The Road to Kandahar

Simon Fonthill guided his horse carefully through the detritus of an army in the field. For half a mile back from the banks of the Tugela River, the tents sprawled in a dishevelled array. Originally they had been pitched in impeccable rows; now their orderliness was eroded by limbers strewn across the lines, camp fires which smoked between the tents and a forest of damp bedding that hung from clotheslines and steamed in the early-morning sunlight.

The smells which met Simon’s nostrils melded together in a pot-pourri of nostalgia and disgust and he wrinkled his nose. The damp washing - moist, warm and domestic - brought back the safety of Martha’s wash-house, at the back of his parents’ home on the Welsh borders: a place of refuge and welcome, away from his mother’s strictures and his father’s gentle but reproving eye. The other odours were army: feet, sweat and cheap tobacco. All around him sat, stood and sprawled soldiers in varying states of undress: some wearing only long-john combinations, others with braces dangling from regulation blue trousers, bare-chested in the morning heat yet still retaining the cool night’s woollen comforters on their heads. This was an army relaxing; an army pleased with itself, having done a job well. A victorious army.

Instinctively, Simon’s eyes searched in the middle distance for the pickets on the far edge of the lines. There were none, and then he remembered that the Zulus had gone, defeated. There was no danger now.

He trotted on and glimpsed a band boy, no more than twelve years old, buffing his bugle as he smoked an incongruously long clay pipe. The lad knelt, as if in supplication to his glistening instrument, and Simon’s mind switched back to the last bugler boy he had seen, held aloft by a Zulu, skewered like a piece of pork on the warrior’s assegai. Isandlwana was only six months ago. The difference was all around him but still he shivered.

As usual when this black dog came to sit on his shoulder, Simon looked round for the reassurance of Private Jenkins 352, late of His Majesty’s 24th Regiment of Foot. Jenkins rode behind his officer, his feet balancing on the very edge of his stirrups, his knees bent so that he sat high, like a jockey - and with a jockey’s confidence. Jenkins’s head swivelled constantly as he, too, took in the scene. He mouthed to Simon: ‘Bloody army!’

Nodding, Simon repeated to himself: ‘Bloody army. Bloody army indeed!’ Although he had resigned his commission - and bought Jenkins out of the army - shortly after Rorke’s Drift, their subsequent work as civilian scouts for the re-invading column in the south still linked them, however intangibly, to the military. It was not a position which suited either of them.

He hailed a private of the Buffs, one of the few soldiers in scarlet uniform. ‘Where’s the Commander-in-Chief’s headquarters?’

The soldier gave both horsemen a keen glance. There was a tone of command to the question that sat ill with the appearance of the questioner. No air of military smartness distinguished Fonthill. He slumped in the saddle, his shoulders slightly hunched, his legs thrusting the stirrups forwards and upwards. He wore the loose flannel shirt, cotton corduroy breeches, dirty, scuffed riding boots and slouch hat of a Boer hunter but, unlike most Afrikaners, he was clean-shaven and his face was open, with wide-set brown eyes. He was also carrying at his belt the new .38 calibre Webley-Pryse officer’s revolver, and an army-issue Martini-Henry cavalry carbine protruded from the saddle holster by his knee. Fonthill was only in his middle twenties, but he sat his horse gingerly, almost with the air of a man expecting to be tossed at any minute, in great contrast to the ease of his companion. This was not the only contrast between them. Jenkins was bare-headed, obviously much shorter, and his very broad shoulders, dark eyes, spiky black hair and wide moustache gave him the air of a mounted stevedore. They were a strange couple to be seeking the Commander-in-Chief.

The soldier delayed his reply long enough to weigh the odds, then decided that it would be wise to give them the benefit of the doubt. Lord Chelmsford’s Zululand army was full of traps for the unwary.

‘Straight ahead for about a quarter of a mile along this track. Then you’ll see the General’s standard on your left.’

Simon raised a finger to his hat brim and urged his horse forward. Jenkins drew alongside.

‘I don’t much like being back in the army,’ he said. ‘Do I have to start calling you sir again?’

‘We’re not back in the army, so don’t talk rot.’

Jenkins sucked in his moustache. ‘It’s all right for you. You’re supposed to be a gentleman. But ridin’ back ’ere, along the lines, like, I feel as though they could put me back on fatigues as soon as look at me. I feel . . .’ he searched in his narrow vocabulary, ‘vulnerable is the word, see.’ In the manner of the valley Welsh, Jenkins’s voice rose mellifluously at the end of each sentence, as though he was asking a question.

Simon smiled to himself. ‘You’ve never been vulnerable in your whole life, 352.’ He looked down. ‘For God’s sake, loosen those stirrups. You look as though you’re riding in the four fifteen at Chepstow. And fall back behind. There’s not room for two of us.’

Jenkins lapsed into a half-heard grumble, now familiar to Simon. ‘You’re a fine one to talk,’ he muttered, ‘with your toes stickin’ up like candles in church. Uh.’ But he reached down to lengthen his stirrups and dropped back behind Simon.

It was as well that he did so, for the nearer they rode to the centre of the camp, the more congested the track became. The Tugela was low at midsummer, but even so, the humidity hung heavily around them and made their shirts stick to their backs like plaster. Yet the moisture that seemed so prevalent did not break into rain, and the dust from the stream of carts, riders and slouching soldiers added to the discomfort, making teeth gritty and giving a harsh edge to their tongues.

‘Why d’you want me with you anyway?’ called Jenkins. ‘I could ’ave been doin’ something really useful back at the camp, like the washin’, see.’

Simon turned in his saddle. ‘Because, as I told you before ...’ he began, but paused as Jenkins’s hard gaze over his shoulder made him turn back.

