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someone else's tab, and an opportunity to point the moral of his tale.
    "Madame History a very fickle lady, sir"--in the telegramese later inherited by his son. "You can march for her day and night. Sweat your guts out for her. Shit, shine, shave, shampoo for her. Doesn't make a blind bit o' difference. The day she doesn't want you--_out.__ Dismiss. Scrap heap. Enough said." A fresh glass is by now making its ascent. "Your good health, sir. Generous man. To the Queen-Emperor. God bless her. Coupled with the name of the Punjabi fighting man. Finest soldier ever lived, bar none. Provided he is led, sir. There's the rub."
    And a ginger beer for the young sahib if he's lucky, while the Major in a fit of emotion whisks a khaki handkerchief from the sleeve of his frayed military sports jacket and, having first hammered his fussy little mustache with it, dabs his cheeks before returning it to base.
    The Major had cause for his tears. The day of Pakistan's birth, as the Golden Swan's customers know all too well, robbed him not only of his career, but also of his wife who, having taken one exhausted look at her overdue and overlong son had, like the Empire, expired.
    "That woman, sir--" It is the evening watering hour, and the Major is waxing sentimental. "Only one word to describe her: _quality.__ First time I saw her, she was in her riding clothes, out for a dawn canter with a couple of bearers. Done five Hot Weathers in the plains and looked as though she'd come straight from eating strawberries and cream at Cheltenham Ladies' College. Knew her fauna and flora better than her bearers did. And she'd be with us here to this day, God bless her, if that arsehole of a regimental doctor had been halfway sober. To her memory, sir. The late Mrs. Mundy. Forward march." His tearful eye settles on his son, whose presence he appears momentarily to have forgotten. "Young Edward," he explains. "Opens the bowling for his school. How old are you, boy?"
    And the boy, waiting to take his father home, admits to sixteen.
    The Major, however, as he will assure you, did not buckle under the tragedy of his double loss. He stayed on, sir. He endured. Widowed, a baby son to look after, Raj collapsing round his ears, you might think he'd do what the other buggers did: lower the Union Jack, sound the Last Post and sail home to obscurity. Not the Major, sir. No, thank you. He would rather slop out his Punjabis' shithouses than kiss the arse of some limp-wristed war profiteer in Civvy Street, thank you.
    "I summoned my _derzi.__ I said to my _derzi,__ '_Derzi,__ you will unstitch the major's crowns on my khaki drills, and you will replace them with the crescent moon of Pakistan--_juldi.__' And I pledged my services--for as long as they were appreciated--to the finest body of fighting men in the world bar none, _provided"__--his index finger stabs the air in dramatic warning--"provided, sir, that they are _led.__ There's the rub."
    And there also, mercifully, the bell will ring for last orders, and the boy will slip a trained hand beneath his father's arm and march him home to Number Two, The Vale to finish up last night's curry.
    But Mundy's provenance is not as easily defined as these barroom reminiscences suggest. The Major, so lavish with the larger brushstrokes, is reticent when it comes to detail, with the result that Mundy's memories of his infancy are a succession of camps, barracks, depots and hill stations that accelerates as the Major's fortunes dwindle. One day the proud son of Empire rules supreme over a whitewashed cantonment complete with red-ochred club, polo, swimming pool, children's games and Christmas plays, including a historic production of _Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs__ in which he stars as Dopey. The next, he is running barefoot down the mud streets of a half-empty settlement miles from any town, with bullock carts instead of motor cars, a corrugated iron cinema for a club, and Christmas pudding served in a regimental institute green