TWO - Bombay Brothers
‘Christ, I never want to see anything like that again.’ Morgan and Bazalgette were sitting in the shady anteroom of the officers’ mess in the fort, chota-pegs in hand, icecubes clinking, still dusty from the maidan.
maidan‘Aye, I thought I’d seen some sights at Sevastopol, but nothing like that.’ Bazalgette’s forehead was cut across by sunburn, stark white above his peeling nose where the peak of his cap had kept the rays at bay. He pulled hard at his brandy. ‘It hardly made the right impression on the sepoys when Ma butt from my lot and that other lad from Carmichael’s company fainted dead away. We’re supposed to be the hand of a vengeful God, not a bunch of swooning tarts. I didn’t see a single sepoy drop out, did you, Morgan?’
We’re‘No, I didn’t, and I agree tha