Coming towards them, at a gentle canter, rode a major of Hussars. He was a gorgeous sight amongst the dust and dishevelment all around. The sunlight danced off the buttons and epaulettes which decorated the ridiculous half-jacket, half-cape which he wore on his left shoulder, and he rode with a back as straight as a colour standard, his buttocks - so tightly rounded that it looked as though his breeches had been painted on - rising and falling to the rhythm of the horse’s gait. One white-gloved hand lightly held the reins while the other pointed directly to the ground, in the approved parade-ground fashion.

As he saw Simon he did not slacken his pace but lifted his disengaged hand and waved him aside. Instinctively, Simon tugged momentarily at the reins to pull his horse aside, off the track. As he did so, he looked into the pale blue eyes of the Hussars officer. In an instant a series of images flew across his mind: the sardonic features of Lieutenant Colonel Covington at his trial, his lip curled, his eyebrows raised in mock astonishment; the jowls of Colonel Pulleine as he looked up from his campaign table at Isandlwana and said, ‘Johnny Zulu doesn’t frighten me . . . I’ve got twelve hundred men of the regiment here; and the Zulus breaking the line, rushing in, hacking and stabbing. He pulled his horse’s head round again, stopped and waited, leaving only a small space for the Hussar to pass, between him and a parked wagon.

The major stared with his china-blue eyes, chin strap cutting a furrow into his jaw. ‘Out of the way.’

Slowly, Simon edged his horse forward. As he did so, he felt the head of Jenkins’s mount nuzzle the back of his left thigh. His man, as ever, was right behind him. The weight of the two horses forced the Hussar to edge off the track, tangling his low-slung sabre scabbard between the spokes of the wagon wheel. ‘What the hell ...’ he began.

Simon waited until he was level with the major. Then, leaning forward so that his face was only inches from that of the other man, he said quietly, ‘Fuck off.’

‘What? What!’ The Hussar’s face had turned vermilion, a combination, perhaps, of heat, too much mess port and extreme anger. ‘How dare you,’ he shouted, attempting to wrest the head of his horse round. But the solidity of the other two mounts forced him to give way. Simon edged by and gave a perfunctory flip of his hat brim. Jenkins followed, and bestowed on the cavalryman one of his most beatific smiles, the kind of grin that made his huge moustache bend upwards so that it almost touched his ears. ‘Mornin’, Major,’ he said. ‘Nice day.’

The Major steadied his mount, looked after them and made to follow, then thought better of it. ‘Bloody Boers,’ he shouted, and then, head up even more belligerently than before, if that was possible, rode on.

When the track widened, Jenkins drew abreast of Simon and for a while they rode in companionable silence before the Welshman spoke, in a light, conversational style. ‘Yes, well then. We’re in deep trouble again, isn’t it? That’ll be two court martials for you now in six months an’ one for me, though I didn’t even say a bleedin’ word, look you.’

‘Rubbish. I keep telling you, we’re no longer in the army.’

‘Just as well, if you ask me. I’m not much good at this bein’ shot at dawn business. Bit too early, see.’

‘Shut up.’

‘Very good, sir.’

A few minutes later they dismounted at a tent before which stood a crudely painted wooden sign announcing ‘Colonel George Lamb, CB, Chief of Staff ’. The sentry enquired their business and disappeared into the tent, but not before he had looked the pair up and down with clear disapproval. Simon turned to Jenkins. ‘Look, I’ve no idea what Colonel Lamb wants of me, but whatever it is, it could include you. So I think it best for you to wait here. Just in case we need you.’

‘Very good, bach sir.’

The sentry’s manner had changed when he returned. ‘Mr Fonthill, sir, the Colonel will see you right away.’

The interior of the small bell tent was dominated by a long trestle table, its top seriously bowed in the middle from the weight of the papers piled on it. Behind this barrier sat a small, tanned man smoking a cheroot. He was in shirt-sleeves, a foulard silk scarf loosely knotted at his throat, and his scarlet jacket hung on the chair back. As Simon entered he threw down his pen and advanced to meet him, hand outstretched.

‘Damned glad to see you, Fonthill. Damned glad. Take a pew.’ At five foot nine, Simon was no giant. But he seemed to tower over the Colonel, who pumped his hand as though trying to draw water. ‘Sit down, do.’

Simon removed a ribbon-tied cardboard file from a camp stool and sat facing the Colonel, whose nut-brown face beamed at him from above the piled papers.

‘Sorry about all this,’ he said, waving his cheroot deprecatingly at the mound. ‘Boney - or whoever it was - was wrong. An army doesn’t march on its stomach. These days it staggers about on arse paper like this.’ He regarded Simon through the blue smoke, a half-smile on his face. ‘Look like a bloody Boer. Gone a bit native, eh?’

Simon shifted uneasily. ‘Well, sir ...’

Lamb held up his hand. ‘No. No. Necessary for the job, I know.’ He gestured to the scarf at his neck. ‘Envy you. Glad to get out of a tunic whenever I can. General’s away so I can today.’

Simon smiled at the familiar staccato sentences. Yet it was not like Lamb to beat about the bush. The summons to see the Chief of Staff had been urgent, and there was an air of unease about the little man’s jocularity. Simon wondered what was afoot. But, hell, he had had enough of the army! It was not his place to make it easy for the Colonel. So he sat on the camp stool and waited.

‘Cheroot?’

‘No thank you, sir.’

‘Right. Yes. Well. Good. Good.’ Lamb picked up a piece of paper from the right side of his desk and put it to the left, without looking at it. ‘Must be wonderin’ what this is all about. Right? Right?’

Simon gently inclined his head. ‘Sir.’

‘Jolly good. Yes, well then. Right.’ Colonel Lamb shifted in his chair and blew a smoke ring. ‘Right. Three things. First, a word of congratulations. You and your man . . . what’s his name?’

‘Jenkins, sir, 352.’

‘Three five two?’

‘That’s his last three numbers, sir. The 24th is a Welsh regiment, as you know, and there were six Jenkinses in his holding company at Brecon, four of them with the same initials. The only way to distinguish between ’em was to use their last three numbers.’

