Ragtime in Simla

Joe hesitated. This precious moment! This moment of solitude in the impressive company of the mighty hills. Did he want to share it with a stranger? He took a further look at his companion and answered his question.

‘Yes. Neither.’

‘I am not fifteen-year-old Kim to walk the fifty miles!’

‘No need to do that. I would be delighted if you would accompany me. We could pass the long journey happily boring each other with quotations from Kipling!’

‘Indeed! And how are you proposing to get up there?’

Joe had spotted a groom in the livery of the Governor of Bengal waiting at the entrance to the station, anxiously sca

‘Joe. Welcome to the Hills. This man will drive you to the foot of the town and then conduct you to your quarters. I came ahead of you, you see. Di

‘Packard. We’ll go in the Governor’s Packard. Where’s your luggage?’

Rickshaws and tongas veered out of their path as they motored by at a steady fifteen miles an hour. At this pace Joe calculated that they would just manage to arrive in Simla by mid-afternoon. His fellow passenger settled into the big Packard with the air of one well accustomed to such luxury and even smiled and waved graciously whenever they overtook a pretty woman. He could well have been taking the air in the Bois de Boulogne, Joe thought, instead of trundling along a desert road in a temperature of over a hundred degrees. Man of the world he undoubtedly was, but Joe was amused and touched by the i

The few hot sandy miles from the plains to the uplift of land which marked the begi

‘You know, for centuries we British have been expecting an invasion from Russia in the north,’ Joe said with mock seriousness. ‘We believe their armies to be poised ready to rush down through the passes of the Himalayas to sweep the British out of India and snatch it from our grasp. But here – what have we? A Russian invasion from the south? Must we think our guns are pointing the wrong way?’

Another rumbling laugh greeted this comment. ‘One baritone does not make an invasion! And besides I come here for two very unmilitary reasons. One, I have been invited to perform at the Gaiety Theatre by the Amateur Dramatic Society of Simla. A great honour! Many distinguished singers and actors have performed there. And secondly, as you must have guessed, I was swept away by the romance of India and especially these hills at a very impressionable age. I was thirteen, of a diplomatic family living in London, when someone gave me a copy of Kim which had just come out. From then on, I knew one day I would have to make this journey… Listen! Is that a cuckoo? It was a cuckoo! And there are the trees!’

Both men enjoyed the moment when, turning a bend, a rush of cool mountain air, faintly scented with pine trees, fa

They were not the only travellers on the road. They passed strings of Tibetan merchants on foot, men and women of the hills who stopped to gaze in amazement at the car, tongas struggling to make way for them to overtake and a good deal of foot and horse-borne traffic. Loads obviously too cumbersome to be stowed into the narrow gauge Toy Train were being carried up on the backs of men. To Joe’s astonishment they passed two men labouring under the weight of a grand piano while a third walked behind carrying its legs. At the passing places when they pulled over they were greeted by cheerful young men on their way back from leave down to the plains by tonga and all asking the same rueful question: ‘Hot down there, is it?’ And Joe’s reply was the same to all: ‘Hotter than hell!’

As they climbed higher, the air grew fresher and the scenery more spectacular. Here now began to appear the majestic cedar trees of the Simla Hills, the deodars, their graceful hazy-blue branches dipping gracefully towards the slopes below. Scents grew sharper and more varied. Joe was intrigued by smells unfamiliar and familiar. He breathed in the nostalgic scents of an English garden – lily of the valley, roses, wild garlic and – like a knife to his lungs – was that balsam or wild thyme? Joe and his companion began to feel almost light-headed. The sluggishness and discomfort of the plains fell away and left them light-hearted, merry, celebratory. Rounding a bend, Feodor jumped to his feet, swaying precariously, pointing ahead. ‘There it is! Driver – pull over there into that passing place and stop for a moment!’

The driver turned to them, smiling, and a

A sight Joe would never forget. In the middle distance the town spilled, higgledy-piggledy, down from the wooded summit of a precipitous hill flanked by other thickly wooded dark slopes, and beyond and above it, the lines of the Himalayas shading from green through to deepest blue and iced with a line of dazzling snow.

For a moment Joe was speechless but not so Feodor. ‘Now this is an auditorium worthy of a serenade from the world’s greatest baritone!’ he a

‘Pale hands I loved, beside the Shalimar…’ Fortissimo his rich voice rolled along the narrow valley, waking flights of agitated pigeons and raising alarm calls from deer and other forest creatures. Joe joined in but found he was laughing too much to continue and, reaching the final line with its swift descent down the scale, he had to trail off and listen in admiration as Feodor’s voice, echoing and bouncing from the crags, plumbed the emotional depths of that most sentimental of songs.

‘Pale hands I loved, beside the Shalimar.

Where are you now? Where are you now?’

As he held the last deep note Joe almost expected to hear a thunder of applause. Instead there was a thump and a simultaneous crack and the bass note rose, tearing uncontrolled up the scale until it climaxed in an unearthly scream. A second crack cut off the sound abruptly.

Joe’s soldier’s instincts had hurled him instantly to the floor of the car. Turning his head, he was horrified to see Feodor Korsovsky, thrown back against the upholstery of the car, collapsing slowly across the seat.

‘Drive on! Drive on!’ Joe yelled urgently at the driver but his driver needed no order. Hardly had the echo of the two shots died away before he had put his foot down and the big car surged forward in a shower of gravel, bouncing across the potholes until it came sharply to a halt in the shelter of an outcrop of rocks. Scrambling up, Joe knelt on the back seat and turned to the Russian who, with arms asprawl, lay prostrate across the back seat. A glance was enough to tell Joe that he was dead and as he tore his clothing apart he saw two neat bullet holes, one just above and one just below the heart.