R. F. Delderfield - God Is an Englishman

A HORSEMAN RIDING BY

Long Summer Day

Post of Honour

The Green Gauntlet

THE AVENUE STORY

The Dreaming Suburb

The Avenue Goes to War

THE SWANN SAGA

God Is an Englishman

Theirs Was the Kingdom

Give Us This Day

To Serve Them All My Days

Diana

Come Home Charlie, and Face Them

Seven Men of Gascony

Farewell, the Tranquil Mind

The Adventures of Ben Gunn

Copyright 1970, 2009 by R. F. Delderfield

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Originally published in Great Britain by Hodder and Stoughton Limited, 1970.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Delderfield, R. F. (Ronald Frederick).

God is an Englishman / R.F. Delderfield.

p. cm.

Originally published in Great Britain by Hodder and Stoughton Limited, 1970.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. FamilyEnglandFiction. 2. BritishIndiaFiction. 3. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

PR6007.E36G63 2009

823.912dc22

2009005926

Printed and bound in the United States of America
VP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For My Wife, May ,
without whose affection ,
oceans of coffee ,
and classical records
this would never have been finished.

T HEY STORMED OUT OF THE DUSTCLOUD IN A SOLID, SCURRYING MASS, HORSE AND foot in about equal proportions, but in no sort of formation; a mob of armed fugitives, with nothing in mind but to escape the hangman, or the bayonets of the Highlanders who had rushed the town at first light and had now fought their way as far as the Ranee's palace.

Swann, sitting his horse a few lengths in front of the extended squadron, recognised the badges and uniforms of the foremost, men of the 12th Native Infantry and the 14th Irregular Cavalry, the murderers of women who had entertained him here when he had ridden over from Allahabad less than a year ago. But before he could use his spurs the leading mounted man was bearing down on him, and Swann noticed that he was encumbered by a curved-topped casket, balanced on the bow of his saddle.

The casket registered as an incongruity. It seemed ridiculous that a man flying for his life should encumber himself with luggage, but this man had, so much so that his tulwar swung loose from his wrist on its sword-knot, and before he could find its hilt, Swann had sent him tumbling from the saddle with a single, backhanded slash. The box went flying, and even in that terrible uproar Swann heard the splintering crack of shattered wood as it bounced across the ground. Then he was engulfed, horse and foot streaming past him on either side, and his bay pivoted and was carried forward, gyrating and bucketing as her rider threw his weight this way and that parrying the random thrusts of sepoy bayonets and the sweep of the horsemen's swords.

The tumult was like the onrush of a bursting dam, its fury stunning the senses, so that he was unaware of the agency that brought him down in the midst of the press or how, pitching on hands and knees with his face in the dirt, he avoided being ridden over by the cavalry or bayoneted by the infantry. His sabre and czapka had gone and he was unable to rise on account of a crushing weight on his right leg, thrusting him forward and downward, so that his mouth and nostrils were plugged with red, pungent dust. Then, like the long sigh of the wind crossing Shirley Hills when he and Roberts had ridden up there to course a hare on an autumn afternoon, the rout passed over him and went rippling away to the west. He had a single conscious thought. If this was death it was preferable to the tumult and discordancy of life.

When he opened his eyes the sun was at full strength and playing on his exposed neck like the steady lick of a torch. He found he could move his left arm, and pulled at the rucked up folds of his tunic in an attempt to ward off the glare, and it was whilst he was thus engaged that he noticed his nose was almost touching the splintered fragments of the casket the horseman had carried into battle on his saddle bow.

He isolated this one piece of debris from the litter surrounding him, noting the intricate filigree pattern of the gilded hoops half-enclosing the lid, and because his mind was searching for a focus he set himself to contemplate it, wondering what it was doing there among so much military clutter. It symbolised a different sphere, a place of patient craftsmanship and gracious living, shunning its bearded carrier now sprawled on his face a yard or so further on, and the carcase of his horse that held Swann pinned by the leg in what seemed to be a cleft separating two ridges of naked rock.

Beyond it the dead and dying sloped away in a series of colourful furrows, white and scarlet, blue and pale yellow, with the red dustcloud as their pall. The sour reek of blood and human sweat reached him so that nausea rose in his throat, but the spasm passed. He had seen many such fields, beginning with the Alma and ending, he supposed, here outside the walls of Jhansi in what would pass as a skirmish. Then the beat of an iron hammer began to fall on his temples like the long roll of Mahratta drums. He wondered how many wounds he had and where they were located. He felt no pain or distress other than the throb of his temples, and not a great deal of discomfort apart from the soft, immovable weight of the casket-carrier's horse on his thigh. He could thus resign himself to awaiting the arrival of the ambulance unit or the burial party and the prospect brought peace rather than panic; peace and a kind of wonder that the ultimate found him so still and soundless.

He must have dozed for a time for when he stirred again his leg was numb and the scent of sandalwood came to him from the splintered box, a sharp, tantalising whiff probing through the miasma of death, dust and wounds, and it was then, shifting his head slightly in a second attempt to ward off the glare, that he noticed something bright and lustrous coiled in the comer of the broken casket

He did not know what it was, but it suggested, at first glance, a handful of cobras eyes, sullen and full of menace and yet, as he braced himself to outface them, possessed of a terrible beauty. For a long time he lay there contemplating them and thinking of nothing else, watching them catch and toss back the refracted light of the sun, seeming almost to challenge him to reach out and touch them, and presently he did, lifting his hand very deliberately, as though to caress a nervous cat.