‘Ah, I see. Well, anyway. You and he have done a first-class job over the last four months. Absolutely first class. Stopped us gettin’ caught with our breeches down again, like at Isandlwana.’ The Colonel pulled on his cheroot and waved it in the air. ‘Good scoutin’, too. Yes. First class. First class.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Simon waited. He had not been summoned to the Chief of Staff to be patted on the head. There must be something else. But he was damned if he was going to help Lamb to get to it.

‘Yes,’ the Colonel repeated. ‘The General was most pleased. Particularly after ...’ his voice faltered for a moment, ‘after that court martial nonsense.’

Simon’s gaze remained expressionless. ‘It wasn’t nonsense, sir. I could have gone to a firing squad.’

‘What, eh? Well, yes, I suppose so. Miserable business. But you were acquitted, so everything turned out right in the end. Eh? What? Good.’

The Colonel smiled, almost in supplication, and Simon was forced to smile back. ‘Quite, sir. What do you want of me now, then?’

‘Right.’ Lamb delved among the papers on his desk. ‘Second thing. Got something for you. And for 376 or whatever his damned number is.’ He handed two envelopes across the table and Simon opened the one addressed to him. Inside was a money draft for thirty-five guineas.

‘I don’t understand, sir.’

Lamb cleared his throat gruffly. ‘It’s your pay. And the other’s for, whasisname, 762.’

‘Three five two. But we have been paid for our scouting work.’

The little man shifted uneasily in his seat. ‘Yes, but that’s the difference between scouting pay and what’s due to you as a soldier. Same for your man.’

Simon shook his head. ‘But we are not soldiers any more. I resigned my commission four months ago and I bought Jenkins out of the army at the same time.’

‘Ah yes. Well.’ Now the Colonel looked openly embarrassed at last. ‘Truth is, Fonthill ...’ he dug back into the confusion on his table and produced another two envelopes, ‘I’ve been sitting on these: your resignation and your request to get your man out.’ He shrugged his shoulders disarmingly. ‘I just didn’t forward them on to the Horse Guards so, you see, you’re still in the army. Thought I’d better tell you now and give you your back pay, so to speak.’ He smiled. ‘Chance to buy a decent shirt, at least, don’t you think?’

Simon stared into the blue eyes facing him. ‘Do you mean to tell me, sir,’ he said slowly, ‘that I’ve been a second lieutenant in the 24th these last four months - all the time I’ve been scouting for John Dunn?’

The older man held his gaze and slowly nodded.

‘But you had no right to delay my resignation. No right at all.’

‘No, Fonthill. I didn’t delay it. I stopped it.’ This time Lamb spoke slowly and firmly.

Simon stood up. ‘Colonel Lamb. You cannot stop me from resigning from the army. The terms of my commission allow me to do so after the first three years of service. And as for Jenkins, I checked. He had served five years and I can buy him out. In fact, I have paid to do so.’

‘Your cheque is in your man’s envelope. It has not been cashed.’

Simon swung on his heel. ‘Then I’ll have no more of this.’ He spoke over his shoulder. ‘I shall see Lord Chelmsford.’

‘Come back.’ The words came like a whiplash. Despite his anger, Simon paused at the tent flap and looked back at the Colonel. The little man remained seated but pointed at the vacant chair. ‘Sit down, Fonthill. We have not finished yet.’

Slowly, Simon returned to the chair.

‘Good. Now listen to me.’ Lamb stood up and perched one buttock on the crowded table in front of Simon. All embarrassment was now gone. ‘I want you to withdraw that resignation and, if you wish, your request to buy out three nine seven, or whatever his number is!’

The Colonel lifted his hand as Simon began to interrupt. ‘No. Hear me out.’ His voice took on a warmer tone as he leaned forward. ‘I can well understand your disenchantment with the army, my boy. It must have been, well, frightening to say the least to have been court-martialled for cowardice. All that bloody fool Covington’s doing. But you were cleared and you must remember, Fonthill, that that bloody fool is also a most gallant soldier and a splendid CO of his battalion. He thought he was doing his duty.

‘Now.’ He walked round the table and selected and lit another cheroot. ‘You have also shown that you have become a first-class soldier over this last strange year, in rather unusual circumstances. Not only in the work you have done as - forgive me - a so-called civilian scout during our advance into Zululand, but also in the intelligence-gathering which you carried out for me in the months leading up to that dreadful business at Isandlwana.’ He blew a spiral of blue smoke into the air. ‘Same goes for your man Jones, too.’

‘Jenkins, sir. Jenkins.’

‘Ah yes. Quite so. Jenkins, yes. Three five two, isn’t he?’

‘Oh well done, sir.’

‘That will do, Fonthill. Don’t be impertinent.’

‘Sir.’

‘Look here. I believe you have a future in the army. I know very well that your father was a distinguished soldier - got a Victoria Cross in the Mutiny, didn’t he?’

Simon nodded.

‘Quite so. The line is there. The tradition is there. This court martial business will soon be forgotten. You owe it to your family and to yourself to continue. Besides which,’ the Colonel’s face relaxed once more into a smile, ‘and this is the third thing. I have a job for you. It is very important work and there are few I would entrust it to. But I am sure, in view of your experience here, that you would do it well.’

Simon stood up once more. ‘I rather thought that there might be something like that behind this, sir. I am very grateful to you, I really am. I appreciate all you say and all that you have done for me. But I do not wish to continue serving in the British Army. I insist on resigning.’

The Colonel was silent for a moment. Thoughtfully, he removed a fragment of tobacco from his tongue. ‘What, then, will you do?’ he asked quietly.

‘Don’t really know, sir. Jenkins wishes to stay with me as my servant, and I am lucky enough to have a few pennies of private income. I thought perhaps we might try our luck in India. Tea, perhaps, something up in the hills.’

‘Capital. Absolutely capital!’ The Colonel, too, was now on his feet, once again displaying the enthusiasm of a small boy. ‘This work I have for you - and at this stage it is absolutely conf idential - is in India and, dammit, beyond. You must do it.’

