with The Pioneer and The Daily Telegraph to be their ‘correspondent in the field’. Blood didn’t know anything about that when he agreed to take on Master Winston but he says that he’s honour bound to keep his promise to Lady Churchill.”

Good God, I thought, who hadn’t the bloody woman slept with to advance her eldest offspring’s prospects?72

“But I still don’t see why you need me on the expedition.”

“Blood really admires the way that you reported on the Matabele affair and he now badly needs the best in the business to offset anything that young Churchill may see fit to put out in the press. And he thinks that ‘the best’ - is you.”

“Look, I’m damned flattered and all that, Joe,” I said. “Blood’s one of our better Generals and I’d like to help him if I could. But I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve already explained. Besides which,” I said inventing wildly, “I’ve promised m’wife that I’d make an extended visit to St Petersburg this Christmas to see our new grandchildren and to attend their christenin’ in the New Year.” He looked unimpressed. “It’s practically an Imperial Command…” He still looked unimpressed. “… as the Dowager Empress has agreed to stand as one of their godmothers.”

That last lie seemed to do the trick. Joe looked disappointed but obviously decided that he was pushing at a locked door.

“I understand. Blood won’t be happy, but I’ll tell him that he can’t compete with Russian royalty. Good day to you, Brother Jasper.” I was half way out of the door when he added: “Don’t think for one minute, however, that I’m taking you off the Active List.” I got back to Stratton Street to find Searcy waiting for me.

“Am I to tell Fahran to start packing for Swat, Colonel?” he asked, as I settled down behind my desk with an Havana and a pre-luncheon glass of the Emperor’s finest.

“Not this time, Searcy. And by the way, how did you know what Lord Wolseley was goin’ to propose?”

“The Nehemiah, Colonel…”

“Say no more. And I suppose you already know what excuse I gave to the Commander-in-Chief so as not to join Blood’s bloody Field Force?”

“Actually, I don’t – yet – Colonel, but am I right in guessing that you played the Russian card?”

“You would be – and I added in the Dowager Empress for good measure.”

“In the role of godmother, Colonel?” I was too shocked to answer that. “The letter arrived shortly after you left.”

“What letter?”

“The one from Princess Dorothea informing you and Her Ladyship that the Dowager Empress had agreed to stand as one of the godparents.”

“But I didn’t even know she’d been asked.”

“Ah, as to that…” he left the rest of the sentence hanging.

“Well, at least I was tellin’ the Field Marshal the truth, albeit it without knowin’ it m’self. That’s a relief on both counts.”

“Speaking of counting, Colonel, I wouldn’t count any chickens at this stage.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

“I mean, Colonel, that Lady Churchill will be very disappointed – and when she’s disappointed she can become very persuasive.”

“Not on this subject, Searcy.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure, Colonel, at least not yet. By the way, I hope you haven’t forgotten that you promised to accompany Her Ladyship to Marlborough House this afternoon for tea with Her Royal Highness?”

“Damn, can’t you get me out of it?”

“After this morning’s news, I’m afraid not, Colonel.”

“Why not?”

“Because I understand that Her Royal Highness was closely involved in getting her sister the Dowager Empress to agree to…”

“Stop,” I said wearily. “Tell Fahran to lay out my new frock coat.”

Later that day we were driving around to Marlborough House when I could have sworn that I saw one of Bertie’s supposedly anonymous carriages pulling up at the front of La Churchill’s house and, indeed, he wasn’t at tea with his deaf, lame but still beautiful wife.

But enough of all that. The important thing was that, following my interview with Wolseley, there were no further approaches from him on the subject of my being ‘Our Man in the Swat Valley’. Nor, for that matter, did the natives of Swat become any more restless than usual – unlike my dear wife who was in a flurry of packing and planning for the christening.

