Snakepit

Начало книги

"This weather is getting unbearable. Are we never to go up to the hills?" Carol Carnac-Smyth drawled.

The other five women lying in the shallow pool of water were all of the same opinion. The searing Punjabi sun beating down on the wooden roof above their heads was far too hot for comfort, especially when the baking summer winds blew in from the arid plains which surrounded Gazepore. There were many delightful places in colonial India in which wives of British officers might live their lives. Gazepore was not one of them. A small and isolated garrison town, its only amenities for Europeans were a social club and a cinema with walls and roof of corrugated iron. And, perhaps best of all, the railhead station, which at least promised some chance of eventually leaving the dismal place.

It had been an unlucky day for the 17th Sikh Rifles when they were assigned the barracks in unlovely and unhealthy Gazepore as their regimental home.

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