Simon smiled, as much at the enthusiasm as the offer. ‘Can I do this as a civilian?’

‘Good lord, man. Of course not. This is vital work. Can’t trust it to a feller ...’ he sought for words of sufficient condemnation, ‘in a tweed jacket and flannels.’

‘Then I am sorry, sir, but the answer must be no. I do not wish to remain in the army.’

The Colonel blew out his cheeks in resignation, sat down again and gestured for Simon to do the same. ‘Very well then, young man. I must play my last card.’ He leaned back in his chair and blew smoke towards the top of the tent pole. ‘You will remember - yes, of course you will remember - what I understand was the turning point of your court martial?’

‘I am not sure that I know what you’re driving at, sir.’

‘Well,’ the Colonel’s eyes were now half closed in contemplation of the conical top of the tent, ‘I was not there, of course, but I am told that what swung the court round in your favour was the last-minute intervention of a witness who confirmed your story about your capture by King Cetswayo and your escape from his camp. Eh? What?’

Simon felt his heart lurch. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said slowly. ‘John Dunn’s daughter, Nandi, was able to prove that I had not been telling a pack of lies, as Lieutenant Colonel Covington had implied.’

‘Quite so.’ Lamb’s eyes were now distinctly twinkling. ‘Quite so. But the court had already reached its verdict, I understand, and almost certainly would not have allowed a girl - and a half-caste Zulu at that - to give evidence at such a late stage if it had not been presented with a letter from me asking them to hear her.’

The Colonel’s chair came crashing back and he leaned across the paperwork in mock puzzlement. ‘And do you know, Fonthill, I’m damned if I remember ever writing such a letter!’

The crack of a whip outside and the rumble of wagon wheels broke the silence. Simon could think of nothing to say. ‘Really, sir,’ he croaked.

‘Must have been a damned forgery. Eh? What?’ The blue eyes now positively danced in that seamed brown face. ‘And done, of course, by that remarkable young lady who telegraphed to me in the Cape from Durban: Miss Alice Griffith, of the Morning Post. Damned good friend of yours, Fonthill, I’d say. And smart too, don’t you think?’

Simon cleared his throat. ‘I am sorry, sir,’ he said woodenly. ‘I knew nothing of that. What is important is that I was not guilty of the charge brought against me. You must believe that.’

The Colonel’s face hardened and he rose to his feet again and walked round the table. He put his hand on Simon’s shoulder and looked sternly into his face. ‘I do believe it. I know that you are not a coward. The letter said only what I would have written had there been time for me to do so before the court rose - which there was not, of course, hence the forgery. But you have one thing to learn about me, Fonthill.’ He lowered his face towards Simon’s in emphasis. ‘I am absolutely ruthless where the interests of my Queen and country are concerned. I want you for this job. If you continue to refuse, then I shall have no hesitation in making public the fact that the letter was forged and demanding that the court martial be reopened.’

He walked back to his chair and pulled out a gold timepiece from the debris on the table. ‘Take your time to consider. I will give you exactly thirty seconds.’

In the ensuing silence, Simon felt he could hear the watch ticking. He stared at the nut-brown countenance before him. Little bastard. Just like the rest of them in this army of Queen Victoria. Single-minded to the point of blackmail. Should he call the little man’s bluff? Would Lamb dare to reopen the trial and risk renewing the storm of criticism back home which had followed the slaughter of Isandlwana? If he did, then Simon would stand no chance of an acquittal this time. The Colonel’s gaze was centred on his watch; one eyebrow raised as if disbelieving the time. No hint of indecision there; just an impersonal air of sang-froid. Ruthless bastard. Simon felt trapped. He sighed. ‘Very well. What do you want me to do?’

Immediately, Lamb’s face broke into a beam. ‘Good man. Knew you’d see sense eventually. Sorry about the hard stuff. Don’t mind playing dirty if I have to, y’know. Now.’ He leaned forward. ‘What do you know about the North West Frontier?’

Despite his anger, Simon felt his heart leap. The part of him which, despite his disillusion, remained a British soldier could not but be interested. The Frontier, India’s border with Afghanistan, presented the greatest opportunity for action and advancement for any officer in the army. It offered danger and hard employment and it did so because it was a vulnerable, half-open door to the richest possession of the Empire: India. The tribes of the independent state of Afghanistan were a militant hotchpotch of feuding warriors in constant conflict with the British garrisons of the Frontier. But they were comparatively unimportant compared to the threat posed by the other great imperial power, Russia, whose own territorial ambitions had taken the double-headed eagle banners of the Tsar right to the northern frontier of Afghanistan, leaving that cussedly independent nation as a kind of buffer between the two great imperial locomotives of the nineteenth century. The North West Frontier of India was Russia’s obvious point of entry to India. Afghanistan, then, was a playground for power politics - and a forcing ground for military careers.

‘Not much, sir,’ said Simon. ‘Only what I learned at Sandhurst and what I’ve read in the papers. And there’s been little chance to do that lately. I’m afraid I’m right out of touch.’

‘Well, you’ll need to be brought up to date damned quickly.’ The Colonel turned in his seat and pushed with his toe at a pile of maps on the ground. Selecting one, he turned back. ‘While we’ve been farting around with Cetswayo down here, the Russkies have been stirring up quite a bit of trouble in Afghanistan. Here, look.’ He unrolled a map of the region, put an inkstand at the top to prevent it re-furling and walked round the table to join Simon.

The map was depressingly empty. The corner of India fronting the border with Afghanistan bristled with hatched lines depicting railways and was studded with townships - Lahore, Rawal Pindi, Kohat, Banu - but the territory that was Afghanistan seemed to consist mainly of shaded mountain ranges and little else. The western Himalayas to the east linked with the Hindu Kush mountains running from east to west to form a seemingly uncrossable spine across the country. No railways, few towns and fewer roads. Across the country’s northern border lay white expanses marked ‘Russian Dominions in Asia’. Here, large blank areas were broken up by names romantically evocative from Simon’s childhood classroom: Samarkand, Tashkent, Bokhara, Khiva, Merv. But again no roads and few railways, although one, advancing menacingly due south from Merv to the Afghan border, caught Simon’s eye. It was marked ‘Under Construction’.