…

As planned, we returned in early April 1897 from St Petersburg where the twin blobs were damned nearly drowned in holy water: the Orthodox church requires total immersion not once but three times! To make the event even more fraught, the presence of the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna ensured that the joint christening assumed almost all the aspects of an Imperial State occasion. The one saving grace was that The Right Reverend Charles-Henry FitzCharles, the unbelievably inept Bishop of Matabeleland who had almost drowned the blobs’ mother at her christening,73 could not officiate as, for many years, he’s been ministering to assorted Cherubim and Seraphim. That’s assuming, of course, that St Peter hadn’t packed him off to the other place to keep the old fool out of harm’s way.

Anyway, safely back in Stratton Street we found a stack of invitations awaiting us, including one to the Duchess of Devonshire’s Diamond Jubilee Costume Ball. This, so Charlotte-Georgina opined, was an affair which promised to be the highlight of the Season. To my considerable relief there was a total absence of communications from the War Office.

Now, as my readers will know, most of my unwilling royal service had been either with Bertie or his late and largely unlamented eldest boy. In the absence of any recent Royal Commands to ‘Attend upon Our Person’ I had quite reasonably assumed that my time as a courtier had come to an end. It was, therefore, with some considerable surprise that I received a fresh summons to kiss the royal arse. I’d just finished a leisurely breakfast, a week or two after we’d got back, and was having a nap in my study when Searcy sidled in.

“A communication from the Palace has just been hand delivered, Colonel,” he said handing me a largish, cream coloured envelope on a salver. I slit it open and read.

Buckingham Palace

Sir

I am Commanded by Her Majesty The Queen to inform you that it is Her wish that you are temporarily attached to Her Household as an Extra Equerry for the Celebrations and Commemorations of Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee.

Please make yourself available here for a briefing at noon on Wednesday next.

I have the Honour to be, Sir,

Arthur Bigge

Private Secretary to Her Majesty The Queen

“Do you know what this says, Searcy?” I asked in the full expectation that he did.

“As a matter of fact I do, Colonel.”

“So do you also know how the hell I’m goin’ to get out of it? And what the dickens is a ‘jubilee’ anyway?”

“The answer to the first, Colonel, is ‘no’. As to the second, scholars dispute whether the word is of Latin, Greek or a Hebrew origin - but all are agreed, I believe, that it means a ‘joyous celebration’.”

“Not for me it bloody well won’t be!” Searcy ignored my outburst and went on with his lecture.

“It was first used in the current context when Her Majesty celebrated fifty years on the throne. You surely recall the Golden Jubilee, Colonel?”

“As a matter of fact I don’t. What was I doin’ in ’87?” Searcy thought for a moment.

“I seem to recall, Colonel, that you did actually take part in the Golden Jubilee Review…”

“Did I? Well, if you’re sure. I can’t have fallen off or I would have remembered.”74

“Indeed, Colonel.”

“So you reckon there’s no way of slidin’ out of what promises to be a crashin’ bore?”

“I’m afraid not, Colonel. But look on the bright side. You’ll have a ringside seat for all the big events as will Her Ladyship, which will make her very happy.”

“Hmm. It’s sounds like a high price to pay for peace on the home front.”

“It could even be enjoyable, Colonel,” Searcy went on. “I understand that Major St Albion received a similar letter yesterday.”75

“Did he, by Jove? Well, that puts a better complexion on the matter.”

“And the Jubilee only lasts for three months.”

“That’s twelve weeks out of what small span remains to me, Searcy, durin’ which I’ll be obliged to dance attendance on a bad tempered and probably incontinent old lady who thinks that she rules the world, a position which has turned her from a reasonably handsome filly into a tubby old biddy with the look of someone sufferin’ from piles and with no sense of humour as a result. It was bad enough bein’ called upon from time-to-time to be Bertie’s Arse-Wiper-in-Waitin’ - and that was only marginally better than bein’ Governor-in-Chief to his delinquent son - but this duty will make lookin’ after her Heirs Apparent and Presumptive seem like a stroll in the Park.”

“I think you exaggerate, Colonel.”

“Do you? Well, I wouldn’t put good money on it.”