Venus in India by Charles Devereaux Read Free Book Online

decent style; how the colonel seemed to inspect me; how the other officers, whom I had not yet met, greeted me with a polite 'glad to see you' from their lips, and 'I wonder what the devil kind of a fellow you are' glance from their eyes. Most regiments are alike; when you have seen one you have seen all. The English officer is undoubtedly a fearful 'stick' and of all weary humdrum lives, mess life is the most dreary. Along with the air of ennui and lassitude, however, there is a wicked, devil-may-care current, which forms the pith of an officer's life, and I knew well that when a good dinner had been eaten, a good share of fairly good wine drunk, and cigars and pegs had become the evening fare, I should hear a great deal more than I was likely to at the dinner table, where propriety and stiffness more or less ruled the roost. Accordingly, I was now regaled with old stories of the war, tales of savagery and cowardly cruelty on the part of the Afghans, with an occasional growl at the generals and authorities who, it seemed, must have been incompetent to a degree or far more significant results would have accrued from the valour of the British troops. I knew how to discount all this, and listened with interest, more or less affected, to my new friends' views.
    But the 'cloth off the table', brought a subject which is always congenial to the fore. Woman, lovely woman, began to be discussed. My young acquaintance J. C.'s statement as to the complete absence of women from Tommy Atkins' quarters in Afghanistan and the consequent immense demand for cunts on his return to civilisation and comfort was immediately confirmed. In those days (it has been very recently altered) the regulations obliged a certain number of native girls to be especially engaged for the services of each regiment, and these ladies of the camp accompanied their regiment wherever it marched in India, just as much a part and parcel of it as the colonel, adjutant and quartermaster. But Tommy likes variety as well as other people, and in every place where there is a bazaar or shops there are establishments for ladies of pleasure and these latter earn a good many four-anna bits which should by rights find their way into the pockets of the proper regimental whores. The recent influx of troops into Peshawar from Afghanistan had created an enormous demand for cunts, and Nowshera, Attock, even Rawalpindi, Umballa and other places had been denuded of 'polls' who gathered like birds of carrion where the carcass lay. This was a great grievance for the officers of the gallant 130th, who were almost as badly off for women as they had been when they been at Lellabad and at Lundi Kotal, at which latter place a Gurkha soldier who had got a bad case of clap from some native woman was universally spoken of as the 'Lucky Gurkha!' Not because of the clap, bien entendre, but because, though he suffered afterwards, he had managed to secure for himself a pleasure so uncommon, under the circumstances, that it seemed like water a thousand miles distant to a traveller lost in the great Sahara!
    Once the subject of love and women was started rolling the tongues of those who had been most reticent during dinner were set wagging, and I found a most entertaining host in the fat, pudgy, double-chinned major, who seemed to take a fancy to me. He proposed that we should adjourn outside where the band of the regiment was performing some operatic airs and lively dance music, and there we sat, in those voluptuous Madras long armchairs, enjoying whatever coolness there was in the air, the sounds of the suggestive music and the brilliancy of the myriad bright stars which glittered overhead, literally like diamonds in the sky.
    'Searle, our brigade major, said he would come later this evening,' said the major, 'but I rather think he won't.'
    'Why?' I asked.
    'Because he is cunt-struck with a very pretty little woman in the dak bungalow.'
    This I guessed was a shot to me.
    'Indeed! Well! I hope he will