Lamb noticed Simon’s frown. ‘Yes. Not much in the way of cartography. One of our problems. Damned nuisance. But look.’ He jabbed a thumb on Afghanistan’s southern border with India and swivelled his forefinger on to the northern border with the Russian territories. ‘Whole bloody country’s only three inches wide. The Russians could be across those mountain passes in three weeks and be down on to the plains of the Punjab before we’d hitched up our knickers.’

‘What’s to stop them, then?’

The Colonel wrinkled his nose. ‘Apart from world opinion - and that can’t be relied on - it’s the Afghans. Awkward buggers. They don’t like us. You will remember that we invaded in 1840-something and got a bloody nose, but they’re not too fond of the Russkies either. So they play one off against the other. But you’ll know all this.’

Simon did, more or less. The Russian threat to India, via Afghanistan, had been a perennial topic of dinner and mess table conversation throughout Britain before he left for South Africa more than a year ago. In Zululand he had heard of a British invasion of Afghanistan and, vaguely, of a British victory somewhere in the hills. But he knew little of what had ensued. He told Lamb as much.

‘Right,’ said the Colonel, lighting another cheroot. ‘Won’t take long to paint you the picture.’ His briskness and obvious delight in this pedagogic role made Simon smile inwardly and took him back to a humid room in Cape Town, where Lamb had lectured him on Zulu history. But he listened intently. The Colonel was good at this.

‘Now,’ said the little man, his eyes sparkling, ‘about ten months or so ago, St Petersburg put great pressure on Sher Ali - he’s the Amir, the guv’nor, of Afghanistan - to accept a Russian mission at his capital, Kabul. The Afghans didn’t fancy this, so they did their old trick of turning to us, asking if we would come to their aid if the Russians attacked. Delhi got the wind up and vacillated. So old Ali was forced to accept a pretty strong contingent of Russkies at Kabul. This meant that the latch was off the Afghan gate to India and our government got the wind up again, from a different direction, so to speak.’ The blue eyes smiled through the cigar smoke. ‘Follow?’

Simon nodded.

‘Good. Now we demanded the same facilities, and when the Afghans hummed and hawed, we sent a mission that was firmly but politely turned back at the frontier. Naturally we couldn’t have that, so we invaded.’

Simon nodded again. ‘Naturally,’ he said, but his irony was lost on the Colonel. ‘We sent in three columns.’ Lamb jabbed at the map. ‘Lieutenant General Sir Donald Stewart took his Kandahar Field Force in from Quetta, here, to Kandahar and occupied that.’ He pointed to the south-east corner of Afghanistan. ‘At the same time, Major General Roberts’s Kurram Field Force marched from Kohat over the Peiwar Kotal mountain range here in the centre, and Lieutenant General Sir Sam Browne’s Peshawar Valley Field Force invaded through the Khyber Pass here towards Jalalabad in the east.’ He shrugged. ‘Not much choice really. These are the only routes in. Anyway, Stewart and Browne didn’t have much trouble, though Browne got a bit bogged down in the Khyber. It was Roberts who was opposed and got the fighting. He took on most of the Amir’s men up in the mountains here, at Peiwa Kotal, outflanked ’em in a brilliant move and cleared the way to Kabul. Conveniently, old Sher Ali fled and died quickly and his successor, Yakub Khan, decided to negotiate. Don’t blame him, with three British columns encamped in his damned country.’

Lamb flicked the ash off his cheroot. ‘There was a treaty concluded here, at Gandamak, on the border, under which the Kurram valley and Khyber Pass were assigned to us and we also gained our mission at Kabul and control of Afghan foreign policy, in return for which Yakub was recognised as amir and an annual British subsidy was agreed.’ The Colonel sighed. ‘It’s always bloody rupees in the end, you know, in that country.’

Simon nodded slowly. ‘And the Russians?’ he asked.

‘Still there, of course, but a bit squeezed out. They relied on us getting beaten and we weren’t.’

Simon raised his eyebrows. ‘So everything’s all right, then?’

‘Ah, not quite. Roberts is still there - left in charge, so to speak, right in the south of the country - but the other two columns have withdrawn. Our mission has gone to Kabul, but Roberts is uneasy. He thinks there could be an uprising at any time. Trouble is, he’s got no reliable intelligence. So ...’ Lamb smiled. ‘He wants me to go out there and organise this for him. He’s my old boss, you see.’

‘Yes, but where do I fit in?’

‘I want you to be my main intelligence officer out there. Do what you’ve done so well here. Sniff out the feeling amongst the tribes. Give us warning of an uprising. Tell us where and when it might come.’

Simon’s eyebrows rose again. ‘But I don’t know Afghanistan, neither the country nor the language.’

‘Lack of lingo and local knowledge didn’t stop you doing a good job here.’ Lamb stood. ‘Look, you will need a bit of training out there, but there isn’t much time.’ He riffled through the papers on his desk again, drawing out a letter written in green ink in strong, sloping handwriting. ‘Here. This is from Roberts to me. Confidential, of course. Highly. Take it and read it overnight and then bring it back. It will fill you in. Right? Right?’

Simon sighed. The whole project sounded crazy: delegating highly sensitive intelligence work to a man who had never visited the country and knew nothing of its customs or its language. Crazy? No, homicidal. Was it the army’s way of getting rid of him? Unlikely. It would be far too contrived and expensive for the Horse Guards. It must be their inherent stupidity. He made one last try.

‘Surely General Roberts will have established sources of intelligence far more experienced and skilled than me?’

Lamb snorted. ‘Oh yes. But he doesn’t rate ’em. Wants a soldier.’ The blue eyes twinkled. ‘Looks as though he’s going to have a reluctant one.’

