Once they had established that a sundowner was more suited to the time and weather than a cup of tea, Remmick the political agent asked what had brought an Englishwoman to Peshawar at the height of summer.
— I wish I had a good answer to that. I should be in London, I know. I was a VAD nurse until a few weeks ago, but I’m afraid I was rather useless, gave it up, and well, here I pathetically am.
She’d had to have this conversation with the Forbeses last night, and the speed with which Mr Forbes rushed in to tell an anecdote about a nurse he’d once worked with told her she should find a better story, if for no other reason than to spare her companions the necessity of covering up her shame. But she hadn’t yet been able to think of one.
— No one in Peshawar is in a position to hold it against you that you choose to be here rather than somewhere else. How good of you to have nursed — that’s more than most people have done. You should hold your head up with pride, Miss Spencer.
She inclined her head in gratitude, felt a burden lift. Two Englishmen in military uniform entered the garden. Viv looked at them, surprised by her feelings of contempt.
— Do you think they feel relieved or ashamed to be here, so far from the fight?
— Peshawar is never far from a fight.
Remmick pointed up towards the hills.
— There’s a fanatic up there, name of Haji Turangzai, with a band of blood-thirsty followers. You mustn’t worry about it — we’re accustomed to dealing with these hotheads. But I would advise against travelling outside the city, and certainly against venturing to the Khyber Pass, without clearing it with me first.
Remmick spoke with an air of authority that was parodic in a man so young — he couldn’t be much older than her — but his words had struck at something inside her. Kipling’s Peshawar! The North-West Frontier! Where even the finest hotel in town was a whitewashed barracks, a reminder that the world of guns lurked beneath every veneer. It was immensely comforting to know oneself in a world in which battles followed the template laid down in books of adventure and valour. The words ‘Khyber Pass’ sat on her tongue, fizzing with romance.
— The war seems so far away.
— I wouldn’t say that. The Haji’s given us trouble before but this time round it’s because the damned Turks have riled up the tribes in the name of the Caliphate. Told them to launch a Holy War against us. Forgive me, Miss Spencer. I shouldn’t use such language, but they really are such damned Turks.
— That seems to be the general consensus, she said, raising her glass to her lips, and wondering how to change the subject.
She returned to her rooms just as a liveried man was on his way out. In his hands a dustpan and her waste-paper basket. She caught hold of the rim of the basket, without saying a word, and he yielded it to her. Inside, a tangle of straw and grass. Her fingers burrowed through it and encountered a beak, a tiny featherless skull. She told herself there was no such thing as omens.
If she leaned in just a few inches and placed her mouth against the Cupid’s bow she might feel blood flow beneath the stone surface of the lips. But what would he want with her kiss, this man who walked away from his life the day his son was born, and became the Enlightened One?
Viv touched the face. The grey stone cool against her palm, the surface smooth except where a spade had left its mark against the forehead, just inches from the raised mole which marked the urna — she touched the scar in apology for the crimes of excavation. Her fingers traced the grooves between the tendrils of hair snaking towards the topknot. When she had first seen a Gandhara Buddha, at the British Museum, she had thought of the hair as Mediterranean but no longer — she looked over to Najeeb.
The boy was standing next to the webbed-fingered, larger-than-life Buddhas with their beautiful drapery which the museum guard claimed to have seen stir in the breeze. As she watched, Najeeb said something to the guard who crouched down and lifted the boy up onto his shoulders.
— Look, Miss Spencer!
He had spotted, and been struck by, the faint, unexpected pupil in the eye of one of the tall Buddhas — one round of the Museum and he’d already worked out that was unusual. For a long time he remained motionless, studying it, until Viv clapped her hands twice, and Najeeb dropped off the guard’s shoulder, agile, unconcerned by the possibility of hurt. Viv’s hand on his elbow, they walked around the high-ceilinged whitewashed halls of the Peshawar Museum, and this time instead of rushing from display to display he asked her to explain those things which had particularly caught his attention. He must be near the same age she’d been the first time Tahsin Bey took her to the British Museum, and answered every question with patience.
— This is all from here, Najeeb kept repeating. This also? This also?
— Yes, all of it. We’ve left it here instead of taking it back to London so you can see your own history.
They walked all along the galleries, until they had circled round to the case which displayed excavations at Shahji-ki-Dheri and Takht-i-Bahi. Here, a fragmented starving Buddha; there, the goddess Hariti holding a cornucopia in one hand, the palm of the other hand resting on the upper thigh of her consort. And most prominently positioned of all, a casket — on its lid the figure of the Buddha seated on lotus leaves, flanked by the Hindu gods Indra and Brahma. Along the rim of the lid wild geese were in flight and, beneath, stood the King, Kanishka himself, in his great boots and cloak; and that old familiar form of Eros draped a garland all around the casket. She pointed the different figures out to Najeeb, explained the word ‘syncretic’.
— I came to Peshawar because of this casket, Najeeb.
The boy wrinkled his nose.
— Why? It’s not very nice.
It was true, the casket was far from the most beautiful object here. Too crude, too fussy. Why did Tahsin Bey choose to draw her attention to this, of all the discoveries in all the archaeological journals of the world? She couldn’t shake the feeling there was something she’d missed.
— So this is a Mughal garden.
Najeeb looked at her, and shrugged.
— It’s where I like best in Peshawar, he said, as if that were more important.
Where-he-liked-best was Shalimar Garden — though he referred to it by the less evocative local name of Shahi Bagh — a vast park with pathways, bordering long rectangular ponds, along which Najeeb and Viv walked to the central, arched pavilion. In each pond, multiple fountains kept up a steady cascade of water which cooled the eye and ear. And the summer flowers dense with colour offered up a consolation for the heat. Najeeb had promised her the Garden’s wonders in exchange for those of the Museum, a boy alive to the reciprocal courtesies of his people.
— I come here after school to read, when I’m supposed to be at the mosque with the maulvi. Only my brother knows. Mr Dickens is my favourite. The maulvi doesn’t care, as long as I take him his money every month. I don’t like to waste my father’s money but my brother says as long as I use that time to learn it isn’t wrong, and I don’t learn anything from the maulvi — he’s so boring, he only makes me read the Qur’an out loud and doesn’t explain anything.
— Sloth is always preferable to zeal when it comes to the religious-minded, in my experience. I’m sure you get a lot more out of Mr Dickens.
— Also, where he teaches me in the mosque is so hot, and here there’s always shade.
— Yes, the importance of shade in Peshawar. A long-standing object of fascination for foreigners.
— It is?
Viv sat on the rim of a pond, scooped up a handful of warm water and sprinkled it onto her neck. Pulling her sketchbook out of her bag, she rested it on her knee, and was about to start drawing the two pavilions in her sight — the solid one, and its liquid reflection — when she caught Najeeb looking expectantly at her.