Simon stood. ‘Very well, sir. I’ll go. But I must take Jenkins with me. He’s discreet, and anyway, he’s a far better shot and horseman than I am. And I fancy you will need both on the Frontier.’

‘Agreed.’ The Colonel waved in a motion of dismissal, then paused. ‘Before you go, tell me one more thing.’

‘Sir?’

‘Why are you so unhappy at the prospect of staying in the army?’

Simon frowned. What to say? ‘It’s, well, rather personal, sir.’

‘Anything to do with Covington?’

How far to go? Attack his former CO, who had suspected him of cowardice, hounded him for two years and then falsely accused him of desertion in the face of the enemy? Simon fixed his gaze on the tent wall behind Lamb’s head and took a deep breath. Go the whole way . . . ‘Yes, it has. With no disrespect, sir, I have not been impressed by the standard of serving British officers, either at home in peacetime soldiering or out here, on active service. Colonel Covington was allowed to conduct a campaign of persecution of me, a junior officer in his command, for eighteen months back home and then bring a charge of cowardice against me here in Natal. In addition to that, at Isandlwana, mistakes were made in conducting the defence of the camp that I find hard to forgive. We lost so many men needlessly that day, some of them my friends.’ In for a penny, in for a pound. He took a breath to continue, but the Colonel interrupted impatiently.

‘But Covington wasn’t there. It wasn’t his fault.’

‘No, sir. I know that. But the General’s enquiry seems to have put the fault for the defeat on the fact that the native levies broke and fled. That wasn’t the real reason. I was there and I saw it.’ Simon’s pace hurried now, as the indignation took over. ‘Firstly, the camp was left open and unlaagered. It was easy for the Zulus to rush us once the ammunition ran out. And that’s the second point: the ammunition did run out - not because we didn’t have enough but because the damned screws and the steel bands had rusted into the boxes. We just couldn’t get them open. The Zulus were upon us before we could get cartridges to the line. The men had virtually nothing left and our volley firing just died away. The Zulus saw that. They were not fools.’

Simon was now looking indignantly at Lamb. ‘Sir, this column had been in enemy country for several weeks and no one bothered to check the ammunition reserves. It was poor soldiering and the officers were to blame, not the black levies.’

The Colonel snorted. ‘Dammit, Fonthill, mistakes occur on a campaign, you know that. Anyway, we’ve now won the war and finished off the Zulus once and for all. Ulundi was a perfectly executed battle.’

‘With respect, sir, we fought the battle from a defensive square just as though we were at Waterloo, sixty-four years ago. If the Zulus had not attacked so bravely we would probably still be looking for them now. I saw no evidence of generalship there. Anyway, it was terribly one-sided. They had spears and incredible guts. We had Martini-Henrys, Gatling guns and cannon. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.’

The two men faced each other across the table, the tension almost visible between them. Eventually, a rueful smile crept across the face of the Chief of Staff. ‘Hmmmn.’ He rubbed his jaw. ‘I see what you mean about your determination not to serve again. Your . . . opinions are not quite what we would expect from a young officer.’

‘Exactly, sir.’

‘And Covington?’

‘The last time I saw him I promised to stick an assegai in him the next time we met.’

‘How charming of you, Fonthill.’ For the first time both men laughed together. Then Lamb’s face became thoughtful and he walked slowly round the table to join Simon. ‘After hearing all that, I really ought to put you under arrest. But look,’ he said, ‘I have an idea. I want you for intelligence work - out in the field, working on your own, or with this bright Welshman, if you like. You’ve shown you can do that, adapting to a strange environment and all that. But it’s not a task that can be carried out while staying within the confines of normal army discipline. And you certainly won’t have to work closely with the type of regimental officer,’ the Colonel’s voice took on a dry note, ‘whom you don’t exactly seem to admire.’

He leaned against the tent pole. ‘You know I’m an Indian Army man, out here on secondment?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Ever hear of the Guides?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Part of the Indian Army. Raised in the Punjab and patrol the North West Frontier. Wonderful bunch of men - cavalry and infantry. Indian troops, of course.’ He smiled. ‘Not exactly regular, y’know. In fact, damned irregular. Work as much in native dress as they do in uniform. I could get you a captaincy in the Guides, with sergeant’s rank for your man. Easy enough to do a transfer that way, from the home force to the Indian, though more difficult t’other way round. Chaps who are finding things a bit expensive in the line regiments do it all the time, though this doesn’t apply to you, o’course. Pay’s not bad - and, of course, you would be away from the men you admire so much in Her Majesty’s regular army. What do you think?’

‘Well, if I have to stay in the army, that sounds pretty good to me.’

‘Good. There is one very final point, Fonthill, and in view of what you have said, it is not unimportant.’ Colonel Lamb drew himself to his full height and the word ‘bantam’ came into Simon’s mind. ‘As I said, I am going to India too, to be Roberts’s chief of staff and to take charge - among other things - of this intelligence work. This means you would report to me. Now, how do you feel about that? I don’t want you threatening me with an assegai or - even worse - mopin’ around all bitter and twisted like a rusty corkscrew.’

The two men regarded each other from either side of the tent pole. ‘I could live with that, sir,’ said Simon, half smiling at the challenging, combative face before him. ‘But no more playing dirty, please.’

The blue eyes twinkled again. ‘Only if I have to.’

They shook hands and, clutching his envelopes, Simon re-emerged into the morning sunlight. He looked around and the sentry nodded to his left. There lay Jenkins, fast asleep, curled innocently around a tent peg, one arm hanging from the guy rope. ‘I tried to get ’im to move, sir,’ said the sentry, ‘but he . . . er . . . was a bit rude, like. I was goin’ to call the guard.’

‘No need,’ said Simon. ‘We’re off now anyway.’

With his toe he gently stirred the sleeping Welshman, who disentangled himself from the guy rope and scratched himself. ‘Gawd, you’ve bin ages,’ he yawned. ‘I almost dozed off. What’s happenin’, then? We goin’ to be shot, is it?’

‘No.’ Simon gathered up the reins of the horses. ‘Worse than that. We’re back in the army.’

‘What? What?’ Jenkins’s consternation was real, and in his haste to catch Simon, his foot slipped from the stirrup as he tried to mount. ‘Not me, boyo,’ he called plaintively after Simon. ‘Oh no. Not me.’ The sentry watched in disbelief as the strange couple rode away, the shorter one behind calling after the slim young man, who rode on, down to the Tugela ferry crossing, a half-smile on his face.

As they crossed, Simon began telling Jenkins of what had ensued with the Colonel. The Welshman listened quietly, occasionally pulling at his moustache. Across on the Zululand side of the river, John Dunn, formerly one of King Cetswayo’s indunas and now chief of intelligence for the southern column of Lord Chelmsford’s army, had erected his own tents away from the mud of the main campsite. Simon was glad to find that Dunn was away so that he was able to complete the briefing of Jenkins without interruption. Jenkins gave no response but walked slowly to a large bowl, where he had left the washing. He lifted a shirt from the tub.

‘Ah, bach, what on earth did you do to this shirt? I can’t get rid of this stain no how, see.’

Simon inspected the wet lump thrust under his nose. ‘Hmmn. Red wine, I think. Sorry, 352.’

‘Well, I can’t do much with it.’ Jenkins slapped the shirt between hands as wide as paddles. Then his face lit up. ‘Tell you what,’ he beamed. ‘Tell the girls it’s blood. Marks of a wound received in a terrible fight against the savage Zulu.’

Simon smiled. Jenkins was getting round to it, he knew. The Welshman looked down at the shirt and spoke without glancing up. ‘So we’re goin’ to swap the savage Zulu for the savage Afghan, is it?’

‘Sort of. Though I hope we won’t be exactly fighting him. More a question of getting to know him and of reporting on his movements, that sort of thing.’ Simon waited. Jenkins’s reaction was vital. Despite the Colonel’s threat, Simon would refuse to go to India if Jenkins did not accompany him. Life in the field without the Welshman would be unthinkable.

A sniff came from beneath the big moustache. ‘I don’t think I’d be much good at spyin’, wearin’ turbans and all that.’

‘Well, I’m not sure that I’ll be much good at that either. But the Colonel seems to think that we would make a better job of it than the people doing it now.’

The sniff came again. ‘So I’ll have to start calling you sir again, salutin’ and so on?’

‘No, not really. Not to me, anyhow, and I don’t think we will be seeing much of the regular army.’

Jenkins smoothed out the shirt. ‘Well, if you go, I’ll go. You’ll need me to look after you.’

‘Rubbish. I don’t need a bloody nursemaid.’

‘You do when you’re tryin’ to sit on a horse.’

‘Oh, come on. I’m much better than I used to be.’

Jenkins suddenly smiled, his teeth all the whiter beneath the black moustache. ‘Sergeant, eh? Well, well, well. What will they think about that back home, eh, bach?’

‘They’ll be as astounded as me. Come on. You’ve got to pack. We leave for Durban in the morning.’

Simon crept into his tiny bell tent, sat on his trestle bed and opened the letter from General Roberts to Lamb. It had been written from Gandamak, the border town in eastern Afghanistan where the treaty had been signed, and dated 26 May, six weeks before. It was in two parts. The first was couched in formal language, penned in a clerkly hand, and had obviously been dictated. It updated Lamb on the situation and told Simon nothing that the Colonel had not already related. The second, much shorter, slanted across the pages in a scrawl that exuded urgency. It had been written by Roberts himself, a few hours after the treaty had been signed, and concentrated on his intelligence needs. It was clear that the General had little confidence in the agreement made with the Afghans.

The Afghans are an essentially arrogant and conceited people. No great battle has yet been fought and the Afghans have nowhere suffered serious loss. It is not to be wondered at if the fighting men in distant villages and in and around Kabul, Ghazni, Herat, Balkh and other places still consider themselves undefeated and capable of defying us.

Both Stewart and Browne are withdrawing their columns. I am to stay and a mission is to go to Kabul, with just a small contingent of Guides to join them. I have fears for their safety but my intelligence is most ineffective.

Look here, Baa-Baa, I need you quickly to organise this. Neither the nature of the country nor the attitude of its people permit me to make effective reconnaissance. Afghan sources are not to be trusted and the political officers, whose job this is, have proved to be useless in conditions of war.

I have heard about Isandlwana and I am sorry about it. But you should have no trouble in quelling the Zulus now with the resources I understand you are receiving. So please get out here as soon as you can. I have cleared this with Delhi and London and I know that Chelmsford will let you go. You will need help. Bring with you whoever you trust. This affair will undoubtedly get worse. Our treaty has only brought us a little respite. The Russians are still behind it all . . .

Simon put down the closely written pages, lay back on the bed and closed his eyes in concentration. He knew little of Roberts except that he had fought that fine action on the ridges of Peiwa Kotal, and that Lamb clearly idolised him. The Pathans of the Afghan hills had fought the British for years. They were renowned as fine, if ill-disciplined warriors, but fierce and cruel. To be captured by them could mean being killed by slow torture. Simon frowned as he forced himself to contemplate this. The women of the tribes were supposed to do the business, he recalled. They used knives and hot coals . . .

He lay quietly for a moment. No. He remained physically unaffected by the prospect. No perspiration. No slump of the heart and dryness of the mouth. Had he cured himself at last of his fear - fear of the actuality and, even worse, of the unknown? Well, there was only one way to find out: go there and see.

His thoughts turned to the nature of the work. Roberts wanted intelligence: information about tribal movements and notice of confederation against him; news of massing in the hills, the size of the gatherings and likely direction of strike; that sort of thing. But if the experts on the spot - what were they called, political officers? - couldn’t provide this, with all their knowledge of the country and the people, how on earth could he? Simon sat up quickly. To hell with it! If Lamb felt he could do it, then he could. If he could fight the Zulu, he could fight the Afghan. And of course - he smiled - Jenkins could fight anyone.

That evening, Simon put on as clean a shirt as Jenkins could find for him, struggled into his only other pair of breeches - he had long ago given away his army uniform - and re-crossed the Tugela. He turned right along the riverbank, skirting the periphery of the camp, until he found a small stream. He followed it away from the camp until it reached a quiet clearing where half a dozen tents were pitched, each at a distance from the other. A notice nailed to a tree announced that this was the ‘Newspaper Compound’. He saw a familiar black figure laying a fire before one of the tents.

‘George. Where is Miss Griffith?’

‘In the tent, baas. Shall I call her?’

‘Yes please.’

Simon dismounted, tied the reins loosely to a bush and waited. Eventually, a slim young woman in her mid twenties emerged from one of the tents and hurried over to him, tying back long fair hair into a bun at the nape of her neck. She was dressed purposefully in a simple cotton blouse, riding breeches and long boots, and her bronzed face broke into a smile of greeting.

Without hesitation she kissed him on the cheek, put her arm through his and walked with him back towards her tent.

‘I haven’t seen you since Ulundi,’ she said. ‘What did you think of the battle? It was my first, and I have to say, I took no joy in it. Tell me, what did you think?’

As she referred to the battle, she frowned and her grey eyes looked with concern into Simon’s. She was not conventionally pretty, the set of her jaw and the line of her mouth giving her perhaps too masculine an air, but her figure was tall and slim, her skin clear, her cheekbones high and her hair the colour of soft honey. Alice Griffith was attractive enough to have turned many a head since she first arrived in South Africa nine months ago. Now, her earnest enquiry and the concern of her gaze made it difficult for Simon to resist a smile. He must not smile, though. She hated condescension.

‘I suppose, Alice,’ he said, ‘no battles are very edifying. We had to shoot down the Zulus before they could get to the square and then . . . then ...’ he hesitated for a moment, because the memory was unpleasant, ‘then we had to send out the cavalry to hunt them down to make sure the defeat was complete.’

‘I know. I saw it. I rode out after the Lancers and saw them do it. Do you know, Simon,’ she swung him round so that she could look into his eyes, ‘most of those natives had thrown away their weapons and were trying to run away. Some just lay down and put their shields over their heads. It was pathetic. But the cavalry still killed them with their lances, as though they were spearing pigs.’ The grey eyes filled with tears. ‘It was just sport to them. Brutal. Brutal.’

Simon blinked at her vehemence and marvelled anew at the change in the girl he had first met three years ago. Then, to confound their parents’ scheming, she had made him confess that there was no love between them and agree that they would become good friends. But that was long ago, and it was a woman of the world who confronted him now. Then, as he held her gaze, the fire slowly died from her eyes and she smiled.

‘Sorry. I know it’s not your fault.’ She shouted to her servant. ‘George. Tea. Quickly now.’ She ducked into the tent and emerged with two small camp chairs, and they sat together in front of the fire which George had succeeded in lighting. ‘Now,’ said Alice comfortably, ‘what are you up to?’

‘Well, I do have something to tell you.’ He related his meeting with Lamb. To his surprise, she was not at all disconcerted by the revelation that the Colonel knew of her forgery. She simply shrugged her shoulders and buried her nose in the tea mug.

‘Well, he was too smart not to find out sometime. But it was good of him to keep it quiet - even if he has used it to blackmail you.’ She laughed. ‘Shrewd old devil.’ She gave Simon a cool glance. ‘But he obviously thinks a great deal of you to use his dirty trick to get you to go to Afghanistan.’ She nodded thoughtfully. ‘Simon, I must say that you have grown, well, much older, my dear, in the last eighteen months.’

Simon laughed ruefully. ‘You mean that I have grown up. Well, I suppose I have, and perhaps not before time.’

The sun had long since gone and the flames from the camp fire threw shadows across Alice’s face. They gave golden highlights to her hair and silhouetted the gentle thrust of the breasts beneath her shirt. Simon felt again the stirrings of desire he had first experienced long ago.

‘Alice,’ he began tentatively.

‘No, Simon.’ Her eyes were now laughing at him again. ‘I shan’t miss you, for the simple reason that I am leaving here.’

‘What! You are going to India too?’

‘No, I wish I was. I can’t say that I like wars, but they do give one the best possible material for writing - and I agree with Roberts that I think the Afghan business will flare up again. No, I’m going home.’ She looked around her. ‘I’m not sorry to leave here and I don’t think that my reports have particularly endeared me to the army.’ She laughed again. ‘So no one here will grieve at my departure. But the Morning Post has been very kind to me. The editor has instructed me to take the first ship to England now that the campaign is over. I understand that dear old Gladstone is preparing a great attack on the Government for its handling of foreign policy and these colonial wars, and my editor wants me to come home to cover it.’ Alice’s voice took on an air of excitement. ‘I do so admire Mr Gladstone, and reporting on his campaign will be capital experience for me and should further my career.’ For a moment, the woman of the world had become a girl again.

Simon did not dislike the regression. He took her hand. ‘I am so pleased for you, Alice. I am impressed that you have made your own way so successfully. It cannot have been easy for a woman - and such a young one at that.’

Alice came as near to blushing as was possible for a newly hardened war correspondent, and she gave a half-embarrassed smile of thanks. Simon retained her hand and they sat silently for a moment, gazing into the fire. Then Simon stood. ‘I must go now, for I have much to do before the morning.’ Despite slight resistance from her, he kept her hand in his and drew her towards him. ‘Alice, I shall forever be grateful for the way you helped me. Goodbye, and God bless you.’

He kissed her briefly on the lips and then walked away. As he mounted his horse, he looked back to see her framed against the firelight, one hand raised in silent farewell.

Eighteen hours later, he and Jenkins were riding the dusty road towards Pietermaritzburg, Durban, and a ship for Bombay.